At 6:30 on the 21st of June 1922, when Count Alexander Ilyas Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool. Drawing his shoulders back without breaking stride, the Count inhaled the air like 1 fresh from a swim. The sky was the very blue that the cupolas of Saint Basils have been painted for. Their pinks, greens and golds shimmered as if it were the sole purpose of a religion to cheer
its divinity. As he strode from the square into the lobby of the Hotel Metropole, the Count gave a wide wave with which to simultaneously greet the unflappable Arcady, who was manning the front desk, and sweet Valentina who was dusting A statuette. Though the Count had greeted them in this manner 100 times before, both responded with a wide eyed stare. It was the sort of reception one might have expected when
arriving for a dinner party. Having forgotten to Don one's pants, he stirred up the stairs until he reached the third floor. Then he walked down the red carpeted hallway toward his suite, an interconnected bedroom, bath, dining room, and grand salon with eight foot windows overlooking the lindens of Theater Square. And there the rudeness of the day awaited, for before the flung open doors of his rooms stood a captain of the guards, with Pasha and Petya, the hotel's bellhops.
The two young men met the count's gaze with looks of embarrassment, having clearly been conscripted into some duty they found distasteful. The count addressed to the officer. What is the meaning of this captain? The captain, who seemed mildly surprised by the question, had the good training to maintain the evenness of his effect. As you have been sentenced for the crime of being an aristocrats, to live out your days within the walls of this hotel, I am here to show you to
our quarters. These are my quarters. Betraying the slightest suggestion of a smile, the captain replied. No longer, I'm afraid. Leaving Pasha and Pasha behind, the captain led the count and his escort to a utility stair hidden behind an inconspicuous door at the core of the hotel. Up they wound 3 flights to where a door opened on a narrow corridor servicing a bathroom and six closets reminiscent of monastic cells.
Earlier that day. The room closest to the stairwell, a tiny one with a slanted ceiling, had been cleared of all but a cast iron bed, A3 legged Bureau and a decade of dust. The good captain explained that he had summoned the bellhops to help the Count move what few belongings his new quarters would accommodate, and the rest becomes the property of the people. So this is their game, thought the Count.
Very well. He skipped back down the belfry, marched along the third floor hallway, and re entered his suite, where the two bellhops looked up with woeful expressions. It's all right, fellows, the Count assured, and then began pointing. This, that, those, all the books. Among the furnishings destined for his new quarters, the Count chose 2 high back chairs, his grandmother's Oriental coffee table, and a favorite set of her porcelain plates.
He chose the two table lamps fashioned from Ebony elephants and the portrait of his sister Helena, which Sarov had painted during a brief stay at Eidelauer in 19 O 8. He did not forget the leather case that had been fashioned specially for him by Asprey in London, and which his good friend Mishka had so appropriately christened the
ambassador. Noting that the guards were eyeing the 2 bottles of Brandy on the console, the Counts tossed them in as well, and once the trunk had been carried upstairs, he finally pointed to the desk. The two bellhops, their bright blue uniforms already smudged from their efforts to cold it by the corners. But it weighs a ton, said one to the other. A king fortifies himself with a castle, observed the Count, A gentleman with a desk. Then the Count began his
farewell walk. First, he admired the salon's grand dimensions and his two chandeliers. He admired the painted panels of the little dining room and the elaborate brass mechanisms that allowed one to secure the double doors of the bedroom. In short, he reviewed the interior much as would a potential buyer who was seeing the rooms for the very first time. Once in the bedroom, the Count paused before the marble tucked table on which lay an assortment of curious.
Just a funny thing reflected the Count as he stood ready to abandon his suite. From the earliest age we must learn to say goodbye to friends and family. But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions of you. And if it were you, we wouldn't welcome the education. But of course, that thing is just a thing. And so, slipping only his sister's scissors into his pocket, the Count looked once more at what heirlooms remained and then expunged them from his
heartache forever. One hour later, the Count bounced twice on his new mattress to identify the key of the bed springs. C#. Then he took a moment to arrange his few remaining possessions, a photograph, the 2 bottles of Brandy, and so on. A pigeon landed outside on the copper stripping of the ledge. Why, hello, said the Count. How kind of you to stop by. The pigeon looked back with a decidedly proprietary air, nodding once to the pigeon to indicate they would resume their
discussion. Anon the Count rebuttoned his jacket and turned to find that three members of the hotel's staff were crowded in the doorway. There was Andre, the Major D, with his perfect poise and long, judicious hands. Vasily, the hotel's inimitable concierge, and Marina, the shy delights with the wandering eye who had recently been promoted from chambermaid to seamstress.
The three of them exhibited the same bewildered gaze that the Count had noticed on the faces of Arcadia and Valentina a few hours before. And finally it struck him. When he had been carted off to trial that morning, they had all assumed that he would never return. He had emerged from behind the walls of the Kremlin like an aviator from the wreckage of a crash. My dear friends, said the Count, no doubt you are curious as to
the day's events. As you may know, I was invited to the Kremlin for a tete a tete. There, several duly goateed officers of the current regime determined that for the crime of being born an aristocrat, I should be sentenced to spend the rest of my days in this hotel. In response to the cheers, the Count shook hands with his guests, 1 by 1, expressing to each his appreciation for their fellowship and heartfelt thanks. Come in, come in, he said.
