Cultivating Christian Resilience, with Tish Harrison Warren

All of us will face times in life where we feel burned out and dried up. What once was energizing and life giving now seems exhausting and tedious, and the only thing that entices is the prospect of escape. This sense of languishing and burnout has actually grown so widespread as to be called by one columnist, Ezra Klein, the omnipresent diagnosis of modernity and Wharton professor Adam Grant. The dominant emotion of our time. But if burnout is endemic in our modern times and times of weariness and discouragement perennial, our guest today has argued that for century times of aridity in the Christian life were actually seen as vital for spiritual growth and maturity. And that resilience and its development is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be. And she points to liturgies that help develop what could be called spiritual anti-fragility embodied spiritual practices that slowly, day by day, without drama or spectacle, enable us to grow deep roots in times of aridity and withstand the winds and blights that come. Tish Harrison Warren is, I am very proud to say, a senior fellow of the Trinity Forum, as well as an Anglican priest, writer, and currently serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological writer in residence at Baylor’s Truett Seminary. She served as various points as the author of a weekly newsletter for The New York Times, a columnist for Christianity Today. In addition to writing for religion, News Service, Art House America, Comment, The Point and many other publications, and is the author of several books, including liturgy of the ordinary, which her very first work, which also won Christianity. Today’s book of the year in 2018. Prayer in the night, another CT book of the year, and her wonderful new work, What Grows in Weary Lands, which we’ve invited her here today to discuss. Tish, welcome.

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here. I love being part of the Trinity Forum.

Well we are we love having you be part of it and really excited to talk with you today. So one of the things I’d love to sort of start with have just found in the course of doing these online conversations, that there’s not only a story in every book, but there’s almost always a personal story behind the book that led to its creation. So I’d love to hear you say a little bit about what led you to write this book.

Yeah. So I, was working at the New York Times and that was a, a, a job I really loved, but it was really intense. both in terms of, weekly deadlines and, and output. but also spiritually, I mean, talking about God in such a very public way with an audience that, many of whom do not share your assumptions or priors or beliefs is a lot. And it’s, and it was, It was an intense moment in American history. I was, there kind of coming out of Covid through 2021 and the, and a lot of turmoil that year. And then, and then the years after Covid, as we were trying to sort of figure out how to keep going and get back to regular life. So I was in a period of kind of creative and emotional weariness. besides just the demands of my own life, having children and a mother with dementia. And, I was really weary and, and it was not only, it was emotional and creative, but it was also deeply spiritual. to me, there was, it felt like prayer had become really difficult. It felt like, what I would say to my husband and I mentioned this in the book is it felt like, the, the line had gone dead or, for people who never had a corded phone, like the call had dropped it. and so it felt, I felt like I was in a period of disorientation, both in terms of faith, but also in terms of like vocation and, marriage and relationships in my life and the church.

And, I wasn’t there hadn’t been a great tragedy. There hadn’t been profound grief. so it, it wasn’t like intense suffering and I wasn’t depressed, but I wasn’t flourishing either. And I felt like I was in this sort of twilight that I wasn’t sure how to name. So in that place, I started looking for resources and I couldn’t find a lot. I didn’t find a lot that I felt like was sort of scratching the itch that I had and, in kind of Christian writing and then in, in books about burnout, there are some really great books. I mean, some of them I quote in my book, but it felt like it didn’t, go deeply enough. It felt like there was a lot of sort of like work life balance and life hacks. And it felt like, that I or even like keep a Sabbath, which was, which I strongly agree with, but I had been keeping a Sabbath for decades. And so it, it, I still found myself in this middle season of my faith and of my life, feeling really uncertain about, who I was and where I was. And so, I really happened upon these sayings of the desert fathers and mothers. And, we have lots of books in my house, as you can see. And, I had read them before I’d read them some in seminary, but not a lot. And so I started reading them and I think they were just so radically different than any kind of Christian voices I heard on the right or the left in the United States in our moment.

