On Culture Work: An Interview with Stephen Jenkinson

The Costs and Curriculum of Being An Engaged Citizen In A Time of Trouble

On Saturday morning, in the lead up to the 10th anniversary of the book Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, I sat down over zoom with its author Stephen Jenkinson to have a conversation about ‘culture work’ which seems to have been a thread through all of his endeavours.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” - Krishnamurthi

Culture work is underwritten by the notion that most of our maladies aren’t personal in nature but cultural but that the very culture that harms us has become invisible to us.

I won’t say too much more. You can hear the rest in the 75 minute interview.

TAD HARGRAVE: Welcome, everybody. It's Tad Hargrave here from marketing for hippies. And I'm, sitting here virtually on zoom with, Stephen Jenkinson, with whom I've, studied and learned since 2014, in his awesome wisdom school. He's a cultural activist. Ceremony list advocating for a handmade life and eloquence. An author, storyteller, musician, sculptor, and off grid farmer is the founder principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife, Natalie Roy in 2010, and also a sought after workshop leader articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony.

And Stephen has written, a number of books. I believe six in total, with another one coming. But when I look at your books, money and the souls desires die wise come of Age Generation's worth and reckoning in particular. It strikes me that they're all engaged in a culture work. They're all coming to very human scale troubles through the the lens of culture, or using them as a doorway to look at the wider culture or, as you often say, as a prism.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Right.

TAD HARGRAVE: For culture. And that's, that's the theme I'd to dive into today. Is this this, theme or understanding of culture work? It's appropriate timing, of course, because it is the 10th anniversary of Dei Wise. That book came out, 2015, was the year after I joined the Orphan Wisdom school.

And I distinctly remember being in, in a van. we were all driving to the school, up on, Cortez. And Ian had an advance copy of Die Wise. Was much thinner, than the final one ended up being. But he had this, and it was a hallowed. we were all had this numinous quality.

TAD HARGRAVE: We were all deeply envious of him that he had this advance copy of it. I remember when the when this was first coming out. And, it's the 10th anniversary of that. You've got a new book coming out called Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart at Work. And then, of course, we'll talk maybe later about, but yourself, myself and Kimberly and Johnson, cooking up our can craft.

It's the working title in November, in New Mexico, that's all the. That's all the preamble. I'm curious, how is it for you ten years after the book Die Wise came out? How how are you? How are you feeling about it all?

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Your life doesn't occur to you with the, beautiful orchestration that you alleged that it has, that mine has. This is all a debris field in the rear view mirror, what you described. And I. By debris, I don't mean, not useful. I mean one's life is a scattering of sorts, isn't it?

And, sometimes arbitrarily, the odometer has a zero and the end of it, and you employ that moment to, to linger or to hover or to indulge in the evaluation, something that. books ten years on and it's still in print. Go figure. That's the first Morrow and, and that I continue to hear from people about it.

All I can really guess about that is that somehow it found its audience, or I would to say it found its people, and, and people let me know that it has. it's, it's, it's, it's gone out as a, as a prodigal would and, it's written home to tell me not to worry that things are going .

TAD HARGRAVE: Yeah, t's a beautiful book. I understand why it's had the, staying power of that it that it has. It's interesting. Over the years, people for the marketing work that they do, a number of people have said, Tad, it's easy to hire a ghostwriter and you knock these things out and and what are you waiting for?

And of course, there's ghost writers and there's ghost writers, and some are much better than others, but it's, palpably, it's such a labored over crafted piece, both in the architecture of it and also the the incredible wealth of stories. It's a it's one of those books when I see it in people's homes, it's often has a pride of place.

It often has evidence that it's been read dog eared. And I understand why it's lasted. For those listening to this, if you haven't had a chance to read these. It's an incredible book for everybody who, tries. They might will fail to live forever. the highly recommended if somehow you missed the the the train first time around.

It's still in print. You can still they'll come and get it.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Immersive first ten years. Yeah. Do that the book actually was born more or less, as you described it, in your admiration? That is that, it was born in an extreme circumstances that resemble more than a little bit. The times I find myself in now, I was, having trouble breathing and, took myself to a risk for allergies in Ottawa.

And I thought, since I'm going to Idaho, I might as fly somewhere because it takes it's such an ordeal from my house to end up anywhere. You've been there, how that works both ways. And, the rest probably say you can't go anywhere. You've got one third lung capacity, one third as I try to breathe through a straw, basically.

And, I thanked him for his advice and I went to, to Mexico on basically a one way ticket, assumption. And, it sounds dramatic because it was. And Natalie and I went there and, as far as we knew, we were going there to to kiss this arrangement goodbye. Really. And I sat on the rooftop the very next morning, in this, small town.

And all I did was wonder what became of, my old understanding of what my allotment was. And, if you will, how much time I still had to do, how many things I was dreaming. And them and it didn't seem likely. And, I was a little more than a little troubled. And I fancied that, some people would try to be in touch with Natalie.

