A correction I've decided to keep. At 17:46, I say Sam asks Gandalf why Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance. It was Frodo, in "The Shadow of the Past," the second chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. Fixing it would mean rebuilding the whole episode, and YouTube won't let me swap the file anyway, so the mistake stays, like the kintsugi gold seam in a mended bowl. A Roman general riding in his triumph had a man behind him whispering that he was mortal. I have Tolkien readers. This one haunts me but sometimes when I freestyle I get a few details wrong. Sam so hates Gollum for most/all of the story that it seemed natural to me despite who knows how many rereads.
Episode 388 of the Reversing Climate Change podcast. You can listen on Spotify (subscribe there for ad-free), Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever else you listen. Paid subscribers get the ad-free version right here on the page.
Content Warning: this episode discusses suicide in literature, specifically Judas Iscariot from the Gospel and Javert from Les Misérables.
Why do this work? You could be doing so many different things. What calls you to it, and what (or who?!) is doing the calling?
In today's monologue show, host Ross Kenyon reflects upon the nature of vocation, aesthetics, and what it means to labor at something as hard as carbon dioxide removal, climate tech, and so many things adjacent.
After a first attempt years ago at J. R. R. Tolkien's short story, "Leaf by Niggle," Ross listened to a podcast about it that had been sitting on his phone for years. After revisiting the short story, he was again reminded that art often finds you when the time is ripe.
"Leaf by Niggle" is a deceptively deep story, which is unsurprising given how strongly Tolkien disliked allegory, and how mythologically dense Lord of the Rings is. In fact, Lord of the Rings has so much symbolic power that many parts of it defy an easy mapping to theology or mythology.
This show dives into some of what Ross has learned now that he's in the middle of my career about what kinds of work to do, how to accept unexpected work with grace, and why creativity might be so much weirder than we usually imagine.
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Resources
"Leaf by Niggle" by J. R. R. Tolkien
"222: Leaf by Niggle by Tolkien" from the podcast Classical Things You Should Know
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
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Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still goofing around.
The books that come up on this show are collected on my Bookshop shelf.
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello, thanks for listening to Reversing Climate Change. I'm Ross Kenyon. I'm the host of the show. I'm a carbon removal and climate tech entrepreneur. I'm also someone who likes books. Today I'm gonna talk about a short story that I really love in its application to the idea of vocation, which, uh, I think is an underused term vocation.
If you've ever studied, , any language that uses cases, any language that uses dele, which is when nouns, , change, similar to how verbs are conjugated, but sometimes nouns can also change rather than using prepositions which are outside of the noun. Sometimes prepositions can be a part of nouns.
And the Vocative case is how it works when you are addressing someone, when you are calling someone. So for instance, it's not a too Brutus, it's a too brute. If you're addressing Brutus, you change his name 'cause you were calling him. It's the Vocative case. And a vocation is meant to be a calling.
And this can be quite distinct from the job that you do, the work that you do. A vocation is meant to be something that is. Meaningful. In fact, a vocation opens the question of who is the one doing the calling? Is it to your, own self as desiring after something that it knows that it wants? Is this some sort of divine motivation or fate determinism?
It's one of those funny, uh, embeddings of meaning inside of a what would otherwise be a rather neutral linguistic term? I think, uh,
I imagine this at least partially comes from the Latin and the Catholic Church referring to people who are called to religious lives. Like, you know, being nuns, monks, priests as uh, the vocations.
And I think when work is good. And you know that you're doing something that is meaningful, that is rewarding, you feel like you're in the right place. I think that can be vocational and it also doesn't necessarily have to be one single thing. But one thing that I've loved about my life since my, uh, last company closed down is that I've been able to work with a number of entrepreneurs in either a mentorship capacity where I am volunteering and accelerator programs.
That's also turned into paid coaching work and accelerated programs in addition to advising arrangements with companies.
And that for me has a strong vocational meaning. I feel as though I am where I'm supposed to be. I am adding value. I am working through big questions, and I'm able to do the job,
In a way that I experience as being, , emotionally connected, impactful, encouraging, while also being real about the issues that companies face as well. It's not just being a,
damn the torpedoes. Never tell me the odds. Sometimes you need to deliver feedback that may be tough to hear about one's company, and I can still view that job as something that I find to be, , a beautiful, rewarding experience that I actually really like. Educating and, uh, I don't even really like using that word so much.