But they also were so relatable. I mean, they wrote about a sense of God’s distance. They wrote about boredom, they wrote about weariness, they wrote about aridity, which I write about in the book, but was not a concept that I had ever been exposed to. And so it felt like it was giving me, I don’t know, I felt like I had these, guides, these voices, these sort of companions. And so, and not just with the desert fathers and mothers, I started kind of reading around in, in church history and found that this sort of middle space, this twilight space between flourishing and depression, this, kind of, place of spiritual dryness was talked about a ton in the history of the church and by, by men and women whose voices I knew and respected throughout church history. And I just had somehow missed it. And so I wanted to cry. It was my. This book was me figuring out my own life. It was me writing a book that I needed a three years ago or four years ago. But it was also that I found all these resources and wanted to give them to other people. I wanted to be like, look what I look what I found, because I think I think we all hit seasons where it feels like we’re running out of steam. And I just wanted good writing on that. And I, and so that that’s where the book came from.

Yeah, no, thanks for that. You know, you mentioned a few times, the sense of aridity and, I think we can all relate to that. But at the same time, I think often, you know, in the Christian life, many people will experience or at least interpret their own sense of like languishing or burnout or a sense of God’s silence that you talked about like no one on the other line as a spiritual failure on their part, that somehow they’ve done something wrong, or they’re guilty of the sin of ascidia, which, I know you distinguish between aridity and a sedere, but you mentioned the early desert fathers and mothers, and you quote several of them saying that actually those periods of aridity, they’re not a matter of sin or failure. They’re actually, if anything, an apprenticeship. and I think you quoted one theologian, John Chryssavgis, who I’m probably mangling his name as saying, you know, the desert is actually a necessary stage of the spiritual journey. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on why dry times are actually necessary for, for our flourishing.

Yeah, that’s such a good question. And part of this book is I’m trying to be intentionally pastoral because when I hit this, I experienced it exactly like you said Cherie, I experienced Experiences. Am I doing something wrong? Am I? Is God more interested in someone else than other people and not me or us? Does faith not work? Is it like time to deconstruct this because it’s not working kind of question. And so I was asking all of those like, is it wrong? Is faith is what I believe wrong? Is am I doing it wrong? Is God mad at me? I mean, all of those things. So the, the idea that you are highlighting that like the desert is actually a part of Christian maturation and human maturation that we need, was so encouraging to me. So there’s two different, kind of ways to talk about this. One is that the idea of fortitude of which we don’t use the word fortitude very much. so I sort of, I use the word resilience as a synonym essentially for fortitude. that idea of sort of, being able to experience spiritual difficulty and, and not give up in the middle of that or not. we’ll get to this, but not leave your cell, not leave your, habits and practices of faith or commitments or community was seen as I just, it’s difficult to overstate how much these, Christians in history talked about the need for fortitude, talked about the need for perseverance and patience and, which I would kind of bundle those and talk about resilience.

So they saw this as really necessary To become who we are meant to become. But then the question is still why? And to that I. One of the most articulate voices on that was John of the cross. And so I talk about him some in the book, this idea that God kind of gets us going through what he called the illumination. where things feel fruitful and we feel full of consolation, as would be the theological word for that. Like we feel like prayer is vibrant and community is vibrant and we can enjoy church, we enjoy God, we enjoy growth. This works in our spiritual life. I think it also works. I don’t think we can silo that to our spiritual life. I think in those seasons of illumination, relationships feel really lovely and, and new and beautiful. And, our work often feels Like a source of joy. And it’s when, we have a lot of energy. Essentially, it’s when the, the winds that are back, spiritually or emotionally, but he says, and he says that’s a good and growing time, but that to continue to grow, to continue to mature, to continue in the apprenticeship, to use the language, that you just used that God intentionally kind of, turns up the resistance.

And often that is accompanied by a sense, a subjective sense of God’s withdrawal. And he says that is to build a nest fortitude that’s to build in us trust. But also the point of that is that, we, he says we can sort of go to God for a particular spiritual experience or a particular, desire for insight or fruitfulness or, I mean, what I see in my own life is I want, if I put these inputs in, I expect God to, to respond in a certain way, to put, to give output that I expect. And John of the cross says that this he calls it spiritual avarice coming to God for essentially the things we want or a particular experience, as opposed to God himself. And so, the, he points to a maturation that has to happen in the Christian life where we shed what he calls the swaddling clothes of, of kind of our early, experiences of God to, begin to wean ourselves off of a particular way. We think this is supposed to look the spiritual life or a way that our lives are supposed to look and begin to. Practice fortitude, continue in this long pattern of discipleship, this long response to grace. Not for a particular result, but because of communion, because we are seeking communion with God himself.