When the word got out of my demise and, seeking after some a little bit more or something. And that may be a flight of fancy on my part. And I might have been wrong at the time, I don't know, but I was trying to figure out a way of heading that off the to pass as, as a husband might do.

And a father and on. And, I started to write, by hand in these, This a book, that scale, that size, ? And, I went after it. I didn't know what I was doing. I was writing every story I could remember in what I came to call the death trade.

That's all I did. writing the stories down. Then this happened. Then this happened in no effort whatsoever to try to string them together in some formal way or, but, as can happen from time to time. Maybe by the third day, something was occurring and I could see, the web growing between them that wasn't there as I wrote the individual ones down, but they grew some affinity, one for the other.

And that affinity turned into the substrate that became wise and became the manifesto element rather than simply narrative storytelling. Element. It's it's those two things married, you would say, and extreme circumstances and, and obviously my prognostic powers were off, I did I lasted or got a second wind, maybe literally.

And and off it went. That's half the Marvel. Excuse me. The other half of the Marvel is that, copy that you were talking about at the end. Had we knocked off, 50 of those. We're complete frigging amateurs. we knocked these things off to to say, I don't know, it was a vanity project, probably.

And, it didn't look that pretty, as as, do it yourself, things can look, it wasn't that pretty, but it found its shape already. And there was a particular Thursday, it was that I was to press go or print with the printer I had lined up for, a big print, a big print run of maybe 500.

And, something told me, I say something euphemistically. I know what it was, but I'll say something. Told me to check my emails before I made the calls that morning. And I thought to myself, that's a strange way for the other world to behave, tell me to check my emails, of all things. It's a little mundane, but I did.

And, there was an email waiting for somebody I hadn't heard of. I didn't know, said I'm the acquisitions editor for such and such a press and, been following your work for years, which, strange sounded strange to me at my ears at the time, since I didn't think I'd been doing anything for years. And did I have anything?

I was thinking about writing as one does in the moment that, I said, What's up with this coincidence? And of course, some part of you is already prepared to take flight. The rest of you going to come on, come on. Don't get all worked up on this. This is goofiness. I back and forth and I cut the story short.

We went back and forth and I. And I was a dick. I have to say, formally, in the sense that I said to him, I appreciate the interest, but you guys take too long and I don't have too long. I still had that sense of purpose and occasion that drove the thing in the first place.

I said, I can't wait. I don't want to wait. And I know what that sounds to you. And I don't apologize for it. It's the way it is. He wrote back and he said, how long would you give this? And I thought, I'm going to, all in. I said, I'll give you a week.

And, and they got back to me in three days and said, we're in completely with the book as it is. Let's go. I said, I'm not waiting a year. That's your timetable typically. And it came out, in eight months or something that. They humoured me or the gods line them up or, or the timing was right or, or I'd finally done something worth the trouble or, are all those things together and, and die wise became a child of some remarkable fortune.

As as a manifestation of that fortune.

TAD HARGRAVE: Both a manifestation and a manifesto. Yeah, one of the reasons it's endured is because it's heavy on, story and not on theory. It's not a book of, here's how it should be, or here's how we fix it. But but, remembering. And remember, years ago, you and I were speaking about the etymology of this word, heft because I was reading a book in, about shepherding in northern England, you do the James Reed Banks Shepherd's life.

And here it opens up with the etymology of heft. But it was spoke about as tradition, which was puzzling for me because it's normally about weight. I would think gravitas, but it's time about tradition. And then you'd said, it's probably also connected with Heath and Heather, which if you dig deep enough, it it clearly is.

There's something about land and weight and, and tradition. And it struck me that when we say some of these words have heft, and this is a book, that has heft, it's, it's that the person has spent time on the territory they're describing. They've wandered those heaths and those heathers. the it's a, a reporting on what was seen in a reflection on something real that happened.

There's a great book or the I've only read part of it, but the title is good it was called the If This is Your Land and where are your stories? Oh, yeah. Which, says the whole thing, that you have this territory that you wrote about, about death and dying, but full of stories.

And that's why it's one of the reasons, it's it did. I've heard you describe and heard your work described as culture work. And I'm curious what that means for you. This, this term of, of culture work.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: It means it's antidote. As much as it's anecdotal and the antidote that I was seeking or the malady I was seeking an antidote for, was the gross interiorization of every conceivable vaguely nuanced, worldly proposition. The world itself, by the time I was, formally educated and, and beginning to be engaged this way as it grown up, the world itself had become a figment of how we feel about the world in the West.

And, even without the benefit of tutelage on that particular matter, intuitively, I had a feeling not that that was narrowing, but that it was including that it was the, extinction of of illumination to interior ize the world in that way. Psychology is everything, dynamics and friggin archetypes. And I'm not saying that stuff doesn't have a place and doesn't belong.

