Eighth Day Symposium 2023

13th Annual

EIGHTH DAY SYMPOSIUM

Be Not Afraid!


Anno Domini 2023, January 11-14  - Wichita, KS

If you're not an Eighth Day Member, join the community today.  Featured events like the Symposium are free for Pillars, and Patrons & Teacher/Pastors receive a 50% discount.


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Be Not Afraid!

When I sink down in gloom or fear,

Hope blighted or delayed,

Thy whisper, Lord, my heart shall cheer,

"Tis I: Be Not Afraid!"



The Speakers

Jake Meador

Editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy
Fr. John Strickland

Archpriest of St. Elizabeth Orthodox Church
James Matthew Wilson

Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and Founding Director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston

The Seminar

January 11-12, Anno Donimi 2023

"Those Who Are With Us"  in the Bible, the Fathers, the Liturgy & Literature

If you really want to dig into the Symposium theme, come early and join us for the seminar. In addition to prayer and teaching, we'll be reading and discussing texts related to the Symposium theme from the Bible, the Fathers, the liturgy and literature. 


Seating is limited to first 12 registrants.  Notebooks with the texts will be delivered the week before the seminar.


SOLD OUT

The Festal Banquet

St. Paul of Thebes & Cultural Renewal

As any past Symposium attendee will attest, one of the highlights is the annual festal banquet. In addition to the a stringed-quartet and delicious food, each year we celebrate a hero of our faith (past years include St Gregory the Theologian, St Anthony the Great, St. Athanasius, St Cyril of Alexandria, St Gregory of Nyssa, St Basil the Great, St. Mary of Egypt, St. Augustine) and the Symposium speakers offer reflections on cultural renewal. But the most stunning part of the evening has consistently been the Cathedral Choir's series of ancient hymns. And the desert auction has become quite the adventurous (and competitive) way to cap the evening off.

Symposium Speaker Testimonials

"The splendid Eighth Day community constitutes a vital alternative to the stale denominationalism that characterizes much of contemporary church life, as well as the flaccid secularism of the culture at large."
Ralph Wood
Baylor University
"Your annual symposiums have become the stuff of legend."
James K. A. Smith
Calvin College

What Attendees Are Saying

"What a tremendous conference! It set my life on a new course. I can't say that about any other conference I've ever attended."
Catholic
"I've put together lots of conferences and know what it takes. You get an A+ in my book! Everything about it was superb - the speakers, the topics, the venue, the books, the Feast! - everything exceeded my expectations."

Protestant

"Eighth Day has much wisdom to offer a world drowning in a sea of information. The Symposium and its associated journal Synaxis help stir up a think tank in the empty gutter of modern society."
Orthodox

The Speakers

James Matthew Wilson

James Matthew Wilson is Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the Founding Director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing, at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Wilson has published twelve books, including six books of chapbooks and poetry. Among his volumes are: I Believe in One God: Praying the Nicene Creed (2022), The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (2017), The Fortunes of Poetry in an Age of Unmaking (2015), and The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry (2014). He serves as the Poet-in-Residence for the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Liturgy, as Poetry Editor of Modern Age magazine, and series editor of Colosseum Books.

Jake Meador

Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy, a Christian ideas magazine. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children. His writing has appeared in First Things, Commonweal, National Review, The American Conservative, Books & Culture, Christianity Today, and Front Porch Republic.

Fr. John Strickland

Fr. John Strickland is an archpriest of the Diocese of the West in the Orthodox Church of America and is currently rector of St. Elizabeth the New Martyr Church in Poulsbo, WA. He is the author of The Making of Holy Russia and creator of the Paradise and Utopia book series, podcast, and blog.

The Schedule

CLICK HERE for a PDF version of the full schedule.

Wednesday 1.11.23

9:00 a.m.      Third Hour Prayer at The Ladder

9:30 a.m.      Pre-Symposium Seminar at The Ladder

"Those Who Are with Us" in the Bible: II Kings 2:1-8:6

12:30 p.m.    Lunch

2:00 p.m.     Seminar continues until 5:00 p.m.

"Those Who Are with Us" in the Liturgy: Feast of Pentecost Kneeling Prayers

Thursday 1.12.23

9:00 a.m.      Third Hour Prayer at The Ladder

9:30 a.m.      Pre-Symposium Seminar at The Ladder

Those Who Are with Us" in Literature: "The Inmost Light"  by Arthur Machen

12:30 p.m.    Lunch

2:00 p.m.      Seminar continues until 4:00 p.m.

