Spiritual but not Religious, from No Small Endeavor

0:00Hey, it's Ryan. This is not exactly another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. This is a sneak peek of a podcast called No Small Endeavor, which is hosted by Lee C. Camp. On the show, Lee talks with world-class thinkers, psychologists, authors, and philosophers about what it takes to live a really good life, not in theory, but in practice, diving into virtue, resilience, purpose, and public life. So here is a sneak peek, and you can hear the rest of the series by searching for No Small Endeavor wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lee Seekamp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.

0:43We're in a disenchanted age where we've decided that all that we can see is all that there must be. And actually, we've realized we desperately don't want to be the most powerful beings that we can imagine. we actually desperately don't want this.

1:00That's Belle Tyndall Riley, author of The Sacred Ake. A century ago, the German sociologist Max Weber said, the fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Disenchantment. The original German word here could be transliterated as demagicking. The demagicking of the world. The Enlightenment, modernity, the scientific revolution, all seemingly took away our magic. If we can measure, master, control, dissect, and quantify, it seems our gods are all explained away. Weber was not the first. The celebrated poet Wordsworth, a hundred years earlier, lamented modernity too.

1:54The world is too much with us, he said. Late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. And then listen to his ache. Great God, he said, I'd rather be a pagan, suckled in a creed, outworn. To many, this seems the only remaining option in our day. To live, on the one hand, in a materialist, quantifiable, imminent world, nothing transcendent or magical, or on the other hand, as Wordsworth says, adopt some worn-out creed patently false, but one which at least lets you live in the myth of some magic. Weber had another phrase from an earlier essay, which is also stuck around. The iron cage.

2:41Weber made the point that the Enlightenment simply captures you within a cage, saying you are not allowed to think otherwise. And of course, the world is rather more complex than the Enlightenment vision and rationality allows. And that's one of the key challenges all of us to face. How on earth do we deal with a really complex, beautiful world when pure reason can't really do justice to it?

3:09Alistair McGrath taught at Oxford University for more than 30 years and he says that about a decade ago the questions which students brought into his office began to change People are trying to break free from this rationalist cage because they realize there has to be more than this because everything inside them is saying this isn't good enough you know it's obvious there's more to life than this tell us what it is Or as Belle Tendle-Riley put it You just don't have to look very far to see, like, when we're all that we've got, we're not enough, I think. We still ache. So we went to Britain to explore that ache.

3:50Because Britain might be seen as at least one of the places where the war between science and religion was declared. In Oxford, in fact, 1860, in a widely publicized public debate, a prominent bishop asks the famous atheist and defender of evolutionary theory, Thomas Huxley, which side of his family the ape was on. And the war was supposedly off and running. So, we went to a manor house outside Oxford, then took a long train north to Edinburgh, followed by a long drive west to the beautiful Isle of Skye. And along the way, we interviewed three people who have lived on both sides of that supposed war.

4:33A biblical scholar from rural Wales, who grew up when the book The God Delusion was topping the charts. And she then lied to her classmates about going to church. or a theologian who came to Oxford as a Marxist atheist. And finally, the psychiatrist on Sky, who has spent 35 years asking what the two halves of the brain are for. All three agree that Weber's iron cage is real. They do not necessarily agree on what lies outside the bars or whether what is rushing in to salve the ache is good news. I would caution people to be wary of things that always give them what they want. It's not about arbitrarily re-enchanting nature.

5:18I think there is a great deal in common between fundamentalist atheism and fundamentalist religion. Max Weber said we're locked in, but psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist is not so sure. The bonds of that iron cage are remarkably easily breakable. We can walk out of it at any point we choose. Maybe he's right. Maybe not. But if he is, where exactly would we go? Today, part one in a three-part series we're calling The Ake. You'll not find here systematic treatment or solution, but three unhurried conversations with three scholars who've thought long and hard about that ache. I think you could pretty confidently say we're in a disenchanted age where we've chosen intellectualization and rationalization.