Just, I like being an external strategic enabler for others, and that's something that I really like doing and feel very passionate about. To the degree to which I'm willing to use vocational about 17 times so far in this podcast. Not all work feels like that. It's not every day that it does.
I've been thinking a lot about the nature of work, of labor because how could you not?
And one of the other parts of my life that feels vocational is this podcast.
Not every part of it feels vocational to me,
but when it does, I feel I'm on the right track about something important and I feel connected to, , a long and powerful lineage. I'm going to explain what that means. In order for this to have a lick of a chance at making sense, I'm going to have to walk you through a short story, which I adore, called Leaf by Niggle, by JRR Tolkien.
I've known about this story for a very long time. A friend of mine recommended it to me. I don't even know how long ago I saw them post on social media years ago, a podcast called Classical Stuff You Should Know, and they did an episode about Leaf by Niggle, and I had it saved in my podcast app for, I don't even know how long it was.
One of those, uh, it's been downloaded. It's at the very bottom of the list, older than anything else that's been downloaded. I've always been like, I'm gonna get to it. As you've probably heard me mention on this show before, books finds you at the right moment. I wasn't ready when I first tried to read Leaf By Niggle.
It washed right over me, made basically no impression at all. But some part of me just kind of knew like, there's something here. I'm gonna wanna revisit it. So recently, probably a month or six weeks ago, I listened to that classical stuff You Should Know, podcast about Leaf by Niggle. It's produced by several, uh, teachers as far as I can understand from a classical Christian academy.
The kind of school that's reading, uh, Aquinas and Aristotle and, and working through the, um, classical humanities, like liberal arts tradition.
And so I listened to this podcast and I'm like, okay, this is really the exact right moment for me to be discovering this again. And I'm gonna go back and read Leaf By Niggle. Big surprise. I think Leaf by Nickel is brilliant.
It is so didactic, but it's also so unexpected, which makes it a truly wonderful tale. So I'm gonna tell you about it. It's gonna spoil it, but also you could listen to it or read it in less than an hour if you would like.
Niggle is a painter, and he lives in the countryside of what I imagine is England.
And he's not that great of an artist. He's okay at it, but he is passionate and he's always working on a picture of a tree, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger, but he never quite finishes it
as he's working on it, his neighbors, people from the town just keep, , bothering him with what he deems interruptions. Oh, he has to serve on a jury. Oh, such and such needs a little help with their garden.
You have a distant relation who's ill somewhere, in other words, his life is full of the regular a, a business of living life. There are people who, who need things that he's in a position to help them with. And while he, he does it, and he does help these people.
He never especially wants to, he, he broadly, uh, resents the intrusion, but he's compliant and, and serves them. His, his goal is to get back to his tree and keep painting as much as possible. And if you know anything about Tolkien who wrote The Lord of the Rings and quite a lot of poetry and other mythological works, this is basically his life.
He's trying, I imagine trying desperately to, uh, birth into existence an entire, uh, internally coherent, powerful, mythological realm. Immensely difficult, uh, to do.
Having a symbolically rich story that also broadly holds is a really challenging thing to do. They joke about it in that podcast, which by the way, if you wanna listen to, I'll, I'll post it in the show notes. They joke that Tolkien was, was always, um, would argue with CS Lewis about how the Chronicles of Narnia universe doesn't actually.
Make sense, like there's contradictions in it that he's never been able to resolve. So PO was really trying to make this thing all sort of make sense, and that's a lot of work, but life keeps intervening. He keeps having to, uh, do things. His community needs him for various things. and he knows that he actually has an important journey coming up that he cannot refuse,
it will not surprise you to know that that is a, uh, literary way of describing death.
. If someone ever says that they have an important journey, that they cannot postpone any longer, or something like that, that's, it's, it's symbolism for death. I think almost, almost always. . We have a joke in my family about how, uh, your high school literature class would always ask you, well, who's the Christ figure in this novel?
And, and by job there's always one, there's always someone that you can, uh, put into that mold. 'cause you come from a Christian civilization, if you're from, a Euro-American orientation,
but niggle has to make a journey and his neighbor perish, comes by his house and says that his wife is ill. And he very much needs niggle to ride his bike to town, to, , get the doctor,
for his wife 'cause he's worried that his wife doesn't merely have a cold, but is actually a fever and she may die. Niggle knows that, , he may himself catch a cold. He doesn't especially want to do this journey, but , he does it to help perish and perish his wife. And he goes, he falls ill and perishes wife is fine.
