Festival as a Way of Life: Father Nathan Carr on Joy, Time, and Christian Formation

Brian Williams: Hey folks, this is Brian Williams, host of Forged Timeless Ways of Living, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute about forging well lived ordinary lives of discipline, delight, craft, calling that draws wisdom from the classical tradition into contemporary times. Today, I am talking with Father Nathan Carr. Father Carr is vicar at Saint John's Episcopal Church in Oklahoma City. He is headmaster of the Academy of Classical Studies. He's a husband and father of six.

He is also author of Restoring Joy, Liturgy, and Celebration in Christian Education. Today, I'm interested in talking with Nathan about the posture and practice of Festival, and how he helps people live into this posture and practice in the three overlapping domains he occupies, home, school, and church. So welcome to the show, Nathan.

Nathan Carr: Hey. Thanks, professor. This is so much fun and long overdue. Thank you.

Brian Williams: Very much so. You are one of one of two people that mutual friends have told me over so many years, hey. You know you you know Nathan Carr. And I'd say, what? Not really.

And I'm like, how do you not know Nathan Carr in Oklahoma City? I've had that conversation, you know, half a dozen times. So this this is great. Hey. Okay.

So let me start. What what's the what's the Nathan Carr origin story? Right? Like, if I'm watching a Marvel movie, and it's the it's the father Carr origin story, what are the threads of your childhood that kinda get woven together into the, you know, the the tapestry that you are today?

Nathan Carr: Absolutely. Here we go. Love it. Origin stories are so fun. I'm a sucker.

I love it. I can't wait for the Stranger Things origin story. Right? The prequel. I I grew up in Oklahoma City, still live in Oklahoma City, lived two miles from my home as a child.

I'm just a 4 zero fiver. That's our area code. We call ourselves the four o fivers. Grew up in a a family where every male and many of the women worked at an oil and gas company. Unsurprising.

And grew up Southern Baptist. Loved every minute. Had something in my high school years of an academic crisis. I would not name it as a spiritual crisis where God, for whatever reason, was found to be less than interesting, and I thought there must be something more. Here, went on to Oklahoma Baptist University, where Western Civ, regardless of major, is still required twelve hours.

So as a biology undergraduate, meeting the classics in in in very much the same way or in the spirit with which we do the same with our little our k 12 kiddos here at the academy.

Brian Williams: Was that a new introduction to you? Was that was that a revelation to you to to read the classics in undergrad?

Nathan Carr: Brand new.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Is that right?

Nathan Carr: Brand new.

Brian Williams: Yeah. What was that experience like?

Nathan Carr: Transformational. Okay. Oh, it was hard. Quickly came to terms with an inability to write at all. Like, oh my goodness.

I have no mastery with the pen over anything, so it's just a frustrating academic experience. But the book's so compelling, so stirring to this soul. And I would find myself less and less in my biological studies and more and more turning the page of these books, and then met Bartleby the Scrivener. Okay. A short story.

Brian Williams: By Melville.

Nathan Carr: Right? By

Brian Williams: Melville. Yep. By Herman Melville.

Nathan Carr: And that was the shift. That was the shift. That's when it all came crystal clear.

Brian Williams: Okay. No. Oh, okay. Unpack that. What what because tell us a little bit about Bartleby Descriptor for people who don't know what that is, and then tell me how that made things crystal clear for you.

Because that that is a that's kind of a heavy story. I mean, in a way, that's a story of contemporary man's kinda lethargy and spirit of despair. Right?

Nathan Carr: That's right.

Brian Williams: But tell us just about the story for a second.

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Bartleby, I'm trying to remember what the office is. There's maybe a law office, a business office, you know, I've not read this in twenty years, that's hiring. And this gentleman named Bartleby comes in and applies for a job and gets the job, running the front office or something. And he is discovered, of course, to be completely incompetent and strange in every way and creepy, and he's then discovered to be living there by night, and then he's discovered to be, you know, whatever, taking baths in the sink in the bathroom.

And and this this office owner, this lawyer, this business owner, whatever it is, just cannot turn the guy out. He can't seem to get rid of him. It's this huge ordeal. And I believe, not unlike the movie Office Space, there is this tendency towards I would prefer not to when given task.

Brian Williams: Repeated phrase. I would prefer not to. That's right.

Nathan Carr: Prefer not to. And so finally, he's forcibly removed and is later discovered to be dead in some sort of homeless hostel from, you know, consumption. He's just completely gone. And it's something of a criticism and checkmate on the the capitalist system and perhaps what it can do to persons. So there you go.

Brian Williams: What what crystallized for you? You're reading Bartleby the Scrivener, and you are you seeing, oh, this is a possible future for me? Mhmm. I don't I don't want that. Is that what it was?

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Yep. There there's successful people throughout my family. I had become a successful coffee store opener at the time. Business was easy and intuitive, and I, you know, I don't know what I thought was on the other side of that, but I it was the first time that I ever I had ever considered that there may be something more to life, and, you know, everybody needs that conversion moment to the nature of meaning.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Yeah. How interesting. I mean, for some of us, you know, it's the vision that draws us forward, and for others of us, it's the vision that repels us away from. Right?

This sounds like you you saw Bartleby, and you're like, not not me.

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Oh, it's horrifying. Amazing.

Brian Williams: But but but you were a coffee bar you you had a coffee bar you were running?

Nathan Carr: I opened all of the first Starbucks in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Little Rock, Arkansas for Okay. A pre career, and was just you know, it's so fun. You have big recruiters, set up budgets, teaching instruction, and and then off to the next, and off to the next, setting up

Brian Williams: What year what year was this? When were you opening to Starbucks?

Nathan Carr: 2001 is probably when I got that Okay. Career. It was just prior to meeting my my my now wife. I mean, you know how those things just Yep. Coalesce and stuff.

Brian Williams: Together. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I asked because right out of college, that's what I did.

I opened a coffee bar and cafe with my college roommate in Southwest Missouri in 9495, when there was no Starbucks around, you know, kinda one of two coffee bars maybe in a town of, you know, fifty, sixty thousand at the time, and so we had not been encroached upon by the Green Mermaid yet. So But it was a few years before It was a few years before you were doing it kind of in the in the region around where I grew up, So you read Bartleby's Scribner, and you think, The Scribner, that's not gonna be my path, and you turn your attention to what? What draws your heart forward after that? What are you looking for?

Nathan Carr: It all leads to seminary. Lady theology had finally peaked from behind the curtain, and I wanted in. I I very much just wanted in, and I don't so powerful was that moment of conversion away from the the the the deceit of riches is probably what was happening in me. Like, oh, that I I wanted in. And so I, you know, buttoned up the undergraduate as quickly as I could, applied to seminary.

