Allie Beth, Me, And The Occult

And: Awful US Journalism; Dreadful Luce; Remembering The Dead Pecker Bench

Thrilled to share with you today my hourlong interview with Allie Beth Stuckey, about Living In Wonder. You’ll like this, I bet. Lots of woo talk:

More lovely reviews of Living In Wonder to share with you. The first is from our friend and comments thread colleague Sandra Miesel, writing in Catholic World Report. Excerpt:

Living in Wonder closes with more personal testimonies from Dreher: what he learned from an evocative image of St. Galgano by Italian artist Luca Daum and a visit to the shrine where that medieval saint’s sword remains embedded in stone; his restorative experience with the Holy Fire in Jerusalem at the lowest point in his life; and hints of an apocalyptic dream that he fears is coming true.

Dreher agrees with Karl Rahner’s warning: “In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic. . . or nothing at all.” Theological treasures of Christendom are useless unless they lead to a personal relationship with Christ. Disenchanted moderns “don’t want to know about God; they want to know God.” Christ is the medium through which God communicates the message of himself.

Seek the living God while you may, says Dreher, but “take courage because the Lion of Judah has triumphed.”

In conclusion, Living in Wonder does fulfill its promise as a wonder-filled invitation to enchantment. Dreher strides across today’s vast spiritual deserts, searching for springs of living water. But his book is no typical critique of Western decadence. Its power lies in the stories it tells of real people’s spiritual struggles, not in “some fairytale past” but in our disenchanted modern times. We see wounded men and women—including the author—seeking, finding, and loving God, the God who loved them before he laid the foundations of this marvelous earth.

Sandra, thank you — you really get the book! Readers, I should point out that Sandra, a Catholic, gently faults my understanding of Catholicism, and church history. I’m not going to take up limited space here quoting those bits, but I want you to know that they are there. Do read the review.

The second is from my pal Niall Gooch, writing in UnHerd. Excerpts:

Dreher is a devout and observant Orthodox Christian. This naturally gives him a certain appreciation of why modern life can feel so disenchanted. In his telling, the dovetailing of the everyday and the transcendent, so common in the high medieval imagination, was dealt successive blows. The first came from nominalism: the philosophical position which denied the existence of an underlying metaphysical unity behind the physical world. Then came the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution of the last few centuries. 

This is a familiar story, though Dreher’s train of thought does call at some unexpected stops. His discussion of the potentially sinister spiritual significance of UFOs and AI — quoting many reasonable people open to the idea that such phenomena could represent a vector for malevolent immaterial entities — is both fascinating and unnerving. That’s doubly true for those who believe, or half-believe, in a world beyond our everyday experience. 

Non-believers will surely raise an eyebrow here, as perhaps might proudly rationalistic believers. Yet Dreher’s book contains many examples of people who are non-religious but nonetheless suspicious of dogmatic materialism. One good example here is the philosopher Thomas Nagel. At any rate, sceptics shouldn’t let their unease with what Dreher himself calls “woo” blind them to a core problem of modernity: the crisis of attention. The best parts of Living in Wonder deal squarely with this issue, and even doubters can gain much by taking it seriously. 

More:

Living in Wonder tackles all this in a chapter called “Attention And Prayer” — but again, religious sceptics needn’t roll their eyes. Much of what Dreher discusses here isn’t specific to religious thought. Quoting Iain McGilchrist, a distinguished polymath, the author claims that “how you attend” to the world changes what you find there. 

Obviously, the argument here is not that the physical world literally changes according to the psychological disposition of the observer. Rather, the idea is that our ability to notice important things — a flower, a bird, the emotional states and needs of our friends and families — is a learned skill, and one we neglect at our peril.

One of the things I especially liked about Niall’s review is how he focused heavily on a part of the book that nobody has commented on yet — the need to reclaim attention as a precursor to re-enchantment. This book has lots of ways in for readers.

My UK publishers Hodder Faith sent me this graphic today from Amazon.co.uk, of the new Christian releases chart. I’m Taylor Swifting them, looks like:

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