The Spirituality of Weariness with Tish Harrison Warren

S10 E2—What do you do when you’ve done all the “right” spiritual things and still feel exhausted? Tish Harrison Warren, a writer and Anglican priest, joins Amy Julia Becker to explore burnout, spiritual dryness, midlife weariness, and the practices that help us stay rooted when God feels distant. For those who are tired, discouraged, or wondering why faith feels harder than it used to, here’s hope for the long middle of life from Tish’s latest book, What Grows in Weary Lands.

00:00 Introduction to Tish Harrison Warren
03:29 Exploring Spiritual Weariness and Doubt
14:47 Understanding Fortitude and Resilience
23:23 The Imagined Good Life
30:20 Navigating the Desert of Faith
35:10 The Practice of Stability
44:04 Community in Seasons of Aridity

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Books by Tish Harrison Warren: 

• What Grows in Weary Lands 
• Liturgy of the Ordinary 
• Prayer in the Night 

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest and the author of several books, including Liturgy of the Ordinary, which won Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night, which won Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for The New York Times, which focused on faith in public discourse and private life. She was also a columnist at Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, Religion News Service, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for The Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. She is a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and three children.

https://tishharrisonwarren.com/

https://www.instagram.com/tishharrisonwarren/

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Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

Note: This transcript is autogenerated and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Amy Julia Becker (00:05)
When's last time you used the word fortitude? I can't remember ever using it actually, but when I first read it in Tish Harrison Warren's latest book, What Grows in Weary Lands, it was a word that describes so much of what I need right now. What I need to walk in faith, in hope, in love, joy, purpose, all the things. I'm Amy Julia Becker and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good.

proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being and envisioning and building a world of belonging where everyone matters. And today I'm talking with my friend Tish Harrison-Morin. Tish is a writer. She's an Anglican priest. She's the author of award-winning books, including Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night. She wrote a regular column for the New York Times where she explored faith in both public and private life.

and she currently serves as writer in residence at Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary, and she's a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum. She has a lot of wisdom ⁓ and a lot of grace and a lot of humor. really, really love her and the way she's able to convey deep truths in very accessible ways. So here's our conversation about keeping the faith in the midst of our ordinary, unexceptional lives when God doesn't feel especially present and the shiny, happy moments of wonder don't feel close at hand.

⁓ I am sitting here with my friend Tish Harrison-Warren. Tish, thank you for coming back to Reimagining the Good Life.

Tish Harrison Warren (01:39)
Yeah, I love being here. I love being with you.

Amy Julia Becker (01:42)
Hmm. Thank you. Well, we were talking about this a little bit before, but I want to also admit to the audience that I just really loved your latest book, What Grows in Weary Lands. And what I mean by that is I get to review copies, I mean, almost daily of books, many of which are fantastic. And I rarely, rarely, rarely tell other people in my life about those books. But in this case, I was reading your book and I put it down.

mid-sentence and texted like my closest friends and said, all need to pre-order this book. Yeah. mean, it just, and I think the reason I did that is because this book speaks to something very true about what it feels to be human right now. And maybe what it feels like to be, you know, a middle-aged white lady. There's a line early on in the book that just made me laugh out loud. was like middle-aged white lady drives to strip center parking lot.

Tish Harrison Warren (02:19)
I love that.

Amy Julia Becker (02:38)
And like, there's no headline in that. Like, what's the plot, you know? ⁓

Tish Harrison Warren (02:43)
Yeah, I wrote that because that made me laugh too.

Amy Julia Becker (02:50)
Well, maybe you can just start off by giving readers, mean listeners, hopeful readers, a sense of how this book came to be.

Tish Harrison Warren (03:00)
Yeah. Well, so I was working for the New York Times and writing weekly on faith in public discourse and private life for two years. And when I started that, ⁓ I had a one-year-old, ⁓ a seven-year-old, and a 10-year-old, and no, I guess an eight-year-old. One-year-old, eight-year-old, 10-year-old. And was... ⁓

and a mom that has dementia and Alzheimer's. So my plate was really full, but even beyond that, mean, I just felt like I didn't understand where I was spiritually. couldn't put myself on a map. I wasn't...