Yeah. You know, you distinguish in your book between aridity and acidity. aridity being, you know, in many ways a vital part of the apprenticeship program. But acedia being a temptation. And while, there are two distinct things they so often it seems like track and yeah, you also mentioned that many of the monks named the ancient desert monks named a city of the meanest and most difficult temptation to resist.

Yeah, they say it’s the hardest.

Yeah so maybe you can distinguish between the two, between, you know, a necessary aridity and the temptation in Acedia. And yeah, I mean, Acedia is so unpleasant. What makes it so tempting?

Yeah. So for those who don’t know who may, many people may be familiar with this word, but it’s often translated sloth. I think that is a very poor translation. but it does speak to kind of a spiritual listlessness or dullness. Rebecca DeYoung defines it as, the resistance to the demands of love, which I just love and didn’t couldn’t fin the book because I had so many quotes in this section. But, my favorite definition is from John Paul the Second, who summed it up as a sadness, an overwhelming sadness that the good is difficult. We just want things to be easy. Yeah. and we don’t, and it’s that part of you where you’re like, oh, I can’t love my neighbor. I can’t pray right now, I can’t. Instead, I will watch Netflix, infinitely or Instagram reels. It’s, it’s just sort of a longing for ease. And the hardest part, honestly, in writing my book, or a very difficult part was trying to figure out how much and how precisely I should, talk about aridity and talk about acedia and how much to tease them apart and talk about them as very separate phenomenons. It to the point where early drafts of my book got very kind of academic, very, almost, like something I would turn in, for, you know, a course in systematics or something because I was trying to make these distinctions. I ended up, I don’t conflate them. I explain the difference, but I talk about them a lot together. And here’s why. The. The basic difference is aridity is more like a spiritual environment. It’s a season that we pass through or sometimes that lasts a long, long, long time.

But it is the experience of longing for God. We still want God. We still want to know God, or at least we want to want to know God. But, we feel like God is distant or we feel like that is a, that, that, we’re sort of, chasing after God but can’t find God. So it’s your heart is still desiring spiritual things, but they feel difficult or they feel, dry. That is kind of the environment of aridity. Acedia. There’s actually sort of a distaste for spiritual things. We’re craving distraction when it I mean, famously in Evagrius description of Acedia, when a monk goes to prayer, he starts to try to listen for people passing outside his cell, outside his cave or hut to be like, what other conversations more interesting than what I’m doing. So it’s a it’s a desire to not be in the moment you’re in or in the practice you’re in, in the, in your actual life. But, a looking out, a desiring for another life or a more interesting life. the reason that I kind of pair these is first of all, I think they go together a lot. I think that in just very practically when I experience aridity, which makes prayer more difficult, the temptation to acedia is much more intense because obviously when life is going well and prayer feels really abundant, it is, Acedia doesn’t have the same sort of, power over us that it can, when things are, are more difficult. But the other thing is that the desert monks kind of prescribed the same, treatment for both, which is, they would tell younger monks, stay in your cell.

Yea they would. Meaning they would call monks to remain, to, continue in their life of faith and their vows and their community and their practices and their rhythms and their work and in their prayer. And so you see in their writings, sometimes they say, stay in your cells, a direct response to a savior, but sometimes they say it as a response to discouragement or feeling like they’re not good enough to be a monk, and they keep struggling with the same kind of sin. sometimes they say it as a response to aridity. It’s just this really common. Whatever your impediment to prayer is, they call you back to stay in your cell. So it felt to me like, if, if the distinction I’m making is like sometimes aridity is really wanting God, but feeling like God is distant and acedia is not as certain. If you want to take up the spiritual life in my period of burnout, that can change within an afternoon. That could change within a few hours. My experience of do I long for God or do I not? Do I long for God and feel that God is distant? Or do I throw up my hands and say, this is all too hard and I. So I think it’s helpful for spiritual directors and maybe certainly historical theologians to make. To tease those out. I think the reality of most of our lives is that we can cycle between our subjective desire for God or not within minutes, within hours. And, and I certainly experienced that.

