Kevin P. Keating is a teacher of English literature at several colleges and universities. He's also a prize-winning fiction author. Jonas invited him for a conversation after reading his latest book Bridge of Dreams.

Kevin's book brings together three interrelated short stories of magical realism. He places his characters in seemingly mundane settings and gradually lets them experience a journey through wonder and mystery. Themes like religion, reincarnation, psychedelics, spiritual transformation are constantly present in the background.

As such, Jonas saw an opportunity to discuss religion and contemporary spirituality from the perspective of storytelling. Are humans inherently 'story creating creatures', and can religions be seen as the inevitable result of the story telling impulse? Is the supposedly 'secular' world not just yet another form of storytelling and, in that sense, as religious? How do we assess the work op Joseph Campbell in all of this? Has a truncated and commercialized version of his monomyth of the hero become the dominant religious story? How can we breach the dominance of that particular way of telling stories in a culture that has become so accustomed to them? How can we come up with new types of stories that allow more room for the contemporary revival of idealism? What would 'idealist myths' look like? And what about the use of psychedelics in trying to find new stories? Might they be pivotal in creating new stories or do they blind us to unconscious stories we haven't sufficiently faced?

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For more on Kevin's book Bridge of Dreams:

https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/iff-books/our-books/bridge-dreams-novel

And for his website:

https://kevinpkeating.blogspot.com/