6:11But I don't know, I think if ever you wanted evidence that that was a detour as opposed to a destination, then you will find a huge dollop of evidence in the healing field at Glastonbury Festival. Here again, Dr. Belle Tyndall-Riley talking about her experience at one of the largest musical festivals in the world, Glastonbury. It's in the English countryside in Somerset. It's on a working farm, which has become iconic. It's called Worthy Farm. and when it's not hosting 200 ,000 people, it's hosting livestock. Other British listeners may argue with me, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think it's probably our most famous music festival for sure up there with some of our most famous cultural happenings of the year.

6:57It's just like this magnetic force that draws so much to itself. Belle went to the festival for the first time in 2024. With headlining artists like Shania Twain and Coldplay, she was expecting a party. just her and 200 ,000 other attendees, camping out under the stars, reveling in dusty, uninhibited escapism. But what she found when she arrived surprised her. People are always reaching for religious and spiritual language when they talk about what it feels like to be there. There's a huge amount of heaven on earth and I had a spiritual experience in this field. You know, I had an awakening. it's like people don't know what other language to reach for so they reach for that I sort of understood a little of why I mean if you think about it you're pressing pause on the rhythm of your life and going and joining something that's so much bigger than you even when you're in the queue I remember someone saying to me the whole world wants to be in this queue and I was like well I don't but it's like six hours long you know so you're just aware that you're a part of this thing that's popped up and there's a sense of awe and wonder in that and you kind of transcend your achy feet and the toilet cues.

8:13At some point Belle found herself in a huge green field at the southeastern part of the farm. The area was arranged into what the organizers call an elemental mandala. Four huge circles drawn on the map representing earth, air, fire, and water. There was drumming, dancing, quiet gardens, reflective spaces, along with hundreds of volunteer practitioners, most of whom were working for donations rather than charging set prices. This whole area is called the Healing Field, and it's been an enduring part of the festival since 1985. Now, even the fact that it's called the Healing Field is interesting, right?

8:52That is an interesting marketing tool. and this field is huge massive and it is a marketplace of every spiritual option that i could fathom and then some and the most fascinating thing about the healing field is that it is bursting at the seams with people 24 7 for the whole festival now when you think that these people are at arguably the most interesting place in the country you know when you've got shania Twain on the pyramid stage, just a few feet that way, like you're going to spend 45 minutes queuing for a tarot card reading, or you're going to spend three hours wandering around this field trying everything on offer.

9:34That was just fascinating to me. As a Christian who grew up in the very secular British culture of the early 2000s, Bell was struck by the spiritual language and practice taking place at the heart of one of England's most progressive and iconic cultural events. What on earth was drawing tens of thousands of people who didn't identify as religious to explore practices like divination and energy work in the healing fields? In the months to follow, that experience at the Glastonbury Festival became the inspiration for Bell's first book, The Sacred Ache. I wasn't expecting anything so overt, I suppose.

10:16So I haven't been able to stop talking about that field ever since. Today, part one of our three-part series, The Ake, with Dr. Belle Tyndall Riley.

10:30Belle Tyndall Riley, welcome to No Small Endeavor. Thank you so much for having me. So in this recent book, The Sacred Ake, one way you began to point to the fact that demagication, disenchantment has been insufficient in giving what it promised, you quote Nick Cave, who said, people need meaning and the secular world didn't come up with the goods. So, I mean, what do you think from what you observed there, the modern secular promise of prosperity, technology, autonomy, how do you think it's failed to come up with the goods? I wonder if it's an experiment that's run on for long enough now that we can say, oh, it's not okay.

