The EVERY MOMENT HOLY series of books by Douglas McKelvey and published by Rabbit Room Press brings new prayers and liturgies for the ordinary events of daily life. These prayers are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose even when, especially when, we are too busy or too caught up in our busyness to notice. The prayers are accented with linocut illustrations by Ned Bustard.
Collectively, Every Moment Holy has sold over 300,000 books across two volumes and five editions.
DOUGLAS MC-KELVEY grew up in East Texas and moved to Nashville in 1991 to participate in the early work of Charlie Peacock’s Art House Foundation, an organization dedicated to a shared exploration of faith and the arts. In the decades since, he has worked as an author, song lyricist, scriptwriter, and video director. He has penned more than 350 lyrics recorded by a variety of artists including Switchfoot, Kenny Rogers, Sanctus Real, and Jason Gray. He and his wife have three grown daughters and two sons-in-law.
The EVERY MOMENT HOLY series of books by Douglas McKelvey and published by Rabbit Room Press brings new prayers and liturgies for the ordinary events of daily life. These prayers are ways of reminding us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose even when, especially when, we are too busy or too caught up in our busyness to notice. The prayers are accented with linocut illustrations by Ned Bustard.
Collectively, Every Moment Holy has sold over 300,000 books across two volumes and five editions.
DOUGLAS MC-KELVEY grew up in East Texas and moved to Nashville in 1991 to participate in the early work of Charlie Peacock’s Art House Foundation, an organization dedicated to a shared exploration of faith and the arts. In the decades since, he has worked as an author, song lyricist, scriptwriter, and video director. He has penned more than 350 lyrics recorded by a variety of artists including Switchfoot, Kenny Rogers, Sanctus Real, and Jason Gray. He and his wife have three grown daughters and two sons-in-law.
You're listening to episode 207 of the Pastor Writer podcast conversations on reading, writing and the Christian life. I'm your host, chase Rapplogl. Over the last few years it's been a lot of fun to watch the work that's been coming out of the rabbit room. If you're familiar with the organization, which, if you're a listener to the podcast we've had several of their writers on before You're probably also then familiar with their series of prayers called Every Moment Holy. The books offer liturgies for everyday life, for everyday situations, as well as difficult situations of loss and grieving and changes. I had an opportunity to sit down and talk with Douglas McKelvie, the writer and editor for the series, as they're preparing to release their third volume. We had a great conversation about the books, how they came to be and what does it mean for every moment to be holy. What is an everyday liturgy? I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:I'm joined on the podcast today by Douglas McKelvie. He grew up in East Texas and moved to Nashville in 1991 to participate in the early work of the Charlie Peacock's Art House Foundation, an organization dedicated to a shared exploration of faith in the arts. In the decades since he's worked as an author, a song lyricist, a script writer and video director. He's penned more than 350 lyrics recorded by a variety of artists, including Switchfoot, kenny Rogers, sanctus Reel and Jason Gray. He and his wife have three grown daughters and two son-in-laws. Douglas has served for the last four years as the section of St John's Anglican Church in Franklin, tennessee, and he joins me today to talk about the Every Moment Holy series and the upcoming release of volume three. Well, doug, it's a privilege and honor to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 2:I'm happy to be here, Chase. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 1:Well, I would love to hear, for a little bit of context, just about your work as a writer and then also how it's intersected with your work within the church now as well.
Speaker 2:Well, the bio that you just read is a few years old, I think, because it has been a few years since I worked as the sexton for my church. But as to my writing career, the way that unfolded, I did move to Nashville in the early 90s, at the invitation of Charlie Peacock and his wife Andy, to work with the Art House Foundation that they were just starting, and it was through that relationship that, within a couple of years, some doors opened for me to begin songwriting as a lyricist. And so for 10 or 12 years that became my primary vocational path was working as a song lyricist, and I hit it, I suppose, depending on how you look at it, at just the right time, or just the wrong time, because there was this sea change of technology with file sharing and MP3 that came along. I had a few years as a songwriter before that, right at the tail end of that era, and then the MP3 thing hit and I could suddenly no longer make a living for my growing family I had three young daughters at that point, because people had just quit buying music and were just sharing the files and within a couple of years my royalty income was 25% of what it had been previously. So at that point I started looking at what other avenues as a writer I might pursue and I took some screenwriting classes, and so that became a part of what I was doing over the years since then is dabbling in screenwriting work here and there, as well as continuing to write some songs.
