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"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
In 1845, when he was 27 years old, Henry David Thoreau walked a ways from his home in Concord, MA and built a small house on a small lake—Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, two months, and two days, and he wrote about it. Walden has since become a classic. A treasure to naturalists and philosophers, historians and hipsters, conservationists and non-violent resistors. Something about abstaining from society and its affordances, reconnecting with the land, searching for something beyond the ordinary, living independently, self-reliantly, intentionally, deliberately.
Since then, Thoreau has risen to a kind of secular sainthood. Perhaps the first of now many spiritual but not religious, how should we understand Thoreau’s thought, writing, actions, and way of life?
In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Lawrence Buell (Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus, Harvard University) for a conversation about how to read Thoreau. He is the author of many books on transcendentalism, ecology, and American literature. And his latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief philosophical biography and introduction to the thought of Thoreau through his two most classic works: “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.”
In today’s episode Larry Buell and I discuss Thoreau’s geographical, historical, social, and intellectual contexts; his friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson; why he went out to live on a pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days and how it changed him; the difference between wildness and wilderness; why we’re drawn to the simplicity of wild natural landscapes and the ideals of moral perfection; the body, the senses, attunement and attention; the connection between solitude and contemplation; the importance of individual moral conscience and the concept of civil disobedience; Thoreau’s one night in jail and the legacy of his political witness; and ultimately, what it means to think disobediently.
About Lawrence Buell
Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of many books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Invention of American Culture, Writing for an Endangered World, and Emerson. His latest book is Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently, a brief introduction to the thought of Thoreau to his two most classic works: Walden and “Civil Disobedience.”
Show Notes
Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently (Oxford 2023) by Lawrence BuellRead Walden and “Civil Disobedience” online (via Project Gutenberg)Production Notes
This podcast featured Lawrence BuellEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Zoë Halaban, Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, and Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Has modern humanity lost its connection to the world outside our heads? And can our experience of art and poetry help train us for a more elevated resonance with the cosmos?
In today’s episode, theologian Miroslav Volf interviews philosopher Charles Taylor about his latest book, Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. In it he turns to poetry to help articulate the human experience of the cosmos we’re a part of.
Together they discuss the modern Enlightenment view of our relation to the world and its shortcomings; modern disenchantment and the prospects of reenchantment through art and poetry; Annie Dillard and the readiness to experience the world and what it’s always offering; how to hold the horrors of natural life with the transcendent joys; Charles recites some of William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover”; how to become fully arrested by beauty; and the value we find in human experience of the world.
Production Notes
This podcast featured Charles Taylor and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Emily Brookfield, Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Fehlende Folgen?
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St. Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun and one of the most influential mystics in all of Church history, writing two spiritual classics still read today: The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle. Her autobiography (more accurately, a confession to Spanish Inquisitors) is The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, detailing her spiritual experiences of the love of God.
In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Carlos Eire (T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University) for a discussion of how to read St. Teresa of Ávila, exploring the historical, cultural, philosophical, and theological aspects of her life and writing, and offering insights and close readings of several selections from her classic confession-slash-autobiography, known as La Vida, or The Life.
About Carlos Eire
Carlos Eire is T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. All of his books are banned in Cuba, where he has been proclaimed an enemy of the state. He was awarded the 2024 Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize by Yale College, received his PhD from Yale in 1979. He specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; the history of the supernatural, and the history of death. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, he taught at St. John’s University in Minnesota and the University of Virginia, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is the author of War Against the Idols (1986); From Madrid to Purgatory (1995); A Very Brief History of Eternity (2010); Reformations: The Early Modern World (2016); The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila: A Biography (2019); and They Flew: A History of the Impossible (2023). He is also co-author of Jews, Christians, Muslims: An Introduction to Monotheistic Religions (1997); and ventured into the twentieth century and the Cuban Revolution in the memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), which won the National Book Award in Nonfiction in the United States and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. His second memoir, Learning to Die in Miami (2010), explores the exile experience. A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, he is currently researching various topics in the history of the supernatural. His book Reformations won the R.R. Hawkins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the American Publishers Association, as well as the award for Best Book in the Humanities in 2017. It was also awarded the Jaroslav Pelikan Prize by Yale University Press.
The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Carlos Eire (https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164939/the-life-of-saint-teresa-of-avila )The Book of My Life by Teresa of Ávila (https://www.icspublications.org/products/the-collected-works-of-st-teresa-of-avila-vol-1 or https://www.shambhala.com/teresa-of-avila-1518.html )A long confession to the Inquisition which had placed her under investigation and read by those who were curious and believed her mysticism might be a fraudThe Spanish Inquisition in the 16th CenturyAutobiography v. Auto-hagiographyThe chief virtue of sainthood was humilityMedieval mysticism in the asceticism of monastic communitiesThe Reformation’s rejection of monastic communities and their practices“You can fast as much as you want, and you can punish yourself as much as you want. That's not going to, uh, make God love you any more than he already does. And it's not going to wipe out your sins. Christ has wiped out your sins. So, all of this, uh, Oh, self obsession and posturing, uh, the very concept of holiness is redefined.”Direct experience of the divine in mysticism: purgation (cleansing), feedback from God (illumination), and union with the divine.On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux (https://litpress.org/Products/CF013B/On-Loving-God)Surrendering of the self in order to find oneself, and in turn GodInterior Castle by Teresa of Ávila (https://www.icspublications.org/products/st-teresa-of-avila-the-interior-castle-study-edition)Recogimiento - a prayer in which one lets go of their senses; a form a prayer in which you are just in a chat with a friendThe Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous (https://paracletepress.com/products/the-cloud-of-unknowing )Meaning that is found without words - recollection and recogimientoFrancisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo - translation of Rhineland mysticism into SpanishStaged approach and a development of spirituality“You're doing some transforming of your own, of course, by, you know, being engaged in this, but it's, it's really a gift from God progress and progress. Uh, progress and progress, or, uh, pretty much like an athlete whose skills become better and better and better. Or any artist whose skills improve and improve and improve and improve.Except in this case, there's someone else involved. You're not just working out or rehearsing. It's the other party involved in, in this, uh, phenomenon of prayer.”The Four Waters as an image for the progression of prayerThe irony of Teresa’s writing and her nods to the inquisition found within her writingsThe experience of mysticism and God cannot be understood - it is beyond languageRepetition in prayer and meditationEdith Stein was inspired by Teresa of ÁvilaMonastic life was very isolated and was filled with hard workThe doubt of her confessors that her visions of Jesus were realResponding to the devil with crudenessMystical marriage with ChristThe Life of Catherine of Siena by Raymond of Capua ( https://tanbooks.com/products/books/the-life-of-saint-catherine-of-siena-the-classic-on-her-life-and-accomplishments-as-recorded-by-her-spiritual-director/ )Physical visions and intellectual visionsHer visions were beyond her controlTransverberation - a vision of an angel with a spear that she is struck with; pain and bliss simultaneously in the woundingGod as a very clear diamondTeresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Femininity by Alison Weber (https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691027449/teresa-of-avila-and-the-rhetoric-of-femininity) - Constant self-humbling of TeresaDevotion to heart imagery in mysticism, Catholicism, and Teresa’s spiritualityThey Flew: A History of the Impossible by Carlos Eire (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300280074/they-flew/)The bodily effects and physical nature of Teresa’s mysticismmysticism for the masses and books for the laityMysticism is a double edged sword - this is also what makes Jesus threatening in the gospelsSteven Ozment (Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century?) https://archive.org/details/mysticismdissent0000ozme/page/n295/mode/2upHuman nature and our potentialGreat detail and charming in her writingProduction Notes
This podcast featured Carlos EireEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
History reveals a lot of things about human nature: our innate drive towards progress, discovery, relationship, community. Often motivated by a drive to feel safe and flourish. But despite this instinct, history also shows that we’re prone to inflicting and being complicit to grave and violent injustices. We fail, regularly, at living well with our neighbors.
In his new book, The Spirit of Justice, Jemar Tisby opens the centuries long history of resistance to racism in the United States through the mode of story, and with the lens of the Spirit moving for justice. He asks, what manner of people are those who courageously confront racism? Presenting the lives and witness of over 50 individuals, Tisby examines the way faith threads the life work of these advocates together: not only inspiring their resistance in the first place, but continuing to move through the weariness that so often arises in this work.
In this episode, Jemar Tisby joins Macie Bridge on the podcast to discuss the manifestations of the Spirit of Justice in figures such as H. Ford Douglas, Sister Thea Bowman, David Walker, Myrlie Evers-Williams, and many more; the problem of historical appropriation with figures such as Martin Luther King Jr.; the women whose stories too often fall into the shadow of their husbands’ legacies, like Anna Murray Douglas or Coretta Scott King; and the ever-present question of why we might look to history as we determine our own ways forward.
Jemar Tisby is the New York Times bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism. He is a public historian, speaker, and advocate, and is Professor of History at Simmons College, an HBCU in Kentucky.
Photo Credits: Fannie Lou Hamer, Phyllis Wheatley, Charles Morgan Jr., Anna Murray Douglass, David Walker, Sister Thea Bowman, Myrlie & Darrell Evers.
