The Eric Metaxas Show - Margarita Mooney (Encore Continued)

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Eric's continues his Socrates in The City conversation with Margarita Mooney 

Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. Back again, eh? Glutton for punishment, eh? When will you ever learn? Now here's the host that you hate to love, the man who was the reason your friend sponsored your last intervention, Eric Matt, Texas. Folks, you're listening to a special edition of the show. These are the audio versions of amazing conversations I had, Socrates in the studio. We want to encourage you to go to Socrates in the cityplus.com. Socrates in the city plus.com.

And now here's my conversation with the great Margarita Mooney. It's Socrates in the studio. Here it is. The idea of, I mean, the title of the book here, The Wounds of Beauty, Seven Dialogs on Art and Education, I'm interested in that concept. And I know in a lecture you gave not long ago, you're quoting Pope Benedict, who at the time was merely Ratzinger,

but whom we now know is Pope Benedict, he said, beauty attracts us to something other than ourselves. And then he goes on to say, this is amazing, this longing causes us to suffer. So there's a kind of a wounding that happens in our encounter with beauty that somehow draws us to God, draws us out of ourselves. These are big, beautiful ideas. So I want you to talk a little bit about that concept of the wounds of beauty.

What do we mean by the wounds of beauty? Look, I picked the title because I think for some people, right, when you hear that title, you immediately think of beauty as a consolation in our sadness. And there's something to that, right? Most people can think of a time when they were sad and a beautiful sunset was encouraging or made them feel good. And that's not bad, right? God gave us beautiful things to enjoy.

I'm not against that. But the title wounds of beauty, Ratzinger used it, as you described, as kind of like an arrow piercing the heart. That what true beauty does, and again, let's think back to the Christo Panto-Crotter that I mentioned a moment ago. A true beauty, it does inspire us and call us, but it doesn't point us towards itself. It says, hey, there's something greater than, right? So. It doesn't deny itself. That's right.

but it is also a window beyond itself to God. It says, I can't fulfill you. The fulfillment you're seeking might pass through me, but it's pulling you somewhere else. So again, just to give you an example of an encounter I had with Christo Panto Crater, Christ in Glory. I was at a friend's wedding in Serbia, and I found a Catholic church to go to in the morning.

It was an Orthodox wedding, but I wanted to go to Catholic Mass. I love going to Catholic Mass in foreign countries, seeing what it's like. But that day, I was really sad because it was a six-month anniversary of the death of a young student who I had mentored, John Artunian. And I woke up that day thinking, how can I go celebrate my friend's wedding when I'm just grieving over the loss of this young man still? And thankfully, a Catholic priest had emailed me and said, listen, your grief is normal. It's a human response.

But you have to picture where he is now. You know, he's not suffering anymore. And I walked into this church and behind the altar was this giant image of Christ in his glory. And I tried to use my imagination to picture this young man is now in the glory. And what I realized, so yes, my emotions were soothed, but I was also sorrowful because I realized that what was in need of healing wasn't him anymore. It was me. That it was my own incapacity to believe in God's glory, my own lack of faith. was what was making me sad.

But yet that face of Christ, which is beautiful yet strange, was calling me and calling me to my own kind of conversion. And it was like a willingness to say, okay, I'm going, I need to change. I need to rejoice for my friend who's getting married today. And I wasn't rejoicing alone. I was bringing the love of Christ both in death and in marriage.

And then at the marriage, Eric, you've probably been to an Orthodox wedding. I love Orthodox wedding ceremonies. actually what is marriage? It's the death of two people and the coming together of one. So what's so wonderful about Christianity and its understanding of beauty

is that out of death can come a new life. And believe me, a lot of people right now want that hopeful message. And they're not going to get it from Nietzsche and they're not going to get it from postmodern art. Now, the people that I talk to also may not be going to beautiful weddings in Serbia though I highly recommend it.

if you've ever, if you're ever invited to an Orthodox wedding, I think they're the most beautiful liturgy I've ever seen in my life. But I want people who read my book to understand that we can all take steps towards restoring this beauty, right? How do we do that? How do we do that, practically speaking? Well, one, let's stop patronizing modern arts

and let's start patronizing traditional Christian art. There's a wonderful workshop in England called the Chichester Workshop for Liturgical Art. They're apprenticing artists in this old-fashioned way. They're doing beautiful art for Anglican churches, for Calvinist churches even, who traditionally don't have a lot of art, but they're realizing that they need to.