Speaker 2:And I began to do video work and just was publishing books here and there, but nothing really consistent, and reached the point where I was about to turn 50, had a couple of daughters in college and just nothing was paying well enough to keep up with the expenses that we had. And it was actually a really discouraging season of life because I was finding myself. I was driving for Uber and Lyft late at night, driving inebriated people around Nashville till the wee hours of the morning and thinking is this what it's all come to, these paths that I pursued for decades. So there was a lot of soul searching and fear and anxiety in that season of my life, and it was during that time, actually, that I wrote Volume 1 of Every Moment Holy, because all of that searching and questioning and fear brought me to a place of having to reckon with the idea of okay, what if this is what the rest of my life looks like vocationally?
Speaker 2:What if the writing that I feel called to do is never the thing that provides the income to pay the bills month to month? What does it look like in that case to be a faithful steward, even if there's no immediate benefit to myself? Am I willing to still say, okay, this is something, this is a gift I've been entrusted with, and will I still seek to faithfully walk this path and create artifacts that might be redemptive within the church and within the broader culture? Am I willing to do that even if there's no recognition during my lifetime, even if it's just a small circle of people who might ever interact with these things? And so it was really out of that place of saying, well, yeah, I'm going to do this anyway that the every moment holy project, the first volume, was written.
Speaker 1:There's so much there as a brighter, as a believer I resonate with. I remember when we planted our church I used to joke that you always have these lists of the fastest growing churches in America that ours was the slowest growing church in America because every year we'd add one or two people. It wasn't failing, the church felt great, it just wasn't. The growth was extremely slow. I had this little discipline on Sunday mornings where I would look out at 40, 50 people gathered and I would say to myself this is in my own head okay, god, if you asked me to pastor this church, this group of people 40 or 50 people for the rest of my life, would that be enough? Just to be faithful and they answer many of us no is no.
Speaker 1:I wanted to have ambitions or aspirations or visions of more, but learning to come to terms with saying yes to that question is, I think, what you're describing as well too. Is it enough to be faithful to the thing God has put in front of you, and what does it mean to practice that with a kind of faithful obedience which I think comes through in this work that you've been doing? Did you have a sense early on of what you were writing when you were starting which I want to get in a minute to what these everyday liturgies were. But when you first started to write some of these, did you have a sense that it was a work? Were they mostly for you? What was the beginning point of that? As you were starting to write, what became Volume One?
Speaker 2:Sure, there was a very specific beginning point, and that was that I was working on a novel manuscript and had been struggling with it for quite a while. I'd made some progress for a while, but then I think I had gone a couple months where I would try to sit down every day to work on it and would just fall into a pattern of thinking oh, before I start on the manuscript, I'm going to check my emails and respond to those. Oh, this article looks interesting.
Speaker 1:And next thing I would know this all sounds like the biography of a writer by the way too, so I'm continuing to resonate.
Speaker 2:So I was growing frustrated that I had fallen into this pattern of just distracting myself pretty consistently and not doing the hard, disciplined work of really making progress, or at least wrestling with the manuscript every day for a few hours in an attempt to make progress. So one morning I sat down, opened my computer and I thought I need something that would focus me Each morning when I sit down to write. I need a prayer, something that would reorient my thinking and just that would place me back into the meta-narrative with an eternal perspective. Right, so it's not just me isolated in this moment, trying to muster enough willpower to make the more difficult choice and not just to do the easy distracting thing, but to be reoriented to who I am, in relation to my creator and in relation to the gift that I've been given to steward and the faithfulness of day by day bringing myself back to that, you know, trying to place one more brick on that wall that I'm seeking to build. And also that would reorient me in relation to the community of people, whoever they are, that I hope to serve by what I'm creating.
