Hello everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind,

and make you brave. I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true,

and beautiful. So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere

comfortable, and let's dive not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs. George Elliott, Middlemarch.

Hello everybody and welcome back to a brand new episode of Speaking with Joy. I am your host, Joy Clarkson,

and I'm speaking to you from a bright but chilly day in St. Andrews, Scotland, where I am finishing up my PhD and theology and the arts.

I'm so excited to share today's episode with you all, where we will be exploring the beautiful

story of a hidden life about the life of Franz Jagerstadtar, a resistor of the Nazis in Austria and the 40s.

I decided to do this episode after viewing it and planning. I helped plan a screening and then a discussion of it with my friend here, Joel Mayward,

who has some very interesting thoughts in the film, which I'll put a link to his blog in my show notes.

But we worked together to plan a screening that was shown at the local

theater and then a discussion of this film. And I was so very happy. It felt very fitting

that it was shown, the theater chose of all days to show it on Shrove Tuesday, which

of course is the day leading up to Ash Wednesday, which officially

begins Lent, begins the season in the church of praying and fasting and preparing for the

great celebration of Easter. And it's funny. I thought it was rather fitting because living in a

world, I don't know where you live, maybe where you live is more saturated with religiosity, but

Scotland is a fairly secular place. And so Lent is kind of when you see people fasting sweets or going to church more often or all these different things, it stands out as a very distinct thing in the culture here. But it can also

seem like a kind of useless thing. You know, in a world where it doesn't seem like religion

is practice as much, it can be kind of an odd thing. You'll think, what is the point of doing

that? What is the point of dedicating specific times to prayer? What is the point of foregoing

something that you love?

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