Uh, as apparently a quick cold, she recovers quickly. So the trip ultimately had no, instrumental result that made Nigel's journey worth it for the outcome. It was, uh, one of those things where the intention mattered, but the outcome was irrelevant,
which is, I think symbolically and theologically important to the story. Uh, while he's there, he's also meant to ask the builders, . Builders, you know, British for, uh, construction people, if they can come by to fix parish's house because the roof is, is failing and it's letting in the damp and the cold.
And that's at least partially why, , Mrs. Parish fell ill.
Niggle falls Ill, soon enough, the, the building inspector comes by and says that the law requires him to help his neighbor because they're having bad weather. And niggle should have helped his neighbor more. , To stop the damage from getting worse during this stormy period. And niggle points out that the town has an emergency fund, like he shouldn't have to be the one to help perish. , But the inspector points to his painting and says, look, you've got canvas, you've got wood, you've got waterproof paint.
It's all right here. You have all the means to help your neighbor, and you chose not to, um, even though you could have prevented , his home from being damaged further by the rain and the storm, of course niggle thinks that his art is more important than helping his neighbor. And so if you stop reading here, you would think, , this is such obvious Christian parable, right?
niggle is selfish. , All he cares about is his art. He's not even especially good at it. He just wants to make it for his own vein desires. And obviously the thing in life that counts is helping your neighbor. And that is. True to an extent. But what I love about this story is it doesn't end there and there's actually a much more sophisticated, , set of moral lessons that come.
So while Niggle is dealing with this very, , insistent building inspector, the driver of his coach that he's been awaiting for his travel arrives
and niggle doesn't want to go, , he hasn't packed anything. He wasn't prepared to make this long journey right now, but here it is. It is upon him and there's no time to do anything except to comply. And he's also just so tired. He's ill, he's just going to allow himself to be carted off from his home and , taken where the driver, , wants to take him.
And if you're thinking this sounds like the grim reaper, then, uh, like I said, I don't really think that there's a lot of, uh, attempts to hide the symbolism.
Which is interesting, right? Because Tolkien is actually very sophisticated with how he uses symbolism and the Lord of the Rings books are not straightforwardly symbolic. Like if, if I asked you the high school literary question of who is the Christ figure in Lord of the Rings, you could give several answers, uh, and write several essays that would convince your teacher that you actually did the reading and had thought about it.
Like it could, it could be Sam Wise, you know, Sam is basically St. Christopher. Uh, I think the mythological story of St. Christopher is closest for Sam, but you could also say that Sam's amount of sacrifice and humility is Christ-like in this way. Uh, obviously you could say Frodo.
Uh, and then what is, oh gosh, do I want to, even if you haven't read lo, read Lord of the Rings or watched it. If you don't want spoilers, quit now. 'cause I, I feel like I have to talk about Lord of the Rings just to, to make sense of this Frodo decides that he's gonna keep the ring the same that Isildur did a very long time ago before the Lord of the Rings, uh, trilogy, uh, happens
and then Gollum tackles him and tries to wrestle the ring away from him, bites his finger off, and then falls into Mount Doom. And ironically, saves the day by his own greed rather than letting Frodo's corruption, uh, win. It's like this beautiful, like rich. Like what, what is that story? Um, there's so much depth to that.
It's hard for me. I know it's symbolically important. I know it's meaningful, but I also can't tell you exactly what is operating there. Part of it , goes back to Gandalf's feelings about mercy that.
I had to look up the quote, 'cause it's one of those things that's so, uh, so tightly written and so perfect that it would be a shame for me to, to butcher it. Sam [Frodo] is asking, Gandalf, why didn't Bilbo just kill Gollum back when he had the chance? And why is Gollum still alive and why doesn't someone do something about Gollum who's just following the ring bearer, uh, across middle earth?
Gandalf chastises Sam [Frodo] for this question and says, many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life, can you give it to them then do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. It for even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it
and he is bound up with the fate of the ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet for good or ill before the end. And when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many, yours not least
What a powerful statement. That's such a, such a beautiful thing. And of course, Gandalf is right. If Gollum had been killed earlier in this story, Frodo would have perfectly duplicated the Isildur story and just walked away from it. And then we'd have a whole nother cycle potentially, of the ring being lost and found, or maybe just Sauron would get his hands on the ring right after that.