I didn't feel like the kind of deconstruction language was exactly what was happening in me, but I was certainly having a profound sense of God's distance and prayer felt kind of...

like not a lot was happening. And like I was kind of trying to kind of dutifully continue to pray, but it felt like, like, is this, is anyone there? Is this thing on? Like it kind of, was, and then, and then it just felt like, I felt sort of off, like in the sense of, I, I,

Felt like relationships were hard, things in church were difficult. ⁓ My marriage was struggling, but not like in a really profound or there was no scandal. was just kind of like, we were tired, like both of us. And ⁓ we had, you know, teenagers and little kids. And it was just like a very full life. I was grateful in my best moments. I was grateful. ⁓

And, but it felt ⁓ arduous, as the book says, it felt wearying. it felt like I, ⁓ I talked in the book about how, and I feel this really deeply, I think partly just talking about faith so much publicly, it began to feel like God was this sort of like, like this sociological artifact that we.

debate about, but I couldn't connect with the maker of heaven and earth, like God, behind all of that, if that makes sense. And so I was just in a season that felt like I wasn't exactly sure how to plot where I was on the map. I had categories for, you know, spiritual growth, and I had categories for ⁓ tragedy or wrestling, you know, like

like deep suffering, but where I was felt like neither of those. didn't feel like I was flourishing, but I wasn't exactly, but I wasn't depressed. It was just this sort of, it felt stagnant. And so I didn't really have categories, but I also spiritually like did not know how to interact with where I was or what was happening. And I,

also sort of wanted to keep going. I wanted to keep going in my relationship with God, in kind of my work, my creative work. I wanted to keep doing things, but I didn't know how to keep going. And so the question that was sort of before me was like, how do you keep going when you don't know how to keep going, when you don't know where you are? And that is...

Well, that's sort of in the state I was in. I was actually starting to write a different book, less ⁓ kind of experiential, more sort of abstractly theological. ⁓ And hopefully I'll still write that book someday, but was just running into kind of this sense of creative and spiritual, emotional kind of malaise. And so I did what

I know to do in that, is that I just sort of started like looking around, like reading and kind of looking around for resources and ⁓ came sort of stumbled upon, I mean, really accidentally, the writings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers and was really hooked into them. It was a season where reading was hard for me, but I just loved reading these guys, these men and women.

they were describing boredom and irritation and a sense of God's distance. And they were describing things that felt like what I was experiencing. And so the book kind of grows out of both my experience and then finding all these resources in the Christian tradition that didn't like precisely name my experience, but described this human condition, I think, is this kind of like word cloud.

of this human condition that I was experiencing.

Amy Julia Becker (08:29)
I'm curious how you compare this book and Liturgy of the Ordinary, like your first book, in terms of, like, because one of the ways I would describe it, even though I think they're very different books, is like, whether or not God shows up in our ordinary lives, like in the ordinary. Because what I love about this book is that sense of like, there's a long middle to our stories. And it is often boring and irritating and dry. And there's actually like so much of an invitation for

us to know God in a different way in those times. ⁓ But at the same time, think of like, you know, the cover of your first book is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, right? Like it's about as ordinary as like you can get, especially in those early child rearing years. But I'm curious, like if you, I don't know how you compare the experiences of being like young mom who was also a working mom and ⁓ in kind of the ordinary tedium of life. And what I think is a different

⁓ and yet maybe parallel situation now, I don't know.

Tish Harrison Warren (09:32)
Yeah, it's interesting. There are certainly overlaps between the book, but they're really, they have a different feel and they're different practices. Like this deals much more with practice of stability, which I don't even think is mentioned in liturgy of the ordinary. ⁓ And I think it deals more with hope. certainly, this is the first time I've ever written about faith and doubt. I haven't written a, I've written,

pieces on that, but I haven't written book-like things on that. So that was really fun. So there are differences. I was struck this week. So I never go back and look at my other, once I have a book in the world, I never look at it again, because I only see the problems. I only see what I wish I could still edit. But I had to pick up Liturgy of the Ordinary this week because I was... ⁓

Amy Julia Becker (10:22)
Yep.

Tish Harrison Warren (10:28)
⁓ I can't remember. I was pulling from it. I was pulling a quote from it for something and that I was writing and ⁓ I didn't remember it. So I had to go back and look. And so I kind of was like looking through it and it was so interesting to me. ⁓ There's two things I would say. First of all, it feels like I really like to write books asking the question like, where is God here?

I've never articulated this out loud. I've never thought, let me write a book about where is God here. But when I was thinking about, when I was holding that book this week, I thought, you know, this is kind of like where is God in my ordinary life. And prayer in the night is like, where is God in grief and loss? And then this book is kind of where is God in weariness in the desert. ⁓

Amy Julia Becker (11:11)
Yep.

