An exploration of human vocation through the lens of one of Tolkien's most strange and mysterious characters. Featuring special guest C.R. Wiley, author of "In the House of Tom Bombadil."

Do you ever feel like you're stuck in the mundane while waiting for your "real" purpose to begin? In Disney's Encanto, Mirabel spends years wondering when she'll get her magical gift and finally enter the family story—only to discover she was already part of it all along. Like Mirabel, many of us view ordinary moments as distractions from the "real…

What does it mean to “practice resurrection,” as Wendell Berry put it? It’s easy to look at the chaos and barrenness of the world and think we can’t make much of a difference. At least not without being some kind of superhero. What good is planting a tree in a wasteland? In this episode, the gang explores a different vision, provided by the story, …

Who is Tom Bombadil? Any Lord of the Rings/Tolkien fan knows that Bombadil is a very mysterious character. But what’s interesting is that as we unpack Tom Bombadil as a character, we end up unpacking things we’ve forgotten about how to do life. Tom Bombadil opens a window into what it means to pursue our vocations. Join Brian Brown, C.R. Wiley, and…

Where do books, movies, songs, etc. fit into how we face the hard realities of life? Should they be "positive and encouraging?" Should they relentlessly portray darkness just as it is? In this episode, we invite you into a recent Anselm Society lecture by Dr. Wesley Vander Lugt from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.…

Meet Julian of Norwich! This medieval woman suffered more than most of us will in three lifetimes—and prayed for more. And the first part of her book, Revelations of Divine Love, unveils a deeply encouraging vision of God that’s worth meditating on. What makes Julian's hope so powerful is precisely that it doesn't deny or minimize suffering. Rather…

Despair tempts most of us at times–and it’s easy to listen to. You don’t have a problem, you are the problem; everything bad that’s happened is the trajectory for the future. In the face of this voice in our heads, how can we remember the hope of our place in God’s story? In this episode of the Imagination Redeemed podcast, the hosts (and guest Eli…

Seasons of winter tend to paralyze us. We think we can’t move on until something changes. How can we learn to live well in those seasons, and participate in God’s work? Drawing from O. Henry’s short story “The Last Leaf,” Brian, Sarah, Amy, and Christina tackle this question in the newest episode of the Imagination Redeemed podcast.…

In this episode, Brian, Sarah, and Christina explore the profound impact of stories on our lives and faith. They discuss how narratives—through books, movies, music, and art—profoundly influence our worldviews, emotional health, and even brain development. Dive with us into the magic of storytelling, the healing power of positive narratives, and th…

Support the show: https://www.anselmsociety.org/podcast25. In our last episode, Chase Whitney talked about the role of tears in relation to joy, and how that is laid out in Scripture. But the night before Chase gave that talk, he was in the audience at an Anselm Society pub night listening to Michael Ward give the following one—and he joked with me…

Support the podcast! https://anselmsociety.org/podcast25 We're still on hiatus as we work to plan a re-launch in a few months, and we look forward to telling you more about that soon. But in the meantime, we have two bonus episodes to share with you. These are two talks that happened within 24 hours of each other at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in …

Support the podcast: https://www.anselmsociety.org/podcast25 Months of planning and prep are almost finished, and in January, with your help, the first episodes of the NEW Imagination Redeemed podcast will drop. It will be a feast: retellings of the great stories, and warm conversations on how to enter into the life of the Christian imagination. Bu…

Brian joins Michael Minkoff of Renew the Arts for a conversation about how imagination and art empower us to live like people of heaven. They also talk about Taylor Swift. Yes, you read that correctly. Learn more about Renew the Arts at https://renewthearts.org/.

Listen to Brian Brown's talk from the 2024 Square Halo "Return to Narnia" conference. Maybe you've absorbed the fake C.S. Lewis quote that you ARE a soul and you HAVE a body. Or maybe you grew up in an environment that only valued time if it was spent getting people into the elevator going up. If so, you probably struggle to live in the world as yo…

A friendly podcast interviews Brian about our new book, "Why We Create." More about Upstream.

