Faber Institute Podcast

The Faber Sessions #9 Part 1 on Poems of the Bible (specifically Isaiah 35 and Psalms 1, 42, 51, and 104), presented by Rick Ganz. Roughly a third of the Old Testament is verse (i.e., set in lines). This poetic corpus includes the three books of Job, Proverbs, and Psalms, and the several festival songs embedded in prose texts, other poems or poetic fragments embedded within blocks of prose, and mu...

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/09/18/on-a-puzzling-word-in-a-famous-prayer/

Ernest Becker is probably best characterized as a cultural anthropologist - someone who studies the “meaning and values” of a culture as they relate to the “human project”. His book, The Denial of Death (1973), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 (after his death), was written as he was actively dying of cancer. When I first read it, probably in the early 1980s, I knew that I had read one of the...

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/09/30/on-receiving-a-grace-profoundly-2/

In the last class of this series, we will learn from God how God chooses to lead - what Jesus called the “Kingdom of God” - by paying particular attention to all that appeared for us to ponder in the first “moments” of the arrival of the Second Divine Person into our world - the so-called Infancy Narratives. Our Guests are the Evangelists Matthew and Luke (1st century CE). 

We come to the final class of this Series, attending to the character of Scrooge portrayed by Charles Dickens in his 1843 novel A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas. How is it, we may ask ourselves as we read, that Scrooge will become so frightened when his longtime partner is “sent” to him on a mission of mercy (think here of Luke 16:30 - He (the Rich Man) said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham,...

The Fireside Gathering is an annual event in which we invite guests to come experience the works of the Institute. Funds raised through this event support the ongoing work of the Faber Institute - the work of souls - activated through classes, retreat, spiritual direction, writing and speaking. We invite you to support the Faber Institute by making a donation online: https://faberinstitute.com/don...

In Simone Adolphine Weil (1909-1943), we encounter a person who had an abiding skepticism of (worldly) authority - of that supposed “leadership.” Or perhaps better, Simone Weil challenges worldly authority precisely because, and when, it has ignored God’s sovereignty. True leadership meant for her to have learned to lead as God does (this has nothing to do with establishing a Theocracy, but everyt...

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/11/29/10-on-your-name-peregrinus/

In Part II, we continue this Faber Sessions series about the discernment of spirits, and in specific relation to fear, with the Gothic novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. This most popular literary work derived from vampire legends became the basis for an entire genre of literature and film.

Dr. Travis Pickell  of George Fox University introduces us to special guest Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome. We specifically focus on the work Meditations in which Aurelius gives a philosophy of finding happiness and maintaining good character whether faced with hardships as a slave or vast power and wealth as an Emperor. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and...

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/08/24/on-the-death-of-your-dad/

Rick Ganz introduces us to special guest Homer and his epic work The Odyssey. From the Britannica Online Encyclopedia: "little is known of [Homer] beyond the fact that his was the name attached in antiquity by the Greeks themselves to the poems [the Iliad and the Odyssey]. That there was an epic poet called Homer and that he played the primary part in shaping the Iliad and the Odyssey—so much may...

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/08/10/on-the-suicide-of-your-younger-sister/

In Part I, we focus on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published in 1818. We consider in this Faber Session how we make monsters and need to take responsibility for what we make, rather than distancing ourselves from them as if they are Other, “not like us at all." This significant novel is famous as much for how beautifully crafted it is as it is for how it has evoked things deep in the human...

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/09/24/on-questions-asked-by-a-15-year-old-girl/

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus #5, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2015/09/06/on-the-testing-of-a-married-relationship/

This is an audio recording of the Letter to Peregrinus, written and read by Rick Ganz. You can read the written version of this Letter here on our website: https://faberinstitute.com/2022/06/23/65-the-healing-of-language/

The Night School is an adventurous exercise of greater depth and reflectivity than is normal for most people. For each of these gatherings, we welcome a profound thinker, explorer, philosopher, painter, poet, theologian or mystic from the ancient or nearer past. For example, we may invite Aristotle (4th century BCE) to attend, and through some short and penetrating texts from his writings to give...