We live in a culture obsessed with productivity, efficiency, speed, and success. But after all the triumph of technological advance, it may still be that the defining condition of our time is not merely acceleration but alienation, marked particularly by the absence of what acceleration destroys: resonance. Coined by German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, “resonance” is the experience of addressing and being addressed by the world—touched, moved, and changed by a two-way relationship rather than one-sided control and consumption.
Steven Lawson and Manuel Dürr ask what daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms restore resonance—not as retreat from the world but preparation to enter it. Lawson is Founder of Monk Manual, a daily formation system for peaceful being and purposeful doing. Dürr is a Swiss painter in Biel; his fourteen-painting Via Crucis was inaugurated in St. Peter’s Basilica, February 2026.
This episode was recorded at the Virginia Mae Center at the Washington National Cathedral, on day two of the 2026 Understory Festival hosted by Comment Magazine.
