302 Work as Poetry‪?‬ Working Man

It is isn’t always easy for people to understand how a Catholic trade school works, especially when you consider that the school combines skilled trades training with intellectual and spiritual formation. And frankly, it is not always easy to explain.
So today, we’re going to attempt to show you instead of tell you, if only in a small way. In today’s episode, we’d like to give you a little glimpse of what it sounds like to study the humanities in the context of the skilled trades. We’re going to do that by publishing part of a lecture from one of our humanities classes, God and Man at Work. In this lecture, you’ll hear a talk that helps make a turn from the first part of this class (where students study the Theology of the Body) to the second part, where they begin laying a foundation for a Theology of Work.
This lecture is about J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem, Mythopoeia. If you’re like our students, you’ll wonder how a poem on mythmaking can help lay the groundwork for a spiritual understanding of work. But argued in this talk, our work is actually part of a very fundamental way of existing in the world, a way of existing that might be best understand by approaching it from the side—in this case, through considering what a poet does.
This is just a little glimpse of how Harmel works, a sample of the discussions we have here, and we hope you enjoy it.
If you know anyone who might be interested in our work—students, donors, partners, priests—would you please send them our way? You can find us on the socials, or at HarmelAcademy.org