And any tool you can you can find a legitimate use for it. But it's not the world to some extent. It's what the West in its fearfulness has done to its corner of the world. And we live in a time now, of course, where the kids are, are, they live inside the the echo chamber is is in the round.

And, of course, I fear for them and, a lot of stuff that I've done before there. There. Retreat from the world in mind. And, given, this is, this begins to open up a vast thing, but let's say for the moment that if I were 20 and I was obliged to consider the end of the world as not something symbolic or metaphorical, I might be tempted to believe in nothing more than my feelings about things.

As much as anybody would. But maybe as a generational hiccup, that it wasn't quite the case when I was in the formative years. And, my obligation as it came to me was to, in, inflect whatever capacities I had in the direction of seeing to it that the world was reinstated in the proceedings. And that's what happened in with di ways.

But I can tell you the, the, the, the vector that drew that to it. That, I'm talking with dying people, many of whom don't understand themselves to be that. that's always a concussive moment, that you have an understanding of their lives that they don't share with you and, and are unlikely to and have a vested interest in not doing .

And they're, They're doing everything they can not to die while they're dying. And they're being spoken to and engaging in the same language in such a way that, that the fact of their dying and the, the deep embodied reality of their dying was the first casualty of them trying to talk about it to anybody else or to make themselves understood.

In other words, the language was not much culprit. The language was, broken. And it's it's consequence when it was employed was to continue the breakage. the dying disappeared. When dying, people tried to talk about it. And I realized early on that I had an obligation to them that they would never ask me to fulfill, and that was to find a way of speaking.

Where they wouldn't lose track of where they were in the arc of their lives. That simple. Can I find a death ready language? And if I can't find it, can I make one? And, at the risk of sounding rather self-important, I got pretty close.

That's a that's a cultural undertaking. One one ravaged human at a time. But I really didn't have their inner life. You see what I'm saying. I didn't have their inner life in the crosshairs. I wasn't talking about their families and their growing and growing up years. And there wasn't time for all of that.

And I didn't think it was called for what was called for, to see if I could plant the person in the labours that the dying was pleading for them to undertake, or while they still could. I should say, Ted, because the clock's ticking, you see, and you don't have, you don't have the largesse any longer of health or vitality or give a shit or really anything.

And you got to go now, as a woman putting together an event out here in Joshua Tree for myself and for Kimberly. She called me yesterday. Can I talk to her? What's up? My father is dying actively right now. Estranged. And, not a lot to work with and, not a lot to feel about.

And I don't do this work anymore. People don't call me for that for the most part, and, and walk this walk with them. But I did yesterday. And is it riding a bike? Absolutely. Yes, it is for me, because I was born to do that. Other things too, but certainly that.

And that's why it's available to me. Still not out of habit, but there's a detonation that happens when that supplication comes my way, that, the things that were entrusted to me, language wise, intuition wise, and on. And a sense of purpose that, that I wasn't asking other people to corroborate all of that's available to me again and yet again.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: And, it makes it believable that, it makes it, that it somehow belongs in the particular time to which I belong. And it's hallelujah time, isn't it? That, I found what I was born to do, and I've got documentation to, to that effect. That's what doorways is. Doorways is the parchment upon which my purpose was was inscribed.

TAD HARGRAVE: Seems true that in this time of, I don't know, cultish mob mentality on one side and hyper individuation on the other side. Somehow there's a lack of ability to see the wider culture that we're in. I remember reading day wise and you speaking about the seeing how.

How much of what was happening wasn't. Isolated or individual was a manifestation of a larger culture. And that the book was, among other things, helping people to see the culture as it appeared, as the dominant culture, society of this North America, how that appeared at the dying time. Is that a fair rendering?

STEPHEN JENKINSON: The word helping is a little benign. I wasn't really not the helping guy, if things I did were helpful, that's a corollary benefit, but it certainly wasn't the VMO. No, it was it was much more obligatory than help. Honestly, that's my tone. My tone is hortitory. Not a word that people use anymore, but it's the same root as to exhort, to make a plea and to to, to be pushy. I had a sense of the urgency of things. I every time I came within, the sway of the desk work, I had a sense of, not of purpose, which one can mistake for self-assurance and things that, but I had a sense of, urgency in the foreclosure of possibility is.

It's it's occurred to me quite a long time ago. That what another human being is, is an intrusion upon your capacity for infinity.

That's what we are to each other. We're limits. And when you crowded somebody else's life or back into it, the limits that they didn't suspect they were labouring with, they begin to suspect they're laboring with. That's what happens. Yeah, that's that's the valuable public service we provide each other is a check and balance on on that grandiosity that things can last for as long as we're ready for them to last, including the big one.

