Latest / Sword&Spade / Your Children Will See Your Failings Someday w/ Adam Taylor

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Your Children Will See Your Failings Someday w/ Adam Taylor · Sword&Spade

• speaker-0 (00:00.298) All we're doing, brother, is just like taking kids, sawing off the top of their head, cramming truth for 18 years, seal it back up, sew it on, and say, here you go. hope that sustains you going forward. But if it doesn't live in here, if the two aren't connected, you know, forget about it. speaker-1 (00:24.046) Friends and listeners and subscribers to Sword and Spade magazine. Welcome to the Sword and Spade Podcast. My name's Jason Craig. I'm excited to be with you. A lot of times we have guests that I don't know, and it's really interesting and fun to get to know them. I know this guy a little bit better. We have moments where we were together and we probably thought simultaneously, we're not drinking and smoking enough, and we're not drinking and smoking enough. we've had a grand time every time we've been been able to be together and it's because we share I don't know what we share, Adam, but Adam Taylor is a former Marine, a perennial educator, formerly with St. Marne's Academy until only recently, and he's gonna tell us about a new endeavor he's a part of now. And I actually just found out, I know readers of of Sword and Spade will know the name John Sr. comes up a whole lot. He has this I don't know, he's like a haunting spirit for a lot of things. and his educational philosophy, you know, there's there's two people that did a great service to John Sr. 'Cause if you go to read like, well, what was his teaching philosophy? You really can't find it from his own lips, even if you read The Death of Christian Culture and and the Restoration of Christian culture. But the two people that did a great favor to John Sr. and his legacy was Father Bethel of Clear Creek Monastery. who wrote return to realism was that the name of it yeah and that one is in the last couple of years has has come out in fact in a book i co edited with jared stout called the American Catholic land movement father beth Bethel offered an adjustment from a chapter in that book about John Sr. and his connection to life on the land and agrarianism in this countr in this country in America. But the other author who did John Senior a favor was James Taylor. I have the book right here. I read this bad boy a long time ago. And I found out this morning that my friend Adam is his son. now given that Adam works at a at a inheritor of John Sr.'s legacy or school and has worked at multiple ones, and we dabble in the same spaces that I didn't know this seems providential, maybe for just this podcast. So speaker-1 (02:46.144) Adam Taylor, welcome to the Sword Spade Podcast. Sorry, that was a long introduction. Yeah, yeah. I can I just ask I know I I don't want to dwell on this too long, but if if somebody I'm sure you've had to do this so many times that you have the elevator pitch. what is poetic knowledge? speaker-0 (03:04.75) Poetic knowledge is the, you know, my dad would argue, actually the highest form of knowledge, even though it comes first, but it is the sensory emotional way by which we come to know and love reality. speaker-1 (03:25.998) Hmm. See that sounds okay, to the conservative conservative, traditionally minded man. That sounds so let me get this right. It's it's the stuff that hits you in the feels. And y your dad would say, Yeah, un w without embarrassment. speaker-0 (03:42.092) Absolutely. No. energetically. my dad was my dad was a he strangely actually loved all these like little colloquialisms, right? Like he loved it's all good because he's like, Well, actually it is all good. So and it hits you in the fields. Yeah, that's kind of a another way of saying, yeah. It's it's that that lifting of the heart and everything inside of us that wants to sing. when we encounter reality. speaker-1 (04:13.998) Yeah, I think he's the I mean y this this book right now I know he's trying to ex I mean he starts the book with talking about with John Sr. but it it begins in you know the famous story from Hard Times, Charles Dickens, where and I saw this on the school I'm gonna ask you about, the St. Joseph's Academy. I saw a horse on the front and I immediately thought of your dad's book that so if you could just I think this is a good for somebody who doesn't quite get it. Like let me get this straight. You guys are just talking about like the feel good stuff. Tell give us the the analogy your dad opens the book. speaker-0 (04:49.494) Yeah, so is he is Yeah, so it's Hard Times and it's in the the great British classroom of Professor Gradgrind and intrigue Dickensian fashion. The names tell you so much more that you know about the person than even his lengthy descriptions. But yeah, in this classroom, where it's orderly and everything has to flow by process and the next step and the next step, he posits a question to his students. who can tell him what a horse is? and there's a girl in his class, her name is Sissy Jupe. Again, a great name. and she, of course, knows what a horse is because her father works with horses. I believe he's a farrier and saddle maker and the rest, but he knows horses so well inside and out. And she knows what a horse is. And so I can't remember if he calls on her. I think maybe he calls on her. And she stands up and sort of starts to stammer out, because, you know, of course she's terrified of Professor Grig Grind, who wouldn't be, and starts to stammer out, you know, this kind of response of what she thinks a horse is, by, you know, kind of its its soul and its spirit. And he very quickly shuts her down. And he says, No, what we what we want here, what we only deal with here is the facts. Right? Those things don't mean anything. And so then of course he sits her down and calls upon his eminent pupil, bits her. Which again, like, is Dickens a prophet? Yes. The fact that we live in the age of bits and bites and we have Bitzer, I mean, come on. So he calls he calls on Bitzer who proudly stands up and begins to recite off all these, you know, bicuspid, twenty-four teeth, four legs, you know, all these, you know, physical scientific characteristics, the the disassembly of a horse by its parts. the facts. And is very smug in his knowledge and and rewarded warmly by Professor Grandgrind for his knowledge of a horse when only Sissy Jup knows what it feels like to be on the back of a horse in the mane, flying in the wind, in her face, in the feel of that horse underneath her and what it smells like and and the rest. So there you go. speaker-1 (07:08.098) Yeah. So John Sr. would take that, you know, and he would critique I I which and it always cracks me up 'cause this was in the seventies. He would cre critique the modern student and I and I think he would critique what we would call the liberal and the conservative. He you know, the the liberal is a relativist, so they don't even know that reality is real, that it's so therefore they don't know how to enjoy it. They're too busy deconstructing everything to to be any fun. and then the my favorite line, I think it's from It's from one of the death or restoration Christian