Where to Find Jemar Tisby's Books
The Spirit of Justice *Available now
I Am the Spirit of Justice *Picture book releasing January 7, 2025
Stories of the Spirit of Justice *Middle-grade children’s book releasing January 7, 2025
Production Notes
This podcast featured Jemar TisbyHosted by Macie BridgeEdited and Produced by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, & Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
In our American quest for a more perfect union, we often mistake unity for sameness. We mistake unity for conformity. But the functional unity of a system—seems to actually require diversity, distinction, and difference.
In this episode, Christy Vines (Founder/ CEO, Ideos Institute) reflects on the problem of division today; how we increasingly invest our identity in politics instead of faith or spirituality; humility and privilege; the definition of unity and the assumption of diversity in it; the centrality of empathy; and how to cultivate an empathic wisdom grounded in the life and witness of Christ.
The Ideos Institute is currently sponsoring 31 days of Unity leading up to the 2024 election. Visit thereunionproject.us or ideosinstitute.org/31-days-of-unity to learn how to participate.
About Christy Vines
Christy Vines is the founder, President and CEO of Ideos Institute where she leads the organization’s research on the burgeoning field of Empathic Intelligence and its application to the fields of conflict transformation, social cohesion, and social renewal.
Prior to founding Ideos Institute, she was the Senior Vice President for Global Initiatives and Strategy at the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) where she served as the managing and coordinating lead for the development of strategic institutional partnerships and global initiatives in support of the IGE mission to encourage flourishing societies and stable states, and promote sustainable religious freedom, human rights and the rule of law globally. During her tenure at IGE she helped expand the organization’s Center for Women, Faith & Leadership which supports, equips and convenes religious women peacemakers around the globe.
Christy has held senior roles with the RAND Corporation, where she worked with the RAND Centers for Middle East Public Policy, Asia Pacific Public Policy, Global Risk and Security, and the Center for Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment, finally transitioning to interim project manager for the RAND African First Ladies Initiative (now located at the Bush Presidential Center). Christy also held the role of senior fellow at The American Security Project and served as an advisor to the Carter’s Center’s inaugural Forum on Women, Religion, Violence and Power.
Christy is a published writer, speaker, and the executive producer of the 2022 documentary film, "Dialogue Lab: America," a moving take on the current state of division and polarization in the U.S. She has appeared on podcasts like Comment Magazine’s “**Whole Person Revolution Podcast”, “**How Do We Fix It” and Bob Goff's “Dream Big Podcast”. She has published numerous articles and op-eds with news outlets and publications, including the **Washington Post, Christianity Today,** and Capital Commentary.
Christy received her Master's Degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. She attended both Stanford University and the University of CA, Riverside where she received her B.A. in Sociology and Qualitative Analysis. She currently resides in Pasadena, CA.
Show Notes
Howard Thurman on Unity, Meditations of the Heart (Beacon Press: 1981), 120–121“Plotinus [205–270 CE] wrote, “If we are in unity with the Spirit, we are in unity with each other, and so we are all one.” (Plotinus, Enneads, VI.5.7.)Sign up for 31 Days of Unity https://www.ideosinstitute.org/31-days-of-unity(Re)Union Project and Ideos InstituteChristy Vines’s experience with diversity and unity in her family: differences in faith, race, gender, sexuality, and religionHow Christy Vines came to faithThe problem of divisionHow neuroscience illuminates scripture and offers insight into empathic wisdom“There are so many ways to love God.” (David Dark)How we invest our identity in politics instead of religionMoral absolutism vs moral relativismAbdicating our faith identity for a political identityTechnology and relationships“Loving God differently”“In the cosmic Christ, you have all of the space you need for the kind of diversity in unity that you're talking about.”“It's the expectation that in order to work together, we really do have to look exactly the same, that we have to think the same things. That's the only way to collaborate. So until we can get past those of disagreements, there's just no way to work across the aisle. And that is disastrous to the concept of a democracy and the concept of the church.““There’s so many ways to be an American. There’s so many ways to be human.”Humility and privilege“There is something about desperation and need that brings, that illuminates God's beauty, majesty, and importance in such a powerful way that I think so many of us that are born into plenty will never experience until the other side of heaven.”The definition of unity: grounded in empathy“Unity is about finding ways to be the body of Christ with all of our diversity and difference and saying that with humility, Here is my perspective. Here's how I understand God. Here's how I live out my faith. Here's what that might mean culturally or politically and all of the other ways we express our faith. And to be unified means maybe we can all be moving in the same direction on different paths, coming at it from different directions, but recognizing we're all trying to reach the same goal. And that maybe in that shared experience, And that rubbing against one another is, our pastor used to say, heavenly sandpaper, refining one another. We may never be on the exact same path, But over time, you find that we get closer and closer together as we share our lives with one another and we influence each other from a position of trust and care. And that can only be done when we actually show up recognizing with humility that we can learn and benefit from others.”Empathy and how to build itEmpathic Intelligence Dr. Rosalind Arnold (University of Tasmania)Empathic intelligence (empathic wisdom) is the lived experience of JesusJesus’s empathy“Most of the time we take our own understanding of Jesus and try to impose that on somebody without ever knowing their story.”“What is it like to be you?”“Why is this so hard to do?”Jesus and the woman at the wellAsking questions and listeningEmpathy is contagiousVulnerability, openness, and a space of relational trust(Re)Union Project for Churches—Building unity in the church across lines of differencethereunionproject.usideosinstitute.orgProduction Notes
This podcast featured Christy VinesEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
To true fans, baseball is so much more than a sport. Some call it the perfect game. Some see it as a field of dreams. A portal to another dimension. Some see it as a road to God. Others—”heathen” we might call them—find the game unutterably boring. Too confusing, too long, too nit-picky about rules.
In this episode, Yankee fan John Sexton (President Emeritus of New York University and Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law) joins Red Sox fan Evan Rosa to discuss the philosophical and spiritual aspects of baseball. John is the author of the 2013 bestselling book Baseball as a Road to God, which is based on a course he has taught at NYU for over twenty years.
Image Credit: “The American National Game of Base Ball: Grand Match for the Championship at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N. J.” Published by Currier & Ives, 1866
About John Sexton
John Sexton hasn’t always been a Yankee fan. He once was a proud acolyte of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. A legal scholar by training, he served as president of New York University from 2001 through 2015. He is now NYU’s Benjamin F. Butler Professor of Law and dean emeritus of the Law School, having served as dean from 1988 through 2002.
He is author of Standing for Reason: The University in a Dogmatic Age (Yale University Press, 2019) and Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game (Gotham Books, 2013) (with Thomas Oliphant and Peter J. Schwartz), among other books in legal studies.
A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a recipient of 24 honorary degrees, President Emeritus Sexton is past chair of the American Council on Education, the Independent Colleges of NY, the New York Academy of Science, and the Federal Reserve Board of NY.
In 2016, Commonweal Magazine honored Sexton as the Catholic in the Public Square. The previous year, the Arab-American League awarded him its Khalil Gibran Spirit of Humanity Award; and the Open University of Israel gave him it’s Alon Prize for “inspired leadership in the field of education.” In 2013, Citizens Union designated him as “an outstanding leader who enhances the value of New York City.”
He received a BA in history and a PhD in the history of American religion from Fordham University, and a JD magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Before coming to NYU in 1981, he clerked for Judges Harold Leventhal and David Bazelon of the DC Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger.
He married Lisa Goldberg in 1976. Their two children are Jed and Katie Sexton. And their grandchildren are Julia, Ava, and Natalie.
Production Notes
This podcast featured John SextonEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
There’s a common misconception that Judaism is a religion of law and Christianity is a religion of love. But the very love commandments at the heart of Jesus’s teaching are direct quotes from Deuteronomy 6. Jesus, after all, was Jewish.
Joining Miroslav Volf in this episode is one of the most important Jewish thinkers alive today: Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His latest book is Judaism is about Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.
Image Credit: “Vienna Genesis”, 6th century, Manuscript (Codex Vindobonensis theol. graec. 31), 333 x 270 mm, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
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About Shai Held
Rabbi Shai Held—theologian, educator, author—is President, Dean, and Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hadar Institute in New York City. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence and The Heart of Torah, a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes. His most recent book is Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.