The mercy for Gollum allows him to stop Frodo's corruption
from allowing either the cycle to return or for darkness to, to finally win in middle Earth. It's such an interesting part of this story here too. 'cause you can also compare this to like, when I think about Jewish theology and Christian theology, Jewish theology has a really strong cyclical feel. It's all about how, , the Israelites, they make a covenant with God and then they break it, and then they make another covenant and then they break it and they make another covenant and they break it.
And the Old Testament basically ends, as far as I can tell, as a lay person, without resolution of this central circular dynamic. It's just on and on and on, which I think is poetically so beautiful too. If you think about our time on earth as a chance to improve your soul, , to learn things, to become a better person, it's not a straightforward path.
You might feel like it's two steps forward, one step back. Maybe it's two steps forward and three steps back sometimes in life. Uh, it's not a straightforward process. And Jewish theology, having that circularity to it, I think is a really beautiful, uh, thing. , But then Christian theology layered on top of Jewish theology is interesting because it takes that cycle and the attempt is to break the, like permanent revolutionary aspects of, of Jewish, , spiritual life and to solve it once and for all and to say , actually this is the new covenant.
This is what we're doing now. Pick up your cross and follow me. And this is sort of, uh, meant to be a capstone on the cycle to maybe close it once and for all. And so if you take that to Lord of the Rings and you're watching the the Mount Doom scene.
Who is what In Christian mythology here, uh, Frodo's moment of darkness could be the agony in the garden. You know, this could be Gethsemane, where, , Jesus is, worried about what is to come and shows his moments of humanity here. Could be something like that. But then what is, what is Gollum exactly.
Gollum doesn't fit neatly into the Christian story 'cause it's so deeply ironic. Gollum's greed unintentionally saves the day because he bites off Frodo's finger and falls into Mount Doom.
What are we to make of that? It's, there's almost like a, um, if, if you haven't seen the movie Burn After reading the Cohen Brothers film, it's wonderful. You should definitely see it. Uh, but the conclusion of it has a moment where the, sorry, again, I gotta spoil it, but it's also been out for a long time and you should see it, it, JK Simmons and the other people at the CIA are just like trying to figure out what even occurred in this story.
They're like, what? What was this? And, uh, JK Simmons says something like, well, what did we learn here? I guess not to do it again. And like, that's the conclusion of the movie, that it's just, it's contingency, it's randomness. It just kind of happened. But like, what are you meant to learn from that? It's not as straightforward as, uh, Christian mythology.
There's something else, there's like Christian elements to it, but the resolution of this is not straightforwardly. Christian in this way, it's, it's, there's like a sophisticated, nuanced kind of understanding, uh, of this. The best thing that you can say about is you have to go back to that original Gandalf line and hear him say that like, Bilbo not killing Gollum as an act of mercy means that this act of mercy that Gollum did not deserve, that he still does not rise to the challenge of like, he does not deserve mercy, potentially even until he falls into the lava of Mount Doom.
Like the last thing you see of Gollum is him slipping the ring on becoming invisible and then falling into lava and being consumed by magma. So, uh, as far as I can tell, he didn't have a spiritually transcendent moment, so he never had his redemption. It's like if you're, if you are looking at this from a Christian lens .
You're craving that moment of, of redemption. You know, like if you are thinking about someone like Jean, Val, Jean here, it goes, all comes to Les miss. It ultimately all goes back to Les Mis. Like you want that moment of redemptive grace and of mercy, like you want mercy to win. And Gollum, uh, Gollum does deserve mercy even if, uh, he's unable to receive it gracefully.
And that is a Christian story, right? The gentlest understanding of Christianity here is it really takes the, the smallest acknowledgement of, of being a sinner, which is everyone within Christian theology to be eligible for grace. It doesn't have to be, it's like the pride of denying that one needs forgiveness or mercy and failing to be as, uh, as good of a person, as one truly can be.
It is what it takes to be eligible for mercy. , Gollum can't get there, but dang it, I still, I still believe in mercy and the people who extended Mercy to Gollum were correct about it. So even if Gollum still fails to have his reconciliatory moment prior to his death for the souls of the people who had the chance to, to maybe intervene and, and end his life earlier and chose not to, it had both an instrumental benefit for this sort of like fatalistic prophecy kind of element here that Gandalf says of like, don't be wishing, , these ends upon people because we really don't know the roles that people will play, which is a wonderful, beautiful lesson.