Tish Harrison Warren (11:27)
when it seems like not much is happening where it's not. So that's one thing. But I also do think it's interesting to me because Liturgy the Ordinary, you know, I was so new as a writer and I had little, little kids when I started writing that, like babies. ⁓ And was young. And so ⁓ in some ways this is sort of like if...

If readers have sort of grown up with me through these years, it's kind of like, okay, so that idea of God meeting us where we're at, which is a lot of what liturgy of the ordinary is, formation, kind of where, and it deals a lot with formation and formative practices in everyday life. But then when you are doing those formative practices, you're taking the Eucharist, you're praying, you're...

practicing Sabbath as best you can, whatever. And life goes on. ⁓ this feels like in some ways like an older book. Like if that was like a young person book, this is kind of a middle person book. Not that it, if there are young listeners, like there are 20 somethings I know who have really identified with the book. I am not, I don't want to limit it, but it does feel like a 30 to 60 year old book to me in some ways.

Amy Julia Becker (12:26)
Yeah, right.

Tish Harrison Warren (12:53)
yells like, when you're sort of doing these practices of faith that I wrote about in Liturgy of the Ornate, but you're tired or kind of life has kicked the crap out of you slowly over time, or you're really disoriented by where you are in life, what is happening in the American church right now, which is super disorienting. ⁓ Like when you are...

It feels like that person who wrote Liturgy the Ordinary, which was me, but it feels like in some ways a different person, because it was over 10 years ago now. Right. That person sort of growing up and going, okay, but how do I keep going? How do I keep doing this? when, like, there's nothing in Liturgy the Ordinary, as far as I know, about perseverance or fortitude, what the

we don't use the word fortitude a lot, but what the tradition would have talked about is fortitude. So it is sort of like, I feel like Liturgy of the Ordinary is opening people up to the concept of formation. That was a really sort of a new idea at the time of talking about formative practices and how that meets our everyday. And this book is sort of like, well, but when you don't feel that, like when that feels really hard or when you feel resistance,

Amy Julia Becker (14:12)
Yeah.

Tish Harrison Warren (14:21)
internal resistance or external resistance to that and you feel like the things in your life have made you weary. How does one continue to be formed? it's sort of how do you how does formation continue to happen over time? Right. So if Liturgy of the Ordinary is about sort of one day, it is about, you know, it's the whole thing is one day.

This is kind of like, what does it look like when it's like day after day after day after day? What is the long haul? So there's certainly, think they're good communi... Like I have not read them side by side, but I do think it would be interesting. The books are having, they're kind of interesting conversation partners and they're both me. I mean, they're both my experience, but in really different seasons of life, you know, the difference between...

someone kind of early on and someone, I'm mid 40s now. just it's a different experience of God in the midst of that.

Amy Julia Becker (15:27)
So, Anne, I just want to add two things. Like one, in both cases, you are, yes, very much and in a really winsome way, sharing from your own experience. But in doing so, or the way you do that is by drawing on this deep and rich tradition. And so there's a wonderful ⁓ conversation even within both books, I think, in that way. But I also just appreciate also that sense of, like it's one thing, you know, if you are like, okay, my health is out of whack.

and someone looks at your life and they're like, well, yeah, like you are eating toxic chemicals every day. so all you, like if you cut out, you know, these oils and you add in these vegetables, you should be good. And so you do that and for a little while you feel so much better. Cause it's just like, it kind of is a quick fix, but it's also a habitual practice. And then you might get to a point where you're like,

I actually still don't feel good. Like, what do I do now? Like, I've done all the things. Like, I've done the prayer, I've done the Sabbath, I've done the church, I've done the, and I'm not saying I'm doing it perfectly, but like, so I think there is also just, as you said, like kind of a natural progression from when we're younger and we're, I mean, I remember in my twenties being like, ⁓ Sabbath, who knew? Like, I didn't really understand that as like a thing that we might put into place. And we did, and then to be like, wait, but there are still,

not even just days, but like stretches of time that doesn't seem to actually matter. And I'm not going to abandon it necessarily, but like, why am I doing this and what's going on? So anyway, I just to even, I guess really just to agree with what you just said. That's my comment on it. And will you tell us a little bit about fortitude? it's not, again, it's not a word that we use regularly. I loved ⁓ kind of remembering that word by reading your book, but will you explain what it is and why that applies to what we're talking about?