Show Notes
Get your copy of Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish LifeTwo stories that set the course for Judaism Is About LoveDeuteronomy 6 and the Love CommandsIs Judaism really a “loveless religion”?Christian students who don’t realize what wells Jesus drank from“The very inclination to dichotomize between love and law leads almost, I think, ineluctably to a misunderstanding of traditional Jewish spirituality, for which law is never an alternative to love, but a manifestation of love.”“The deed is an expression of a posture of love. The deed cannot replace the posture. It has to express it.”“A majority culture telling a minority culture that it is inferior and loveless.”Interpreting both Judaism and Christianity through a moral or ethical lens, rather than the mystical, affective, and spiritual dimensions of bothUnconditionality of God’s loveObedience to law vs unconditionality of love“My argument is that divine love, biblically speaking, comes without conditions, but with expectations. God does not say, do this or I will stop loving you. God says, I love you and I want you to do this.”Analogy to parental love for children“God believes in the centrality and urgency of human agency.”Eliezer Berkovits: embrace of human agency in JudaismZero sum games and God’s will and human agencyPerformance-oriented society, and “measuring up”Competition and being better than othersNot earning, but striving to live up toGraceWhat objectives exist for us toJohn LevinsonChosenessMoshe Weinfeld: “you were not chosen because you were wonderful.”Election isn’t earned, but don’t let grace become capricious.Abraham’s blessing and God’s love for IsraelRabbi Akiva: “Every human being on the face of the earth is loved simply by being created in the divine image.”Centering theology around creationNoah’s flood and a universal covenant with humanity as a wholeGod and Moses’s chutzpah to ask for forgiveness because Israel is so stubbornGrace is a Jewish idea, not invented by Christianity or the New Testament“Culture stripped of grace”Arbitrariness of electionExodus 34Psalm 145:9 God is good to all. God's mercies are upon all of God's creations.Mercy on everything that God has made, including animals and all sentient beings“Very good” and God’s assessment of creationLove for stranger and love for the enemyJudaism and expanding circles of concern“The temptation to dehumanize is one that must always and everywhere be resisted. … every human being on the face of the earth is infinitely valuable without exception.”John Levinson’s “universal horizon of biblical particularism”Just War Theory“At the end of the If the Middle East and the land of Israel are ever to become less blood soaked, what will be required is two peoples engaging in profoundly empathic listening to one another's stories. There is no other way.”Moshe Una and the Religious Zionist Peace Movement“Jews dreamed of this place for thousands of years, and that this is a unique place where God's commandments can be fulfilled, and this is a place of religious yearning, religious aspiration, historical connection. And the second is, we have to teach our children that there is another people who feels the same way.”“So much of the protest of this war has, it seemed to me, really lacked empathy and actually perpetuated really destructive ways of thinking about this conflict.”What is Rabbi Shai Held’s vision of a life worth living?Medieval Mishnah on Genesis 1:27: “The human being is created in God's image, but whether we become God's likeness is a function of the choices we make.”Production Notes
This podcast featured Shai HeldEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Problem-solving the crises of the modern world is often characterized by an economy and architecture of exploitation and instrumentalization, viewing relationships as transactional, efficient, and calculative. But this sort of thinking leaves a remainder of emptiness.
Finding hope in a time of crises requires a more human work of covenant and commitment. Based in agrarian principles of stability, place, connection, dependence, interwoven relatedness, and a rooted economy, we can find hope in “Love’s Braided Dance” of telling the truth, keeping our promises, showing mercy, and bearing with one another.
In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Norman Wirzba, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, to discuss his recent book Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis.
Together they discuss love and hope through the agrarian principles that acknowledge our physiology and materiality; how the crises of the moment boil down to one factor: whether young people want to have kids of their own; God’s love as erotic and how that impacts our sense of self-worth; the “sympathetic attunement” that comes from being loved by a community, a place, and a land; transactional versus covenantal relationships; the meaning of giving and receiving forgiveness in an economy of mercy; and finally the difficult truth that transformation or moral perfection can never replace reconciliation.
About Norman Wirzba
Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, as well as director of research at Duke University’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. His books include Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis, Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land;This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World; and Food & Faith.
Listen to Norman Wirzba on Food & Faith in Episode 49: "God's Love Made Delicious"
Show Notes
Norman Wirzba, Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of CrisisHow the crises of the moment boil down to one expression: whether young people want to have kids of their own.How Norman Wirzba became friends with Wendell BerryWendell Berry, The Unsettling of America“Love’s Braided Dance” from “In Rain”, a poem by Wendell Berry“You shouldn’t forget the land, and you shouldn’t forget your grandfather.”Return to agricultural practicesSacred gifts“An agricultural life can afford doesn't guarantee, I think, but it affords the opportunity for you to really handle the fundamentals of life, air, water, soil, plant, tactile connection that has to, at the same time, be a practical connection, which means you have to to bring into your handling of things the attempt to understand what you're handling.”AnonymityNorman Wirzba reads Wendell Berry’s “In Rain”Hyperconnectivity and the meaning of being “braided together”Love as Erotic Hope—”the first of God’s love is an erotic love, which is an outbound love that wants something other than God to be and to flourish. And that outbound movement is generated by God's desire for For others to be beautiful, to be good, and I think that's the basis of our lives, right?”Audre Lorde and patriarchyAffirming the goodness of ourselves and the world as created and loved by GodHow the pornographic gaze distorts the meaning of erotic loveDancing as a metaphor for God’s erotic loveDeep sympathy and anticipation, and the improvisational movement of danceWoodworking: taking time and negotiation“Sympathetic attunement” and improvisationManaging the unpredictable nature of our worldRevelation of who you are and who the other is—it’s hard to reveal ourselves to each otherHonesty and depth that is missing from relationshipsLearning the skill of self-revealingBelonging and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s sense that a people could be “loved by the land”Physiological, material reality of our dependence on each other, from womb to tomb“The illusion that we could ever be alone or stand alone or survive alone is so dishonest about our living.”Denying our needs, acknowledging our needs, and inhabiting trust to work through struggle together“It’s not about solutions.”“Some of the needs are profound and deep and they take time and they are never fully resolved. But it's this experience of knowing that you're not alone, that you're in a context where you are going to be cared for, you'll be nurtured, and you'll be forgiven when you make mistakes means that you can carry on together. And that's often enough.”Transactional vs covenantal approach to relationshipsGranting forgiveness and receiving forgivenessTransformation is not a replacement for reconciliationRather than denying wrongdoing or seeking to eliminate it, focusing on a renewed effort to be merciful with each other.Economy and architecture“So how is the land supposed to love you back if it has in fact been turned into a toxic dumping zone?”“Think about how much fear is in our architecture.”Building was vernacular—people were involved in the development of physical structuresJ. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers: Ents vs Saruman, natural agrarianism vs technological dominationJoy Clarkson, You Are a TreeRooted economy“Is anything worthy of our care?”When a parent chooses a phone and loses a moment of presence with children“Go to some one and tell them, ‘I want to try to be better at being in the presence of those around me.’”Be deliberateProduction Notes
This podcast featured Norman WirzbaEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë HalabanA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Can music teach us how to live? In this interview Evan Rosa invites Daniel Chua—a musicologist, composer at heart, and Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong—to discuss his latest book, Music & Joy: Lessons on the Good Life.
Together they discuss the vastly different ancient and modern approaches to music; the problem with seeing music for consumption and entertainment; the ways different cultures conceive of music and wisdom: from Jewish to Greek to Christian; seeing the disciplined spontaneity of jazz improvisation fitting with both a Confucian perspective on virtue, and Christian newness of incarnation; and finally St. Augustine, the worshipful jubilance of singing in the midst of one’s work to find rhythm and joy that is beyond suffering; and a final benediction and blessing for every music lover.
Throughout the interview, we’ll offer a few segments of the music Daniel discusses, including Beethoven’s Opus 132 and the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th symphony, and John Cage’s controversial 4’33”—which Daniel recommends we listen to every single day, and which we’re going to play during this episode toward the end.
Show Notes
Music and Joy: Lessons on the Good Life by Daniel Chua (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300264210/music-and-joy/)Can music teach us how to live?The emotional relationship we have with musicEveryone identifies with musicHow did you come to love music and write on it?MusicologistThe Sound of Music soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeSQLYs2U8X0nTi15MHjMAWim3PxIyEqI)Listening to music at a young ageLove of Beethoven as a childWhat about Beethoven in particular spoke to you? Do you have memories of what feeling or challenges or thoughts or kind of ambitions were there?Beethoven as harder to listen to and sit through as it is quite disruptive and intellectual in styleBeethoven and Freedom by Daniel Chua (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beethoven-freedom-daniel-k-l-chua/1126575597)What pieces in particular, or what about Beethoven’s composition was particularly moving to you?Beethoven’s final string quartets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qaq881bwRI)“It’s very strange. It’s like the most complex and the most simple music. And somehow they speak very deeply to my soul and my heart. And you just want to listen to them all the time.”A Minor String Quartet, Opus 132 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUob2dcQTWA)A piece of thanksgiving to GodMessages sent by music as a young person about how things come togetherMusic interacts with usPlaying to understand how it is that a piece worksHow do we replicate what music communicates in our daily lives?Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0EjVVjJraA)Stephen Pinker - music is auditory cheesecake“If music is joy, then what is it? What kind of joy is it?”Consuming music is not the same as joy; music is not simply entertainmentThe fanfare of terror in Ode to Joy“Humans are strange. We are very sinful creatures so we tend to weaponize whatever we have to weaponize and we weaponize music too.”“Whatever we do with music as humans, there is something more in music that speaks beyond out puny human point of view of music.”Our view of music and joy today are too human; music is cosmicWe tune ourselves, our virtues, our wisdom to the rhythm of the universe.Joy as something we obey, we listen to.“Music isn’t human. Music is actually creation.”Music, the Logos, and WisdomMusic as something that teaches us how to live.Wisdom taking delight, joy, in the universe.Music is deeply beautiful; there is profound goodness to itA lesson in flourishing found in music, in the tuning of ourselvesMusic is truthful; Christ as an instrument and salvation as being in tuneSheet music v performance as an analogy for incarnationMusic as an event that is happeningHarmony and coming together - finding one’s place within the turn; Taoist and Confucian traditions“Jazz offers this fantastic expression of a different kind of wisdom born through suffering and grief.”Improvisation in jazz; an exuberance - the weird and the spontaneous alongside the orderedMusic as an opportunity for emotion and a way to communicate and understand; spirituals and slave hymns“The order of the cosmos is basically tragic. It’s a bad, bad world. And music is a kind of consolation in that.”“Music can’t help but be meaningful.”4'33" by John Cage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWVUp12XPpU)Whatever we are, music is there.Using music to make sense of things; really attend to the world and its music.Augustine’s Book of Music “De Musica” (https://archive.org/details/augustine-on-music-de-musica/page/159/mode/2up)The spontaneous music of the worldDefiant joy in the music of slave hymns; a joy that will not be crushedA robust understanding of joyMusic tells us something about the world, the cosmos, of creation - Music reflects the heart of God.About Daniel Chua
Daniel K. L. Chua is the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Hong Kong University to head the School of Humanities, he was a Fellow and the Director of Studies at St John’s College, Cambridge, and later Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at King’s College London. He is the recipient of the 2004 Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal, an Honorary Fellow of the American Musicological Society, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He served as the President of the International Musicological Society 2017-2022. He has written widely on music, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky, but is particularly known for his work on Beethoven, the history of absolute music, and the intersection between music, philosophy and theology. His publications include The ‘Galitzin’ Quartets of Beethoven (Princeton, 1994), Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 1999), Beethoven and Freedom (Oxford, 2017), Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music From Earth (Zone Books, 2021), Music and Joy: Lessons on the Good Life (Yale 2024), ‘Rioting With Stravinsky: A Particular Analysis of the Rite of Spring’ (2007), and ‘Listening to the Self: The Shawshank Redemption and the Technology of Music’ (2011).