Well, there’s so much we could talk about in terms of the advice to stay in your cell. You were mentioning the, you know, the ancient priests listening eagerly for a distraction through someone walking by. And boy, we have so many more available distractions at the ready now, don’t we?

You don’t have to wait for someone to walk by. You can be distracted at any moment that you want.

Yeah, infinite rabbit holes in your pocket in the form of your phone. Yeah, but I can see people thinking like, well, why? Why is it so important to stay at your cell? You’re already feeling a sense of listlessness. slothfulness discouragement. Weariness. I mean, isn’t the injunction just to sit around and do nothing either? You know, one a form of self-indulgence or or conversely, you know, there’s been a lot of research about how how difficult people find it just to sit by themselves and do nothing. You know, the whole Pascal quote, all of man’s troubles are the inability to sit quietly in a room alone. What is it about staying in your cell and resisting distraction, essentially being quiet and present when you don’t feel like it? that that has this, this ability to help form resilience and perseverance.

Yeah. Well, a few things. I think staying in your cell was a really comprehensive, understanding of what that meant. So it did mean staying at practices of prayer and silence for sure. But monks also worked in their cells. So it was rhythms of work and it was a symbol of a monk’s vows and vocation. So when they would leave their cell, what they were doing is, is leaving the desert to go, back to where they came from. And so it was staying at your vows, at your commitments, but also your community. Because even though these desert monks lived alone, Many of them were kind of hermits. There were so many of them that they ended up forming essentially, our first monasteries, like living in groups together. And so they, they had, the equivalent, we would say now of like mentors. They had elders, they had community, with each other. And so it was a call to actually remain in place with a group of people. So it was this really comprehensive call that ended up being picked up by Saint Benedict, as the practice of stability, which is still one of the vows that Benedictine monks take today. And so a huge part of my book that I wanted is just to introduce the, I, the, the idea of stability, but specifically the practice of stability to the broader church and non-Catholics and non Benedictines. because I think we’ve there is a resurgence and renewal of interest in practices. I think my books are part of this. And we want to talk about prayer.

We want to talk about the Eucharist. We want to talk about the church calendar, whatever. But I but I think underneath that, we also have to talk about the practice of stability, of continuing at these things over a decade after decade and when they’re not cool anymore, to keep going. And so, part of the reason, I think that we are called back to the cell, is because the work of God is really long. And that is particularly difficult when we do live in a time of distraction and we live in a time of consumerism. And so one of the things that I saw is there, there is a bit of a narrative of particularly around midlife, where if it’s sort of like if you’re not satisfied or if you’re not fulfilled, the thing to do is to kind of reinvent yourself for that, follow your bliss. And I actually think there is a kind of deeper joy on the other side of stability, that we miss when we just go to our bliss or distraction or, where sort of, as I say in the book, like numbing out or flaming out. And so I think, part of the point of stability is there are just really important goods. I mean, joy, I mean hope, I mean maturity growth that only happen, by, by continuing in the cell of our lives, whatever that is, whatever your sort of habits of faith and, and, and commitment to community around you is.

Yeah, you know, the, the practice of stability that you talk about, it seems to run counter not only to our tendency towards consumerism or, you know, pleasure seeking or whatever, but in some ways it also seems to run fairly counter to a Puritan work ethic. you know, I think there are many of us at least I’ll plead guilty where it just seems like we have striving in our soul like that. There feels there feels like there’s a virtue to the work. And one also feels like, there’s no progress without motion. Mhm. Essentially. but you not only in your answer, but in your book, it almost seems like you have argued that that, that striving, that Puritan work ethic, taken to extreme, you can say our penchant for self-optimization, might actually be contributing to a sense of fragility.