"Those Who Are with Us" in the Fathers: Commentary on Matthew by Origen"

4:00 p.m.       VIP meeting with speakers for Patrons & Pillars

6:45 p.m.       Vespers at St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral

7:30 p.m.       Opening Reception at Eighth Day Books

Friday 1.13.23

9:00 a.m.     Third Hour Prayer at St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral

9:30 a.m.     Convocation and Contemplation by Dr. Paul Davis

The Christian & Anxiety - Matt. 8

10:00 a.m.     Plenary Lecture I by James Matthew Wilson

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, and Quarantine Notebook: What Writing About the Pandemic Taught Me about Our Divided Times

11:30 a.m.     Breakout Sessions

Christian Kettler: "Longing to Be Clothed..." But How Long? The Vicarious Anxiety of Christ and Our Anxiety

James Matthew Wilson: On Richard Wilbur's "A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra"

12:30 p.m.     Lunch

1:30 p.m.       Plenary Lecture II by Jake Meador

The Presence of Reality & the Reality of Fear: Natural Theology & Christian Hope

6:00 p.m.       Festal Banquet at St. George - Dressy Casual Attire

Cash Bar, Dessert Auction, Cathedral Choir, the Life of St Paul of Thebes, & Plenary Speakers on Cultural Renewal

Saturday 1.14.23

9:00 a.m.      Third Hour Prayer at St. George Orthodox Cathedral

9:30 a.m.      Convocation & Contemplation by Director Doom

Fear Not & Press On - Matt. 14 & Heb 12

10:00 a.m.    Plenary Lecture III by Fr. John Strickland

From the Abyss of Anthropological Despair: Three Cases of Fear & Fortitude in Modern Christendom

11:00 a.m.    Break

11:30 a.m.    Breakout Sessions

Jake Meador: Christian Presence in an Anxious Age

Fr. John Strickland: The Dream of a Ridiculous Superman: Dostoevsky's Demons & the Problem of a Christendom without God

12:30 p.m.    Lunch & Book Signings

2:00 p.m.      Plenary Lecture IV by James Matthew Wilson

A World without Beauty: von Balthasar, Plato, & the Ordering of the Soul

3:00 p.m.      Break

3:15 p.m.      Panel Dialogue with Q& A

4:30 p.m.      Wine & Cheese Reception with State of the Organization - Members Only

6:00 p.m.      Great Vespers at St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral

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Registration Ends in

Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds

$140

Seminar Excluded


Fri and Sat Lectures


Fri and Sat Lunches


Fri Festal Banquet


$100

Fri and Sat Lectures


Fri and Sat Lunches

$55

Festal Banquet Dinner with Toasts to Florovsky, Newman, & Torrance


Dinner


Cash Bar


Dressy Casual Attire

$50

Festal Banquet Dinner with Reflections on Cultural Renewal by Plenary Speakers


Dinner


Cash Bar


Dessert Auction


Dressy Casual Attire

Let us remember, if ever we fall into distressful temptations, that Jesus has constrained us to enter into their boat, wishing us to go before Him unto the other side; for it is not possible for us to reach the other side, unless we have endured the temptations of waves and contrary wind. Then when we see many difficulties besetting us, and with moderate struggle we have swum through them to some extent, let us consider that our boat is in the midst of the sea, distressed at that time by the waves which wish us to make shipwreck concerning faith or some one of the virtues; but when we see the spirit of the evil one striving against us, let us conceive that then the wind is contrary to us. When then in such suffering we have spent three watches of the night...the Son of God will come to us, that He may prepare the sea for us, walking upon it.  
~Origen, Commentary on Matthew

Abstracts

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, & Quarantine Notebook: What Writing Taught Me About Our Divided Times - Plenary I

By James Matthew Wilson • December 29, 2022
By James Matthew Wilson During the first months of the pandemic, I wrote a series of news-article poems recording the events, public and private, of the period. They were published serially in Dappled Things magazine and together constitute a narrative that, even at their most private or domestic, constitute a record of the American experience as a whole. The concrete fruit was a book-length poem; the intellectual fruit was a new and deepened perspective on the divisions in our country and the strange commonality Americans experience in and through that division. I will reflect on the composition of the poem and also on another long poem written through international disaster, T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets , which also sought to be a national poem in a time of division and destruction. Presentation at 10:00am on Friday, January 13 in St George Cathedral Fellowship Hall

A World without Beauty: von Balthasar, Plato, & the Ordering of the Soul - Plenary IV