Tish Harrison Warren (17:16)
Yeah, it's crazy how much it's talked about in the Christian tradition. mean, people are just talking about fortitude all the time. And I kind of grew up around church, have been to seminary and like never hear people. No, never. I've never hear people talking about fortitude. So part of it is sort of me wanting to like revive this word. ⁓ But I think it's akin to what we talk about now as resilience, which is why I sort of like make the book about resilience. But it is like,

strength to go on when you do not want to go on. mean, that's essentially what it is. I, going back to what you just said, which I loved what you just said, by the way, feel like that's so, that's so exactly what the book is to me. What you, what you kind of just said is that one of the things that

bothers me somewhat about the formation movement. And I do think there's a movement. think evangelicals are sort of discovering spiritual practices, formation. My book's part of this. John Mark Comer is part of this. Jamie Smith is part of this. there's all different, it's coming in different directions, but ⁓ I think there's a lot of interest in formation and that's all to the good. I think that's really needed and has been a corrective from things before it.

that are super necessary. I'm not, and I would consider myself part of this. So I'm all for it. But there are, all that said, there are moments where I think, ⁓ I don't even think anyone's intentionally presenting it this way. I'm certainly not intentionally presenting this way, but I think the church is also so shaped by American consumerism and consumerism, like the consumerist mentality.

that it can come across a little bit like, if you just do these practices, you'll feel great. Your relationship with God will go from strength to strength. You will keep growing. You will be a disciple. will be, which you will be a disciple, but we have this sense of what that will feel like or be like. And then it's kind of like,

know, in the blank of what that means for you. Like, your kids will be well-formed or you'll have a great marriage or you'll all, you'll totally have great Christian community or you'll be rested and feel good. Like all of those things. And so it can kind of feed into like, you know, like a life hack or wellness technique or whatever. And I am so resistant to that. And so this book is sort of like,

Well, what if you're doing all the things and still exhausted and still not, because I was like, there is a part about Sabbath, keeping Sabbath in this book, which I ended up putting in way at the end because I was so resistant to put anything about the Sabbath because I feel like parts of the church kind of discovered Sabbath keeping. And this was like the answer for weariness. And then when I hit the season I was in, I mean, I've been keeping

We've been practicing the Sabbath, again, not perfectly, but certainly more than like your average American. I don't know, over 20 years, and I don't work, and I turn off the phone, and I still felt completely overwhelmed and exhausted. And so I ended up putting something about Sabbath in the book, essentially because I realized if someone was coming to me and said, feel burnout and weary, my first

question would be like, are you resting? And so I'm like, okay, so pastorally, I think I do need to have that. But my resistance to that was that it sometimes is seen as portrayed as such a silver bullet. And that's just one example. can be, there are other, know, liturgy can be portrayed as a silver bullet or, ⁓ I don't know, like ⁓ meditative.

prayer, silence, like all of these things can be shown as kind of like, this is the key, buy this book because this is the key that will unlock your spiritual potential. I totally agree. that's not, none of that's true. And we're setting people up. I mean, it sells things, but it doesn't, it doesn't actually prepare people for like the long haul of a lifetime with God. And so my interest in this book was,

what do we need not just to be formed, but to be formed over the long haul of a lifetime with God. And for that, we need the practice of stability, we need fortitude, we need to learn how endurance or perseverance is different than like a John Wayne kind of stoicism, like just do it, just get through life, you know? And so this book is much, is kind of like, okay, so if you...

If you care about formation and are taking up these formative practices, this isn't going to solve things for you. So how do we expect this to look over time in life? ⁓ That's so much of kind of my desire for this book.

Amy Julia Becker (22:42)
I'm thinking about the difference between the transactional ⁓ experience of God in which I give you my time on a Sunday and you give me back rest, or I give you my moments of stillness and silence and you give me back peace of mind, ⁓ as opposed to the relational ⁓ experience of God, which many, oftentimes that is actually how it's gonna work. Those things do go hand in hand, and yet even when they don't.

⁓ what does it mean to keep going? And I think you write about just that experience of like ⁓ clinging to God for God and not for what God gives me. I'm going to read you a quotation ⁓ here. You wrote, God gets us going with fireworks, but we grow deep when the craft of faith becomes dull or difficult. The cacophony within us settles and we slowly, painfully release the imagined good life that we once demanded.

and learn to cling to God himself. So I had to ask you about that quotation on this podcast, Reimagining the Good Life, because you're talking about an imagined good life and releasing it. ⁓ But I would love to hear more, like just about your thoughts on like, what is the imagined good life? How do we release it? And how is clinging to God himself different than that? And what does that do for us in us?

