You're Living in Your Head. Here's How to Get Back. w/ James Taylor Foreman
Sword&Spade
James Taylor Foreman is a writer, the voice behind The Metaphor on Substack, and a contributor to Sword & Spade magazine. In this conversation with Jason Craig, James traces his journey from being born Catholic, through years as an atheist, and back to the Catholic Church — and the more personal story underneath: a recurring dream, a two-week wedding, and a move back to Louisiana to finish the house his father left incomplete. In This Episode, We Cover: * How reading Aquinas, Augustine, and Athanasius made James's conversion to Catholicism intellectually inevitable and what both Protestants and materialists have in common when they skip everything between Aristotle and Kant * The two-week wedding, the relocation to Louisiana, and why time pressure sometimes produces more beauty than years of planning ever could * Walker Percy, Louisiana Catholic culture, and the tragedy of a people who possessed one of the richest Catholic inheritances in America and nearly let it rot from the inside * Abstraction as the defining spiritual disorder of modernity — what it is, why it fuels everything from addiction to political outrage, and why embodiment is the only real remedy * Right relationship with technology: why the tools that "disappear" are more dangerous than the ones we can see, and what it means to be a faithful steward rather than a tool yourself Chapters: * 00:00: Introduction and James's Background * 06:02: From Louisiana Catholic to Teenage Atheist * 08:40: A Slow Conversion, the Presbyterian Church, and the Church Fathers * 14:45: Meeting Riley and the Two-Week Wedding * 21:56: Finishing His Father's House in Louisiana * 27:28: Walker Percy, St. Francisville, and Louisiana * 34:58: What We Squandered: Retention, the Dance Hall, and Louisiana Catholic Culture * 42:20: Walker Percy and the Problem of Despair * 43:43: Abstraction, Embodiment, and Escaping Yourself * 54:14: Right Relationship with Technology: The Tools That Disappear Resources Mentioned: * The Metaphor by James Taylor Foreman * Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy * Morning Offering with Fr. Brad Doyle JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/ Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios