Sunny Banana
I am a school chaplain and the content is intended to encourage curiosity about Faith and it's impact on day to day life
The Sunny Banana, is a play upon the Zulu greeting, Sanibonani, meaning I see you.
As tech wrenches us from real life, we are not seeing each other. The Greek word 'idea' means to see. It is as if we have lost the idea of what it means to be human; social, communal, relational. The same word, to see, in Old English is 'seon' which has connotations of understanding.
Let's start seeing each other again, listening, respecting, and understanding each other and ourselves. After all, we are people through other people.
Sunny Banana
Aidan Hart | Religion is about being truly human?
What does it mean to be "fully human" in an age of distraction? Iconographer Aidan Hart challenges our modern separation between religion and spirituality, suggesting that true fulfilment comes not from being "religious" but from living as God intended. Through the metaphor of a light bulb that needs electricity to shine, he illustrates how connection with the divine activates our fullest potential.
The conversation explores how contemporary life keeps us constantly busy, preventing the attention needed to see God in creation. Aidan, who created the screen for King Charles III's coronation, shares how traditional iconography serves not merely as art to observe but as faces looking back at us - reminding us that God sees us even when we're unaware. This mutual recognition forms the heart of authentic human connection, reflected in the podcast's name "Sunny Banana" - inspired by the Zulu greeting "Sanibonani" meaning "I see you."
When discussing the relationship between religion and spirituality, Aidan builds on the metaphor: spirituality as flowing water, religion as riverbanks giving direction. Without boundaries, spiritual energy disperses aimlessly, but with proper channels, it nurtures everything it touches. The conversation weaves through fascinating territory - from the meaning of symbols to the threefold ministry of prophet, priest, and king reflected in art-making.
Throughout, Aidan returns to thanksgiving as central to human fulfilment. The fall of humanity essentially involves taking creation without acknowledging the Giver. A thankless attitude leads to consumption without connection - we grab the gift but run from the relationship. In contrast, gratitude opens our eyes to see the world as "theophany" - every element of creation revealing divine presence. For those seeking deeper meaning, Aidan invites courage and honesty: "Becoming a Christian is an intelligent step forward," not abandoning rationality but transcending its limitations.
Fantastic. So, aidan, welcome to the Sunny Banana. I guess I haven't really explained to viewers yet about Sunny Banana. It is on the description in the podcast, but it's a play upon the Zulu greeting Sunny Bunani and you've inspired this. Actually, sadi Bonani means I see you, and it's a traditional Zulu greeting from South Africa, and you say back I see you too, instead of the how are you?
Speaker 2:It's really profound, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Isn't that lovely.
Speaker 1:And why it's inspired by you is because we stand.
Speaker 1:We stood in this chapel two, three years ago when I first met you and you told me about the greek word idea where we get the word idea from, and it literally means to see. So in my description of a podcast, we, I think it's really important that we start seeing each other, not just I. I know it's quite ironic that we're on a podcast and we're on technology now and so on, but I'm literally saying we need to start seeing each other and start understanding each other so that we have an idea of what it means to be human again, because you know the way, the fast life's going and we can talk about this in the podcast we're starting to lose that idea, or losing touch with humanity, and I wonder how we can, we can discuss this. Religion and spirituality and faith helps us actually become more human, and it's not these airy fairy, uh ideas that uh actually transcend being uh human, but, um, make us human. So so thank you very much for your time today and being on the sunny banana pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you for inviting me, jared. I've been looking forward to it. Yeah, the journey. What I like about this podcast, it's the journey. You don't know where it's going to end up. I didn't even know what the subject was going to be until a few seconds ago.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly. I've just come from a lesson teaching Buddhism and life after death here at the school and I'm into this here. So we want to speak about religion, faith and spirituality. We want to speak about religion, faith and spirituality. But before we go into that, I just wanted to say that so for our viewers out there, listeners out there, who you are. So, aidan, you're an iconographer, you're a carver, you work with wood correct me if I'm wrong and stone, but I know you mostly for your iconography, your iconography writing, if I may say, all the painting of icons. Um, and the most uh interesting thing for me is you did that um screen for the king's coronation that covered him during the anointing moment, which is rather cool to have that project. And you've just finished a massive project, I think an icon for is it Cambridge Institute or the Orthodox Institute?