Tish Harrison Warren (24:04)
Yeah, I think each person's imagined good life is probably different. That probably looks different person to person. One of the things that's been really interesting to me is that my own sort of desert, being in this spiritual desert that I'm in, ⁓ have been in that I describe in the book.

revealed to me, and I do not think this is just me, I think the desert does this to a lot of people, and the desert fathers and mothers also would affirm this, and so would John and the cross, so I have good theological weights on my side, but I think one thing it showed in me is how transactional I am in thinking about my relationship with God without knowing it.

I of course wouldn't say that. And I kind of know that's the right answer. And for me, but it just, it shows me how much I want to control God. I mean, if my last book, in the Night was about wanting God to sort of keep all bad things from happening to me, I mean, that's part of how I control, want to control God.

want God to like make things work out for my children. I want God to make things work out for me. But there's something else that I realized kind of through this time is that I want to be able to like put in these practices and get back like a spiritual experience or a sense of God's closeness or at least like

some clear progress in my life. Like I want to be able to be like, I used to be unkind, but now I am kind. Like I want to see things change. And I don't think that's bad. I mean, I think that's very normal. Of course we want like a subjective sense of God's presence. But I do think there is a sense where I often feel like God is,

don't know, it is a more transactional thing. It's like, I did this thing and now you have to do this thing because I did the thing. Yeah, you owe me. Yeah, yeah. And I, even though I think I know that's not the right response, I think when I, for instance, go to prayer and feel like, don't really even know if anything happened there. There wasn't a sense of flow or there wasn't a sense of.

okay, God revealed something to me or something really powerful. Over time, it becomes like, what is even the point of this? Like, why am I, because I'm here for something. ⁓ But there is this sort of fundamental transactional nature of that. And for me, it's a control. Like, I want to control God. I want to be able to like put in my inputs and get an output. Kind of like, almost like a smartphone. I have this app.

and I can enter things and then I get this response. And I start to expect that from people in my life and from God. And it's tricky with me. And I think the reason the desert revealed this is that I don't seem to me like a control freak. Like I don't, for instance, we're teaching my daughter to drive and she's about to be 16.

I've been much calmer about letting her drive than my husband, for instance. So I don't need to drive. My house is not clean. I'm not like an Instagram influencer with like perfect hair and perfect children. Like that's just not, and I'm kind of like type B. Like I feel like I'm not, and I've never been like into the prosperity gospel. Like I don't have a sense that if I followed Jesus, I'll be very wealthy or anything like that.

So it's easy for me to be like, I'm not trying to control God, but it's interesting that what the desert showed me is that I'm trying to control my experience of God. Like what that does in me, what that feels like, the kind of community experience I have around that, ⁓ and the sort of wisdom I'm accruing. Like I, and when,

that doesn't seem to work when I feel like I don't really know where I am spiritually. It feels like it's not working. Then I really start to doubt my faith, start to question, I doing something wrong? I guess I'm saying I have my own sense of, I hate to call it a prosperity gospel.

because I, but it is sort of that of like how I think my life should go. And maybe it's not like the American consumer dream, but it is my own imagined sense of how I want God to perform for me. And in the desert, God just stopped performing for me. And it was like, I don't know what to do right now. I don't know how to keep, I don't know how to interact with this being that is like so out of my control.

and so unpredictable and so, ⁓ and really doesn't owe me anything. Like I'm not sure how to interact with a God like that.

Amy Julia Becker (29:45)
curious if you feel like having been asking those questions, you not have an answer in the sense of, now I have God back in a box and it's very nicely tightly, but more in terms of being in the desert and hanging in there and experiencing at least the beginning of like, oh, this is what fortitude is. I want to talk about stability in a minute, but has there been

some sense of any sense of resolution? I guess that's my question.

Tish Harrison Warren (30:20)
I don't know if I've had a sense of resolution. I think really since I finished the book, I have a sense of joy that I didn't have before. I think I have a sense of, and maybe it's, I don't think it's just because I finished the book. I think that there is a sense of, ⁓ you know.

guide kind of, ⁓

showing me the patterns of kind of discontentment that I have practiced and kind of cultivated and giving me like a more profound sense of contentment. I feel, I mean, I'm in the middle of a book release. So right now it's sort of like, know, there are days this feels really strong. Yesterday was a day this felt really strong. And there's other days this feels like, you know, my entire identity is completely

you know, has like run from God and is finding itself entirely in like Goodreads ratings. I don't present any kind of perfection in this at all, but I do think there is a joy that comes when maybe God actually isn't, maybe this isn't a transactional relationship. Maybe it isn't just me trying to like,

push the buttons and make God act in a certain way. But it is like an invitation to communion. And maybe communion, when I say communion, that even can feel like, waking up early in the morning and like basking in the glowing presence of Jesus. Like maybe that's not even communion. Maybe communion is something that's more quiet and more, ⁓ just very ordinary. But I do think there's like a,

nothing's changed. still feel like God is like totally unpredictable and totally uncontrollable. But there's a sense of okayness in the midst of that that I think I didn't have before. And a lot of that was born, I mean, I just think four years ago, I just was like, I don't know what to do. I but I say this when in the white lady in the strip sinning,