Speaker 2:And so I decided well, I'm going to write a prayer for fiction writers, and just on a whim. I thought I'll do this in a liturgical form, and mostly just because occasionally I'll dabble in writing poetry and I like the imposition of a structure on that. I find that it actually opens up greater creativity than if there are no parameters. So so I spent a few hours and did a first draft of a liturgy for fiction writers. There was a Hutchmoot conference coming up that there's an organization called the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit organization that Andrew Peterson, the singer, songwriter and author, and his brother Pete, founded maybe 15, 16 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listen, we've had the privilege of having Andrew on a couple times, so familiar with the work.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So our annual conference was coming up and Andrew and I were going to do a session together that was related to stories. So I sent that prayer to him, asking if he thought this might be an interesting way for us to close the session, to have everyone pray through this together. And he responded and said I love this, but I wish I had a liturgy for beekeeping, because that's a hobby of his and and a liturgy for this, and that he listed a couple other things. And when I read his response, just the, the whole vision for the project just within a few seconds expanded in my mind and I started furiously typing up a proposal for the book. Because it was his, it was his response that just made me realize, oh yeah, this, this prayer, isn't just a one time sort of novelty prayer for myself. There's actually something here that could be of real service to the body of Christ. So that it was. It really was just within, you know, a couple minutes time that the, the idea just expanded and expanded in my head and I then it was just a race to try to capture all the ideas in a proposal before before I started to forget any of them and I made the pitch to Pete Peterson, who was managing editor at Rabbit Room Press, and at that point it was just a one person operation, just a really small press without much in the way of revenue to work with. And he looked, he listened to my proposal and he said, okay, I'm going to say yes, but we don't have the money to do this kind of book and do it right. So you're going to have to give me time to figure out how we can finance it. And that was what happened.
Speaker 2:It took about a year and the involvement of the community, largely the you know, the, the Rabbit Room community, as we begin to put some of the prayers I was writing in front of them. And at the Hutchmoot conference the following year, we incorporated several of those prayers into the corporate gathering, stirring the conference and just let the need be known that, hey, it's going to take $60,000 to do the first print run of this and press doesn't have that kind of money. And people just started stepping up, even immediately, just making donations, and over the next several months people continued to give money to that and it was not a crowdfunding situation where they were getting any product for it. They weren't even. You know they weren't even entitled to get a copy of the book for this.
Speaker 2:This was just a community of believers saying we want this project to exist in the world and we want it to be a gift from our community to the rest of the church. So it was from the beginning of the Every Moment Holy Project there was this gracious involvement of community, that there was a real, a real community of vision, of seeing it as something that together we could make, we could make happen and as a community could offer to others. So that it was a very humbling process from that standpoint, just to kind of stand back and see how many people just just wanted to be a part of it, wanted to see it happen.
Speaker 1:It's such a powerful picture of the rabbit room community and I was also thinking. It makes me really grateful for friends that will give thoughtful responses to emails. In many ways, the book came down to a friend willing to just write a meaningful email back to you, which I think is such an incredible gift as well, too, what as you've been working on these volumes, what is your definition of an everyday liturgy? For some people, that may be a new idea, and I think you've hinted at it, but how do you think about what an everyday liturgy is supposed to be for somebody who might be picking up one of the volumes?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it goes back to the concept of quorum deo, of every part of life being lived out under the gaze of God and under the Lordship of Christ, and that you know, when Paul speaks about you know, offering our bodies as living sacrifices, and then goes on to kind of expand what that looks like in you know, in every part of our lives, that it includes things like mourning with those who mourn and rejoicing with those who rejoice, and all the other things that he lists in that passage, which you know. I don't think that passage is in any way intended to be all inclusive. It's just more representative of, you know, this idea of worship and of the orientation we're to have toward everything that we're doing in our lives is that it is part of our lives, lived with and for our Creator. So I think that that idea is a huge part of what I was trying to work out in these prayers, because the church historically has some great liturgies, you know, and resources like the Book of Common Prayer that has been written and refined over hundreds of years by generations of believers who have borne witness to the idea that, yes, these are expressions that you know, that align with scripture and that are true, and and there are specific liturgies included in those kind of resources for the sacraments of the church, you know, for marriages, for baptisms, for burials, for those sorts of things, but and for the Lord's Supper, of course.
