Anthem to the Invisible Audiobook, Interview with Chip

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast. In this week's episode, Chip sits down with friend, Alex Derry, to discuss his recently released audio book, Anthem to the Invisible. Here are Chip and Alex. Hey, Chip. Hey, Alex. How's it going? Going well. Glad we're doing this today. I'm I'm very excited about this. This book means a great deal to me. Even though it was very fun to write, it also is very, very serious material for me. Well, you gave me the book, I think it was several years ago. Really? You were teaching somewhere, and, you walked in and you said, hey, I wrote this novel. If anyone would be willing to read it, I'll give it to you for free. And so I said I said, I'll read it. And I think two years later, when I started working with you at CPE, the conversation came back up, and I realized I've never read the book. I wanna read the book. Uh-huh. And so, you know, I picked it up and I started reading it. And one of the things I realized is that I found it kind of hard for me to get through, not because it wasn't good, but because there was so much there. Yeah. And as I started talking to you and having these conversations, I realized there's so much in this book. I think it's important for people to really hear what's in it and what they can find in it. Even as I offered in the very beginning of our conversation that it unlocked some of the mysteries,

there are multiple layers in the book. Yeah. And, also, the book is a little bit difficult because it it really does push the boundaries of a lot of the thematic things that people expect or the easy read in which they're entertained. Yeah. This is a very serious work of fiction that's about literally how we live. Let's face where we're headed before we get there. Let's do something about it before we have to. Yeah. So it's a book about rescuing the heart Yeah. Before it disappears completely. Yeah. Yeah. But one of the things that I found about the book is that truly, truly, it was it's one of the most mysterious, attractive, and yet repulsive at the same time books that I've read. Well, I tell you what too, and it is funny how I had to ask you to read the novel. This this book is really actually not made to be easy. It is very true to life and all the struggles and difficulties and joys and celebrations we have as we move into life mattering completely from our heads to our hearts. It is the journey that is often, attractive and difficult for us, and we would like to escape it. But this book actually takes us into that journey. So it's not as attractive at first, and at the same time, as we move to freedom, a lot of people will struggle with what freedom cost in terms of becoming ourselves and living in intimacy, passion, and integrity

with ourselves and other people. Well, let's start maybe with this. Why don't you just tell us just a little bit about the book? What it's about, Anthem to the Invisible, really means anthem, which is glory or hymn, and invisible is God. So it's a hymn to God or a statement of glory to God, but it's a dystopian novel Yeah. That is written about a society in which God is gone. And as God is not gone in terms of, like Erasmus has said, bidding or unbidden God is present. Yeah. But the society has walked away because of their capabilities and capacities, has killed God off, so to speak Sure. Even though God has never left. So the invisible is God. Anthem is the pursuit of something more than what has happened in the world of the future. Society has collapsed. Yeah. In fact, we even have a new epoch. It's called AC, after collapse. Yeah. And a collective, which is an organization, was taken over when we collapsed because of the promise that the collective would take us away from having to have any pain. Science has gone far beyond what we ever thought it would and to the point that it creates grotesque results and at the same time allows humans to go to places that we never materially thought we could. Sure. But the character the the tough part, I wrote a novel in which the character, the main character, who is who works for the collective is actually an uninteresting, in some ways, unlikable person. He's so up in his head. Yeah. He's an intellectual, and he believes that if we can finally figure it out, then we can create all kinds of solutions. He has, fooled himself to believe that that the collective wants him for good purposes, but he discovers they're actually using him as a tool. So what he does, he awakens to the 18 inch journey. He finds that it's not his head that matters as much as much as the forgotten heart. And any people who are living with heart are considered to be people who are working against the system, people who are haters or rebels, when actually there are people who are seeking who they're made to be so they can do what they're really made to do. So the collective has taken over, and it's all about getting rid of having to experience pain because pain is the enemy instead of pain being the thing to create a solution for us or move us towards solution. Sure. But, anyway, the character is actually a character moving from head to heart, from the unlikable to being attractive for those who are looking for heart, and he's a man that faces his own need for transformation.