By James Matthew Wilson • December 29, 2022
By James Matthew Wilson In a few paragraphs, the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar diagnosed the emptiness of the modern age, an emptiness produced by the elimination of beauty as an attribute of reality. We’ll reflect on von Balthasar’s bold claims and have a look at Plato’s great “palinode” in the Phaedrus , where we see with a clarity and concision still unrivaled how and why human life is ordered by, to, and through beauty. Presentation at 2:00pm on Saturday, January 14 in St George Cathedral Fellowship Hall

From the Abyss of Anthropological Despair: Three Cases of Fear & Fortitude in Modern Christendom - Plenary III

By Fr John Strickland • December 29, 2022
By Fr John Strickland I will open by introducing the anthropological pessimism of “late-medieval” Western piety as a crisis of heavenly immanence and then present the way in which Petrarch, in his text Secretum , handled the fear it provoked—by secularizing Christendom’s imperative toward personal transformation. Next, I’ll jump forward in time to the “desecration of the world” that occurred during the so-called Enlightenment to frame a second case of anthropological fear and fortitude: the poet Percy Shelley’s project of cosmological reenchantment (using works like Hymn to Intellectual Beauty ). Finally, I’ll sketch the rise of totalitarian ideologies as context for Albert Camus’s struggle against anthropological despair from The Plague to The Fall . My goal is to present the history of modern Christendom as a cause of agony not only for Christian intellectuals but for secularists like the “father of humanism” (Petrarch) and a pair of atheists as well. Presentation at 10:00am on Saturday, January 14 in St George Cathedral Fellowship Hall

The Presence of Reality & the Reality of Fear: Natural Theology and Christian Hope - Plenary II

By Jake Meador • December 29, 2022
By Jake Meador Whether you consider the latest statistics on our nation’s mental health or simply listen to the people in your life, it is clear that ours is a moment of intense fear and anxiety. In part this anxiety arises from the radical uncertainty of our moment. Having turned away from any form of thick identity that obstructs individual choosing, we now find ourselves uncertain who we are, what the good life is, or what it means to be good. Still further, we are troubled by the uncertainty and opaqueness of the world we are rapidly moving toward. All that remains, we think, is the individual person, existing as a kind of “point of aggression” amidst a hostile and indifferent world. This entire way of imagining reality is foreign to the truth of Scripture and wisdom of the church, however. The faith teaches us that we are embedded members of a coherent creation, not detached points of aggression existing in space. If we wish to regain some sense of footing in the world, we would do well to begin by considering what the world actually is. Presentation at 1:30pm on Friday, January 13 in St George Cathedral Fellowship Hall

On Richard Wilbur's "A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra" - Fri. Breakout

By James Matthew Wilson • December 28, 2022
By James Matthew Wilson The most perfect American poem of the twentieth century is surely Wilbur’s “Baroque Wall Fountain.” In an age where the secularity of the fine arts seemed final, Wilbur achieved a perfect vision of the Christian understanding of the person and the world, one that summons all of us to change our lives. Presentation at 11:30am on Friday, January 13 in St George Cathedral Fellowship Hall

The Dream of a Ridiculous Superman: Dostoevsky's Demons & the Problem of a Christendom without Christ - Sat. Breakout

By Fr John Strickland • December 28, 2022
By Fr John Strickland The title comes from a chapter section of my most recent book, The Age of Nihilism . We’ll focus on the novelist’s critique of secularism and atheism and introduce Nietzsche as a foil (even though, amazingly, the former never read the latter). Discussion will be based on the novel’s censored chapter “Stavrogin’s Confession.” Click here for access to this chapter . Here is a link to the section we’ll focus on in this discussion . Presentation at 11:30am on Saturday, January 14 in St George Cathedral Fellowship Hall

Christian Presence in an Anxious Age - Sat. Breakout

By Jake Meador • December 28, 2022
By Jake Meador To hear many Christians talk about our moment is to come away with the idea the chief source of our cultural and social problems is political. As a result, no small number of Christ’s followers dedicate a great deal of their time and mental energy to attempting to win political victories. But this strategy is mostly wrongheaded because the underlying spiritual crisis that produces the political crisis is actually anxiety. When we miss this point, we end up becoming trapped ourselves in the spiritual crisis, adopting our own postures of anxiety in response to the anxiety of others. In this breakout, we’re going to briefly summarize how W. H. Auden, Jody Bottom, Edwin Friedman, and Mark Sayers treat the problem of anxiety before discussing together how Christians can adopt a non-anxious presence within their communities. Presentation at 11:30am on Saturday, January 14 in St George Cathedral Chapel