Together, the three staff members squeezed their way between the towers of furniture, teetering. If you would be so kind, said Count, handing Andre one of the bottles of Brandy, and he kneeled before the ambassador through the class and opened it like a giant book. From this he drew 4 Brandy glasses and passed them around as Andre, having plucked the cork from the bottle, performs the honors. Once his guests set their Brandy in hand, the Count raised his own on high.
To the metropole. He said. To the metropole they replied. The Count was something of a natural born host, and in the hour that ensued A surprising amount of laughter was present. On this of all nights, the Count deeply appreciated the staff's good cheer.
At 10:00, the Count walked his guests to the belfry and bid them goodnight with the same sense of ceremony that he would have exhibited at the door of his family's residence in Saint Petersburg. Returning to his quarters, he opened the window, though it was only the size of a postage stamp. Poured the last. Of the Brandy and took a seat at the desk. If a man does not master his circumstances, he reflected philosophically, then he is bound to be mastered by them.
Welcome to the Imagination Redeemed podcast where we follow the great stories further up and further in In Pursuit of the Life of Christ. Welcome back to Imagination Redeemed, everyone. I'm Brian Brown, joined today by Jeremiah England, Sarah Howell and Christina Brown. And if you are not familiar with the story that I just read, it is part of the opening of the book A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor. Toles which is one of my. Favorite books by a living author?
You may remember if you've listened to our last couple of episodes that this. Winter we've been exploring. Limits and constrictions on our embodied lives. We talked about joviality as the key to magnanimous joy in the face of limits that come against joy. We talked about the limits of time and and season. In that context, we talked in our last episode about magnanimity itself as the key to practicing generosity within the
limits of means. In this episode, we're going to talk about how the limits of space can grow our character, our virtue, and our closeness with God. If we let them. We will not be revealing huge book spoilers in case you haven't read it. And I want to call out right away that anytime somebody's doing an episode about a book, people who have read the book can kind of flock to it and go, oh, I want to, I want to hear
this conversation. And people who haven't read the book A might worry about spoilers and B might just sort of check out. So I want to make sure that all of our listeners understand we're talking about something that we all struggle with. We are in winter and we're stuck inside a lot, and a lot of limits come with that constricted space now, a monotony, potentially bad habits and patterns, friction or noise from other people.
And we're kind of conditioned to view limits as confining in general, even if we pay lip service to the value of limits. Oh yes, limits can create this or that positive benefit. As soon as we experience a new limit, right? We typically respond with frustration, rebellion, grief, whatever. So we're going to be drawing some wisdom from this book in the course of that. But we will we'll kind of signal what what we're doing along the
way. So we won't, we hopefully won't run into situations where if you haven't read this particular story, heard this particular anecdote, it has no value to you. So I'll sort of kick this off with this quote from Dostoevsky, which is appropriate since it's this is all Russian themed literature. And then I'll toss it out to you guys with an initial question in The Brothers Karamazov, Elder Zosima says. The world says you have desires. Satisfy them, expand your
desires and demand more. This is the worldly doctrine of today and they believe that this is freedom. The results for the rich is isolation and suicide.
For the poor envy and murder. As I was preparing for this episode, as I was throwing notes around to you guys as we were talking about it, I was noticing certainly a lot of patterns in Christian writers, whether it's novelists like Dostoevsky or whether it's ancient Mystics. There's they're very, very different perspectives on limits and particularly limits on space of various kinds. And it definitely had me walking
away going. This. This novel is not unique in raising the the notion that there's a way to learn to be the kind of person who is sharpened and grown and even set free by limits. So perhaps guys, we could start by just jumping into that story that we opened with. I kept most of what was in the book when I was adapting it for for reading because there's a lot of detail in there that's I think is worth our conversation.
So maybe just as a softball to start us off, I would just love to know from each of you what strikes you and listeners, you can think about this too, what strikes you about Count Rostov's immediate response to his new situation. This is brand new to him. Like 5 minutes ago, he was told. You came this. Goes to being executed. Now you are going to be under house arrest in this hotel.
Can't leave the hotel for literally the rest of your life and oh by the way, we're taking away your room within the hotel and most of your stuff. What's your response to or what? Strikes you about his response. One of the things I like in the book that he talks about later is he kind of makes a comparison of himself to Robinson Caruso. And he says, you know, like is is kind of his way of responding to life that he tries to
achieve. Is being Anglican washed ashore like Caruso and fashion a life out of your difficult circumstances. And it is almost like that, you know, Robinson Caruso is trapped on this island. Everything he's known and loved is taken away from him. And yet he's able to build a life such that I think he even
mentions the book. And after Crusoe gets off the island, like three years later, he's like, I got to find my island and get back there again, you know, because that's where his life is. But, you know, I think there's, there's something to that, like almost hardcore practicality of being the master of your circumstances so that your circumstances don't master you. And his approach to that I think is, is very much so He's like, OK, I'm washed ashore.
It's time to salvage what I can and start rebuilding. And I think that's throughout the book. As a side note, I loved it. It, it sounded to me like when you said Robertson Crusoe, it sounded like you were saying Robinson Caruso. And I just have this image of CSI Miami like Robinson. Yeah, sorry. What else? Well, just to Jeremiah's point, I think of, you know, just saying that Swiss Family Robinson same same concept, right, Only they have like a
family, right? Like it's AI guess husband, wife and three boys or something like that and same concept, you know, like we're either going to die or we're going to build a life and they turn it into this grand adventure. And I remember as a kid reading that I was just like. Wow. This is what people can do with
stuff like this. The. Point about family is really important when we think about the count because even though he is alone, so he is like Robinson, he brings along with him the items from his past and from his family. I'd love to have a little bit of a conversation about how he brings the bottles of Brandy almost because he noticed the soldiers escorting him wanted them. Bit of rebellion. There. Yeah, yeah.
Speaking of the Brandy, Sarah, if I remember right and correct me if I'm wrong, but he takes those bottles of Brandy to eventually give to the guards, you know, as you know, somewhat of a bribery and to Curry favor. And I think it's excellent foreshadowing for kind of his whole character arc in the rest
of the book. Because I know one of the things that we wanted to talk a little bit about is the juxtaposition of this is being a very winter book where I I definitely, as I was reading it, always had the the feeling that like the winter outside was omnipresent. Like it there were no other seasons for this kind of other than just the the coldest merciless Russian winter ever. And yet what's interesting about the book is he's able to find such a deep sense of warmth
throughout the whole book. And in my notes I wrote, warmth is a deep, delighted consideration of others. And I think that's kind of like how he lives his life. And so even in this very, very beginning thing, as he's getting out all of his possessions, you know, he might be, I'm just thinking about the horrible situation I had or the fact that I had a near death experience and you know, what's my life
going to be like? You know, he even in that moment was considering the guards and going, oh, what is it that they that they want? You know, and, you know, maybe he did it selfishly as a way to Curry favor later. But I think it just kind of speaks to the fact that throughout the book, he always has a consideration of other people and what their goals are and what it is that they need at the moment. And that's what ends up, you know, really blossoming him as a person inside this prison.
Yeah, I love the fact that he gets up to this attic and the hotel staff, the people who were essentially his servants 5 minutes ago. His his first reaction is, is hospitality. And in in general, you see this in his, his selection of some of the items. A gentleman fortifies himself with the desk. All the books. The hospitality element you can. Tell he is a very his character is very disciplined already.
He has a lot of good habits already and his his first response within this tragedy is not even to you know what I'm just going to give myself a day to grieve before I wrestle with what to do here. Not that that would be illegitimate. His first reaction is just to keep being himself, to keep living out the same habits and like you said, Jeremiah 2 to project that that warmth toward
toward those around him. He doesn't, he doesn't let himself stop being, you know, a lover of the good, the true and the beautiful and so on for for a moment. Which is really striking to me. I also noticed the interpersonal relationship that he had clearly built with the people of the hotel, kind of like you said, Brian, they were his servants, but noticed that when he told them what was going on, they cheered like they were like. Oh my gosh, our.
Friend did her Yeah. And they when he offered them Brandy, I noticed too that the guy didn't you know, I don't remember his name. Andre or something did did not hesitate. He's like, yeah, I'll pop it. You know, like he just clearly knew that Count Rostov, like considered him an equal. And clearly that was a very a very normal thing and they were just all ready to be there with him. And that just, I think immediately setting that up as a part of the book, that says a
lot about his character. And I think Kristina, you were the 1 mentioning this before we started recording. But I, I was struck in the opening story today how much this story is framed from not the count losing everything and getting shoved into this closet, but actually this count going from death to life, right? Like he should have died. They all thought he wasn't going to come back. And so there's this kind of gratitude and celebration in the
midst of all of the loss. And I think that that's kind of a really nice pattern for this character in his not only in in like what we see play out, but also in like the kind of habits he has shaped in himself and the kind of literal character formation he has. I death to life, perhaps I I do wonder how much I mean, because we talk about like how we need limitations to kind of give us the kind of freedom that we
crave. But there's there seems to be and how that can kind of form our character. But there seems to be already when the story starts, a kind of character that he already has formed. So he didn't come into this circumstance kind of as a a ne'er do Well, Rich, you know, guy who's used to getting his own way. He came in clearly already with some kind of understanding of what really mattered in life, And I think that's worth noting and I think because of that.
He had some kind of, I would say maybe like, I guess as a Christian, we might say it like a gratitude. And as far as etymology of gratitude, it's, it's, it's like goes way back. Some say goes to Sanskrit and never hell pronounce that. But as far as Latin, it's, it's pleasing and pleasant and then of course, full, so full of pleasure and pleasing and, and pleasants. And I think when we as Christians, we don't always know
what grateful really means. But I think it also means really recognizing the beauty around us and letting that fill us. And then that becomes a sense of blessing. And then that becomes like it, it goes into the this gratitude
for life, for living. And again, like when he chose the things, it was very intentional and he was mourning the things on his dresser, but he did grab one thing and they were his sister's scissors, you know, and you kind of in your head, you're like, huh, that's interesting. And you're kind of like, well, I wonder what else was there? And and so. So yeah, so he has. This connection to things, but there's also, as you can kind of see, there is a the things that he chooses do have a higher
entire symbolism. There's something else there. Things are just things. However, when he connects the the bigger picture and the people and the things they represent, sort of the gentleman has a desk. Like there's an entire statement there to unpack even in why he chose that desk, you know? So yeah, I kind of wonder where where that kind of fits into the bigger picture of who he is.