There are ways to do this. But in your own home, think about your own home. Now, when people come to my home, I'm now married to an artist who does traditional Christian art, and as part of our last conference, we opened up our house for people to see his workshop. I thought we'd get 10 people. We got like 100.

Don't ask me how they all fit. But there's this fascination with the process of making art. And the fascination with an artist describing the mathematical, scientific process. My husband's degrees are all in math and physics and engineering. So he has this science of materials approach to his beautiful art. But then they also saw our home, which is intentionally designed, according to the principles my husband talks about in his book, the little oratory that when you walk into our house,

the first thing you're meant to see is the image of Christ in his glory, as I mentioned a moment ago, but then also the image of Christ with his mother, how he came into the world, and also an image of Christ on the crucifix. So we have these three central images, the entrance of our house. You go a few feet,

then we have the most important people in our lives, our wedding picture, our families, because the humans get their dignity from these sacred images. Then we have plants because God's creation is good. My husband is a gardener. I do the indoor plants. He does the outdoor plants. But that creation plants is also a reflection of God's glory, right? So the house kind of moves out. And then we actually do have abstract art. My husband will defend abstract art. He says it's about as good as a curtain. You know, curtains can give nice color to a room, so can abstract art. But if you think a curtain is going to teach you what's inside your

soul, he's going to say you're kind of a little off there. But he does make abstract art, and he makes landscapes, right? So he makes abstract art, he makes landscapes, he makes sacred art, and he does portraiture. But those are all expressing very different things.

And I think the point he's making is that abstract art can express what an image of Christ can express, because Christ was actually historically a person. I wasn't going to bring it up. It just came to me now that in my book is atheism dead, at the end of the book, I'm really talking about evidence for God, and the evidence for God from everywhere, whether science or archaeology, is almost preposterous.

It's the evidence for God is everywhere. But there's a chapter at the end of the book called The Witness of Beauty, how beauty somehow points to God, whether you like it or don't. My wife and I were in Montauk recently looking at a sunset, and I shouldn't say this publicly. I want my girlfriend to know. But we were looking at this sunset, and it was so beautiful that I almost wanted to get up in this outdoor restaurant and tell everybody, doesn't this make you believe in God? It was that beautiful that I thought to myself, what are people thinking as you look at this,

this glowing orange globe. Why does looking at that pierce your soul? You know, you have to ask, what are people thinking? Why do people look at sunsets? What is this doing for them? And I think this is the work that you're doing is you're helping them understand why they want to look at a sunset. What is happening there that is just, it's transformative.

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It's amazing. Well, I start with a lot of young people. It's precisely what you just said. Beauty and nature. There's a lot of agreement about what's beautiful in nature. Sunsets, you know, parks, trees. You don't really have to convince people that, sunset is beautiful. I've never actually heard somebody say it's ugly. But the question is,

how do you go from that agreement on beauty in nature and help people to see that it's not, like, again, I go back to Augustine, right? He said, oh, you know, the birds, you're so beautiful. And they said, well, we didn't put ourselves here, you know, oh, you know, tree, you're so beautiful. Well, I didn't create myself, right? How do you help people see that the beauty they're encountering in nature? Well, guess what? the sun sets over in a minute, and then it's gone. The lasting beauty is the creator of that beauty. And I do think people are open to that idea. Because if not, listen, before I knew all this stuff about beauty, I was, sure, I was a practicing Catholic.

I went to Mass. I was interested in the intellectual life. But when I had emotional issues or problems, what would I do? I mostly turned to entertainment, you know? Let's go have a good laugh. Let's go to the beach. Let's go hiking. let's go on a trip, let's go to a museum.

