413 - Heidi White - The Divided Soul: Duty and Desire in Literature and Life

In this conversation, I sit down with author and educator Heidi White to discuss her new book, The Divided Soul. We explore the story of the prodigal son, the tension between duty and desire, and how these themes echo through literature, culture, and our own lives. Heidi shares insights from the Bible, classical works, and pop culture, showing that many stories reflect this deep human struggle.

YouTube version: https://youtu.be/1LjDeZpSviw

Buy Heidi’s book: https://www.goldberrypress.com/products/the-divided-soul-duty-and-desire-in-literature-and-life
Heidi’s Substack and podcast: https://closereads.substack.com/ 
Instagram: @heidiwhitereads 

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Timestamps
00:00 - Coming up
01:40 - Intro music
02:04 - Introduction
02:48 - The prodigal son
05:32 - Duty and desire
07:17 - Paradise as unity
13:02 - Why the duality?
17:36 - Sins of the right hand and the left hand
20:49 - Ordering desire
27:30 - Examples
33:28 - Repentance and sacrifice
38:04 - Christ's version of this pattern
44:24 - Heidi's vision

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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Imagine a world, Jonathan, and you and I probably can't
even imagine this. Imagine a world in which everything we
want to do, we should do, and everything we should
do is something completely desirable and fulfilling to us. I
can't even live an hour like that here in this
fallen world. But that's what we were made for. But

(00:21):
as the story tells us, when the monster the serpent
invades the garden, he convinces the woman. He convinces Eve
to break a commandment, to violate her duty, and how
does he do it by insinuations and manipulations that communicate
to her that fulfilling her duty to stay away from
the one forbidden tree is going is not going to

(00:43):
fulfill her desires. And the scripture even tells us when
she's looked after the serpenttents are when she looks at
the tree and sees that it is desirable to eat
and to make one wise. It is then and only
then that she decides to eat. So that Brack sure
that fundamental wound of the human soul, I argue in

(01:04):
the book is the division between duty and desire. That's when,
for the first time in their lives, what they wanted
to do is different from what they ought to do,
and that rupture is so traumatic, so fundamentally disintegrating to
us as humans, that we keep replaying that over and

(01:27):
over again in our own lives, psychologically and morally. And
then we keep telling that story over and over again,
which is why I think every story is divided along
that fracture of duty and desire.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
This is Jonathan fjel Welcome to the Symbolic World. So,
hello everyone, I'm here with Heidi White. Heidi is an author.
She's involved in education. She's also a podcaster. She recently

(02:14):
published a book called The Divided Soul, and I know
she sent me the book and I looked over linked over,
and I thought just how in tune it was with
the kind of things we talk about on this channel.
Vision of the of the human and a powerful image
of microcosm and macrocosm. And she gives these really interesting
examples which I think will be helpful for people to

(02:35):
see what she's talking about. And so, Heidi, thanks for
talking to me.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh gosh, are you kidding? This is such an honor.
I'm so glad to be here.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
So maybe tell us a bit about the basic concept
of the book. What do you mean by the divided soul?

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah, So the book came from a conversation I had
with my godfather years ago. I don't actually even remember
the main subject of the conversation, but somewhere along the
way he made a comment that everything in life comes
down to the story of the prodigal Son. And immediately
I honed it on that. It felt really true, this
sense of recognition and what he said, but I didn't

(03:13):
know why, so I started like meditating on that, contemplating that.
And you're very familiar, of course, I'm sure your listeners
are with the story of the prodigal son. The loving
father with two sons, and the first son asks for
his inheritance and squanders it on wild living. Meanwhile, the

(03:34):
dutiful older brother is at home doing the right thing
and working in the fields, and the younger brother finds
himself destitute, having squandered everything, and so he returns home repentant,
and the father welcomes him home. But that's not the
end of the story. His older brother is angry and
refuses to welcome him. But the father, what's so fascinating

(04:00):
to me, Jonathan, The father, I notice, wants only one
thing for both of his sons, and that's to come
to a feast. And the feast is this healing communion
that reconciles these two brothers. And I love that, and
I started looking for that pattern, and I found it
first in myself. Right. I have both an older brother

(04:20):
and a prodigal in me. I have a part of
me that wants to seize everything I can and squander
it and waste it on my appetites. And then I
have this other part of me that wants always to
do the right thing and be rewarded for it and
have the freedom to judge everybody else for not rising
to my standards. And both of these impulses are alive