Image Credit: “Beethoven with the Manuscript of the Missa Solemnis”, Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820, oil on canvas, Beethoven-Haus, Bonn (Public Domain, Wikimedia Link)Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132: iii. “Heilige Dankgesang eines Genesenden an die Gottheit” (”Holy song of thanks of a convalescent to the Divinity”), Amadeus Quartet, 1962 (via Internet Archive)Ludwig van Beethoven, The Symphony No 9 in D minor, Op 125 "Choral" (1824), Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer, Live Performance, 17 May 1956 (via Internet Archive)Traditional Chinese Music, Instrument: Ehru, “Yearning for Love” Remembering of The Xiao on The Phoenix Platform (via Internet Archive)John Coltrane, “The Inch Worm”, Live in Paris, 1962 (via Internet Archive)4’33”, John Cage, 1960trThe McIntosh County Shouters perform “Gullah-Geechee Ring Shout” (Library of Congress) -
“The whole of human existence is like some sweet parable told in the most improbable place and circumstances. … God values our humanity. … One of the things that's fascinating about the Hebrew Bible is that it declared and was loyal to the fact that God is good and creation is good.”
Novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson joins Miroslav Volf to discuss her latest book, Reading Genesis. Together they discuss why she took up this project of biblical commentary and what scripture and theological reflection means to her; how she thinks of Genesis as a theodicy (or a defense against the problem of evil and suffering); the grace of God; the question of humanity’s goodness; how to understand the flood; the relationship between divine providence and working for moral progress; and much more.
About Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Her fictional and non-fictional work includes recurring themes of Christian spirituality and American political life. In a 2008 interview with the Paris Review, Robinson said, "Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I've found fruitful to think about."
Her novels include: Housekeeping (1980, Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Gilead (2004, Pulitzer Prize), Home (2008, National Book Award Finalist), Lila (2014, National Book Award Finalist), and most recently, Jack (2020). Robinson's non-fiction works include Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010), When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012), The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), and What Are We Doing Here?: Essays (2018). Her latest book is Reading Genesis (2024).
Marilynne Robinson received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Brown University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977. She has served as a writer-in-residence or visiting professor at a variety universities, included Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho and now lives in Iowa City.
Show Notes
Get your copy of Reading Genesis by Marilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson’s New York Times article, “What Literature Owes the Bible” (2011)Reading Genesis as the singular ancient literature that it isThe Bible (and Genesis) as theodicyHow Calvin and Luther influenced Robinson’s approach to GenesisThe benefit of reading Genesis as a wholeThe story of JosephThe fractal nature of the bibleUnsparing, honest descriptions of the characters“I think that the fact that they are recognizably flawed creatures is, what that reflects is the grace of God. He is enthralled by these people that must have been a fairly continuous disappointment, you know? We have to understand humankind better, I think, in order to understand what overplus there is in a human being that God loves them despite their being so human.”“An amazing little theater of domestic dysfunction.”Abraham and Isaac: “Poor Isaac … or he could just be a plain old disappointing child.”“The Bible is a theodicy.”God’s goodness, and a defense of GodGod’s value of humanity and the conservation of the human self“God stands by creation.”Humanism in Genesis“Humanity sinks so deep into evil. that they become near incarnations of evil.”Genesis 6: “Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was Only evil and continually.”Total depravity and the bleak view of humanityNoah and the Flood“… there's a kind of a strange lawlessness of Genesis.”“When God remakes the world after Noah, after the flood, he does not change human beings. He gives them exactly the same blessings and instructions that he did originally, which is simply another statement of his very deeply tested loyalty to us as we are.”“Finding a humane way to deal with the inhumanity of human beings.”Genesis 8: “Because human beings are evil, I will never destroy them.”Grace as a condition of possibility for all lifeThe similarities between Hebrew Bible as a philosophic text, drawing influences from cultures around them“what is a greater question of theodicy than the fact that populations are wiped off the face of the earth every so often—it must have been so common in the ancient world with plagues and wars and all the rest of it.”“Every human, every thought, all the time: evil.”“Genesis is a preparation for Exodus because the solution to human wickedness, which nevertheless does not violate human nature, is law.”What is the moral purpose of humanity?The roaring cosmos and modern atheisms: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on moral purpose is gone, humanity is just a little boat amidst a storm“The whole of human existence is like some sweet parable told in the most improbable place and circumstances.”Charles Taylor’s Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of DisenchantmentProvidence and moral progress“We’re still terribly violent. Terribly violent people.” “And terribly blind to our violence.”Revelation and God’s control of an otherwise nasty worldThe possibility of human encounterProduction Notes
This podcast featured Marilynne Robinson and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Emily BrookfieldA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove discuss the political, moral, and spiritual dimensions of poverty. Together, they co-authored White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, and they’re collaborators at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.
About Rev. William Barber
Bishop William J. Barber II, DMin, is a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He serves as President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, and has been Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Goldsboro, NC, for the past 29 years.
He is the author of four books: We Are Called To Be A Movement; Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing; The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and The Rise of a New Justice Movement; and Forward Together: A Moral Message For The Nation.
Bishop Barber served as president of the North Carolina NAACP from 2006-2017 and on the National NAACP Board of Directors from 2008-2020. He is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement that gained national acclaim in 2013 with its Moral Monday protests at the North Carolina General Assembly. In 2015, he established Repairers of the Breach to train communities in moral movement building through the Moral Political Organizing Leadership Institute and Summit Trainings (MPOLIS). In 2018, he co-anchored the relaunch of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival— reviving the SCLC’s Poor People’s Campaign, which was originally organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., welfare rights leaders, workers’ rights advocates, religious leaders, and people of all races to fight poverty in the U.S.
A highly sought-after speaker, Bishop Barber has given keynote addresses at hundreds of national and state conferences, including the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 59th Inaugural Prayer Service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Vatican’s conference on Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.
He is a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award recipient and a 2015 recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award and the Puffin Award.
Bishop Barber earned a Bachelor’s Degree from North Carolina Central University, a Master of Divinity from Duke University, and a Doctor of Ministry from Drew University with a concentration in Public Policy and Pastoral Care. He has had ten honorary doctorates conferred upon him.
About Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, preacher, and community-builder who has worked with faith-rooted movements for social change for more than two decades. He is the founder of School for Conversion, a popular education center in Durham, North Carolina, and co-founder of the Rutba House, a house of hospitality in Durham’s Walltown neighborhood.
Mr. Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of more than a dozen books, including the daily prayer guide, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, New Monasticism, The Wisdom of Stability, Reconstructing the Gospel, and Revolution of Values. He is a regular preacher and teacher in churches across the US and Canada and a member of the Red Letter Christian Communicators network.
Show Notes
Center for Public Theology and Public Policy’s ten-session online course: https://www.theologyandpolicy.yale.edu/inaugural-conferenceGet your copy of White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324094876Production Notes
This podcast featured Rev. William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, with Ryan McAnnally-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Julian of Norwich is known and loved for the lines revealed to her by God, “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” But beyond the comfort of this understandably uplifting phrase, what are theological and philosophical insights we might learn from this anonymous medieval Christian mystic and anchoress?
Ryan McAnnally-Linz joins Evan Rosa to discuss the historical context of Julian of Norwich, her life and vocation as an anchoress, and the story of near-death experience and subsequent mystical visions that led her to write such theologically rich and uplifting words—which comprise the earliest known writing by a woman in English. Together they have an extended discussion of a rather marvelous segment from the Long Text of the Revelation of Divine Love, sections 46-58, and in particular we look at the revelation Julian herself was most puzzled and mystified by during her own life, discovering understanding only decades after having received the vision: Section 51, the Parable of the Lord and the Servant.
Image Credit: adapted from The Lives of the Saints Gallus, Magnus, Otmar and Wiboradain German, 1451–60. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 602, p. 303.