11:07I wonder if it's maybe as a part of it, at least as simple as that, in that we are more anxious than ever. We're more tired than ever. We're arguably less healthy mind, body, spirit than ever. We feel like we don't have enough time, like we're more productive than ever and yet somehow feel like we're still not productive. You know, I just wonder if it's gone on for long enough. And so I just wonder if it's because of this perma crisis that we seem to be in speaking about even just a UK context but I'm sure so much of this translates I can just think now and be like I can think for the climate crisis that people talk about we're currently in the middle of a housing crisis we're in a dating crisis that's the thing now the meaning crisis people talk a lot about the truth crisis I know that in the UK you now have a minister of loneliness I think because of the loneliness epidemic the loneliness epidemic you just don't have to look very far to see like when we're all that we've got we're not enough we still ache that's why the book is called the sacred ache we still are not satisfied we still have this ache and so I think when we stopped putting our trust in these magical things enchanted things we put them into man-made things and now we're pulling our trust out of man-made things again trust has got to go somewhere we seem to be faith filled creatures it's never that we don't really have any faith it's just where does it land where do we direct it where do we point it and that's where i wonder about this this re-enchantment i think in the book i call it like a rewilding almost yeah so i want to spend quite a bit of time unpacking that but before we do you do say fairly early in the book that you kind of show your hand and you say okay i'm writing as a christian yeah you say something perhaps unexpected as you continue to say that when you were younger, you were desperately fearful of the weird label and had even lied about the fact that you were a Christian when you were earlier.

13:16So why? Unpack some of that for us. Yeah, I have a very vivid memory and it came out when I was writing the book. And it's something that people keep wanting to speak to me about. So it may be it resonates or maybe it's just an interesting thing but I think I say in the book I have always been a Christian and I've always been embarrassed to be a Christian and so I have this really vivid memory where I must have been about six or seven years old I was in primary school and I was kind of skipping towards the school gates like I could see my mum in the

13:47Lee C. Camp: distance it was home time the light was shining on here as I was skipping towards freedom and this young child from my class he just came up to me and said bell do your family go to church and something within me told me that it was socially necessary to deny it and so I did I said no and unfortunately for me my cousin who's always been a better person than I am was next to me and she said yes we do and she looked at me as if she could not make sense of the fact that I had just lied about that and I couldn't either but I just knew in that moment it was socially necessary to do so and now part of that is my personality one of the key flaws in my character is that I am a chronic people pleaser to a debilitating extent but I think part of it even at the age of six or seven and even in rural West Wales was the cultural ear that I breathed in and apparently was breathing out again because at the time the books topping the charts with a God delusion, why God's not great, why religion poisons everything.

14:55I think that was Christopher Hitchens, that one. The rise of the so-called new atheism was at its peak at this point. They may have gotten into you at this point somehow. I must have. I must have that this idea that I'm delusional or that I poison everything because I'm one of those religious folk, that's the soil in which I was grown. That's the cultural area I breathed in and breathed out. And if I'm being completely honest, my nervous system hasn't moved on from that, I don't think, until embarrassingly recently, this instinctive no has been what I've lived and breathed.

15:35You're listening to No Small Endeavour and the first part of our three-part series, which we're calling The Ake. Here in part one, we're interviewing Belle Tyndall Riley. I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee at nosmallendeavor.com. You can get show notes for this episode in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in the episode and a full transcript. We would be most appreciative if you'd go to your favorite podcast app and write up a glowing five-star review of No Small Endeavor.

16:08cause those reviews help extend the reach of the beauty, truth, and goodness we are seeking to sow in the world. Coming up, Bell and I discuss the practice of manifesting and the quest for a friction-free life.

16:30So then here you are in the healing fields of Glastonbury with all of this sort of spirituality, this longing for some sort of re-enchantment. And then you seem to be wanting to say, on the one hand, there's something, what, true, maybe even beautiful about these longings and this ache and the way people are trying to find some sort of spiritual practice. And then yet, on the other hand, you're raising questions and saying, but I'm not so sure about X, Y, or Z. Is that a fair kind of summary of how you go forward then? Yeah, totally. So each chapter takes a practice, all of which are grown in popularity.

17:06So that would be manifesting, tarot card reading, crystal use and astrology, those kind of things. And yes, it basically unpicks what those practices are, but it tries to go a step further and thinks, okay, but what's the longing that would drive someone to want to go and experience that, go and pay for it even? because in that longing in every single chapter according to every single practice I found a true thing or what I believe as a Christian to be a true thing that's why they're called the sacred aches I truly believe that these aches within us we were designed to have them and really this quote by Saint Augustine of Hippo it's a super famous quote it frames every talk I ever give it frames the whole book I think it's on the first on the last page and it's you have made us for yourself oh lord and so our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you i believe that that's true of me i believe that's true of you i believe that's true of the thousands upon thousands of people in the healing field i believe that's true of the millions upon millions of people doing these practices just in their everyday life around the world and so i tried to see the restlessness believing that they were made by god for god and that that restlessness is a design.