(04:43):
and active in me at all times. And so I
SI just started noticing this pattern not only in me,
but in everywhere. As you said, I'm a teacher a
literary podcast. So I read a lot of books, a
lot of stories. I think about them, talk about them,
and I started seeing this everywhere, both in literature and life.
And from that came my research, and from that came

(05:04):
the book The Divided Soul and the Divided Soul. I
say in the book, is this war within us between
these two competing impulses what we ought to do represented
by the older brother, and what we want to do
represented by our prodigal and then that healing communion that
comes from the Father that brings these two boys together.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
And so in the book you kind of you kind
of talk about these to these two opposites, and you
give examples. Of course in literature, you know, maybe you
can give us to start up, Maybe you can give
us the sense that why we would choose one or
the other, in the sense that, you know, what is
the appeal of following duty and what is the appeal
of following desire in the first place.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
I love that question. I I think that, and I
argue in the book that true desire and true true duty,
as they really are and are intended to be, as
they are created to be, are are absolute. Like our
true desire is for paradise, it's for eternal joy, it's

(06:12):
for heaven, and our true duty is to keep Christ's commandments.
But more often than not, we attach these this question
of what we ought to do and what we want
to do to distortions rather than that reality. And I
think we see that in the story of the Prodigal Sign,

(06:33):
and then in many other stories, And I don't think
we do it on purpose, right, Like that that older
brother in the story, he really believes he's doing the
right thing. And this younger brother, he may know what
he's doing is wrong, but does he really know it's
not going to make him happy?

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Right?

Speaker 1 (06:54):
And so I think what we really want is happiness.
That's what we want. We want joy, And we'd attach
these kind of impulse towards duty and impulse towards desire
to a distortion rather than to the eternal reality of it.
And that's what creates chaos and suffering in our lives.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
And I mean, because there are some how can I
say this? So in your book you talk about, for example,
virgils an Eus. You talk about an Eus in some
ways as the one that that chooses duty over at
least his desire. And in the poem he's presented as
this is in fact the great is the greater good

(07:39):
that the fact that he that he chooses the duty
to be the founder of Rome rather than to settle,
you know, in a possibly a loving relationship, or to
settle before reaching that goal. You know that this is
something seen as positive in the poem. And so how
do you see this, how do you see? And then
right now ours art of society right now, focus on

(08:01):
the opposite, that is that we have the sense that
you have to always that you're following your desire, following
your bliss, expressing your desires in sometimes in the most
idiosyncratic way is the path towards authenticity and the path
towards towards happiness. And so maybe you can paint a
little bit for example, like I said, why why do

(08:27):
we see that in why is it not a path
towards happiness? Like why is neither of those the way
to happiness? Right?

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah? I used to think that I used to kind
of you know, at the beginning of my writing and
research on this topic, I kind of thought that I
use it almost like a personality test, which sounds kind
of dumb, but in my mind, I was thinking, you know,
some of us are duty driven people and some of
us are desired driven people, and we make most of

(08:54):
our mistakes in life because of this or that or whatever.
And I still think that it's true that most of us,
because of some combination of nature nurture, kind of favor
one over the other, and maybe some of its time
of life, right like I'm a middle aged woman. All

(09:14):
I do is duty all the time. When I was young,
I tend to make more like prodigal, desire driven mistakes.
Right now, I'm a little bit more prone, especially as
a mother and a teacher, like I want people to
keep in line, right, and I've seen enough consequences that
I'm afraid of them now. And and so I still

(09:35):
think that that there's kind of a privilege, so to
speak of, within us to kind of gravitate towards one
distortion over the other. But duty and desire are intended
to be unified. Like they are brothers. They are they
belong together, and actually they both want the same thing.

(09:57):
So I think that the division between them is absolutely fundamental.
This isn't just some kind of psychological, you know, theory
or literary interpretation theory that I'm putting forward to look
smart or trying to make a point. But I think
that this is fundamental to the human psyche. And one
of the stories that we have that the fundamental The

(10:19):
first story that we have in history lays this bear,
I think, and that's the story of Adam and Eve
in the Garden of Eden. We're told in the scriptures
that God puts Adam and Eve in a garden of
delights to meet their every desire. Right he gives them.
He gives the food to eat tree, eat of any

(10:42):
tree that you desire, that looks good to you and
that you long for and hunger for. Also be fruitful
and multiply and fill the earth, and then take dominion
over the entire created order. Like this, these aren't just permissions.
These are commands that God gave and Eve, as we're
told in the story. So what we see there is

