So hello, everybody. I'm really excited to be here with Nathan Jacobs. I met Nathan several years ago as he was putting together a movie called Becoming Fully Human. It was really exciting to see that he was aware of the spiritual crisis that we're going through, let's say, in the West. And he was trying to kind of talk about it and propose some solutions. But Nathan is also a scholar who's associated with several universities. He's written papers, books. He is a visual artist. He makes paintings and illustrations, commercial art. And ultimately, he's also a movie maker in also in a narrative sense where he has, just a regular story movie and is also working on

some projects now. So I think he's the perfect person to talk about the moment right now,

the moment in culture, reenchantment, and how Christian spirituality is related to that.

Music This is Jonathan Pescho. Welcome to the symbolic world.

So Nathan, thanks for joining me in this conversation. I'm happy that you were able to find some time to talk to me.

Yeah, my pleasure. It's been a while, but I'm glad that we're able to talk. So maybe tell people a little bit, like a very quick, I mean, it's difficult because your journey is extremely complex, but maybe tell people a little bit about your journey of how you connect your art making with the scholarship and also with your own spiritual path towards orthodoxy.

Sure. Yeah, that is a long journey. I'll see how brief. This is a long journey I'll see you have brief this is a long

form you know yes it is a long form discussion but I'll try to not spend all of it on that

so I'm sort of a I suppose you could say I'm an artist turned scholar turned filmmaker which I

really see is the convergence of those other two phases of my

life. So in terms of art, I started in fine art, a very classical sort of fine arts painting

and drawing. I went to the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where I study that.

And that was really sort of my, what I was all about, right, the visual arts.

But then what happened for me is I ended up going into a type of existential spiritual crisis,

specifically asking questions about immortality, the afterlife, God, whether I have free will,

things like that.

And that was induced, rather peculiar.

I'll skip that story, but suffice it to say, I was very interested in things like hallucinogenics,

and those played a heavy role in awakening those questions in me. And that started me down this

road of inquiry about philosophy and religion. And that road

took a lot of twists and turns. I had a Christian background. My mother was a Missouri Senate

Lutheran, a very conservative form of German Lutheran, you know, her being German and Lutheran.

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