Speaker 2:But there's also this reality for the believer that all of life is sacramental right, that the bread and the wine that are held up for communion when we come to the Lord's table and that we see those as sacramental, that, like in that act, you know, we're holding them up to the light of eternity and to the promise of the new creation and the return of Jesus and the restoration of all things. But one day, when all things are restored at the new creation, when our vision is restored, we're going to see and experience all bread and all wine as sacramental, and all moments and all activities. You know, once these barriers of thin and woundedness and all of the limitations that we know post-fall, once those are removed, we will see and experience everything as it truly is, in that, you know, in that pure light of the presence of God unveiled. So the Every Moment Holy Project has largely been about saying, okay, let's look at some of these moments that might even seem mundane in our daily lives or things that we don't want to do necessarily home repairs, changing a diaper, if what we give theological ascent to and say, yeah, it's true that God is the God over this moment and that it's his good pleasure to be at work, by his spirit, in my heart, in me and through me, conforming me more to the image of Christ somehow, even in this moment, and reorienting my perspective, and that, you know, even these small acts that no one else is going to see have eternal significance somehow when I do them, yielding them to God and to his purposes and yielding my heart to him in the midst of this.
Speaker 2:Okay, I believe that theoretically, but what does that actually mean? What does that look like? Can we take that abstract notion and unpack it in such a way as to make some of those connections in the context of a prayer that a person might pray, you know, as they're about to change the eighth diaper of the day. That would reorient the heart in that moment to the eternal perspective, to the truer story, and that would place that little insignificant drudgery that you know, that's just this small act of service to an infant in the context of the kingdom of God, where the heart. You know, the position of the heart toward God might be changed and yielded to the work that the Spirit of God would do even in that moment and through that act.
Speaker 1:There certainly seems to be an invitational quality to them to recognize those places in which faith can be brought in, where perhaps we've not done before. I mean, as I was flipping through Volume 3 and some of the liturgies to come, before hosting, before writing, but also before sailing, which is one of my favorite hobbies, so you had me at that one as well too, I'm anticipating that one. How do you go about recognizing these opportunities? As a writer who's putting together the liturgies, how are you recognizing, from hosting to sailing, to writing, to a long list now, through three volumes, opportunities you're identifying for a prayer that might be able to be that invitation to somebody in that moment?
Speaker 2:The first two volumes were a combination of my own brainstorming initially, and you know me asking the question of what parts of life would I like to have a prayer for? And, you know, thinking of the lives of the people around me and contemplating what might be useful and meaningful to them. And then we also opened it up to the community around us to submit topic suggestions, and a lot of those ended up making it into the books. And I also, as I walk through the process, I made the conscious decision that I was going to look at the needs of the people around me during that season as direction, because we had such a long list of possibilities that there was no way they were all going to get finished by the print deadline and we couldn't have afforded to publish a book that large anyway because the potential topics are endless. But you know, there was a moment during the process of writing volume one when a friend called me and said, hey, do you have a liturgy for the loss of a pet? Because our dog that our whole family loves just got run over and we could really use something. And so at that point I spent the next few days writing that one. There were friends who lost their home or they lost parts of their home to a fire, and they sent me an email a couple of days after that happened and asked if I had anything for when you've lost your home. So the liturgy for those who've suffered loss from fire, flood or storm was on the list of ones to potentially write at that time. But we were getting close to the deadline and I hadn't thought I was going to be able to get to that one. But because that was an immediate need for people in the community around me, I focused on that one for a few days and wrote that and sent it to them and that kind of process continued through volume two, which, volume one, is topically broad. It just covers a wide cross section of topics.