And I had this sense of, drastic, which is an alchemical word, by the way. Drastic desire doesn't mean bad. It means, potent medicine, basically. I had a sense of urgency, you see, that didn't require despair to fuel it.

And I didn't personalize it because it wasn't my death. That's at the time. But it was my witness, and it was my my charge, my obligation. And it was, I understood to be a, social obligation, principally, and not an emotional or, relational one, but, I'll put it another way that's going to sound very self-serving.

Somebody, a lot of people had the small story in view, and God bless them. And it's great. And you need that to. But at the time, somebody needed to see across the range of the small stories to see if those beads could be strong. How did it get this way? In other words, because the small stories don't help with that.

They're examples of this way. But how did it get this way? Could be helpful while you're still able to breathe and think as a dying person. And it's not wallowing as they were fearful it to be, and the word that we have to bring in now to make the whole thing sit as a architectural piece, is grief.

Grief was, nobody was talking about grief. I can tell you in those days that we're talking about now. No, because it was understood as a synonym for sadness or depression. There's a lot more grief literacy now than there was. But that's not saying a lot, because there was Jack ten or 12 or 15 years ago. I, I enthroned grief.

I pretty explicitly tune I understood it to be a divinity on par with death in terms of its consequence in and, its valence. And I took it upon myself to see if I could translate grief, claim in the proceedings. And that became that's the cultural work to articulate. How did it get this, and where from whence comes this grief, illiteracy that we've settled for at the time?

TAD HARGRAVE: Strikes me that much of your work has been about. Helping insistent, on the old gods being seen. about how, you wrote a book come of age. And somehow, in the presence of coming of age, Elderhood vanishes, is somehow eclipsed in the getting older. Yeah. That there's clearly this, generational span. And yet the differences between generations get collapsed or eclipsed.

And you're supposed to be young forever. Or young people are supposed to be the elders now, and there's no differences, and that's all flattened. And then in your book on matrimony. There's lots of weddings, but matrimony has disappeared. And it strikes me that in much of your work, you've been bringing, giving a seat at the table to death, to grief, to matrimony, to the difference, differences entrusted to generation and, and to Elder Hood, who even in the presence of what should evoke the recognition of them there, they don't seem to be there in the occasions where they should be acknowledged and welcomed and obeyed.

They aren't I don't know if that, resonates with you at all.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Sadly, it does. It's what you've described is a unlikely haunting of the contemporary post humanist Western tradition. What is we're haunted by stuff that ain't there. It's not the usual haunt, specters and goblins and, apparitions in the hallway. That's the norm, but we don't have any of those.

We have a sense that something's slipped from view. Something's been lost. Something's been cast aside, but nobody remembers doing. Those kinds of things, the way I try to describe it from the matrimonial point of view is: who would settle for a 15 minute wedding for, for an event that's supposed to be fundamentally transformative?

And, it makes you cock your head or me in a way. as is my want, I answered the question. I didn't let it be rhetorical. What the frig did happen? And where does this instinct come from in me to not imagine, but almost to be able to hear and see the once was ness of things.

you could say, and you wouldn't be wrong, that it's me wishing. But I'm not very nostalgic. I really I'm really not. I'm not looking back. I'm looking in. I'm not trying to have things as good as they once were. I don't think we have the capacity for things to be good.

That's a pretty naked declaration there. I still have a few. I don't think we have the capacity to live the good life that much self-exploration is designed to, to generate, because you have to inhabit that stuff, you have to move in.

The confetti, the aisle, the procession up the aisle, the people waiting for you, the notion of giving away the apparition of gifts. Where are they supposed to go and to whom and where are they supposed to come from? What do they mean? And the timing of the giving of them and the seating arrangement and which direction you face?

I could keep going, but I didn't make any of that stuff up right. We're we're heirs to it all . We don't know what we're heirs to. We're more custodians than heirs. We're more janitors than we are progeny of that stuff. I simply said to myself, these are pieces of something. They're not something unto themselves.

And because they're pieces of something, you can, with enough archeological instinct, begin to hold this pieces in some proximity to see whether or not they, once upon a time, were adjacent, in terms of cause or purpose or tradition or rumour or customer language, that's the repertoire for reassembling them. And as you do, occasionally you get very lucky and you realize in the snakes and ladders reckoning fashion, that this piece once upon a time went alongside that piece in sequence, say, ceremonial sequence or something that.

And, and from this you can infer, you begin to infer what the shape and heft of the original container could have been. And I came to understand these things as shards with an implication or a memory of the chalice that they were.

And that's where the matrimony book came from. And that was my M.O. in. And that's how I wondered, I took my God given instinct to wonder about these things and trained it upon something in a disciplined way. And lo and behold, I was rewarded.

TAD HARGRAVE: Have you read the book, The Valley At The Center of the World by Malachi Tilak.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Man, the guy's name alone means I should read the book.