Yeah. So, so we're talking about this, this big picture about how his, his disciplines, his own character formation prior to these unexpected constraints prepared him for the unexpected constraints. As we go on, I'll sort of just Telegraph this for you listeners. I want to kind of progress through how he responds to different phases of, of of the constraints. So the first one is just the initial one. And how is how does who he is, how has that prepared him for this?
Next, I want us to get into how constraint can drive self examination, how limits can help can force us to look at ourselves in in ways that we might not have otherwise. Third, I want to get into how constraints can drive creativity. And 4th, how constraints can clarify purpose because he goes through each of those phases.
So listeners, just just so you have a sense of where this is going, I think what the the last couple things I've heard from you are a good transition into and we can still talk about some of the same topic. But getting into that second one, how constraints can drive self examination. Obviously when we're constrained by space, it doesn't always mean solitude, right? It it does in his case, it could
mean the opposite. Winter, if you have kids, can mean a lot of loud noise, but when limits do permit or even require solitude, that solitude can force us to truly reckon with ourselves. I am. I would love to hear from you all what that what that looks like. Either what you see in the story or how we as as humans can allow the solitude to move our gaze productively inward. Because obviously there's lots of unhealthy ways we can get obsessed with ourselves.
But if we are, if we're forced by circumstances to kind of look ourselves in the mirror, what does it look like to to do that? Well, as far as responding to limits. Yeah, I'm not even sure it's so much solitude, at least in this book, because I can't really think of a whole lot of times where he's really like by himself for very long before he's either joined by someone or because, I mean, he really does spend a lot of his time like focused on other people.
And I think, you know, the main thing is as he goes through, like you said, great loss and great limitations. And the the thing about it is like, it's almost like a triage for him where he's able to cut out all of the, you know, surface level stuff. And even, you know, he's forced so hard that he has to even cut out all the mid level stuff. And like Christine was saying, like, you know, he can take one thing off his desk. And so I took the thing of his
sisters, right? And it's like that kind of limitation and loss was able to give him focus on what actually really, really, really mattered to him. And, you know, he was able to form relationships with people that probably would have just stayed at us as a surface level.
You know, his relationship with the cook and with the maitre-d' at the restaurant and his relationship with the little girl that he meets, you know, probably would have been very kind of surface level relationships that he stated account. But because he kind of lost everything, he had to really, really focus on the things that really mattered. And take them not only relationships, but take all of life from that shallowness into
more depth. The image that's in my head a lot right now is an illustration that Pascal, at least Pascal, uses about being on board a ship to explain like the relative external success that can kind of look well, well, when everyone is at the same task on the boat busying themselves, the boat is the ship is moving. And so he says, quote, when everything is moving at the same place, nothing appears to be
moving. The one person who stops shows up the haste of others, like a fixed point, the busying activity of being on the same pace, being a count, doing the things that counts do. We could say that when he gets off that pace and he stops, there is opportunities that open up for him to really start practicing what he preaches in a lot of ways, right? If he's a gentleman, what does
it mean to be a gentleman? It might mean to show respect to the person next to you, but what does it mean to really show respect to the person next to you? Especially if you are now not equal in status but now you're serving them right? What does respect really look like then? That's a second layer that goes from the shallow public facing into like what's happening inside of him in order to really show respect.
And I don't know if if I finally find found the loose ends of all those strings and pulled them together. But there is to me something about the count being a count and caring about the values that he saw as noble and then stopping the pace of what it means to be in the status of count and yet still live them out. And how that almost requires A deeper aspect of him in the shallow public facing count. Yeah, yeah.
The, the it's, it's striking as as the count, as the story goes on and the count interacts with different people. I think this is more and more true as the story goes on because he knows the, the the book follows a good chunk of his life. And so he actually sees people who come regularly to the hotel and he essentially watches them grow up, watches them at different stages in their lives, and it's striking. How the the?
Vast majority of interactions he has with people who are not the hotel staff, people who are guests at the hotel, They're so characterized by the way that the the current of the world is kind of pulling them along, what they're thinking about, what they're worrying about, where they're setting their aspirations. So much of it is is driven by these external Soviet Russia era developments. And to the count those things. Yeah. And to the reader, right, Because you're looking at it
from the Counts perspective. He, on the other hand, has this posture of like, if the walls keep closing in and I keep losing one thing after another that I think defines me, who am
I? And there are points in the story where he struggles with that question, but overall he, he, he hangs on to it from A at a very deep level because of what you're talking about Sarah, because he's, he's kind of the the still point who recognizes that no matter how small the context might get, I still have the ability to be me. I still have the ability to have a relationship with the people around me and meaningful relationship.
