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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
The Odyssey as the Restoration of Culture with President Washut
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascend the Great Books Podcast, I am joined by Kyle Washett, the president of Wyoming Catholic College, to discuss John Senior the Odyssey and how the lessons of Homer are needed into the culture. At Wyoming Catholic, we discuss a bit about Eastern Catholicism and the Greek Fathers and then dive into the history of John Senior and his unique approach to the Odyssey. We'll explore Odysseus's denial of immortality on Calypso's island, how Achilles was a sacrifice to maintain the cosmic order of Zeus, and how Odysseus return home is a restoration of culture. So join us for a wonderful conversation exploring the lessons of the Odyssey and how we can apply them today. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father and serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We are recording on a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. If you're new to Ascend, we are finishing our year with Homer. We read the Iliad for six months and then the Odyssey for six months. One book or chapter a week. Nice, easy pace, but a pace that you can actually dive into the depths that I think Homer offers us. You can find out more about our year with Homer by checking out our account on X, our YouTube, Facebook or Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters. You can visit thegreatbookspodcast.com where we actually have guides, written guides to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Today we are discussing John Senior the Odyssey and the unique approach to the great books you can find at Wyoming Catholic College. And fittingly, we have a wonderful guest today. We have President Kyle Washet who serves as the President of Wyoming Catholic College. He is a native of Wyoming and grew up in Casper where he worked in nuclear missile silos and coal mines during his teenage years. He's a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and holds an MA in Sacred Theology from the International Theological Institute, or ITI and an STL from the ITI in the center for Eastern Christian Studies. He returned to Wyoming Catholic as a full time professor in 2012 and in the fall of 2019 he was named the Academic Dean and served in that capacity for four years before now being named the president in August 2023. President Washet, how are you tonight?
- [02:37]
Kyle Washett
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
- [02:39]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
DK yeah, no, thank you for being here. I know we're supposed to talk about the Odyssey and John Senior and all that, but I have to ask the studies into Eastern Catholicism, Eastern Christianity. That sounds fascinating.
- [02:52]
Kyle Washett
What was that like, so I'm a Byzantine Catholic, so one of the Eastern Catholic churches in communion with Rome. And so I studied especially the Eastern patristic tradition and then the harmonies, resonances, and occasional differences from the Western theological traditions, especially how it resonated with St. Thomas Aquinas, then did so really steeped in the Greek Fathers. That was the joy that I got. I got to read a lot of the Greek Fathers, which was a delight.
- [03:23]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, that's beautiful, because it makes more sense now because I think not too long ago I was discussing some of the theologies of Saint Maximus the Confessor, and I think I was somewhat struggling. I was like, I didn't understand this idea. Something, you know, something about the Incarnation, et cetera. And you just kind of, like, swooped in and clarified it. And so now that makes so much more sense now that this was your background. What is there a particular patristic on the Eastern side, like a Greek Father, that you particularly draw near to?
- [03:52]
Kyle Washett
Oh, so I love Saint Maximus the Confessor, in fact.
- [03:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, there you go.
- [03:57]
Kyle Washett
Yeah, I find him a just wonderful character who spent a lot of his time in, in fact, North Africa, so has a spiritual kinship, at least geographically, with St. Augustine, even though he's very much a product of the Eastern patristic tradition. And while his writing is never going to win any awards for easy reading, I find that his insights about the Incarnation are just marvelous.
- [04:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
They are marvelous. I recently read. I was drawn to him because of my studies into Eros. Right. The Greek love Eros and that whole tradition. And I had read St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John Climacus and a few other of the. On the Eastern side. And I was. So. I was drawn to Saint Maximus, and I recently read his Four Centuries on Love and Adoration out of the Philokalia. Is that. Was I, at least in the ballpark on how you pronounce that? Okay, good.
- [04:53]
Kyle Washett
I'm from Wyoming. You shouldn't ask me how to pronounce.
- [04:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, I'm from Oklahoma, so I don't know who wins that battle there. So it's fine. So a guy from Wyoming and a guy from Oklahoma are going to talk about the Odyssey tonight. So it's good. Life is good. No, I really. I really have enjoyed the Eastern Catholic Fathers. They've been a joy to read. I particularly, I fell in love with Plato's Symposium a few years ago, and that's kind of just haunted all of my thought since then, even my political thought. And so I really wanted to understand how. Where did this come into Christianity. And I mean, authors like St. Gregory of Nyssa are just wonderful on this. Right? Like Moses ascending Mount Sinai is an erotic act. It's an act of eros. And then he enters into the bright darkness of God. Right. Just. Just as a gorgeous writing. One thing I really appreciate about the east is that they always seem to have sanctification in mind or theosis. Right. So no matter what they're talking about, they don't seem to go very long without tethering it back to your own spiritual life. It seems to just always be like this anchor. And it's one thing I really appreciate about. Appreciate about the Eastern writings is they just seem to always keep in mind the scent of the soul to God. And how does this. So if we're studying the Incarnation or we're studying something, sometimes that can seem very abstract, they immediately tie back in to, oh, yeah, and this is how it helps you to become more Christ. Like, this is how it helps you to ascend to God.
- [06:13]
Kyle Washett
No, in fact, that's teaching. Junior year, everyone does Christology here. And in that Christology course, we do a lot of the Greek Fathers and the somewhat complicated, occasionally for the outsider, tedious history of trying to parse exactly what the theological debate is. And that is the thing that helps carry through the subtleties and the linguistic difficulties. And the rest is the conviction that these Greek fathers have, from St. Athanasius through St. Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, that all of this is about your divinization, is about your embodiment of the mystery of the Incarnation here and what you're going to realize that ultimately in the eschaton, it's.
- [07:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
A beautiful approach to theology that I very much appreciate. Okay, so last question, or I will take up the entire podcast on this, because I find this fascinating. But so if someone's interested in, like, the Eastern side of the faith, like the patristics, like, what early church father writing would you say, hey, like, this might be a good place to start.
- [07:17]
Kyle Washett
I think the most accessible entry level reading is Saint Athanasius on the Incarnation. I think it's just beautiful, accessible, and it's all the glory of the Greek patristic tradition right there. After that, I think Gregory the theologian, Gregory of Nanzian, his Oration on Christmas and oration number 40 on baptism, I think are just marvelous. As long as you, you know, just go into them, just read them for the delight of the wordplay, the delight of the imagery, what he's doing. I think those are both just incredible. Great jumps into the. The glories of the. The Greek Fathers that are not overly technical. You don't have to have a huge amount of historical background to know them. And I find them electrifying.
- [08:05]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
All right, everyone. Well, there's your reading list for an intro into the Greek Fathers. Okay, so pivoting to the topic at hand. So as a preliminary, like, tell us about Wyoming Catholic College.
- [08:16]
Kyle Washett
So Wyoming Catholic College is a Young College. We're 17 and a half years old. We were started in 2007. We had our first students in 2007, started by Bishop David Ricken and a parish priest here in Wyoming and a professor who was teaching at a community college, who became the first academic dean. And they founded it on the conviction that Our lady wanted them to start a college, which is a bold conviction in a state that had no Catholic high schools and which has more cows than people. But they were, you know, really felt in a way they couldn't quite articulate. Our lady wants us to start this college that is going to be in the. In a remote mountain town, be devoted to an experience in the wilderness. Three week backpacking trip, another seven weeks of outdoor experiences, a semester of horsemanship, coupled with an intense Great Books program. This incredibly rich theological curriculum, rereading the Fathers and the Scripture and Aquinas and the Church, documents a perennial philosophy that's rooted in Plato and Aristotle and going through all of the major traditional modes. There's reading the ranges of literature and putting all of this together, memorizing poetry and the rest. They're convinced that this is the thing they should do. And then the founding bishop, in fact, is sent immediately after the starting of the college to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he then approves the Marian apparition of Our lady of champion, which, 150 years before our lady had appeared in rural Wisconsin and given the message to gather the youth in the wilderness and teach them for their salvation. And the bishop realized, ah, so obviously in rural Wisconsin, that message meant something slightly different 150 years ago. But the fact that that apparition is now approved, only now, means that this next phase of the new evangelization, this Marian call to go into the wilderness for renewal, for study, for prayer, is the thing that the church needs in every age of renewal. They need this time to go in a wilderness retreat. And that's what we're doing at Wyoming College.