Well, one of the things I noticed is that you really see the transformation of Abe as the language that he uses begins to shift in the novel. Yeah. So those beginning chapters, so much of it is just honestly, even as I would read it, I couldn't even understand half of what he was saying, all these philosophical ideas. Everything's ideas. Yeah. You know? And and all of those ideas are truths that we hold in the ancient traditions of literature, poetry, history, and philosophy. But when they're just concepts Yeah. And they're not swallowed and become part of our digested living experience, they're just intellectual. I sometimes urge the person this is terrible to say, but I sort of urge the person just let the third chapter flow over you, you know, like like French art or something and just let it happen. Go through it to get to where the story's going. Yeah. But you're not made to understand the character, but the the living, breathing point of everything he's talking about comes true throughout the rest of the novel. Yeah. And then what happens is he ends up leaving behind the collective. He comes to his senses. Yeah. He comes to heart and actually joins a movement that's forming a shifted society. He becomes a rescuer Yeah. Of the true self as he as he comes to his own true self, which is what happens for all of us who reawaken to how we're made and what we're made to do. We end up sort of like, helping wake people up Yeah. To, to come into life. Sure.

And so for you, like, so much of this is impacted by what you see happening in the world. Absolutely. I I see us forming a collective. Whatever we need to do to stay away from having to feel oh, we're big and really great at reacting to feelings. I can see how the reactions become the enemies. Like, resentment takes the place of admission of hurt, and apathy takes the place of admission of loneliness. So I I get that the reactions look terrible, but we're I I really am concerned that we're living in a society that would do anything, anything to stay away from how we're made. And I see addiction propelling itself exponentially to the point that I'm I'm concerned about an explosion of zombieism. Yeah. And I see people who are willing to promote that idea to the point that they'll make millions and millions of dollars selling us on a an idea that we can get away from ourselves when actually we're here to become ourselves and live fully even if it's in a tragic place. Yeah. So the novel is about bringing people through the tragedy and being able to live well in it. And I love the characters. I love the leaders in it. I love the humility as people move from their pride. I love how it even speaks into the limbic transformation, how we're called to walk into our limbic brains to move out of our frontal lobes, and that if we don't deal with feelings, we become lizard like, and there are characters in there that are are not there. And it's it's a it's a book, a novel about retaining empathy. I believe that millennialists and all of us are looking for a return to community, are looking for, a shifted society that is real, intimate, authentic, and loving. And this novel is about the creation of that society and the courage it takes to do it and the risks that we have to do. In other words, we have to be willing to feel again. And I know it's it's a intellectual concept. Yeah. But the novel is about moving from which means I think, therefore I am, to genuinely facing which means I feel, therefore I am. Yeah. But we live in a society that, in spite of all the talk of feelings, we're actually running from what it means to face feelings because feelings put us in a position of needing. Needing puts us in a position of having to connect with ourselves, others, and God. Sure.

One of the other things that that you mentioned just a few minutes ago was talking about this desire for relationship. Right? Yeah. You pinpointed millennials, but true for all people. I think that looking at the connection between how we live in a society where we have more connection than we've ever had before Yeah. And at the same time, less. Yeah. You know? And you kinda write about that a little bit in the book. You call it this boundaryless connectivity. Yeah. The main character, a, says that society collapsed out of its own boundaryless connectivity Yeah. Which means it speaks to the multiple levels of amazing quick contact we're capable of having with each other. But even the research is showing today that we have faster, quicker, more amazing contact, but less true connection of heart and relationship than we've really ever had. In fact, a Harvard study came out not too long ago, a longitudinal study that said even in 2000, and I think it was four, people asked how many confidants do you have, and and the average number was three. In 2014, the same question was asked, and the number had dropped to zero. So even in those years between o four and '14, in ten years, the increase of technology just in that time and our capacity to see, no move, go has increased, and we can keep up and see each other and talk to each other, but we're using the very thing that could draw us closer to actually Yeah. Keep us apart, Yeah. That we're not close to each other, which means the heart is not being fed. And if the heart is not fed and if the heart is not awake and aware, we can be taken anywhere because it's the heart that is the holder of what we really need in our lives. And the heart is a call to relationship with each other, ourselves, and God. And so when you lose heart, you lose self, we lose each other, and we lose God. Thus, dystopia, boundaryless connection, collapse. And we're we're in search of the invisible because there's got to be something besides deadness, zombieism, numbness,