I mean, and you Fast forward a few years, he's learned needlework with Marina and he's learned, learned waitering and hospitality with Andre and he's learned menu planning with Emil the cook. And so in a weird way, yeah, he's he's he's turned himself outward now in his quest for self examination, essentially. Essentially he's learned to discover himself by doing his duty.
I guess would be a way of framing it rather than by just sort of navel gazing on the one hand or going with the current of what's going on on the other. Yeah, I mean, I would say there is something about and I don't know, I don't, I honestly don't know how you get there. I mean, it might just be lots of prayer and discipline and what not, but I think there's a point and and I've definitely learned this the hard way in my own
life. But there's a point where you're so tired of self pity and just hating your circumstances or yourself for the things that you find you're in, find yourself in. And there's a point where you have to go out either into an outside world. For me, it's literally stepping out into my backyard to look at like life outside my, my 4 walls. But anything in Count Rostov's case, it's, it's going to people, right? Going to relationships, people.
He might not necessarily as count as a rich guy have truly encountered to know the life of a seamstress, to know the life of a cook, to know the life of a server. And and there's something about allowing the things outside ourselves, I think to fully enchant us. And I think enchantment is kind of where a lot of this fullness and living into ourselves comes from. And I think we do have to let those small things.
Take hold of us. By emptying ourselves first, there is a point where we have to sort of step outside ourselves to let other things enchant us. It's the looking at different things that the people around us. Count Rostov, in his case, it would be, you know, learning needlework, the life of a of a seamstress. It's learning the life of a server or the cook. And if he had been that rich, you know, man, he probably would not have felt so deep into their
lives. And and I know that's something that that's hard for a lot of us when we're. Just so consumed. With ourselves. And I think there's something about emptying ourselves and letting enchantment fill us. And that's where we find our true contentment. That's where we find the pleasance of life. And so sometimes I think that that contentment and gratitude even, you know, feeling full of pleasure, right, as the etymology would suggest or suggest, comes from a quietude, right?
It comes from a letting oneself be approached by the things of this world or the beauties of this world that we wouldn't necessarily open ourselves to. Yeah. Well, that's, that's kind of bumping up against our Third Point about the, the relationship between limits and creativity. And then I suspect all of you have thoughts on this one. But I think about there's a, there's a point in the book where he's, he's befriended this little girl and, and she has essentially a skeleton key to
the whole hotel. And the result of that before getting the key, like he, he thought he knew the hotel. He'd literally had lived there for years. But all of a sudden when he has this key, he, he just, he explores the underbelly of it all the back rooms and all the secret passageways and the, the physical boundaries of the hotel actually drive him into this place of creativity and exploration sort of inward and downward rather than outward.
So rather than getting broader, he's getting deeper. He has to work within these walls, but he discovers that within the walls is much bigger than he thought he was. What else have you guys noticed from the story or or elsewhere about the relationship between limits and creativity? To to tie what you just said, Brian, also to what I was thinking about with where Christina took us, there's something to me coming together here with the concept of
excellence. I see the count as being someone who strives for excellence in all these things, But something that that the whole building seems to be a maybe a symbol for in that is that he puts his love of excellence into the things that are inward or downward, as opposed to kind of the status of authority or of, yeah, identity in the world. He goes to the lower things, the humble things and the inward workings of the the hotel that that isn't for the posh almost
right. And it's in those constraints that I feel like the things that make him who he is, the, the, the kind of character he came into the situation with like flourish, right? It's like the humble work of the service in excellence that allows, like you were saying, Christina, allows for us to be filled with the beauty around us and things of that nature. So I don't know your house.
I'm calling it a house. Your comments, Brian, about the hotel kind of grounded that for me in a way that is abstract, but that's a very concrete example of like inward and downward. Yeah, I mean elephant in the room. I, I, I when Christina and I tried to go on a a vacation in 2021 in Europe and I tested positive for COVID right after we landed.
And so our, our wonderful like 10th anniversary vacation turned into 10 days mandatory quarantine by myself in a hotel room that was like fairly better than prison, both in terms of the food that was delivered and in terms of the actual amenities of, of the box. It was bad, y'all, It was really bad. And they put her in a separate room, but she hadn't tested positive. So she could at least kind of venture out, but we were
completely separated. 12 days. And I first of all, I did not handle the initial shock at nearly as well as the count handled his initial shock. But this story was really inspiring to me in in that experience because Kyle Rostov had been through essentially the same thing, only much worse for much longer. And I was able to think about
how did he handle this? So like, one of my first reactions was to kind of turn to the disciplines that I had learned and in some cases sort of put them on on steroids. How can I order my day in a way that is meaningful? So I actually set limits on screen time and stuff like that. How can I what, what books can I read? Thankfully, I still had a Kindle at very slow but functional Internet access. And what does this look like in terms of staying in shape? And what does this look like in
terms of daily prayer? And it wasn't me trying to be holy. That was me trying to reckon with my circumstances. But but like the next place that I turned was this direction of of. Creativity. So there were books I was reading I wasn't wouldn't have read otherwise. They were sort of writing, doing things I wouldn't have done otherwise, and I kept coming back. You wouldn't otherwise have played lots of online Scrabble with your wife. That's also true.