Show Notes
“All shall be well” as an introduction to Julian for manyRowan Williams on Julian as one of the greatest English language theologiansWho was Julian? How she thinks and what we can draw from her for the purposes of theological insight and spiritual maturity?Found Julian in a medieval survey course and she has remained with himWhat caught you in Julian? Why did it stick with you?She synthesizes a visionary experience with deep theological reflection: subtle and sophisticated theologian; simplicity, earnestness, and virtuositySo give us a little bit of her biography. I know that we know precious little, but what do we know? And maybe give us some of the historical context of her?Couple of manuscripts of her writing; the short and the long textMargery Kempe visits Julian to make a request in The Book of Margery Kempe (https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/staley-the-book-of-margery-kempe)Anchoress and is attached to a church in Norwich; 1340s first and second waves of the Black Death; mass loss and traumaThe text is less focused on herself outside of the visions that happen on what she believes is her death bed.What is the spiritual occupation of an anchoress or anchorite?Anchorite as isolated spiritual calling different from monks and hermits; life is in this one cellDo you know what motivations are there for that spiritual vocation in the church? Why would anyone do this?Anchorite ceremonies are like funeral rites; a death to the world, living only for prayerThe showings - 16 visions; prays for mind of the passion, bodily sickness, and three wounds (contrition, compassion, and willful longing for God)The suffering of Christ and his wounds and their popularity in medieval devotional practice16 showings that are intertwined and vary in form (visual, auditory, bodily, mental)The last showing, which she ponders for the rest of her life.What are some of the core philosophical, theological, or other concepts that are most salient for understanding Julian?Julian understands herself as beholden to the church, its teachings, and its tradition - wrestling with these and her visions.A Vision Shown to a Devout Woman by Julian (https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-02547-6.html)A Revelation of Love by Julian (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/261039/revelations-of-divine-love-by-julian-of-norwich-translated-by-elizabeth-spearing-introduction-and-notes-by-a-c-spearing/)Augustinian tradition is appealed to—his teachings on evil and sin, Christian PlatonismJulian as a Trinitarian thinkerWhat would you say about her understanding of love?Later visions in life and praying for many years for understanding —Love is THE thing for Julian, it’s the whole thing.Love as joyful communion but also a passionate willingness to sacrifice for one’s belovedA Short Play: The Lord and the Servant (from the long text)Chapter 51 of the Long TextRed herrings in Julian; the medieval trope of enumeratingThe perplexing vision of the servant in the hole ?Reconciling the goodness of the world with sin; dealing with what she is seeing from God and what the church teaches about sin—wresting with the detailsThe Fall, the “Felix Culpa” or the “Happy Fault,” and the servant in the holeGod looks without blame and that complicates church teaching on sin; layers in the narrative, God, humanity, ChristBeing drawn into the puzzling and the pondering experienced by Julian inspired by her writing; finding comfort in a loving God that we cannot see clearlyHow God sees“Our life and our being are in God.”Chapter 49 of Julian’s Showings“She’s saying, sorry sin, good creatures are good creatures and their goodness qua creatures of God is kept safe and whole in God, regardless of what their concrete existential messed-upness might be.”Julian says: “Jesus is all who shall be saved. And all who shall be saved are Jesus and all through God's love along with the obedience, humility and patience and other virtues which pertain to us.”Totus Christi: Jesus as both head and body of the churchJulian says: “All people who shall be saved while we are in this world have in us a marvelous mixture of both weal and woe. We have in us our risen Lord Jesus. We have in us the misery of the harm of Adam's falling and dying. We are steadfastly protected by Christ, and by the touch of His grace, we are raised into sure trust of salvation. And by Adam's fall, our perceptions are so shattered in various ways, by sins and by different sufferings, that we are so darkened and blinded that we can hardly find any comfort. But inwardly, we wait for God and trust faithfully that we shall receive mercy and grace, for this is God's own operation within us. And in His goodness, He opens the eye of our understanding, and by this we gain sight, sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the ability that God gives us to receive it.”The servant out of the hole; the mixture of weal and woe within us“She says at some point, ‘Peace and love are always at work in us, but we are not always in peace and love.’”Even when we don’t feel God, Julian wants us to know the comfort that he is there.Julian writes: “There neither can, nor shall be anything at all between God and man's soul. He wants us to know that the noblest thing he ever made is humankind and its supreme essence and highest virtue is the blessed soul of Christ. And furthermore, he wants us to know that his precious soul was beautifully bound to him in the making. With a knot which is so subtle and so strong that it is joined into God, and in this joining, it is made eternally holy. … Furthermore, he wants us to know that all the souls which will be eternally saved in heaven are bound and united in this union and made holy in this holiness.”The Beauty of the Middle English it was originally written in: “one-ing”“Christ's union with God is our union with God by virtue of Christ's union with us.”The meaning of atonement for Julian of NorwichThe soul as an intricately woven knot; one knot that is interwoven with those of others by and through God—atonement, the one-ing of humans and God; being tied together and pulled in by the incarnation“It’s Julian reminding me that my blindness doesn’t have the final say, doesn’t actually say anything about what’s real and true and how God sees.”Production Notes
This podcast featured Ryan McAnnally-LinzEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, and Macie BridgeA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was an influential philosopher and beloved author and speaker on Christian spiritual formation. He had the unique gift of being able to speak eloquently to academic and popular audiences, and it’s fascinating to observe the ways his philosophical thought pervades and influences his spiritual writings—and vice versa.
In this episode, Steve Porter (Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute, Westmont College / Affiliate Professor of Spiritual Formation at Biola University) joins Evan Rosa to explore the key concepts and ideas that appear throughout Dallas Willard’s philosophical and spiritual writings, including: epistemological realism; a relational view of knowledge; how knowledge makes love possible; phenomenology and how the mind experiences, represents, and comes into contact with reality; how the human mind can approach the reality of God with a love for the truth; moral psychology; and Dallas’s concerns about the recent resistance, loss, and disappearance of moral knowledge.
About Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard (1935-2013) was a philosopher, minister and beloved author and speaker on Christian philosophy and spiritual formation. For a full biography, visit Dallas Willard Ministries online.
About Steve Porter
Dr. Steve Porter is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of the Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont College, and an affiliate Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation at the Institute for Spiritual Formation and Rosemead School of Psychology (Biola University). Steve received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Southern California and M.Phil. in philosophical theology at the University of Oxford.
Steve teaches and writes in Christian spiritual formation, the doctrine of sanctification, the integration of psychology and theology, and philosophical theology. He co-edited Until Christ is Formed in You: Dallas Willard and Spiritual Formation, Psychology and Spiritual Formation in Dialogue, and Dallas’s final academic book: The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. He is the author of Restoring the Foundations of Epistemic Justification: A Direct Realist and Conceptualist Theory of Foundationalism, and co-editor of Christian Scholarship in the 21st Century: Prospects and Perils. In addition to various book chapters, he has contributed articles to the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, Philosophia Christi, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of Psychology and Theology, Themelios, Christian Scholar’s Review, etc. Steve and his wife Alicia live with their son Luke and daughter Siena in Long Beach, CA.
Show Notes
The Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture at Westmont CollegeDallas Willard Ministries (Free Online Resources)Dallas Willard, The Spirit of DisciplinesWillard as both spiritual formation teacher/pastor and intellectual/philosopherGary Moon, Becoming Dallas WillardDallas Willard MinistriesConversatio DivinaPhenomenology—“One of the principles of phenomenology is you want to kind of help others come to see what you've seen.”Willard “presenting himself to God” while teaching“The kingdom of God was in the room.”The importance of finding your own way into your spiritual practicesAn ontology of knowing and epistemological realism: “We can come to know things the way they are.”What does it mean to say that being precedes knowledge or that metaphysics precedes epistemology? What does that imply for spiritutal formation?What is real?Operating on accurate information about realityDallas Willard on Husserl: “What is most intriguing in Husserl's thought to me, the always hopeful realist, is the way he works out a theory of the substance and nature of consciousness and knowledge, which allows that knowledge to grasp a world that it does not make.”The Cambridge Companion to HusserlThe philosophical tradition of “saving the appearances”Mind-world relationshipThe affinity between concepts and their objectsDallas Willard on concepts and objects: “On my view, thoughts and their concepts do not modify the objects which make up reality. They merely match up or fail to match up with them in a certain way. Thus, there would be a way things are, and the realism there would be vindicated along with the possibility at least of a God's eye view.”Lying as a disconnection from the truth and therefore from the worldAgency in our choice to know God and pursue knowing GodThe role of sincerity and honesty in shared realityRichard Rorty, “Solidarity or Objectivity”: “breaking free of the shackles of objectivity”Dallas Willard in “Where Is Moral Knowledge?”: “One way of characterizing the condition of North American society at present is to say that moral knowledge, knowledge of good and evil, of what is morally admirable and despicable, right and wrong, is no longer available in our world to people generally. It has disappeared as a reliable resource for living.”Knowledge used to justify violence versus knowledge used to counter injusticeMoral relativism vs moral absolutism—which is the problem today?Moral absolutism is often not rooted in knowledge, but a feeling of certaintyDallas Willard, *The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge* (also available here)Social causes for moral knowledge having disappeared from public lifeMoral knowledge provides the place to stand for justiceWhat is it to be a good person?Emmanuel Levinas and the face of the otherDallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy, “The life and words that Jesus brought into the world came in the form of information and reality.”Becoming a student of JesusWillard’s four fundamental questions: What is real? What is the good life? Who is the good person? How does one become good?Dallas Willard on how to understand Jesus’s words: “It is the failure to understand Jesus and his words as reality and vital information about life. That explains why today we do not routinely teach those who profess allegiance to him, how to do what he said was best. We lead them to profess allegiance to him, or we expect them to, and we leave them there devoting our remaining efforts to attracting them to this or that.”The contemporary issue of exchanging becoming more like Jesus for other ways of life.The real cost of changing one’s lifeFrederica Matthewes Green: “Everyone wants transformation, but no one likes to change.”“The good news of Jesus is the availability of the Kingdom of God.”Sociologist Max Picard, *The Flight From God* and philosopher Charles Taylor on “the buffered self.”Dallas Willard on taking Jesus seriously as a reliable path to growth“In many ways, I believe that we are at a turning point among the people of Christ today, one way of describing that turning point is that people are increasingly serious about living the life that Jesus gives to us. And not just having services, words, and rituals. But a life that is full of the goodness and power of Christ. There is a way of doing that. There is knowledge of spiritual growth and of spiritual life that can be taught and practiced. Spiritual growth is not like lightning that hits for no reason you can think of. Many of us come out of a tradition of religion that is revivalistic and experiential. But often the mixture of theological understanding and history that has come down to us has presented spiritual growth as if somehow it were not a thing that you could have understanding of. That you could know, that you could teach, that made sense. And so, we have often slipped into a kind of practical mysticism. The idea that if we just keep doing certain things, then maybe something will happen. We have not had an understanding of a reliable process of growth.”Jesus on “The Cure for Anxiety”Production Notes
This podcast featured Steve PorterEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
What does it mean to be fully alive and at peace with ourselves and our neighbors in the anxiety and fear of contemporary life?