And all that's great. But at the end, there's still something deep inside of you that's looking for a connection, that's looking for the eternal. And so little by little, I discovered the Catholic mystical tradition, right, through St. Teresa of Avala or St. Thereseu, that actually inside of our souls

is this beautiful place of the encounter with God. And what's so beautiful about experiences in nature is that it helps us to see that God is actually in us. And when you've seen that, and again, we are human beings. We're created. We need to touch and to smell and to see beautiful things so that we can recognize that presence in our soul of the eternal. And so what the Catholic mystical tradition has helped me to do

is to live this dynamism, right? You can't simply be contemplating God's beauty in your soul all day long. You have to get out there. You have to toil. You have to make things. You have to deal with real people. You have to deal with brokenness. But when you've learned that through prayer and through contemplation,

that material things can all give glory to God, even if they're broken, because you're standing there in the brokenness. And you're witnessing to the light in the midst of the brokenness. So again, I wrote this book during COVID because we need people right now in this country. who can witness to the light. And not only through our ideas and our philosophy and our politics, all of which we need, but you need to be experiencing that light deep inside of your soul.

And I tell people, whether or not the people around you know that you're a Christian or know what you believe, they can sense when somebody is a nihilist or when somebody has the light of Christ in them. They may not know what it is, but I'm telling you, a woman who helped me when I went through a very painful experience of being denied tenure at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, a woman who helped me more than anybody called me from her deathbed, dying of cancer. She said, I'm not really a believer, but I've always felt something special about you. And I wanted to call you as I'm dying of cancer and just ask you to pray for me.

I feel a special connection to you, and I can't explain it. and I've just seen that, that people who, she was a great person, a very virtuous person, a very hardworking person, but she hadn't grown up in a house of belief. And when she's facing her final moments, facing her creator, she thinks of a human person who reflected something of that creator to her. And she grasps for it. And this is the hope that we need today. because there are a lot of people who are in despair right now. Look at our mental health crisis.

This is the other reason that I did this. It's the other reason that I talk about this in places like Princeton and Yale. Because the mental health crisis is out of control. And I've had people in administration at major public universities and private universities tell me, we cannot hire enough psychologists to fix this problem. It's like the more we spend on psychology, the deeper of a hole we get into. Well, that actually makes sense, right? It's like the more taxpayer money we throw at the quote-unquote war on poverty, the worse it becomes.

It can't be fixed this way. It can only be made worse this way. Well, because ultimately, if you don't believe that your life has dignity, why struggle with your mental illness? And I had a student who came to me at Yale who had been struggling with a lot of mental illness. And she said that she didn't think her life would really matter whether she was alive or six feet under the ground. She came from an atheist family. And I finally just said to her, listen, I know you don't believe in God. You know, you've never set foot inside of a church.

But I'm telling you, you have a dignity that can never be taken away. And whether you overcome your mental illness or not, you are created in love and for love. And, you know, she went and found in New Haven. I actually couldn't find any bookstore, New Haven that sold a Christmas card with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It was all joy and peace. But again, we're not looking at the picture of Jesus. We're not looking at a picture of his mother. We're just talking abstractly about the joy of the season.

And, of course, the concept of joy and peace, these are utterly meaningless concepts when they're disembodied in that way. What is it? Who's against peace? But what does it mean? How do you get peace? Precisely. And I actually think a lot of bad things come into the world

through people who proclaim that they're doing it in the name of peace, but can't actually put their feet in the ground of a tradition, right? people throw out. What do communism do, right? You know, re-education camps meant, you know, you get a musket in your butt and you have to go, you know, cut down sugar cane until you get rid of your belief in God. I mean, like the playing around with language. But this student who was herself not a believer, she actually somehow found a card with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph on it and put it on my door and thanked me for open thoughts and big hugs. But what I realized when in these schools where people are truly struggling, they're not.

not just struggling psychologically. They're struggling with this fundamental question of being. Why does this world need me to exist? Would the world even care if I ceased to exist? It's not a psychological question. It's an existential one. Well, this is, it's interesting because what it points to is the idea that we're at a point in the culture where we're living on fumes, we're running out of the fumes themselves. But we have divorced ourselves from the idea that every human being is made in the image of God is sacred and beautiful and that the God of the Bible dies for us, values us so much, unimaginably much, that he dies for us to redeem us. There's something so ennobling and beautiful about that.