See Social reaching out to the people around you. Probably one of your most memorable vacations and you know, great story to tell too. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean it, it it's my story was one thing that Count Ralston has that I didn't have other than, yeah, digital interaction with Christina. There's a great Wendell Berry quote that's he says our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements but rather inducements to fullness of relationship and
meaning. Creativity springs from limits and, and I love that Ralston has that instinct, as we've noted he does. He has conducted himself even as an aristocrat in a way that has built relationships with these people who on paper were his underlings. And the result of his limitations is he just pours himself into those relationships. And the meaning in each relationship that was goes deeper and deeper as do the skills that he develops along
the way. What are the other thoughts do you guys have related to this creativity topic? Well, I mean, so I've, I think you can really see this a lot if you study any kind of filmmaking, because time and time and time again, you'll hear directors and writers and film makers basically say, you know, it was actually so much easier to make something when I had a lower budget, you know, or when I had, you know, no actor. And so I had to like, you know, come up with something on the fly.
And I think that, you know, when you're when you're creating something, you want to create something new, right? But human nature is like water, right? It just goes the path of least resistance. It's always going to just flow down the path of least resistance like everything else, right? And then when something blocks you, that's when you drift off and cut new interesting paths. And I think any time that you're
trying to make something. You know, all of the limitations and problems that you have are actually gifts. They're gifts to get you to somewhere that's new and interesting. It's also just very human. We, we're not Count Rostov, but we all do have a life that is confined to particularity. I do not live Brian's life and Brian doesn't live mine, nor does Jeremiah, right. And you guys have different families with different needs as Dubai or someone who's single and the freedoms they have or
the limitations they have. I mean, if we think about the the story, the the creation story in Genesis, God makes everything and it's expansive and abundant. And yet he gives us a little garden. And I, I put the word little on it, but it's definitely not the whole world, right? It's manageable and it's
something to begin with. And I think that if we all see our lives as the garden God's given us and as the count sees his little space as what has given to him, like you're saying, Jeremiah, we stop thinking that we have these endless possibilities with a big budget as a filmmaker.
And we just start working within the confines and seeing those as opportunities because they're intentionally given to us by God. Maybe because what others intended for evil he will use for good, but they are still given to us by God. You've got to the cutting out all of the excess in your life is a painful thing because we we, you know, love all of these things.
And you know, if you think about the count, like everything that he lost, all of his wealth, his status, his, you know, traveling, adventurous family, everything like that. I mean, he lost some real things. And, you know, a lot of times it is those things that, you know, I, I guess it's just, it's never easy to get down to the nitty gritty. We're all kind of like hoarders, right? Where we've got, you know, million things and we're like, Oh yeah, we got AI got to get
rid of all this stuff. I'm going to take this one thing out. And then, you know, everything should be better when you've got like just rooms full of all the excess stuff that we collect. And so, you know, those those times of loss and limitations are always really difficult because all the stuff that we're losing are things that we we love or like. But that's the only way to really get down to what really matters.
You know, the famous was Hemingway quote writers like, you know, you've got to Kill Your Darlings. You got to cut your story in places that really hurt. And that's the only way you're going to get down to actually the really good part of the book, because you just collect so many things that that you want. I don't know. I really, I, I, I love that and thinking of it in terms of the kenosis, right, the self
emptying. And I think there's actually a couple quotes from, from church fathers and the Maximus the confessor had a great point. He said that aesthetic restraint, or I'm sorry, aesthetic constraints, kind of like thinking of Count Rostov, right? Going from that beautiful, beautiful room and salon and dining room and bedroom to this tiny little room in the attic, right? And getting rid of all the stuff
that he had to anyway. Aesthetic constraints clear away attachments that clouds us up. He says. They don't create virtue, but they reveal God's natural goodness already present. And then John of the Cross, I love his famous maxim here. He says to reach satisfaction in all desire, its possession in nothing, to come to the knowledge of all desire the knowledge of nothing, to come to possess all desire, the possession of nothing, to arrive at being all desire to be nothing.
Yeah, there's that consistent pattern in in the the ancient writings of we had a good conversation about this actually in the the Christian Imagination class that I'm teaching. Several people were asking about this, why were some of the the Mystics so extreme in their asceticism? And we had a conversation about some of this, their specific
circumstances. But one of the things that's that's pretty consistent in the actual teaching from those people is not that I think it was Bonaventure who said that. Like it's not an end in itself. Poverty, this limits of means and space and whatever it is are not an end in itself. But there, there are really good means of ensuring 2 essential Christian virtues, the fundamental humility that every Christian should have before God and the charity that is the
Christian life. Or this isn't an ancient quote, but I think, I think I wrote this one down. Yeah, Simone Weil, she said. I love this quote. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it. And it is grace he knows. Which makes this void. That sounds like what Flannery O'Connor must have tried to write in all of her short stories over and over and over again. And that void and cutting, that cutting into that space and making room can be really painful.
