← The World and Everything In It
The World and Everything In It
11.28.25 AI chatbots giving spiritual guidance, Christmas music that still unites us, and an artist preserving memories in stone
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Good morning.
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Today on Culture Friday, AI chatbots offering on demand spirituality and politics driving culture. What would Neil Polsman have said?
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Johnstonestreet is standing by. Also today, world music critic Arsenio Ortezza reviews standout Christmas albums from cathedral style carols to Cuban inflected favorites from the Nutcracker. And later, an artisan uses chisholm and hammer to create lasting tributes.
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The only document that testifies that this man was living on this earth was this gravestone.
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It's Friday, November 28th. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Myrna Brown.
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And I'm Nick Iker. Good morning.
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Up next, Kent Covington with today's news.
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One of the two National Guard members shot on Wednesday just blocks from the White House has died. Officials say 20 year old specialist Sarah Beckstrom did not survive her injuries. President Trump made that announcement on Thanksgiving Day, offering his condolences.
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And he added, the other young man is fighting for his life. He's in very bad shape. He's fighting for his life and hopefully we'll get better news with respect to him.
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He is 24 year old Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf. He was still listed in critical condition as of early this morning. The suspected shooter was also treated for gunshot wounds and is in custody. Authorities say it was an Afghan national who carried out the targeted attack. FBI Director Kash Patel it is an.
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Ongoing investigation of terrorism. Make no mistake about it.
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The accused shooter, Ramanu Law Lock and Wall, worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and he was one of about 76,000 Afghans brought to the US after the chaotic US military withdrawal from that country in 2021. In the west bank, tears last night as an American teenager held in Israeli custody for nine months was reunited with his family. World's Benjamin Eicher has more.
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Mohammed Ibrahim was visiting his family when he was arrested at their home for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli settlers. In an affidavit, Ibrahim said he only confessed to stone throwing after his interrogators threatened to beat him. He was released yesterday. Elsewhere in the west bank, gunfire in the city of Jenin. Video obtained by Reuters appears to show Israeli security forces surrounding a building after shots rang out. Two Palestinians were seen surrendering to Israeli troops earlier this week. Israeli officials said they were conducting counterterrorism operations in the west bank, which the Israeli government refers to as Judea and Samaria. For World I'm Benjamin Eicher.
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In Hong Kong, the death toll from a massive fire at a high rise apartment complex has climbed to at least 94. Hong Kong's Chief executive, John Lee, told reporters Thursday that the fire at all seven buildings in the complex was finally under control. Rescue teams yesterday moved floor to floor checking damaged apartments for survivors or victims while pockets of smoke continued to rise from the buildings. Millions of Americans are on the move this Thanksgiving weekend in record numbers, even as airports across the country still face a shortage of air traffic controllers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says it is a problem officials are working to fix.
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We're about 2000 controllers short trying to make up that difference. We're going to do it. We're going to work on it.
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Typically, about four air traffic controllers retire each day, but during the recent record long government shutdown, that number spiked to between 15 to 20 daily. The FAA had to force airlines to reduce air traffic for a time because of the controller shortage. Many controllers being asked to work temporarily without paychecks during the shutdown called in sick a lot more often. But Duffy says that has now leveled out. A US Russian space crew of three has begun a mission to the International Space Station aboard a Russian spacecra that launched Thursday from Kazakhstan. It blasted off in the afternoon and docked at the station a few hours later. The Soyuz MS.28 spacecraft carried NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Russian crewmates Sergei Makayev and Sergey Kud Sverkov. All three are expected to spend about eight months at the orbiting outpost. I'm Kent Cuffington. And straight ahead, CULTURE Friday with John stonestreet. Plus some fresh music suggestions as we prepare for Christmas. This is the World and Everything in it.
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It's Friday, November 28th. Glad to have you along for today's edition of the World and Everything in it. Good morning now, Myrna Brown.
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And I'm Nick Eicher. It's CULTURE Friday. Joining us is John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson center and host of the breakpoint podcast. John, good morning.
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Good morning.
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Well, John, the New York Times published a piece this week on the rise of so called Jesus bots. These are AI chatbots offering on demand spiritual guidance for a nominal fee each month. And that article pointed to a big study from the Gospel Coalition that looked into the accuracy of sex. Seven major AI platforms and the TGC findings were along the lines of what you might expect. Some AI models tended to reinforce Christian teaching. Others leaned skeptical. Several of them defaulted to an all viewpoints are equal approach. But the report says that the real differences come from what it called alignment, meaning the human guardrails that tell an AI what it can and cannot say. So that's why you'll have one model giving a clear Christian answer while another pushes everything toward equal viewpoints. And the point of the TGC study is not that Christians should avoid AI, but what they should avoid is uncritical use of AI. So what do you think about that, John? Is there a place, for example, for AI tools for Bible study or personal devotions? What do you say?