Center parking lot, crying. I just was ⁓ telling God I do not know what to do. ⁓ And I think I have a stronger sense now of like, ⁓ maybe what you're doing is fine. Maybe this is enough. But also I tell the story, I think I tell the story in the book. I can't remember if I ended up taking it out, but I had a spiritual director at the time who would say, I would say, I feel lost. I feel

uncertain anything's happening. I feel like I disoriented and she would say, okay, well maybe just feel lost for a little while. Maybe feel unsure anything's happening. And that would drive me nuts because I was like, no, I want you to tell me how to not feel like this anymore. I want you to tell me how to like get out of this, do the thing that's going to make me feel, you know, like things are fruitful and I know what I'm doing and I'm, and like.

I mean, even like in a spiritual sense, like there's like ministry fruitfulness and like, you know, I'm growing and like, tell me what to do. And she just kept calling me back to like, maybe just, maybe where you are is the place to be. Maybe God is right in the midst of not knowing if anything's happening. Maybe this is where you like burrow down and go deep into the things of God.

And that still drives me crazy, but it drives me less crazy. think that more and more I'm like, I think that's it. I think that this middle, this book was absolutely born out of a desire to tell middle stories. You said middle earlier and I just really resonate with that. But maybe part of what it means to be in the middle is to accept that place, accept the incompleteness, accept the... ⁓

uncertainty except the sense of like disorientation of that. And for I think four years ago, I was just like, tell me what to do to get through it. Right. And I think I'm more in a place now of like, okay, well, what is the beauty in it? Where's the beauty right around me? And that's been a huge, huge shift for me.

Amy Julia Becker (35:10)
So I love that. ⁓ I want to circle back to the idea of stability, because again, that's something that I know what the word means, but it's not one that I use as kind of a practice, or it's not something I really think about. And so I'd love to talk about staying committed to particular places and people as an act of faith, ⁓ and think about why that matters. I would.

I think RU matters more in our world perhaps than it has in the past. So anyway, can you speak to that?

Tish Harrison Warren (35:47)
Yeah, I think that's true. mean, going back to an earlier question about liturgy, the ordinary, if liturgy, the ordinary was a way for me to like subtly introduce liturgy to evangelicals, it was like a gateway drug to liturgy. This is the gateway drug to two things. Like the things that I really hope get like seeded into the DNA of conversation through this is first of all, drawing on the desert fathers and mothers and the historic church.

But, and secondly, and I think actually more so, even if we never talk about desert fathers and mothers, is the practice of stability. Because it is in all this sort of list of spiritual practices, it's not really talked about. And I think we just have to recover it. think it's so necessary. so, I, so stability is a vow taken by Benedictine monks and ⁓ it's,

In the simplest form for Benedictines, it's to literally stay in the monastery that they're in, to not go somewhere else. But it means something bigger than that because they talk about stability of the heart, which is essentially like a rootedness in one's commitments and vows, but also the kind of practices and habits that orient your life, but also the people around you and the place around you.

And so I just think we have no concept of stability as a practice now. I think it's, or maybe even as a value, I don't know if we see stability as a virtue. But when you look back at, I mean, I think it seems unexciting. It doesn't seem adventurous at all.

Amy Julia Becker (37:41)
It can seem like, that person got stuck in their hometown. like, there's like a stagnant aspect to things, which I do think is different than what you're talking about.

Tish Harrison Warren (37:51)
Right, it can seem like a stuckness. I think that's right. I do think at some point, the long practice of stability, there's going to be a moment where it does feel like stuckness. I think there's more happening than that, but it certainly feels like that. But I think that, I mean, part of the reason this was, a bit, I mean, it is a monastic vow. What's interesting to me is I don't think it's just for monastics. I think all Christians are.

called to embrace stability as a practice in certain ways. But I think the reason it's a monastic vow is because it was seen as absolutely essential for maturation. That if you continue in place of instability, if you keep all your options open, if you continue to reinvent your life and reinvent yourself over and over again, you actually never mature.