18:20Not a defect. Not a defect, exactly. And then, yeah, as a Christian then, each chapter kind of pivots. It kind of like tins on its head a little bit because it says, oh, well, I'm open enough to say that I have that exact same longing. Gosh, and I have those exact same fears. I have that exact same sacred ache. And then it becomes a come and see invitation, basically. Come and see where I go with that. What's that look like for you to be restless in that way yeah that's a beautiful question i think for me i take my yearnings seriously i suppose a bit like c.s lewis maybe it's because i'm in oxford right i've just got him on the brain he says i long for food while there is such a thing as food i long for water while there's such a thing as water and then he says if i find a yearning or a longing that nothing in this world will satisfy the most obvious conclusion must be that I'm yearning for another world.

19:17I'm longing for something that can only be given by some kind of other world. And I suppose for me, it's this sort of feeling that I crave there being a God. And I, whenever I think about him not existing, I miss him. Do you know what I mean? It's this sort of absolute dissatisfaction with myself.

19:57So these practices that you're assessing, what's a favorite one you might want to start with? Manifesting. I think that's my favorite one because it's just so mainstream. It's absolutely everywhere so what this is and I'm going to really simplify this there are whole books out there on what manifesting is and I'm about to give a 10 second summary but the essence of manifesting is sort of twofold firstly that it is within our power to visualize and that's a really key word literally visualize close your eyes and picture it our wildest dreams coming true or our desires coming to fruition. These can be small things.

20:37These can be massive life-changing things. And so it's a practice where you would sit down and almost harness that either by writing it in a journal endlessly. Again, if we were to talk about Glastonbury, one of the years I was there, Dua Lipa was headlining and she got up and said, I manifested this. I wrote this in my journal and I've manifested this moment. That's where her credit is going. It's to herself and her ability to visualize it and that has to be done with such precision so firstly you have to have a deep conviction about what it is you really want what will make you happy I mean I'm out there because I don't trust myself in that kind of way but a really strong conviction that no this is a good desire and it will make me happy but that could be just mind over matter like when I'm parking my car in a really tight spot me saying I can do this I can do this this will happen is actually probably like more likely to make me be able to do it that's just a psychological quick but where it becomes a spiritual practice is there's roots in the law of attraction so there's this belief that the more you focus on these good things there is a magnetism and they will come to you and that the universe what i call the capital u universe will collaborate with you and it's kind of like two tins on the end of a string, right?

21:58We'll hear you and we'll put its weight, whatever that looks like, behind giving those good things to you as well. So it's both this sort of practice of harnessing something, but also it's like this collaboration with that which is so much bigger and more powerful and more resourced than we are. So it's definitely presuming a sort of re-enchantment of one's own personal experience, right? There's some sort of vibration or some sort of spiritual reality in the world that makes this come to pass. Yes, and we are somehow connected. There can be collaboration there. Let me propose a fully disenchanted interpretation of that.

22:38Go on, yeah. There's been a fair amount of writing done on goal setting and how one way you can make sense of goal setting is through, and I'm getting out of my depth, but it's something like the reticular activation center, which is this idea that if you give your brain a filter to see certain things or pay attention to certain things, you began to see it where you wouldn't see it otherwise. So what kind of car do you drive? A VW Golf. Okay. So let's say that before you had your VW Golf, you had never paid any attention to VWs. Yeah. And then one day you decided you were going to buy one of those and you buy it.

23:13And then all of a sudden you see it everywhere. Right. And so some interpreters of goal setting will say, that's what's happening. and goal setting is that you set your mind on something and then all of a sudden you see these things that were in front of you all the time. And now you can begin to say, oh, I could get closer to my goal by doing this and doing this. You're not striving as much as you are in effect, and I'll put this in scare quotes, manifesting it. I don't know. What do you think of that possible interpretation? I mean, I don't disagree with that, but I do think there's something within us, right?