And even if you don't believe that literally or whatever, we've still been living in a culture that reflects those ideas. And that has been going away, month by month, year, by year, day by day. And we're now at a point where, as you're describing it, people are in genuine despair because they have been told you're an accident. You evolved by chance out of the primordial soup. Your life is literally meaningless. Like your life is literally meaningless.

You're an accident. So suck it up and get a good job and, you know, do your best. but clearly people are saying that that that doesn't resonate with me. If that's true, I should commit suicide. If that's true, why are you telling me it? Why would I even want a good job? Why would I want to do anything? And so at the heart of all of this really is that question of who are we?

What are we meant for? and I really do think it's fascinating when we're talking about the beauty of nature. I had this thought not so long ago. I thought nature is always beautiful. It's kind of a strange thing. Nature is never tacky. Only human beings can do tacky.

Nature, there is nothing in nature ever, anywhere that is tacky. And I thought that is a clue about something. Even if you don't know anything, you'd say, well, why is that? What is that? What is in me that responds to nature to beauty? Well, I will say, that's funny, Eric. I never thought of anything that way.

But I wouldn't say that. So I'm here for her. That's a very good one. I wouldn't say that everything in nature is already in its perfect ideal state either, right? So most of human experiences like Central Park is a human creation along with nature, right? So nature can be, I mean, nature also expresses itself in decay. One of the people I interview in the book is called The Cheese Nun. You know, she has a PhD in microbiology and learns about the mysteries of the faith.

One of the people in this book is called The Cheese Nunn? Well, that's not legally her name. It's not even her name. It's not her baptismal name. No, her baptismal name is Noella, Marchalino. Okay. But there's a documentary about her called Cheese NUN because people were fascinated by this nun and a habit who got a PhD in microbiology and makes artisanal French cheeses. But she doesn't do it because artisanal French cheeses taste good, though they do.

I've had her cheese in her monastery. Yeah. She does it because the process of cheese making is about bringing something beautiful out of something that's decayed. And so her understanding of nature is like death and decay is part of nature. but we as human beings can step into that death and decay and still bring something good out of it. It can disturb you or it can be decaying, but it contains within it a seed of growth. But again, we need to understand, again, that through grace into the nature that is beautiful yet decaying, we're called to order it.

And this is actually the grand calling that God has given us. He's given us a piece of his divine intellect. that we can, whether it's woodworking or gold leaf or architecture, gardening, right, cheese making, we're participating in the divine intellect. And if we don't do those things, then nature becomes unwieldy and it can be uninhabitable, even to human beings. So it's, again, I love it. It's not about anything in nature being tacky, but in seeing in nature,

the co-creative capacities we have to bring beautiful things out of what's limited, because only God ultimately is infinite. And as I mentioned earlier, I think a lot of these young people I talk to who may call themselves atheists and don't believe in something, they're ultimately really relieved to find out that there's something bigger than themselves, outside of themselves. That's good. You know, one time on Valentine's Day during the COVID pandemic, on Valentine's Day, I was on a panel about suicide.

Yeah. With a comedian, a psychiatrist, and an existentialist, go figure. Two of them were in person. Two were on video. The psychiatrist who worked at a university hospital said that, you know, at least half, if not more, of the mental illness cases that come to him are not mental illness. They're existential. This fundamental question of why should I exist as, to pose to not existing.

And the comedian named Jeremy McClellan, he gave the best reason to convert to Christianity I've ever heard. You know what it was? Because life is funnier when you're a Christian. And I was like, a strange answer, right? But what he said was that as a comedian, part of what he does is try to kind of make fun or make light of human darkness.