That’s an interesting idea. I haven’t thought about that, and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t necessarily say it like that, but I will. I mean, I wouldn’t I didn’t say it exactly like that in a book, but I like that idea. And I think one of the things I discovered in my own desert is how much of a striver I am and how I can put that on God, meaning, that okay, God, I’m, I’m doing my part. I’m doing the work with now you need to respond in these ways. You need to show up. You need to show me healing. You need to, I need a sense of your presence. I need my kids to flourish. I need, you know, I need the, I sort of, and I talk in the book about the verse, be still and know that I am God, which is so widespread now, but it really, is probably better translated. Stop striving and know that I am God. And, I feel like part of what the desert does in us is that we can’t control it. We can’t control how long it’s going to last. We can’t control, we can’t kind of out of our own strength of will or gifts, make our, hurt hurry through it. We can’t hurry through it. And so, it is this invitation to stop striving and to trust God to, meet us in the actual place we’re in, in our actual lives, who we are today. yeah, I haven’t thought about it in relationship to the Protestant work ethic, so I will have to think more on that.

Yeah. You know, you mentioned our actual lives in real life. And it does seem to me that the, the importance of embodiment, you know, is basically kind of woven throughout your book, you know, of, of being present in your cell, present in your place, present to other people. And one of the things that, you know, I’ve sort of noticed is that even though our self-reported burnout has really gone through the roof, there’s been different studies showing that like, actually last year was an all time high in terms of, you know, employees reporting burnout. It’s not that we’re actually doing that much more, but we’re doing a lot less. That’s embodied. We’re sleeping less, we’re walking less, we’re reading physical books, yet less. We’re interacting with other people in person less. And, and we have of course, significantly increased our, our virtual interactions. Is there something about, you know, the embodiment that makes us more likely to develop resilience and perseverance?

That’s interesting. I think so. I think, there’s something about the material world that there are, there are. Rewards and enjoy, but also, friction. There’s also resistance. And, but I think that, living in that resistance and friction actually builds important muscles, that don’t happen with um online life. This is a very small example, not in the book, but my kids are used to ordering if we eat at a restaurant or, or we do takeout, they’re used to ordering online. and so when we recently went to a restaurant and they had to stand there and talk to the person, they were like, mom, can you do this for me? Can you talk to the person and tell them what I want? And these are teenagers, young teenagers. but I said, no, you have to talk to the human. You can do this. You can, you can talk. But they, they, and they’re certainly old enough to do it. And they did. And they did a great job. And they’re great kids. But, but it was that training that it’s just easier to push buttons and you never interact with someone that they actually had gotten out of the habit of, of talking to another person. I mean, part of this is we don’t eat out a lot, but of talking to another person and, and ordering. And so, but little interactions, little bits of embodiment like that, I think are, do build more emotional and, and spiritual resilience in us. I think, that they can be more difficult. You have to get on clothes, you have to leave the house. But you have to drive somewhere. But it does, I think the opposite of that. I think the opposite is true as well. I think if we are used to a world that, if we have enough privilege where we can kind of DoorDash food to our house or, order online in the grocery store or we, we get very used to things being efficient and we get very used to things being controllable. Yeah. And then you walk into this relationship with this untamable, unpredictable, wild God who will not be DoorDash and will not respond to our order. And, we, I think that we aren’t used to that. And so, some of what I think it means to build spiritual resilience is to, to find practices that actually see kind of friction in our lives, including our spiritual lives as things that are gifts as things that we, just like I said to my daughters, no, I’m not going to order for you. You, you can, you can do this. Yeah. That there is, some sense of God saying, no, you keep going, like, let me meet you in this place of friction.

I have a spiritual director during this time of, of kind of burnout in my life. And I would say I feel lost and, and she would say, well, maybe just be lost for a little while. And I would say I feel, I feel disoriented spiritually. And she would say, okay, like maybe just be disoriented for a while. And I hated that. It drove me nuts because I wanted her to say, here’s how you get out of it. Here’s the five steps. Here’s the thing you do. But what she was saying is that so much of our life is conditioned that if I can just I can just make this happen. I can just, I can, I can fix this, I can order this, I can buy this, I can DoorDash this. Right. And she was saying, no, no, no. Like, what is the invitation for you in this place of not knowing that much is happening spiritually? What is what’s the invitation in this fallow place? And, I think, I think there’s something really important there for us.

Yeah. Well, Tish, there’s so many more questions I’d love to ask you, but I also see all the questions kind of piling up, in the Q & A button. And if you’re one of the new, viewers, you cannot only ask a question in the Q&A feature, but you can also like a question. And that helps give us an idea of what some of the most popular questions are. So a question comes from Heather Bueller, who asks, how do you raise your kids, especially teens in the faith, when you feel so dry or you have your doubts so overwhelmingly that you’re not altogether positive, you believe the words you’re saying to them?