23:43And this is the longing, the ache that I sort of scratched the surface of. We both really want to be in control of our life circumstances. And we also desperately do not want to be the only ones in control of our life circumstances. I truly believe that. We want help. We want help. And so I truly believe that we don't want to be at the top of the pyramid. And so you're right, it could be that but people keep using spiritual language why isn't it enough for Dua Lipa to say that she set a goal and she really worked her butt off for it and she met the right people maybe it was a bit of right timing you know but that wasn't enough for her she wanted she wanted that spiritualized enchanted language around exactly and I think a lot of that is probably to do the fact that we're meaning making creatures there's a lot of meaning placed on something if the universe has helped you to achieve it right it certainly gives it more significance the big Big U universe gave this to me.

24:39It wasn't just me dreaming it up, my little self. And somehow this is good for us all. So while I agree with the disenchanted thesis, I find it fascinating that people aren't satisfied with it. That's the ache that I find fascinating. They want help. They want to know that it was them, but not all them. It's like a really interesting tension. So what are other aspects of manifesting that you find problematic or that you would wish could be corrected in some way. Yeah. So the trust that you have to have in yourself to think about what you really, really, really want, what you truly desire and that it is good for you, that it is best for you.

25:20That scares me because how I feel about myself and what I want changes on the weather. So there's that. Another thing that pops up, not just in manifesting, but in only spiritual kind of practice or option, I would caution people to be weary of things that always give them what they want, that feel too effective, right? That gives some kind of frictionless life. When I talk about the fact that I desperately don't want to be the only one in control of my life circumstances, I want the thing that is to be able to say no to me when that is the wisest, most unexplainably loving and sometimes painful but right thing.

26:07I suppose that's an echo at least of more traditional practices of Jewish, Christian, Muslim prayer, right? There's a presumption in those practices that I may be told no. Yeah. Whereas I suppose in manifesting, is there ever a presumption that you're going to be told no, or is that if you don't get what you're manifesting, you just didn't do it right? there's no hint of judgment in me when i'm talking about these practices in the book i really strive to have a generous curiosity that being said i've noticed that there is a kind of quite glib well if it was meant for me it would have come that pops up every now and again but no mostly it's well you could visualize a bit harder or maybe you don't love yourself enough and so you're not putting enough self-love into a visualization maybe it wasn't specific enough maybe you need to tweak some of the details that you assumed maybe you need to tweak your timing assumptions they were like levers you can pull in order to try again and i mean you're right as a christian i believe with my whole heart that we were made to collaborate with that which is so much bigger and more powerful than us that's a hunch that i share with people who manifest right is i don't think we are supposed to be the master of our own fates or the commanders of our own circumstances and that comes from my spiritual tradition that comes from my christianity so i feel like the longing that draws people to manifest is one of these sacred aches is a good longing right because i believe that one type of prayer is what i would call a petition prayer in the lord's prayer which is arguably the most famous one ever spoken there's a little line in there that says give me today my daily bread give me what I need to get through this day and that's in a prayer that is encased with huge huge asks for God's kingdom to come and his will to be done and who knows what we're actually praying when we say those words and talking about his glory and his power and his kingdom forever and all of that kind of thing and yet housed in it is an ask to get what I need to get through today and so you're you're right so much of this the things I feel are similar and so much of the things that scare me when it comes to those differences between manifesting and prayer rooted in my christian tradition for sure coming up is a short break followed by our discussion on tarot cards witch talk and the commodification of spirituality

28:46I can imagine that those who are in the camp of the disenchanters could say one of the things that happened in the so-called enchanted world is all manner of violence done to people in the name of our enchanted interpretations of God's will. What do you do with that? anything in the hands of someone who wants to manipulate or coerce or violate will be a dangerous thing anything i personally think that a staunch atheism disenchantment that's not like an absence of belief that's not an absence of faith i really don't believe there ever is such thing as an absence of faith that's just a choice about where you're putting it and so surely if we're saying if our faith is in ourselves and ourselves alone and the lid is on the world as c.s lewis sad and we've disenchanted and we want to stay that way because that feels safe doesn't feel any safer to me when i look at the way ai is progressing when i look at some of the regimes where the religion of state was atheism like it doesn't feel safer to me because it's not a neutral ground so this idea that if you don't believe in god if you're an atheist if you're a secularist if you're rationalist you're like the neutral ones and then these other people just have an added ingredient in their lives that's just not quite how i see it i think you also have that ingredient and in you it looks like x and in others it looks like y