And, you know, you make a lot of self-deprecating jokes. And, you know, you just observe human beings and you talk to a lot of people. but he was really plagued by this fear that really if you take atheism for what it is, it's the denial that there's any meaning or order in the universe. And that's dark. And so he realized that when he converted to Christianity, the message of Christianity is not, as he said, if I pray 20 times a day I'm saved and if I miss one and it's 19, oops, you know, I missed it. He said, the central message of Christianity is that the world and of itself is created in love.

and that I'm here because the creator loves me. So he said, I can face the darkness, and I can even make jokes about it, because I have this deeper hope. And so when talking to someone who's very sick from mental illness or who's depressed, the message is not, hey, do this and you're going to feel better, right? People tell them that all the time. The message is, regardless of how you feel, you are here because there's something bigger than you that loves you. And let that sit with them for a while.

and hopefully they can respond. And so what I say to people as well, if you're feeling lonely and you're feeling depressed and you're not sure about yourself or why you exist, how about you put yourself someplace where you can serve other people? How about you give of yourself, right? We're telling so many young people that their happiness ultimately lies and what they can achieve, right?

This kind of individualism. And what I share with students is that, you know, my first book was about Haiti. And what really struck me about Haiti, tremendous material poverty, but an unbelievable joy. And what I realized was that, although I thought, because I was so much materially better off than people in Haiti, that in order to kind of, I don't know, maybe win their love, I had to do something for them or bring them something material. What I realize is that people who don't have a lot of material possessions, they see straight through you. And they know, and they want to know who you are before they even think about taking something from you. And plus, they don't want to take something from you. They want to participate in something.

They want to co-create with you. So this whole idea that we could solve all the world's problems by somehow taking this finite amount of goods and in a utilitarian way, distributing it more evenly, it's actually not a very good way to help the poor. The poor have a tremendous capacity to create. And I think we need to approach the poor with an economy of abundance and super abundance that, sure, by teaming up with people in Haiti,

my gifts and their gifts can come together to do something greater. But the moment I've looked at a poor person as if they have nothing to give, I've already sunk myself. So this utilitarian mentality that we tell the high achieving, go be your best self and achieve all this and do all this. And then you go give of what you have and tell other people how to make things. No, no, no.

We're called to co-create. So in Haiti, I did this through song. One of the ways that I made friends in Haiti was by learning songs. By the way, I love singing in languages. I don't speak. You can memorize the tone. you can memorize some of the verses, the words, and you can co-create music.

Now, I did learn Haitian Creole, but give me any language and I'll try to sing in it, right? We can work in a garden together. We can worship together. There are all kinds of things we can do with people very different from us that are creating beauty and are creating something good.

And if we do that, then whatever our unique skills are at science or engineering or painting or mathematics, or writing, then those skills will be rightly understood as part of the common good. We have our individual calling, but we're also called to cooperate with others to create the common good. There's no place like Israel, rich in history, culture, and spiritual significance.

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Go-Israel.com. When we talk about beauty, we tend to think of physical beauty images. But music also obviously can be beautiful. or ugly. And it's fascinating to me how I think I probably write about it in the chapter of The Witness of Beauty and my book is Atheism Dead about how an experience my father tells me about. He's 96 now, but when he was about 16, the war was on and Cephalonia, where he's from, was occupied.

And he was in the square of Argostholi, probably at midnight, moon, beautiful summer, in the middle of war. And someone from a rooftop someplace was playing, suddenly started playing a trumpet. And I forget the song or whatever. But he says it was literally the most beautiful thing he ever experienced in his life. And so you have all these people sitting there in the midst of occupation and war listening to this, tears streaming down their faces. and you think why? Because somehow that musical beauty communicated something transcendent.

It wasn't just noise, it wasn't just sounds, it pointed to something on the other side of the war, it pointed to, and I think about that, the meaning of beauty, that somehow it pointed, I mean, if you listen to John Cage, you want to kill yourself. If you don't want to kill yourself, you're not listening carefully enough. Really ugly things, whether it's some modern art or John Cage, it really says something.