and survival. And then Abe, the main character in the book, he has a similar awakening, awakening of his heart. And throughout the book, it's his search for other people who have lost heart. Yeah. What's happened in this society is that technology and spirituality, materialism biology and spirituality and metaphor and emotion have collided to actually produce these creatures. The ego has literally materially swallowed the true self. For anyone who's refusing to take a risk of connecting as they're created to get away from feelings, the the ego has swallowed, and these creatures actually live underground. Yeah. So as Abe awakens, he becomes a hunter who's in pursuit of rescuing the true self from these creatures. Yeah. And the true self that is being swallowed is swallowed by what has become a monster or do anything to protect what it has gotten from getting away. Yeah. So we become enslaved by our our lust to not feel. Sure. And so, basically, the feelers are helping create a new society. Yeah. Not a new world. There's not another world. Yeah. But creating a shifted society, but because the collective doesn't want feelers around anymore. No. They want people that are asleep. Yep. They want people that are asleep and people who do their bidding Yeah. And people who they can have power over. Sure. But once again, once power gets into the hands of a few, it means disaster for the many, and the many will often sell out their freedom and their liberty to the few to escape something. Yeah. And so that's what's happened in this society.

And so what's your hope in writing this book? I know it's really meaningful to you and and it's to me. Extremely meaningful for me. At the end of the book is the original Anthem to the Invisible, which is now called The War of Love. What do you mean the original? The Anthem to the Invisible was actually a piece of stream of consciousness writing Yeah. That was actually rather strange for me. True. I mean, I started writing this piece that's in the back of the book in the mornings during my my time where I would I just sit and wonder and pray and think and journal and so on. And, I wrote started writing what turned into a story about the perseverance of the spirit of the child, the perseverance of the Imago Dei that God has created in us and for us to live fully. Yeah. I would literally get up the next morning because I need to stop and go to work. I would write until it was time to stop. I would literally put the pen down. The next morning, I would get up, start exactly where I had stopped. It was really Yeah. Strange, and keep on as if I had never stopped. And then at seven days, it was finished. I just it's just I'm done. And it was a story in poetic metaphor and prose stream of consciousness about the perseverance of the human spirit. Yeah. What I did was I took that first piece of writing, which I called Anthem to the Invisible, and I wrapped a novel around it. Yeah. So the Anthem to the Invisible, honestly, is another way of saying and and actually living what I've been writing about and talking about for now for, you know, thirty years. Yeah. My hope is that it becomes one of those unusual pieces of writing that people will talk about and think about and talk to each other about and make it something personal

to them. One of the things you wrote in the introduction of the book, I think it's Abe writing in his journal. He said, for those who have the heart to grasp this message, live it well. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So it's not for everybody. No. It's not. I wrote the book for a minority. Yeah. I did not realize how small that minority would be. But I chose to do the audiobook honestly because as I wrote the novel, I saw the novel. Yeah. So words that are written don't do it the same justice that words that are spoken. And frankly put, ultimately, my hope is that it will become a visual presentation because I think only visually, if it's done well, will it speak to what I'm speaking to because the visual, the experiential Yeah. Story that is being lived and being seen and being felt becomes, the most impacting experience. So I think the visual spoken will actually help people interact to be called up to experience what the novel is calling to to to not allow dystopia to occur Yeah. While at the same time facing there is no such thing as utopia. There's living life well by living it fully. Life is tragic. God is faithful. The people in this novel are actually the ones who live fully because they can struggle the best. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing all this with us, Chip. Well, with me, you know, as we I I appreciate you reading the novel, Alex, and and actually being curious enough to suggest, well, that I that I do an audiobook. Yeah. And also to say, look, I want it to succeed. Let me interview you for a few minutes to get this thing opened Yeah. So that the people who read the letter from aid know that they're stepping into a journal that absolutely did happen. Yeah. It just happened in the future. Thanks. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Sage Hill podcast. The audio book, Anthem to the Invisible, is available now on audible.com. For more information about Sage Hill, visit us online at sagehillresources.com.