culture. He says, you know. And then there's the Catholic parents who send their their children all bowed up. I believe he calls them like panty wastes. because they don't know anything of love or adventure or of danger. so either way, whether you're keeping them shielded from the world in the form of safety or or even an intellectual rigor, I would argue, or you've denatured nature by making truth not findable, you know, in the liberal the relativists. he he says both of both of them are in a form dead. and I think this is it, you know, I I the educational philosophy that I've I've seen, I think I I don't know if it was you, somebody handed me like the philosophy curriculum for the St. Martins, and it was just these series of beautiful quotes about wonder. my favorite one being from Descartes, who said once people understand what I will tell them, they won't wonder anymore. speaker-0 (08:45.198) Wonder what a cloud is, yeah. speaker-1 (08:47.594) No more wonder. So tell me what it's been like. I want to ask about your father specifically, but trying to now carry on your father's legacy, this form of education, which, in case anyone is not interested at this point, this mode, this this tradition of poetic knowledge arrived in the United States in this continent at just the right time and has given us great gifts from St. Gregory's, St. Martin's Academy, Wyoming Catholic College, I would Clear Creek Monastery, I would argue. lives changed. My family, when people if people were to say, Well, what's the one book that where you why do you live the way you live? I would say John Sr. he's like William Faye says he's like a drug that you almost don't want to give people. So in case you're thinking, you know, this is just an S this is the this the the ripple effect of this this these ideas are some of the most exciting and invigorating. parts of the church right now. So me just say if you're not interested, you're the problem. You should be. that being said, having now being somebody who's carrying on this heritage for you much more literally than than me, what has it been like, you know, because I first read John Sr. in 2009, now educating students in a world of the hyper artificiality, what is it like to try to awaken wonder One, awake and wonder in the students, and two, convince their parents this is something worth teaching and it's not just fluff. speaker-0 (10:17.666) Yeah. Yeah. Great question. so maybe I'll weave it together a little bit with kind of my own encounter, right? In in that the arc of seeing you're my father in in school. And so I'll I'll reverse the words of the of the famous poem and say that I came to this education, this mode in the fullness, if you will, of of kind of my dad's vision, soon and late. Right. Meaning that that was my childhood. up until I was, you know, 14, 15 or so. we were profoundly, I mean, one, I think my dad was already attuned, and my mother especially, perhaps even more than my dad. My mother was very attuned to the life of the real, right? Gardening, kidding her own food, working around the house, you know, making her own bread. I mean, she was definitely like she would love the liturgy of the home, right? Like she would be all about it. music, the rest. And so I kind of had that already. But then as soon as my dad started to flow in that circle of John Sr. and Ellick and Quinn and the rest of those guys, then it just like on fire. and so like, you know, I have I have memories of childhood of, you know, senior in our a family living room, right? And just this that, you know, didn't know anything about him other than he was a man that had these solemn but twinkling merry eyes that just sort of presided like Gandalf over You know, the evening's entertainment. And and so, you know, that was kind of the childhood. And of course my dad was in the middle of writing Poet Knowledge, which was his doctorate thesis at KU. and so we had them as mentors to write that as he was doing it. and then speaker-1 (12:03.438) Sorry, wait, then I'm then I'm getting this wrong then. I I thought poetic knowledge was born out of his encounter with John Sr. You're saying he was already working on this. speaker-0 (12:14.274) Well, no. I mean it was born out of the encounter of it. Right. And so my dad as a teacher all his life, you know, at least professional life mostly, had already been chewing on these ideas and reading the great works. I think I think senior for him in that group was the spark. That was the catalyst. It was like, this is what I've been looking for. They've helped me articulate it. So yeah. speaker-1 (12:37.742) Okay, sorry, continue the story. Yeah. He's finishing this the what would become poetic knowledge. speaker-0 (12:43.096) Yeah. So he's finishing this up and then you know, a little personal family tragedy in my life kind of shattered that that sort of idyllic childhood for a while. and to be quite honest, I was a bit of a lost soul and wandering a bit and eventually bumped my way around to the Marines. joined at nineteen. no plans to stay in it more than four years and perhaps go back to school and teach. and then you know, got married and it just kind of was increasingly clear each time I kind of you know made the mark or made that came up to that mark to stay or leave, to stay in. So I ended up doing 20 years in the Marines. and had a great career, did well, learned so many things, learned many, many things, and especially poetically, when I look back on it, right? the military is a great poetic teacher. it's still one of the one of the true things it has, it does well, is that Yeah, no you've got to put it into word. It ha or the word has to become action. Right. It's ultimately aimed at that. And so that was wonderful. but I always knew in the back of my head, I mean, every every time it kinda came up to either stay or get out of the marines, I was like, I'd talk to my wife and I'd say, like, I honey, I just wanna get out, I just wanna teach. 'cause I've known since I was like sixteen years old that I want to be a teacher. I I remember looking in this move, I went and pulled one of my little memory books from my graduation, you know, those cheesy ones and you know. Nobody writes anything and there was hardly anything written in it. But the one line that was like, what do you see yourself doing? Like career. And it was I in my handwriting, architect or teacher. and so like I just knew this. It was back in my head, and you know, I'd get angsty be like, I need go teach. And my wife, being a wise woman, just said, you know, God willing, you have time. Right? if you want to teach where you want to teach, then look, a military retirement is not Gonna pay all the bills, but it's certainly free you up a little bit. And so that proved true. and so when I retired in 2013, I was looking around kind of places to go, went back to our kind of family ancestry place in St. Mary's, Kansas. Most of our family was there. Worked as a corporate guy for about seven years of all things, in like big data analytics, you know, crazy world. Huh. speaker-1 (15:07.982) did not know that part. speaker-0 (15:10.39) No, which sounds so weird given my formation and background. it flowed from a military work I was