It's not just something that it is. It says something. And it can depress you. It can make you feel fractured and confused. or it can lead you toward God, toward the good, toward hope. And I'm just, I'm fascinated at how everyone knows that. But people in our culture rarely talk about that, rarely talk about the fact that if I go to MoMA,

it's not going to probably like give me hope for my depressed life. Why? Well, that's what we're talking about. Listen, music is probably the one thing that my students most want to talk about, because I've never actually heard anybody discuss anything about the relations between music and beauty or mathematics or tradition. But music is something everybody experiences, and people can't help but respond to music for good or bad or whatever. It's like you feel it, right? You don't see it, but it affects you somehow. But the example you gave of music in the midst of war

helping people to see that there's something bigger and greater than themselves, this is what music is supposed to do. Now again, in the context where I live and work and teach and the people I work with, they might encounter all different kinds of music, even in their own places of worship. But I had one student who said to me, you know, at some point we Christians have to say that certain kinds of music don't belong in church. Because I can tell you, when I wasn't a Christian,

I was getting down to music, and it wasn't the Holy Spirit moving me. And his point, I think, was well taken, that there are forms of music that are actually meant to enliven the passions and the wrong kinds of passions. Again, people don't want to say that there's anything objective about beauty, but I do want to say, you've got to be careful what you put in your places of worship. I hear people say, and I think they're well-meaning, that, you know, Christianity has always engaged with pagan forms of art and music and architecture,

And, you know, maybe even sounds like I'm saying we can co-create, we can uplift everything. But there are boundaries and there are borders. And I will say, I don't think I've ever said this on a show before, but I've actually been to a pagan ceremony. Most people who want to say we can, you know, Christianize pagan ceremonies haven't been to one. Was it at the U.N.? It was in rural Haiti. It was a voodoo ceremony. Uh-huh.

And I went trying to be an agnostic observer, but I can tell you that when the music started and the drums started and a woman was dressed in red crawling backwards at a speed that I couldn't possibly imagine, I thought I was seeing a possession, which is what people who do Vooda would claim it is. And there's a clear link between the form of music and the form of dance and the spirit possession. So this is not controversial. this is, I think, exactly what pagan religions claim they're doing. And so then the question that I had to face as a believer in that context was, can I pull myself out?

Can I say, well, this is not my religion, so this isn't going to affect me? And in that moment right there that I was debating that, this other guy came up to me and he said to me, do you think this is devil worship? And I said, well, I don't know that it is, but it's certainly possible that it is. And he said, well, you look uncomfortable. comfortable. I think you want to go. What he really wanted to do was not be the only one to leave.

So he and I left. And I had to face with my conscience, can I actually psychologically, spiritually protect myself from that? And I tell you, my Haitian Christian Fred said, don't try it. Don't try it. If you know that's what's going on and you know people are intentionally using these forms of music to bring about spirits that aren't the Holy Spirit, you don't want to be there. Now, what happens in our churches, you know, look, discernment of spirits is a difficult thing, right? And just because there's some form of worship going on and you say it's Christian, well, you know, doesn't mean that you don't have to have some kind of tradition you're standing on. So when you're doing your worship and your houses of worship,

you've got to think about where the forms you're using are coming from. There are some boundaries. And I think as Christians, we should acknowledge that and acknowledge the potential for certain forms to really distract us and to get in us and stay in us. By the way, I went to confession about having been at the pagan ceremony. I spoke to some priests about it, and, you know, there is a way in which you can block out the evil spirit. But the last thing you want to do is put yourself into a context where you might think, oh, that's actually kind of neat.

I wish I could do that. You don't want to put yourself in that kind of context. My Pillow is excited to announce that they're having the first ever mega sale on overstock clearance and brand new products. For example, you can save over 50% on this season's flannel sheets. The queen's size is only 5998 and King is only 69.99. They sell out fast every year, so be sure to order now. You can also save 30% on their brand new My Crosses. They're designed in the likeness of the one Mike has worn every day for over 20 years.