Speaker 2:Yes, the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right Creation, your creation. Icon.
Speaker 2:Actually. No, you talk about that one. I did an icon of christ for them, but this one you're speaking of is actually for the point loma nazarene uh university in san diego yeah it's actually here at the moment and you can see it'll be sent off, yeah that's it to america soon.
Speaker 1:Stunning, honest beautiful, beautiful, um the. We have a lot of artists at our school soon Stunning, beautiful, beautiful. We have a lot of artists at our school here, so I hope we can touch base on your idea on art and how your faith and spirituality or your worldview comes through your art and your craft. But I think with all my guests we talk about the three things religion, faith and spirituality, and I wondered we could probably start with spirituality and religion. How do they link in your life and are they two different things, or are they a different side of the same coin? How do you see religion and spirituality playing in your life and why is it relevant?
Speaker 2:I'd rephrase that question. I don't believe in being a religious person or spiritual person. I just believe in being fully human, as God intended me to be. So God created us for union with him, to love people, to see everyone as a walking icon or image of God, to even see trees and stones as what's called in theology a theophany, a God showing forth his love for us. So to me, to be spiritual religious I don't particularly like the terms is actually just to be fully human. I don't particularly like the terms is actually just to be fully human. That when someone denies the existence of god or believes in him but doesn't think about him, then to me they're not living to the full human potential. Um, sometimes I give the example of a of a light bulb. You know if, if you don't turn the switch on, the light bulb is sort of a light, but only in potential, until it has this, as it were, foreign energy called electricity going through it, it is not a truly fulfilled light bulb. It is when this electricity runs through it and then it's a union of this energy and this metal filament and then it's fully a light bulb. So for me, spirituality has just just literally being switched on, to use a modern term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of people have this idea of religion a bit like the dewey classification system. This, the library at your school, compartmentalizes things. It's called the dewey classification system. So we think of this is biology. Now I'll turn around to this compartment. This is religion and this is sport. But now I'll turn around to this compartment. This is religion and this is sport. But to me, just everything is love for God, and God comes to me through everything. I could study sport and then I'd be amazed at the wisdom with which God has made the human body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you sound like you're describing the classical method of education, where there's just one class, one teacher and there's science, maths, biology, literature, all linked to God or ways to understand God. So everything there is is a way to see God and understand God. That's theophany. A question there with the light bulb. I like that analogy. What's keeping us from being switched on? What's um? Do you think the biggest uh distraction or um stumbling block in the way for people being switched on, as you say?
Speaker 2:I loved how you introduced um, this discussion, um, with the idea of seeing. I think people aren't switched on, people don't love God or people don't believe in God because they don't see him. And people as they are, in other words, they've got a caricature. One of the names of the devil is a liar, and you can lie in image as well as in word, can lie in image as well as in word. So let's say, for example, before I met you, jared, someone might have decided to tell me horrible things about you, so I would see you differently. So, when I met you, I would relate to you not as you are, but through this caricature. But if someone, on the other hand, had told the truth and told me how wonderful Jared is, I would see you in a different way. Therefore, treat you in a different way. Therefore, I'd treat you in a different way.
Speaker 2:So I think a lot of, probably even most, of our lack of love for God, our denial of the existence of God, whatever state an individual is in, is because of caricatures. We believe the lie. Perhaps it's a social lie. You know that society tells us that we'd be stupid to believe in God, which is part of common thought rather patronizing approach to believe in God. Whatever it is, how we receive that from our parents. Whatever we've got to deal with that caricature and I think that needs a certain scientific precision. With a scientific theory it's not worthy to be called a theory unless it's disprovable. Unless it's possible to disprove something, it's not really worthy of the name theory. So good scientists will love to have themselves disproved. In other words, that will open up a new vista. So in the spiritual world, I think a real alive person would always want um to have the caricatures challenged and overcome, because that's going to lead you to greater freedom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you spoke about the devil and lies um. Have you seen that video of the gentleman asking chat GBT to tell us if, if it was the devil, what would they, what would it do?
Speaker 2:Really, and I haven't heard that.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll let you watch it. I'll let the viewers watch it as well, but one of them is to not that, to reject there's a God or like, oh, there's a God there, but I don't want God. It's more like the devil gets us to forget him, to forget, and so not even to see or to think or to contemplate the idea. And as a school chaplain, it seems also those moments of reflection and we all say it's very important to reflect, but it's the moments of silence and contemplation actually getting less and important to reflect, but it's a moments of silence and contemplation actually getting less and less. There's no more space for it anymore and any free time people have it's filled with some more, some more noise or some more information.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, so I, I'm a member of the orthodox church and I think also some other Christian churches have had the same experience but sort of beginning with lockdown, where people were forced to think more. I suppose I could just waste all the time playing computer games, but a lot of young people, particularly young men, funnily enough, have joined our church. I mean, we've had to move to a larger church now because our church is too small have joined our church. I mean we've had to move to a larger church now because our other church is too small, and that was forced upon them by having to think and become self-aware and have the leisure, if you like, the stillness, if you like, to open their mind. It's often through podcasts like this.
Speaker 2:Some of them started listening to podcasts and that stimulated them and they discovered in podcasts intelligent people openly talking about god. So I I agree. I think I think one way the devil could make us forget um him is just have us really busy, running around really busily, and not have time with creation. I think immediately stop and and just be out and I don't know the term nature, but out in god's cosmos and just be out in. I don't like the term nature, but out in God's cosmos and God's creation. Then you begin to hear God whispering to you through the trees and the grass and the clouds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was. Have you heard of Justin Briley?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and his great book and then he's also got a great podcast called the Surprising Rebirth and he's talking about Bibles being sold from 2019 to 2024 has doubled, has been 5 million copies sold compared to 2.5 million. I think, yeah, that's right, isn't it? So the devil, or the power that be, uh, wants us to be distracted, wants us to be, and this is the whole idea about sunny banana uh, the sunny banana. It's like if you don't see each other, if you're looking down at a black screen all the time, or you've, you're just being sucked into this other world and you don't have your head up. That lovely cs lewis quote. You know that those who don't always look down don't not know what's above them, so you just forget. You just forget god and uh. So I'm throwing all these ideas.
Speaker 1:I'd like alexander solzhenitsyn was like why has all these atrocities happened in the soviet union? Um, because we have forgotten god. You know, because we have forgotten god. One of my uh, one of our minibuses here, one of the favorite quotes I have I love them is it's to the uneducated and we can unpack this, though to the uneducated. An A is three sticks, three sticks to the uneducated, as3 sticks you and I have spoken about Pajot, not Jonathan, his brother, matthew, matthew Pajot and his book, and that book smashed me the language of creation and the symbolism. Could you talk about this in your artwork and maybe for our artists listening at school, here and wherever, and people, what is art and what is the purpose of your art and what are you doing there?
Speaker 2:Thank you. That's a really important question because I think the answer to that relates to what it is to be human If we can go back to your lovely sunny banana the idea of seeing Icons, rather than being just symbols in the sense of a language that we read in our heads, above all anything else, they're faces, they're people looking at us. An icon, a holy icon, is an icon because it's an image of a saint, image of Christ, image of the angels, and the whole function of them is not only us to look at that saint and to commune with him, but to realize that they're looking at us. If I go to sleep, I'm not looking at Christ or the angel, but they don't stop looking at me, and this is one reason why icons often use what's called inverse perspective sometimes. So, basically, the icon depicts the world not from my point of view, but from the subject's point of view that I'm the vanishing point to them. So, instead of me being the actor all the time, I'm me being the initiator. I'm meditating, I am looking at God, I'm praying. Anything I do actively is actually, then, just a response to God's eternal looking at me. He sees me. This is why, in the Old Testament they besought God, lord, do not turn your face away from me, it's of God. Where's eternal's face? Away from them, they would not only die but cease to exist. So there's a bottom line with an icon.
Speaker 2:And I think, why then is this relationship so important? It goes back to the meaning of symbol and icon and various things. So a symbol means to throw together symbolos and the opposite, interestingly, of diabolic. The devil always divides. A good way to divide is to create a caricature, to tell a lie about someone. So you don't want to know someone who you believe is bad and is going to sort of steal from you. And then the word art comes from the ancient Euro-Indian word meaning to join together. Fitly well as artists, articulated truck, articulate person, they join things together well. So religion the same to rejoin religio.