And I think you mentioned this already in the beginning, Brian, very early. Like we, we give lip service to this concept, but when it happens inside of us, it's painful. And Jeremiah, you just said like for good reason, it is painful. You know, there's something truly good that might be lost. And yet I'm, I'm kind of pulling all this together for myself, Christina, The concept of
letting beauty fill that. And that's grace, you know, that's, that's really, really comforting to me as someone who grieves first and then can stay there.
It's kind of, I think extra interesting just in our current kind of American culture too, because we really do have like a, you know, lives of excess in a lot of ways, whether it's, you know, our material possessions or just, even, you know, there's a million things trying to get every second of our attention and time with entertainment and activities and, and things like that. And it's just, it's interesting to see kind of the cultural backlash to that too.
And like what people are trying to do to to figure it out. It's funny, as you were talking, I was like the real Christian theological thing I'm thinking of is the movie Fight Club from the 90s where the guy is like, you know, it starts out with him just saying how much he just loves his apartment and all the things he buys it and then he blows it up, you know, and it's like pretending to be really sad.
But it's really because like, you know, as in her conscience is like, you know, you, you work a job you hate to buy things you don't need to impress people that you can't even respect. And, you know, it's like you're just, I think we do feel like we're trapped by everything, by the lives that we built around ourselves and the only thing that's going to save us, as if
it all just completely explodes. And maybe that's why stories like this resonate with us because, you know, in some way we're like, man, you know, I wish I could get out of this. And it's hard, You know, people that are hoarders, they need someone else to come in and like tear everything out to let them start fresh because it's really hard to do on your own.
If if we go to the fourth point though, about clarifying purpose, the one thing that I do want to note too though, and this was a conviction that I had this past weekend in terms of what was happening in my life. And then I'll also, as I was reflecting on these notes, I am the wife of someone in the Navy. And so someone else very external from us, well, sometimes on a whim, decide where we're going to be.
And, you know, there's a sort of ease to having really, really intense constraints that are always new. And there's a freedom there that I think goes well with the kind of cultural mill you have grown up in. What I realized is scary to me is being someone who lived in the same town with the same people and I'm constrained by the needs of my family, immediate or but I think it's
the commonplace and the mundane. Brian, you quoted where Dostoevsky says the poor envy and and I think there's a poorness in monotony, like we can be poor of new experiences and the envious of something new. So we might be sitting around feeling like, OK, Jeremiah, but I don't have that much excess. I actually am very sad with how little I have and how there's not opportunity coming my way.
And I think there's a difference between, like, the cutting of things that are filling up our spaces, metaphorically or
figuratively. But then there's also the reckoning of what do we do in what feels a little bit more empty than it perhaps should be. So I don't know if I'm just trying to get in another angle of something we've already said, so I'm repeating it. But it did feel important to say that like it's not just cutting off of the excess of, but it's noticing the gaps and it's noticing the losses that are present and asking God, what do you want with these spaces and
how can they be opportunities for you to work in my life? Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, definitely loss isn't the the end all of it. In fact, you know, to bring us back to Fight Club, you know, it
didn't end well for this guy. You know, he got rid of all the excess junk in his life and then was left with, you know, violence and depravity and and you know, it was not not good, right, But you look at like the and I I think almost he maybe he had more of an envious response, whereas, you know, all throughout the book, I can't think of a single time that count. I'll stop envied anyone. And again, it was that exact opposite. It was that that warmth. It was that he he was delighted
to consider other people. One of my favorite scenes in the book just real quick is like, you know, he's at a dinner by himself alone and there's a couple that's sitting next to him. There's like a young man who's trying to kind of impress his date, right. And you know, I mean, if it was me, I'd probably be there like I'm alone. I'm never going to find love. I'm stuck in this hotel. But instead he's going, Oh man, I bet he's having trouble figuring out the perfect wine
pairing. And I happen to know the perfect wine pairing. And he's like rooting for him the whole time. He's just like focused on wanting this, this young man to succeed and then ends up intervening and and, you know, basically like, you know, I can save this whole date for this guy, you know, by sharing my expertise with him and, and stepping in.
And it just, I think it really speaks to that, you know, even though he's sitting there alone for the 900th time in the row, eating the same thing at the same table, you know, he was again focused on somebody else and and how he could bring something delightful into their lives. You know, this, this love that he had for fine wine. It's perfect pairing. And, you know, it's not the most expensive, but it's going to fit because of this.
And it's going to help your conversation, you know, this type of thing. It's that. Yeah. I mean, he had, he had a delighted consideration of other people and that was the whole difference. You know, that's why he was able to lose everything and instead gain so much more. I love that it's funny because it it actually reminds me of a sort of a dual Bible quote here that they almost seem to contradict each other, but not especially in context of that
story. Jeremiah And you know, it's, it's when Jesus says it's, you know, it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. But he also says, you know what? Father does not desire to give good gifts to his children. And so there's this beautiful contrast of, yes, I do want to give you good things. And you are supposed to want them and desire them and love them.