Speaker 2:Volume two is actually a longer book but it's more narrowly focused on prayers for death, grief and hope. So it has a lot of prayers for people who are navigating the process of facing the end of their own life and then a lot of prayers for people who are going through the process of grief. But that one as well there was a lot of community involvement of people who were walking through those things or who had previously walked through a significant loss, who were weighing in, who were, some of them, people who, in kind of in real time, as they were making their grief journey, would contact me and say, hey, I've reached the point, after having lost my spouse nine months ago, where I'm ready to take off my wedding ring, but I feel like I need a prayer. I want a prayer to mark that time. It's a significant moment and because that's not something that I have experienced personally, it was not one that would have occurred to me as, oh, there's a need for this, but there are several prayers that are in that book only because there were people around me who were going through these things and who were opening a window for me to their process as they went through it and asking for those things.
Speaker 2:And then, with volume three, the one that's releasing at the end of 2023, here it was an entirely different process, because that one, which is subtitled the work of the people, from the beginning we conceived as this labor of community, where we would invite dozens of other authors to participate, to contribute prayers, and we had seven artists participating as illustrators for some of the prayers as well. Ned Bustard, who did all of the illustrations for volume one and two oversaw that process and he has a number of illustrations in volume three as well. But there are six additional artists who contributed. So with volume three the process was that I would invite a writer and their first step would be to submit several possible ideas for topics and then we would discuss those together and decide which one made the most sense. But a grid that I've run, it wouldn't be all of the prayers, but most of the prayers, at least at this stage where I'm considering what topics whether it's when I'm writing or in volume three, one that someone else will be writing is, does it have this sort of hook topically, where someone who has the book would know when to use it. So something that's fairly abstract doesn't tend to work as well.
Speaker 2:I think it doesn't tend to serve the reader, the person who might be praying prayers from the book as well, because it doesn't stick in their mind such that when X happens they remember oh, there's a prayer for X. So like an example would be when there's one in volume, one for when the electricity goes off. So if someone has familiarized themselves somewhat with the table of contents, then when lightning strikes somewhere close by and the electricity goes off. They're likely to remember that. Oh, there's actually a liturgy in the book for that. So, part of that refining process topically, and why I love things like you referenced the one for sailing, that Malcolm Geith, and one because he is an avid sailor. I think I just saw from his posts recently that he made some epic trip from England. He might have been sailing to Greece with his wife and stopping at all sorts of different ports.
Speaker 2:But those kind of very specific events, I think it's much more of an opportunity to recognize the presence of God with us in the midst of very specific activities and moments and experiences. And I think it's that rhythm of recalibrating our hearts and bringing them back to that recognition, moment by moment, that does have this liturgical shaping effect over time, of training us to be more aware of of the posture of our hearts, you know, and what it is that our defaults are, that we are desiring, you know, what is it that we're most desiring, what are the affections of our hearts, what are they being drawn to? And that habit, that grace-filled habit of reorienting our hearts again and again and again, not in a you know, I don't want people to be doing that in like a discouraged. Oh, here I am again. You know, my heart has drifted kind of way, but just like awakening to the joy, again and again and again, of oh yeah, there's something more, there's eternal meaning, even in this moment, that God is here and he's present and he's active, and he's wooing my heart and I'm going to yield to that again. You know, each time I recognize that little bit of shadow, of lesser desire that's overtaking my heart in some way. I want to welcome the light of God again and again and again.
Speaker 2:I've borrowed the phrase that Brother Lawrence coined I think he lived in the 17th century that he wrote a book called Practicing the Presence of God, which of course is just a way of saying practicing an ongoing awareness of the presence of God, because of course God is ever present with us. But I think that's at the heart of what I hope that the topics we've chosen can help people to see. I mean, there's the aspect of the Every Moment Holy Books where these prayers are utilitarian. You know that's a grid that we've run them through as we've written them and revised them is is this something people could actually use? Would it be helpful to people? Would they know when to use it and also the aesthetic grid that we've wanted these to be as beautiful as we can make them, without having the beauty in any way overshadow the usefulness of them.
Speaker 2:But on another level, you know, we recognize that these are representative. It's not all inclusive, but I think that there's a work that the book can do in that regard, just in helping people to begin to recognize that. Oh okay, if you know, in all of these prayers, these different activities, if I'm beginning to see how I can reorient my heart in the midst of these and how there are connections between each of these to the larger story that God is telling in me, through me, around me, then maybe I can begin to see as well, maybe it begins to open my eyes to how God truly is present in all moments and at work in these sorts of ways, in every circumstance of my life. Even you know those that aren't represented in any of these prayers. So I think that answers your question, maybe with a lot of extra information.