30:28back to the healing fields tarot cards Yeah. Tell us what the practice is for those who are unfamiliar and what did you observe about that kind of practice? I think the earliest deck we have access to is 12th century, but that doesn't mean that that's when they originated. That's just the earliest deck. And from my research, it looks like it started just as a game and they have these characters and it only got sort of entwined in folklore and that kind of thing through the centuries. The way I've had it explained to me is it's like an unbound book. The pages are unbound and the book then will fall open and give you wisdom.

31:07So you would go to a tarot card reader or more commonly now people are just learning to read tarot themselves because you can buy a deck of tarot cards in any bookshop in the UK right now. But basically these cards are turned over and they give you insight into yourself. They give you insight into what's happening both in your external world, but more profoundly in your internal world. They're not necessarily concerned with telling the future. That's a bit of a myth, but they do tell the future only in that they are so attuned to your present, they shed wisdom on the future. If I were to go and have someone read tarot cards for me, what would be an example of something that they might tell me?

31:50It's based on certain characters and these characters are compiled into two what are called arcanas so some cards are about the meta stories of your life things that just have always been a theme and always will be and then you have the minor arcana which are about the circumstances you're facing right now and then it's kind of interesting the way the cards are laid out interact with each other so there are little nuances and little inflections and one being placed next to another might affect the meaning of one that's why people go to a tarot card reader because they are fluent in that language.

32:22And so really what people want is some kind of external voice to speak into their life circumstances and shed some kind of wisdom or insight. I read a New York Times article recently by McKenna Goodman and it was about the fact that she and many, many women in the US along with her are giving up therapy and instead going to tarot card readers and astrologers. And her reason for doing so, she said, I wanted someone to be able to speak into my life. And I no longer trusted that someone to be me. So she wanted someone to explain things and define things and shed wisdom. And she no longer trusted herself to be sort of the teller of her own story.

33:07She was sick of her own voice being the one that held the narrative in going to therapy. That's the key. It's this externalness. Some sort of narrative larger than oneself. Yes. That then can give you some sort of insight into your own particular narrative. Exactly that. And I wonder if, again, it's like people's low anthropology, because this whole expressive individualism, I wonder if we're a bit done with it now. And we're sick of our greatest insight to ourselves being our Spotify wrapped right at the end of every year. Like we no longer want to be the tellers of our own story. There's something comforting about a word of wisdom being offered to us from somewhere mystical and transcendent and very non-human.

33:52And I think those are some of the key facets of tarot card reading.

34:11so on tiktok there's witch talk hashtag witch talk yeah it's a huge phenomenon apparently right which is all new to me but so what's going on there you think well this is yeah this is the other thing on etsy as well you can hire witches now so if you're engaged you can pay just six pound so a bargain actually to have an etsy witch put a spell on your wedding day to ensure good weather or it can get slightly more insidious because i haven't seen this but i've heard that you can also get witches to put hexes on people. And you're just buying these on like an online marketplace as if it's nothing.

34:43And it's all the same trend, right? Witch talk is majority women, though not entirely, but a majority female phenomenon where you're just scrolling past people, just offering out blessings or spells, offering out words of kind of affirmation, again, that sound a lot like spells. And so it's happening there. It's also romanticy. and romantic fantasy romantic fantasy is i think last year was the number one literary category in the uk so we want it in our fiction as well we want it in our literature to hex appeal is now like a real phrase for the characters in the romantic book so what what do you see there as what seems to be some sort of legitimate longing or what's going on with that yeah witchcraft is an interesting one in particular so in the book i specifically write about i call it the female roman empire do you remember a while ago when women were told to ask men how often a day they think about the roman empire did you not come across that so if i asked you how many times a day do you think about the roman empire well for weird reasons i would say i might once a week once a week okay yeah great so like there was this instagram trend where it was like ladies just ask the guys in your life how often they think about the Roman Empire.