TAD HARGRAVE: He's from the Orkneys.

But there's a there's a line in, it's a fantastic book, a story and beautifully written, but there's a line about a farmer who basically hasn't left this valley. His whole life. This little valley and this little, island. And he says, in the book, “He didn't look towards the future the way others did. But nor was he stuck in the past. David seemed to live in a eternal present, looking neither forward nor backward, but always somehow towards the land.”

And it strikes me that this is, some of what you're describing, that, in it was a here's what's happening and then bringing the wandering of how did it get to be this way?

Or the land looks this, but how how did it get to be this way? There's this shard sitting here. How did we get to a point where there's only a shard left? Or as you've spoken about etymology before, the. We have a word that means this now, which is almost the opposite, or some strange inversion of what it used to mean.

Right. And how did the shift happen?

Which brings me to this question, aside from the incredible high pay that culture work brings, the riches and fame and the, the adulation and there's that.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: There's all of that.

TAD HARGRAVE: I'm curious what for somebody who's thinking about getting into culture work, they're drawn to it. They've seen you do what you do. They've seen people making mad attempts, and they feel, against the odds, some draw to it. I'm curious what what are what does culture work cost the culture worker? Maybe we'll start with that.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: It costs you the easy, imagining that you're doing something. First of all, that other people welcome and intuitively have regard for, realize themselves to have been waiting for what you're doing without knowing that that's what they're, all of that stuff that's all gone. When I did these weddings that that ultimately produced The Matrimony Book, you can't, this is rhetorical.

You can't imagine the shit show that ensued from simply trying to do it. Otherwise. I became a living shit magnet in those enterprises, in real time, Tad. Not receiving emails about it as I was doing it. Bear in mind, now I'm getting this flack from people who were invited to the event by the people who asked me to do this transaction.

There's no hesitation whatsoever. And people sliding up to me and saying, is this a real wedding?

I know that the same person never went to the front of the hall or the front of the chapel or the front of the generic event space, and that's the man or the woman in the corner. Whether this was a real wedding, that never happened. of course, the question becomes, why am I getting that treatment?

Since what I'm doing is explicitly as called for as the more official officiant was doing. Nobody goes to a wedding to change the world. Ten.

But they could. And that's the way I proceeded. I became, a anarchy brigade of one or at least one at a time. I proceeded this could be otherwise. companionship is the next casualty. Deep running companionship. A lot of people let me know that they were right behind me, but far behind me that I couldn't see.

Why? Because it was fucking dangerous. That's why. Because a lot of flak was coming. That's why. Because it hurt to stand there and see if it could be otherwise and plead with people to proceed we're in a circumstance of such fundamental poverty that it's a transgression to contribute to it.

That we have to seize upon that love that these two people have for each other, and see if we can oblige it in the direction of culture. what do you become? You've become leader, right? You're in the blasted heath and you're saying never, never, never. You've become some, bizarrely romantic figure that no one wants to marry, that no one really wants to be with you.

You shoulder something that you've not been asked to do. I hope this doesn't sound heroic. it to sound mournful. And, and broken and you're a spirit mechanic. And the vehicle hasn't moved for years. It's been sitting in a field with the weeds coming up through the steering wheel for years.

And somebody says, I got to get to the hospital. Quick. Can I use your car?

And you do what you can to get it running again. That's culture work.

TAD HARGRAVE: At least the pay is good.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Is it?

TAD HARGRAVE: The. if somebody, despite all the troubles and all of this that can come, I've certainly seen it when somebody, attempts to not even break this bill gently suggest that there might be a spell that we're under. Right. There's some defense mechanism in the spell that rears up its its thorns and there's that, to contend with.

But with all of this, if somebody says, I get it, it can be lonely, it can be dangerous, it can be immensely rewarding, enriching. All of this. What might a curriculum look for somebody wanting to engage in this in a way that would be trustworthy and not freestyling and not anything goes? Do you have any sense of of what a trustworthy curriculum might look .

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Of a curriculum for wellness.

TAD HARGRAVE: For culture, work?

STEPHEN JENKINSON: When by curriculum you mean how how you might engage in being fundamentally radically educated about the matter? what, you mean?

TAD HARGRAVE: Yeah.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Of course, if you have to ask the question, you've been derelict of duty up until now because the opportunity to learn it has been there. if you, you and I've spoken this very theme before, it is, the sound that you make upon awakening, the spirit awakening that we're talking about now, the sound that you make is not.

Hallelujah. It's not finely, I get it. It's not at long last freedom. It's not. There's no heroism or victory available. Not now. If you awaken at the level that you've asked this question of me, the sound that breaks your lips. Is is some anguish, some personal grief, some clear implication.

You are implicated. How could you not have seen this before now, how did you proceed? As if none of this was when it was, as you now know.