Speaker 2:So religion, art, symbol and icon, they're all various ways of saying the same thing. So why is this? It's because God made us in his image, and God himself as community, god himself as Trinitarian, god as Father, son and Holy Spirit, not three aspects of one person, but three distinct apostasies, as we say in Greek. So when it says in the Bible, let us make man in our image, to be in God's image. I've got to be in relationship with Jared and with my wife and my children, with the stranger, with the beggar. Also be in relationship with the trees that God has made and the stones and everything. So true art brings us into relationship to people, even if it's not an icon it's, say, rembrandt painting or Brancusi sculpture Great art helps us to perceive the mystery and the profundity of not just people, but I'm thinking of Brancusi's bird in space.
Speaker 2:There you see something about a bird, even though it's a highly abstracted sculpture that you've never seen before. In theology, in orthodox theology anyway, we talk about the unknowable essence of God. We know God through his outgoing love, but also we got to realize that in his essence we can never know God. Likewise with you, jared, I get to know you through our conversation, but also I need to realize that you're a profound mystery. So I think good art both reveals and conceals. It doesn't conceal so much. It reminds us that some things are too high to comprehend. We can stand in wonder and awe, but not try to sort of stick them in our brain, which is one of the functions of the screen for the coronation. What was on it revealed the importance of what was happening behind the screen. On the other hand, the actual anointing of such a profound mystery. That icon, as well as revealing, also concealed.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. I've been on one of your courses up in Salisbury and I got the idea that this iconography emanates. It comes towards you, it's coming, but this light that's around the saint or Christ, or it's something that comes out to you and has an effect on the person looking at it. John Cage, are you familiar with John Cage? Yes, of course. He went into this chamber that was the quietest room in the world and he came up with this understanding and he said that art is not one's expression of their own thoughts or beliefs, it's more the imitation of nature. Could you speak into that? Because for our young artists here at the school it's like very much. Perhaps they're thinking well, I'm going to express myself through this art, and that's true. Art is expressing oneself. But can you speak into this idea that it's actually imitating something else larger than the person creating the art?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a very good point. I think to understand the point of view of most modern art one needs to know one's history a bit. This idea of the individual genius, artists, sort of expressing their own individual worldview on the viewer, really only started, I would say, in the Renaissance. But even in the Renaissance period there was still the sense of an ability beyond oneself. So though man is the measure of all things now other than God, still there is the sense that you're there to manifest the inner harmony of things, since leonardo da vinci's famous drawing of the proportion to the human person, um, and then you got the uh salons, um, the art salons, and you can only really be a professional artist if you're accepted by this elite group. And that, and that led to a rather sort of if you're accepted by this elite group, and that led to a rather sort of ossified understanding of beauty, so-called classical beauty, rather stolid and dense copies, pseudocopies of classical art were made. So there was an inevitable reaction against this which led to our sort of modernism. So you've got this rather ossified, glorified photocopying machine called the Salon. So then you're reacting to that and say no, it's the individual. It's not an understandable reaction, but it is a reaction, but it leads to death in a way, in the sense that what we think is freedom to do what I want ends up being a slavery to one's own limited worldview. So traditional art and I work within a tradition is actually a union of the two.
Speaker 2:So, on the one hand, because I'm expressing things that are profound, I can't possibly in my short span of life learn how to do that. So I'm a bit like a scientist. Really I've got to start where other scientists have left off. Einstein didn't sort of pop out of nowhere. He knew all the previous theories and then sort of added on it. So in that sense, one is working within parameters.
Speaker 2:On the other hand, I'm a unique person and God is infinite. So I'm going to express, as it were, certain wavelengths of the profundity of God or the profundity of the human person and of the cosmos that no one else has ever done. It's not my objective to sort of express myself and push myself and people, but it's just the natural result of trying to communicate infinite things as a finite person. So I'm going to end up with something original, and so I'd finish with that word original. Up with something original. So I'd finish with that word original. Nowadays we think it means to be not like anything else, but in fact to be original means to go back to the origin of things. That's true originality, because that origin is divine, ultimately and infinite. Your going back to the origin is going to be different from a bit, not contradictory, but it's going to give a different emphasis, a different color to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's a union really of courage, not just a copy, but humility to see one's self. In a sense it's a servant. I think of the viewer that you're trying to help them see more profoundly, more deeply. I don't want to sort of throw out to the poor view of my paintings all my own angst and my own struggles. There might be some part for that in some art, but I think of us as servants to try to help people see more profoundly. And that needs profound honesty and I'm not going to do something that's inauthentic. But it needs this combination of courage and humility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the freedom point you speak about, that's quite contentious these days and quite counter-cultural, because it seems to be that we've created a culture that just loves to be free and thinks they are free because they can click and get whatever they want and find what they want and do what they want and be what they want. And then you say, you frame it as it's quite a slave. It's like a slavery um to one owns passions and desires. I think gk chesterton said something about art. He spoke about art. He said you know that the freedom of a picture is the boundary, you know it's. You have to have boundaries for that picture to be free.