By that time, was married and had a child, and and off I went. Now there's a whole story that leads to the school where all of these learnings in a Western Civ classroom as a sophomore undergrad grew up into school planting. I mean, that's a crazy story. As I'm going to seminary and trying to get priesthood and all the rest. But

Brian Williams: Alright. Well, we'll we'll circle around to that. Let me let me come back real quick to Oklahoma City. What did you love about Oklahoma City? I mean, you you grew up there.

You left there. You came back there. What what'd you love about where you where you grew up, about the place?

Nathan Carr: Never left. Flew back and forth. So I had a this the year that I was admitted to seminary, a son was born to us who was very, very, very sick. He's 19. He's doing great.

He's at UATX as a sophomore. But his early life, as recent as 13, he's had open heart surgeries, replacing valves, doing good work in his Okay. Which is to say, we never were able to leave behind medical benefits. Got it. So I would fly back and forth to Reformed Seminary and then to Wycliffe College for postgraduate work for my Anglicization, all because of this little guy.

This is the whole reason that I was still in Oklahoma City when we suddenly needed to figure out education for our oldest daughter. Yeah. Okay. Which is to say, I never left. Yeah.

I never

Brian Williams: There you go. Alright. Which doesn't tell me what you love about Oklahoma

Nathan Carr: It doesn't. I just wanted Yeah. To be

Brian Williams: No. That's good. No. But was is there something you especially loved about that part of the world, about where where you grew up?

Nathan Carr: I love the predisposition of Oklahoma City to take care of its own. Those who grow up here rarely leave. We have had an influx. It's the city's doubled in since I was in high school. It's now the twentieth largest city in The United States Of America.

That would not have been the case when I was in junior high. So there's many coming in, but it it cares for families well. It is family friendly. It is affordable. It's it's just a bright and and happy, happy place for children.

There you go.

Brian Williams: Okay. Very cool. The tourism board is happy with that answer of Oklahoma City, so well done. Well done.

Nathan Carr: Thank you.

Brian Williams: Hey. So talk to me then about about festival and festivity. I mean, I'd love to just, you know, get you helping me think about this and helping our listeners think about it. You've done a you know, some some this you get this great book on the festive school, but but stay in those early memories for me. What were some early memories of festival that you had?

I mean, an early experience of what you now know to be Festival. What what comes to mind? Like, you introduced and experienced something like Festival?

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Early childhood. A grandmother and a mother whose instincts for putting out some linens for the high feast days of the Christian calendar were instructive to a degree that I have only since children begun to appreciate and would not have known that the seeds had already been planted that then grew up into seminary, grew up into a classical school, grew up into a couple of books. That has had many subsequent experiences that enhanced that and expanded even my understanding of what they had given me. The the the likes of which I'd never become you know, they had not even come to appreciate.

Brian Williams: Yeah. But what was it they gave you? Like, you see them setting out linens, and what did that do for for young Nathan Carr?

Nathan Carr: Some sort of hierarchy of loves. I mean, there you go. I mean, you kinda have to go Augustinian here. There's there are certain things that are of greater devotion to the Christian life than other things, which in fact helps us fully cherish the ordinary. It's not discarding the ordinary to prioritize certain things as of greater celebratory or festive value.

So to have a grandmother that would be willing to set aside two full days of structured, knowable, repeatable, expectation filled festivity. I knew what Christmas Eve was going to include. I knew what Christmas Day was into going to include. I knew who was coming, who was not coming. I knew where everyone was going to to be seated.

There was such routine that fills one with deeper expectation because the expectation is not out of mere surprise what will happen, but it's informed by precedent and former participation that now I just can't wait. I can't wait for the cousins, and I can't wait for the green peas floating in my gravy lake in my taters, and I can't wait for the Christmas story reading where we all cheesily dress up and do the living room litany of there's just this whole world that she created that was a world I wanted to live in. Yeah. And it was informed by festivity. Does that make sense?

Brian Williams: Yeah. What's the significance of time here? Because, I mean, it sounds like what we're talking about is not just like a festival, like one moment where it just shows up. I mean, in my childhood, I grew up, you know, in a a church, wonderful folks, but, like, at my church, you just showed up one Sunday, and it happened to be Easter. And you're like, oh, I'm a little more dressed up than I was, and it's Easter, and I got a basket, and then it was Monday.

And and then you just then you're like, oh, okay. And I guess the next time we show up one day, it happens to be Christmas, you know, once once Sunday. So there was no structuring of time. I mean, what you just described sounds a lot more like, hey. We're having a feast today.

It's like, I don't know. We're we're this is a way of inhabiting time. Is that is that fair?

Nathan Carr: It's completely fair. And we to be clear, growing up in that cherished Southern Baptist way, like you, the two days a year that we did liturgically acknowledge did come and go quickly, more quickly than perhaps the liturgical calendar historically would have suggested, of course. But they had within their limited understanding of how a festival even would maybe traditionally go, my grandmother had just sort of enhanced it. But that's exactly right. You move from old man Kronos, you know, we've all read Silverchair, into inhabiting some sort of dynamic relationship with with heaven itself.

And and therefore, time is transfigured into something that settles into its significance and not its mere passing. So I that's exactly right. And that's the that's the time I wanted to inhabit. And it gives some sort of emboldened and sustained perseverance or courage or something

Brian Williams: through the rest of return to Kronos. Yeah. Yeah. Fine.

Nathan Carr: Yeah. You know what I mean? So

Brian Williams: Yeah. So what is when when you when you write about the festive school, obviously, you're you're not thinking, what do we do at school in Easter time and Christmas time? Right? I mean, you're you're trying to foster, I think, this in this book and what you're doing at school, a kind of posh like a a festive posture, a festive practice, or something like that? So so so what what is I mean, for for people who haven't read Joseph Peeper and haven't read your book, I mean, what what is what is festival?

What is this this festive spirit?

Nathan Carr: That that is the question. How do we find, teach, instruct, form, and give instinct for the odium and the endless negodium for these babies? So there's a way of life. It's a way of life that we have all of the time in this world and in the next to fully embody and enter into. It is therefore a way of life no longer threatened by anxiety.

It's no longer threatened by urgency. There is a way of life. There is there is a way of being the church in this life and in the next for which we have all of the time, so to speak, to just embody. So I have attempted with principals and with my whole team. God bless my team.

This is this is this is team oriented in trying to cultivate, for 1,100 students here at the academy, an entire way of life that gives instincts for seeing the odium in the endless negodium and be and that becoming a way of life moving away from. So it seems to me that there are there's such there's such good work right now in restoring and calling to mind and remembering as an entire movement, let's just say the classical Christian movement, you know, Not to mention traditional Christianity. And, I mean, it's clear that my project is some sort of return to the instincts of traditional Christianity. I there you go. There's the whole thing.

I admit it. I admit the whole thing. But what is but who care? What what does traditional Christianity give you? Perhaps the medieval perspective, which is usually historically most closely associated with the high point in traditional Christianity, is that there is, as earlier said, a way of life.

I mean, I'm after a particular orientation of the soul. That's it. That's it. Let's figure out a way to craft an entire experience, otherwise known as school, that gives predispositions to a soul. And then there's certain structures.

So I I said this about my mom and my grandmother. So here we go again. There are knowable, repeatable, fully practicable ways of predisposing souls. There the we actually know how to do this, and these are monastic instincts. You know, just this week, right, you probably read and plow or heard the lecture from Paul Kingsnorth as he resists the machine, oh, man, was that a page turner.

In addition to becoming a barbarian, which was you know, you give these six ways of resisting the machine. He says, construct monasteries. I was like, that's it.

Brian Williams: That's the thing. Yeah. So so so let's unpack this. I mean, interesting that that you referenced that. There's great interdisciplinary humanities program at University of Kansas back in the seventies called the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program.

The school that I taught at Care Parabell for several years came out of that because those professors told their students, You need to go practice this and start schools, because it's great to have this kind of education like you did in college, but they're like, man, how much better if you learned this way of being and reading and dwelling the really real of the world when you were six or 16. And then their graduates also started Clear Creek Monastery in Oklahoma, and they started Wyoming Catholic College, you know, these kind of things. And so they they went out to do exactly to that. Like, let's start these formative institutions. Right?

Let's start schools. Let's start monasteries. Let's help Let's build institutions that help people practice this way of being, and this way of living, which is so transformative for the way most people, often, many people think about school. Right? To think that, hey, I'm not just teaching you to pass the next test.

You're the six year old or 16 year old. I'm forming the 36 year old version of yourself. The 66 year old version of yourself. Right? To live in a certain way, to have a posture.

So so what what is that posture? I mean, what what is that what are what are you trying to help them see? What are you trying to help them how how are you trying to help them indwell the world? I mean, is it a posture of, like, receptivity and affirmation? Is it how do you describe it?

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Open parentheses, John Sr. Oh. Yeah. My I I'm drowning in Pearsonites in Oklahoma.

We're we we take all 100 of our seventh graders to Clear Creek each year as they study the rule. I've got a book from John senior's library. I thank you for that. Dear listener, if you've not dipped the toe in the work of John senior, Please join us. The swimming is nice.

Brian Williams: So that was my real introduction to classical Christian education when I became a teacher at Carre Paravel Latin School, which was started by his graduates and was the first Classical Christian school in America, and there were a lot of his students still around. It was founded by seven of his graduates. And man, it was amazing to talk to these guys. And these were drone men with families well into their professions, well into their 40s, or what, or 50s. And to get them talking about their experience at this state university, Kansas University, with this kind of education, they get moved to tears.

I mean, they were all transformed by this way, not only of, not just an education, but a way of reading, a way they they would dance. They would do kinda naked eye stargazing. They would make their own clothes. They they they would go on excursions. They'd go on trips.

You know? And so much of that spirit fed into the school that I taught at, but I mean, was transformative for these 50, 60 year olds. It was amazing. All owe a for, debt of to these guys in the seventies at this, you know, state university running this really amazing formational experience. I wanna say educational program, it was really a formational experience.

But it sounds like what you're trying to do is something, some echo of that.

Nathan Carr: That's right, that's right. And with full credit to them, and to all the Pearsonites that swim in these traditional waters of Christianity in Oklahoma. Mean, the the the all credit, archbishop Coakley, father Abbott of Clear Creek, all all these formational and inspirational luminaries for the likes of even some random Episcopal priest in Oklahoma City. Praise God. But to your earlier question, the first formative instinct, you know, is it is Chesterton who says joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

That if I'm to be true to my book, that's where I that's where I launched the whole thing, is that in a joyless society that is marked by cynicism and suspicion, that the twin sister of love, the handmaiden and bridesmaid herself known as Joy, should be lifted and released from the quiet closet in which we've locked her forever and given back to children. I don't know how to do anything with a joyless student. I don't know how to do anything intellectually with a joyless student. I don't know how to do anything spiritually or otherwise with a joyless student. So I think the first formative instinct of the school is to return, if at all possible, joy to a culture and to families.

When families live their lives in open suspicion because of a world that is now hostile to everything that they would ever wish to give to their children, it can have long term effects on their ability to maintain joy. So we want to give in closing here, and then, you know, when you carry the ball where you wanna take it, but we wanna give a restored, unthreatened, unflappable, not even territorial instinct to throwing open the windows of potential joy. And so what a weird thing to say when you're talking about, do you say matins together? And if so, are you singing the Venite or chanting it? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But you have to start there, or you're gonna get your liturgies wrong. I mean, it's just liturgy for liturgy.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Okay. So so I I've often told my students that cynicism and skepticism are the vices of their age. Right? And cynicism and skepticism, they rob us of joy.

Right? Because they put us in a certain posture towards the world where it's it's got defensive posture. It produces a knee on the on the I think the first instinct is like cynicism, skepticism, which then leads to a kind of anger Yeah. Towards the world, and then a sadness. Because we're not made to live in the world like that.

And so I think the the the rational response to that kind of posture is sadness, and then a kind of despair. Right? And then we just gotta entertain ourselves with with however we, you know, see kind of the dopamine hits of the day. Right? It seems like to me yeah.

Right? Well, like like the doom scrolling or whether it's Netflix or whether it's, you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, whatever whatever it happens to be. It's kinda born out of that, like, what do I do when I'm sad because I have this posture towards the world. Right? So so the alternative is joy, but you can't just wake up on a Tuesday morning and say, ah, joy.

I'm gonna will myself to be joyful today. Because it's like, well, joy kinda seems a I mean, I'm tempted to say joy is a byproduct of something else. Right? That I'm I'm led to joy, or joy is the the the natural response to something else. And I and I wonder what that other thing is.

Because you're not you're not just telling your students, hey, kids. Happy clappy joy day. Right? You're saying, okay. Wait a second.

There's a there's a world out there that's fascinating. There's a beautiful world out there. There's a good world out there. I mean, does it start with just, like, attending to the to the goodness in the world and naming good as good? Or what what what are you doing?

Nathan Carr: Absolutely. No. That's exactly right. It's that's such a great framing. The gift of the Christian Platonists, you know, the Robert Krauss of the world is that there is a good, a transcendent, final, and forever good, and the good is God himself.

And to know God is to know God's mirth. That's the Chesterton instinct. But there are there are ways of attending to God. Perhaps this is the attempt of Festival School is to just give some rails to run on. Yeah.

Of being forever and endlessly and and daily and hourly, five times daily, in the worshipful and unique presence of the worship god that then informs and trickles down to everything else. But your question, does joy is it in response to something else? It's a very, very good

Brian Williams: Let me throw out mean, when I when I was reading your book and I was jotting notes in in the the end of pages that the good publishers left us for notes. I wrote down seeing the world as good, arrow, loving the world as good, arrow, joy, arrow, gratitude. So it's it's not that I'm just joyful, like, as generating it within my spirit, you know, like, in the in the midst of despair. It's gotta start, it seems to me, with, like, seeing the world. Seeing the world as good and naming it as good nurtures a love for the world as a good, which generates a kind of joy for which then I'm I'm grateful.

So I mean, I saw that sequence in in your book, which is deeply Augustinian, but but does that sound, I mean, a version of what you're trying to do?

Nathan Carr: That's right. That's exactly right. It's a condition of the soul. I you know, I'm kinda going back to fifteen, twenty minutes ago. If I'm to create a condition of the soul, if God is to create a condition of the soul, let's be clear, through the intermediate the intermediaries of Christian discipleship and mentoring.

Praise God that we get to participate in that. The condition of the soul must be gratitude if the world is to be overcome because Christians are nothing if not even in the midst of death itself. Right? I Paul Kingsnorth. What was his number six way to in his plow article of resisting the machine, it is to prepare to be crucified, and yet it was for the joy set before him.

Brian Williams: One of the questions is, you know, then how do I maintain this posture of, I would say, open receptivity to the world's goodness, and affirmation of the world's goodness that leads to love and joy and gratitude? How do I maintain that spirit, and if it's the suffering, material scarcity, because it would seem like those kinds of things would rob me of joy, but I think the testimony of so many people is that they don't necessarily, but that it might be those things that sustain us through material scarcity and physical suffering.

Nathan Carr: Is it in leisure? Is it in Peeper's leisure that he says scolae, some would call it sort of an unhurried predisposition of wonder towards the word, loving attention to the world Mhmm. Is not a condition of circumstance. One would in other words, one does not need a holiday or vacation, he says somewhere in that book, to experience the odium amidst all the negodium, you know, kind of where we launched today. Rather, it's a condition of the soul.

It's a condition of the soul. And so that's exactly right. If one is to and this you know, I've got a fun story. I've mentioned this on other podcasts where I've got a daughter, fourth she's the fourth of the six children. She's in the she immediately enters the hospital for months and months and months at birth.

She has this severe condition with her GI tract. It must be rebuilt, and she's now 13. She's doing well. I I mentioned the son who was we've just we've had

Brian Williams: sick We

Nathan Carr: just cannot get these kids to lunch, man.

Brian Williams: Forged through fire, dude.

Nathan Carr: I enter her room week eight. She's yet to be awake in this life. I mean, it's just brutal trying to get this child to live, or she'd been in shock. She'd been after the third or fourth surgery or whatever it is, and I'd run. I had I had genuinely run out of prayers.

And so I we'd had heard hard things from the doctor. He was very much trying to temper our hopes for her future, not knowing what to say, not being completely grim yet. But I walk in one morning, and the only thing this is me giving example of how these instincts for festive school have had real purchase in my life. The only thing I can remember is the secret prayer of the priest when he approaches the altar, which in the Roman liturgy has now become part of what the people say as well, the actual liturgy, the the participation of the people. And it's the prayer of the centurion.

And so having offered every other prayer that had ever occurred to me, the veil had now covered my heart of of the practice of my Christian faith feeling like much of anything.

Brian Williams: Yeah.

Nathan Carr: And suddenly, the prayer of the centurion, Lord, we are not worthy that thou shouldst come under our roof, but speak the word only, and thy servant shall be healed as I'm holding her tiny little toes. And instantly, she woke up. And there's this whole beautiful healing episode that follows from that that we can discuss some other time. But it's to say, in the course of suffering, in a veiled soul sort of moment, Kierkegaardian moment, A piece of the liturgy that is joy sustaining, soul conditioning that I happened to memorize because I had had to say it 400 times occurred to me, an actual miracle happens, and something is restored. So there's, hopefully, like, a narrative illustration of these things can show up in your life.

It's crazy.

Brian Williams: Yeah. When you habituate yourself to them, and that's what you've just described. Right? I mean, they're they're in your mind. You practice them.

You've said them, and in in a way, they're kind of bearing you up in ways you don't even realize, and then you come to a moment of crisis. And that's when something like that hits in your head, whether it's a word of scripture or or Chesterton or a prayer or, you know, a line from the Odyssey or whatever it happens to be. It's almost like it's almost like you're resting in that, and and it bears you up. So so let me I'd love to hear how how the what this looks like in your your home and your church as well. But just before I leave the school, you know, obviously, you've described your school.

You you you practice a liturgy within the school. Right? There's set set prayers from the the Catholic and the Anglican tradition that that you you practice with your students, but what else do you do in your school? How do you foster this spirit among your your students? I mean, said you can't do much with the the the cynical, skeptical, joyless student.

Okay. Well, but so many of them live in a cynical, skeptical, joyless culture, and are formed in those kind of ways. So when they come in your school, how do you help students, you know, nurture what we've just described? This, you know, this attentiveness to the goodness of the world that causes them to love the world, feel joy towards it, and then and then gratitude. What what are some of the practices of your school that you've built in?

Nathan Carr: Yeah. And and God bless the joyless student. In some, of course, moments, there's no greater joy than grabbing ahold of that one.

Brian Williams: Oh, well, and giving that one an experience that cracks a smile for the

Nathan Carr: first time. Right?

Brian Williams: That's right. And you're like, ah, I gotcha. Yeah. Got it. You know?

Here we go. Let's go with let's run with that. What was that you just experienced? You know? But what what do you guys do?

What do you guys build into your the practices and rhythms and rituals of your schools? Are there other kinds of things that you have your teachers do? I'm just curious.

Nathan Carr: So tier one, we, as much as is humanly possible and given the time constraints that we have, fully incorporate all of the traditional elements and fully appropriate the Christian calendar into the school. So five of the Benedictine hours up, I should say, because it depends on which of our stages, so to speak, that you're in. Are you in grammar school? Are you in middle school? Are you in high school?

But there's an ever increasing and available number of hours. So up to five of the Benedictine hours a day prayed, and those have rich content. They're spite by high school, they're student led, and they're entirely memorized. They're sung, and it's just great. You're gonna go through all 150 psalms in the course of a single year as our epic poetry is suggested by the church fathers.

And so all of our students by the time they graduate have gone through the entirety of the psalter as part of their worship 14 times. But then there's the mean, we do we have 15 houses, and so we do each house has its own feast. We do feast of the incarnation, feast of the resurrection. I'll send in his Christmas and Easter in full Hogwartsian style. So we feed 1,200 people a formal dinner with a 100 volunteers.

You know?

Brian Williams: And as an Oxford man, I just have to point out full Harry Potter style means full Oxford style.

Nathan Carr: That's right.

Brian Williams: Full Oxonian style, which is where it came from. Just, you know, for the record. Sorry. We can move on now.

Nathan Carr: Ever the Oxbridge shout out. And and, you know, you're doing Stations of the Cross in Lent. You're doing Advent Calendar, and this is each you know, I have three campuses. So this has three three different principles practicing and and giving whatever the embodied form at their particular campus is. And by the way, and, you know, this is a shameless shout out.

I just put all of this in the student prayer book that has just been published by CAPS so you can practice it. It's a k 12 prayer book.

Brian Williams: Could a school pick this up and say, okay, we're gonna use this? A friend of mine down in Florida, I don't know if you know Kevin Clark in the Ecclesial Okay. Schools So Kevin used to teach in a master's program that we have here in Templetown, and he's been a friend for several years, and you know, I mean, he's doing something very, I think very similar, and just as life giving. So, okay.

Nathan Carr: Of course, there are classroom prayers, classroom liturgies, all of that, and that is contained in the prayer book. I mean, everything that I'm saying, you think, but how did he but where did you It's get the all in that book. It's just a manual. Like, okay, now we can go do this thing.

Brian Williams: Which is great, because I think for a lot of people, you know, who might be listening, or people with their kids in a school, or headmasters of a school, you know, they might be listening going, I don't know how we would do that. I don't know where we'd find those prayers. And even if I did know, I don't have time to, like, you know, do all that work myself. So what what a gift, Father Carr, that you've done it for your school and these other these other schools. So besides the liturgical practices, the rhythms of the church calendar, are there other practices baked into your baked into your school and the kind of culture of the school that nurture this attentiveness and and love and joy and gratitude.

You know, that that that cultivate what we might call certainly in the IHP tradition, the senior tradition, this this kind of poetic knowledge, this kind affective love of what we're learning and what we're doing. I mean, in one place in your book, you reference, you say something about algebra leading to joy or something like that. Don't remember what it was, but in some reference, I was I bet that's not most freshman's experience of algebra necessarily. I'm just curious, like, are there other things in your schools that you guys do, you know, with respect to just the experience of beauty or literature or, you know, rhythms besides the liturgical year?

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Several examples. And that's exactly right. That that's another it's a comment on Eros, I believe, that says Yeah. I think that's right.

It's good that you exist. Could you even imagine a student saying that about algebra? It is good that you exist. But you've suggested this, and an affirmation of the good is the first instinct of eros that that then leads us to the to the real possibility of the deepest Christian love of self sacrifice of agape. I mean, but you gotta have it.

Brian Williams: Well, because it's that arrow way. Because you have arrows for that which you desire, and you only desire that which you recognize as good. And you know, sometimes we're mistaken about what the good is, and we desire what is not good, or what is lesser good, but it does start I mean, I don't have desire for something that I don't see as good. Like for me, I don't like chocolate. Okay.

Fine. I have no arrows for chocolate because I don't recognize it as good for me. But the cup of coffee sitting in front of me, oh, have desire for that because it's good for me, you know? And then there's that move to like, good for me whether I, you know, want it yet or not. But when I recognize it as good, it nurtures that eros, that that that sense of desire.

Nathan Carr: That's right. That's right.

Brian Williams: That's That's kinda what it's kinda that taste and see that this thing is good and allow it to nurture those kinds of desires. Okay. So so here's here's what I'm fascinated oh, yeah. Do you want me to jump in?

Nathan Carr: I was gonna try to give briefly an example of your last question because I got distracted by how cool Eros is, but each classroom has a practicum element of how to embody the particular direction of joys that that year's curriculum suggests. And so it could be something as simple as and and we can leave it here and jump right back into your your your next question. But if your particular novel of that year is suggestive of and and and and easily applied to a particular kind of festival. I mean, you're going to find in our school is a theme of endless festivals. How do we mark as theologically, joyfully, spiritually, and and therefore of time importance, that which will give a condition of the soul, a condition of the soul, a condition of the soul.

And then we're gonna put that into the curriculum and not just put a test into the curriculum. And if that me that means there's a confectionary instinct associated, then that's what it means. We're gonna cancel a whole day of school to do it. Or not cancel, but change how Yeah. Yeah.

The other end of the spectrum would be we are big on excursions. You mentioned Pearson's instinct for the same.

Brian Williams: We we did the same thing at Camp Paravel. Every grade from five to 12 went on a major trip. We took a week off from school, and I would lead the DC trip and the New York trip, and we took them to California and Yosemite and a dude ranch in Colorado, or they'd go the the Lewis And Clark Trail, or civil war trips, and the whole thing was to get our students out into the world experiencing it, rather than just talking to them about it. Hey, this cool thing happened. It's, oh, hey, let's go let's go where that cool thing happened.

And so then, I and a Latin teacher, we started leading trips to Europe. Because we were like, hey, we're reading about Dante. You know what would be cool? To go to Florence and read Dante in Florence. Or to go to to go to Assisi and read the life of Saint Francis.

To go to Greece and read Plato on Mars Hill. And so, you know, I mean, it was transformative for all of us who went on those those kind of those kind of trips to have that, you know, that sensory affective experience. That was a deep learning, you know, and nurturing our loves, I think.

Nathan Carr: So. Pilgrimage.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's

Nathan Carr: every It's everything we And again, another traditional Another instinct

Brian Williams: Yeah. The Christianity. Traditional Christianity.

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Go on pilgrimage.

Brian Williams: Well, and there, I mean, think that's also nodding to the fact that we're embodied in a material world, and we're not just cerebral heads in a vat, so getting out to experience things. Okay. So we've been talking to Headmaster Carr here for a little bit about your school. Let's talk about I mean, I don't wanna say father Carr because that puts you into the church. Here again, what I wanna know what I wanna hear you reflect on, and I'd love to hear what you think about how we can create a common culture between homeschool and church.

Because these are the formative cultures within which our students and our children live. Right? These are Yes, they're being formed on, you know, their digital platforms, but as far as like healthy, holistic institutions where they're being formed, it's it's home, school, and church to my mind. You live in all three. I mean, you're a you're you're a priest in a church.

You're a headmaster of a school, and you have a a home with a wife and and six kids. So what is this festive spirit, this festive rhythm, these festive practices? Tell us what that looks like in the Carr family, and then what that looks like in your church, and then we can talk from there about how we might be able to think about fostering this common culture. But what's what's it look like at home?

Nathan Carr: Great. And I am thrilled to offer some of the most unoriginal and inherited answers to this question. Our home is as fraught and hilarious a mess as you could imagine six kids are able to create.

Brian Williams: Okay. What are their ages? Just tell tell us their ages. What what what's the range so we have our imaginations?

Nathan Carr: 21 to nine, 21 year olds, married, and I'm gonna be a grandpa next August.

Brian Williams: No. Well, you are looking old. I was gonna say that, but well done. You're getting you're anticipating with the gray hair. Nice nice work.

Nathan Carr: Come home. That's right.

Brian Williams: I'm When when when are you becoming a grandfather? When when's the due

Nathan Carr: First week of August. Okay. I'll be a 46 year old grandpa. I'm thrilled. I Okay.

Lost my mind Christmas Day. You know, she she gave we opened the gift, and it's a pair of baby shoes. I just lost it.

Brian Williams: Alright. So twenty '1 to nine. Alright. Twenty one to nine. So so so six kids in the home, and how how are fostering this spirit of festivity?