- [10:23]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That is beautiful. I have to ask you, though, about the horsemanship, right? So this is something that, on its face, I actually really appreciate. Like, you read the great. I mean, Just imagine, like, being a young man, you get to read Plato, you know, in the afternoon. In the evening, you get to go ride horses. But what's like, the pedagogical purpose? Like, why did you guys incorporate horsemanship into the college?
- [10:45]
Kyle Washett
So Socrates had two really famous students, Plato and Xenophon. Plato wrote all of the dialogues, trying to capture and lead the souls of the readers through the instruction and virtue that Socrates gave him. Xenophon went on an incredibly intense military hike and wrote the story of that in the Anabasis, and then wrote the first book ever written on natural horsemanship. But I think that's not an accident. I think, in fact, Xenophon was aware, and you catch this in Plato's dialogues, that horsecraft is soulcraft, that the art of forming the soul needs a mirror so you can understand and you can see it. And Plato emphasizes in various dialogues that comes up in philosophical conversation, but the image he uses very often, whether it's the Republic and the Phaedrus at various points, is going to be of horsemanship. And that there really is a way in which, when you're working with the horse, your soul, certainly the passions of your soul, become more evident to you in a mirror. And there is this way in which you're able to read Plato in the afternoon and then put into practice, in a very concrete way, the kind of ideals that Socrates is proposing. And so that's. That's very much the. The pedagogical purpose for it.
- [12:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I appreciate that, particularly the analog between horsemanship and mastery of your own soul, because this is something that I've witnessed. I grew up riding horses periodically. My father was on the mounted sheriff department in Oklahoma County. And so I got to spend time at the horse barn and do things like that. But my eldest. My daughter is actually taking horseback riding. And so now she's gotten to. She's matured in this, and so I go and watch her. And yet now it's, like, amazing that, you know, this little girl who probably doesn't even weigh, you know, 60 pounds is on the back of this animal that used to be used for war. Right. It's like these huge horses. And I. I've just been amazed recently because she's kind of, like, matured in her horsemanship. Like, okay, now you're gonna make the horse do this, but you're only gonna use these subtle things to tell the horse to do this. And if you do, you know, if you. I mean, I don't know, but. Right. It's like if you move Your left leg first and not your right leg and don't have the reins like this. The horse is gonna do something different than you want it to do. It's all very subtle. And for the untrained eye watching this, like, trying to figure out, like, okay, what is she supposed to be doing? And then the horse, like, walks a particular way, and it's like, oh, you're doing a great job. And I'm, like, desperately trying to actually ascertain, like, what. You know, what's actually happening. But this is, like. But I really appreciate, though, now, having a better understanding of horsemanship of, you know, all those subtleties are the same types of subtleties that actually come in when we have to master and control our own soul, right. That we have to pay attention to these small little details. I think that. No, I think that's really important. I think it's brilliant to incorporate that into the Great Books. I'm not really sure if you guys have a lot of competition on that. I'm not sure if there's a lot of competitive.
- [13:43]
Kyle Washett
No, no, we're pretty. Pretty unique. I think it's a tradition that's pretty fundamentally rooted. Right. Xenophon and Plato are both very aware that if you work well with a horse, you work well with your soul, which means you work well in the governing of the city. These three tiers, horsemanship, soulcraft, and then politics. There's this great tradition that I think was just in some ways presumed because, I don't know, until a little over a hundred years ago, everyone who is, in fact, engaging in the great philosophical liberal studies does, in fact, know how to ride a horse and work with that. And even the cowboys that settled the west are bringing their Shakespeare and their Plutarch and, you know, you read True Grit, and they have this elevated diction from reading all of these great books that formed their imagination while they were on horsecraft. So it's really only a relatively recent split where you need to intentionally recapture that, which is in some ways presumed by the tradition that we're studying and immersed in.
- [14:44]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, that is excellent. So I assume, kind of taking a step back and looking at Wyoming College and really the Great Books tradition as a whole, I'm assuming, as the president, you get to do fun things like travel and maybe talk to young people why they should come to Wyoming Catholic and X, Y and Z. And so when you talk to these young people and you're like, oh, Wyoming Catholic, it's a great books college. And they say, why should I study the Great Books Why should I go read in Homer and Plato? Why do I need to read these old thinkers? I just need to go to some tech school or the school with the best rankings. When they ask you, why read the great books, what do you tell them?
- [15:17]
Kyle Washett
So the first thing I ask is just, all right, so why do you want to go to a tech school? And they'll say something like, well, so I could get a good job. And you say, okay, why do you want to get a good job? Well, so I can make a lot of money. Okay, so why? So I can have kids. And you're like. And so then you can send your kids to a good school so they can get into a good college, so they can make a lot of money. So they can. And you start to get a sort of hint of Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities that comes out in the conversation. And they say, well, no, no, that's not the only thing I want to do. I really want to live a good life. I want to live a great life. I want to be a great human person. All right, but you're going to spend all of your time and energy on what you're going to do. 40 hours a week, 60 hours a week, depending on how intensive your job is, really becoming an excellent technician, really becoming an excellent lawyer or whatever the case may be. And you're thinking you're going to pick up being an excellent human person on the side. It's just a thing that, you know, it's in the air. And then you ask, well, this is very Socratic, right? Well, does it seem like everyone is able to pick up being an excellent, truly great human person on the side? Is that. That's something. We see lots of great examples of that. Okay, no. All right, so what's the devoted study to that? And then, in fact, wouldn't it make sense to go to the tradition that's sort of weighed out all of the best and the brightest that have thought about this and said, these are the fundamental standards, these are the guides, and the books themselves are not enough. I think that's why we're going to stress the importance of the cell phone fast and the outdoor backpacking and the horsemanship and things that we do at Wyoming Catholic. There needs to be a culture there that supports it, but at the same time, there needs to be a teacher, really great teachers who have thought deeply about the question of how to be excellent, how to be great and give you some guidance. And then when you read Homer or you read Plato, or you read Aristotle, looking for guidance on how to be great souls. You find these are the best teachers in the world. They're amazing. And then you go to the Gospels and you read them in context with that, and then you read the Fathers, who are building on that. And then you read Dante or you read Virgil, and you realize there's this wealth of tradition, this wealth of focus on, for lack of a better word, soulcraft, that's focused on making you a great, truly great human being. But you need to go to a great education. You need to submit yourself to great teachers to achieve that kind of greatness that you're made for.
- [17:41]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, that is excellent. Yeah, it occurred. It occurred to me a while ago because I don't think I would say I grew up with, like, a strong understanding of education. I'm a convert to the faith. And, you know, while a certain level of, like, intellectualism was a. Was appreciated in the home, I don't think there was a lot there of like, you know, what university to go to or different pedagogies or things like that. That was very foreign. Like, even the great books would have been a very foreign concept. I don't think I even read Plato until maybe my master's. I went to Ave Maria University, but before that I was at a Protestant school. It occurred to me at some point that, particularly when I went through law school, that most modern education is simply a training, Right? It's literally just training me. I remember, really, the juxtaposition was quite clear to me after leaving Ave Maria and reading Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas, et cetera, in grad school and then going to law school, where we never even talked about what justice was like. We never talked about what a law is or what a law is supposed to do or justice or the polis or anything about this. It was literally just a logic game, right? It's like, okay, here are the rules. Here's kind of the arbitrary rules. There might be some context for them. And therefore, who's the most clever at, you know, who has kind of the greatest kind of technical skills to kind of solve these problems that are presented to you? And while it's certainly, you know, there's a certain skill set there to be respected, but it had no context. It wasn't rooted in anything, right? And so, like, when I was going through law school, you know, a lot of the major Supreme Court cases that have come up in the last, you know, two decades were coming through on, you know, what does it mean to be a human person? What's marriage? What's love, what's these kind of things. And those debates would happen in class and you immediately realize that no one has any context whatsoever. There's no anchoring to, like, what justice is or what the polis is or what's the purpose of law, Right? There's no teleology. Like, no one even understands what we're actually supposed to be doing here. But we get, like, you know, little awards if we solve the logic games. And it really did dawn on me, going through that experience, how much of modern education is simply a training, Right?