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 2:I think it's helpful.
Speaker 1:It captures how pastoral I think your approach and your writing has been, which I think stands out, and it I think you're also right Seeing the list. Even if there's perhaps you don't sail, you know the fact that there is a liturgy before sailing makes you wonder can there be a liturgy for maybe that's not included in the book, but for writing or for hunting or for some other hobby that you may have, like just the idea of inter cert, inserting these liturgies into everyday life. And one of my definitions of good writing is that a good piece of writing gives you language for something that you know is true. When you read it, you feel it, you probably knew it was true before you read it, but something about reading it, the writer has given you language for it.
Speaker 1:And I think that's really what these are doing. It's giving language, it's giving away into that eternal moment, that kingdom moment, or perhaps we've had hints that it existed, but for most of us we just haven't had perhaps the time or the patience or the perspective to recognize that language in that moment. I do wonder how writing the prayers has impacted you personally. The you've written now I assume sort of they're not count numbers next to them, but it has to be hundreds of prayers, certainly many that didn't even make the book over these years. How is that process of paying attention, sitting down, the discipline we talked about early on, of actually writing prayers, of recognizing and giving language to those moments has that had an impact on you as a not just a writer, but as a believer, as a person?
Speaker 2:I think that I mean the short answer would be yes, it's definitely done some work on me through the process and I think the biggest way and this is something that in the that I addressed in the forward for volume three, I talked some about the incident with the loaves and fishes that we find in the Gospels and you know, and this little boy who's in the assembled crowd of people and has this little lunch that probably his mom has packed for him of a couple small fish and a few loaves of bread, and I so consciously identified with that kid on an emotional level, day after day, as I would, you know, bring myself again to sit down and try to make progress on a prayer to, to try to get a few more lines hammered out. The writing of volume one was a one year process for me and volume two was a two year process where that was what I was focused on. Volume three was it was a six-month process because, you know, there were 59 other writers who were involved so I wasn't having to do as much content, but I would say it was a more intense six months because of the editing process and project management and I was writing some prayers of my own as well for the book. But the process has been one that has brought me again and again I wouldn't even say just daily, but on some days hourly or even more often to my knees, because I was faced again and again with my own inadequacy and my own overwhelming sense that there's no way I have the internal resources or wisdom to make this particular prayer what it needs to be, to make of it something that would truly serve people. And I would say that was most acute in writing. Some of the prayers for volume too, like a prayer for the loss of a child.
Speaker 2:There was such an aspect of fear and trembling for me in approaching the writing of that Because, on the one hand, I had a strong sense that, okay, this book is one of those good works that God has prepared in advance for me to do and so I need to not say no. That was, my biggest job was to just keep showing up day after day and sit down and try to write and see what happened. But prayers like that. I also felt like I had no business writing it and even given that there were people who had suffered that loss recently or, you know, a decade ago, who were graciously willing to walk with me through that, to read what I was writing, to give honest feedback and to help make sure that it was shaped into something that would serve other people who would be walking through the same thing that they were currently walking through.
Speaker 2:But even so, it just the process exposed my own weakness and inadequacy, and so again and again, I would just be on my knees and praying God. If you don't somehow meet me in this process of trying to write this, if you don't take it and make the whole more than the sum of the parts that I can bring, more than these couple of little fish and a few loaves, if you don't bless and break and multiply, or the feeding of many, this utterly inadequate offering that I can bring, then I don't even want to do it Because it's not going to serve anyone. If it's just me, if it's just what I can shape and bring to this, that if this is a work that you have called me to, then you have to bring it to completion. And there were so many times when that sense of inadequacy, almost of despair, was so overwhelming that I would just have to set the computer down and leave the room and put my mind on something else and then, without thinking about it, would just have to come like, probably sometimes literally running back into my office and sit down and just read the last paragraph I'd been working on. And I think it was Annie Dillard, maybe in the writing life, who kind of describes the writing process in these terms that it's like you take a running leap off of the last sentence that you had written and you hope that there's something there for you to land on.
