from The Anadromist and his (cor)respondents:
a small selection of the contributions, but don’t miss watching Byrne’s video, especially for all the personal stories and atmosphere
… Skip the time travel. You're there. You're in a period as crazy as the 60s, but the nice thing about this moment is it gives us a chance to change.
Things are in flux which means - more questions are open, we can do more. Think of something to do and do it - because everything is going to change … If you have really interesting ideas, really honest thoughts - dive in!
… those ideas are reflected in the many different answers that I got to the question ‘what was your year like?’
~ Byrne Power
It feels like the fourth year of the tribulation and it looks like it's going to be a very bleak winter.
I am a human being who has been alive during this period. The only thing that makes the darkness bearable is each other.
~
… Stormtroopers in 1934 thus ending his academic career and life in Germany forever. So Richard Kroner would start again in the English-speaking world, spending the rest of his life devoting his significant intellectual powers and erudition to elucidating the boundary line between philosophy and religion - the original title of his 1939 Gifford Lectures. He penned a magisterial three volume history of Western thought from a Christian perspective exploring the interplay between speculation and revelation.
So allow me to to commend his work to you in this new year with his own words from that anadromous response to the indomitable Karl Barth: ‘The standpoint of the following treatise may be outlined in advance. I try to show that a natural theology cannot be prohibited by dogmatics as Karl Barth would have it, but also that a merely rational faith as provided by Kant is not tenable. Reason needs the supplement of revealed religion. In such a way thought and faith do not contradict but rather complement each other. In this relationship faith has the primacy - it surpasses the power of reason and completes its undertaking. I might call this standpoint a modern conservatism. It does not inaugurate a new orthodoxy, but it shows the legitimate right of a supernatural and even super-rational faith - of that faith which was, and is, and I trust will ever be the basis and the source of our life. The tendency towards the humanization of religion is passing. That led finally to the dehumanization of man and thus it refuted itself’.
~ CW
A lot of 2022 was just how are we good parents, and what do we do when the kid suddenly doesn't want to be spoon fed anymore but wants to feed himself…
I became an elder in the church for the 16 to 30 year olds, and… they can be tough conversations, and a lot of it reminds me about, and well, to segue there - the Estuary Festival and conversations I've had with people and that was such a large part of 2022, besides the whole parenthood thing, traveling with John and Paul and Byrne and meeting all the new fine folks, or at least a bunch… I hope that I'll meet some of you in 2023 again.
~ Job
We’ve had a lot of time to reflect… being able to kind of get out of the battling, the culture war, all that stuff and kind of just seeing it as an observer instead of taking part. Everybody seems to think they know everything, but in reality it's probably likely we don't know much when it comes to all the stuff out there and all the propaganda…
What I hope for 2023 is that I believe that everything is being demystified…
~ Anon
Of course it's never the year that changes. It's always the same measure of 365 days but with any luck we change. As Chesterton observed, the object of the new year is not that we should have a new year, it’s that we should have a new soul.
I hope to begin writing again in 2023 - I wrote for most of my life for my early teens until my early 40s…
~ Nate Hile
2022 was a big year for me as I not only moved to a different country, but also got married and sort of changed the trajectory of where my life was going to pursue this new life. It's been really interesting to watch as I put this path that I was moving towards on hold or to the side to pursue this different life that I didn't necessarily expect to be walking, but which has shown itself to be increasingly beautiful and something that has opened my mind to a lot of different things about the world and the way I should be living in it.
For 2023 I don't have any specific hopes. It's hard to know what to hope for when it feels like a lot of the things I had hoped for were not necessarily the most important, but I guess my hope is that I continue to learn and grow in curiosity about the world and people and that this new life and this new stage that I found myself in shows me what it is to be more human, what it is to be more loving and caring and grounded in my community and my reality and find the joy and the beauty in those things.
~ Cassidy
2022 has been a very full and joyful year for me not least because I got married back in May to Susannah we've been really enjoying our first few months together…
So the balance between the sort of focus that solitude and rootedness give - and the stimulation and the possibilities for growth and connection that mobility allows for. The next year is going to be a continued period of trying to establish that balance. I really enjoy both of those things - I'm more of a an introvert and someone who's inclined to solitude by nature, but I've always found that the serendipity of connection is an incredibly powerful catalyst for thought, for projects, for doing all sorts of things… I have too many projects and not enough time or energy with which to do them, but being able to connect with certain people and connect certain people together - forming a network of people that our friends and colleagues and collaborators and people that we can be co-belligerents with has been a real blessing for me and
. The power of connecting the right people with other people who will be able to bring out their best, to assist them in what they're doing, to encourage each other in their respective tasks it's an incredibly powerful thing.We have spent an awful lot of time making new friends. We're trying to develop our network of friends and collaborators and really think towards long-term projects and a long-term project that we're trying to consider how as a couple we might be able to work towards something that's a lifelong project.
~
Another analogy would be tilling a field, getting a field ready to be planted … I think more of this year being a year of pulling weeds, scoping out the ground, more than really watching fruits grow, because I think that is what next year is going to be all about. I know of a couple projects that are bubbling under the surface, some even that I'm involved in, that as
says we'll start to embody much more next year. I'm very thankful for this year because of this kind of internal and external expansion that I've definitely noticed.