(11:04):
that there's this unity of duty and desire. Their duty
is to keep these commandments, and the commandments are given
to them as wholly desirable, to their to their humanity.
So we were made Paradise is the unity of the two.
Imagine a world, Jonathan, and you and I probably can't
even imagine this. Imagine a world in which everything we

(11:25):
want to do we should do, and everything we should
do is something completely desirable and fulfilling to us. I
can't even live an hour like that here in this
fallen world. But that's what we were made for. But
as the story tells us, when the monster the serpent
invades the garden, he convinces the woman he convinces Eve

(11:46):
to break a commandment, to violate her duty, and how
does he do it by insinuations and manipulations that communicate
to her that fulfilling her duty to stay away from
the one forbidden true is not going to fulfill her desires.
And the scripture even tells us when She's looked after

(12:08):
the serpintensor, when she looks at the tree and sees
that it is desirable to eat and to make one wise,
it is then and only then that she decides to eat.
So that fracture, that fundamental wound of the human soul,
I argue in the book, is the division between duty
and desire. That's when, for the first time in their lives,

(12:34):
what they wanted to do is different from what they
ought to do. And that rupture is so traumatic, so
fundamentally disintegrating to us as humans, that we keep replaying
that over and over again in our own lives, psychologically
and morally. And then we keep telling that story over
and over again, which is why I think every story

(12:56):
is divided along that fracture of duty and desire. HM.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
So in your let's say, in your own experience or
when you read the literature, the stories. You know, why
why do we perceive, for example, duty as an opponent
to desire? Why is it that we we see the
competition right in our everyday experience? Because I agree with

(13:23):
you obviously. I think that when you when I kind
of look through the book, I agreed with the basic
concept right away, which is, if you think of duty
as an organizing principle, you know, just think about it
that way, or a purpose, uh, you know, and then
desire as a motor as in some ways the thing
that makes you move, Then you alwaysly are always moving
towards a purpose, right, even when you follow your morals,

(13:46):
your whims, you're always kind of moving towards a a
A a kind of purpose. It's just that some of
these purposes are better order than others, are better organized
than others, you know. And so I mean, is it
the timescale? Is it? Is it like the capacity to
see the whole? The force for the trees? What do

(14:06):
you think is the is the obstacle to join those together?

Speaker 1 (14:11):
I mean, I think it has to be a spiritual
blindness within us, right, that this chasm between this sense
of if I restrain my appetites, then I will not
be happy if I fulfill the duty. Say, you know,
let's pick some low hanging fruit here. If I were to,

(14:33):
let's talk about marriage, like a marriage is the ultimate
union of duty and desire, or it should be. Right.
When I married my husband, I forsook all others. I
say to him, like, my desire is for you, and
my duty is to you. And five minutes before the
sacraments of marriage, there are things we cannot that are

(14:53):
our duty to abstain from that. Five minutes upon the sacrament,
it is now my duty to yield up to him. Right,
And that that's a mystery, that that's a beautiful part
of our human experience. And let's say, you know, five
ten years into marriage, I decide I don't want care
about that duty anymore. And this happens all the time.

(15:17):
Adultery is a profound violation of duty because we have
this sense that if I were to keep it, I
can no longer have what I want, right, I want
to feel something I want. I want. I'm tired of
this duty and I want to just jettison it in
order to fulfill my desires. So whenever we have a perception,

(15:38):
a flawed perception, I think it's it's spiritual blindness every time,
whatever we perceive that to do our duty will keep
us from our desire, or to pursue desire is a
better thing than to fulfill duty. Whenever there's that chasm
between them and we choose one or the other, we

(16:01):
we wound our souls and we create that same primal
division that that Adam and Eve creative for themselves in
the Garden of Eden. And I think it's just as
true on either side. There's a there's a verse in
I think it's first Timothy that says the sins of
some go before them, and the sins of others trail
behind them. And it seems to me that those prodigal

(16:23):
sins tend to be the ones that go before us, right, Alcoholism,
adult truth, some of those things that are just about
like appetites, they either the lust of the flesh or
the lust of the eyes. That those are the prodigal sins,
the sins of desire. But the sins of duty can
be equally destructive, sometimes even more so. Pride and envy

(16:46):
and that sense of being better. I mean you you
know that within our within our tradition, we are like
we're always talking about repentance. Right, it's only the prideful
that won't see heaven, and that that that pride tends
to be the sin of the older brother, the sin
of duty, like I am better than others, and I

(17:08):
will live like that, and I will cast judgment, and
that's those are sins that are violations of duty. And
so we reap equal destruction in our life from each side.
And I think, do you think to your question, it
comes down to that flawed perception, the clouding of the
inner heart, the inner eye of the mind that cannot