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I think there's absolutely a role for it there. But I mean, I think almost all of the questions around artificial intelligence, whether we're talking about its use here or whether we're talking about all kinds of other uses. I mean, we had a study that came out this past week which said the majority of young people are ready to give over government authority to AI. What could possibly go wrong with this plan? You know, the fundamental question is, do we know what makes humans human? Are we clear about what is distinctively human? Because that order of creation is very clear in the text of Genesis. In the creation account, there is God. He creates everything, and then he creates his image bearers. And his image bearers have a hierarchical, authoritative relationship with the rest of the world, not for their own ends, but for the ends for which God created them. And their responsibility is to steward it towards that end. So as far as technology serves that. Absolutely. The problem is, is that we've just kind of thoroughly demonstrated, and not just through AI, but even previous than this, is that we haven't taken seriously the biblical order of creation. There's just so many examples of us, A, missing what it means to be human, and B, missing the church's responsibility to speak outside of issues of personal spirituality. So what we are essentially is Gnostics. We have a disconnected, disembodied faith. And then when it comes to real issues, we basically say, well, as long as we have good intentions, then that should be okay. That's not going to cut it. It never has, really. But it's certainly not going to cut it with tools that are as powerful as the kinds of tools that AI is bringing to us.
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Well, John, I had to think twice about following up with this next question because I have heard you say before, you know nothing about contemporary Christian music, but I don't think you have to be a fan of the genre to comment on this story.
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Don't grow weary and well doing get those problems off your chest Cast your cares on my shoulders.
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So you're listening to the number one Christian artist. This dude can sing. Except he's not a dude.
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He's not a dude.
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He's not a Dude, his name is Solomon Ray. AI generated. That's what we're talking about, right? So real quick, Forest Frank, who is a human chart typing CCM artist, argues AI Ray doesn't have a soul and therefore Ray's songs don't count as art. He goes on to say, I think it's weird to be opening up your spirit to something that has no spirit. The hip hop artist Christopher Townsend, the man behind the machine, fired back and he says, this is an extension of my creativity. So therefore to me it is art. It's inspired by a Christian. It may not be performed by one, but I don't know why that really matters in the end. So, John, who's right?
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I have no idea and I do not have any idea about ccm. And I think there's pre existing conditions here, you know, because Christian should, I think in the best case scenario apply to people, not the songs and certainly not the technologies. And I think fundamentally too, the question comes back, you know, what were humans created to do and what can only humans do? I think it is interesting that there are limits that can be put on AI in terms of the amount of data that they can access. And so we can kind of keep it in the fold. And then at that point it's an extension of collating and curating information and can be very helpful as a tool. But are we ready to say it's creative for me to design a prompt and that's artistic in, you know, what I've asked for from the AI? That seems to be a pretty dumbed down definition of art and creativity. So I think, yeah, there's a lot of morally complicated questions here. And, you know, it still doesn't solve the question that's been around probably for 40 or 50 years, which is, do we need Christian music?
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Oh, I'm not touching that. Well, moving on, moving on. Interesting article coming out of Semaphore Media about President Trump shaping popular culture. A big factor in that equation is Trump's relationship with Larry Ellison, who owns Paramount and is a big Trump financial supporter. And reportedly, Ellison is on the cusp of taking control of Warner Studios. And insiders are speculating about how Trump's influence through his relationship with Ellison could shape the types of movies being produced. So my question would be, how do you think Neil Postman would frame what appears to be the blurring of political authority and cultural celebrity?
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I think Postman's concern was the other way around. I don't think it was politics, you know, informing entertainment arts and media. It was entertainment arts and media influencing politics. You know, he talks extensively there, basically. I mean, you know, the whole thesis of Postman's Book is entertainment makes us sillier. In other words, if our politics then become entertainment driven, then our politics become, well, sillier. Look, there's two things you need to know. President Trump influences everything that's been part of his thing from the very beginning. So we let's stop being surprised by this second. It's not inappropriate, by the way, for him to do that. But the fact of the matter is we do have these blurring of what Abraham Kuyper would call spheres of culture. And a reality of contemporary culture is that politics is taking a lot of air out of the room. It's filling a whole lot of empty space. Now, one reason that it's filling an empty space is because it can. The other reason is because entertainment first influenced politics. And another reason is because these other areas, areas of culture have become pretty weak and politics tends to push into areas that are culturally weak. And so that's going to be the, you know, analysis of the 21st century. There is an integration with technology, certainly an integration with communication technology and entertainment media and so on. But the story of the early 21st century is just how much space politics takes up in American culture. It wasn't always that way. It's not healthy when it's that way. Politics isn't big enough to handle human creativity or storytelling or relationships or certainly marriage and having babies or all the other things that it's creeped into and pushed out other influences. So I think that that is an interesting thing to consider. But there are consequences, and the consequences are going to be for art and entertainment as well as many other areas of culture.