It reminds me of, if you haven't read the, the book or seen the movie of Just Mercy, it kinda reminds me of that. It takes like a really wise person to say something like this.
And this isn't even getting into the different personalities of Christ in theology. And in literature. Aragorn might just represent the, Divine King version of it.
Whereas Frodo and or Sam might represent the meekness version of Christ who is not royal in that kind of way, whatever. All I'm saying is that Tolkien knows how to use symbolism and he is very good at it. The fact that I just basically ranted about it for 15 minutes or however long that was with basically, uh, no script, um, because I'm still processing it, right?
Like it's such an interesting story where you, you know, there's poetry in it. You can feel it. But it's hard to know. It doesn't just feed it to you either. It's meant to be powerful imagery that sticks with you that you're meant to chew on in the same way, like one of the stories I love about the Bible that I often come back to is the idea that in Exodus, , God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
You're like, why does God keep hardening pharaoh's heart? Uh, that's strange. Is it saying that Pharaoh, is not an agent with free will, that his actions are predetermined in some way? Or is it that God is confirming him in his, uh, own stubbornness that pre-existed God's intervention?
And also why was he, was God intervening in this way to enforce a story or a fate for, for the Israelites or something else? I think what's interesting about the Bible, but especially parts of Jewish tradition, is that it's very much based upon asking these questions in long, long debates for hundreds of years, that ask questions and are meant to be this sort of like, this is what Yeshiva is for, right?
You're supposed to just be sort of like processing this information, asking these questions, and engage in theological debate because there is not a discreet answer to all of it. Uh, maybe some people think there is, classical texts are often more of an invitation to a discussion rather than something that's presenting you with the answer.
And I think Tolkien using symbolism in this way is a very sophisticated guide at presenting these ideas to you with elements where the Christ figure shows up across many characters. And it's not, uh, a simple one. In fact, even as I'm saying this, you know who Gollum reminds me of is Judas Iscariot, where Judas is someone that, you know, gets paid his, , 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus, and then commits suicide.
But the resurrection story
does not happen without Judas Betrayal.
And this is one of those parts of the Christian tradition that has long baffled people. A more recent version of this that is not considered to be theologically sound, but is still in pop culture reasons it's important, is in the last temptation of Christ, Jesus actually tells Judas to betray him.
And granted it's Will Defoe telling Harvey Kittel that, but it still happens.
And there's actually a book that I really love that, uh, a friend of mine wrote it's a graphic novel. , About Judas called Judas very appropriately. it's about how after Judas dies in certain Christian traditions, specifically in Catholicism, there's a moment called the harrowing of hell.
So Jesus is dead for three days before he rises again in the story. And during that time, Jesus is in hell. And one of the, traditional elements of the harrowing of Hell's story is that Jesus leads the noble pagans to heaven because they died before they had a chance to know him.
So he brings the Jewish patriarchs, he brings the philosophers from Athens like He, he brings the people who died before they had a chance to, to learn of the new dispensation that Jesus offers. And so Jeff Loveness wrote this graphic novel about Judas, and Judas is not typically considered to be included in the harrowing of hell.
But what if he was,
his story was deeply tragic. It was necessary for the entire narrative to even happen.
And I suspect even though he died by suicide,
we can also interpret that action as , , being evidence of his remorse and therefore remorse making one eligible for grace and for mercy, perhaps Judas, in the harrowing of Hell's story should be elevated out of hell and taken, , to paradise with Jesus.
Relatedly. I once heard someone say that God's mercy exists between the bridge and the water, which I always thought was such a kind, beautiful sentiment. I think a mercy should be so encompassing if it is to exist,
and not to always go back to Les Mis, but I'm kind of salty.
That Ver doesn't get to sing in the choir, angelic at the end of the musical. , It doesn't seem that Hugo gave Jave much thought after his own suicide, , into the sin.
And I think Jair deserves mercy as well. So I'm, I'm sympathetic to, , the redemption of villains. I probably attribute it to watching a lot of episodes, four or five and six of Star Wars as a kid, and loving Darth Vader's Ark. I think that's such a, such a wonderful thing. I think that really ties the story very, very nicely together.
But anyways, in a, in a show full of digressions, I digress.