- [19:43]
Kyle Washett
Well, Wordsworth is seeing this. He has this poem. Our students end up memorizing this poem. And we memorize about 30 poems over the course of the program. But one of the first poems they memorized while we're reading Homer, in fact, is this poem called the World's Too Much with Us in the open the world is too much with us late and soon Getting and spending we lay waste our powers Little we see in nature that is ours We've given our hearts away assorted it's just this frustration that all of life is devoted to a kind of training which is ordered to a kind of getting and spending. And then, you know, he contemplates the, you know, the wind that's up gathered now like little flowers in the sea Burying her bosom to the moon. He's contemplating these beautiful sights. And then he says, it moves us not. And then in frustration, he yells, great God, I'd rather be a pagan Suckled on a creed outworn so might I standing on this pleasantly have some sight that would make me less forlorn have sight of Proteus rising from the sea or hear old Triton blow his wreath. And it's actually a great poem to read about the time that we're studying the Odyssey because there's this deep angst and Wordsworth that, look, education, life is constrained in this getting and spending and training. And, oh, my goodness, if only I could see some fantastical thing like Proteus that Menelaus is wrestling with in Book four. Or if I could see Triton, who, you know, these are not friends of Odysseus. These are, you know, people who are warring against men for the most part. Poseidon, the great man who's fighting the man of the Odyssey. But he just wants something that breaks him out of mere training, mere concern with getting and spending. And the students resonate with that. We're living in this wonderfully successful civilization, right, which has done great things monetarily and with technical training. And yet they have that sense that Wordsworth does. Oh, my goodness. If only there was something more enchanted, more glorious. Only I could be moved by the glories of nature like my pagan forebears. That's what my heart really wants. But you're right. Education, for the most part, doesn't even raise that question. It says, well, what do you want to be when you grow up from the time you're in kindergarten? And the only approved answer is, how do you want to sell your labor? What kind of training do you want to go with? If a little kindergartner says, I really want to pursue arete and be transformed by the contemplation of the meaning of man and mortality, that teacher would be really weirded out, say, no, no, no. I mean, how do you want to earn a paycheck? Right? That's what we're trained from the first question in school all the way through. That's what we're doing.
- [22:19]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I am totally. I have a bunch of little boys running around this house. I've got five kids now, and four of my boys are under six. And I'm totally going to start training them to say something like that. Like, what do you want to grow when you have. Like, I want to contemplate the platonic forms and be a good man. Like, I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm sold. I'm done. I can't wait. Because I'm just gonna slowly do it and not tell anybody. And inevitably someone at their school is going to ask them, and they're be like, you're a garlic kid, aren't you? It's like, yes, you are. Yeah. No, I really appreciate that. So how do you want to. How do you want to crack this open so. Because I think Wyoming Catholic, you know, my understanding is that you guys kind of have a unique approach overall, even to the great books and the Odyssey kind of plays an important part in your pedagogy. So where's, like, a good foothold for us to start?
- [23:03]
Kyle Washett
Well, I think we could talk about why John Senior sort of is the intellectual grandfather of Wyoming Catholic College. Dr. John Senior taught for three years at the University of Kansas. Well, he taught for longer the University of Kansas, but he had the integrated humanities program there, the Pearson Institute. That what gave rise ultimately, the graduates of that program became Benedictine monks that ultimately founded Clear Creek Monastery outside of Tulsa. And then other graduates of the program started Wyoming Catholic College. But John Sr. Himself is a man who basically had a Wordsworth like experience. Right. He ran away from home when he was 14 years old, became a cowboy out on the plains looking for adventure when he was a pagan. Studied the occult and oriental studies in graduate school, had a conversion to the Catholic faith, began teaching in Wyoming, eventually moved up to Kansas and started this humanities program. And for him, the Odyssey had this pivotal role. And he would go to the Odyssey over and over again for examples about what culture is, about what family means, about what society means. But I think in a special way, he did that because one of John Sr's famous books is the Death of Christian Culture. And his other book that he wrote is the Restoration of Christian Culture. And he gets awfully cranky in those books and takes on the Persona of the prophet Jeremiah at times. And so if you want to listen to a cranky prophet Jeremiah, it's a great book to read. If you're looking for a dispassionate social analysis, he's not the guy to follow. But the reason I think he loves the Odyssey is the Odyssey is a book about a civilization that's been broken by a fundamental original sin. And it's about how you put the civilizational pieces back together. If the Iliad is fundamentally about the sacrifice that Achilles needs to offer so that we can maintain the order of Zeus at the level of the divine and create the sphere for mortality, the Odyssey is fundamentally. All right. Well, once you've had this huge disruption, this huge cosmic sin that required the great sacrifice of Achilles and the destruction of Troy and all of that, there's a lot of carnage. And the homecoming and the rebuilding of the culture is the necessary conclusion to the saving of the order of Zeus. And so the Odyssey becomes this great guide from the great teacher Homer. For how do you rebuild a culture after a great original sin? And how do you instantiate the witness of this godlike sacrifice in a hearth culture? And that's very much what John Sr. Is focused on. And he realizes that we've lost that. And so in the great blow that modernity struck to Christendom, there's this new rupture, this. This new original sin that sort of broken out in Christian civilization. And the question is, not only are we looking for someone that can explain to us the story of the sacrifice that maintains the cosmic order. We know that, and we know there's great theology written about it. But seniors concerned with an education that helps us craft a culture that makes people capable of hearing that theology, the hearth culture that embodies this, passed down from father to son, around the family, that culture is the essential carrier of the liberal arts tradition, of civilization, of religion, of piety and the rest. And so Odysseus, in his story of refounding a family, refounding a civilization, becomes a great archetypical story to go back to as we're in the midst of refounding a Christian civilization after this great rupture.
- [26:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That was beautiful. No, I really appreciated that kind of going back to John Senior, particularly for those who aren't familiar. So integrated humanities program, this was in what, the 70s?
- [26:51]
Kyle Washett
70S. So it ran from really only three years, 75 through 78.
- [26:57]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And my understanding of it is he came in and he created this incredibly poetic great books program that was incredibly attractive to students that was offering them, you know, an insight into wisdom in a certain life that they weren't seeing anywhere. And this became overwhelmingly, like, popular. And, you know, long story short, it actually got shut down because of its popularity, right? Because.
- [27:21]
Kyle Washett
Because of its popularity and successful conversions. You have a bunch of people there in the mid-70s who are showing up at a state university and all of a sudden converting to Catholicism in droves, which is not a great thing to do in the 70s at a public university.
- [27:39]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right. And just like, you know, maybe to. As you pointed out, this is the germination of the Benedictine Monastery of Clear Creek, which we have here in Oklahoma. If you're unfamiliar with that, you know, please look them up. They're a traditional Benedictine order to celebrate the Latin Mass. Beautiful. They're on the thousand year plan, building their church. It's an amazing community. I've gone up there, spent time, you know, Father Abbott washes your hands before you, you know, eat with them. And they're self sustaining, right. I mean, they, they have their cattle, they have their bees, they do this. They live off the land. I'm not really sure there's a whole lot of difference between them and living in the 1200s. Right. And it's a, it's a gorgeous life of prayer and work, but it has its, it has its roots with John Sr. We also have Archbishop Coakley in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City here was a, was a student of John Senior. Conley, just north of us, was also a student of John Sr. And actually our current superintendent in the Diocese of Tulsa, David Dean, is John Godson and also a student through the IHP program. So it's really interesting because a lot of people know John Senior, the name. You know, there's a good biography on him. You mentioned his works that I think are certainly worth reading. But then down here in Oklahoma, he's actually had a huge impact. There's a lot of people that can trace their intellectual history back to him. And again, a very short period of time that bore a tremendous amount of fruit.
- [28:59]
Kyle Washett
Right. And in fact, one of his students that converted to Catholicism under John Sr. Eventually became one of the founders of Wyoming Catholic College. And we are explicitly intending to carry on that intellectual vision that he had the need to form a culture, an experience of the outdoors, of fasting from technology, ballroom dancing, speaking Latin as a lived language, reciting poetry, singing songs. These sort of things, he thought were necessary baselines to prevent modern man from being overly Cartesian, overly abstract, overly intellectual. When he came to think through the mysteries of philosophy and theology that were his birthright to think about that they needed this earthy, authentic hearth culture to be sitting around and then contemplating the mistress.
- [29:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. Can you. Can you unpack that just a little bit before us? Because I think this is something that's incredibly foreign to us. And I'll express it in probably a jargon that's off and then. And you can swoop in and correct me. But there seems to be then, like, radically, in classical education, you know, we'll talk about that. Sometimes we. We forget that we're embodied creatures, right? We. We actually live in a body. It's not just the formation of the soul, but we actually. We experience everything in a body, right? We're composite creatures. And so there seems to be then, you know, we always want to run to the great books in general, like, straight, okay, I'm gonna read Homer, read Plato, et cetera. And in classical education, it's like, okay, what do we do? We sit down, these kids, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna teach them grammar, logic and rhetoric. There seems to be then a precursor to these things or things that maybe are concomitant with it of poetics. What I mean by this is like, you know, do you know how to garden? Do you know how to ride a horse? Do you know how to get dirt under your fingernails? Right? Do you. Do you have, like, an embodied experience? And even, like, these things you talked about, right, like dancing. Well, why would dancing help me cultivate, you know, my intellect? Why does. Why does reciting a poem in Latin help me right, with my intellect? Can you talk a little bit about just, like, what is this, like, preliminary kind of poetics? Maybe this hearth culture that you're talking about that sometimes gets overshadowed, but it's actually pretty necessary for an intellectual life.
- [31:07]
Kyle Washett
So I'll say in the first place, we think we're very much just out of the tradition of Homer and Plato on this. We're not inventing something radically new. When Plato in the Republic thinks about how we're going to begin education, he says, well, education is going to begin with the muses. It's going to begin with poetry and gymnastics. And what he means by that is the memorizing of poetry, the playing of music, you learning to make your own music or play the flutes, you learning to move to the music, and you learning to move in your body and the sport and the thing you're doing in your body. Which gives the principle that Father Shaw will sort of, James Shaw will clarify or interpret, put a gloss on what Plato says there and say you can tell the disposition of a society to education by the kind of music and sports that it has, that the music and the sports that it has show a kind of disposition of the mind. And that's because the mind, when we think, and Plato's even aware of this, despite various accusations of various forms of dualism or things that come. He's very aware that when we think, it's an interaction of the soul and the body in certain ways. And if you're not attentive to the way the soul is interacting with the body, you're not really thinking about what human thinking is. There may be great moments when we sort of separate and contemplate the form, but we've got to be attentive to the way the soul's in the body for thinking. And in fact, the thing he'll say that begins philosophy, the experience of wondering, eventually will be used by Thomas Aquinas as the distinctive mark of the human intellect. Embodied intellects feel wonder. Embodied intellects are the ones that have the ability to sort of interact with their bodily experience and ask questions and grow in this sort of marveling way. And so that's how he proves in his Christology why Christ must have a human intellect. Because in the Gospels, we're told that he marvels, that he feels wonder. So Plato's very aware of that, the embodiment of. As the beginning place for education. And I think you can think of that. You can see that then in a second step, we can see that at a sort of moral place, at an epistemological way. That's just how we know things. That's how we come to know things. And we can distort the way we're knowing if we're not attentive that we're bodily knowers. But there's also a moral Sense to this, which is really important. St. Paul tells us that knowledge puffs up. So if you're a successful teacher, you're getting a lot of arrogant kids. And so there's necessarily a question of, well, what's the moral disposition that that is being brought to knowing? And again, Plato's very aware that the thing that moves the entire education process of the city is the good is the truth is a common good is something you enter into and participate in, which means there's. If it were saying, the truth is a good, there's a kind of moral disposition to the truth that we need to cultivate. And that moral disposition is one of humility. It's one of realizing the truth's greater than us. It's also one of realizing that I need to share it and I need to protect it. And when Plato talks about the education of the poetry and music, he's talking especially about the education of the guardians of the men who are trained to defend and protect the truth that's been entrusted to the city. And I think what we see very often is that when classical education. Look, the classical education is what gave us Descartes, for example, an overly disembodied classical education that's not thinking about the way we know in a body, the experience of wonder, the moral obligations we have to the truth, both for sharing it and defending it, all of which involve us as bodily beings with thumos and eros and these sort of aspects of our ability to know, our desire and our spiritedness. If we leave that aside, we get really distorted modes of education. So that was a rant a bit, but there it is.
- [35:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, it's beautiful. No, I deeply appreciate it. I think it reveals to us a certain level or aspect of education that is often neglected, even neglected, maybe in classical circles. Right. Sometimes we focus so much on the curriculum, like, what should they read, what should they do this, et cetera. We forget actually running around and being athletic and playing amongst the trees and touching grass is in certain ways just as important. Right. There's another way to express this, right. Where we talk about, you know, just a certain realism. And this is why I think a lot of, you know, classical education and certainly Wyoming Catholic and other places really start to shun screens and in the virtual, right. It's. It's like we're in Plato's cave and then we decide to dig a hole, right? That's how that works. And so, no, I mean, I appreciate it. You know, our local classical school here that we have at our cathedral I think there's, like, one screen in the entire school that's in the art room so they can show up, you know, certain types of art so the kids can, like, draw it. And it's just. It's really refreshing once when you first hear it, like, I don't know, like, what is that about? And then you actually are in an environment, you know, so this as an example, and you might have examples from Wyoming Catholic, you know, at our little classical school, you know, all the kids. Desks are made out of wood. There's. There's real. We've really shunned, like, plastic in the school. There's lots of natural light. There's lots of plants. There's fish, there's birds. Like, you know, my kids are in this, like, little Montessori class, and everything's, like, their size. There's, like, a certain realism when they come, that everything I touch is real. It's not artificial, it's not fake. And then that. That helps the kid, I think, open up in a certain kind of poetic way, in an incarnational way to, okay, well, then the things I'm learning are also real. Right? Everything around me is real. I remember this, a similar conversation. We have an absolute amazing Catholic Charities here in the diocese of Tulsa. If you're not familiar with it, I suggest everyone go look it up, you know, Google it. But we built a beautiful, beautiful campus in North Tulsa, which is really a socioeconomic area that's been devastated. We built a beautiful campus up there because our previous bishop, Bishop Slattery, who recently died, God rest his soul, was like, no, we need to give the poor beauty that has to be part of it. It's not utilitarian. It can't be simply reduced to food and et cetera. And I have one of the most beautiful chapels in the entire diocese is actually in their Catholic Charities. It's a. It's a gorgeous place. But there was a debate when they were building it about whether or not to use, like, real marble and, like, the altar and other places, because, you know, it's like, well, it's much cheaper, like, to have wood, and then you finish it like marble. And, like, a lot of high altars actually are right. And this was actually one of the arguments, is that when they come here, we want them to think that everything's real, and so we need to use real marble. Everything is here, and we're going to use real things. We certainly want to use them around the altar. And then everything else kind of, you know, and concentric, like, circles Moving out. Right. That everything is real around this thing as well. And so I think that, you know, when you talk about the poetics and music and gymnastics and these kind of things, there's a. Yeah. There's a certain kind of incarnational opening of the human person to then receive real knowledge. And if you're kind of closed off from that, you can kind of fall into an artificial knowledge as well, it would seem.