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Well, John, tomorrow we are running a full 30 minute interview with your co host from the Truth Rising documentary, Os Guinness. We covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes. The crisis of truth, the roots of Western cultural drift, the difference between the American and French visions of freedom. Good conversation. But I wanted to draw out one theme that I think has a nice tie to the documentary Oz's argument that the west is not doomed to decline and fall. Biblically, the pattern is exile and return. And he says the turning point there is repentance. So here's a brief excerpt from that part of our conversation.
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Let's hear that the west will decline, the American republic will decline, unless there's a return to the Lord. But freedom means a freedom even in repentance. Sadly, there are some evangelicals who have such a heavy view of predestination they're almost theological determinants, too. But you can see in the Bible there's a freedom to repent. And as the Lord says, or rather Moses says in the Lord's name and many other prophets do, if you return to me, says the Lord, I will return to you and restore your fortunes. And that, of course, in Christian history is the story of revival. Think of how the First Awakening led to the American Revolution. Think of how the First Awakening saved England, as historians have said from the French Revolution, the Second Awakening, incredible impetus for reforms, including slavery. In other words, we are realists. We look at reality unblushingly and realistically, and we will decline unless there's a massive return. But the Awakening is something when the Word speaks in power and conviction, and the Spirit comes down in power and conviction, and there's an incredible transformation.
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Well, John, I love the hopefulness in that. It's really what the doctor ordered and, you know, on Thanksgiving week. What a great thought.
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It's a great thought. And Oz is a Gandalf for our generation. Certainly it's been such an honor to work with him on this project. And we've been thrilled at the response. The aim is to call people to this cultural moment as if it's part of their understanding of their vocation and their calling, because it is. And part of the Christians who toolkit, in fact, fundamental to it. What shapes their perspective is this idea of hope. But our hope isn't just that redemption and renewal and repentance are possible, although they are. And Oz is exactly right that the Bible talks about that and the Bible lays these options out. But our ultimate hope, and this is something that's laid out both in the documentary and in the study, is not in what happens in our cultural moment. It's what we know to be true about the whole story of the world, and that is that it's centered around the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And now human history is secure. And the whole point has always been to see the chaos and the seriousness of the civilizational moment that we're in in light of what is ultimately true, with a capital T of the whole story of the world. Our freedom is something that is God given and the way that God has made us. Somehow God is supervising the flow of human history, and our actions really matter. So the opportunity here for Christians is unbelievable. Oz is exactly right. Not just for people, not just for people sharing with other people, but also in our making our decisions and then letting God bring about the results. I mean, we tell the story in the film of Jack Phillips. And I've just remembered over and over and over how many people told Jack he should just bake the cake because that's what Jesus would do and he should just bake the cake. As if God wasn't able to use Jack's obedience to make an incredible difference in a lot of lives and our understanding of free speech and our nation, the most important nation in the civilization we're talking about. Listen. Oz is right. Do what's right. Make the choice and we leave the rest up to God.
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Well, be sure and listen to our OS Guinness interview tomorrow. You'll find it in your podcast feed for the world and everything in it. John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center. He is host of the Breakpoint Podcast. John, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and we will catch you back here next time.
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Catch you next time. Thank you both.
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Additional support comes from Dort University, where pre med students gain knowledge through undergraduate research and hone skills through hands on simulations. Dort Edu from Free Lutheran Bible College, grounding students in the Word of God for life in Jesus Christ on campus and in person in Plymouth, Minnesota, flbc Edu World and from Cedarville University, equipping students for professional excellence and gospel impact. Cedarville. Edu World.
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Today is Friday, November 28th. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day. Good morning, I'm Nick Iker.
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And I'm Myrna Brown. Coming next on the World and everything in it Christmas albums to season your holidays despite perennial complaints about the commercialization of Christmas, there's never a shortage of sacred Christmas recordings. To right the balance, here's world music critic Arsenio Arteza.
