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Dante & Me in Charleston

Come to Circe's pre-conference event, and let's talk about how Dante can save your life
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I’m going to be part of the program at the annual Circe Conference in Charleston, SC, from July 15-18. The theme is “A Contemplation of Harmony.” The Circe conference is the event for classical Christian educators, and I was thrilled to be invited. Check out that link to see who else is speaking. Ken Myers! Andrew Kern! Martin Cothran! Eighth Day Books will be present selling its wares. You have to see those book tables to believe them. And you have to see the mugshot of me, taken in 2003, before I had a single gray hair.

But wait, there’s more, on July 15:

In this special pre-conference event Mr. Rod Dreher will lead a discussion on the themes central to his new book, How Dante Can Save Your Life (ReganArts, 2015), a memoir about the ways reading Dante’s Divine Comedy brought clarity, healing, and harmony to his life.

Topics for discussion will include:

Harmony and the Medieval Mind

What are the conceptual differences between ourselves and the medieval vision that makes it hard even for sympathetic modern readers to understand Dante’s message? Is there a way to talk about what we have lost in the 700 years since the High Middle Ages, and how the metaphysical realism of the medievals is so alien to the modern mind — even the modern conservative Christian mind. The discussion will touch on the work of Charles Taylor and his ideas about secularism as a way of illuminating concepts all of us moderns have to work through to see the world as Dante saw it.

Dante and 21st Century Ecumenism 

Rod is an Orthodox Christian. As Dante Can Save Your Life details, God used a Catholic poet, an Orthodox priest, and an Evangelical therapist to heal him. In what ways might the study of Dante serve as a point of unity among contemporary tradition-minded Christians, even as we maintain our unavoidable differences?

Holiness as Harmony

Paradiso offers us an image of the Kingdom as hierarchical but harmonious, not egalitarian. Inferno is full of atomized egotists, but Purgatorio is filled with people who are learning how to live more altruistically. How can we learn to see truth as symphonic, without becoming relativists? Does Dante offer us insights?

Time permitting, additional topics will include:

  • The Power of Storytelling As a Way of Learning and an Impetus for Change
  • Dante and Ascetic Christianity as an Antidote to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

All attendees will receive a copy of How Dante can Save Your Life and Mr. Dreher will conduct a signing following the event.

Note: Lunch, and snacks/coffee/tea/water are included in the pre-conference registration fee. Open to the public, not just to conference attendees.

See that? You don’t have to register for the whole conference (though I hope you will) to come to the one-day Dante event. Cost for the Dantepalooza: $125.  Come out, friends, it’ll be fun.

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