- [38:13]
Kyle Washett
Yeah. And in fact, you get that very often. And the arguments of relativism and things, in part, come from the experience of a kind of fake or superficial knowledge, a lack of confidence that your knowing's connected to the real. And so John Senior will say no, like the real. The real knower. And he's following Aristotle on this. The real knower has a great sense of touch. He's touching a lot of things. He's touching grass, he's touching trees. Right. That's. That's where the knowing starts. Partly because the mind is not a power of any one part of your body. It's not a power of your brain. It animates the whole body. And so you're knowing in your fingertips, you're knowing in your nose, you're knowing in your taste in all these really important ways. And that. That realism, that visceral realism needs to underlie our commitment to the truth and the goodness of that truth.
- [39:06]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Gorgeous. I love it. I love it a lot. There's a lot here that I really need to learn about, too. Just on the classical side and things. I mean, I think there's a certain beauty here that we've lost. And I very much appreciate places like Wyoming Catholic that have kind of picked that up and invite people to come and experience it. So maybe, like, do we have, like, a good example? Like, can we give an example from the Odyssey, maybe, whether it's from John Senior or someone else, like, can we give an example from the Odyssey that you think is. Is quite pertinent in the formation of your students? And I really enjoy it, and I want to kind of tether it back to that kind of architecture that you just gave. Right. That maybe pulling from John Senior, that the Odyssey is a restoration. And I love that because here in our year with Homer, we've talked about the hero's journey. We've talked about, like, yeah, you get to go to war. You get the chaos, you have the glory, but you got to make it all the way back home. Right? Achilles doesn't do that. Agamemnon. I mean, poor guy, right? I mean, he's like, Killed in his bathtub. And it's very ignoble. And then no one remembers him for sacking Troy, right? They remember him from being murdered by his wife and his wife's lover. And you know, we have other people that kind of make it home. But Odysseus has this like, particular journey that he goes on. I really like looking at that as like a restoration. We see this too, right? He has to return home. It's a return of the king. He has a house that's fallen into disorder. Fatherlessness has wracked not only his home, but actually I think a good argument for. For all of Ithaca. I think it's. That's a whole lesson in. Of itself is how fatherlessness kind of breeds instability inside of the polis. I really like this overarch picture of his return. The return of the king is a return of order inside of the home, right? So what's like a good example from the text that you guys maybe pull from as you're trying to explain this from your. To your students.
- [40:55]
Kyle Washett
So. So there's, you know, two things that I think that we could jump to. I can. There's. My mind's racing with a couple. But just make the first note, right? Just. Even the way you're supposed to think of Odysseus is very much in his particularity. And the thing that's striking about Odysseus, right, He's the only one of the heroes that eventually returns and has his son and his father. So Achilles doesn't return, but his son does. Menelaus returns, but he only has Hermione. And Hermione marries off to Achilles son, but there's no son to go after Menelaus. Nestor returns, but his son died at the war. Agamemnon returns and it's just a total mess, right? His wife kills him and Orestes goes off and he's pursued by Furies. It's a nightmare. Only Odysseus is going to come and restore all of the orders of the home that namely the Odyssey. You might think the Odyssey should end after the slaughter of the suitors. But there's this long. Okay, then he, okay, he comes to Penelope and okay, okay, now it ends. But then he goes to his father, to Laertes. And in every one of these stages of recognition, for Odysseus, it's the particularity of the home. So when his nurse recognizes him, it's the scar that's on his thigh from the boar hunt and this from this moment of gymnastic youthful vigor when Penelope recognizes him. It's the test that there's this always the question of the sign, right? That. The test of, well, I'll just move your bed out. He's like, no, I built that bed into this olive tree, which is a sign of Athena that's built into the home. And I was thinking of that olive tree when I was sleeping under the. These two olive trees when I first got out of Calypso. And I was thinking of that olive tree when I blinded Polyphemus with this olive branch. This olive tree has been with me the whole time, and I know it right there. This deep, deep way of knowing the home. And then when he goes to Laertes, and Laertes like, you're not my son, he's like, no, no, let me list the trees that you gave me, the trees that we planted together, and then the vines in this way. So. So it's very clear that when Odysseus is restoring the home, the attentiveness to these recognition and the particularity of the recognition is very important. Important. So he doesn't. The way he convinces them that he's home is not by a great exalted speech about the nature of justice for the restoration of the civilization. The way he begins restoring the home is a very bloody act. But also the remembrance of the importance of the bed that he built. His craftsmanship in building the bed and building the house around it, the trees that he planted. And that is what's going to root and ground his restoration of order. Sure, Athena's going to help him and, you know, working with the families and restore them to friendship. But it's Achilles. Odysseus is this craftsman of order in the home. You know, this thing that we're really attentive to.
- [44:06]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That's beautiful. You know, I think that a few comments on that. I really appreciate you maybe pulling out that thread of the use of olive wood throughout the Odyssey. That's nice. I haven't thought about that. That's obviously, the bed is an important part, but then maybe. Do you see foreshadowing of the bed, particularly through olive wood throughout the Odyssey. That's something I'd like to reflect upon further, I think. You know, too, at the very end you mentioned, he has to go to his father. I mean, I think one of the most endearing parts of the entire end is Laertes, Odysseus and Telemachus all standing together against, you know, this. The onslaught of the relatives of the suitors. Right. These kind of blood avengers and Odysseus and Telemachus are kind of vying, you know, about bravery and these kind of things. And Laertes actually, like, his heart warms, right? Like, how blessed am I to see my son and my grandson trying to outdo each other in, like, you know, valor, et cetera. And I think it's a. It's a beautiful section, I think, the restoration of the entire home. You know, I think there's a lot of parallels to Christ there, too, Right? He's the king that returns, you know, He's a king that doesn't return in a way that people expect. Right. He's almost, like, in disguise. And then it's. It's always interesting to me how people come to know him, Right. So some. It seems like his disguise is very thin for certain people, right, who seem to have a familiarity with him. I'm always kind of suspicious of how much the swineherd actually knew at what point, obviously, everyone's suspicious about Penelope, and at what point she probably had her own suspicions. Right? Right. It's hard not to read the scar. You mentioned the scar. It's hard not to read a scar and not think of Thomas and our Lord, right? You know me. You know me through this, you know, through this scar, through Eurya coming to. To recognize, you know, who he is. No, I think that restoration, I mean, I. I've talked about, you know, our year with Homer, my own struggles. Like, the first time I read it in a group, I read it with a group that was like, man, Odysseus is amazing. And he's just like. He endures everything and perseverance. And I. I oscillated too far, right? I pushed back too far and really got wrapped around the axle and was like, no, he's a terrible human. And look, he loses all his men, and he uses them as a meat shield, and he sacrifices people, and he's not honest in X, Y and Z. And so I've tried. I'm not really sure I've been terrible. Successfully. But, like, I've tried on this Year of Homer to really start to focus on those. Those positive themes. And I think the restoration of the home, you know, Penelope constantly coming out of the chamber of the home, this intimacy, how he knows her, their relationship, and how he seems to appreciate, you know, her intellect. No, I think these are all very good things. And I really like. I really liked that kind of overarching narrative, that architecture to look at, you know, this is overall a restoration, not simply of his home, but, like, the damage that was done because of the Trojan War, right? So it's, it's a, not just simple, you can't isolate it and make it narrow simply to Odysseus, but rather you have to look at all these other characters that you mentioned, you know, Agamemnon actually, you know, obviously being kind of first and foremost that, you know, they. Was this really worth it? Right? I, you know, I love the Oresteia by Aeschylus and I think he, he really leans into this fact of like, was this really worth it? Like why you come back? You know, Odysseus comes back with no one. Agmidmon comes back with one ship. There's whole now missing generations amongst these polises. You know, was this really worth it? And so no, I think looking at Odysseus as an overarching character that then brings healing and restoration, even like, you know, if it could mimic as much as it can a pre Trojan war era. And I think that's a beautiful way to look at it.