Speaker 2:That that thought can continue, and the process of writing for me was very it was a very physical, visceral kind of wrestling in that sense that sometimes it was all I could do was to believe for a couple minutes that God might show up and I would keep trying before I would just be and I might get a few more words another rough thought there and then I would just be overwhelmed again by my own sense of inattentive to do this. And yet somehow the work gets finished, even when it seems like I'm in a mire, I'm just slogging through a swamp and I don't know where I'm going, and I know there's this deadline up ahead somewhere, but that it doesn't seem like I could meet. But somehow in God's economy. It comes together, it coalesces, and then it's like waking from a dream at some point and realizing oh, it's finished. These prayers have come together, they've solidified that. I don't know how it happened, but here it is.
Speaker 2:And then begins the process of the insecurity of but is it going to do anything? Is it going to be meaningful to people, or is it just a lot of it, just my own ramblings? And so it's not that insecurity or that prayer of saying, ok, god, now here's this book. That itself is this little basket of inadequate offerings and please take it and use it, however you would, it's not early out of my hands now. So, yeah, so I think that is probably the biggest.
Speaker 2:I mean, there are other ways that the process affected me and the writing of the prayers and that exercise of looking at so many different parts of life and considering them more deeply in light of the movement of the kingdom of God that has broken in to time and space and history, and that we are moving toward the fulfillment and full revelation of, there's definitely a shaping effect on my thinking that has taken place there, but definitely the biggest impact for me is just being forced into a place where I of these long seasons of not being able to escape the reality of my own weakness and inadequacy even to do the things that I believe God has called me to do, to recognize that it's all of grace, that it's all the work of Christ, that he has done this great work for us and now he is doing His work through us, and he is the one who calls us and who equips us and who brings to completion you know the works that he has called his people to.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I think it's a good place to be. I mean, I think it's the only right posture to be in relation to the work that's before us as the people of God.
Speaker 1:I know this feeling really well that you're describing as a writer, that you're sort of alone in a room just trying trying to do this work, sometimes to the point of driving yourself mad, as I think you're sort of describing. But you say not only is it a surprise that the work gets done, I think there's also the surprise that, even though you know all along you're writing for someone to read it, that people do end up reading it, which always feels like a strange experience for me as well. There's somebody there reading that thing that you worked on. And that's certainly been the case with every moment Holy, even recently, you know, I was at the principal at my kid's school I noticed had a copy of it on their desk. And I was at a friend's house not too long ago and there was one out on their coffee table.
Speaker 1:I imagine just from our conversation with volume one, you probably didn't have in mind three volumes or who knows what's to come with it. Even as you're describing trying to write these prayers, you're certainly not thinking about some big, larger strategy and who will read them and how it'll go. He's always sort of wrapping up what is struck you, what do you think is resonated about them. It's not just that they've been successful. I don't think that's the right way of asking the question. It's that there's something that is resonated with people within the work of every moment holy. There's something about the approach to these prayers or the moment that we're in where people seem to have resonated, because we need this language, we need what you're calling attention to. How have you gotten a sense of what it is that is resonated with people?
Speaker 2:I don't have an exhaustive answer to that, I don't entirely know, but I think there is something that you touched on earlier and one of the things you said.
Speaker 2:One of the most consistent comments that I've had from people over the last few years is that it gives them language when they don't have the words and that it articulates precisely what is on their heart but that they didn't know to say until in the context of one of these prayers. Until that thing is named, they couldn't see it, they couldn't recognize it. But in having it named for them there and the words being given to them to articulate that, it holds up a mirror to their heart, their soul, their mind, their emotions that they're able to give an amen to, to say yes, that's exactly what's been swirling inside me, so I think there's something in that regard that has resonated with a lot of people. As a funny related anecdote, at least, it's funny to me sometimes when I'm in a gathering now, whether it's just a room full of people who are gathered for someone's birthday or whatever it might be that people might ask me to pray and they'll reference oh, we'll be author of every moment. Holy is here.
Speaker 1:And surely you've got a prayer.