They come in men's and women's styles and they're made right here in the U.S. Get the 2025 six piece My towel sets for only 2998. The initial quantities are extremely low, so get them now before they go. And I can't forget to mention the best-selling standard. MyPillow is just 1498. To take advantage of the first ever mega sale,

go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Eric or call 800-978-3057. But wait, remember that $75 free shipping rule? Well, that ship has sailed because right now for a limited time, every order ship's free. Folks, go to MyPillow.com, use the promo code Eric. Mypillow.com. Promocode, Eric. I think a lot of people can be sleepwalking without ever sensing the need for God. But when

evil or really aggressive despair enters, for a lot of people, that is the trigger in the good sense to, okay, I think I need something beautiful and good and true. And maybe that's God. And where would I find that? Listen, and I think right now, in terms of how do we speak as Christians in the public realm, how do we communicate this hopeful message? You know, Christianity isn't just a set of ideas or a set of teachings, right? Jesus wasn't just a teacher. He didn't just tell parables. He was the divine who became man. And he lived in family and he lived in relationships and he created a community, right? So the project I'm working on during my sabbatical at Oxford is actually about the mother of God, the Thaotokos, right? So as I mentioned to you earlier, I think

time for Christians all to recognize that depicting Jesus and depicting Mary isn't optional. But also, if you're going to call yourself Christian, you have to take this idea of the mother of God seriously. It's not optional. And for the early church, this was very clear that her motherhood was real, not just of Jesus the person, but she is the God bearer. So my kind of way that I've been drawn to spread this meshes of hope is by talking about the mother of God And images of the mother of God that I'm really drawn to are Mary the seat of wisdom, which I described a moment ago, right? Where this woman has her son in the womb and she's bearing him, but she's this kind of powerful maternal figure. But the power of Mary is born from the wisdom of submitting her life to God and being with Jesus at the foot of the cross.

And it's because she submitted her life to God and was at the foot of the cross that she now is in glory with her son. and she's inviting us to participate in this relationship. But on the topic of spiritual warfare, I taught this class called ecumenical devotion to Mary at Princeton Theological Seminary, and there was a woman who was in a Pentecostal tradition who does a lot of deliverance prayer for women who've lost children,

maybe they had abortions, maybe they were raped. And she said, you know, I heard something about Mary crushing the head of the serpent, and I wonder if the mother of God can help me you know, minister to these women who need healing. And that also really got me thinking, right, that Mary is the new Eve because in her freedom and assenting to God's plan for her life, she gave her will back to God, which gave her authentic freedom. So it's because Mary assented and agreed at the incarnation that we can have the hope as her children, that we can also crush the

evil, right? So I do think, again, this may not be what everybody's used to, but I do think that these images of Jesus and these images of the mother of God are pointing us towards God, but that the objects, having them in our presence, has a protective power. And for me, having a couple of images, it doesn't have to be a lot, but a couple of images, then I feel that though the presence of the mother of God with me all the time. And that's what these images are supposed to do. That's why you're revering the person in the image, but the objects themselves are sacred objects. And when I attended the blessing of this new workshop for liturgical art in Chichester, England, the Anglican bishop said, in an ecumenical sense, all of us Christians believe in sacred objects.

And we need to be supporting the creation of these sacred objects, beautiful architecture, beautiful images, so that people are surrounded in their daily life with images of beauty. We're just about out of time. The book is The Wounds of Beauty. And I hope people will look up the Scala Foundation. What's the website? ScalaFoundation.org. We're also on YouTube, the Schala Foundation, and our YouTube has really wonderful examples of artists, including my husband, David Clayton, but also Martin Earl, Aidan Hart, Jim Blackstone, short videos where they take an icon of the Mother of God

and explain some of the symbolism. Margarita, Mooney Suarez, Clayton. Thank you for being our guest at Socrates in the studio. Been a joy. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Thank you.