It cuts off the possibility of that and it cuts off the possibility of going deep and it cuts off the possibility of the inner work that needs to happen. Because as long as we're like very, very busy renovating the outside of our life, as long as we are keeping ourselves, I mean this, think actually and metaphorically, keeping busy with like, ⁓

redecorating and reinventing. I'm thinking of people who like go through midlife crisis and decide to like redo their whole kitchen, which is not a bad thing. But I do think that that motivation, that is sort of the consumer mentality that we deal with all of life. That we're going to kind of keep remodeling ourselves, our lives.

our friendships, our churches, we're just gonna keep sort of always about remodeling. I actually know, this is interesting and didn't end up in the book, I'm just thinking aloud now, but I know a person that every time they kind of like hit a difficulty in their marriage or they kind of like remodel something and it's a distraction. It's clearly like a way of distraction. But I think as long as we sort of do that,

We don't turn to the inner work that really has to happen for us to mature in faith, but also as a human, like to mature as a human being. Like part of growing up and becoming whole, I think is ⁓ to stop kind of blaming everybody else and the circumstances you're in for the problems in your life.

Not that, I mean, obviously people can cause great harm and great hurt in our lives, but at some point, ⁓ you have to realize that remodeling the circumstances of your life is not the solution. And Desert Father and Mother, it's an anonymous person, so I don't know if it's male or female, but said, ⁓

If you're in a community and you have conflict or difficulty in that community, don't leave it and go somewhere else. Wherever you flee, your problems are waiting for you in front of you. And I think that's true. Wherever you go, who you are is waiting for you there. Yeah. And Benedict picked up on that. And that was part of him forming this idea of stability. He basically quoted it. He said something very similar.

⁓ I, but I think the, that idea of kind of like looking inward, cultivating wisdom where you're at contentment, where you're at, like, it's not very lucrative. so, ⁓ it, I think we don't, we don't talk about it much or we don't have categories for it culturally very well. And so, ⁓ I think.

You know, especially with the kind of cultural winds that are ⁓ kind of profound instability that our culture is experiencing, I think we have to learn as people of faith to cultivate stability. ⁓ so we just need to rediscover the practice of that.

Amy Julia Becker (42:28)
Too many things I want to ask you about. I also want, I realized I haven't mentioned just something that I think you and Jonathan say to each other. You can flame out, ⁓ what flame out, numb out or go deep. And that's in the book. And I was like, yeah. Like, and what you're talking about here is exactly that, right? Like the, but the going deep just even just like metaphorically does imply a commitment to stability.

Tish Harrison Warren (42:41)
Yeah

Amy Julia Becker (42:55)
because if I uproot, then I have to start going deep all over again. And to go deep, I think part of also what we're wanting is that sense of like, I'm bearing fruit, right? But the roots have to go deep first. It just takes a long time for that all to happen. And that's another theme in the book is just that idea of like, this happens over time. It's the only way it happens is through some measure of like patience, endurance, like time passing.

I mean, there's just not a quick fix to our souls, even though the kind of presence of God is not contingent upon any of these things, upon us going deeper, upon us getting it right. There's also just a degree to which our souls are gonna be able to resonate with that presence or recognize it or something ⁓ as we resist the distraction and do the

stable, what might feel like boring ⁓ thing of showing up day in and day out for the people in our lives and the places and all of the rest. I guess I'll ask one last question, which is about other people, right? So like, what is the role that other people play in seasons of what you have called in the book, aridity, languishing? I loved this quote, we cannot self-generate a sustaining faith.

⁓ That sense of like there's, yeah, there's a role for other people here. Like what do you see that role as?

Tish Harrison Warren (44:29)
Yeah, think there, mean, so much, I end up talking about community so much in the book because I think it's very hard to cultivate stability in a healthy way. would say it's impossible to cultivate stability in a healthy way without others. And I draw from these desert fathers and mothers who were like hermits and alone, or we think of them alone, but actually there were,

they were hermits in community with other hermits. And so they knew each other. mean, even the fact that we have their sayings were because they were passing them around and talking to each other. And they all had what was called elders, essentially mentors that they would go to to kind of like talk through things, get advice, get wisdom, get spiritual direction, what we would now call spiritual direction. ⁓ So,

I talk a lot in the book about the place of hope because I do talk the first, the chapter two and three are so much about stability. And I should tell people if you get the book and you read the first three chapters and you're like, this is really hard or intense or feels heavy. Like you keep reading. Cause I do feel like the first part of the book is kind of like be stable. And then chapter four, I'm kind of like.