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The December 1995 issue of the American Spectator featured the Mark Stein article, It's the Best Time of the Year. Stein wrote about what he called the American Christmas. He meant by that term an occasion whose popular songs were able to unify a country. We don't have popular culture anymore, he wrote. But uniquely in today's fragmented market, seasonal songs cross all boundaries. Thirty years later, the market is more fragmented than ever, but seasonal songs still cross boundaries. Boundaries Stein had in mind pop songs such as White Christmas and Winter Wonderland. But he could have just as easily been thinking of Handel's Messiah. It was originally composed as an Easter oratorio, but it's become synonymous with Christmas. This is a selection from Messiah Choruses by the vocal ensemble the 16 under the direction of Harry Christophers. The album is a condensed version of their complete 2008 Messiah recording, but they have a newly recorded seasonable album as well, called the Wise Men and the Star. It's an a cappella collection of what the back cover accurately calls much loved traditional carols, interspersed with inspirational modern classics and little known treasures. For listeners who like their Christmas carols a little less traditional, there's Joy to the World by the Grammy winning 12 man choir Chanticleer and the conductor Tim Keillor. A good example of how they avoid making just another Christmas choral album is their arrangement of once in Royal David's City. For the first 40 seconds it's pretty much business as usual. Then some very interesting harmonies come into play. The arrangement is a clear example of what Keeler means in his liner notes when he writes that the magic of Christmas lies in old meeting new. It's a motif that runs throughout the album, and not only where the arrangements are concerned. The 19th century Carol Good King Wenceslaus, for instance, gets medleyed with the 20th century Lorenz Hart pop song Little Girl Blue. That the two would make a good blend is hardly obvious, but as performed by Chanticleer, the combination makes sense. And count your fingers. There's a plethora of good choral Christmas recordings this year. For listeners without the time or money for more than one or two, the decision will come down to repertoire, but even that isn't always enough. For instance, both the 16's the wise men and the star and the St. Martin's voices a babe Is Born Music for Christmas contain the 15th century English hymn Adam Lay I Bounden. The 16's version performed to Boris Ord's melody sounds like this. Saint Martin's Voices, on the other hand, perform it to a melody composed by Vicente Chavarria and it sounds like. Same text, but melodically they're two different songs. For fresh evidence supporting Stein's thesis, we can turn to the album Cuban Christmas by the Sarabanda. The Serrabanda numbers among its specialties, imbuing classical pieces with Cuban dance rhythms such as salsa, bolero and mambo. On Cuban Christmas, the type of border crossing songs that Stein had in mind get the treatment beginning with the album's opener. The centerpiece of the album is an eight minute suite devoted to selections from Tchaikovsky's the Nutcracker. Before hearing an example of those, though, it's good to remember that the first musicians to introduce new rhythms into Tchaikovsky's ballet were the American jazz titans Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. The Sarabanda's Tchaikovsky interpretations are a kind of tribute to Ellington's and Strayhorn's. They are not, however, copies. The Cuban accents with which they imbue Tchaikovsky sound nothing like the American accents employed by the Duke. One final album of note is the Southern Christmas Songbook and hymnal by the Americana stalwarts Spooner Oldham, Oteal Burbridge, Billy Crane, Tammy Rogers, and Marco Giovino. It was my favorite Christmas album of 2016, but somehow I forgot to write about it that year. And because it was no longer new, I've avoided writing about it ever since. Well, no more. An instrumental collection of 11 classic carols performed with energy yet reverence. It's simply too good to ignore. I may be going out on a limb, but I think Mark Stein would approve. I'm Arsenio Ortezz.
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Today is Friday, November 28th. Good morning, this is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Myrna Brown.
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And I'm Nick Eicher. Next up, carving memory into stone. For centuries, gravestones were made by hand, one hammer strike after another. Machines have taken over most of that work. But in a corner of South Carolina, one stone cutter is keeping the older craft alive, honoring loved ones the way his family has for generations. World's Kristen Flavin has the story.
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Carving gravestones is a very sobering experience.
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David Gillespie says he's a student of the brevity of life.
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All I do is carve stones for people to mark a spot for their memory.
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Today he's showing World's Carissa Garcia a five foot tall tombstone.
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As you can see, it throws up a lot of dust.
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Using only a mallet and chisel, he carves a scene of rocks jutting out.
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Of the ocean and with relief carving. You're really not carving things anatomically correct. You're trying to trick the eye.
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Below the relief, Celtic knots and lettering are sketched on the stone waiting to be carved.
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See, when I strike the chisel with the mallet, it leaves striations. You can see them right here. And those striations show that some man did this. It wasn't a machine that did this.