Nathan Carr: That's right. From the very their very earliest ages and from the very beginning, we have honored with our own prayer book tradition in the larger Anglican communion, I'm an Episcopal priest, the life of prayer, festivity, and feast days, as they are named in the prayer book, for years and years. There is

Brian Williams: In a your home.

Nathan Carr: Yeah. In our home.

Brian Williams: Yep.

Nathan Carr: So again, unoriginal answer number one. Our kids are very,

Brian Williams: very

Nathan Carr: familiar that each and every red letter feast day a red letter feast day is something named in the prayer book about someone who's lifted from the pages of scripture itself and given a festival. It's it's all there. It's all there. It's so so I'm trying to think of what the most recent festival would have been. Well, of course, we're in epiphany tide.

You know? Some people would say today is January 9. The Romans would say, yay, Janus, the two faced one, looking forwards and backwards. Let's name today January 1 or or '9. Today is January 9.

The Christian would say it's the first Friday of Epiphany. Yeah. So Epiphany is the coming of the magi and these mages. Right? And and in fact, Orthodox Christianity, as I understand it, gave us Epiphany long before they pulled backward a separate festival for Jesus' actual birth.

Those two were collapsed into I think Epiphany is older than Christmas. Right? What is Christmas? Is that fourth century, maybe,

Brian Williams: festival? Yeah.

Nathan Carr: Yeah. And I think Epiphany is second century festival. Yeah. Woah. Mind blown.

But it's the it's the it's the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles. And so what do you do? Well, you find funny ways with your babies to do secret things that are then revealed. Some people bake little babies into their cake, And so when you cut into your cake, ta da, you find a baby, and they call it king's cake. Right?

And go to New Orleans, and this is what you do in New Orleans. Or some people hide things in the home where the discovery of the hidden thing is more important than its actual value. Like, it's a small gift. It's a throwaway amount of money. But the search, the search, Because that, in fact, is us recapitulating and reinhabiting what Israel did for thousands of years, the search.

Brian Williams: Way of inhabiting time. Happening time. The search. In in my in our own family, when Advent rolls around, first day of Advent, we put up our nativity set, but there's a pregnant Mary. There's not a Mary and baby.

There's a pregnant Mary. And then our wise men, they start the journey in the furthest point of the house, which is in the Or in the back shed, and then every night, overnight, the wise men and this dumpy looking camel, they move somewhere new. And I have a, she'll listen to this someday, but I have a 10 year old daughter who still does not know that I move the camels and the wise men every night. So every morning, we wake up, and she's like, let's see if the wise men moved. Where'd they move?

And we go and hunt them down. And there's there's lots of days when dad forgets to move them. And so she gets up and she's like, dad, the wise men didn't move. Weird. What's going on?

And I'm like, oh, they're tired. Travelers need rest days. But, you know, this this goes on, and, you know, when we hit Christmas, then we replace the pregnant Mary with a Marian child. Then when we hit Epiphany, we have the Mary with a slightly older child, and then the Wiseman show up. Right?

But we've just inhabited, I don't know what what what what fifty two days of our advent to Epiphany season. You know? And and it's it's a way of like marking time, and building that kind of expectation, and anticipation, and kind of joy and delight into the season, in a silly way, but in a really lovely, formative way.

Nathan Carr: So It's the best.

Brian Williams: It's so It's it's so good.

Nathan Carr: Everything about that, yes, yes, yes. I have found We let our kids move the Weisman. I found them in the fridge. I found them in the freezer. You do yours.

I love it.

Brian Williams: We we have a tie we have a little tiny guy who's squatting, and the little tie the the tiny guy, she calls him, he always shows up in the funkiest places. So he's he's in a shoe. He's the one on top of the cabinets. He's the one hanging out somewhere, you know. Where's the little guy, she calls him.

So

Nathan Carr: Yeah. Is that Caspar or Melky or Melky? Melky or Melky.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's great. Okay. So so what's the spirit look like in your your church? Like, how do you foster Or is that just where Is it just obvious this happens in the church?

Because I would say that the spirit of festival that you've been describing here, and that we've been, you know, trying to like like circle around, that is not many people's experience of church. They don't come to church and feel this this experience of, you know, attentiveness that leads to love, that leads to joy, that leads to gratitude, that is a kind of celebratory spirit. So so what do you do, father Carr, in your church to to foster that for your community that gathers on a Sunday morning?

Nathan Carr: Yep. And and a final comment on the last. Read we have a whole shelf of children's books for saints.

Brian Williams: Okay.

Nathan Carr: And if we have found as our greatest help aside from scripture itself that our kiddos who've been taught to love stories by their super cool school are so attentive to the lives of these greats and yet so normal

Brian Williams: Yeah.

Nathan Carr: And yet at times afflicted and yet at other times quite quirky and funny. The saints are fabulous because the saints are people. Yeah. So I would say buy every every children's saints book you can find and read it.

Brian Williams: You know, I wish I I wish I had it in front of me. We have one that my daughter has just just poured through for the last three years, beautifully illustrated. I think it's called the Book of Saints. You gotta know the one I'm talking about. Yep.

Like like, it's gorgeous.

Nathan Carr: Saint Francis is on the front.

Brian Williams: Yep. Saint Francis is on the front, and she just loves to read them. And it's it's really fascinating because so many of these saints, they did not have happy endings. You know? She's like, dad, do you have to be, you know, flayed alive to become a saint?

And I was like, well, no, actually. She's like, well, but, you know, the majority of them, you know, they got a sword, they got a whatever, you know. But but but it's not gory for her, and she is inspired by these in a really lovely way because they're told really well. And I think she has, you know, it has it has framed her understanding of in in part what it means to be human, and what a human could do, and how God's God works in a in a human's life, you know, and from from a young age, it's it's been her experience. So so I just do affirm what you just described there.

Yeah. Reading the stories of these ordinary people who who in whom God does these kind of extraordinary things.

Nathan Carr: So It's just fabulous. Our favorite author is Ethel Pachocchi. Okay. So, dear listener, go find Ethel. Alright.

To your to your last question.

Brian Williams: Sure. Yeah. What's this look so like in you're so school, okay. School, great. Home culture, great.

What about what about church culture? And then I'd like to hear you, because you you uniquely inhabit these three domains. And I'd love to hear your reflections just, okay. How do how do listeners in their own spheres how can we cultivate this common culture between homeschool and church within which our students are are formed, their children are formed? So talk to me about church for a second, though.

What's this look like in your church?

Nathan Carr: Okay. Let's do a couple of categories here. The first is acknowledging perhaps what's obvious, which is there was a moment at which I, for myself, in my own discernment of having to rep something, I had to figure out a church tradition that would allow a rather obvious, I suppose, form of festival, which is to say the prayer book gave me the excuse to move church outside of Sunday mornings only k. And move into these red letter feast days where as often as we are giving commemoration to either the life of Christ, the life of one of the apostles, or something that's read in the book of Acts in the expansion of the church that we otherwise know as Pentecost tide. There's this New Testament focus in the festivals of the of the prayer book most closely associated with my tradition.