Speaker 2:And I guess I should have a disclaimer label affixed to my chest that it's not going to sound if I make a spontaneous prayer. It's not going to sound anything like a prayer from every moment holy, because those are the fruit of hours and days and sometimes months, of wrestling with something, both with the topic and scripture and how that relates to the topic, and the poetry of the phrasing, the aesthetic of how it flows, and I'm not so good at sounding anywhere close to eloquent if I'm just asked to pray off the top of my head. So all of that to say that I think the way that the prayers are the fruit of a long wrestling with the scripture, with the theology of things and with the phrasing and just the way those things are named and voiced in the prayers, that is something that has seemed to resonate with people. And I think you're right that there is something about the cultural moment that we're in as well, and maybe part of it is that in my own experience I came from backgrounds, the churches that I grew up in where the idea of using pre-written prayers would have been looked at kind of funny as well. How could the spirit of God be involved in a prayer that's not spontaneous and a thing which, for whatever reason, we didn't ask. The same thing of songs that had been pre-written that we would use in worship, which is, I think, a bit humorous that that just naturally gets a pass, but the idea of a prayer as an expression of the heart to God doesn't.
Speaker 2:But I think there's something for those of us who came from backgrounds where maybe there wasn't this coherent scriptural framework of a theology that encompassed the whole word of God but that maybe was a bit more of a flimsy structure of picking scriptures here and there and taking them out of context and building theologies that ultimately maybe weren't true or sound that liturgical expressions where someone has done the work of more carefully thinking through and prayerfully wrestling with ideas and then articulating those, and especially when that happens in the context of community, as it should, where there are other people weighing in and providing safeguard and giving feedback.
Speaker 2:And I've made a practice of having my pastor and sometimes other pastors read these manuscripts and give me any notes on anything they see as potentially problematic that people might misinterpret the way this is phrased, that sort of thing, and making those corrections before the book goes to print.
Speaker 2:But there's something about those kind of expressions that we feel like we can trust more, that, for those of us who have experienced in the past being in places where there wasn't any attempt to make sure that all of the expressions were theologically true, were aligned with scripture and with the whole flow of the story that God is telling and the truths that are revealed in His Word. So I think there's also something that is a cultural moment in the church where you have people who are no longer as drawn to maybe something that's flashy and that's primarily emotionally driven, but are wanting something that is an expression of their faith that is more rooted in scripture, rooted in the church historically, and that they have a greater sense of just of being able to trust it without having to second guess what's being said, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does, and it resonates not just with me, but I know many others as well too. The book we've been talking about is the new, soon to be released, november of 2023, third volume of every moment holy. Of course, volume one and two are already out and I'm refraining as you mentioned before, always having to pray. I'm refraining from asking you to close out with a liturgy for closing podcast conversations, so I'm not sure if that's included in volume three, but actually what I want to.
Speaker 1:The way I would like to close out is there was a phrase that you used earlier in our conversation that you hoped this would be a gift from you in the rabbit room community to the broader church, and I certainly think that that's a great way of framing it and that it's been, that it continues to be that. So a big thank you to you for all of the work you put in, for the writers that have contributed to volume three, for donors and supporters who have made it possible. Back to the very beginning, I will have shown links in the show notes, but anybody who's interested make sure and pick up a copy of every moment holy. I know it's something that will do exactly what we've been discussing, help you find that language, help you incorporate those moments, those that sense of awareness of God's kingdom, into those everyday moments of life. And, doug, a big thanks to you for all your hard work on it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, chase, I enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1:As always, you can find show notes for today's episode by going to pastorridercom. I'll have information there on the books, as well as the upcoming third volume of every moment. Holy links to their website, as well as places you can find the books. While you're listening, you might take a second to also leave a review. You can do that wherever you listen to podcasts, either clicking one of the ratings or maybe taking a moment to write a short message which you enjoy about the podcast, what you'd like to hear more of. I always appreciate that. Feedback Helps me continue to make improvements. I'm excited as we're going into the fall. I've got some great conversations lined up and I can't wait to bring those to you. As always, thanks for listening. Until next time, bye, bye.