Speaker 1:And just coming back to religion and spirituality, if I can give my idea about religion and spirituality, I see religion as the boundary, as the things you do, the things, the sort of rules and things you do. But the river is the spirituality, that the energy, it's the power. But if those banks of that river, which is the religion part, aren't strong, well then the river, if you don't have those banks, and the river goes all over the place and it's free to do what it's like. Because as a chaplain I get a a lot of young people saying I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, you know, and that could go anywhere. That's what I'm saying. Where are you going with that? I think there's a meme that says you know, even demons are spiritual. What do you mean by that? You know. So when the religion part comes in and I suppose that is faith and beliefs and so on and so forth gives that, gives their power, that's virtually a direction.
Speaker 2:Um, yes, I agree entirely, and I think part of that is because God has created us as bodily beings. So I can't become a Christian, despite I said we're blessing myself and baptizing myself, need to, because I'm made in God's image and therefore I'm in God's image through communion with other people in community. I need to be received into that community. Someone else baptizes me. I receive through tradition, through things like the creed and the Bible, the tried and proved teaching of 2,000 years, and that gives me freedom.
Speaker 2:So these boundaries aren't arbitrary, they're actually boundaries that manifest our truth. So, as you quite rightly say, as someone said, if you believe everything, it means you believe nothing. You can have no boundaries, you're just a notion of chaos, of formlessness. So if we define religion as like our bodies, really we're not angels, we have bodies and likewise, life with Christ is a body. I never thought of that. The church is called the body of Christ and the body has limits and those limits, as you suggest, funnel us in a direction, like a river is funneled in a direction, hopefully to water gardens and to bring more life than if it just flooded everything and killed it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mentioned Matthew. Matthew Peju, now his brother Jonathan, uh peju, now his brother jonathan, speaks a lot about patterns, chaos, coming together to make meaning. So, like I said, with the a is just three sticks to an uneducated, and I think we've spoken, I've spoken to you about this, about the colors that come together in art and the iconography, and you know, nothing is just random and useless. Can you speak to this idea of bringing down meaning and raising matter in your life? How's that? How's that expressed in your life? Um, do what you do, you know bringing down meaning, raising up matter, because you work with matter.
Speaker 2:We are matter yeah, please, yeah, that's a wonderful question. Um, I just love those three ministries that come up again in the bible again and again as prophet, priest and king. And I think that's how we're fulfilled as humans to be prophets. And a prophet listens before they speak. So when I'm painting I've got to listen to the pigment. Each pigment is different. Some are naturally opaque, some are more earthy, some are brighter, being made of stone, some are more earthy, some are brighter, being made of stone. So I've got to listen to the pigment and not try to make it do something that is not in accordance with its nature. But then I don't just sort of look at the pigment and say, well, that's really nice, then I've got to enter into a synergetic relationship with it. Then I mix it with the egg and paint with it. So that brings in the king, the, the, the kingly role. Let's think of a king as is an artist. So an artist has got to be master of his or her materials, not to subjugate them but to actually lift them up, to make them articulate. So I make the take these good colors and make them very good by gathering thing together into an image and in that sense the pigments rejoice to be ground up. You might think. If that stone, as you might say, had a voice, you might think, oh, what's this guy doing? He's crushing me with a hammer, he's grinding me up, he's hurting me, what's he doing? But oh no, hang on, I've been ground up so I can be made into the Mona Lisa. No, I'm very happy to be granted the Mona Lisa.
Speaker 2:So creation is made to have limitations imposed on it so that it can become more articulate. So it's a prophet, one who listens, and the king queen is one who uses their mastery to make things more articulate. And the priest offers, above all, the priest offers. So if we go back to the story of the fall of adam and eve of mankind, I've often wondered what the tree of knowledge of good and evil was. And um.