So I'm just owning and acknowledging out loud. I liked that framework. It gave me excuse to drag my sweet peas to church one or two additional times per week to go to one of these festivals. And the way that it's shaped in my particular church is we go to Our Lady Chapel, Chapel Of Saint Mary, and we have a Eucharist, and the kids get to participate because it's a little less liturgically high as as as compared to a a Sunday. And so my kids might read the Old Testament lesson to the 12 that are gathered or because it's a weekday Eucharist.

Right? Or my kids are accoliting, but in a a very familiar with their father sort of way as they serve from the credence table. So it give them it just gives them, you know, blah blah blah. That's how it looks in my tradition. Words, words, words, credence table, Anglicanese.

It gives them participatory opportunities in the course of a week to put on the very inheritance that I'm constantly suggesting to them could change their life. I'm like, okay. Well, let's go do that thing then.

Brian Williams: So you used the the word participatory. Yeah. Is that is that that's I mean, how important is that? Like, participatory. I mean I mean, you you they're they're they're being involved in the actual, like, ceremony, the actual service.

Right? They're not just they're not just sitting in a pew.

Nathan Carr: That's right. They're not reduced to observer. Yeah. They're not reduced to customer. They're

Brian Williams: not Especially important, don't you think? I mean, that seems especially important. It might be important for adults, but especially important for for children when we're trying to get them to inhabit something or indwell something. I mean, it's why in fifth grade when we're talking about, you know, the Native Americans and pilgrims, they dress up as Native Americans and pilgrims. Why?

Well, because, you know, that as as a kid, embodying it, physically expressing yourself in it, I mean, that's how you enter into this other realm of time or this other world. So I'm just just just pausing to, like, draw attention to this word participatory here, especially for kids.

Nathan Carr: That's right. So now and you can see this coming from my kids, Everything that they ever heard at school I mean, people my poor children, man, everywhere they go. Their dad's in charge. They hear it at school. Oh my gosh.

These festivals. And then, oh my god. You know, they get they get to home, and and to your point, there there's the wise men in the refrigerator. And then and then they get to church, and there's a Eucharist also associated with it. It's just sort of drowning with reinforcement, but at least it's integrated.

It all sounds the same, looks the same, smells the same. I also will add to this because my maybe particular tradition is guilty of the opposite. There's an there's a number of things that one could say about mainline Christianity, and I didn't even grow up in it. I I was more evangelical adjacent

Brian Williams: K.

Nathan Carr: In in my Southern Baptist upbringings than I was in what some describe as mainline decay. I mean, I was in a church that was growing expansively because we were in the middle of the really happy and expansive times of evangelicalism in the late nineties. I mean, I'm just yeah. All all of that was very good for me and have only happy things to say about it. But I'm now in a tradition that has undergone rapid decline.

Yeah. And we talk about it all the time. I mean, I'm talking with my bishop all the time. There's fewer than 2,000,000 Episcopalians left in the nation, and and and this was the predominant denomination at our founding. Woah.

Let's go think about that thing. What but which but but but my point is, having been honest about that, preach and teach as if God is fascinating and interesting. That's one of the instincts if joy is the goal. Yeah. You've got to

Brian Williams: So Right. And that's that same I mean, teaching preachers of God is interesting. You know, that, not to keep going back to this, but that draws my attentiveness, right, to God, in the same way that I want to attend to the good world. I want to be my arrows for God, if you will. Right?

To draw on forth my attentiveness to an interesting, fascinating God that I wonder at, and then nurtures my affection for, and then I think then the byproduct of that is the kind of joy and gratitude, possibly. What how does this need to happen? Father Carr I mean, how do how do how does this happen in other contexts where they don't have a father Carr who's, you know, in his family, and in a church, and in a school? Now your kids are obviously moving in three different spheres that you you are largely responsible for, in a way, the school, home, and church.

Nathan Carr: But do you know?

Brian Williams: I mean, I don't know if there other examples of, say, headmasters and pastors and priests getting together to say, How do we create common cultures? I think that would be fascinating. Say the local school, the local classical school said, hey, we'd love to have all the the pastors and priests of our families come to the school. Let's have a conversation about what we're trying to do together and how we work together. Because we all have this common vision of what a flourishing human person looks like, you know, intellectually, morally, aesthetically, spiritually.

Maybe we all have different gifts to give, but man, if we could find opportunities to, like, do the same kinds of things, say the same kinds of things, I mean, that might be transformative in some in some places. But I don't know that that's happening necessarily.

Nathan Carr: I love this. No. I don't I don't know. Surely, it's happening somewhere, and God bless those who are pioneering this. But I and and likely, it's happened by happy providential coincidence in my own life because of my my unique moment in in being able to embody each.

I mean, I think that's fair. But may so maybe we turn this into a challenge and say because I'm constantly meeting with the pastors in my community. Have a 170 churches represented in our 500 families or so. Yeah. Oh my goodness.

These are some of the best friends that I have in this world, and they're such great ambassadors for us. But maybe we turn this into a challenge and say, dear classical and Christian peers and colaborers in this beautiful vineyard, Take that up. Please. We're not going to live through the age of cynicism if you do not make concerted and attentive efforts at this.

Brian Williams: That's right. There are forces of culture that nurture the cynicism and skepticism that I think leads to sadness and leads to despair that we see in our generation. And no surprise, you know, people are turning to whatever, to try to just manage their way through that despair, whether that's social media or whatever it happens to be. But man, if schools gathered pastors and priests together to say, let's look at this as a common cause, our common cause, the nurturing of the next generation. I mean, sometimes I have pointed out, and I think you'd resonate with this, I get this from John Henry Newman, said, know, everywhere the church has gone, it's built three buildings.

A nave for the worship and care of souls, a school for the nurturing of hearts and minds, and a hospital to care for bodies. And so we could have the hospital in there, but for now, I'm thinking, let's take two of these institutions, school and church, get them talking to each other, and then bring the families in to say, how do we support this in our families' lives too? I mean, I think that would be transformative in some areas. So

Nathan Carr: It's completely fabulous.

Brian Williams: Maybe that's your next book, Father Carr. Maybe your next book is this, How Do We Create a Common Culture? Write that down before we

Nathan Carr: Write it down right now.

Brian Williams: That's good. Well, and I think what you've been doing is is modeling that for so so many people. Hey. Thanks. But as we as we draw to a close here, let me give you some it's it was some rapid fire questions.

Alright? I'm ready. So Forged, we we on on the podcast, we think about disciplines, delights, crafts, and callings that constitute our well lived ordinary lives. So so what's a discipline that you've pursued over low these many years that has sustained you?