in military intelligence. don't laugh too hard, the Marines have intelligence, you know. We can tell crayon colors apart from each other. speaker-1 (15:22.83) Somebody's gotta do it. speaker-0 (15:26.24) Somebody's got to do it, right? but but did that, and actually that was in hindsight also another great preparation because like it lifted the veil of like modernity and where this like technological, hyper-scientific world is like hurtling towards. And so that was fascinating. I look back on it and go, wow. but then eventually that road led me to St. Martin's. through mutual friends, Jim Vogel and some others. Heard about this little thing going on down there, the Prairie Troubadour and then St. Martin's. And so took the family down to go visit and said, Well, I think this is where God's calling us. And so moved the family down there, I guess about eight years ago now. And my son joined the school, St. Martin's. He was at Greg's for his first year. And we were just kind of there just to help and support the school any way we could, until two years later, position came open and they asked and and I said, Yes. Fiat. And the last six years I've been teaching and working at St. Martin's and the best, the best and most fruitful work of my entire life, with without a doubt. It's not even close. and so that was that was kind of the journey looping back, and then of course, in the last six to eight years, really coming back to reread my father so many times, go and pull up some of his old writings, and in kind of a, you know, he passed what. five years ago, I think, this April. and so in a way sort of returning this beautiful gift back to itself with him before he passed. speaker-1 (17:03.416) So did he well one, the the story, I believe the the family tragedy is what you wrote about for us in the death issue of sword and spade. So if anybody if anybody wants to visit that, it's it's beautiful and we'll just we'll leave it at that. We'll let them go find that. the legacy living within the legacy and continuing with your father. So did you you you said you maybe you didn't have an awareness of the gift you were receiving. You know, I I have one son who's speaker-0 (17:12.205) I did, but speaker-1 (17:32.696) Who's going? He's getting older and he's articulating an awareness of this is really good, what we're doing here, you know, and like well, that's what you want to hear eventually. Was there a time when y you and your father were ever I mean, did you ever have to go through what I I don't believe is the to be necessary, but is still common, sort of estrangement from his legacy or himself during that period? speaker-0 (17:58.998) You know, that's it's funny. There were at times, but it was less his legacy and more him the man. Right? Like every every son has to wake up one day where they or or has a moment where they wake up one day and they see all their father's failings. You know? And that's that's a crucial moment in a young man's life. And what do you do with it? and so for me, you know, it's probably a little bit more convoluted than most. you know, I had I had, you know, my dad and I buttered heads quite a bit. but it was never over the good that he gave us. Right. that and it's funny because ten years ago I was up at Benedictine doing a a program master's program up there and we were all out having a a little drink in contemplation of our studies in the evening. And somebody, you know, was asking me about this and and kind of said, Well, man, how did you just not completely lose it, you know? as a teenager and afterwards. And I said, honestly, it was that good, true, and the beautiful that was the formation of my childhood. It's what saved me. Like that was never in question. And I I know for a fact that's what sustained me. Because I remember I remember in my head, fifteen years old, right, coming to grips with, you know, this thing. speaker-1 (19:20.312) Can you just I'm sorry, we we're we we've lost her, but can just tell the quick the quick story of what happened? speaker-0 (19:25.218) Yeah, quick story. Hot summer day, July, kind of actually July twenty-seventh of nineteen eighty-six. family was living outside of Lawrence. And like we were wanting to do to escape the heat on July day, we went up to Lake Perry, which is kind of the closest lake, to go swimming for a couple hours. And my dad stayed at home. The rest of us all family piled in the truck and headed up there. And and then as we were coming back home, crossing a little town just, you a mile or two up from our farmhouse. came to a railroad crossing and I was driving. you know, I was super excited driving, fourteen years old, my learners permit and show off and came to a stop. And there was a it's a it's not a very good crossing, just safety wise anyway. and got hit by a train. and so my three young three of my younger siblings passed away and my mom passed away from that when I was fourteen. speaker-1 (20:22.84) So that's what when you were telling somebody this story, you say, How did you not lose it? And in a certain way, that is what I guess the what one of John Senior's points is that if you have not encountered reality including the suffering, y you're not prepared for it. So not to say you can be prepared for something like that. That would be ridiculous. But you you still look at what I guess the gift of what the formation your father gave you. speaker-0 (20:51.02) Yeah. Yeah, because because a thing like that forces you, which many people don't get this fully, or they don't get it until maybe later in life, but you get asked a fundamental question. Like confrontation with death forces a human person to ask this great question. Why? What for? What does it all mean? Right? And so, like like you, you know, your insight there. Like I was forced to ask the get asked that question at a very early age. And what's the alternative? The alternative is it makes no sense at all, right? Life is meaningless and pointless. And, you know, it's despair that way lies, right? Despair and chaos and in the rest. Or there's a reason. I don't know what it is. I don't know when I'll know what it is. Who knows? But there's a reason. Because if there isn't, madness that way lies. speaker-1 (21:46.54) Hmm. And did so w you were going towards what possibly was the estrangement with your father? Was it after that? Because it was like is that kind of ran off to the Marines? I mean speaker-0 (21:58.082) Yeah, it was after that. It was kind of my late what you would call teenage years. you know, just because you know, unrealized expectations of a of a young son of his father, right? Like I I look back on it now and I'm like, I don't think I had enough sympathy for his grief or empathy for his grief, you know. you know, because a son, like something like this happens, you look to your father, right? And you're like, stand firm, stand tall. That's the man I want to look up to. And not that he didn't. 