36:01You will be shocked by how frequent it is. Really? Yeah. And so women did. They asked all the men in their lives, how often do you think about the Roman Empire? I asked my husband and he was like, oh, about four times a day. It's fascinating. Yeah. And so it was just this absolute... Well, suddenly I feel much less manly because I don't think of the Roman Empire enough, apparently. No, I think once a week is a solid answer. I think you're fine. And so it was like this absolute moment of like women being like what and so i called witches the female roman empire because i was walking behind a couple of young women walking out of the cinema one day i was just eavesdropping on their conversation and they said oh i i think the innate part of being a woman is just thinking about witches on a daily basis and the other one was i totally i agree i they're in at least a once a day kind of thought for me and so that's what i was fascinated by i wrote a whole chapter wondering whether there was something about the female psyche of our cultural moment that was turning witches into common thoughtful women and I was wondering why and I think there are a few reasons I think to be honest having grown up a Christian I know from personal experience that women assume that Christianity is not for them whereas witchcraft that's famously female driven phenomenon and so I thought it was a bit of that like a bit of a feminist sort of thing and in the book I go into all kinds of things like we're told that our bodies are kind of this mysterious magical things that elude people so much about the female body that people don't know and it's much less painful to romanticize that as we're mystical beings than it is to acknowledge that we are drastically under researched right that's just a less painful reality to live in there's also this connection to the natural world that people seem to be craving and to live a life that feels a bit more like beer feet on the ground rooted again that's particularly in things like alchemy when people are wanting to use natural remedies as opposed to pharmaceuticals all of that but then i'm a woman so i was like why am i an anomaly and then i wondered whether it's because i am a christian so i am having that ache filled elsewhere so i wondered whether it's this mix of i won't be celebrated for being a woman and I want that to have some kind of spiritual meaning.

38:28And then because we are who we are, decentralized and becomes something like witch talk. I think one way to think about the disenchanted world and the individualism that we've been handed in that is we've been given this almost overwhelming agenda in that I have to figure out how I am going to make my life somehow worthwhile or worth something. Yeah. And it seems like a really heavy load to have to everybody to have to reinvent all of that. Yeah. And do you see these this kind of sacred ache as a way of saying, that's just too much. I need some help with this. How would you respond to that or think about that?

39:04Absolutely. I think expressive individualism in particular, this idea that it is down to me to excavate my true self, build it from the inside out and then spend my entire life proving it or living up to it or narrating it. I think that that is a task that is too heavy for us. I think we are constantly looking to outsource that task in many, many, many ways. I joked earlier about Spotify Wrapped but I do actually put it in the book because I see that as one of the most tangible ways that we subcontract out that job for one day a year we can just put our most streamed artists on our Instagram story and then it's like I listen therefore I am and I do absolutely feel like this sort of spiritual openness that we have at the moment the fact that these spiritual practices are becoming so mainstream I think it's us doing that exact same thing again.

40:00Absolutely. I think you're dead right. I kind of alluded to this in a question previously. I think for me, I've also seen, let's say, an enchanted version of the world in spiritual pietistic garb. So quickly become a way in which someone can assert a non-falsifiable claim about God, right? God told me to such and so. And while I'm not opposed to the notion that God might tell us things. I've often seen that as a sort of seeming to say much more about the person who is asserting something about God than it says about God. What do you do with that? Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I think two things there.

40:45So interestingly, I think people think, right, well, when secularism is shaking, which it certainly is in the UK, I don't know how you feel about in the US, but secularism seems to be shaking a little bit and people are becoming much more spiritually open again, even if they're only willing to say I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. What is not happening is like every other ingredient is also being taken out. So there's still consumerism there. There's still individualism there. All of these other things are still in the cultural air are then funneled into our vision of spirituality. And so I say in the book again and again and again be weary of things that always place you on the moral high ground just be weary of things that always make you feel good about all of your choices and as long as you are shrinking your search for something bigger than you or your reality of already living in company with something bigger than you as long as you shrink that down to the size of you you've lost it do you know you're no longer dealing with a true thing that's my conviction because you're no longer dealing with a true thing.