(17:28):
see that that true duty and true desire will bring
us the only thing we truly long for, which is joy.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Mm hmm, Yeah, A lot of things came in my
mind when you were talking. I was thinking about my
favorite quote from Sam Maximus. People have early quoted over
and over which he talks about sins of the right
hand and the sins of the left hand. You know,
he has this idea that in fact, we actually the
first often as Christians, especially as spiritual people, our first

(17:58):
temptation is to give into the sin the right hand,
which are exactly the ones you said, like presumption and
arrogance and pride, all of these kind of sins, of
solidity and a feeling of being proper and of being
right and rightly ordered. But he even he says that
when we give in to those sins, it actually opens
up the door to the other sins, right to the

(18:20):
to the sins of desire, because we in some ways
have a false confidence about who we are and where
we stand, and then suddenly we get sideswiped, you know,
and you get those ques, you get those stories like
you know, the stories of the fallen pastors, and the
stories of the you know, of the adulter's pastors and
the adulter you know, and the kind of the priests
that do all kinds of crazy stuff. Like you can

(18:40):
see that that's the exact patterns that just at the
moment when they think that they're gurus, that they're that
their fathers and that they're in charge, then all of
a sudden, you know, they're not attentive to to to
how or it's or they feel they suddenly people feel
like their desires are are kind of aligned with their duty,

(19:00):
or that their desires are given you know, the fact
that they're so dutiful that they're allowed in some ways
these kinds of uh these kinds of transgressions or something.
I don't know how how to phrase it, but uh,
but there definitely is something something true about that.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
And the one thing I wanted to say too is
the way that I see it and when I think,
when I think about what you're what you're talking about,
is there's a sense in which that when we when
we give into our desires, you know, we we are
in some ways moving towards it, towards a direction, because
all our desires are meant to be directed towards a

(19:39):
good right. That's the reason that they exist. And when
we give in to them in their own let's say,
in their own world, then they're they're directed in all
kinds of ways. Uh, And so we can see that
they just don't lead towards that that that good right.
And sexuality, obviously you mentioned it is the is the
easiest one to to see in a marriage. If you

(20:01):
commit adultery, you're putting not just your marriage at risk,
but your entire family, Your your children, your relationship with
your parents, your relationship with like, everything is kind of
put into chaos if you if you don't order that
desire towards towards higher purpose. And so and so there

(20:23):
is a sense in which you know when you say
that duty and desire are meant to be united. I
think this is it's not just something that happens you
could say at some point to saying Christ, because I
think that's definitely what you mentioned in the book, but
that it really was at the outset the way. It's
actually the shape of the world. It's the way that desire,
it's what desires for is in some ways, to move

(20:46):
towards duty, you could think about it that way.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, And to move us towards heaven, right like what
to and to grant us happiness here on earth, like
desire in itself, the parings of desire. It's not pleasurable
but painful, right it is when we want something, there's
this It means that there's kind of this endless distance
between between the fulfillment of it and the want of it.

(21:11):
And so desire itself pricks us. It won't leave us
alone until it is fulfilled. And I think that for
that reason it's dangerous, and people are afraid of it,
or can be afraid of it, or or attach it
to fall and distortions rather than eternal realities and c. S.
Lewis one of my favorite authors. I dedicate the book

(21:33):
to him because he is like this profit of desire, right,
and he talks about this so compellingly in so much
of his fiction and nonfiction. That desire is given to
us in order to motivate us to seek for the
good of our own soul. And I love what you
just said about the shape of the world, and it

(21:55):
makes me think of the church Fathers who spoke of
the love of God with erotic language like that that
they use the language of eros. Right, that's this is
the divine longing to be united with God, the ultimate
lover of our soul. And they saw the song of songs,

(22:16):
and the Old Testament is being this profound allegory, a
spiritual allegory. Just as a man longs for his wife
or a bride longs for her husband, so the soul
longs to be united to God. And if we do
not have that, how much we miss as humans. But

(22:37):
it does need to be directed to its proper object.
And the only way it can be directed to its
proper object is through principles, commandments, laws, duties, and so
duty forms this kind of this orienting of the longing
of the soul towards towards the proper object, which is
why they belong together.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, and we can see. I mean this isn't abstract.
It's really something that you can experience easily at small scales. Right,
It's hard to experience them with the soul in God.
But you know, anything any discipline that you get into,
Let's say you want to learn to paint, or you
want to learn to make art. You know you have
these you know, you have this capacity, this potential, you