Nathan Carr: The most precious thing in the world to me is it's this Monday night for my accountability, nourishing. It's my book club. For for over a decade, I've read books with the same crew. There's professors at local universities. There's pastors.

There's best friends. One of my brothers has just joined. And it's it's completely everything to me. Okay. Yeah.

I would highly recommend it.

Brian Williams: What about a delight? What do you what do you especially delight in, Nathan Carr?

Nathan Carr: I love becau you know, if you work with the mind, the hands tend to be the way that you release. So I associate delight of course, there are many intellectual delights that create my whole vocation. Yeah. But when I think of just things that are important right now to me when I'm in release, those are those are the delights that I'll speak to. I like tinkering with old engine driven machines.

So, you know, I've got a scooter. I've got an old speedboat. I I like fixing engines and just figuring the dumb thing out that's broken. There you go. Okay.

It's pure delight.

Brian Williams: I love it. Alright. So what about a what what about what about a craft? Is there a craft you have pursued over

Nathan Carr: over the course

Brian Williams: of your life? And if not, what what craft would you do you wish you had pursued, or would you love to pick up?

Nathan Carr: Maybe if maybe I

Brian Williams: I'm should have the always like metallurgy. I wish I could pound hot metal, but I'm not I'm I'm not, but, like, that would be amazing or whatever. But but what about what's a craft you pursued? Have you?

Nathan Carr: No. And, you know, had I known this was the next question, perhaps I would have saved my last answer for Yeah.

Brian Williams: I know. I thought about that. The tinkering. But Maybe that's it.

Nathan Carr: It it probably is it, but let's go ahead and suggest one that I was raised by an artist. Two my my mom and my aunt are visual artists. And had I another life to to live, and and perhaps there's one in my future. Right?

Brian Williams: In the eschaton even.

Nathan Carr: In the eschaton, it would have been to learn how to draw like my aunt knows how to draw. She's fabulous. So.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Okay. There you go. And I think this one's obvious, but we've gone through discipline to like craft, and now calling. How do you understand your calling?

So recognizing for people that calling and career are sometimes different, I don't think they probably are for you, but how do you how do you think about your calling? What is it?

Nathan Carr: My calling let me try to answer more expansively than just pointing at the caller, which seems obvious enough. I have been ontologically changed from nonpriest to priest. I am a there's my calling. All of which is is, you know, theologically important, but I think it has been my calling and vocation, broadly speaking, whether it's the bookstore or the school or my role as missioner for the diocese or my whole world as children and traditional Christianity writ large, and some I think it's my vocation in life to joyfully connect the up and coming generation to the riches of their inheritance and in in as many ways as I possibly can. So I write about it, and you build schools for it, and you try to preach about it, and you replant two churches in support of it.

And then there's no local bookstore that has the right books, so you build the bookstore that that feeds the libraries of the children who then come to your school, who then who then and you just build this entire ecosystem that you hope gives enough minerals in the dirt to put fruit on the dad gum plant. That's what I've been doing my whole life.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I know the fascinating thing is, I mean, you you started a bookstore, church, schools, teaching, writing. It it it it's all just different manifestations of that calling.

That's that's beautiful. Hey. So I always ask my guests in closing if there's a poem or a paragraph or a single sentence that's become significant for them over over the years of their vocation. Is there something that comes to mind for you that you'd you'd like to read for us?

Nathan Carr: Yes. And thank you for giving me a heads up on this on this one. Dear listener

Brian Williams: supposed to sound spontaneous here, and you're just like, oh, yes. Out of a I just pulled this out. That's alright. I did tip you off on that, and I think you should read the whole thing if you're ready

Nathan Carr: for it. Should I read the whole thing? Okay.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That gonna be my

Nathan Carr: That was gonna be my question. Yeah. Okay. So I had privilege ten years ago due to Circe Institute's invitation to meet Wendell Berry, and it was the height of his, perhaps, first introduction and celebration within class one Christian. You know, we'd all been we'd all just found the guy, or

Brian Williams: at least

Nathan Carr: at least me and some of my early school planting peers had just discovered the riches of Wendell.

Brian Williams: At Regent College, we discovered him back in the nineties, but it's good that you guys I came know.

Nathan Carr: We thank you for leading the way, professor.

Brian Williams: There you go.

Nathan Carr: We finally dug the guy. It's just everyone knows the remarkable canon manifold and ways in which he's presented, whether in essay in poetic form, novel form. It's just remarkable what this man's done. But on my fortieth birthday, which happened to correspond with a pandemic in 2020, a longtime friend, someone who'd served on the board, someone I've known since college, the board of my school, and so on, gave me a poem, a poem that he had driven to Louisville to a particular moment that he knew Wendell would be present, had the poem signed and framed, and he gave it to my fortieth birthday. It was signed by Wendell.

And it's Manifesto. Right? His mad farmer liberation poem. And so I'm gonna read that poem, and then tell you the one sentence that has drawn my attention ever since.

Brian Williams: Okay. Go for

Nathan Carr: Manifesto. Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die, and you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery anymore.

Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something, they will call you. When they want you to die for profit, they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag.

Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands, give your approval to all you cannot understand, praise ignorance for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed, Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plan, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that prophet. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under your trees every thousand years. Listen to Carrion. Put your ear close.

Hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself, will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade.

Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection. Beautiful. Manifesto by Windleberry.

Brian Williams: Alright. So so so so why that, and what what line in that has resonated with your soul?

Nathan Carr: All of them.

Brian Williams: But

Nathan Carr: narrowing our focus a bit, speaking more broadly about the the the poem, this poem must be, I cannot prove this claim, among the first attempts at undermining the world system of rolling the grenade under the door of the machine to use some use some King's Northian language to take on the mind of the serpent even as we are innocent as doves and say, how can we undermine the world system that is laying claim to our children? I it's the very thing to to to undermine cynicism. So I found that in the poem, and perhaps others have as well. And it gives you sort of a map accordingly. But be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.

We, as Christians, can also be clever in our planning, and the fox who does not wish to finally be destroyed knows how to throw off the scent or to to to cast aside the bloodhound from his trail by making many tracks in several directions so that his own cubs are safe in the hollow of the tree. So it just seems to me that my work and your work, professor, and the work of those listening to this podcast should not just include thoughtful systems, though we need them. And I've got nine people on the case right now at the academy. But it should also include some clever protection of the cubs and some devious fun in the process, informed by joy to throw off the scent a little bit so that those monasteries that we're gonna plant make it through. So I don't know.

I love the poem. There you go.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Alright. Alright. Well, we will leave it there. Thank you so much, man.

I've been talking with Father Nathan Carr about the spirit of festival and the formative cultures of home, school, and church, and I am grateful for this conversation. Thank you, sir. It is good that you exist.

Nathan Carr: Thank you, Brian. You too.

Brian Williams: Yeah. So you've been listening to Forged Folks with Brian Williams, a podcast of the Kiwanitas about forging well lived ordinary lives of discipline, delight, craft, and calling. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.