If you've listened to previous shows where. Theology has come up. I often really want this version of mercy to be so much more present in our culture because it's, it's so missing.
In, uh, the Divine comedy, Judas is down there with, uh, Brutus full circle. I didn't expect to be talking about that today with Brutus and Cassius, I believe it's like the three of them.
And if Judas is that far down and Dante and the Harrowing can even still reach him. Then I love that. And related to this, I love the idea in c. S Lewis has this line, I forget where it's from. He says something about how, , hell is locked from the inside. So I always thought it was a really interesting idea.
Some of the portrayals of people who are suffering, even in Dante, they're so obsessed with their own suffering and their own interests that they don't even necessarily know that they need to ask for forgiveness. And if you take the CS Lewis line and apply it to the Dante, then someone presumably in hell at this position could maybe acknowledge their sins and then find their way to purgatory in this way of understanding.
And this is a great moment to go right back to Leaf by niggle. So Nigel is on his journey, he's sleepy, he's like kind of passed out and he ends up in a station where he's shuffled along by people and it ends up at a workhouse, which, you know, I don't, I don't know how much you know about I Victorian British history, but not a very nice place.
A place where the indigent would go and perform various types of work and made not to starve. They were not comfortable places, they were not very nice places, but they were an attempt to provide welfare in its early days. But he actually takes to it really well. He does relatively menial tasks.
And Niel does carpentry and he's involved in the building of various things. And soon enough, he forgets much about his life and what he was worried about, forgetting when he didn't have anything to bring with him, when the driver showed up and, is more focused on where he is now than what was happening in his life.
And then he gets transferred to a much more menial task of I think just digging holes, digging ditches. And that's not great, but even still, he rises to it and sort of takes to it in his own way and has no idea how long he's been at it. And at one point when he is resting, he hears two people debating the course of his life.
And as it's often the case, especially if you've listened to this podcast on theological episodes, the two people arguing represent Mercy and justice. And justice is making the case that Niggle was so self-involved that he only viewed his, his, you know, charitable obligations as interruptions from his prime duty, his painting, that he wasn't even that good at.
And yet he had a hard time, uh, helping his neighbor whose house was falling down. And, and he was so obsessed with this dumb painting that, gosh, niggle iss just really not deserving of any amount of mercy. And Mercy was saying that after niggle did these things, he never thought about it again. He didn't necessarily think, uh, that parish should have thanked him to a greater extent.
He didn't feel entitled to a greater amount of gratitude. He just did the thing that he had to do. And maybe he didn't love it, but he also didn't, uh, resent it after the fact. He kind of just moved on with his life and tried to get back to his painting. And his painting was oftentimes that of noticing the world around him and was a lovely thing.
And they, they talk about how the tree as a whole is not that great. But he was amazing at painting leafs and he painted one leaf in particular that was truly sublime.
And as they're debating Nichol's life.
Mercy gets the last word.
And Niggle did know that he had a chance of not being able to finish his painting. Should he go on the bike ride to try to bring the doctor and the builder from town to help Mrs. Parrish. And he did it anyways. He had an intuition or a feeling like this was, this might be the last trip I'm able to go on and it's going to cost me time to finish my painting.
And he still went. And so Mercy argues persuasively that justice would be better served by being gentle with niggle. And niggle is so thankful because he does not believe himself to be deserving of this mercy at all. That in fact many of the things that are said about him appear to him to be true.
That what Justice says about his behavior was self-serving, obsessive insular in ways that are not really what the law either truly legalistic law in his life or the moral law of Christianity, demands of him during his life.
And so the two interlocutors ask niggle. If he has anything to say for himself, they notice that he's listening and niggle takes the opportunity, to ask how Parish is doing because he knows he has a, a, a lame leg. That's why he had to go on the bike for Parish because Parish's leg was bad and couldn't get there himself.
And, uh, they say that parish hasn't arrived here yet,
But Niggle makes sure to, to specify that parish. Gave him a number of potatoes that saved him time. In fact, early in the short story, it's revealed that Niggle had a potato field, but he put a barn over it so he could paint more stuff. So Parish was also taking care of him because Niggle made a decision to prioritize art And Niggle makes sure that Mercy and Justice know that Parish did these things for him, even though parish maybe didn't even understand the art that he was trying to to make.
