Fully Alive: Modern Monasticism & the Topography of the Soul / Elizabeth Oldfield

For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

What does it mean to be fully alive and at peace with ourselves and our neighbors in the anxiety and fear of contemporary life?

Joining Evan Rosa in this episode is Elizabeth Oldfield—a journalist, communicator, and podcast host of The Sacred. She’s author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.

Together they discuss life in her micro-monastery in south London; the meaning of liturgical and sacramental life embedded in a fast-paced, technological, capitalistic, obsessively popular society; the concept of personal encounter and Martin Buber’s idea that “all living is meeting”; the fundamentally disconnecting power of sin that works against the fully aliveness of truly meeting the other; including discussions of wrath or contempt that drives us toward violence; greed or avarice and the incessant insatiable accumulation of wealth; the attention-training benefits of gratitude and the identify forming power of our attention; throughout it all, working through the spiritual psychology of sin and topography of the soul—and the fact that we are, all of us, in Elizabeth’s words, “unutterably beloved.”

About Elizabeth Oldfield

Elizabeth Oldfield is a journalist, communicator, and author. She hosts a beautiful podcast called The Sacred. And she’s author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. Follow her @esoldfield, and visit her website elizabetholdfield.com

Show Notes

• Intentional living community; pulling on monastic lifestyle and framework; read more about Elizabeth Oldfield’s micro-monastery here.
• People passing through the micro-monastery and the sharing of a meal and sitting in silence with others
• Celtic prayer book - The Aidan Compline (https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/monday-the-aidan-compline/)
• Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield (http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/fully-alive/421701)
• How you see your liturgical life, the rhythms of your life however else you might describe you spirituality as providing the soil of this book?
• A personal writing experience - communicating something of her tradition with the outside world
• What it means to be fully alive to you?
• Everything is about relationships and connection; to be fully alive is to be fully connected with the soul
• Between Man and Man (https://www.routledge.com/Between-Man-and-Man/Buber/p/book/9780415278270) and I and Thou by Martin Buber - “all living is meeting” (https://www.maximusveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/iandthou.pdf)
• If all living is meeting, how are we failing in that regard?
• Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/unapologetic-francis-spufford?variant=32207439626274)
• Sin is disconnection; a turning inward
• “Elegy on the Lady Markham” by John Donne (https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/elegy-lady-markham-0)
• “As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden (https://poets.org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening)
• The Sacred podcast (https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2017/12/06/introducing-the-sacred-podcast)
• Polarization, division, and the splitting of people - homophily and fight or flight response
• Jesus going to the margins, ignoring tribal boundaries and turning the other cheek
• Sin and Reconciliation
• The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson, “I find the soul a valuable concept, a statement of the dignity of human life” (https://www.brethrenpress.com/product_p/9781250097316.htm)
• The soul is interesting and difficult to name but is so valuable
• Room for uncertainty and poetry—we beat up our souls, keep ourselves distracted
• Contemporary life is angry and greedy
• Contempt is a poison for our souls and relationships and humanity
• Stress and anxiety as a constant
• Christian non-violence tradition
• We must feel our emotions - process them through the shared rituals of our communities
• Desire by Micheal O’Siadhail (https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481320061/desire/)
• Would you like to introduce your take on greed?
• Phyllis Tickle, dogged commitment of the scripture - the love of money is the root of all evil
• The Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:19 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark 4%3A19&version=NIV)
• Made gods of wealth, greed, comfort, and connivence
• Gratitude is a medicine for greed
• Of Gratitude by Thomas Traherne? (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/works-of-thomas-traherne-vii/of-gratitude/161CCCE8293EE4034F65AB436AB4D3F9)
• “These are the Days We Prayed For” by Guvna B (https://genius.com/Guvna-b-these-are-the-days-lyrics)
• Notice and give thanks; misplaced desire
• Acadia, spiritual apathy, and heavy distraction
• Attention and discipline are formation
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book)
• Community as accountability and rituals and set rhythms of life
• Divine Love, ultimate love
• Baptism as a reminder of our death - love remains
• Quiet space shared with others; honesty, vulnerability, emotional processing

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Elizabeth Oldfield
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Kacie Barrett and Alexa Rollow
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give