Why did God tell Adam to name the animals? When you think about it, it’s an odd time to quit creating. He left it to humankind to look for the significance of the things He made, to derive meaning from it, and to join with Him to put the finishing touches on things for which He obviously had a clear vision. Understanding the dignity and responsibil…

The Bible is filled with time because God’s revelation is always historical—a story of moments both old and new. God reveals who He is and what He’s doing within our ongoing story, our ongoing time. In this episode, Glenn Paauw shows us how the movement of the biblical narrative is always toward God entering into our time more and more deeply. It i…

These days we tend to take a dim view of the past. We struggle to overcome things (personal or corporate) we wish we could go back and undo. But Christianity teaches a different way of viewing the past: one in which “remember” is one of the most frequent commands in Scripture, in which gratitude is a discipline rather than a feeling, and in which n…

Tolkien talked about “subcreation” - this thing we do when we take something God has made and create with it. When we try to make creation about ourselves—our pride, our desire for affirmation, and so on—we only make things harder. But when we understand it properly, our subcreation is a middle act between God’s first creation and His second—and th…

A certain Tsar collects artisans like trinkets. And what do you think? Of course they all compete for his attention. But once a goldsmith and a carpenter argue so much they nearly come to blows. The Tsar, never one to avoid an exciting opportunity, orders them to create the greatest work of art ever made. The result? Well, a hero's journey, two thw…

At last year's Imagination Redeemed conference, Christina Brown and Amy Lee shared about the art of gardening and God's story. They covered their own journeys into gardening, how their experiences cultivating God's creation changed their relationships with Him and their families, and much more. In this episode, we revisit their talk on gardening an…

Cultivation is a lost art for most of us. It requires paying attention—understanding each person and thing in its proper way. It requires love—viewing everything as the Creator does; not just as it is but as it can grow to be. And it requires agency—viewing ourselves not as a scourge upon nature but as people designed to be a blessing to it. In thi…

In preparation for Heidi White's keynote session on the Art of Christian Memory (which she'll give at our upcoming Imagination Redeemed conference), this episode revisits a talk she gave at our 2020 artists' retreat. In this lecture, Heidi explores the two different attitudes we can have toward the past, and how each needs the other in order to hea…

How are we supposed to grapple with the past—the good, the bad, and the ugly? Why does the Bible talk about remembering so much? And can storytelling be a way to use the past to remind ourselves who we are? In this episode, Brooke McIntire shares this month's essay by Heidi White on mythmaking, and the questions surrounding creation as an act of sh…

Little Prince Ivan was born dumb, and his parents couldn't wait to have another child. Anything was better than a voiceless future Tsar! But you should be careful what you wish for. They did have another child. A girl. But she had iron teeth. And an unfortunate taste for... well, everything! This strange, wonderful story has some of the most unusua…

Christ's incarnation is the spark of Christian creativity. Poet, rock musician, and priest Malcolm Guite joins the show to make the case for this, journeying through Shakespeare and the Gospel of John. He also tells us why he loves the Anselm Society's name.By Anselm Society

Today we're happy to share two shorter stories, one called "Just Like Salt" and the other the return of everyone's favorite villain: Baba Yaga.In the analysis section, Deacon Nicholas recommends a wonderful new book that has some fascinating things to say about early Christian poetry and imaginative fictions. Be sure to check out "She Who Loved Muc…

Why did God make us? What do our personal journeys represent in the grand scale of things? Is it really true that things like feasting and creating are acts of war against the Enemy that besets us? In this episode, Brian kicks off this month's theme of "Imago Dei" by sharing Peter Leithart's essay Creators Imaging the Creator, which explores the hi…

What is the role of gratitude in figuring out what to do with the time that is given to us? Can we pay attention to what God is doing, in both the monotonous seasons of life, as well as in the middle of life's hardest plot twists? What does the ideal of gratitude look like fleshed out in the nitty gritty? Brian welcomes back writer and storyteller …

Bonus episode! After the conversation with Corey about how Bergson's theory of time influenced the literature of Lewis and Eliot, Jane and Corey take us into T.S. Eliot's poem The Four Quartets to show us an example of these ideas in the text.By Anselm Society

This week we return to the world of mythical Kiev for another tale of the bogatyrs and... their wives? The Tale of Vasilisa Mikulishna is a wonderfully fun gender-swapping tale that puts masculine and feminine tropes on their head... only to put them all back in glorious order by the end. In the analysis section, Deacon Nicholas offers a real-life …

Did you know that both C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot wrote about Time? About how the present moment is the means by which we touch eternity? Join Brian, Jane, and special guest Corey Latta as they dig deeper into the philosophies that influenced Lewis and Eliot's theology of time, and consequently some of their most famous works like The Screwtape Lett…

In "The Proud Bride," we see the classic trope of the shrewish bride who is impossible to marry off (think King Thrushbeard and the Taming of the Shrew) being tamed by a trickster figure of a groom. But this time, it's the Russian fairy tale version. In the analysis, Deacon Nicholas reflects on some of the difficulties of the creative life by readi…