'Cause he certainly did. But it, you know, he had a lot of moments where he wasn't. Like, you know, he had the heck, he had to have us live with another family for about six, eight months that were kind of relative strangers to us. because he had to go get psychiatric treatment, right? He just disappeared off the face of the earth. You know, and so some of those things, you know, in my, you know, poor, you know, understanding as a child, you kind of like rage against. You're like, why, dad, right? You know, why weren't you there? But now in hindsight, I look back and like, Dear Lord, how did he keep it together? Knowing what I know now as a father, even you know, somewhat darkly, like the burden he was carrying. and so, you know, the few years of that, but then perspective comes, right? My own time in the military, responsibility, suffering, sacrifice. Then your own children come along and you're like, okay. And that was that, that was kind of that that full arc back where you look back and you say, like, who am I to judge? My father in that regard, right? Like and so that was that was a beautiful, full sort of reconciliation conversion. Yeah, speaker-1 (23:35.618) Yeah. Our mutual friend Trey Bailey and I were discussing, we're we're we were preparing you know the some of the some of the content guides that guys in fraternists that use the daily sword and spade that they use and and we're getting to humility and it's like how does how can we help fathers? How can we help ourselves when that inevitable day happens when our children realize that we're not gods. And I think how a man deals with that moment is actually whether or not there's a bridge into an ongoing relationship or not. Now it can be healed later, but just it just in my work with fraternists and it's just I I hear this story over and over. And the men that have the capacity or the what we would call the virtue of humility to To admit fault and then not just say like I was wrong, which is really hard for dads to do. Hey, I might be wrong. is cause because they're I mean that's a big deal for dad to say I'm wrong, I was wrong, because every you know, you literally you have the place of authority to d to like declare right and wrong in the home, the form of the rules and orders that you impose. But to be able to let your son into your suffering a little bit, yeah Which is why I I sorry, this is off maybe but re I've been so struck lately by why our Lord in the New Testament, like God use we use brothers and sons, like when you're saved, it's because you become a son, right? And even Hebrews says you become a like Jesus is like our brother. But there's this one instance and we use it to develop all sorts of theology and books and talks, but it's really it only happens once, which is when he says, I now call you friends. And it's because their likeness where he he condescends to become like them, right? Because friendship is born on likeness. And then he allows him them into his authority and into his suffering. Which I think if there's something about us fathers, we can't we can't pull that curtain the way our Lord does for his disciples. So we can't we don't call them friends. And I think what happens is a lot like your story, which is all right, well, let's speaker-0 (25:53.016) Yeah. speaker-1 (25:54.21) Let's find freedom away from you then and then maybe we'll come back and reconcile. So Yeah. Sorry, I'm putting putting words out there, but I was thinking we were just having this discussion. So you you you came to see him as imperfect and you took off to the military or you took off to the Marines or speaker-0 (26:11.926) Well, yeah, and and and you know, I mean, I'm I myself was just I mean, I was barely holding it together, right? Like, you know, I mean, and so, you know, I was a waiter at Olive Garden, you know, just kind of these things, dreams going back to school, that didn't work out. It's just kind of flailing around, honestly. And I was in Wichita at the time working at the Olive Garden and also at a suit store at the mall. and My brother, older brother, just kept telling me, Hey, you should talk to this Marine recruiter up in Topeka, Kansas. I kept putting it off, put it off. And so finally I did and I called him up. And it was so funny because you know, I got talking about he's Well, what are you what are you looking for? What do you want to do? And I was spewing this thing about, well, you know, I want to do four years and hopefully go back to college, go back school. And he just stopped me and he said, Look, man, if you want all that, this ain't the place for you. If you want to get your you know what together, get some discipline, straighten yourself out. then come back and talk to me. And I kinda hung up the phone like, yeah. I called him two days later. And, you know, a month later I was heading off to boot camp. 'cause I knew I knew that's what I needed. And, you know, I you know, speaking for other military members and maybe listening to the audience, stuff like this, maybe this will ring true. But I think for I think for men that or young men that have had a good formation, a good family, like any service boot camp, doesn't It's not so much as it transforms you as it reminds you of who you really were and you who you really are. Like in the great words of our lady of philosophy to Boetheus, right? You have forgotten who you really are. And so for me, boot camp in the military was that recovering of myself that I lost in the accident and lost for those few years. And probably why I enjoyed it so much and we thrived only like we're mutually beneficial to each other, was this sort of steady. sort of breaking down of of walls and and and r healing and recovery. speaker-1 (28:14.914) Hmm. Did you was it just the rigor and discipline of the Marines that you would say brought about that healing? Or did you have to like I mean that I mean I'm sure this goes on forever. I mean this is just in your heart now. But was it was there help like this guy did did he know your story, the the recruiter to say, Hey, look, I get it. You had a tragedy, you've fallen apart. I can help you I can help you get put back together, but I'm not here to make your dreams come true. speaker-0 (28:41.976) Yeah. I he didn't know the full story. Obviously he kind of knew it because you gotta do some screening and that kind of thing, right? mostly for Psyche Val. But but yeah, that was about it. But I mean along the way it was you know, the the the the atmosphere, the best things about the military, right? Like, you know, you know, put the nonsense aside and you stay away from those things. Like their core values are still good, virtuous core values, right? And and so that the structure, the stability, just the cadence, if you want to call it that. it like, you know, it's one of the things it does. And it's it's so funny because I remember there was this Marine General Zinni, kind of famous there in the 90s. and he wrote his retirement speech. He's Anthony Zinni, I think he's from Philadelphia, Italian from Philadelphia. His retirement speech is beautiful if anyone wants to find it. But he talks about growing up where for him there were two options. Right? Become a priest or become a Marine. And he and he weaves the connection between those. You can do the same for the monastery, right? Where this cutting off of all these superfluous things from yourself, which the military can do, provides that peace, right? That space within that sort of quieter space where you're