Oh yeah. Oh, that is such a good question. No one has asked me that. And that is a great question. Well, that is that’s interesting because I do think that I tend to give the doctrinal answers. I do tend to say like if my son says what, who is six years old, what happens when we die? I talk about the resurrection. but there have been times when I answer that and I’m like, do Is that true? and, and especially sometimes I think the, it’s easy for me to talk about things in kind of lofty theological terms, but when you have to explain it to a teenager or to a kid, a young, a young child, it strips it of some of its sophistication. And so I think you do, you are left with like, oh, do I. Is this right? Do I believe this? I think that I mean it if, if you truly, obviously come to a place where you are like, I do not think this is true. I am not saying that you should lie to your children about your beliefs. I do not think you should. but I talk, I have a, I have a chapter in the book on doubt, and it’s the first time I’ve written on doubt in a, in a book length, chapter. I’ve done short pieces, but I loved writing it.

It was one of my favorite chapters to write. And I do talk about that kind of faith. Waxing and waning should be expected and normal. So there are some times when your kids ask you something and you’re like, yeah, I really believe that. And there’s sometimes where you’re like, I believe this, but help my unbelief. I’m not sure I believe this. And I think, but I think that’s almost too much of a, of a to be constantly taking the temperature of how precisely how much precisely do, do I believe it’s 80% now. 70 now 30 now 90. You know, it’s, it’s almost too individualistic of an understanding, I think of the faith, Christian faith. I mean, one of the things that I love about saying the creeds is that we say, we believe, we believe in God the Father. So I’m stepping into this, this kind of solid place of belief with the saints throughout history, with the apostles and, maybe I believe that 100% sometimes, but maybe sometimes it’s less than that. But it doesn’t that that doesn’t actually change creed. There’s this still sense of this is what we believe together and what wherever I am on this moment to moment, day by day, this exists. This is like a room outside of me that I can choose to be in. Of course, at some point you can say, I don’t want to be in this room and you leave the faith altogether.

But I think if we are Christians and seeking to be faithful in that and, and truthful in that, it’s really normal for faith to wax and wane. And so, I do, I guess if with my, I’ll just say what I do in my own experience, I do you still answer? Kind of. This is what Christians believe. And, but then also with particularly with my older kids, I think that I will say we’re just kind of open about every, like our faith with them. So when my husband and I are both in ministry, we see beautiful. we see beautiful things. We see people loving each other. We see people forgiving each other, we see healing. And so we’ll mention that. But I also, I mean, they, I will also be honest about prayer being hard. And, my oldest now is old enough where she’s read part of the book. And so, they’re, I’m, we’re kind of, we’re sort of also honest about the struggles and there are doctrinal questions that I will tell them. I’m not sure. And there are even some doctrinal questions where their dad has one view and I have a slightly different view, and we will talk about why we have different views and what people have said in history and how the church has thought about this in different ways.

Mhm. Yeah. So a question from an anonymous attendee who asks. They say resilience is often marketed as a form of rugged individualism, the ability of a person to bounce back alone. But your work draws heavily on the communal habits of the early monks. How can we shift the cultural narrative of resilience from individual grit to collective anti-fragility?

Okay. Love this question. Such a good question. I think it’s the right question to ask. it’s also it gives me a chance to give like a brief reader’s guide to my book, because the first part of the book really does start with kind of this is stability. This is what it is. Here’s kind of how I think about that and practice that. But I get worried that if you just read through about chapter three in my book, what will come across is almost sort of a, there’s a way that could seem like stoicism. There’s a way that could seem like you just stay in it and like John Wayne or something. You just are impassive to pain in your life, to struggles in your life. And life is hard and you just get through it. And then I’m so which I strongly reject. I don’t think that’s Christian resilience. I don’t think that’s I don’t think that sheer sort of gutting it out or that rugged individualism. First of all, I don’t think that’s sustainable over time, but I also do not think it will make us more faithful. Like there is a way the prodigal son would be a good example of this, that we stay in, that we do our duty and our hearts are still resentful of our lives, resentful of our younger brother, far from God. And so there is a difference between Christian resilience mere kind of stoic perseverance.