(23:22):
have these drives to make it. But in order to
reach you have to order your desires and your capacities,
or else you're not going to be able to make
something beautiful. The same goes for a sport or any
kind of like Tot's say someone wants to learn to
become a ballet dancer. A young girl wants to be
a ballet dancer. She has this desire to dance, you know,

(23:43):
this strong desire to dance, But to get there is
actually very frustrating and annoying and practice. You know, in
all of these steps that you have to do that
are very frustrating and look like in fact, you're actually
stifling the very reason why you are engaged in the
first place. But then once you push through, once you
kind of get through, then you become a master and

(24:05):
you you you have a kind of freedom in that
desire that that you that you realize you didn't have
at the outset. And that the way that we talk
about freedom of desire in the you know, in the
kind of post World War two sexual revolution type of thinking,
is that is a deep mistake because by not disciplining
our desires, we end up inverting the relationship, and then

(24:28):
we become slaves of our desires, We become we become
tyrannized by you know, these idiosyncratic moment you actually move
from moment to moment of desire without actually you know,
uniting it together towards something that gives you true and
proper joy in that desire. So, you know, I think think,
you know, thinking about this and talking about this is

(24:49):
very important, especially for you know, our young people that
are that are so drowning in the narrative of you know,
do whatever you feel like and you know your desires
are you are your desires that kind of thinking.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
I completely agree with this, And you know, I've got
teenagers at home, and I teach teenagers every day of
my life, and I love them, but it's such as
it's such a season of desire and and it feels
I mean, I remember being young, not anymore, but I
remember it, and I remember that sense of like it

(25:23):
felt as though duty would stifle that in me. And
I remember a priest saying to many years ago, when
my children were very small, saying in a parenting group
at church, saying something like, if you want your children
to be chased, put them in piano lessons, which I
is a lot like what you just said, right, And

(25:44):
I loved that so much. Like that, It is piano
lessons train the habits to the fulfillment of duty in
the mundane and ordinary things in order to create something beautiful,
something bigger. Right, to be able to play a sonata
by Mozart, right is something to be able to train

(26:09):
yourself to do that, to create that kind of beauty,
that kind of transcendent connection with like that with cosmic harmony, right,
uh is it's it begins with doing your scales when
you're seven years old and sticking to it and uh
and sitting at the piano. And so there's just this
intrinsic connection between the dutiful life and and and transcendent

(26:32):
beauty and fulfillment. That is, as you said, not abstract,
it's embodied. It's our daily life. You you mentioned Saint Maximus,
and right now I'm reading Saint Gregory of Palamas, who
says it pretty much exactly what you just said, which is,
if you want to conquer the passions, then you must
conquer your stomach. Right, you have to learn to eat

(26:55):
a little bit less because it is when when it
is when we fill our ourselves so full of fill
our flesh, then it becomes easier to give in to
the bigger passions and become enslaved by them. Which is
why the Church has always prescribed feasting and fasting as

(27:15):
part of our spiritual discipline, because it matters the little
choices that we make and fulfilling the duties of our lives.
That is what creates this kind of framework or scaffolding
to the bigger temptations and the bigger joys.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
So one of the things you do in the book
is you kind of take us through these different aspects,
you know, the aspect of duty, the aspet desire, and
then the kind of reconciliation of the two of these
two senses and maybe tell a little bit people, because
you don't just do it abstractly, kind of do it
through literature and through fiction and then obviously through Bible stories.

(27:52):
And so maybe give us a few images of the
characters you see as representing the duty side the desire side,
and if you hints, if you have some images of
people that you know, we know, Christ does it, but yeah,
there are other people that you can see that that
can exemplify that reconciliation.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Right, So let me start with something from pop culture
that's just not in the book, but yeah, which I'm
happy to talk about examples that I give in the book.
But if I'm talking about this kind of with with
people that I think don't don't read as much as
I do, right, because this is my entire life read books, right,

(28:32):
books talk about books. But an example from pop culture
might come from the Marvel universe. Right, You've got your
two main The two main heroes in the Marvel franchise
are iron Man and Captain America. So iron Man is
your very desired, driven hero, right. He he has everything
you meet him, He's got well, you know, he's got money,

(28:55):
he's got swagger, he's handsome, he's got women in cars,
and and he's super smart. So he's successful. He's like
everything that you know the world. He's this worldly icon
of success. Right, But there's something wrong about him, and
we intrinsically, audiences, we intrinsically know there's something wrong here.

