Thanks for that. Found the transcripts, including this part from what I included in the 1 minute clip. I especially like what Elizabeth says at the end about what IM has said about the reasons we need the word “God” if only as a place holder name for something we just understand can’t adequately be pinned down with language.
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Elizabeth
And when you were at Winchester and going to chapel twice a day sometimes and, I’ve been listening to a lot of Tallis’ limitations this week. It’s been in my ears. Did you, you know, coming from a non–religious or not explicitly religious family? Did you feel drawn to Christianity? To God? What was the kind of journey around that for you and your teens?
Iain McGilchrist
No, I was drawn very much. So much so, that I was pretty certain that what I wanted to do after school was to study theology, and be ordained, and then go into a monastery. That was definitely my ambition. It was based on very little experience of life. And as soon as I had a little, I repented me of this idea, and good thing too I say, for me and for the monastery. I’m a bit of a rebel. I don’t like to just take things because somebody says so. So I’m often adopting another position from the one that’s fashionable in order to see what’s been lost here and to recover the valuable in it. And I often say that I’m the believer among sceptics, but I’m the sceptic amongst believers. That I often think, “well, yes, but hang on”, you know. I’ve never been one of those people who has 100% certainty about anything in the spiritual and religious realm. I go so far as to say that, you know, I admire and envy people who have that certainty. But I think there should be a bit of a question mark over it. Because these are not really realms unless one has a very, very convincing and undeniable personal experience that just absolutely convinces one. This is not an area in which 100% certainty can be had, indeed, it’s a matter of faith, and it wouldn’t be faith, if it could be certain. Faith is a matter of having trust in something. And trust is part of a relationship. And trust can be upheld, fulfilled, or it can be betrayed. And so, I see whatever it is, as a two–way relationship between God. I say the word in that slightly hesitant way because the word God is so surrounded by assumptions, and images that I think are damaging, and I’d want to distance myself from. But nonetheless, in the end, one has to call it that: God, the divine, the Sacred Realm, whatever. That it is something that is responsive to us. That we are called to respond to it. That it is always a relationship. That it is in fact to do with love. And love is another very powerful thing that can be reciprocated or can be lost. So I think it’s a good way to think. Sorry, I may have wandered off the question there.
Elizabeth
No, I love it and I am about to wander off as well. So who knows if this will stay in. But I have been trying to write a chapter on God myself, which I just finished before I started reading your chapter, The Sense of the Sacred, and the way I got round that is for most of my book, the word God is in square brackets. And then I got to you when you started talking about a non–word we need. We need an ‘un–ward’. And then trying to find those linguistic signals like in Orthodox Jews not saying the name or we need to find some way to signal that you can’t drop this into a conversation casually, and expect that it doesn’t drag with it this kind of semiotic baggage that we’ll be setting off, you know, existential fireworks in the person who’s receiving it. And I very much valued that honest wrestle. But I will try and stay on track and we’ll come back to it.
I get the feeling you and Jay at least would not miss the stridently tribal stance of so many Christians as we have seen even in this thread. I swear, as I said a day ago on that recent thread about making faith and science matter to youth - the exclusivity is toxic and could exert a push out of the faith for some Christian youth. It doesn’t look good to someone not already baked into that partisan stance.