And I make this pretty big turn in chapter four. And then five, six, seven, eight in my book, of saying, okay, if we’re going to talk about stability, how do we distinguish it from this kind of individual, grit that, that they’re describing? So if you’re going to read the first three chapters, you have to read the next several chapters or you’ll get a skewed view of what I’m trying to say. but I think one of the things that was interesting to me, I said that I wrote this book trying to figure out how to keep going in my own life and my own Christian, discipleship. And I didn’t sort of set out with an, I didn’t know what I was going to say before I wrote it, before I said it, before I edited it and wrestled with it. I talk in the book is it’s a kind of field notes for my own figuring out this experience and journey. And one of the things that struck me as I was writing, and certainly when I was editing, is how much community ends up becoming a major theme in the book. And I to the point where I would say that we can’t grow in the desert without community. That community is such a part of what building resilience in us is. I quote Curt Thompson in the book,

Curt is a regular here. Yes.

Curt is a psychiatrist for those who don’t know, and I interviewed him for the New York Times. And, he said we were talking about burnout and he sees it much more as a result of isolation and, lack of embodied community like you were saying. Cherie then as something like overwork, not that overwork can’t can of course contribute to that, but he sees isolation and lack of community as a real, cause for weariness and exhaustion and burnout. And so he, said, and I will never forget this. He said the, the human brain is made to do hard things for a long time, but it cannot, it is not made to do them alone, that we need others to be able to build resilience. We need deep emotional and vulnerable connection to others. I also talk in the book about, I think hope really, really changes our understanding of what resilience is, the Christian understanding of what resilience is from the sort of rugged individualism. I think, when you I was recently, This is very random on a panel about the theology of Westerns, the movie.

But like the movies, but that kind of individual, grit is often accompanied by, I think, a lot of nihilism. And the difference between that and Christian resilience is, is hope is the idea of a rescuer. But I really, really do not think we can sustain hope or, or carry hope on our own. I think hope has to be communally learned and communally carried. And so, I could say way more about that. Read the book if you want more. But I do think, I think we just simply cannot sustain, we cannot practice Christian resilience without community.

Yeah. Oh that’s great. So another anonymous attendee asked about one of your New York Times columns, they say. And one of your most cited columns, you argue that America has a, quote, scorn problem. The tendency to see those we disagree with not just as wrong but as contemptible, even subhuman. Mhm. What should we, as both individuals and as the church do to overcome this, given that some have will argue that the church itself has become quite polarized?

Yeah. I think individually, I think this has done on a really small scale, I think a thing, an idea that the church needs to really recover is the notion of personalism, which is a really important part of Catholic social teaching, but it’s essentially, I’m not an expert on personalism, but to sum up, it’s the importance of, of, of the sort of like it’s, it’s elevating persons over ideology and, over abstraction. And so, I think repair. Political repair, and repair of the scorn problem, which I think is part of political polarization is certainly to have better teaching on politics and better political theology. But I also think it really is people that disagree sitting together in a room and worshiping together. And, that’s hard. That means we need to make space in our churches for people that have disagreement. it was really interesting as a pastor to walk through, the weeks after Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the way that, that ricocheted, around our community and the way different people processed that. And there were there, there was some conflict, there was some difficult conversations in that, but there, there were two, men who have really different political understanding of the world that kind of, ended up sitting together at a table and having a tea together, talking privately and sharing their stories, sharing their stories of church hurt with each other, sharing where they came from. And by the end, they, they hugged and they were crying. And they said, I’m so grateful that I can worship with you. I’m so grateful that you’re my brother. I don’t want to paint a Pollyanna picture. Like every time you get two people sitting down together, this will always happen.