~ David Walker
2022 and 2021 to me felt like the same year, it's sort of just this covid withdrawal.
But the thing is that it's kind of like what's been going on the TLC and on Byrne Power’s channel, how there's this enormous potential for a new culture. There's this huge space that's not being taken up that people in these Corners can jump into and hop into and and do stuff like creating real works of art that really reflect the world that we're living in, and all its complexities and its truths and its darkness. I see huge potential with music that people pick up instruments again and learn to start singing again and the music has integrity and there's cultural reflection in the music as well and that leads to things deeper down the line, more sincere and more communal. There's potential with film - you can just make like a real culturally reflective film with your iPhone. That’s something. I mean there's just this space of enormous potential…
I had an old co-worker and he had this hockey saying head up, stick down. So ‘head up, stick down everybody!’
~ Van Gogh’s Ear
I feel my faith kind of dying, and rising to new life at the same time…
I'm trying to basically just keep moving forward keep doing what I gotta do and not get too daunted by everything that I'm going to have to do. So that's a big theme for this last year - being willing to take up those kind of challenges.
~ Anon
It was the most full and and rich year of my life.
Exactly a year ago I joined the discord channel. After a few weeks I managed to meet
on a livestream, which was interesting. Then with a few members from Bridges of Meaning I started a book club and for a half a year we read Crime and Punishment two chapters a week. It was gruelling work but it gave me so much. It gave me the strength to go and do something with my nephew, so after a few months I started with my nephew a movie club...I started my religious life … and interesting thing, I started to pray for my transgressions to subside and to deal with them and to really take the responsibility for them and a miraculous thing happened…
The war in Ukraine which touched our family a little bit. My two parents are on the other sides of the fence - my father is for Russia and my mother for Ukraine and there we have like very awkward dinner conversations… At the beginning of the war I had an aunt who still lived in St. Petersburg, and we brought her here to Israel - after a month we managed to send her to her son who lives in Texas…
I started to prepare for Landau (conference of Bridges of Meaning) and part of it was to discover Byrne Power… through listening to his videos I felt that a certain anxiety and depression in me just subsiding, why I don't really know, but he managed to ground me into reality somehow and I'm really appreciative of him because of that and I started to do videos with other people who were going to be in Landau.
I came across a friend who was a rando conversation with Paul… he taught me a really good lesson which is good enough. Do the stuff good enough to pass and that's it, and that's the reason that I'm actually doing those videos for you right now, because I'm doing something that is just good enough because if I was thinking about it and trying to do it perfect you will never see it - so I really appreciate my friendship with Paul Baker.
~ Teddy
I developed so much in terms of cooking and friendships and family and growing relationships that were very positive and learning a lot of new things - adventuring out into the world in ways that I hadn't previously done.
On the grand scheme of things it feels uneasy to me going into 2023, but I think that's mostly because of media manipulation. Getting together in person with other real life people is what matters and I think that with the current culture and the way people are so individually on their own it's easy to shut down and not interact with others in the way that we should be…
This past year I started a a podcast with two friends called I will not live in the pod and the entire idea is let's get out of here and have these conversations, not only start online but live in real life and through our actions - so I pray that that's what the future holds.
~ Laura
I went to Europe for the first time in 2022.
I think Estuary sort of hit a new reality…
Towards the end of the year we began seeing the Just Chatting phenomenon going on, Jacob really sort of got that going. A number of the this little corner channels have have reached quite a bit of maturity…
You then get into a question of Where is this going? We've had a lot of those kinds of questions. There was a little bit of drama around the German Estuary meeting, and that provoked a lot more conversation about institution and structure and hierarchy, and those conversations are by no means ended.
Personally I look at what happened this year and think wow I've been truly blessed - I just grabbed a stream with Sam and Fr Eric and and expressed to both of them the reality that now we're having the kinds of conversations I've always wanted to have with a breadth and a quality of people that I never would have imagined before. I think the big goal of this little corner is to create spaces where people can participate in better conversations with better and better conversation partners as we all get better and better at it as we practice it together…
We lost Mary Kochan in 2022. Mary was a delight, a bright and shining star who brought so much wisdom and joy and energy to the corner. We didn't lose Jordan Peterson which was a good thing, and in many ways he's back. And Byrne of course is continuing to labour in Tbilisi, Georgia - I got to meet Byrne in person at the at the German Festival. We’ll see how many more live events we do, kind of the kicking off of live events for this little corner happened in 2022.
As we sort of muddle forward in 2023, I believe God will continue to do things in our midst that bless and surprise us.
~
With PVK & The Estuary - Playlist (The Anadromist)
randos conversations:
we're in the middle in space and time
I try to be not an impartial, but a multi-partial mediator.
~ Paul Baker
We are trashing our pasts. If we were making our presents or futures worse and worse -- it wouldn't be seen as wise!
I try to be at peace...
I have been blessed to live through all the changes that the 1960s brought empowered by the Holy Spirit to raise a family and see revival and now in my old age witnessing a new move of God, stirring in the Estuary, waiting for another outpouring of love.
So pleased to be able to participate from afar.