Don't be a prisoner in solitary confinement. mean, what does this look like to do this in a way that is healthy and a way that is full of grace and a way that is gentle? ⁓ That's kind of the rest of the book. So don't stop. Whatever you do, don't stop after chapter three. Like read a little further. Because I think hope is really carried together. ⁓ When I was at the New York Times, I interviewed Kurt Thompson.

the psychiatrist about ⁓ burnout. And he talked about it not so much as just like having too much to do or life being hard, because there is seasons where life's just gonna be hard and it's kind of unavoidable. ⁓ Unless you wanna like, again, run off to Vegas and be by yourself, which is unstable, not stability of the heart. But if we indwell our lives,

faithfully, there's gonna be hard times where that is wearying. And he said, he attributes burnout more to isolation than to, you know, our circumstances being too hectic. And so he says, ⁓ the human brain is actually made to do hard things for long periods of time, but it is not made to do them alone.

It's not made them in isolation. We kind of need other people to walk through these hard things with us in order to be able to do that. so I talk about holding hope, how hope changes endurance. So instead for Christians, it's not just this kind of stoic, like there's nothing to do, but keep going. It's this idea that like, it's not just stay in your cell. It's that they would

Desert Fathers and Mothers would say, stay in your cell. Your cell will teach you everything. It's that hope that like you're gonna learn really important stuff that's gonna change and shift your internal life in ways that make you whole and make you stronger, make you have fortitude and ⁓ make you more content. so this notion of your cell teaching you everything though, I just don't think it can happen alone. I think,

that we like carry hope together. we, and I mean this on a small level, like one friend, like a small group, but I also mean it on a big level. Like the stories of the saints throughout time, art and beauty became so important to me in this season of the desert of just to hear other people who have like produced beauty out of

struggle, you know? And so I think...

I think whether we're talking kind of micro community, the people right around us, our family, our best friends, or we're talking macro community, like the church, historic, global, Christians throughout time, saints throughout all ages. I think these are the things that allow us to be rooted without being isolated, without having to. ⁓

gin up stability through our own willpower, which I just, think that that's going to end up leading us to being people that are resentful. I don't talk about this in the book, but I do think the story of the prodigal son is applicable here. And then in some ways you could say, oh, the older brother was stable. He stayed, but he was completely cut off.

Amy Julia Becker (49:46)
Resentful.

Tish Harrison Warren (49:47)
Because he was completely cut off from the father. He was there out of will. He was there out of duty. But there was no community. There was no love. And ⁓ Dorothy Day, my very favorite, she's like my mother in the faith, said, know, we've all known the long loneliness, that sense of longness, the middle of the long loneliness. And we have found that

the solution to it is love. I don't know if I'm quoting this exactly right, but the response to it is love and that love always comes in community. so I think the middle is too, the desert is too difficult to get through without people, without people with you.

Amy Julia Becker (50:39)
feel like that's a great place to leave it, even though there's much more that we could talk about, which hopefully, again, we'll just encourage people to go read the book and to actually, I mean, I really do think this would be one of those books to gather with other people, whether that's once or a couple of times and just be like, yeah, how about you? You know, and talk about it. ⁓ So thank you, Tish, for writing this and for the work you're doing and just putting such good things into our world.

Tish Harrison Warren (51:03)
Thank you. You too.

Amy Julia Becker (51:08)
Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. We've got some great upcoming episodes for you. I'm going to be talking with Dr. Chris Cipriano from Yale University about politics and language and disability. I'm looking ahead to a conversation with Karen Swallow Prior about childlessness and loss and limits and expectations. And also really looking forward to a conversation with Malcolm Foley who wrote a book, The Anti-Greed Gospel.

so good. It's about greed and pride and racism. ⁓ I know these are heavy topics, but I love getting to talk with these really thoughtful people about these things that matter and to talk about them in a way that allows us again to think about reimagining the good life. So if this conversation today or any of these others resonates with you, I would also love to invite you to subscribe to my reimagining the good life sub stack. That's a newsletter.

that extends this work where we challenge assumptions about the good life, proclaim the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envision and build a world of belonging where everyone matters. So you can find a link to that in the show notes. You can also always follow, rate, review this show. We'd love for other people to find it and just share it with them. And we would always love to hear from you. You can send questions or ideas anytime using the send us a text link at the end of the show notes.

As always, thank you to Jake Hansen for editing this episode, to Amber Beery, my director of content for producing the show, and thank you for being here. Let's all keep reimagining the good life together.