So they keep that in mind. Mercy wins the day. Niggle is put back on the train and is taken to a beautiful environment that seems so familiar to him. And it seems so familiar because it's the place where the tree that he's been trying to paint his entire life is, he looks at it and not only is the tree there, but everything that he would have painted had he, the skill, had he, the time that expands beyond the tree is also there,
He's just over the moon. He's, I mean, this is a wonderful experience for him. This is essentially, as far as I can understand, and the podcast talks about how this is sort of , taking the model from Dante, this is Paradise. And he's at the start of working through Paradise it seems like he. Broadly skipped hell in my understanding. He went to purgatory and now he's at the bottom of paradise.
And this is where it comes back to what it means to be vocational. What's interesting about this setup here is that niggles tree that he was trying to paint his entire life was not something that was generated from within his own mind. Niggles tree is a transcendental form.
It exists outside of the human mind. It may be in fact divine reality, and the artist can only ever reflect it back to one's peers into history in an imperfect and incomplete way. For instance, , after niggle dies, the people in the town and the building inspector are debating about what to do with niggles canvases, and they use them for practical purposes to patch houses, specifically parishes house.
But they do save one leaf as a painting that's a perfectly painted leaf. Uh, and they take it eventually, it ends up in a museum where it is called leaf by niggle and is admired by all as an example of a perfect leaf painting. It's like the smallest artistic triumph. That niggle achieved in life. The smallest representation of this tree was still beautiful in this kind of way, divisible even down to the leaf, to the single leaf.
It's still that important of a thing to reflect back. Ultimately, the museum burns down, which is a, a very funny, ironic thing about what it means to have legacy on earth. Ozzy manian kind of, uh, arrogance,
you know, look on my works, he mighty in despair, who even was Ozzy Manus, who even cares, uh, kind of deal.
But what I love about this is that feels his entire life that he's, he's working on something that is transcendental, that it's something that he's communicating. It doesn't even come from within him, the artist's role is to reflect back some divine universal transcendental truth or beauty.
This is the aesthetics of Tolkien. This is what the work is meant to be when it's truly transcendental.
Soon enough parish ends up in the same environment , with niggle end. They end up, , building a house together and being engaged in the practical work of just like being in this environment. They, they, they sort of just know that they're meant to build a house together and work together. Niggled does much more of the construction, even though parish is the one who's much better with practical things and Parish spends much more time wandering around the woods and staring at leaves and just appreciating nature.
And one parish sees the tree that niggle has been trying to paint. Perrish realizes what a fool he is been that he didn't realize that niggle was trying to paint , this reflection of divine truth for his friends and for his neighbors and for his community that this was actually a really important thing to do and, , perish is so sorry that he bothered niggle so many times with things that were frankly less important than trying to find ways to reflect divine truth.
And niggle apologizes in turn that he prioritized that to such an extent that he was not able to wholeheartedly give to perish. And now that they're in this world together, they sort of reversed their roles and they both develop the parts of their personality that were lacking. You of course, need to be a good member of the community and to nourish the practical needs of your friends and neighbors and community members, but you also are meant to find these reflections of divine truth and appreciate them, that is also constitutive of a life well lived.
One doesn't necessarily need to have one or the other, but it's, it's a combination of both, at least in this particular telling.
The story concludes , by them meeting a shepherd who's passing through their little beautiful spot and niggle wants to see what lies beyond the mountains above. That he's been staring at and painting behind his tree for so long and decides to follow the shepherd into the mountains and to see what else is out there in this divine space.
He's ready to, to move on while Parish decides to wait for his wife, who he knows is short and coming,
because he knows his wife would want him to wait for her.
The train stop, which had previously been unnamed, it is decided that will now be called Niggles Perish. And that's sort of the end. They, they love that. And then they both proceed with no more documentation of their story, , of the afterlife.
This show feels vocational to me too. And many of the shows that I've done recently that have been more emotional in content, more theological, more existential, the shows that I'm doing about what it means to be a human during very hard times, what it means when the world is dangerous and changing, and the kinds of things that we should be thinking about and preparing our souls to undergo
those feel vocational to me, when I do that work and I do that well, and, um, this will sound a little bit like Ernest Hemingway, but like when I put down something into this podcast that I know is true and is from the heart in this kind of way, I very much feel like niggle reflecting back a divine reality to the listener.
And what I love about that way of understanding the creative process here is that it doesn't actually make me smart or elevate me in any way. What I'm drawing from when I'm speaking about topics of this nature. Do not originate from within me. , They're me channeling wisdom traditions, or the wisdom tradition of the world.