(29:17):
There's some essential quality of heroism that is missing from
Tony Stark u and that uh, and that is that
he can never restrain himself, right, he and the trajectory
of heroic development for Tony Starkin, for others like him,
the trajectory of development for the hero's journey of the

(29:40):
desire driven protagonist is to learn to do his duty.
He has to do the right thing and and and
in order to do that, he has to learn to
repress himself, to restrain himself. So you know, in the
first Iron Man movie goes, he gets captured and then
he has to go through this like training and and
he has to learn to respond to a mentor. Right.

(30:03):
It's just this classic hero's journey that we intrinsically recognize.
We find it satisfying, but we don't recognize him as
a hero until he's tested and he has to put
that training into practice. And then only then by the
end of the movie we're like, oh yeah, now he's
a hero. And we don't do this consciously, it's just

(30:24):
we've just recognized it. Right, It's so fundamental, it's so innate.
We just know that, and it's predictable, but it's predictable
in a very satisfying way. Now let's talk then about
Captain America, who's your very typical duty driven hero. We're
not worried. From the very beginning. We know that Captain
America is going to do the right thing, Like he

(30:44):
just always does the right thing. He doesn't even want
to lie about his age when he's going into war,
like he just wants to he's he We know that.
So but for him, what we need to see this
is the sad part, right, because this is what happens
to your duty Drinn protagonist. Is they always lose something
that they want, right and so, and it's usually the

(31:06):
girl so, and that's exactly what happens to Captain America.
He we know he's going to do the right thing.
That's like not even interesting to us. We just recognize that.
But the thing that happens to him is that he
loses the thing he wants, and a million movies later, finally,
you know, I don't even know how many by the
time we get to the end. The only satisfying ending

(31:28):
for him is that he has to have her back.
And when they're finally reconciled, then and only then do
we recognize, do we have that sense of this satisfying
character arc and plot arc, Then we can rest because
we know that this dutiful man is reconciled with his desire,
whereas with Tony Stark he has to be reconciled with
his duty. So if we look for that pattern, I

(31:51):
started looking for that pattern, and it's everywhere. It's not
just in the Marvel movies. It's not just in Star Wars.
It's it's it's not just Harry Potter, right, it's everywhere.
So you see that in Hamlet, Right, in Shakespeare's Hamlet,
we have a very duty driven hero. In fact, the
whole conflict of that entire play is he doesn't know

(32:12):
the right thing to do. Should he kill Claudius or
should he not write? And there's no transcendent voice of
good to tell him what to do, And because he
doesn't know that, he freezes, and then the play ends
in tragedy. On the other hand, we have Macbeth, who
I write about in the book. He's a very desired
driven protagonist, and the tragedy of his life is that

(32:32):
he never does the right thing, even though he's given
the opportunity to over and over and over again. And
so in both cases we have a stage littered with
dead bodies, but we have it because of those kind
of different impulses within these two characters, one desire driven,
one duty driven, so that that if you look for

(32:54):
that character arc, you're going to see it in every story,
including our own.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
The example you give are very are very convincing, especially
for I think for most people that aren't well read.
I think the Marvel example is is perfect because you actually,
like you said, you actually see the crossover the two
characters starting in one place and then basically flipping and
then at the end, Tony Starr gives this life and sacrifices,
you know, his happy life, and then the opposite happens

(33:22):
with Captain America. It is, in fact exactly what you're saying.
And so are there characters that you see I mean,
in some ways you see that in that that full arc,
you kind of see the balance coming out where in
some ways you you you are satisfied because you see
the character that has more of one side ultimately be
reconciled with the other side. So you already have given

(33:44):
us examples of characters in some ways that that reconcile.
But then how is it that you see that Christ
does this?

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, through the cross right, which is the dividing line
of every single story. There is always every satisfying story
always has a moment of self emptying, of sacrifice, of
death and resurrection. It is, as you said, the shape
of the world. It's the pattern of the cosmos. Uh.