Time is one of those things that's bigger on the inside, and the science of Time gets complex fast. But a good story about Time? A story can push you outside your assumptions and broaden your imagination without giving you a headache. Join Brian in a conversation with Ned Bustard about time travel, Doctor Who, and the big ball of wibbly wobbly, tim…

What if time is more than the passing of moments? What if it’s a gift to help us find meaning? And what if the Christian life–in which death itself starts working backwards–can change our experience of past, present, and future? Grief and joy? Memory and expectation? In this episode, Jane reads to us her essay on the gift of time - a gift we will e…

The ascension of Christ at the end of the Gospels leaves Christians with a paradox: how do we sing of redemption and joy, and in the same breath lament evil and suffering and pray "how long, O Lord?" In this bonus episode, Pastor Chris Stroup of Anselm's founding church uses the Ascension to show how we, who have had eternity opened to us, should a…

When a mysterious old woman visits the house of three brothers, unexpected gifts begin to abound. But the greatest gift is sometimes the smallest, least expected thing...In the analysis section, Deacon Nicholas continues his examination of the poetry of St Gregory the Theologian and finds some unexpected insight in a poem... about poetry.…

The world around us deserves our awe and wonder, but we can make the error of believing the good things of this world are the best we can have - we can idolize the creation and forget the Creator. On the other hand, if we believe that because this world is secondary to the next then all of our earthly endeavors are meaningless, we can be indifferen…

God's workmanship and His character are crackling through every fiber of the world that we live in. Brian and Heidi dive deeper into concepts like "the Earth is charged with the grandeur of God" and challenge our categories of the physical and the spiritual, and what we mean by heaven and earth.By Anselm Society

Creation is redeemed, not abandoned, because creation tells the story of God’s glory in its own unique way. Brian shares Paul Buckley's essay to help us better understand how to read the "book of Creation."By Anselm Society

Ivan, the third son of a peasant family, refuses to be left behind when his brothers go to war against a dragonish monster. And a good thing, too! For his brothers prefer snoring to swordplay. After coming into a land scorched by the attacks of the monster, Ivan becomes the last man standing between the monster and the people of the Rus. But the tr…

Brian and Heidi explain our season focus (Why We Create), and tee up the big question: what is the relationship between eternity and what I do with my time now?By Anselm Society

The Third Son, a Carpatho-Russian fairy tale, starts like the well-known parable of the talents. But this time, we're looking at it from the perspective of the lazy, third son who did nothing with the talent given to him. What happened to that poor son? Well, in this tale, he goes on a transformative journey where his own adventures and redemption …

After a long wait, In a Certain Kingdom is back! And thanks to the show's patrons, it will now be an ongoing bi-monthly podcast with no limit to the number of episodes. Not only that, but Nicholas Kotar is going to include stories not only from Russia, but from Ukraine, Carpatho-Russia, Georgia, Romania, and maybe a few others. In addition, wonderf…

In which we kick off the 2022 season with an introduction to creation theology, and an explanation of everything that is to come this season.By Anselm Society

As the Tatar horde lords it over Kiev, Ilya slowly digs himself out of his prison. There is no one else left between Batu-khan and total domination. Batu decides to try to woo Ilya, instead of keeping him imprisoned. But Ilya will have none of it, and Batu orders him to be executed. At the place of execution in the field of Kulikovo, the rebirth of…

Ilya Muromets's fateful words to Vladimir prove true. A massive army led by the terrifying Batu-Khan approaches Kiev, intent on destroying it and feasting in its streets. Vladimir, in his terror, agrees to let the Tatars into the city, in return for his life.But Ilya Muromets will have none of it. He attacks the army on his own, and almost defeats …

After the untimely death of Sukhmann the young warrior, Ilya Muromets is furious with Vladimir of Kiev. He plans to take revenge on the prince, but Vladimir manages to pacify him for a short time. But the boyars of Kiev are at it again. Jealous of Ilya's preferred position in court, they slander Ilya Muromets to Prince Vladimir. The hot-headed prin…

When Sukhmann the young warrior comes to Vladimir's feast, he feels a sudden desire to thank his host with a special gift. A white swan caught with his own two hands. But his hunting does not go at all as he planned. Unexpectedly, he is faced with a new enemy of the Rus. A never-before seen fighting force called the Tatars.…

Sadko is a young musician. The best in Novgorod! But he's also one of the poorest. This is the lot of the true artist. No one understands him, he feels. No one except the beautiful river near his city. Well, it turns out that the river does understand him. Not only that, but she (yes, she!) is intent on marrying him!There is no analysis this week, …