But I am saying, I don’t think we can repair this in the abstract. I think it really is the small repair of human beings seeing one another. what the church can do institutionally Is, a few things. I think there’s always a temptation for I mistrust churches that, when we preach, when people preach that the sinners are always outside of the church, that they’re always like in progressive churches, it would be like the real sin is voting Republican or, you know, not being for gun control in conservative churches. The real sin is those liberals out there trying to destroy democracy, you know, America and American values. I think that perhaps the most important part of even political formation in our churches is when we get on our knees together and we confess sin together. I want, I want preachers to preach as if the people in the room are the people that need to repent, not the people outside the room, you know, No., and then and that includes us. That includes the preachers, the leaders, and to leave space, ideological space in your church where people who truly are wrestling with the scriptures, who are, who are genuine Christians coming in good faith together can actually have different views on things. And, and, but that space has to be made by leadership, for people to be able to even have those conversations.

Yeah. You know, we’ll squeeze in one last clarifying question somewhat from Harish Patel, who asks, how does solitude in the practice of the of a cell fit with the gospel of grace and the kingdom of God invading and filling in our emptiness? Any thoughts?

Yeah. That’s interesting. I think a few things. Number one, this isn’t exactly what he asked, but I think this is getting at some of it. I have a hard time with the desert mothers and fathers sort of natively or naturally before I read them because it felt to me, they felt to me a little like, the theological word would be pelagian, like two works oriented.

One of the things that really struck me in reading them, there are certainly times where I feel like they are where I disagree with them on things like 100%. I do not think they are above critique.

I think you said they were very weird.

They’re super weird. But that’s, that’s a side you can be weird and not pelagian, but but I but they are very weird. but I think, what struck me in reading them is how much they talk about grace and talk about mercy. Um and they see um there, but they, they, they also feel that, part of grace is, is the ability or the invitation from God to participate in the, in the work God is doing. And so I really do not want to make any kind of distinction between like transformation and, and resilience, or something, because I think that, this, the gracious, salvation that God gives us, which is certainly a moment in time, but also every day of our lives and in our, in our growth and transformation and, and freeing us from sin and bringing us to repentance. that, that happens, over time. And, and so God does certainly. Fill our cell and fill that emptiness that right, mother desert mothers and fathers often talked about the cell as the furnace where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego encounter the angel of the Lord. This, that the, the cell is not just this place where we sort of like grimly endure. It’s a place where God shows up and we meet God. and so, grace absolutely transforms us. Grace absolutely fills us. But that, but the, we also hold this really long view of that transformation, transformation, taking a lifetime and being requiring seasons of, of real flourishing. And of course, there’s seasons of tragedy and loss and darkness, but there’s also a long middle. And, God is like God’s mercy and filling is at work in those seasons. But looks different and it feels different.

Well, Tish, the time has now come where I ask our guests to share a final thought before ending our time together. So that last word is yours.

Yeah. I had the privilege of getting to know Tim Keller towards the end of his life and, and getting to know him well. And, one of the things he said to me when he had cancer, and I was asking him what he wanted to do with his, the remainder of his time, as he said, we have, that we are living in a time of discouragement and he wanted to offer encouragement. And so I, want to tell you, I want to just highlight a story. There’s so many stories from, desert fathers and mothers in my book. It was hard to pick, but there’s one where, a man, is essentially told by an elder to weed a plot of land. And it had been, it says, neglected and turned into waste ground. It was full of weeds and brambles. So when the man went to weed this ground that was so covered in brambles, he was discouraged and said, how long will it take before I’ve uprooted and reclaimed all that? So he laid down and went to sleep for several days. And um. Then his father came and said, why have you not cleaned up this land? And um. And he said, I was so depressed by how much there was to do how many weeds and brambles that I could do nothing but lie down on the ground.

And his father said, child, just go over the surface of the plot every day and you will make some progress. So he did. And then the elder says, before long the whole plot was weeded. The same is true for you, brother. Work just a little bit without getting discouraged, and God, by his grace, will reestablish you. So I want to. Anyone who is weary or discouraged, anyone who feels like you. Look at the weeds and brambles in our culture and our politics and your own life and feel like this is too much. I just I want to go to sleep for several days. Know that, you the little tiny bit that you do and, matters and that you can take it up without discouragement, with encouragement, knowing that it’s not up to you. It’s not on your shoulders to weed this plot of land that is our life, but that it is God by his grace that reestablishes us, and that grace is enough and it is sufficient. And that grace calls us, gives us the invitation to participate without discouragement.

Thanks, Tish. That was beautiful.