41:52Yeah, even if secularism is in some ways at a retreat, these other practices of consumerism, individualism, can channel that in very powerful ways so that now the spirituality just becomes, say, another form of consumerism. We're looking for whatever's for sale that can kind of fill the stake that we have. I mean, this is where my eyes are focused. So like the wellness industry is kind of like becoming the spiritual industry. And that makes me really nervous because for me personally, any relationship that you have with the divine, like, gosh, yeah, it will have wellness benefits or whatever, but it's just not about you in that way.

42:37You're not the main character in the story. And so I think that's what I'm weary of. And that's being used not only in these ways, but in other ways with so-called Christian nationalism and all of these things where we are just funneling everything or putting everything through the lens of sort of a spiritual paradigm and therefore saying it has more weight. It has more power. And I mean, I don't know. I'm a mess. I am broken in a thousand different ways. I do nothing perfectly. I do everything chaotically, to be honest. but whenever I feel God has told me something I can't think of one instance where it was not challenging me I can't think of one instance where I tangibly heard the voice of God like speak to me and it wasn't to somehow in wonderful love give me a bit of a telling off i can't you did you didn't respond yippee here we go yes never that very really if ever happens that i would feel god speak to me and then be like do you know what i knew i had all of that right thank you for confirming and god finally has shown up to let you know that you were doing just fine okay here we go that's never happened and so i would just say be very weary of a god that always just pats you back.

44:02I don't want such a God to exist, and nor do I think he does. Talking to Belle Tyndall Riley here in Oxford in the UK. Belle, it's been lovely to be with you today. It's been such a joy. Thank you so much for having me.

44:25Here's one closing take on today's interview with Belle Tyndall Riley, part one of our three-part series, The Ache. Belle helpfully, I think, reminds us that the so-called ache itself may not be the problem or a problem. Citing Augustine of Hippo, our restlessness might be a design rather than a defect. And yet much of modern life is organized around getting rid of discomfort as quickly as possible. Perhaps some longings, though, shouldn't be anesthetized. Maybe they should be listened to. Related, Bell's description of expressive individualism is rather devastating, I think. We have been burdened with an immense weight to excavate my true self, build it from the inside out, and then spend my entire life proving it or living up to it or narrating it, she said.

45:14And it's no wonder, given that burdensome lifelong toil, that we keep reaching for something larger than ourselves. But then comes a harder question. How do I know that the something larger is not just me projecting my wishes and fantasies onto the heavens? To which Bell replied, be wary of things that always place you on the moral high ground. Two practices toward a good life. First, notice whether my spirituality makes me the main character. You're not the main character in the story, Bell said. So, does my faith or spirituality enlarge my attention beyond myself, or just give my self-absorption, a supposedly impressive spiritual vocabulary?

46:02And second, keep some voices in my life that are allowed to tell me no. Bell says, I would caution people to be wary of things that always give them what they want. So maybe one mark of something trustworthy, a friend, a tradition, a community, even our understanding of the divine is that it can lovingly resist us. That's a small but not so small take on today's episode. Make sure to join us next week for part two with Oxford professor Alistair McGrath and the week following for part three with psychiatrist Dr. Ian McGilchrist. Two more wonderful conversations coming your way on The Ake. Peace to you, my friend.

46:50You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and the first part of our three-part series entitled The Ake. Here in part one, you heard our conversation with Belle Tyndall Riley on her book The Sacred Ake. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc., which made this series possible. The opinions expressed in this broadcast do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion.

47:25Special thanks to the staff at Yarnton Manor at the Lanier Theological Library in Oxford, England for their generous and delightful hospitality.

47:43Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible. Christy Bragg, Jacob Lewis, Carriott Harmon, Jason Sheasley, Sophie Byard, Kate Hayes, Mary Evelyn Brown, and Audrey Griffith. Our theme song was composed by Tim Lauer. Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together. No Small Endeavor is a production of Tokens Media, LLC and Great Feeling Studios.

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