- [47:38]
Kyle Washett
And there's, there's really a way there, right, because the, the concern for Homer, right, is Achilles and the question of mortality and that, you know, Zeus has in some sense deprived him of immortality by marrying Thetis off. And so now there's the son born of Peleus, okay, so that Achilles can't be greater than Zeus and it preserves the order of Zeus. And so now Achilles is in a certain sense a sacrificial death for the preservation of the order of Zeus. All well and good and that encapsulated what's going on in Troy and various things. But then the question is, all right, what does that mean for men? If, if initially we're responding with the rage and the, the fight and then the struggle to preserve the order of Zeus, what's it mean for us that this great sacrifice in the heavens took place and the order of Zeus has been preserved and he's keeping peace amongst all the gods. Great, fine. And there's now no longer the same kind of generation and incest and fighting, that's going to keep going. But Odysseus is really founding the order post the order of heroes, right? He's very definitively leaving it. He has various choices, right? He's invited, even captively held, to enter into the divine generation and all the struggles amongst demigods and things that happen. He is invited to look upon Hercules, this great hero who has sort of split his divine self that's in heaven and his human self, or this dark men of himself, the image of himself that's down in Hades. And Odysseus is offered over and over again this, this chance to sort of live this sort of duplicitous twofold life or leave behind and go into the heavens. And instead he goes and founds the post heroic order of men incarnates the meaning of mortality that Achilles died for. But that's a real struggle and that requires a cross generational thing and it requires a healing of all of those offenses against guest friendship and hospitality that are not just sanctioned by Zeus, but somehow are part of the marriage bed. And the guest friendship and hospitality and bards and poetry and sports, all of this sitting around and that's what a, what a feast is for. And ritual sacrifice, all that, that's all part of this new human, post hero order that Odysseus needs to restore. Otherwise, yeah, humans are going to look back in the Iliad as glorious and mighty as it is. It's not our story. It's just a tragedy. It's human. The greatest human ever getting blown up so Zeus can preserve his order.
- [50:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I really, I really appreciate what you said about Achilles because that really helped me. We talk about the rage of Achilles. Like, what is the rage? And I think understanding his backstory and that really he was supposed to be the new Zeus, right? And so you almost read him as having this like existential angst, right? So he's, he's, he's, he is supposed to be the king of gods and men and he's trapped in this like, mortal body and there's just this rage about it. I think it really helped me understand his character and I really, I appreciate the context you give it that then you look at him upon a sacrifice, you know, for the, the order of Zeus. And I think that we've had Dr. Grabowski on the, on the podcast and he's kind of focused on that a lot of Zeus as this like keeper of order, that, that he's almost like this not gardener, but he kind of tends fate to a certain degree. Right? He's worried about fate. And if you read like, you know, if you take the view that Zeus and fate are separate, but Zeus is even subject to it, he has to kind of tend to it. You see this in the death of Sarpedon. He's thinking about intervening. And then I think it's Hera's like, you'll usher in chaos if you do this right, Chaos basically will return. And so I've come to appreciate Zeus. There's a certain aspect of Zeus that I think you miss. If you just see him as like this kind of goofy God that's basically always trying to take some form and seduce some mortal and do X, Y and Z, even the seducing the mortals, right, is part of the plan. Because if he sleeps with mortals, none of their children can be greater than he is. That's part of the plan. And I think you see this. You know, we're going to read, we have our year of Homer coming to a close, and then we're going to pick up Hesiod's theogony. And that gave me a much better appreciation for Zeus as a bringer of order. Because Hesiod's theogony is almost a praise of Zeus, right? He brings civilization, he breathes cosmic order. He's kind of stopped, you know, this kind of violent succession amongst the gods that brings all this chaos and et cetera. And really seeing Achilles as the last real threat to Zeus's order, right, I think has gave me a lot of appreciation for understanding maybe what Homer's doing and. But I want to tether it though. I really like what you said. That is the, is the Odyssey moving us to a post kind of heroic age. And I haven't phrased it like that, but my intuition or maybe even my hope, as I've been reading through the Odyssey, is it seems like Homer, who we take as a teacher, right, he's, he's intentionally trying to teach us something. It's really hard not to take notice of the comparisons between Odysseus and Achilles, right? So Achilles is, is this. I mean, it's just, you know, Thumas incarnate. I mean, it's just this rage, military prowess, et cetera. But he doesn't take Troy, right? He fails to take Troy. That's not what wins. And Odysseus, if you read the interim period, we have a whole episode where we talk about the interim period between the Iliad and the Odyssey. It's almost comical. It's like, okay, well, this problem pops up and Odysseus figures it out because he's super clever. And this other problem pops up and then he figures it out because he's super clever. And it's Odysseus that obviously through Trojan horse, Troy Falls, etc. And then you get, you know, he's clever enough to make it home when others can't. And then you get this like almost over the top thing where he goes into Hades and talks with Achilles. Achilles is like, I, you know, I would give all this up, you know, to be a Dirt farmer. If I, you know, if I could just, you know, live again. And then Achilles is asking about like his son, his family, right? And Agamemnon does too, with Orestes. And so it's, it's. I haven't phrased it as like a post heroic age. I think that's fascinating. The way, or what I've been contemplating is, is Homer, you know, pushing us into a different understanding of, of arete, of, of excellence, of what it means to be a good human, that there has to be some incorporation of the intellect because Odysseus has the thumotic side. We see that in Iliad, right, when he fights and things like this. There's also times though that, you know, Agamemnon critiques him, that he might be, you know, using people as a meat shield and hiding back a little bit, you know, etc. But, you know, we know he can be brave, he can be demonic. But I see Homer the teacher pushing us into what is the role of the intellectual in being a good man, right? And it's all over the Odyssey. It's not just Odysseus, it's Athena playing her primary role. It's Penelope as the matchless queen of cunning. I mean, everyone that seems to be excelling their excellence is not reducible to military combat. I mean, even, you know, even, you know, obviously, as, you know, he uses arete, right, the word for excellence for Penelope. And that's, that's a huge shift. You have to think like, wait, what is that? Right? And that get. That starts to really prepare the soil for someone like Plato, right? Where the, the, the excellence of a thing, is it fulfilling its purpose? So it seems like, I mean, you know, what are your thoughts there? I mean, is Homer the teacher through the Odyssey, kind of pushing us more into an understanding of the intellect? That the intellect has to be an intellect might be a strong word, right? Because like Odysseus is not a philosopher. There is this understanding of cleverness. And you think about the Sirens and they're, they're, they're asking to give him all this knowledge, right? So there is this, this whatever you want to call it, the intellect, wisdom. It's not, I don't know if it's philosophy yet, but this understanding that man is not reducible, the good man maybe is not reducible to simply prowess in military combat, but there has to be some cultivation of the intellect.
- [55:35]
Kyle Washett
And it's, you know, again, it's hard to always wade through with Odysseus, whether we're supposed to Always see this as, you know, it's not clear to me that Homer has the, you know, this is the good bag and this is the bad bag. And okay, Odysseus always isn't the good bag and, or he's always, you know, it's this complicated emerging thing. And in fact, I think that's the nature of the intellect. And you see Odysseus do a number of things, right? Stratagems. He does, you know, that he apparently held, commanded the army and weaved the army together. He, you know, the first thing we see Odysseus doing is building a raft. He's a shipbuilder and he's also a kind of man who's able to govern on the ship. And so it's an intellect that again, very embodied intellect. An intellect that women weave things, men build things, men are carpenters, women are weavers and they're storytellers. And the stories, you know, may or may not be true. And yet Odysseus also hates falsehood. And so there's this interesting question about how to understand the, the spinning of these not true tales. While Odysseus is claiming to have utter contempt for falsehood and utter devotion to the truth. Already Homer's trying to struggle with what exactly is this sort of duplicity that seems part of the human mind that's complicated and then it's part of wisdom. It's good you're not getting won over, but it also makes it easy to be tempted into rashness to doing things that occasionally transgress the bounds that are ultimately going to be responsible for Odysseus having to die at sea, not as a warrior, but he's going to have to die at sea to ultimately pay things back to Poseidon. So that there, there's a, I think there's this interesting thing about the mind, right? And again, you get, you get that challenge with the Prometheus giving fire to humans. And Odysseus is in this weird spot. He's always pious, he's trying to work through, well, except for Poseidon, he's trying to work through things, but he doesn't quite get sacrifice, right at first Athena likes him, but he's a little bit shifty. So there's complicated things there. And so I'm not convinced that Homer's absolutely saying Odysseus is the model of what we would say later as moral excellence, but that Odysseus is a kind of model of an excellence, of a founding, of a weaving, of a putting together different orders.