Speaker 2:The answer to me came from um ephraim the syrian. He said that it can be considered as the whole of the created world, given by God to us as an expression of his love. It's like a dowry or an engagement ring saying I want to marry you, but we just took it. We took the engagement ring, turned our back on our lover who gave it to us, and then the ring just becomes dead, it becomes knowledge of evil. It's not the ring's fault, it's my fault, as if I give thanks for that ring, look at the face of god. Oh, thank you. This is an expression of your love for me.
Speaker 2:So thanksgiving is so central to the church. The eucharist, the central service, means to give thanks. That's why thanksgiving is central, because it reverses the fall. The fall is basically, which means taking the cosmos, taking the creation and forgetting. It has a label on it from God, with love. So when I'm painting an icon, I finish it, then I offer it to the person who's completed it. Then they would see that icon as a means of coming to God. So this whole thing of prophet, priest and king is all tied up in the making and in the use of the icon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautiful. I remember you were saying in that course in Salisbury how one of the worst things is when a kid gets a Christmas present. They're just like grab, but then they run away from the person. I've got now daughter one and three now I think I met you when my first daughter was born, sort of Ziva, and if I see Ziva do that or something and just grab a present and run away, you know it's like no, no, no, that's the worst thing that can happen. I guess that's what you're saying through the tree of good and evil and the knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 2:And without that attitude of thanksgiving we end up being consumers in the negative sense and our consumerist society or the ecological problems we've got, our loss of belief in God, is all because we don't have a thankful spirit Immediately.
Speaker 2:When it's thankful, you feel rich. You really do feel rich. Really do you feel rich? You feel satisfied because, as a prophet, your eyes are opened and, like moses, you see the bush burning. It's no longer this naughty bush, it's an incredible bush that has grace and glory shining through it and then that opens up all sorts of other things. So he sees his burning bush, he he goes to look at and god speaks to. And the whole history of the world has changed because God tells him he's got to deliver the Israelites. So I think we can backtrack if we, instead of looking at the problems of the world the confusion in art or ecological problems or ugly, architecture or psychological problems, whatever they are, normally it's the lack of thanksgiving, in other words, the lack of perceiving God in his world, and all the complicated problems actually come from something quite simple of not seeing properly, not seeing like a prophet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not being educated, just seeing the sticks and not realise actually there's a poem here. I just need to read those sticks as a symbol of deeper meaning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a conversation with a colleague here about Genesis quite recently. What would you say to people that say you know, well, there wasn't an Adam and Eve. That didn't happen. It's a story, you know, challenging question for all christians. Um, but here we are talking about meaning and things that mean things and the days and the you know the chronological chrono, the chronos of of genesis, and all that. And what if someone says it's lovely to hear what you're saying and these meanings of stuff, but it just didn't happen. You know, it's this what would you say?
Speaker 2:quite true, it is a story, but it's a true story, a true myth if you like, and mythology is often closer to reality than bare scientific facts. Facts don't give us meaning. They're just words in the dictionary, which are nice individual words, but they don't convey much meaning. So it's completely relevant to me whether or not adam and eve is a true story. I mean, obviously it's. If you date it back, it's about six and a half thousand years ago. So plainly, humans are around before that. So an intelligent person.
Speaker 2:I know it's not um history in the sense of literal fact, but it is profoundly true that I think, if we have any honesty to ourselves, we know that we are adam and eve. All the things that they did are things that that we do every day, probably telling lies, justifying ourselves. When god goes to adam and says, what have you done, he says oh, eve, the woman you gave me, she tempted me. So god goes to me what was the devil? The serpent, yeah, serpent, the one that you made. He's always passing the Well, all of us know we do that all the time. We justify ourselves. So likewise, the chronological chronology of creation, the principles there meaning, you know, from the simple to the complex, culminating in the profundity of the human person as prophet, priest, priest and king of creation. Yeah, these are the symbolic meanings of that. Um, so it's a long question, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah so what the? You mentioned something there about um, myth. Okay, and um, I did an online course with martin shaw. Oh, yes, and uh, I've seen you've you met him in london? I think you met him in london and that I was very excited to see that. And so these two guys that I follow and uh admire are also talking to each other. Um, and he said something about myth being uh truth without the use of facts. I guess my question is, for our viewers out there, what is Aidan up to? What projects are you working on? You mentioned the icon and you showed us the icon there. What kind of things you're getting up to for the greater good and for God, I've got various projects.
