Ritual Relationships: Matrimony, Hospitality and Strangerhood | Stephen Jenkinson (Orphan Wisdom)

On this episode, my guest is Stephen Jenkinson, culture activist and ceremonialist advocating a handmade life and eloquence. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor and off-grid organic farmer. Stephen is the founder/ principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. Also a sought-after workshop leader, articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony.


He is the author of several influential books (https://orphanwisdom.com/books/) , including Money and the Soul’s Desires, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), A Generation’s Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), and Reckoning (2022), co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson. His most recent book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work, was released in August 2025. He is also involved in the musical project Nights of Grief & Mystery with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins, which has toured across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.


Show Notes:


The Bone House of the Orphan Wisdom Enterprise


Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart’s Work


The Wedding Industry


Romantic Sameness and Psychic Withering


The Two Tribes


The Roots of Hospitality


The Pompous Ending of Hospitality


Debt, And the Estrangement of the Stranger


More Than Human Hospitality


The Alchemy of the Orphan Wisdom School


Homework:


Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart’s Work (https://events.orphanwisdom.com/matri...) | Purchase (https://orphanwisdom.com/store/matrim...)


Orphan Wisdom (https://orphanwisdom.com/)


The Scriptorium: Echoes of an Orphan Wisdom (https://thescriptorium.orphanwisdom.com/)


Transcription:


Chris: This is an interview that I've been wondering about for a long time in part, because Stephen was the first person I ever interviewed for the End of Tourism Podcast. In Oaxaca, Mexico, where I live Stephen and Natalie were visiting and were incredibly, incredibly generous. Stephen, in offering his voice as a way to raise up my questions to a level that deserve to be contended with.


We spoke for about two and a half hours, if I remember correctly. And there was a lot in what you spoke to towards the second half of the interview that I think we're the first kind of iterations of the Matrimony book.


We spoke a little bit about the stranger and trade, and it was kind of startling as someone trying to offer their first interview and suddenly hearing something [00:01:00] that I'd never heard before from Stephen. Right. And so it was quite impressive. And I'm grateful to be here now with y'all and to get to wonder about this a little more deeply with you Stephen.


Stephen: Mm-hmm. Hmm.


Chris: This is also a special occasion for the fact that for the first time in the history of the podcast, we have a live audience among us today. Strange doings. Some scholars and some stewards and caretakers of the Orphan Wisdom enterprise. So, thank you all as well for coming tonight and being willing to listen and put your ears to this.


And so to begin, Stephen, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to let those who will be listening to this recording later on know where we're gathered in tonight?


Stephen: Well, we're in... what's the name of this township?


Nathalie: North Algona.


Stephen: North Algona township on the borders, an eastern gate [00:02:00] of Algonquin Park. Strangely named place, given the fact that they were the first casualties of the park being established. And we're in a place that never should have been cleared - my farm. It should never have been cleared of the talls, the white pines that were here, but the admiralty was in need back in the day. And that's what happened there. And we're in a place that the Irish immigrants who came here after the famine called "Tramore," which more or less means "good-frigging luck farming."


It doesn't technically mean that, but it absolutely means that. It actually means "sandy shore," which about covers the joint, and it's the only thing that covers the joint - would be sand. You have to import clay. Now, that's a joke in many farming places in the world, but if we wanted any clay, we'd have to bring it in and pay for the privilege.


And the farm has been in [00:03:00] my, my responsibility for about 25 years now, pretty close to that. And the sheep, or those of them left because the coyotes have been around for the first time in their casualty-making way... They're just out here, I'm facing the field where they're milling around.


And it's the very, very beginnings of the long cooling into cold, into frigid, which is our lot in this northern part of the hemisphere, even though it's still August, but it's clear that things have changed. And then, we're on a top of a little hill, which was the first place that I think that we may have convened a School here.


It wa...