As a rough ride, man, there's reasons that people don't see this stuff, because in the short term, it doesn't pay, all joking aside, it genuinely it doesn't work. And yet the fact that you and I are talking about it is a quiet whisper campaign. Claiming that it does work, that it must work even better. you proceed with no evidence.

That's the repertoire. If you can't do it with no encouragement, you probably can't do it with it. It's the it's the intuitive reverse of what people imagine with enough encouragement bolstering education, exposure. Elders in the wings, etc., etc. you're armed, down into the furrows you go. You never go down into the furrows without all that armament.

First of all, you'd look the Michelin Man, way too ready, right? Yeah. Nothing subtle about you at all. You're bloated with capacity. Yeah. you realize, oh, man, it's the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that that would have you come up alongside these parties that we're talking. In other words, they manifest, they visit you first as your own little wrinkled self that you become dissatisfied with, but not particularly harsh towards.

And you somehow realize that certain limitations have visited you, that you've settled for.

A how did it get that? You weren't always this way. Oh, you probably were. Come on now. You probably were always this way. But that realization is exceedingly valuable. Because description is not the same thing as prescription or prescription. Right. You've you've blinked a lot of times. Yeah, I know, me too. But if you're asking, you start with the poverty that was entrusted to you.

Yeah, but how how do you start doing that? No, no, no, it's not the right question. Start with the poverty. Stop trying to get out from underneath the poverty long enough to feel less impoverished. The feeling of in poverty, the the distinction that Chappelle made in one of his jokes between being poor and being broke. Poor is a character logical deficit that you never get out from under, right?

Broke is a possibly temporary condition. That's the distinction I'm making here. Now. When I used the word poverty, cultural poverty is is an indictment as long as it's unchallenged and unrealized, that the moment you really glimpse it in its three dimensions, it becomes something much closer to an obligation than it is to an indictment.

And that's how you start. You start with what you think is nothing. It's the old joke that, you're a jokester of the highest order, right? you you'll appreciate this. The the joke. I'm going to tell it real quick. it's going to joke is going to suffer, but it goes something in the order of here's God and the smartest man in the world.

And they've been living together in the with everybody else in the village, and they pass each other routinely and, lots of high regard and high fives probably. And then one of them gets it into his or her head, who knows which one it was. They should have a bit of a contest to give the people some weekend entertainment.

And the contest they're going to make is who can make something from nothing. That's a throw down. I can see I got your attention. because because you're in that game who can make something from nothing. they agreed to meet in the town square the next morning, fully prepared to do this, that their lives, in fact, have prepared them to do this.

And, smartest man in the world says to God, you first. And God says, it's always been me first, man. Let's let's break the spell of me first. You go first, and I'll see if I can see you. Never mind. Raise you, but you go first. No pressure. And the smartest man in the world reaches into his pocket and flourishes lint from his pocket and begins to conjure.

Or is, begin to enter into a fit of conjuring over this lint gutters. Whoa whoa whoa whoa. Modest man says what God points the lint between the man's index finger and thumb. He said, what are you doing? Yeah, this is the nothing that I'm going to conjure from. God says you have it. That's mine. Nothing. You got to conjure from your own.

This is two friggin good. You see, that's what I'm saying. You got to conjure the culture that you would have your children be heirs to with your nothing. Not your personal nothing. Then. Nothing that's been entrusted to you that's different. Not personal inadequacy. That's not what we're talking about. No, we're talking about you looking around and awakening to the facts.

The hard awakening, the hurtful. That is a beginning, though. God knows it doesn't feel it. And I've begun that way many times. And you could say, yeah, look what it's done for you or to you and you wouldn't be wrong. It's costly, but you're asking me top drawer questions here. You're not asking me how to get by.

I'm $12 a day thing.

TAD HARGRAVE: I'm. I'm struck by. How part of the curriculum is seeing why you've not seen the curriculum that was already entrusted to you.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Ain't it, though?

STEPHEN JENKINSON: It's a parable. You see. That's why the Jesus is of the world. If I could use the phrase. That's why they spoke that way. It's not to be tricky. It's not to be elusive is to find a way to do justice to the the workings of the world. In how you talk about that you talking about it or you hearing me do is not a break from the action.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: It's the action. And that's why we love the poets, really the good ones, and the storytellers. We really do love them. We're fairly ready to crucify them, to if they, become a drag. Before it, somebody is going to come up to you. Ted is going to say, said real magic. And you get to say, baby, what are the kind?

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Is that right?

TAD HARGRAVE: The that also strikes me. And what you're saying. That the truancy we have around learning, the poverty's the troubles of our times are very specific to each of us, in a way. They're born of the times that we're in, they're going to be. It'll be different in Alabama than it will be in Alberta. And. And how much of the curriculum is, is looking at the heath and the heather that we've grown up on and and being educated by this, that the, the notion of looking for some curriculum here's the book on how to be a culture worker.