It's essentially me trying to channel the wisdom traditions that precede me. Any of those shows that you can listen to where I'm talking about , different theologies and, and, uh, different stories of people who have gone through hard times and, and developed some amount of wisdom and. I can't take credit for any of it.
It's not it's something that is truly democratic and universal that anyone can plug into. I really don't think there's any gatekeeper whatsoever. I think there's a reason why so much converges around the same themes with people that we consider to be sufficiently wise, to discourse on things of this nature.
And it mostly is about
how your time in your body is limited.
That kindness is important.
That showing a great amount of love
is what you can be proud of and to not be so afraid of death that one will do anything to avoid it.
There are so many different ways to plug into the world's wisdom traditions . I'm Catholic, but I'm also a very ecumenical person. I like to read widely.
And when I have a chance to, to channel some of this information through, , reading and reflecting on, on what it means to be human at this particular moment in time, I do feel like I'm tapping into something that is much deeper than an audio essay that I am so smart for having created. I really, it is, I honestly just feel like this is something that exists outside of me, that I'm reflecting back to my peers.
And I hope that there's a small leaf of it that can be appreciated. That was like, wow, that really was a divinely inspired piece of art when this show is good, I want it to be art, and I want it to be art that reflects back some amount of divine truth. And I mean that in the broadest, most ecumenical sense here as well.
And it's also so funny to pair shows like this with shows that are such intensely nerdy inside baseball about carbon dioxide removal. I recognize that this, this show has many personalities and is a, a vessel for so many different ideas. And I hope that there's room enough in your heart for both of those things.
So I think they both, uh, are important to be super practical and to be dealing with art that is reflective of what I hope to be, uh, sort of the universal democratic divine truths that we all have access to if we have the right ears to listen. And is that not exactly how it is with Parish and Niggle?
The podcast has both of them. This is a niggle show. The parish shows are, are ones about, uh, private equities in involvement in the biochar industry. That's Oh, that's funny. I did, did not expect that that link to come. That's cracking me up. . If you have any sort of thing that makes you feel the way that I do when I'm talking about
Niggles tree and his art as reflecting back that transcendental platonic form of beauty of truth, go do that. I honestly think that that kind of thing you almost can't go wrong with you might look a little bit silly. You're gonna sound a little woo sometimes, but honestly, I think creation like that ,
it can be truly vocational when one taps into that type of spiritual calling. I think it can be that.
When I find that I can bring something back from Nichols Parish, my own version of it, at least I'm trying to, I do feel like I'm on, I'm on the right track when I'm there and when I'm doing that work. I think it's more than the exact right financial mechanisms for making sure that carbon removal can survive a period of geopolitical reshuffling and uncertainty.
I think the heart portion of this is going to be the thing that makes the difference.
I think ultimately this policy work is going to be dependent upon how we mature as a global civilization. I don't think the policy will ever be robust enough without spiritual maturation. Because there are always gonna be very practical reasons. Uh, to, to follow the discount rate and to do the easy thing now, but not the hard thing.
Anything that brings wisdom back
From that platonic realm that can coax us out of the competition that we feel with other people, with other individuals, with other countries,
and can inspire those transcendental feelings, I think is truly doing divinely inspired work, vocational work,
Even if we know that our work while alive will end up in a museum that will ultimately burn down same as Leaf by niggle, the work is still worth doing for its own sake. And even if it is not permanent, it can still be invaluable
Sometimes I'll say that if a podcast I make reaches one person, I consider that to be good enough for this. If one person listens to this and says, wow, I never thought about it this way, and like that, really, I really connected with that. I love getting notes like that, and feel free to send them to me if you ever, um, feel passionate enough to, to do so.
But also I'm recreating my own soul in the process of making this too. So even if no one listened to this, in the process of me explaining this and exploring this, I'm also trying to change my own heart, my own soul, my own relationship with all that is.
And you can do that too.
Thanks for listening. I hope you'll find a way to heed the vocational call in something that feels transcendental to you. I'm grateful for you listening. I really am. Thank you so much for being a part of this show. Uh, if you're listening to the very end here,
I know how many things there are to do in life. You chose to spend it with me. I do not take that for granted. I've said that before and I'll keep saying it. I do sincerely appreciate you.
That's all for now. Good luck.