- [58:12]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I Agree. It seems like it's, it's in flux because I think that, you know, one thing we've talked about on the podcast is that when you read the Iliad, it's Achilles versus Hector. Like this, like Homer gives us this wonderful contrast, right? And so we're playing this out when we read the Odyssey. It's the contrast is Odysseus and Odysseus, right? It's like sometimes I'm like, oh yeah, this is great. Like he's just, you know, man, this guy is a paragon. Like live your life like Odysseus. And then like two pages later you're like, oh man, that was a terrible choice. Like why, why are you doing that? Right? Because a lot of times his, his intellect is self serving. You think of him like I always think of him like not telling his men about Scylla, right? So he knows about these things. He like, I love like the picture of like, you know, his men are rowing and all of a sudden he shows up on deck, like decked out in armor. It's like, what Odysseus, what are you, what are you doing? Right? And you know, there's different ways to read that, but even as he retells a story, right, it's actually incredibly horrific. And he talks about how the men all called out to him and looked at him as they, you know, as they were being kind of dragged up by Scylla. And again, like you can, there's layers here because then the problem is with a whole four book analysis of him telling his story is that he's the one telling the story. And so it's like, how do we lean into this? Like how, like it's funny, like, oh yeah, I went down and met Achilles and he said my life was better. Like, how do you know? Or I met Hercules. That reminds me of, I was recently reading the Apology and Socrates is like trying to defend himself in front of 500 Athenians. And he like compares what he's doing to like the labors of Hercules. And you're like, is that really going to win you any favor? And Odysseus kind of does the same thing, right? He like meets Hercules, he's like, oh yeah, you're like me. It's like Dante. And he goes down into limbo and like all the great poets come to him. He's like, oh yeah, you're a great poet. Dante, right? It's like this, it's like, it's almost a comical scene. I, you know, maybe to get your thoughts on this I mean, what, where I like him the most? Like, if you had to say, like, where. Where do you like Odysseus the most? Like, where does he shine? I. The coming home story is good, but I really think, and the more I've read it, the more I've kind of wrestled with it. I. His denial of immortality on Calypso's island, in a lot of ways in my mind is his zenith. Because his capacity to say no to that is really amazing. To have, like you can be, you can, you can gain immortality, you can have what everyone else wants. I think even like today's day and age, you can live forever and you have all the food and sex you want this beyond Calypso's island, right? You have a beautiful goddess. You can sleep with her. I'm sure that's not going to get old anytime soon. You have this whole banquet, like all these kind of things. You can live this life of baser appetites. And he says no to that. And we might say no to that because, oh no, Jesus wants me to live this way or like, whatever, but in a pagan context, like the context that he has to make the decision. It's really amazing to me that he can say no. And how he can say no, I think is a fascinating question for me. I think that's. That's his zenith. That he can deny what would be considered the paradise for most, which most all men would say yes to. You can stay here with me. You can have this beautiful goddess as your lover. You can have this banquet and live an immortal life. And he says no. How's he saying no?
- [61:21]
Kyle Washett
Yeah, it's marvelous. And I think it's bound up very much with. Odysseus is the one who is founding the human order, a sort of refounding the human order, right? He's sort of ending the back and forth. He's a seed of Zeus. He could be this. And in fact, when he gets off the isle and he falls asleep, right, he falls asleep there at the base of these two olive trees, one wild, one natural, one that's been made by human art and one that's been made by divine art. And they've woven together and that's this place where he, where he finds his rest. And that, that in a certain sense, I think, is what the, the mystery of Odysseus is, that that's where his greatness is. You're like, oh, he rejected the immortality. That's the greatness for Homer is that he is instead going to. Found an order where he's not trying to be Hercules and end up in heaven with a shade or an image of himself in Hades. He's not trying to be Achilles. He's not trying to be. He's not going to be Menelaus. Menelaus looks a lot like him. Menelaus is in a situation where he covers himself with some animal to deal with a divine being and then grab hold of him and wrestle with him and get knowledge for the sake of getting home. You know, that looks a little bit like what happens with Odysseus and Polyphemus there with the Cyclops. But Menelaus is going to go off. He's told he's not going to die. He's Zeus's son in law. Only. Only Odysseus is going to go back with the three generations and refound it. And that's his greatness. That's the moment where he shines through and he struggles with it like he's back and forth, like he wants to go to hell and back. He wants to say he went to the land of the dead. He wants to taunt Polyphemus. He's responsible for the slaughter of his men because of this raging curiosity that he has, this constant temptation to sort of break the bonds of the human order and go to the divine. And he's not really good at sticking in it, but he does ultimately decide to go back to it. And that's what is going to allow for Greek poetry and Greek sculpture and Greek weaving and Greek civilization to carry on.
- [63:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I very much agree. Yeah. I like, you know, Patrick, Deneen, Dr. Patrick Dineen talks a lot about Odysseus saying no to Calypso. And he has a brilliant little insight where he points out that I think it's book five starts off with, you know, we have dawn, we have the rosy fingers of Dawn. It's like, it's like one of the most famous, like little phrases that in the wine dark seas. But it changes in book five. It actually talks about haughty Tithonus, the husband of the Dawn. And if you remember that story, Tithonus, you know, dawn says to Zeus, like, I want to marry Tithonus. He's immortal. And he's agreed. And Zeus grants him immortality kind of begrudgingly. But Don doesn't ask for immortal youth. And so Tifonis, like starts to just. He can't die. But then he becomes this like imploded, grotesque creature becoming almost like an insect. Right. And it's interesting that Homer references him. Deneen, I'm Just pulling from Deneen, references him at the beginning of book five. And I think that dovetails. What you said is that there's something about accepting this type of immortality that is unnatural to man. Right. It's appointed to man to die, but also like our death. If you think about Achilles, you think about even Odysseus, like, it's the risk of death in the embracing of death and the facing of death that brings chaos, that brings glory. Right? And so to deny yourself, I think, that type of glory so I can live in the pleasure cave of food and sex. It's funny in the, it's funny in the Greek mind because the gods seem to represent the worst of humanity. So somehow in the Greek mythology, you accepting to become a God actually is a satiation of your lower appetites. Does that make sense? Like, it's a weird dynamic for us. So you go up, but in going up, you actually go low, you actually go down. So I, I ascend to immortality and I live a life of my baser appetites. And I, I don't. And that seems to dovetail into our conversation of like, you know, that's very contrary to any type of Homeric praise of the intellect, right? Because that's, it's not high, it's low. I'm of food and sex. And so, yeah, I just, that's where I, if I, if I had to point to him, like, where. Where do you see Odysseus shine the most? Or where do you appreciate him? I. And to do all of that in a pagan context, it's amazing. It's just, it's an amazing foreshadowing in a lot of ways. It really is antecedent to Christian teaching.