(34:14):
This is why stories are satisfying to us, is because
we're waiting, we're looking. A story begins with, you know,
a created world, a created order, and then once as
a reader or a beholder of the story, we understand
what that created order is, then there's some kind of
disruption to that order, right, Like and it could be

(34:40):
like Souron is looking for the ring, there's a disruption
for you, or it could be something a little bit
more mundane, like mister Bingley moved into the uh, moved
into another field. Right, there's a little disruption of the
order of the story, and something has to happen because
of it, because everybody knows that a man of considerable

(35:04):
fortune is always in want of a wife. Right, So,
once there's kind of this disruption to this story, then
because we our souls seek for harmony, our perceptive faculties
are always desire harmony, and so we need then we're
invested in the story at that point, we need that
to be resolved, and so then some kind of conflict

(35:29):
happens in the main characters that has to be resolved
through a moment of repentance or sacrifice. And that repentance
and sacrifice, you know, it's Lizzie Bennett walking in the
garden with Lady Catherine de Bergh and finally defending Darcy. Right,
there's her moment of repentance and or reading the letter

(35:52):
that Darcy writes on realizing she was wrong, This duty
driven soul who always thinks she's right, right, but she
has to come face a face with that her perception.
She is blind and she doesn't know what she really wants,
and she's not yet worthy of it. Right, The same
thing happens for Darcy. And this is why pride and
prejudice is such an enduring story. We read it and

(36:13):
it's like, it's so simple, why does this work? But
it's because it's the shape of the world. And so
you asked how Christ. He wanted to talk about How
Christ does it? Right? He does it through love, through
sacrificial love, and the laying down of his life, and
then he invites us to participate in that. That is

(36:34):
how we are known to be Christians, says Saint John.
That theologian they will know where Christians by our love,
which means our willingness to die. That's the that's how
we know what love is. And sometimes that happens literally
in stories. Harry Potter literally goes into the forest and
dies for the life of the world. And then after

(36:56):
that none of the curses of the death eaters can
stick on any of the people they're attacking because they're
protected by that charm of love, of sacrificial love. Such
a christ like story, and that happens, of course through
Lizzie Bennett and mister Darcy getting married at the end, right,
it's and her getting ten thousand a year, which is

(37:18):
not mercenary but simply a vision of heaven, like the
more we get more than we deserve. And Christ models
that for us first, and then we participate that in
that through our own conversions and our own humility and repentance,
and then we we recreate it in every satisfying story

(37:39):
that's ever been written or told in the history of
the world. And that's all the more compelling because so
many people don't know that that's the story they're telling.
So many authors don't know, they don't know that they're
telling this cosmic redemption story over and over and over
again because it's the only satisfying story.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Hm hm, yeah, it's it's interesting because one of my problems,
my problem, one of my problems with the story of
Christ is that it always slips between my fingers, right,
And so you know, you know, when you describe, when
you describe the characters in the book, like when you
you describe the duty characters and the desiring characters, and

(38:22):
and you know, and even now when you describe the
Marvel universe, it's like it's so it's it's simple, actually, man,
Jesus' story is just because if I take your if
I take your pattern, I see it. I see it.
Crashing is is. But maybe that's what Jesus does all
the time. Right, Jesus is always doing that because when

(38:44):
he's in the garden, he expresses that he does not
want this right, right, he expresses that he does not
want the cup, and and therefore he he in some
ways seems to you to to completely accept duty. He says,
you know, not my will basically, but what but your will?

(39:08):
But there are other versions, like other ways that we
described the crucifixion in which we talk about it in
the passion, and we use the word passion, right, we
use the word passion in the sense we use the
word of a a of a fully giving yourself, uh,
you know, in a in a kind of ecstatic giving,

(39:32):
you know. But it's a painful, it's not it's not
a But then desires, I said, desire is painful. To
desire is not Desire is pretty much the equivalent of pain. Uh.
And so and so so when I when I tried
to keep when I tried to capture it the whole
story in my mind, it doesn't hold, like it doesn't.
It just keeps slipping because I'm like, well, you know,
because we for example, like you know, even in the

(39:54):
Orthodox tradition, we have this insane moment during the during
the during a Holy Week, you know, where we put
up the icon of Christ being tortured, and we say
and we put it up for bridegroom mattens where we
describe the relationship between the bride and the bridegroom and
we sing of this kind of uh call in response

(40:15):
between the lover, between the lovers. But we're basically we're
basically at the moment where Christ is being tortured, you know,
and heading towards the cross, and it's like, it's just
it hurts, like it hurts to try to to try
to capture it. So I don't know, maybe you can
help me elucidate it, because because I can see it,
but I don't see it completely because when I when

(40:37):
I grab a thread, then another thread unravels and I
try to hold them all and they don't. They don't.
I can't seem to hold them all together.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, I don't know that I can hold them together either,
because it's it's it's a mystery. Like Christ. He I
got thinking right now of the Sermon on the Mount
when he says, not one jot, not one iota, of
the of the law will be lost. He's not come
to abolish it, but to fulfill it. But in order
to fulfill it, he completely subverts it, right, And and

