David Cayley is introduced on this website here.

This summer, he consented to meet with a group of us on Zoom, to discuss his new book on Ivan Illich.

An epigraph in the book above goes:

On the table . . . there is always a candle? Why?
Because the text that shaped my understanding
was . . . a treatise on spiritual friendship by the
twelfth-century abbot Aelred of Rievaulx . . . It
begins with the words “Here we are, you and I, and,
I hope, also a third who is Christ.” If you consider
his meaning carefully, you understand that it could
be Christ in the form of Brother Michael. In other
words, our conversation should always go on with
the certainty that there is somebody else who will
knock at the door, and the candle stands for him or
her. It is a constant reminder that the community is
never closed.–Ivan Illich

Further commentary on this and the book’s genesis is on page 9:

On December 2, 2002, he died in Bremen. I proceeded with what I had and, in 2005, published The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich.

The origins of the present book lie in that one. What I dared to call Illich’s testament—a name some thought presumptuous—was at the same time something vulnerable, exigent, and unfinished. There were reasons, after all, why Illich had maintained his discreet silence on the subject of the Church for so long, reasons why only his trust in me had finally allowed him, as he put it, to “stammer … what I have avoided saying for thirty years.” At various points he speaks of what he is telling me as no more than a “hypothesis” or, again, as a set of “possible research themes.” What I had asked for asked something of me in turn. A hypothesis needs testing; research themes need to be followed up. When Illich completed his “stammered” testament in 1997, he said, “I leave it in your hands to make sure that my intention … of speaking in gratitude and fidelity to the one behind this candle, which is burning here while I’m talking to you, was not a betrayal of his touching tenderness but a truthful statement, chosen once in my life.” The one behind the candle was always, finally, Christ. His charge was weighty, and in the intervening years, I have felt its insistent weight, even if with gratitude. With this book I offer my answer. In its pages I try to see Illich whole—understanding his various beginnings in the light of what he said to me at the end—and I try to say what I think the example of his life and thought means for our time. 

One participant is author Marcus Peter Rempel. His book, Life at the End of Us Versus Them: Cross Culture Stories, powerfully applies both the thought of Ivan Illichand René Girard in telling his stories.

Marcus also is a singer-songwriter. In part inspired by Ivan Illich, in response to the death of a good friend, in the season of falling leaves, Marcus explains how he came to compose the following, gently-meditative song, Conspiratio:

NOTE: A clickable list of many Illich resources is here. The new Ivan Illich series of publications is here. David Cayley’s is the second of the series.

You may also appreciate the following excellent interview by noted theologian William T. Cavanaugh¹, October 2021, recorded at the Center for World Catholicism & Intercultural Theology, by clicking here. Cayley addresses amongst other issues what Illich’s response to the Pandemic might have been.

Zoom Recordings:

September 28, 2021

Much of this was discussing Illich as priest, his wanderer lifestyle, his formation, his relationship to David and genesis of recorded discussions and books with/by/about him.

October 26, 2021

Much of this was David’s discussing Illich and the Church: his faithfulness to, but variance from it; eventual cessation of performing duties as a priest; but perhaps consequently making the world his parish. Hebrews 11:4b reads:

. . . and by [faith] he being dead yet speaketh. (KJV)

Please also see Ivan Illich’s The Powerless Church and Other Selected Writings, 1955–1985.