not worried about all these other things because they just don't matter anymore, that allows you to kind of reconnect. So that was part of it for sure. Good friends along the way. Got married, my wife, who I had known since I was six years old. We grew up together in St. Mary's. so that was, I mean, she's been, I I couldn't I couldn't even begin to measure the amount of healing that that that she's brought to me in my life. and in so many ways. And then eventually after her stubborn insistence, and it wasn't really until about two and a half years ago, did I ever actually go to formal counseling. And that was kind of a last sort of capstone event. I think, at least in that part of healing. As you say, like it's going to continue until, you know, now and perhaps God willing, all of eternity. but but yeah, those were kind of the the key pieces of it. And then, you know, lastly was again coming back to like all the things that I had known when I was young, going back and rereading all these great books and reading all these great stories, reading them to my children, seeing my children grow. speaker-0 (31:06.392) Being a part of that, right? All those things contributed to the to the healing. speaker-1 (31:10.87) Yeah. So man, you're you're making me think of a couple questions. One, from a father's perspective, we we've been using see you inherited poetic knowledge in the form of being taught by someone. So now you're passing it on, right? So you're a linking generation. For a lot of us, we're like myself, we're converts. You know, steady diet of of Beavis and Butthead and you know skater punk culture in the Wu Tang clan that speaker-0 (31:40.886) Mm-hmm. speaker-1 (31:42.166) Now trying to like have that. You know, it's like I I had the other day this he was a priest a priest, he was or actually he was a deacon, but he's with the fraternity of St. Peter's, he's a traditionalist. He's on his way to being ordained, traditional priest. He goes, All these traditionalists crack me up. They're not traditionalists because they didn't inherit it. It was like a really simple meaning, like they're doing their best checking the notes of of an error that wasn't handed on to them. So to pretend yeah that I'm merely carrying on some great thing. Like, no, that's how great the disruption. in our culture has been is that for most of us we are in a place of of healing or recovery or redemption or so what was yeah what were the things what was the poetic knowledge in your home because you just now we're we're I realize now we're talking about it to someone on the outside. I have some knowledge of of of that but for but from reading, right? Not from experience. So so what was it with your dad? speaker-0 (32:40.448) Well, I mean, it was you know, obviously it was the great stories. My dad was a wonderful storyteller, right? Especially bedtime stories. he would just sort of combine or take or sometimes whole cloth, make his own bedtime stories up. it was his own storytelling about his life, right? So they kind of like cast these things in imaginations. That's one part of it. But they were real things, right? It wasn't just like fantastic fantasy stories. They were actually about places in his life, Taos and Idaho and all these crazy places. New York City when he went and cut an album with a group way back when he was like 18 years old, right? Like, you know. And so like, you know, those are both imaginative. They're wondrous, but they're also connected to something real. And the real is him, right? And in the truth of that. But then just how we lived, right? we we chose, my parents chose to live simply. I think they were kind of on the backside of the the hippie generation, right? You know. So in the early seventies, they they moved to Taos, New Mexico, where I was born. And, you know, dreams of opening a a picture framing shop and an art studio and a book, you know, a a bookstore and all the rest. But you know, every successful place they went, like we always had a family garden, right? you know, I don't know, you probably know these things, the Suffolk or not Suffolk, Firefox. yeah, Foxfire. Foxfire. Foxfire. yeah. Like they had the whole library of those. speaker-1 (34:06.54) That's so great to hear. speaker-0 (34:08.453) And you know, and and so you know, they were studious of those and then would go try to live it out. And so my mom, you know, painted, she wrote, she wrote poetry, she sang to us, she taught us how to sing music, piano, baking, cooking. I mean, she was, and I know it sounds like hagiography just because, you know, she's she's passed on and we tend to over whatever, but like my mother was an incredible woman, so talented. She, for example, I mean so her her background is Rodriguez, Hispanic German. And in St. Mary's, when it was first starting out, they wanted to teach the the girls Irish jig dancing, right? and and so she taught herself and then taught them, right? Like it's just that kind of who she was. And so, you know, in our house was just filled with kind of either song, music, story, fire, good friendship, and then work making things, not just consuming things. adventure. You know, my brother and I just, I mean, we spent most of our days living outside, whacking at each other two by fours for swords and building, you know, taking apart the lawnmower, putting it back together again, working up at the school barn, shoveling pig stalls and working in the gardens and animals. So it was just like I look back and thank God it was the age right before the eighties with the computers, right? The advent of the computer, the late nine mid eighties, eight late nineties. It's just one part of our life. And and so it was just like it was the most real childhood that I could think of. And I think it was just immersion in the goodness of reality. And my parents were, I think, were just kind of along the way, like all good teachers are, is one, to then, you know, be actively driving and participating in it. But two, they themselves believed it. Like it wasn't faking the funk, you know, wasn't putting on a show. And then three, they were so good at wait, stop and look at this. Right. See that. Come and see this. Right. which is so good along with childhood and development of you know, those those who notice things and those who have been attentive to things and are attentive to things, just merely being sort of like the guide for the rest of us. So that was that was the the childhood, an immersion in reality. speaker-1 (36:34.584) So that's yeah, anybody who's listening who doesn't know the whole poetic knowledge, John Sr. thing, it's it was his, you know, what Father Bethel called the restoration of realism, which is the sort of what what Sr. would call the the perennial war, really, between warring intellectual factions of is reality real and is it accessible? Yeah. And that seems so esoteric, but it's not because if you think of the world as just a mental construct or just the the the silliness that comes out of that is it's it's constant, whether it's relativism or or extreme liberalism or whatever. it's it's but one of the things he was concerned about is artificiality severs us from reality. which is interesting. This isn't just get outside and you know bang on your brother with a two by four, which is a great thing to do. You should do that. but it's also encounter the danger of a of a fairy tale, right? Without explaining its moral, you know. he was very concerned, senior that is, and your and your father, that being surrounded in artificiality keeps you from ultimately God. Ultimately, because it keeps you from reality, it keeps you from transcending towards the higher things of truth. So that the poet acknowledges that first experience of things, that intuitive emotional sense of reality that you that you've experienced it. so could you could you describe though the place because that sounds like well anybody listening to you who has some sympathy for boys will go, yeah, of course it's better to be outside than inside. Of course it's better. All of those things. but one of the places I that your father and John Sr. really 'Cause think my salvation, I came you divorce home, all sorts of mess. Very typical stuff, you know, we won't have to go into it, but I think I was saved, ultimately opened to the gospel and to truth and to the church because I spent so much time in the woods. just I just lived in the woods and the sense of God was like it was just obvious. I don't think you can grow up in the woods and not believe in God. you might say silly things like I don't like God when he gets under a roof, but like you still you you still know. speaker-1 (38:59.426) But the other side of poetic knowledge is the imaginative, the the the place where the stories sow the seeds. and I think it was one of John Senior's essays, one of his last that little collection of essays that his son wrote a forward to I can't recall the name of it, but where he really laid out or maybe you could help us understand what how where the place of imagination, because the other side it's not just that you have artificiality, so you're inside more than outside, the other side of it. is that your imagination is poorly formed because you're stuck doing what Bitzer would do, which is just learning bits of facts and not really knowing how they fit together. So you never actually arrive at wisdom. So could you describe some of Yeah, what maybe what that looks like in your experience? speaker-0 (39:46.89) Yeah. Well it's it's it's actually and my dad talks about this, spends a bit a bit of time pulling that thread all the way back through like Augustine, Aquinas and the rest, right? Plato and even back to the Greeks. But if we think about what our imagination is, right? It's the imago, right? And so it's the place in our in our in our mind, where this very curious thing happens. And so folks like Q of St. Victor or some of the middle evilists When they they contemplated sort the mind, they they they separated the mind into two sort of components, right? There was the intellectus and the ratio, right? And and the intellectus was actually the part of the mind that is the thing that takes in from your senses. Raw, unfiltered, unanalyzed, no judgments made, no attempt to do that. It's the sitting with reality. In whatever form that is, right? And and and what that is doing is that sensory input for lack of a better term, is coming in, and that is the thing that's getting stored as images in the brain, right? That that's going in there. So a tree you look at, right? That's what's forming that connection. And so the sensory, when you when you add the sensory with the emotional aspect, as we all know. That's the greater connection. Like that just forms such a greater connection. And therefore, what's in your mind, your imagination becomes more vivid. And so then once it's in your imagination, so your imagination is going to be limited by how vivid your reality is, or as you say, how much artificiality is, or how many layers of abstraction there are between you and actual reality. Right. It becomes less of a concrete image in your brain, right? And so then it's the ratio part of the brain that then takes that image and then actually acts upon it and puts it in ratio with other things. This in relationship to other things. How is this tree like another tree? How is this plant like another plant or not like this other plant? How is this story different from this story or similar? Right. And so hearing somebody tell a story where we build these. speaker-0 (42:06.55) images in our mind, especially if we're read to, I mean, that's just the best. Is that what we form in our mind is this base layer, if you will, of reality that's been put in our to our imagination, our Mago. It's vivid, hopefully. And then when I hear a story being read or I read a story, what I form with those words in the story are those things out of my imagination. And so the richer that is, the richer the story is. And that becomes part of me. And then that allows the rational mind To then take those things and start to put them in relationship with each other, not just like physical reality, but also like moral reality. Right. So then we go through the modes of like, what is this trying to teach me? Is there a moral in this story? If so, what? Is there virtue in this story? If so, how? How does that compare to other stories I've heard or other examples of virtue? Right. And all these things are working on top of each other to build in our minds this beautiful, almost like, library, if you will, for us to be able to rationalize upon, which then obviously then goes incorporates and then moves our will to then pursue good out of those things that we see and pursue good more often, hopefully, given the number of examples we have. I I've often I've I've come to use this term lately that I think all formation, meaning any education, but I just call it formation. And especially when it's given to us like this, is a way to achieve prudence before your time. speaker-1 (43:41.854) Mm hmm. Yeah. Well that makes that makes total sense. I mean, a Aquinas says, you know, prudence is the charity of all virtue, and the young cannot have prudence because they don't have experience. So then what do they do? And this is the place we had another guest, I can't recall who said it, who said that, you know, reading a story, the reason you need the stories is that you can live an entire lifetime through the story and and sort of have its wisdom. So that exactly. But if you're trying to simply teach a young man or young woman to think critically, right, at age ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. so they literally stand as lord over the facts that are fed to them on, you know, tablets and and and and flashcards. They have no encounter, no wrestling. They also don't have true prudence because those things aren't in them yet. In the form of either a story or experience. And so the way the imagination is yours, if I'm re-articulating it well, you sort of all these things come into you and then you put them in relationship. I think it's a I think the analogy would be you have the aha that happens when you're not following GPS and you're learning the back roads of maybe your own town or a small town, and you think to yourself, I bet this road comes out near there, and you turn, and when it does You go, and you know that place. And in that