- [66:18]
Kyle Washett
Well, and in fact, that what's great. So, you know, he ends up on Alkanois, his island, and he has this line, this, this is one of these famous lines of John Senior in book nine, when he stands up and he's been weeping during the recitation of the Trojan horror story. They're like, okay, now, stranger, you've got to really tell us your story. He looks out. And now again, Odysseus has spent islands on the pleasure goddesses, or years on the pleasure goddess's island here, right? He's, you know, seen the best that there can be. But then when he's here at Alkanos and they've done the Olympic Games and they've competed and they've had the poetry, and he says, oh, great, I'm going to read in the latter more. Oh, great. Alkanois Preeminent among all people. Surely. Indeed, it is a good thing to listen to a singer such as this one before us, who is like the gods in his singing. For I think there is no occasion accomplished that is more pleasant than when festivity holds sway among all the populace. And the feasters up and down the house are sitting in order and listening to the singer. And beside them, the tables are loaded with bread and meats. And from the mixing bowl, the wine steward draws the wine and carries it about and fills the cups. This seems to my own mind to be the best of occasions. So. So the thing that he paints is a picture of a sacrifice. Well, so Liturg, you know, anytime there's a feast, there's a liturgical event. So this liturgical feast with poetry and games and this sort of ordered household, this ordered kingdom, and that is the best of occasions. This, this godlike life. Aristotle will say this later, right? The life of a God is in fact no happiness for a man, because he would have to cease to be a man. That, that the godlike life on Calypso's island. There's no. Nothing to order. He's been there for years, and it's an eternally sterile relationship. There are no children, there is no kingdom, there are no songs there. There's not prepared food. You know, there's. There's feasting, but it's not the same kind of thing. There's not sacrifices in the same kind of way. It's a very different experience. And so here in a kingdom hall, where there's poetry and this hearth culture and the game. So. So again, where I think Plato is getting it, namely poetry and music, where civilization began, or poetry and gymnastics, where music begins. All of this is here. And he says, this is the best of occasions, that this is what I want. Which is getting at the point you're saying that something about the mind and the human mind that orders these earthly things, there's a kind of divinity to it. And I think. I think Homer makes that even more clear at the very end, because the last line of the poem says that Athena in the guise of Mentor, sets all in order, which is kind of mind boggling, because Mentor really messed up, right? He was not particularly good at the things that he was doing. He really messed up. He did not order the house, he allowed for the suitors, he did not take care of Telemachus. But now, when Odysseus is here, now there's a kind of divine Mentor, a divine mind, a divine steward. That is a fresh ordering, like what it was at Alkanosis. And that's the thing that Odysseus was longing for, this harmony of heaven and earth, where the human mind in some way is partaking with the divine in this ordering. I think that's. Yeah, that's what the Odyssey is about.
- [69:57]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, Beautiful. I really appreciate it. Do you find it fascinating that their understanding of sacrifice has both a vertical and horizontal element to it? Like, I really noticed that when I read that. I mean, it's incredibly antecedent to, you know, the Holy Eucharist, where you come together and there's the sacrifice, which is, you know, vertical. This relationship, this restoration between the relationship between man and the divine. So it has this, like, vertical element to it. But then they always feast. There's always. Then the horizontal element. That the sacrifice actually brings man together with man. And that's. I think it's a wonderful. You know, religion is a natural virtue, right? We naturally are religious creatures. We naturally want to give God his due. And so I think it's really beautiful that they're even in this, like, pagan context. The sacrifice is both vertical and horizontal. That the giving to the gods, what is due to them also brings man together in these festivities. Okay, good. So as you kind of look at the Odyssey as a whole, you think of John Sr's impact on Wyoming Catholics, like, any kind of final thoughts or last thoughts that you'd want to share about his use of the Odyssey kind of in the formation of young people.
- [71:06]
Kyle Washett
So I think that is really. That scene of Alkanos is really an important one. Right. When Odysseus sees, in some sense, the peak of human culture is sitting at the fireside with a great meal, everything's in order, and you're telling stories and you're singing songs and you've been physically engaged like this. This is the place where you can finally think about the. The meaning of human society. This is when it finally comes out. The Cyclops is the utter opposite of Alkanois, right? They. They don't live together there. There's no agricultural planting of crops or any cultivation. There's only wild olive trees. Right. They're only cultivated not by Athena at all, but only by sort of the. The wildness of divine care. And. And they're savages. They have no sense of hospitality. And education is left entirely to their. To themselves. It's not a communal thing. It's this nightmarish place. But Alkanois, this is a place where the human mind can be divine, where it can think about the questions of order, the questions of Politics, the questions of ethics. And so what do we do to make an alkinous home? That's the question that Homer is proposing to the reader of the Odyssey. What do you do to found an order like Odysseus is going to find? And he says, well, look, the thing you need to do is you need to be rooted in your father, you need to be rooted in your wife, you need to be rooted in your son. You need to found a home where you are singing songs together, telling stories together, and eating an order together, where you are practicing archery together, both because it's just good and fun, and because you might have to slaughter people who are a threat to your family at some point. That these are. This is what a civilization is built on. And so if you're living like a Calypso, or you're living like a Circe, or you're living like Polyphemus the Cyclops, or even if you tried to do the Achilles thing, none of that actually satisfies that Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter in the end has disastrous consequences. The thing you need to do for the pursuit of glory is build a life founded on religion, right? Worship on sacrifice, on poetry, on games. And that will give rise to philosophy. And Homer's a prophet. It's true that his book. His book and the culture that captured his book are what gave us Plato or what gave us Socrates. And so that's what I think the important thing for us as husbands and fathers and wives and daughters is that's our task as we read the Oliv.
- [74:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Beautiful. I love it. I love that there's a place like Wyoming Catholic that is trying to pick up this torch and create this type of culture and actually form young people in it. So where can people go to find more about, like, your work or Wyoming Catholic?
- [74:19]
Kyle Washett
So we do have a website. I sort of say that grudgingly. I can go to the website. You can look about things. You can go follow us on Facebook and on, you know, X and LinkedIn, you know, these. That's fine, you can do. But I kind of hate that. It's a necessary concession that we make. And there's some good things that can happen. There's great conversations that came out of podcasts and various things. But the best thing, the best thing is to come visit. And we offer various ways to make that possible. During the summer, we have an entire department of the college is devoted to the outreach and making this kind of immersion and culture available. We have family ranch getaways where you Come to the ranch, recite poetry. We do mass. We go out and do outdoor activities. We take seminarians out on backpacking trips. We take high schools out on backpacking trips. We put the phones away, we go out. We set out on a quest and go out on a journey and come home. And the thing we learn about Telemachus is, you know, an important part. As much of the story is as important about Odysseus coming home to found the culture. Another important part is the need for Telemachus to go out on a journey, on a quest, and come back to found the culture. That. Those are both important keys. So come out with us. I think most. I think I'd say look@corexpeditions.org, look at wyomingcatholiccollege eduardo, and come make a visit. Come on a backpacking trip, come camping, come riding with us, come singing with us, and you will both embody the spirit of the Odyssey and get a great sense of what we're doing.
- [75:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Wonderful. I actually think our. Our local high school was actually coming up to Wyoming Catholic here sometime soon.
- [75:55]
Kyle Washett
Terrific.
- [75:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think I just. Yeah, I just processed all the contracts. I'm pretty sure. So they're gonna come and visit you guys. I was a little jealous. I might need. I might see if they need a chaplain or something to tag along. You guys need a lawyer on your trip? Because I'm. I can. I'm available, so. No, that's very good. You know, President Washington, we really appreciate your time. Thank you for illuminating the Odyssey. Thank you for talking about Wyoming Catholic and John Senior's influence. It has been wonderful. Thank you for coming on tonight.
- [76:19]
Kyle Washett
Well, thank you so much for having me. It is always a delight to talk about Homer and a great delight to talk about Homer with the Ascent podcast.
- [76:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, thank you so much. All right, everyone, we are gearing up for the Greek Poetics. We're going to read Hesiod's Theogony and then dive into Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. So if you want to understand some dates and translations and other things like that, check out our website, thegreatbookspodcast.com and X for the schedule, and we will see you next week.