So many wonderful moments blessed our Midwestuary gathering in Chicago last weekend. But three moments from the plenary session especially touched my heart and inspired my spirit. Watch for these moments when the videos come out on Paul Vanderklay’s Youtube channel.
The first blessing was an opening prose poem on the first day by Cory. I don’t know Cory’s relation to Estuary. But I had the pleasure to sit at his table last November when I took John Heer’s tamada training in the Florida Keys. (More on that in a separate post later). I was touched by Cory’s devotion to his young family and also by his open-hearted devotion to God.
There is no recording yet of Cory’s invocation for our day. I remember only that he invited us into the dark forest wherein we might find a table of angels awaiting. I felt invited into sacred space.
The most forget-to-breathe moment came in the midst of a debate on immigration between Rod Dreher and Elizabeth Oldfield. I was confused about why such a debate happened at this gathering. We normally don’t discuss political issues as such, and Dreher is unfamiliar with our focus on listening for “the weave.” But as host of this panel session, Sam Tideman said, “Let’s spice things up.” And indeed they did. Half the audience cheered as Dreher laid out the conservative position on the need to limit immigartion in Europe to prevent cultural obliteration and rising crime, especially rape.
When it was Elizabeth’s turn to reply, her voice trembled as she said, “I don’t know what to say, so I’m going to pause to pray.”
That moment right there was the most important takeaway for me.
She prayed out loud something like, “Dear God, let us listen to each other with deep compassion…” (I am eager for the replay to hear what she actually said).
She cited an Old Testament command that "you shall love the stranger as yourself" because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Then she told stories she hears from immigrant men in her Christian church—some of whom came to England to escape religious persecution. “They take all the steps to gain legal status, but they get no response for years. So they live in terrible fear and deprivation with their families. If only our debates could be as aware of their suffering.”
Half the audience cheered.
Dreher asked her what policy she would set.
She replied that she isn’t qualified to speak on policy. But she does know that our prime directive must be acknowledging that we are all children of God.
Everyone remarked how John Vervaeke was impassioned as we’ve never seen him. His keynote address found him diving and leaping across the stage in full-out “preacher mode.” The first half of his content was familiar to most of us—relevance realization via opponent processing. But the second half crescendoed in a new way, telling us how these processes ARE Spirit. I was spell-bound and can’t wait to watch the video.
But this was not the topic Paul Vanderklay chose to engage him with during their panel with Pageau. Instead he teasingly accused John of being a fundamentalist for his forceful directive that we not use LLMs like ChatGPT because of their danger of dehumanization. This led to one of the best laughs of the day later. In the final comments section, Courtney, a theological student, told how her church welcomed a pitch to train an LLM to be an avatar of the pastor. That avatar could then provide pastoral counseling 24 hours a day. The audience gasped in horror. John did a deep theatrical bow of “I told you so.”
But even that was not his #1 magical moment. It was his response when someone asked via anonymous note, “Is everybody nihilistic really just lacking friends?”
“How dare we,” was John’s indignant response. Given the social and economic conditions this generation is born into, who are we to blame young people for addiction to screens and lack of friends?
The room was silent. One mother told me later, “I need to go home and apologize to my son.”
To me these moments typify why This Little Corner of the Internet is such a special space. It now breaches the blood-brain barrier of meet space and meat space. Not just a place to make friends, learn stuff, and discuss differences—but a sacred space where we can embody for each other how to serve the Glory of God, and forgive each other when we don’t.
[Written without help from LLMs]
See also Midwestuary Part 1: Prep, Part 2: Surprise Guest, Part 3: Jam Packed
as well as lively Reactions at the bar filmed by Christian Baxter YT
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