knowing, that place becomes more of a hole. Yes. Right. You see the bigger picture and you you expand your knowledge of the place without reducing it to directions. Turn left, turn left at the first Dollar General, then right at the third Dollar General. Right. speaker-0 (45:24.812) It's which could which could occur within a half a mile. speaker-1 (45:27.778) People ask they come to my house, which way is a dollar drenal? Just pick one. Just go in any direction. Within twenty minutes. I think that's what the imagination does. So if if you reduce education to attempting to teach a student, for example, critical thinking, where they they begin not in receiv not in the intellectus. It's an anti intellectual posture to to begin in that in that mode at the very in a sort of skepticism that anything is real. speaker-0 (45:33.449) Ha ha. speaker-0 (45:50.498) Yes. speaker-1 (45:57.912) Then no wonder they end nihilists, jaded relativists. speaker-0 (46:02.55) And and look, like classical and sometimes classical education can fall victim to this too on the other side of the coin. speaker-1 (46:11.342) I think it does more than we admit. Yeah. speaker-0 (46:13.29) I I I agree with you wholeheartedly in that we think the answer then is to say, well, you've got to read all these books and know all the math and the quadrivium and the trivium and how to, you know, logic and rhetoric and disputate and write well and all these things, which are all good and true. Like but if if there's not the corresponding, and it doesn't it isn't just the base layer of that forming the imagination with reality and wonder and the rest that just somehow sort of ends at like I don't know, kindergarten or first grade or second grade or even fifth grade. Like it should continue. Like twelve, you know, twelve, twelve, twelfth grade seniors, when I read them the book Gates of Fire, well, guess what? We go out, we grab some rugby pads, and I went and bought and made eight foot Spartan spears that have the real spearheads on them, weight wise. And we go out, we form a scrum. Right. And we and we go out in the field and like feel what it feels like to do that. And so like it's gotta occur all the way through and it should incur all of our life. But but but the the there's a temptation to be like, okay, well that stuff's for little kids. Great. Now let's get serious about education. And now it's like standard boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, your fourteen year old should know how to tear apart Frankenstein and put it back together, right? The book Frankenstein. Like no, like that that that's a that's a on based on it, I think it's a reactionary idea, but it's an idea that that the the fight to be had with modernity is mostly, if not all, in the life, the mind, the intellectual. Like the battle is an intellectual one. And I think that one's been over rather unwinnable, at least, you know, strategically for a while. Right? The the battle for modernity is actually in a great place. It's in the heart. Right. And so this is why, like the monks, you know, especially the Benedictines are still just so ever relevant. Why senior quotes them, right? Incline, my son, the ear of your heart. Right. And so that's where it's at. It's like if if it doesn't give you the feels, right? As you said, when you first get it, and then that gets moved upward through the human person and then takes root and expanded upon and made real and and even more real by our mind. speaker-0 (48:37.036) And then our will, all we're doing, brother, is just like taking kids, sawing off the top of their head, cramming truth for 18 years, seal it back up, sew it on, and say, Here you go. hope that sustains you going forward. But if it doesn't live in here, if the two aren't connected, you know, forget about it. speaker-1 (48:55.478) Yeah. Would you agree that same and then I I hope this doesn't sound like a simple fishing question because of your educational career right now, but it seems to show itself the whole c I I think not be too hard on it, but like the overpromising of the classical education world is becoming more and more manifest as we just witness the sort of young men that it's producing. And the the lack of integration with generationality with their own fathers. Like I I have a good friend of mine who said, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of them telling him my son's gotta read, you know, he's gotta be reading this or he's not classically educated. If he's not reading with me, what is it? Who cares? It's not here meaning he wanted it to be rooted in this like generational experience in the in the encounter with reality. And so one, the world of classical education has a lot of experts, very few fathers. meaning rooted in a in a in a place training up their sons integrated in their formation. And the in a classical education, there's you know the classical schools, which a lot of them are Protestant and co ed, which is that's a whole nother issue on both fronts. but it seems that the failure or I would say the lack of poetic knowledge exists, or it shows itself especially with. boys that they have a need for the encounter with with reality. So I'm I'm guessing you would emphatically agree just based on what you you know, getting spears with young men. speaker-0 (50:36.064) One hundred percent. Right? I mean like girls, I mean it's it comes down to just this like fundamental understanding of the human person as male and female. Like all all formation is downstream from anthropology. What you understand the human person to be d drives your formation and your education and To do anything less than that will produce something skewed in some way. And so for boys especially, like everybody knows it. Like they had a certain age and even younger than that, what do they want to do? They want to make and break things. And and and God even tells Adam, by the sweat of your brow, well, you know, sweat of your brow doesn't exist in a or at least not often in a you know, classroom. speaker-1 (51:16.717) Yeah. speaker-0 (51:30.428) not to say that we don't need classrooms, we don't need academic side, that's not the point, but like there's gotta be it's gotta be complementary. speaker-1 (51:37.196) Yeah. I mean I th this is something we've had to come to grips with. We're not just complimentary, it is actually we need to see that their formation, their school is their experience. So sweetie, I'm sorry that I ruined the homeschool these last, you know well, yesterday, especially yesterday morning, but the boys slit the throats, you know, of sixty chickens. and then we had to endure the process of turning them into food. And it we just have that we have to be reminded that that actually is is formation. And at this point, because there is so much attempts at just especially in the A of A the age of AI, there's so much attempts at just the most efficient way to again saw the tops of their heads off, shove the information down, it is the lack of experience, the lack of sense experience of things that is so detrimental. people just they're not acquainted with their own bodies. And for boys who are so physical, so sense sensual sensual and and yes, I mean that in the sense of their their senses are really on fire, or they should be. Because what's sad is when when they're not. when they're not, or when they're just totally I I for me also the other set when I see sort of an average school boy growing, when their primary care is looking cool in front of their peers. Or girls competing for the affection of girls they'll never marry. it's just like, y there's so much being missed. there's so much being missed. So all right, I need to y you've you've almost given me an hour. We could I think you and I could just keep going, which is good for us, bad for the producers. speaker-0 (53:23.758) speaker-1 (53:25.656) Can you tell us a little bit about one, Saint Joseph Academy? And probably just, you know, that that can be a somewhat minimal because my understanding is you're going to carry on the legacy from St. Martin's Academy and your father to somewhere else. And then tell us about cornbread Catholic, something I'm interested in. speaker-0 (53:45.602) Yeah. So St. Joseph Academy, as you said, continuing that vision, that great, beautiful sort of tree, if you will, out of the mustard seed of the IHP program. so again, education in the real, aligned with farm horsemanship is probably gonna be one of our key pieces, which is beautiful. so the anti grad grind to the anti bitser. amongst other things here in the deep south, which is gonna be fascinating. I'm reading up on my Mark Twain again. which is lovely. This is awesome. and so we're we're we're hopeful target date maybe for our first students to be next September. God willing. But we're we're keeping keeping our prayers up for a little piece of land that will do just right for us for that, if not, you know, September of the following year. But that's our goal right now, so stay tuned. if you're interested or hit me up for more updates to stay in tune for that. and then for the Cornbread Catholic, so the the fellow Tim Malloy, who we're gonna be co-founders of St. Joseph's together, him and his wife were very smitten by the the prairie troubadour that's associated with St. Martin's and Dan Kerr and the rest up there in Fort Scott. and they saw, you know, in you know, I'm sure they talked to to Dan too, and like what a neat sort of boon and fruit it's born for the community as a whole, not just even for St. Martin's, but just everything. And so last year they said, well, you know, we're going to start our own. So like, what should we call it? Well, it's got to be connected to here. And so it's cornbread Catholic, which is awesomely appropriate. It's so great. and so last year's conference is just to kind of plant the flag and just start a, you know, unabashedly Catholic conference, gathering of of folks around topics in Natchez, Mississippi. which is a neat place in that I think Mississippi is probably, I think, the least Catholic state in the Union, you know, by some whatever statistics or damn lies there are out there. but Natchez itself has a long history, right? Founded by the French, the Spanish were through here, beautiful basilica downtown of Our Lady used to be the Diocese seat. So the bones are here. And there's a great little Catholic community down here. I say little, it's bigger little. speaker-0 (56:10.166) and matches. And so the bones are there. It's almost kind of like excavating, right? Like kind of bringing this back out, which is beautiful. speaker-1 (56:18.07) Yeah. And so tell me the the conference though is also unabashedly Southern. it's it's it's which is well I if you're reading up on Southern books in in the faith, gosh there is one the Catholics Lost Cause it's the history of Catholics in South Carolina, written by a friend, Adam Tate. he's a friend of Fraternis, reader of Sword and Spade, contributor to Sword and Spade, but he's also a full time historian and teacher. And that is a a great book. But the if anyone hasn't explored this, I think the South is primed right now because of its its heritage of of kin and tradition and hierarchy and place and soil and roots, as opposed to we're we're not gonna be mean or crass here, but the Yankees and their transactions and investments and cosmopolitanism. so I'm excited about this conference. I hope you guys just keep digging in to that identity. Not that not that we need to play dress up in costumes, but we certainly better make plenty of seersucker there. I think I think the South I think the South has something beautiful and worthy to to offer the church, especially right now. especially in other places that are are declining so rapidly. speaker-0 (57:24.602) Yeah. speaker-0 (57:39.786) If a a quick plug and it's not for anything and nothing to do with me or anything else, but if anybody's interested in getting a different perspective on Southern Catholicism, go and find the collected poetry of Father Abraham Ryan. speaker-1 (57:52.928) yeah. I have to correct you. well, a so Father Abraham Ryan after, as he would put it, Lincoln invaded America, he changed his name to he changed his name to Abram. That's right. To to distance himself. yeah, there's actually a great little historical fiction book called The Chaplain in Gray. but yeah, funny story, the the places like Nashville speaker-0 (57:58.071) Is it not Abraham? speaker-0 (58:10.146) That's right. He did. speaker-0 (58:14.316) speaker-1 (58:26.136) When they wanted to start a Catholic school, you know, the the clan and others would show up. They we're not we don't like your kind here. This is not a Catholic place. And they would name these places, for example, Father Ryan. Yes. And they would back down because all these men in the South had learned this poem. do you do you recall the one about the flag? speaker-0 (58:46.624) Is it it's not that one I'm thinking of land without ruins, but that's that's a du speaker-1 (58:50.296) No, no, that's a good one too. We've published that in Swords Fade. No, Father anyway, Father Ride, well maybe we can find it and put it in the show notes, but it's a it's sort of a a a a mourning of the end of the war as a law. So anyway, that's a okay, well that's a whole nother podcast. what's great is you can actually be a Southern apologist now because there's so many actual Nazis on the internet that it doesn't seem as controversial to be pro-South anymore. Anyway, all right, Adam Taylor, this has been a great you've given us where we can go and look for you. definitely go and and and sign up for updates at St. Joseph's Academy. I saw you have a little button there that people can stay in touch and and check out and come and attend Cornbread Catholic. If he can can just find a way to pay me to come to the conference. I'll just be blunt. That's that would be a lot easier. Yeah, talk to Tim. And I'll I'll show up with a I'll show up with a whole pig. I'll bring a whole pig. and if speaker-0 (59:37.602) Tim. speaker-1 (59:46.316) If you haven't yet, please pop over to Fraternis and join and sign up for Sword and Spade. especially the daily Sword and Spade, which we're really excited about rolling out this year. So everyone, thank you for listening to the Sword and Spade podcast. Adam Taylor, thank you for being on. speaker-0 (01:00:00.27) Thank you so much, Jason. Always a pleasure to talk to you, man.