You know, and, and you see here the count who has had this love and you know, of fine wines still enjoys it. He's he, but he's able to give it to someone else in this way that he might not necessarily have have done before. And so there is this. He does enjoy this good gift and he has it, but he also is ready to give it away. Partly because you know of, of his, his lack of, you know, things. Yeah, yeah.
And, and, and I think this orientation that he has one of my favorite sort of narrative turns in the book. Every chapter in this book is just delightful by itself. The prose is beautiful. There are so many great little observations about human nature along the way. First time I read this book, I read it really slowly because sometimes I would read not even a chapter, I'd read like 2 pages. And those 2 pages were just so full of beauty and richness that I would just close the book and
think about them for. A while I remember that and. I would just pick up, pick it up again and repeat the So it took me a while to get through it. But he has this, this, this warmth toward others. But it's not it's not obligation. I mean, it might be in a, in a sort of an existential sense, but it's sort of like, like the to like the couple on the day. That's kind of his choice, right? He didn't have to intervene.
But as the book goes on, he starts to run into these situations where unexpectedly, for someone who has no family and is under house arrest the rest of his life, he starts to encounter obligation. He learned some of these skills with the hotel staff. And next thing you know, he's actually helping run the hotel with staff. He's responsible for the the tables all being perfect. Before the guests come in for dinner. There's a key moment in the book where something terrible's about
to happen. And what? And the the thing that saves the whole situation is a total stranger asks him to care for some honey bees. And then the the last portion of the book, which I won't spoil, is he's actually asked to care for another person, another human soul who has to rely on him totally. And there's a great quote about that where he says that he's talking about parents in general and he's not a parent.
But he says in the end, a parent's responsibility could not be more simple to bring its child safely into adulthood so that she could have a chance to experience a life of purpose and, God willing, contentment. If that's what, if that's what parenting is, He has this opportunity and obligation, as it turns out, to basically to pass on what he has learned to someone else. And that ends up being the hinge point that changes the whole story.
All right, we are wrapping up for the day because we can talk about this book for hours and we're not going to. But any parting, the thoughts on anything we've talked about haven't talked about or the book itself that you want to leave
our listeners with? What you were saying, you know, as far as parenting, I think at least for me in my life, this was probably where I learned this lesson the most, just because when I had kids, it, it was very difficult and there was a lot of extenuating circumstances. And, you know, I, I, I felt in that moment when I started having children that I lost everything. All the things that I really enjoyed about my life.
I lost, you know, whether it was with the way that I had a relationship with my wife, all my different hobbies and interests and dreams and passions and things I was going to go do, you know, it just basically all got completely derailed. And, you know, it was, I felt kind of like the count where I was like trapped in this thing.
And, you know, it wasn't until years later that, you know, I was able to then have the perspective and see like how much, you know, I had gained that I could never think of. And you know, that that transitional process where you kind of lose all of your sort of favorite things to find newer, greater, richer things. As you know, it's like kind of a part of growing up and becoming a, a mature person.
And it's funny, I always tell any of my friends that have kids this because I was like kind of the first of my friend group to ever have children and stuff. And so I would basically like tell my friends that, look, you know, everyone says having children is like the best thing that will ever happen to you, but they don't tell you is that having children is also the worst thing that will ever happen to you. You know, it costs you everything. Your whole life is going to change.
You know, it's like buckle up, buddy type of thing. Then once you have like the kind of longer experience, you know, then you're able to see, you know, like, you know, every parent for the most part, you know, says I would wouldn't change having children for the world, you know, because we're able to see that that great thing. And I think it is because only because it costs us so much to
have children. And in the book, again, spoilers and such, but, you know, he kind of goes through that same thing. And there's that moment in the book when he's like, faced with a choice of what he's going to do, where he's like, ah, man, I can't sit in my favorite chair. And I like, you know, all of the little pleasures that he had kind of regained in his hotel, like he had to lose them all again, you know.
But then again, 10 years after that, you know, he looks back at it going, man, this is so much better than I ever thought it could be. Yeah, it's a beautiful picture of self sacrifice for something else better. Yeah. Yeah, parenting is such a great way to practice self sacrifice, to be forced into it, you know?
Well, reading for this episode was so rich for for all of us, but both the book itself and some of the theological writings that we encountered around it. So I think it's appropriate to leave with a a couple of good quotations. Not from the book. That just didn't work into the conversation yet, but I think they put a nice bow on this conversation. The book is not told from an explicitly Christian perspective, but we're approaching it from that perspective for for obvious
reasons. So we're I think we're putting 11 little extra layer of spiritual meaning to some of this. And so, all right, quote number one, this is Francois Fennelon at a Roman Catholic French Archbishop and poet from the 17th century. He said it is when God appears to have abandoned us that we must abandoned ourselves, most holy to God. I need to write that one down somewhere because I keep thinking of it in important moments and not being able to
quite remember it just right. But it's so Dang. And I'll let Julian of Norwich. It's been about a year since we did our episode on Julian of Norwich. So it's appropriate, I think, to give her the last word. She said, he said not thou shalt not be tempested. Thou shalt not be travailed. Thou shalt not be diseased. But he said thou shalt not be overcome. Thanks for joining me, guys. Thanks for listening friends and
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