(41:09):
that there's that paradox that is not an intellectual it
is an intellectual paradox paradox. But to your point, it's
so existential as well. And one of the things that
that I had to do to make this book come
alive is talk about my own life in it. And

(41:31):
you know, it's funny. I wrote about half the book
and and it was like drudgery. It was so hard.
I was just pushing through, you know, putting it, doing
my duty thing right right in my you know, thinking
about hiving away, typing on the you know, typewriter and
bleeding and just like killing my darlings and all the
things right that you do when you're writing, as you know,

(41:52):
and and but there was no life in it. I
just felt like I was writing a really long essay.
And I was like, why would aby read this book?
It's so boring? And and I, uh, I came to
this realization that it really didn't have life in it
because I was I. I wasn't in it like I

(42:15):
my own tormented story, my own like those two hands
that can't my right hand and my left hand that
are divided from each other. That that that I'm trying
to understand something that is so mysterious. I'm trying to
make this case for something that is a mystery and

(42:35):
in my life. And and you know, I'm thinking of
Flannery O'Connor saying the fiction writer, which I'm not writing fiction,
I hope but that God have mercy. I maybe someday
I'll be good enough to write fiction. But this book,
I hope isn't fiction. I I was, But Flannery O'Connor says, like,

(43:00):
if you have a proposition, don't write fiction. If you
fully understand something, it can't be a story because otherwise
we wouldn't have any Like we should just tell one
story and be done right. Like there's like stories are
supposed to be mysterious, and that's why they exist. It's

(43:22):
because they're so elusive. There's something that we're trying to say,
There's something that we're trying to contemplate or look at
that eludes our comprehension. Shakespeare says there's such a difference
between Midsummer Night's Dream, between apprehension and comprehension. And in
this book, I'm I think I'm trying to apprehend something,

(43:43):
not comprehend it, because as you're saying, the Life of
Christ both fulfills and subverts every proposition and every law
that's ever been And that feels true to me, which
is why I had to tell some of my own
story because it's messy and there's a lot that I

(44:04):
still don't know what to make of. And I'm just
one person that's insignificant except to myself and to God, right,
and that is part of the human condition, and that's
why books are worth writing. But that's why they can't
say everything.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
Mm hmmm hm. And so if there is something like
if you could, if you could could bring it together,
you know, what is what is that you're hoping the
book will do? Like, what is it you're hoping that
people will get from you?

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah? I feel like for me it's pretty easy. I
just try to say something I'm seeing right. My vocation
as a teacher, podcaster, writer, all of it really is
because I'm so overwhelmed by mystery all the time, and

(45:00):
but I also believe that there's something true. I feel
kind of stuck right or strained in between, like my
grasping towards the transcendent truth. I want to be transfigured
into it, right. I long for heaven like the eschatological hope.

(45:21):
This world is a comedy, not a tragedy. It's moving
towards a desirable end. And the only question is which
side am I going to be on at that point?

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Right?

Speaker 1 (45:31):
And that So I'm constantly reaching towards that. But at
the same time, I don't live in transcendence yet, I
live in the imminent, and I'm confused all the time.
So the book is and all of my vocation is
just an attempt be like, look at this, like hold
out my hands, my two hands with something in it

(45:51):
that I think is worth looking at, and just say like,
look at this with me. So the thing that I
want is immense. It's just for people to look at
it with me and and say what they think, Like
join a conversation, Open a conversation.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
So, so, where can people find what you're doing? I
mean obviously the book, but also your podcast. Tell us
where to go find your your your your discussions.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, so we're we're We're not on My book's not
on Amazon. You can get it through the publisher at
Goldberry press dot com. We're trying not to we're trying
to stay out of the machine as best as we
can and the but you can listen to my podcast,
close Reads. You can go it's wherever you get podcasts, Spotify,

(46:43):
you know, iTunes, whatever, wherever you get podcasts, you can
find close Reads. And we it's me and two other
people and we two other guys and we just sit
and talk about books over It's like a book club.
And we have a really active social media presence and
we do retreats and things like that and just basically
do what you and I are doing right now. And

(47:05):
then you can follow me at Heidi White Reads on Instagram.
And I'm always posting and talking about these things because
I just I just want, like you, you know, I
just said, I just want to talk about it with people.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Well that's great because I think that I'm set to
be on the Closer podcast as well, and so we
will be. We'll be discussing again very soon. And so
thanks for your time. It was great to meet you
and I'm definitely looking forward to our next conversation.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Thanks Jonathan, me too, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
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