Mar 22, 2023, from Mike Sauter: Hey David-- I hope you are doing well. Michael and I would love to have you back on the podcast sometime if you are open to it. I'd really like to propose that we talk to you and promote something that interests you but there's no shortage of topics that I can think of, too. Let me know if you're interested sometime.
I'm writing today because I've just finished a short series of three articles for Front Porch on the future of the Church, wherein I examine the shortcomings of "religion" when it’s cast as being the most apt container for the message of the Gospel. You are present in all of them but, by name, most present in the last one.
Lately, too, I've been thinking about friendship and how, in "Philosophy, Artifacts and Friendship" Illich pointed out how the 60's generation thirsted for "justice" and the young people he was teaching towards the end of his life thirsted for, even though they could not necessarily understand the references in Aelred and others, this relationship, or 'way' or 'state'. Anyhow, David, I just wanted to send along these relatively short pieces (below) as you might find them interesting as your work in Illich really got me thinking more about "religion".
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2023/03/deeper-than-religion-with-powys-and-chesterton/
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Mar 25, 2023, from David: Thanks for your three essays which I got a chance to read yesterday. I won't attempt a commentary here. You must know that the direction your thinking is taking largely agrees with mine. However, I was introduced to several thinkers and writers I know little or nothing about. The most intriguing was Powys - the English Dostoevsky being pretty high praise in my ears. If I wanted to get to know his work, where would you recommend that I start? I was also very touched by your heart for the young. Jutta and I have our grandchildren in mind in a very similar way.
I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you and Michael last time and will gladly do it again whenever you like. My current work is a book the the CBC and public broadcasting more generally, in which I consider where the CBC has got to over the going-on ninety years of its existence, and where it might go under radically revised assumptions. There are certainly topics there concerning the media and discourse environment in which we're living, but it would also be interesting to talk about the meaning of religion along the lines you've been exploring.
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March 27, 2023, from Mike: I am so grateful you suffered my series of articles as I figured you would at least understand the basic critique and movement. In the Fall I was asked by my Bishop to run my local parish again and that's been interesting, especially in light of the path my thinking has taken. As for Powys, it is such a large and unwieldy corpus, but also so fruitful, and his book on Rabelais and a book called "In Spite of" are both decent intros. "Mortal Strife" (with the 'change of fascism' I recommend in my article) and an odd but charming book called "The Art of Growing Old" both have really important insights in this area as well.
And, yes, the mental health crisis of young adults is totally central for me right now.
Before I wrote to you, Michael was thinking we needed to do a deeper dive on Simone Weil. Maybe we could do an episode on her thought and maybe merge it into this direction on the meaning of religion you and I are exploring? Just the example of her "On the Right Use of School Studies.." takes us pretty far down this road. Thinking maybe sometime in the week after Easter.
I'd also like to do one on your book as it would be a good focus for a wider discussion on the recent history of the media.
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April 6 2023, from David: Friday the 14th with you and Michael on Simone Weil and the future of religion is a date. I hope you're thinking of it more as a conversation than an interview, given the thought you've recently put in to this question.
Thanks for the Powys article. I'm looking forward to reading it, even if it does invite me to swim in a bog.
Just finished The Sovereignty of Good. I did read one of Murdoch's novels years ago, but her thought was essentially new to me, so there's a lot to take in.
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Jul 9, 2025, from Mike: I hope and trust all is well with you and yours. I know you've been spending time editing/finishing your book on the CBC but that ERH essay came out of nowhere for me, but it's such a game changer and I'm in my second reading of his The Christian Future, and it's causing me to rearrange, or at least adjust, a lot of mental furniture. Thank you so much for introducing him to me, as he was just a name I barely recognized a few weeks ago.
Any interest in coming back on the podcast sometime soon to discuss him and the CBC and more? We'd love to have you. I'd like to draw as much attention to your essay as possible. Michael is distributing veggies from his CSA on most Saturdays so we've been thinking about weeknights more, (after we took a month or so off).
Thanks again, David, for continuing to be an adventurer as that has helped me a lot.
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Jul 11, 2025 from David: I'm just delighted to hear that my attempt at introducing Rosenstock-Huessy to a wider audience was of interest to you - even better that you're on a second reading of The Christian Future - the book that drew me in. I wrote the essay mainly to clarify my own mind - as a step from entertaining his ideas as an enthusiastic and sympathetic reader to seeing if I was able to reproduce his argument in black and white, so to speak. Talking to you and Michael, would be another step, and so long as you're willing to take the lead and share your reading, I'd be happy to do another conversation for the podcast. Early August would be better for me than right away, as I am just working my way into a new theme - comparing Illich's account of "the mystery of evil" with Carl Jung's attempted revision of Christianity in his late works Aion and Answer to Job - and will need to keep my mind on that for a couple of weeks.
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Jul 16, 2025 from Mike: Your project with Jung and Illich sounds interesting! Cristado is great on Rosenstock, so thanks for recommending his work as well as your own, as I feel like to do need something of a map for him, though I find him immediately sympatico because of his focus on time. I forget which essay, but I've always remembered Illich as saying we have police-type forces for space, but not for "time". But, even with that temporal-view, it's seems that Christado is saying that his singular difference is that he focuses on the "end" whereas thinkers like Agamben focus on the "messianic". I'm still reading my way into a better sense for that divide. But I just love the way Rosenstock plows forward and I'm listening to a 3-part series of talks he gave on the Peace Corps, recorded by his students at Dartmouth. Anyhow, thanks again for singling him out!
I look forward to talking sometime in early August. I'll have Michael read your essay but I will prepare some conversation topics that bring in Rosenstock and your thoughts and, as always, it will just lead into a deeper conversation that will go wherever the Holy Spirit takes us.
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Aug 16, 2025, from Mike: I hope you are well, and that your work on Jung continues apace. I see from our correspondence that I had targeted being back in touch with you regarding a podcast on Rosenstock in 'early August', but here we are. My apologies for falling behind. Michael and I have been kind of hit-and-miss with podcasts for the past couple of months but are gearing up a bit moving into September. Last week, I mentioned on our podcast that, soon, we'd be talking to you, (a fan favorite), about Rosenstock and that people should read your essay. From that mention, I heard from a talented thinker and writer, Caryl Johnson, who shared her essay on ERH: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2024/06/eugen-rosenstock-huessy-cross-reality-caryl-johnston.html
I thought it might be fun for the four of us, (you, Michael, Caryl and myself) to chat about him. Does this work for you? I'm looking forward to this conversation and I hope all is well with you and yours, David. I thought we'd also possibly talk about Wendell Berry a bit, too. But we'll see where it goes.