Speaker 2:I'm just designing an icon of St Lawrence for Concordia University in Chicago. St Lawrence was a martyr, but he was a deacon in the Church of Rome and at that time there was a persecution and the legate of Rome wanted all the wealth of the church and at that stage a deacon's role especially the top deacon, as Lawrence was was in charge of the finances so that it could be distributed to the needy. So he said give me three days and I'll gather all the wealth of the church for you. And he gathered all the poor. Well, he gave away all the church's money because he knew that the emperor was going to steal it. So he gave it all the church's money because he knew that the emperor was going to steal it. So he gave it all away to the poor and then gathered the poor and the ill and brought them to the Roman legate and said here are the riches of the church. So that's part of the university is apparently going to be attached to a hospital or something.
Speaker 2:And then I've just finished designing a whole lot of embroideries for the Guild of Upholsterers also our undertakers. So they're celebrating the 700th anniversary of becoming a world charter, um. So that's been very interesting, um. And then I'm carving a portrait as part of a memorial stone not memorial stone like a stone icon, you could say of of a catholic um, blessed lady um, margaret sinclair. So it's stone carving, um. So a lot of different jobs on and also trying to finish off a novel. It's almost there. This novel is like a true myth. It's an unusual experience for me to write a novel because my other three books are all nonfiction, but here you can create people out of nothing to make a point. So it's an unusual experience for me to write a novel compared to nonfiction.
Speaker 1:Excellent. I've got two more questions. I saw that um. What were you? What were you?
Speaker 2:working with on with with martin, sure was it? Um, well, yes, we first um met because I have a. I used to be a hermit. I lived as a hermit for five, seven, seven years up on the hills here and that property is in a trust now and unfortunately the last monk had to leave being ill. So I first came across Martin because he was interested in buying the property, because it's sort of a wild place. So subsequent to that, we had a podcast. I asked him if he could have a discussion which I then recorded to that. Um, we had a podcast. I asked him if he could have a discussion which I then um recorded. Um, and then we're at um, at arc. It's a big conference organized in part by jordan peterson. Yeah, the second conference was in february of this year. Um, arc stands for alliance, um of responsible citizenship. So, um, yeah, the talks are interesting, but it's more the people one met in between the talks that's most interesting. So lots of us orthodox artists would get together and of course martin was one of them yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 1:Last one for um, our viewers out there, um, who may be wondering what you would say to them in forward guidance or advice, or about the spiritual life, about religion, about faith, in this climate that we're in at the moment. You mentioned that our conference, and now that could bring in other things about its right wing, and it's this and it's conservative and it's so polemic in our polarised society and we've got the young looking at this. You know what kind of hope, what kind of message would you like to leave with them as we end off this podcast?
Speaker 2:I think. Number one being a Christian, and being a Christian not as an individual, but within the living church. It's actually an intelligent step forward. You're not bearing your brain, you're not sort of just living a life of a fluffy faith. It's actually an intelligent step forward to a greater profundity, uh, a greater fulfillment. But you've got to be willing to die.
Speaker 2:You know, christianity is not the easy option. Yeah, if you're a man, if man or woman, but man or woman, you've got to have courage. At the moment, anyway, we're not being persecuted, but you've got to realize that becoming a christian is going to change your life and you've got to decide do I just want to live an easy life, just what I want to do, when, which is the road to death, basically or you don't want to live for something much higher than myself? Um, so answer that question truly and honestly and don't pass the buck.
Speaker 2:Ask yourself if I don't believe in God, well, what is this God I don't believe in? Describe this God you don't believe in, and I can assure you you'll find that that is not the God that the Christians believe in. So in that case, I'm an atheist as well. So be brutally honest with yourself and just believe that becoming a Christian is actually an intelligent step forward. It's rational and it'll take you beyond your rational faculty. It's a spiritual life. It includes the rational, but it's super rational, it also supersedes it. So you've got to be humble. In that sense. There is a world much greater than what our limited rationality can comprehend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, aidan. It was such a pleasure, and I always learn so much when I speak to you. It's a pleasure having this time with you, jared, yeah, and it's good to see you, sunny Bonanni.
Speaker 2:Sunny Bonanni.