"Longing to Be Clothed..." But How Long? The Vicarious Anxiety of Christ & Our Anxiety - Fri. Breakout

By Christian Kettler • December 28, 2022
By Christian Kettler We groan, “longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling,” Scripture says. This chaos is made particularly acute by anxiety. Anxiety can be the pain of the present, but also the fear of the future. We may fear the past, but only in the sense that it may be repeated (Kierkegaard). The Christian is confronted by the biblical admonitions not to be anxious (Matt 6:25-26; Luke 12:22; Phil 4:6: 1 Pet 5:7). But these admonitions can often create even more anxiety, particularly as we face the inevitability of death. Not just our impending death, but the death of someone we love can create the anxiety of what Ernest Becker calls “the denial of death,” even among pious Christians. ‘Jesus Christ interrupts us, not just with pious platitudes or future promises, but His present action. This is the vicarious anxiety of Christ . This is taking seriously the biblical teaching of his uniting with our humanity, who we really are, in the incarnation. His humanity is connected with our fallen humanity, yet without sinning Himself (Heb 2:14-18; 4:14-16; 7:23-25). He has taken upon Himself, not just our guilt, but also our anxiety, as we see in Gethsemane and the cross. His anxious humanity has been crucified and resurrected. We participate in that, even now. Therefore, faith should be our only response to this grace. But even this faith is based on the previous and continual faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, our High Priest even now in heaven (Heb 8:1). Presentation at 11:30am on Friday, January 13 in St George Cathedral Chapel

Theme-Related Content

Be Not Afraid

By Origen • November 11, 2022
And I would say with confidence, that, because of the prayer of Jesus to the Father for the disciples, they suffered nothing when sea and wave and contrary wind were striving against them.

Lodging

Hotel at Old Town
830 E. First St.
Wichita, KS 67202
316.267.4800
Hilton Garden Inn
2041 N. Bradley Fair Pkwy
Wichita, KS 67206
316.219.4444
Wesley Inn
3343 Central Ave.
Wichita, KS 67208
316.858.3343
Spiritual Life Center
7100 E. 45th Street N.
Bel Aire, KS 67226
316.744.0167

Location and Contact

Eighth Day Books: 2838 E Douglas Ave, Wichita, KS 67214

Eighth Day Institute at The Ladder: 2836 E. Douglas 67214

St George Orthodox Christian Cathedral: 7515 E. 13th St. N. 67206

Have a question? We are here to help. Send us a message and we’ll be in touch. 

Contact Us

Past Eighth Day Symposia

2022

Sex & Lies: Delusions of the Self by Hans Boersma, Jennifer Roback Morse, Fr. Alexis Torrance, Carl Trueman, et al


2021

Hope in the Age of Anxiety:

A Digital Library of Twelve Presentations by Fr. Calinic Berger, Bradley Birzer, Erin Doom, Shailesh Mark, Louis Markos, Fr. John Strickland, Joshua Sturgill, et al


2020

For I Am Holy: The Command to be like God by Dr. David Fagerberg, Fr. Stephen Freeman, Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson, et al



2019


Eros & the Mystery of God: On the Body, Sex & Asceticism by Hans Boersma, Adam Cooper, David Ford, Ephraim Radner, et al



2018


Strangers & Society: Cultivating Friendship in a Fractured Age by Peter Kanelos, Ken Myers, Joseph Pearce, et al



2017


Where Are the Watchmen: Theology in the Public Square by Martin Cothran, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Brian Zahnd, et al



2016


Soil & Sacrament: The World as Gift by Mike Aquilina, Hans Boersma, Rod Dreher, Vigen Guroian, et al




2015


Whatever Happened to Wonder: The Recovery of Mystery in a Secular Age by Bishop James Conley, Rod Dreher, James Kushiner, James K. A. Smith, et al



2014


Constantine, Christendom & Cultural Renewal by Vigen Guorian, Alan Kreider, Peter Leithart, Benjamin Wiker, et al


2013


Dostoevsky: The Divine & the Demonic by Scott Cairns, Martin Cothran, John Hodges, Ralph Wood, et al


2012


What's Wrong with the World: An Inkling of a Response by Warren Farha, Ralph Wood et al


2011

Imagination & Soul: Harry Potter, Twilight & Spiritual Formation by John Granger, Fr. Josiah Trenham, et al



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