There's probably, of course, much that can be said and much that you do say on this. But it strikes me that, that there's, there's a poverty in looking for this globalized approach to culture work. Yeah.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: what you do instead of starting. Right. It's another reason you're not starting is you're trying to find that one size fits all thing. Because all the voices of discontent and they are friggin legion. Now, all of them appeal to a, global constant, a global norm, a global, book of supposed to as if the particulars of culture, yet again, are friggin problems to solve.

We get to the the pen guy of the whole thing. And really, I can't believe it needs to be said, but it does needs to be said that,

It looks the particulars are where the haunts of the gods are. Not the exclusive particulars. The manifestations, the articulations, the executions. That's where the mojo is. That's when it's turned into something. It's not waiting to become something. You were born where you were, and you're tall. I was born who I was and ain't. And, you get them high, I'll get them low thing.

We don't have to do the same work. God almighty. Come on. We don't have to agree that we're working in some harmony that's yet to be determined. Maybe it's not that required. Maybe harmony is way oversold. Maybe simpatico is welcome, but not mandatory. Maybe simpatico is a consequence of undertaking the work, not a precondition.

Yeah, but you said it better than me.

TAD HARGRAVE: Yeah. I'm also struck by that. The poverty and the troubles. If we approach them as problems to solve, that's different than approaching them, is as curriculum as, a chance to learn how. It is a chance to to. Yeah. To learn.

If somebody is wanting to be a culture worker, there is a craft to it. And I'd be interested to hear your understanding of what some of the tools of the trade are that you've seen, in your own life and in culture, workers you've admired, what are tools that are probably good to have in the tool belt when engaging in this work?

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Endurance. Endurance, an appreciation for the limitations that your body is thrown for. An understanding that you only get many kicks at the can. That everything's not going to work out. That you don't get to see the consequences of everything you try to put into motion during your allotment. The willingness to realize that the best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago.

Not now. And then the willingness to sign up for the fact that if you plant a tree now, you will be the 25 years ago. Someday. That deferred gratification is not punishment, that your willingness to work. Is not mostly willingness. It's mostly being broken down. Maybe it's not the right word. Maybe not reduced. I don't mean reduced. That your brittleness is tempered out of you. That's what, that beautiful formulation that came to me towards the end of writing, come of age about the wine and how do you end up with wine? And the answer is the depth, the the the the discernment that wine implies, the, remarkable achievements over time, that the wine is in evidence of.

Is it, you can call it depth of various kinds. How is it achieved? And the answer is you lost in volume. But you gained in depth. There's less of you, but it's all you now. It's a beautiful thing. it's a beautiful thing. And, you don't get there. You don't get to start that way. But you may get to finish that way.

Between now and then, you got to proceed that's possible. But it's mostly work, isn't it? It's perspiration. It's knowing how to, proceed, not being able to. That beautiful back at formulation. Sometimes you're going to have to be able to go ahead, not being able to go ahead. You're going to have to go. Excuse me, I botched it.

Sometimes you're going to have to go ahead not being able to. And that's a human thing. And we got to stop asking God to be less godly, less confounding, less, less trying. It's companionship with the divine. Is not a good entry level encounter. That is calamitous in the extreme. And all the world's mystery religions know that.

And they all warn you about it is calamity. God's doing us a favor by not living next door. because of the volatility of the same, you recognize that there's a certain psychic distance between yourself and everything that feels the source. But maybe that's not. It doesn't imply that there's been a transgression and a sinfulness and a breakage and a rupture and all that other stuff that we're heir to.

Maybe it's compassion at work. You work where you are. The say and we'll work with we are. And occasionally we'll pass each other in the night.

We're probably to wrap up time here. I'm wondering if there's anything that you would to read from your new book. That comes to mind? I had a chance. Kimberly sent me a little advance copy, and I was. I was reading through it this morning and, enjoying it very much. She texted me a few, illegally of course, a few, excerpts from it, which I thought were wonderful. But I'm wondering if there's anything that comes to mind you'd to pull out.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: God. There's a self-contained. It's a chapter. It's called, Salt and Indigo. It's about halfway through and it's my recreation of a moment of the pure embodiment of the spirit of trade. The spirit work of trade, which I say is the template for the matrimonial event we call wedding. That the spirit work of trade is manifest in the in the giving away and the acquiring of a young person to deepen and, introduce variety into your gene pool. That's that's how far back that goes. And it's, if I, if I may say it's, the chapter is a beautiful summit summoning up of a of the Spirit of Trade, where these two groups of people, the salt traders and the indigo workers, never meet. But the the holy ground is where they leave their wares.

And the exchange happens mysteriously because nobody's there to witness the transaction. The transaction occurs in the presence of the gods. You could say, and the willingness of the workers to step back from the product, from the fruits of their labor long enough that it becomes a, spirit speech to the possible receivers, to the to the partners in the trade.

