The Adventurous Life of the Intellect: A Letter from the President

Fr. Dr. Geoffrey Boyle offering a toast at the Feast of St Patrick at The Ladder

On behalf of the board for the Eighth Day Institute, grace and peace to you in Christ!

It’s been a wild year for the Eighth Day Institute. Director Doom took a much needed and much deserved three-month sabbatical. We hired an office and database manager, who has done a spectacular job of keeping us all on track. We laid new flooring in the bathroom and kitchen, added a significant number of bookshelves upstairs, and finally replaced the beer fridge! And that’s not even mentioning the incredible turnout to our Inklings Festival, the stimulating baptismal conversations at the Florovsky-Newman Week, and the ongoing rhythmic drive of the Hall of Men, which regularly offers new faces, new stories, new conversations. Oh, and did I mention that this all went on despite the looming threats of Covid-19?

What EDI has to offer is so real and so human that we can’t not continue to do what we’re doing. We need these stories and lectures, the dinners and toasts, the feasts and pub crawls. We need to be able to stay up until well-past midnight arguing the finer points of Apostolic Succession. We need to add Arthur Machen to our repertoire of Inklings and Francis Thompson to our wall of heroes. But what makes EDI what it is, is that it recognizes above all else that we need one another—face-to-face, pushing and challenging each other in love and devotion to Christ and His Church. And that’s what EDI is all about.

Our goal is to keep providing the space and theme for these real and human encounters of faithful joy. This next year we’re carrying on with our three flagship events: Symposium (Jan 12-15), Ad Fontes (June 1-4, formerly called Florovsky-Newman Week), and the Inklings Festival (Oct 21-23). Symposium registration is live and it’s filling up! The theme is “Sex & Lies: Delusions of the Self in the 21^st Century” and our speakers include Rod Dreher, Carl Trueman, Jennifer Roback-Morse, Hans Boersma, and others. Be sure to join us!

We also love our three Feasts: Nativity (Dec 30), St. Patrick (March 19), and St. John of Damascus (Aug 5). If you’re in town, be sure not to miss these.

Finally, I want to say a word about our publications. Complementing our desire for real and human gatherings is a content that forms and fills that gathering. We are inordinately blessed by the members of EDI who continue to write for us, present at our events, and/or read and critique us. This stimulation of the mind flows from faith, not against it. As G. K. Chesterton put it, “We have got to make them see that conversion is the beginning of an active, fruitful, progressive and even adventurous life of the intellect” (“The Thing,” Collected Works III:299). To that end, we intend to offer three print editions of the MOOT, tied to each of our flagship events. And at the end of the year—in fact, it’s right now at the printer—is our Christian News-Letter. These publications, along with the web content that continues to accrue in the weekly emails and the archives, are offered as a further stimulant to the adventurous life of the intellect. God willing, they’ll even thrust you into a real and human conversation, whether you particularly appreciated the writing or not.

It’s this real and human life that we’re after and we think you are too. Thank you to all who continue to support the work of EDI! If you’re not yet a member, consider supporting EDI financially at one of the tiers noted on our website. If you're a member, consider offering an extra donation to our year-end campaign. And if you’ve never made your way to the Ladder, I’ll be there January 27th for the next Hall of Men. Hope to see you there.

Peace to you and joy in Christ our life,

Fr. Dr. Geoffrey R. Boyle

President of The Eighth Day Institute