The 'Bishop's Day' Series Canterbury 2023 #2 Session 1

Iain McGilchrist was invited to give a day of talks for the Bishop’s Day for Clergy and Licensed Lay Ministers
Wellbeing in Ministry
Recorded on Friday 3 November 2023
Augustine Hall, Augustine House, Canterbury Christ Church University
To purchase The Matter with Things
Hardback internationally Amazon.com
Hardback UK only ChannelMcGilchrist.com , Amazon.co.uk and other booksellers nationwide
Kindle on www.amazon.co.uk and www.amazon.com

[@helenperala3459]

"Science advances one funeral at a time." That has proved itself to be very true in this day and age, alas. Wonderful talk, thank you!

[@samloutalbotmusic]

Dr McGilchrist - I’m a music scholar PhD at Glasgow University. I have found your work to be an ongoing inspiration for how I am articulating my practice. Thank you for being so generous on here.

[@cheri238]

Thank you.🙏❤️🌎🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵

[@reubencohen8838]

Thank you

[@ximono]

I'm glad he mentioned Simone Weil. I've noticed a clear relationship between his philosophy and that of Weil, especially around attention (as a moral act). Simone Weil was a fascinating thinker and human being who I believe deserves to be more widely known. And I'll say the same about Iain :)

[@alisonwilks302]

Lovely job , enjoyed that xxxxxx

[@trevorhart5000]

Hi Iain, Thank you. I am struggling with The Divine, and “Thank God for that!” I suspect the struggle is borne from a brutal left hemisphere focus of a God. The belief system valued me only as a number, an object, for my utility in registering hours of service, and the hope that when earning I would contribute funds to keep the Org going. Previous listening to you left me speechless, but not without the capacity to think. The Org. I was raised in, and latterly shunned by refers to itself as The Truth. Reference to truth, caused something of a flashback to past cruelty… could the JW Org be Truth? If so, that would be shocking for me. They will contain some truth, but not exclusively. Curiously, I can forgive the JW Org their cruelty, as it was through them I found a place of peace which, exists in reality in the foothills of Ben Loyal and Ben Hope, and also exists in my imagination during meditation and imagery…. The Kyle of Tongue. More curiously, on the east side of the Causeway crossing the Kyle was an art studio called The Watchtower. Thanks again. Until we meet again, Trevor

[@MrEnniscorthy]

Thank you for UNSEALING your life to discover the GOLD that lay quietly there to be unsealed

[@OrpheoTreshula]

Does anyone know the piece of music he had played early in this talk? It was removed from the video; I assume due to publication issues.

[@ximono]

He later mentioned that it was a kabbalistic hymn, if that is any help.

[@OrpheoTreshula]

@@ximonoYes, thank you.

[@OrpheoTreshula]

I fear this, this monument work may be a swan song, or minervan flight; the final hour of a dying divine. A prayer whose only hope now is in her death. They said small grains could prove monumentally moving. Some insights crystalize not merely as small grains do, but carry the hopes and sacrifices of millennia. While small in space, vast in What Once Would Have Been. Rich in Time. Contempt held, like all small things by the powerful are. Missed, like everything longed for, by the very loss now inflicted.

[@anhumblemessengerofthelawo3858]

I. The Forgotten Song 1. Never forget the world the sightless “see” must be imagined, for what it really looks like is unknown to them. ²They must infer what could be seen from evidence forever indirect; and reconstruct their inferences as they stumble and fall because of what they did not recognize, or walk unharmed through open doorways that they thought were closed. ³And so it is with you. ⁴You do not see. ⁵Your cues for inference are wrong, and so you stumble and fall down upon the stones you did not recognize, but fail to be aware you can go through the doors you thought were closed, but which stand open before unseeing eyes, waiting to welcome you. 2. How foolish is it to attempt to judge what could be seen instead. ²It is not necessary to imagine what the world must look like. ³It must be seen before you recognize it for what it is. ⁴You can be shown which doors are open, and you can see where safety lies; and which way leads to darkness, which to light. ⁵Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you where to go. ⁶Why should you guess? 3. There is no need to learn through pain. ²And gentle lessons are acquired joyously, and are remembered gladly. ³What gives you happiness you want to learn and not forget. ⁴It is not this you would deny. ⁵Your question is whether the means by which this course is learned will bring to you the joy it promises. ⁶If you believed it would, the learning of it would be no problem. ⁷You are not a happy learner yet because you still remain uncertain that vision gives you more than judgment does, and you have learned that both you cannot have. 4. The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it. ²They think they know their way about in it. ³They learned it, not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed they could not overcome. ⁴And still believing this, they hold those lessons dear, and cling to them because they cannot see. ⁵They do not understand the lessons _keep_ them blind. ⁶This they do not believe. ⁷And so they keep the world they learned to “see” in their imagination, believing that their choice is that or nothing. ⁸They hate the world they learned through pain. ⁹And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived. 5. Thus they define their life and where they live, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. ²And so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their brothers have. ³They try to reach each other, and they fail, and fail again. ⁴And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they have. ⁵Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will speak of now. 6. Listen,-perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. ²Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. ³But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you. 7. The notes are nothing. ²Yet you have kept them with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep if you remembered how dear it was to you. ³You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing you would lose the world you learned since then. ⁴And yet you know that nothing in the world you learned is half so dear as this. ⁵Listen, and see if you remember an ancient song you knew so long ago and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since. 8. Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle. ²And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. ³The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all. ⁴The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere. ⁵Within it everything is joined in perfect continuity. ⁶Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowhere that this light is not. 9. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well. ²Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. ³Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within, and joined to all as surely as all is joined in you. ⁴Accept the vision that can show you this, and not the body. ⁵You know the ancient song, and know it well. ⁶Nothing will ever be as dear to you as is this ancient hymn of love the Son of God sings to his Father still. 10. And now the blind can see, for that same song they sing in honor of their Creator gives praise to them as well. ²The blindness that they made will not withstand the memory of this song. ³And they will look upon the vision of the Son of God, remembering who he is they sing of. ⁴What is a miracle but this remembering? ⁵And who is there in whom this memory lies not? ⁶The light in one awakens it in all. ⁷And when you see it in your brother, you _are_ remembering for everyone. A Course In Miracles

[@ximono]

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour

[@OrpheoTreshula]

@@ximonoThe world's a passing and. Heaven's wild hour: Palms lain InVicory Land; the grist turns the flour.