That's the template, as I understand it, for where matrimony comes from. But I don't have it in my fingertips, ? But it's it's it's there.

TAD HARGRAVE: For you to speak about it many times in the book is coming out in August. Yes.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: August 12th, . Something that. Yeah.

TAD HARGRAVE: That sounds true. Publishing will be putting it out. Yeah. yeah. For those interested in buying the book, if you're on the email list at Orphanwisdom.com, you can hear more about it. And also, you have this die wise 10th anniversary event coming up, and I'll be sure to put the links to it when I share it.

TAD HARGRAVE: But, would you to tell us a bit about what you've what you've got cooking with the.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Yeah. It's a simple thing that I lived long enough to see. Something I'd done ten years ago. Still seemingly viable, and I thought the book deserved a recognition that wasn't simply congratulatory. Where I would get a letter from the Prime minister or something that? No, I'm joking about that.

But, what I decided to do was to sit down with several dying people and record the encounters. To see. To see. I've done that already. I did that last month. And, they they are part of the package that the registrants receive. In other words, for better or for worse, they hear me in action.

They hear me doing the die wise thing. They hear me die wise. There you are. And, that's part of it. And then the the actual weekend in question is, me sitting on the Saturday with one, luminary and then the Sunday with another people who've come into my little life and towards here as I occupy the third act of the arrangement and, I don't know what they're going to talk to me about any more than I knew what you and I were going to talk about.

Really. And, one of them is a filmmaker, and he was a consultant on Grief Walker way back in the day. Manfred Becker's name is. And he's a, remarkable guy. And he's making a film about I and immortality. And I was the first one he interviewed for the film. I had anything to say about that stuff at all.

But, I can find different ways to have nothing to say. And, I pulled it off enough that he was very compelled and has let me know repeatedly since then that he was very compelled by that. we're going to talk about probably those things and other things besides on the Sunday and on the Saturday.

I'm talking with a good friend of mine in Spain who, Alex, who, who I engaged early. He's the one that brought me to Paris in Italy last year. He's the executive director, is his title of, the Perry Institute, maybe, which is a , science and humanities thinktank that meets, or and often they meet in,

When the news got out about the diagnosis that I'm laboring under now, he was one of the first people to be in touch. And very quickly, the conversation, left behind the, smoothly orchestrated sounds of compassion and and concern and turned into, an exercise in.

The elegance of hurt.

That's how it started. And, which is the younger man than I, And I wouldn't be surprised that we've spoken together a book, and 15 or encounters that we've had of 90 minutes or, and each time and, he's, he's my other partner in, prompting me to some eloquent capacity that far has eluded me.

Perhaps that's where we'll get. But it's all in the name of, basically looking at, the the stance that Di Di was occupied at the time and to what extent the passage of a decade, ordinary decade in ordinary life. And then the particulars of, of, what's come to get me more or more recently, what it makes di always look or sound to me now.

I'm looking forward to to rumination of that kind, really. And that's what's coming in, a couple of weeks or months from now or thereabouts, a couple weeks from now.

TAD HARGRAVE: I'll have the dates and all of that linked, below this interview or somewhere in there people can see it be putting this out on my Substack. It's good to see you, Stephen. I'll release you back to, San Diego. We'll be in touch down the road.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Let me say something to you. If I could. In case this doesn't happen again. I forget in my, little sorrows, I forget how good things are in many places and with many people. And talking to you today reminds me how much I missed the school. And you've done me a great favor to remind me of them because as much as anyone that I know, you took the school to heart and are properly one of the heirs of what I tried to do. I'm really gladdened that I lived long enough to tell you that.

TAD HARGRAVE: Thank you. Stephen, there's, there's a lot of us out there that are in the missing with you. Comes up in conversation many times. The. Can't believe it's over feeling.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Yeah.

TAD HARGRAVE: And really wishing it were otherwise. And when have said it to many friends of. Can you believe what we were in on a times that we got to have the things we got to see that, no one else will in that way in those times. And it's.

It's, the, the, the grief around it is. Yeah. Right side by side with this incredible gratitude and bamboozled. How it happened. A lot of us look at each other who were there and say, how did we get in? We can trace it. There's a sequence of events. But why us? Why did we hear this? Why did we hear this interview? Or see one of Ian McKenzie's little films, or come across your book, or have a friend say with this guy Stephen Jenkinson and, and, I know it's formed and it's shaped much of, of course, my life and my work and many others and I wish it could have lasted forever.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: Yeah. We did have a little bit of for them.

TAD HARGRAVE: We did.

STEPHEN JENKINSON: It. A little taste of it, man. That's what forever is also .

STEPHEN JENKINSON: for a while, certain things seemed possible that weren't even weren't even there a year before. tell. Thank you. Tad.

TAD HARGRAVE: Thank you.