Joining Evan Rosa in this episode is Elizabeth Oldfield—a journalist, communicator, and podcast host of The Sacred. She’s author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.
Together they discuss life in her micro-monastery in south London; the meaning of liturgical and sacramental life embedded in a fast-paced, technological, capitalistic, obsessively popular society; the concept of personal encounter and Martin Buber’s idea that “all living is meeting”; the fundamentally disconnecting power of sin that works against the fully aliveness of truly meeting the other; including discussions of wrath or contempt that drives us toward violence; greed or avarice and the incessant insatiable accumulation of wealth; the attention-training benefits of gratitude and the identify forming power of our attention; throughout it all, working through the spiritual psychology of sin and topography of the soul—and the fact that we are, all of us, in Elizabeth’s words, “unutterably beloved.”
About Elizabeth Oldfield
Elizabeth Oldfield is a journalist, communicator, and author. She hosts a beautiful podcast called The Sacred. And she’s author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. Follow her @esoldfield, and visit her website elizabetholdfield.com
Show Notes
Intentional living community; pulling on monastic lifestyle and framework; read more about Elizabeth Oldfield’s micro-monastery here.People passing through the micro-monastery and the sharing of a meal and sitting in silence with othersCeltic prayer book - The Aidan Compline (https://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/monday-the-aidan-compline/)Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield (http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/fully-alive/421701)How you see your liturgical life, the rhythms of your life however else you might describe you spirituality as providing the soil of this book?A personal writing experience - communicating something of her tradition with the outside worldWhat it means to be fully alive to you?Everything is about relationships and connection; to be fully alive is to be fully connected with the soulBetween Man and Man (https://www.routledge.com/Between-Man-and-Man/Buber/p/book/9780415278270) and I and Thou by Martin Buber - “all living is meeting” (https://www.maximusveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/iandthou.pdf)If all living is meeting, how are we failing in that regard?Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense by Francis Spufford (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/unapologetic-francis-spufford?variant=32207439626274)Sin is disconnection; a turning inward“Elegy on the Lady Markham” by John Donne (https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/elegy-lady-markham-0)“As I Walked Out One Evening” by W.H. Auden (https://poets.org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening)The Sacred podcast (https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2017/12/06/introducing-the-sacred-podcast)Polarization, division, and the splitting of people - homophily and fight or flight responseJesus going to the margins, ignoring tribal boundaries and turning the other cheekSin and ReconciliationThe Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson, “I find the soul a valuable concept, a statement of the dignity of human life” (https://www.brethrenpress.com/product_p/9781250097316.htm)The soul is interesting and difficult to name but is so valuableRoom for uncertainty and poetry—we beat up our souls, keep ourselves distractedContemporary life is angry and greedyContempt is a poison for our souls and relationships and humanityStress and anxiety as a constantChristian non-violence traditionWe must feel our emotions - process them through the shared rituals of our communitiesDesire by Micheal O’Siadhail (https://www.baylorpress.com/9781481320061/desire/)Would you like to introduce your take on greed?Phyllis Tickle, dogged commitment of the scripture - the love of money is the root of all evilThe Parable of the Sower - Mark 4:19 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark 4%3A19&version=NIV)Made gods of wealth, greed, comfort, and connivenceGratitude is a medicine for greedOf Gratitude by Thomas Traherne? (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/works-of-thomas-traherne-vii/of-gratitude/161CCCE8293EE4034F65AB436AB4D3F9)“These are the Days We Prayed For” by Guvna B (https://genius.com/Guvna-b-these-are-the-days-lyrics)Notice and give thanks; misplaced desireAcadia, spiritual apathy, and heavy distractionAttention and discipline are formationThe Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book)Community as accountability and rituals and set rhythms of lifeDivine Love, ultimate loveBaptism as a reminder of our death - love remainsQuiet space shared with others; honesty, vulnerability, emotional processingProduction Notes
This podcast featured Elizabeth OldfieldEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie Barrett and Alexa RollowA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Elizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, and came back to the White House again in 2017 to serve in the Trump Administration.
Her job was to counter emerging right-wing extremism, fueled by long-standing anger, resentment, white supremacism, and Christian nationalism. By April 2020, she had resigned from the Trump Administration. Citing a failure of leadership and his imperiling of American security, she signed an August 2020 statement with 130 other Republican national security officials, boldly stating in no uncertain terms that Trump was unfit for office.
In this episode, Elizabeth opens up about this experience, told in her recent book Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace. As a person of Christian faith with over two decades of experience in public service and national security, she offers a fascinating inside take on the inattention to domestic terrorism; she elucidates the emergence of a new and Christian extremism, grounded in rage and willing to take violent action; she explains the Jan 6 attack through the perspective of homeland security; and she reflects on Christian resources for responding to the chaotic, politicized anger characterized in right-wing extremism and how we might act as instruments of peace.
About Elizabeth Neumann
Elizabeth Neumann served as the Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration, and came back to the White House again in 2017 to serve in the Trump Administration, publicly resigning in 2020. She is author of Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, and is a frequent guest on national news outlets, and the Chief Strategy Officer at Moonshot. She is based in the Denver, CO area.
Show Notes
Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace by Elizabeth NeumannElizabeth Neumann’s faith journey and background in public service.Christian, North Texas/Bible Belt, more theologically conservative—an “evangelical mutt”Body of Christ is made up of different communities—personally gravitating towards more nerdy churches, an emphasis on Bible studiesPublic service as a way to live out the faithWorking for George W. Bush campaigns for governor and president—federalism, conservative, to the states: faith-based community initiatives and Bush’s compassionate conservative agenda9/11 as a moment of changeWorking in Homeland Security, specifically in the Domestic Terrorism UniteInstances of domestic violent extremism: Pittsburg Tree of Life (2018), Christ Church in New Zealand (2019), and El Paso Walmart (2019)Do you think of them as domestic terrorism? Do you think of it as a kind of violence that’s brewing from within? How does the Department of Security try to understand threats to America from within?Intelligence is used to inform responses to challenges, yet the means to collect don’t work domestically and domestic material support of terrorism is not understood as criminalNo way to designate domestic terrorism groupsThe threat has been there all along; domestic extremists require a shift in the focus - many Americans (3%, roughly 8 million people) believe in the necessity of violence for political aimsWe don’t talk about it so people don’t know about it, but the church is equipped to discuss and address the underlying drivers that mobilize people to violenceHow did you experience perspective shifts?COVID in 2020, protests against COVID procedures, and the protests surrounding the murder of George FloydWeaponizing of crisis by Trump administration for re-election campaignThe ANTIFA movement; authoritarian responses from Trump that were illegal and unconstitutional; no longer anyone in the room to tell him noJanuary 6 highlighted a security failure that was both day of as well as a result of 20 years of ignoring a threat from withinWould you be willing to share a bit about what motivated your decision to leave the Trump administration?Presidential personnel interviews as a loyalty test; people being pushed out; how far were people willing to go for Donald Trump?Hatch Act: prohibits federal employees, including political appointees, from engaging in political activityChristian nationalist mindset—How does Christianity get radicalized?Extremism: when an in-group perceives a threat to its success or survival by an out-group and hostile action is necessary—this is the nature of contemporary politics which are saturated in fear and anger.The plausibility of violent actionViolence is not the option taught by Jesus and the ScripturesViolence has a historic presence in the Christian traditionChange in the presence of Christianity in society that is unsettling for some, but cannot be an excuse for extremists and violent actionWhat are the prospects of keeping it a peaceful community?Building protective factors and systems for healing brokennessUnmet needs cannot be allowed to be met by extremist ideology when the Church possesses the answers and the means to meet them; a call to properly investing in our communitiesThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan HaidtMotivated by emotions and experience—critical thinking is a vital skillWe are in a perpetual state of anger; we are called to not stay angryProcessing anger properly; being better at lament and grieving in a biblical wayTim Keller on idolatry and anger; an interfering with our idols; Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters?What is lying more deeply within us when anger is on the surface?The space to lament and grieve in society in a healthy wayThe Lord can meet us in our anger; he will take it when we bring it to him and ask for helpWhat does it mean to be a Christian peacemaker?Intentionally caring for communities; the quiet spaces in which the face of God is seen in others by loving them.Production Notes
This podcast featured Elizabeth NeumannEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
Genuine disagreement is vanishingly rare. But to disagree with careful listening, empathy, respect, and independent thinking—it’s an essential part of life in a pluralistic democratic society.