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Gillespie is a stonecutter from Pumpkintown, South Carolina, a tiny community outside Greenville nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. This is a family trade. Gillespie learned about that on a visit to an old graveyard with his mother. She told him about one of their ancestors who was a talented stonecutter.
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I asked Mama, I said, where is his gravestone at? She said, well, nobody carved a stone for him when he died in 1819. And I thought, why don't I just learn how to carve A stone. I'll just carve a stone for her.
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He tried teaching himself for a couple of months without much success. But after receiving a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission, he flew out to Rhode island for two days of instruction.
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But when I got back home, I took that chisel and turned it a different way, and all of a sudden, I was carving in an hour when I was taking a day to carve.
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Around 70% of Gillespie's business comes from carving new stones. Restoration is the rest. There are many things that can damage stones over time, and erosion from the elements is the primary problem. But it's not the only concern when it comes to preservation.
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You know, it's not the size of the stone that keeps it lasting longer. It's the. The type of material. And you hope and pray that none of these graveyard sextons, as they call them, the lawnmowers, bash into them, the weed eaters trim them.
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That makes Gillespie picky when it comes to his commissions. Some stones are more easily damaged than others, so Gillespie prefers to work with slate. It's a stone that allows for detailed carving while still being durable and weather resistant.
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The slate is smooth. You know, it's like almost like carving froze butter is how I describe it.
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The craft of stone cutting is usually passed down generationally from parent to child.
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From master to apprentice, because it's an unbroken tradition. It's special because it's not that you just kind of hacked it out and figured it out. It was passed down from person to person. And so that's why I do hope someday I can pass it down to somebody down here to keep the tradition alive.
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But Gillespie and his wife Renee, don't have any children, and he's hesitant to share the tricks of the trade with others. With only around two dozen stonecutters in the US and none who do it full time in the South, Gillespie is worried he could create his own competition.
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I probably need to get rid of that mentality, but that's just kind of where I'm at right now, is because it's such a niche thing, it actually is to my advantage that it's niche.
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But Gillespie says he's considering passing the craft to a young man in his church. And since he hopes to be carving for a few more decades, that may be the amount of time he needs to properly train his replacement.
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If I showed somebody every trick that I knew, it took me about 10 or 15 years to kind of get. I don't want to say master it, because you never master anything, but it's like to get comfortable enough to say, I might could actually make a living doing that.
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Stone carving is time consuming and labor intensive, with faster or cheaper modern options readily available. So what motivates Gillespie to keep this ancient craft alive?
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Down in Abbeville, where my people are from, my ancestor carved a gravestone for one man. His name was John Davidson. He died in 1795. And I said, I cannot find any record of his existence on earth, whether it be property search papers, census probate court. On paper, this guy never existed. The only document that's left on this earth that testifies that this man was living on this earth was this gravestone that my ancestor carved for him.
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Gillespie says people sometimes ask whether his work is depressing. He says it's not. And his wife Renee explains, it's a way of marking history and honoring the lives of other people. We obviously are are all going to die. So I think it's a great privilege to be able to share the talents that God's given us to come up with a monument that would mark someone's grave. So Gillespie pays special care to keep each individual in mind as he carves.
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I'll put up a picture beside of me in the shop of the person itself. That'll show this is somebody's father. This is somebody's mother or granddaughter, grandmother. This isn't just a job. This represents a soul for world.
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I'm Kristin Flavin with reporting from Carissa Garcia.
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All right, time now to name the crew who helped to put this week's programs together. David Bonson, Caleb Weldy, Mary Reichert, Lauren Canterbury, Emma Eicher, Jenny Ruff, Herbie Newell, John Willsey, Ann Bergdorf, Janie B. Cheney, Hunter Baker, Onise Adua, Colin Garbarino, Jenny Schmidt, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Arsenio Ortezza, and Carissa Garcia. Thanks also to our breaking news crew, Kent Covington, Daniel Devine, Christina Grube and Steve Klosterman. And thanks to the moonlight maestros, Ben Eicher and Carl Peetz. Harrison Waters is Washington producer. Kristen Flavin is features editor. Paul Butler is executive producer. Les Sillers is editor in chief. I'm Nick Iker.
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And I'm Myrna Brown. If you enjoy this podcast, help a friend find it too. Send a link to a favorite story or the whole podcast right from your app. One click helps a friend start the day the way you do and helps make the program grow. The world and everything in it comes to you from World Radio. World's mission is biblically objective. Journal that informs, educates and inspires. The Bible says for this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God and and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Verses 15 through 18 of 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 a reminder to attend a Bible believing church this weekend. Encourage others and let others encourage you. And Lord willing, we'll be right back here Monday morning. Go now in grace and peace.