In this episode, legal scholar and author John Inazu joins Evan Rosa to talk about his new book, Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect. He’s the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis.
Together they discuss the challenge of disagreeing well in contemporary life, replete with the depersonalization of social media; the difference between certainty and confidence; what it means to think for oneself, freely and independently; the virtue of humility in civil discourse; the prospect for political dissent and civil disobedience; how to pursue the truth in a culture of principled pluralism; and practical steps toward empathic and respectful disagreement.
About John Inazu
John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis. He teaches criminal law, law and religion, and various First Amendment courses. He writes and speaks frequently about pluralism, assembly, free speech, religious freedom, and other issues. John has written three books—including Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (Zondervan, 2024) and *Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly* (Yale, 2012)—and has published opinion pieces in the Washington Post, Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and CNN. He is also the founder of the Carver Project and the Legal Vocation Fellowship and is a senior fellow with Interfaith America.
Show Notes
"Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man."Get a copy of Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect (https://www.jinazu.com/learning-to-disagree)Disagreement around civility and civil discourse particularlyIdentifying and naming disagreementPractical limits of human relationship as a reality of disagreementWhy you picked up learning to disagree, disagreement in particular? And why is it important to you? What drew you now to make a comment about disagreement?Liberty’s Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly (https://www.jinazu.com/libertys-refuge)Right of Assembly in the first amendment and what it means in groups - Madison and factions (Federalist 10?)Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference (https://www.jinazu.com/confident-pluralism)Constitutional lawThe First Amendment as what secures the ability to disagree - Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech“One is, even if that was part of the, original focus, like any ongoing tradition, it can be lost or ignored. And so there's this sense in which each new generation needs to understand and appreciate it for intrinsic reasons and not just because they read it in a book.”Individual thinking but the reality of not doing anything individually as we are involved in embodied human relationshipsWhat starting points are there? You begin with empathy, what other starting points do you like to introduce to help people understand where you’re trying to take people with this?Complexity and compromise and recognizing that compromise isn’t always possibleHumility in competing visions of truth and what is best for the world; no good or bad, just different persuasionsA desire for certainty which fear and laziness underlineI wonder if you could speak a little bit more to the legal background and why you think that is so helpful and so instructive for going through this framework of learning to disagree?“Maybe only prudentially in order to try to defeat it, but the work of understanding the other side's argument in the best light possible is itself a work of empathy that allows you to step into the headspace of the opponent a little bit and allows you to see why someone who is not dumb or is not You know, completely outside of society might actually think differently.”Supreme Court and difficult, political decisionsApplying the approaches that are taught in law schools in every day lifeThree branches of government and checks and balancesLoss of human relationships with colleagues in Congress and the increase of them in the Supreme CourtPolitical dissent and political dissidentsWhen to disagree?Protests, assemblies, and activismThe privilege of dissent in the United StatesSocial pressures, social stigma, and the confidence and responsibility to dissentHow to cultivate respect for the one who you disagree with?Love your enemies and the Christian calling for interpersonal relationship with the person you disagree with; there is no guarantee of reciprocityQuestion of belief, right belief and orthodoxyDifferences matter, especially in theological conversation, but that doesn’t mean we should rest in certaintyLearning and granting grace to ourselves and one anotherLesslie Newbigin - confidence not certaintyHow do we cultivate that ability to stay in the middle of it? To hold the tension, being able to live in the complexity, stay invested that the conversation happens without getting disillusioned or apathetic?The differences between Preaching and PersuasionHow you recommended, what they can do today in the disagreements they find themselves in? What they can do at the level of mindset and what they can try to implement?Disagreement is something you have to practice and to know that mistakes will be madeLet conversations linger and take time and happen over multiple meetings - making the commitment to be together and be in conversationBuilding trust in disagreeing well - acknowledging the relationalDon’t start with family; practice with others initially“But regardless of sort of the relationship that you start with, go in with a full tank, right? don't don't go in when you yourself are like, impatient or exhausted or hungry, because you should go in kind of anticipating that there'll be some challenges to this. And if you can, on the front end say, you know what, in this conversation, I'm probably going to hear something that is going to offend me or annoy me.”Friends who disagree and the importance of friendshipMixing the serious with the playful and the mundaneFriendship as an important element of discourse and disagreementProduction Notes
This podcast featured John InazuEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
We live in a time of disillusionment. Trust is waning in the public sphere, religious affiliation is on decline, and some feel a deep tension or ambivalence about their community—whether that’s a region, family, political party, or spiritual tradition.
How should we think about the experience of disillusionment, particularly the threat of becoming disillusioned with faith?
Aimee Byrd, author of several books on contemporary issues facing Christianity. And after her own experience becoming disillusioned with the church, she wrote her most recent offering: The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment.
In this conversation, Aimee Byrd joins Evan Rosa to discuss: how to diagnose and understand disillusionment—particularly disillusionment with church and the trappings of Christian faith & culture; as well as the problem of spiritual abuse and the broken forms of faith that allow it to persist. She explores the Old Testament’s Song of Songs—exploring how it honors the depth of human longing and desire. She considers how beauty validates our yearnings and invites us toward a lasting faith and gives us new sight and recognition, and ultimately takes a hard look at what it means to explore our wounds and scars in search of hope and faith.
About Aimee Byrd
Aimee Byrd is the author of many books, including her latest, The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment (2024).
Show Notes
The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment by Aimee Byrd (https://zondervanacademic.com/products/the-hope-in-our-scars)Steven Heighton’s The Virtues of Disillusionment (free PDF download)Unpacking disillusionment. You spend some time thinking about disillusionment. Where do you begin to think about that?Experiencing disillusionment as we mature and try to figure out the meaningfulness of lifeThe hustle; pursuing what we think goodness is supposed to look likeA disrupting takes placeSpiritual maturity; writing into a neglect in women’s discipleshipThe rejection and harassment experienced by women acting as theologians - spiritual abuseHelp set some parameters for how you conceptualize spiritual abuse and how you came to understand and integrate with your story?“And yet these feelings of unsafety in the very place where you’re supposed to be shepherded.”Carefully using the word abuseAbuse: when people are okay with harming you for their own gain and power, where you are the costLimiting feelings of possibility; a shrinking of the person and questioning of their belongingDiane Langberg on the elements of personhood (https://www.dianelangberg.com/shop-books/)Agency, voice, and sense of selfDiagnosing disillusionment; a lot of dull signs leading up to it, somethings just not rightDesperation, loss, depression, fight, panic, pretending or rejecting/deconstructing to move onNaming our wounds is an action of hope“Jesus’ wounds are a testimony.”Our scars are a remembering, a telling of our story.John 12:24 - grain of wheat falling to the ground (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John 12%3A24&version=NIV)Being a good witness to God, justing handing it over to him.“Unless a grain of wheat falls to into the ground” by Malcom Guite (https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2015/05/09/unless-a-grain-of-wheat-falls-into-the-ground/)Holding onto these resentments leaves us further alone; we must let go.We don’t need reform, we need resurrection.Maintaining a false sense of belonging through facadesSanctified imagination and communityWe need to recapture our imagination as a way to combat disillusionmentWalter Brueggemann - the riddle and insight of Biblical faith is that anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy (https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/resources/books/textonly/)Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God by Malcom Guite (https://www.squarehalobooks.com/lifting-the-veil)“Scripture is a story. It’s all kind of story of people who screw up.”“God is bigger than all the ways we screw up our lives.”Open wounds, healing, scarringSong of Songs and unlocking the imagination and intimate love of GodScripture in which a women’s voice and experiences are given center stageSong of Songs, chapters three (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song of Songs 3&version=NIV) and five (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Song+of+Songs+5&version=NIV)Love calls to usVulnerability in the position and in the naming of our experiencesBeholding the face of Christ, and Christ looking back at us - the beauty Christ sees in us, as Christ beautifies us.“Beauty is an invitation into goodness.”The natural world develops our taste for beauty.A desire to feed our allusion of security, yet our hearts remain uncaptured.Beauty engages will and involves all of our senses; a hyper-fixation on the brain that is not holisticAwe and wonder; the role of the poets and the artists as the reveal what we try to hustle over the top of - they leave us feeling seen and maybe exposed.Speaking from a place of knowing our own value, a confidence and strength.Looking for the personhood that Christ is fostering in each of us.Being a community that beholds; our longing to be seen, known, and loved should be met by our churches as we see Christ in one another.We must go to Christ; yet disillusionment makes it difficult; all the disciples experienced disillusionmentHope is disruptive and subversive, but gloriously so.Production Notes
This podcast featured Aimee ByrdEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
“Black motherhood has consistently been a contested space. Black women have just fought for their rights to be. And so when we say Black motherhood, to me, the reality of Black motherhood itself is the resistance. And we still stand and we claim what it means to be Black mothers. We've got to consistently stand firm trying to raise healthy children in spite of it all.”
Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas (Episcopal Divinity School) discusses the gift and grace of Black motherhood to the world and what we can learn from Black mothers about love and resistance. Appreciating the example they set for the meaning of justice that emerges from love, and the capacity for love that emerges from justice, Dr. Douglas offers beautiful examples and expressions of the joy and abundance that Black motherhood means.
She reflects on the impact of her maternal grandmother on her life; the Langston Hughes poem “Mother and Son”—which is a testimony of perseverance and robust agency; the glorious hush harbor sermon and ode to self-love and dignity, delivered by Baby Suggs Holy, known as “The Sermon in the Clearing" in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. It gave me chills to hear Dr. Douglas read the sermon. She looks back to the example set by Mamie Till, the mother of Emmitt Till, who as a 14 year old boy was lynched in 1955. And Dr. Douglas speaks in witness to the fear, pain, and grief of the Black mother during the Black Lives Matter era, drawing not only on her expertise in Womanist Theology, but her close relationship with her own son.
Show Notes
Black motherhood and womanist theology; listening to the experiences of black motherhoodAudre Lorde “to love and to resist at the same time” - Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches? (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/198292/sister-outsider-by-audre-lorde/)What does it mean to love and resist at the same time?Legacy passed on through motherhood; loving oneself while resisting that which says you are not a sacred child of God - helping black children to understand that they are somebody.Where have you been inspired by womanist scholars and by other sources in the Christian tradition and beyond for really strengthening the kind of love you are describing there?Inspired by the woman in her life - maternal grandmother especiallyThe Great Migrations from the SouthGrandmother worked as an elevator operator, a job traditionally associated with with black womenAlways made a way for her grandchildren to have fun and set aside money for them after high school - making sure they felt importantAccountable to one’s legacy, to the generations that came before.“You struggle for the children that you can’t see.”You’ve written about intergenerational dialogue, about communication and so tell me a little bit more about how you see love expressed through honest, truthful, wise communication?Communication as a part of love and a part of resistance; telling the story with tough truth and means of survivalBeloved by Toni Morrison (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/117647/beloved-by-toni-morrison/)Would you mind quoting it and kind of giving some context for listeners that are not familiar with that sermon?Sermon of self love; love of the whole self as an act against those that do not love youTo parent Black, the love and the harsh truthResurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter by Kelly Brown Douglas (https://orbisbooks.com/products/resurrection-hope)Having these conversations with her own sonPhilandro Castile killing“These are the dialogues you cannot shy away from when you’re trying to raise a Black child, that you have to have, that you have to tell them the truth, you provide them the tools for surviving, those sort of practical tools. And at the same time, you have to provide them with the inside stuff that allows them to resist all of that stuff on the outside that tells them that they aren’t worth it.”The tools to resist and then thrive; the world suddenly becoming knowledgable on the conversations being had with Black childrenNot thinking it as THE conversation but one piece of intergenerational dialogueMother to Son by Langston Hughes (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son)How you see the possibility of Black motherhood passing on this love, which is resistance, this dual side of what that is? It’s kind of paradoxical holding them both together, how that might speak not just to the son but to the world?Black motherhood itself consistently attacked and contestedMoynihan in 1960s“Black women have just fought for their rights to be. And so when we say Black motherhood itself is the resistance.”Moral imaginary of justice“Because if we don’t have that dialogue that speaks to the hard truths and pushes forward an agenda of justice, then we cannot expect the next generation to be any better than out generation or previous generations in enacting a world where all mothers, children, can be free from anything that does not affirm and respect their sacred humanity.”Mamie Till and the open casket of Emmett Till; the parents of Trayvon MartinWe forget that these are people’s children, these are mothers who have lost their children.“We see Black bodies, but not Black human beings.”Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin by Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin (https://jacarandabooksartmusic.com/products/rest-in-power-1)See the humanity of Black mothers and their children“The Sermon in the Clearing”
Toni Morrison’s Beloved
“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in the grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you*! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your* mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.
Mother to Son
BY LANGSTON HUGHESWell, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.About Kelly Brown Douglas
The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Ph.D., is Interim President of the Episcopal Divinity School. From 2017 to 2023, she was Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Theology. She was named the Bill and Judith Moyers Chair in Theology at Union in November 2019. She also serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Theologian in Residence at Trinity Church Wall Street.
Prior to Union, Douglas served as Professor of Religion at Goucher College where she held the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion and is now Professor Emeritus. Before Goucher, she was Associate Professor of Theology at Howard University School of Divinity (1987-2001) and Assistant Professor of Religion at Edward Waters College (1986-1987). Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1983, Douglas holds a master’s degree in theology and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union.
Douglas is the author of many articles and six books, including Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, and Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter, which won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Her academic work has focused on womanist theology, sexuality and the Black church.
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On June 3,2024, Jürgen Moltmann died. He was one of the greatest theologians of our time. He was 98 years old. In this episode, Miroslav Volf eulogizes and remembers his mentor and friend. We then share a previously released conversation between Miroslav Volf and Jürgen Moltmann. This episode first aired in April 2021—and it includes Moltmann’s conviction that “without living theologically, there can be no theology”; it explores the meaning of joy and its connection to anxiety, fear, wrath, hope, and love; and Professor Moltmann shares about the circumstances in which he came to faith—as a 16-year-old drafted into World War II by the German Army, enduring the bombardment of his hometown of Hamburg, and being held for 3 years in a Scottish prison camp, where he read with new eyes the cry of dereliction from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This cry would lay a foundation that led to his most influential book, The Crucified God. Moltmann explains the centrality of Christ, the human face of God, for not just his theological vision, but his personal faith—which is a lived theology.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz introduces the episode by celebrating Jürgen Moltmann's 95th birthday and reflecting on his lasting theological influence.
Show Notes
Happy 95th Birthday, Jürgen Moltmann!Find the places of deepest human concern, and shine the light of the Gospel there.“Without living theologically, there can be no theology."Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Joy (1972)—“How can I sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?"Joy today: Singing the Lord’s song in the broad place of his presence"Hope is anticipated joy, as anxiety is anticipated terror.""How does one find the way to joy from within anxiety and terror?"Seeing the face of God as an awakened hopeJesus Christ as the human face of God: “Without Jesus Christ, I would not believe in God."God is present in the midst of sufferingDiscovering and being discovered by GodMoltmann’s story of being drafted to the Germany army at 16 years old (1943)In a prison camp in Scotland, Moltmann read the Gospel of Mark and found hope when there was no expectation.The Crucified God, the cry of dereliction, and the cry of jubilationContrasting joy with American optimism and the pursuit of happinessChristianity as a unique religion of joy, in virtue of the resurrection of ChristJoy versus fun—“You can experience joy only with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your energies.""You cannot make yourself joyful… something unexpected must happen."Love and joy"The intention of love is the happiness of the beloved.""We are not loved because we are beautiful… we are beautiful because we are loved."Joy and gratitudeLove comes as a gift and surprise, and therefore leads to joy.Blessed, therefore grateful—receiving the gift as gift“Anticipated joy is the best joy.”The Passion of God as the foundation of joyPassionate God of the Hebrew Bible or Absolute God of Greek Metaphysics?An apathetic God makes apathetic people; the compassion of God makes compassionate peopleA Feeling God or an Apathetic God? God’s participation in suffering and joy“God participates in the joy of his creation."Luke 15: “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just…"Lost coin, lost sheep, prodigal son...The wrath of God is God’s wounded love“My wrath is only for a moment, and my grace is everlasting.""Joy, in the end, wins."Watch a video of this interview here.
Production Notes
This podcast featured theologians Jürgen Moltmann and Miroslav VolfEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan Rosa & Ryan McAnnally-LinzProduction Assistance by Alexa Rollow & Kacie BarrettA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give -
How do you find hope when you can only see yourself and your future in light of your past mistakes? When you’re certain that everyone on the outside looking in is doing the same, punishing you, immobilizing you, invisibilizing you…?
Seems the only way out of that spiral is the “God Who Sees.”
Practical theologian Sarah Farmer joins Evan Rosa to discuss her recent book, Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons. She describes the experience of prison—the ways it constrains movement, how it abridges and threatens agency, and how the constant surveillance leaves a person breathless. She illuminates the approach to theological education she and her colleagues put on offer for these women, these incarcerated theologians whose very lives were the texts to learn from. Sarah offers a contribution from Womanist Theology: Dolores Williams’ re-narration of Hagar—from the book of Genesis—the forgotten, quote, “invisibilized” Egyptian slave of Abraham and Sarah—Hagar, the woman who named God, “El Roi”… the God who sees. And she imagines a restorative hope built around self-respect and identity, connection, and resilience—a hope that shines even into the darkness of a women’s prison cell.
Show Notes
Get your copy of Restorative Hope: Creating Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons
Production Notes
This podcast featured Sarah FarmerEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Alexa RollowA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give - Mehr anzeigen
