The Habit

Carolyn Leiloglou is the author of the middle grade fantasy series The Restorationists. Book Two of that series, Between Flowers and Bones, has been recently released. In this episode, Carolyn and I talk about writing about family, balancing motherhood with creative pursuits, and the ways that interacting with visual art enriches writing.

Here's a video of Carolyn in San Antonio's McNay Art Museum, referenced in the episode.

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John Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of many books. His award-winning illustrations have also appeared on book jackets, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. The Society of Illustrators named John the Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024. He is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at Washington University in St. Louis. John’s new graphic novel is The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. 

In this episode, John and Jonathan Rogers talk about the nature of myth, the creative power of friendship, the beginning of the Inklings, and the sad end of the Inklings.

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Daniel Silliman is senior news editor for Christianity Today. He earned a doctorate in American studies from Heidelberg University in Germany and has taught US history and humanities at Heidelberg, the University of Notre Dame, Valparaiso University, and Milligan University. His new book is One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation. From the jacket copy: "Impious and amoral, petty and vindictive, Richard Nixon is not the typical protagonist of a religious biography. But spiritual drama is at the heart of this former president’s tragic story."

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In this back-to-school episode Jonathan Rogers speaks with Rachel Griffis and Rachel De Smith Roberts about their book, Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age. Dr. Griffis is a professor of English at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, and Dr. Roberts is an associate professor of English at North Greenville University in South Carolina. In this episode, they talk about “Deep Reading” as a corrective to the vices of Distraction, Hostility, and Consumerism. 

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Jared C. Wilson is an author of over twenty books and a popular speaker at churches and conferences around the world. He serves as Pastor for Preaching and the Director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri. He is also an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Author in Residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. His new book is The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship. In this episode, Jared and Jonathan Rogers talk about the multi-faceted calling of a writer, and the ways that writing a means of transformation for the writer as much as a means of communication to a reader. 

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As of last week, all three books of Jonathan Rogers's Wilderking Trilogy, 20th Anniversary Deluxe Hardback edition, have been released into the wild. The Bark of the Bog Owl released in June. And now The Secret of the Swamp King and The Way of the Wilderking are available wherever you buy books. These new editions have gorgeous new covers by Stephen Crotts and exceedingly swampy new interior illustrations by Joe Hox. Joe Hox is Jonathan's guest on this episode of The Habit Podcast.

Get the books here.

Get the audiobooks (read by the author) here.

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Besides being an award-winning teacher and professor of theology & ethics at Lipscomb University, Lee Camp hosts No Small Endeavor, a podcast that asks What does it mean to live a good life? What is true happiness? What are the habits, practices, and dispositions that facilitate human flourishing? Lee Camp explores these and similar questions with some of the most influential authors, scientists, artists, psychologists, philosophers, and theologians. In this episode, Dr. Camp and Jonathan Rogers talk about ethics, virtue theory, and writerly habits.

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Lanta Davis is a professor of humanities and literature in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. Her new book is Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation. In this episode, Dr. Davis and Jonathan Rogers talk about the perhaps counterintuitive truth that neglecting to engage our imagination makes us more susceptible to imaginative influences that we don’t choose. They also talk about the difference between an idol and an icon, and they talk about the role of weirdness in spiritual formation. They also talk about raccoons and unicorns.

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Joel Miller has been an editor, a publisher, and an author. He is currently working on a book on the history of the book. He also writes an excellent twice-a-week Substack newsletter called Miller’s Book Review. In this episode, Joel and Jonathan Rogers discuss Joel's journey toward publication—and how Joel gets so much reading and writing done while holding down a full-time job an raising a family.

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Dr. Shirley Mullen is President Emerita of Houghton College in New York State and the author of Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future. In this episode, Dr. Mullen and Jonathan Rogers discuss the idea that, in an era of such dangerous polarization, the “courageous middle” is not a place of bland averaging, moral cowardice, indecisiveness, or indifference, but a place where thoughtful people work with urgency to foster attentive listening–listening even to those with whom they disagree–in pursuit of what is true and good and beautiful.

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Dr. Junius Johnson is an independent scholar and teacher and a public intellectual who devotes his time to thinking and writing about whatever is noble and excellent, and how to bring those things to bear to nurture meaningful lives. You can find out more about his classes at JuniusJohnson.com. In this episode, Junius and Jonathan Rogers talk about receiving wonder and adding to the stock of the world’s wonders. And Junius asks, Who invented dragons?

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Karen Stiller writes about  the intersections between faith and the world, social issues, matters of justice and doing better. Her most recent book is Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life. In this episode, Karen and Jonathan Rogers talk about holiness as a matter of loving people well as opposed to telling them how they have fallen short–and what that holiness has to do with the writing life. They also talk about writing in the midst of grief.

Read Karen's essay, "Why Keep Writing in the Midst of Grief?"

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In this interview, recorded in front of a live audience at The Habit Summer Writers Weekend in June 2024, Doug McKelvey discusses the ups and downs of a muti-faceted writing career. Doug is the author of the Every Moment Holy books.

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Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred, a podcast about our deepest values, the stories that shape us, and how we can build empathy and understanding between people who are very different. She has a regular column for UnHerd and has appeared on BBC One, Radio 5Live, Radio 4, and The World Service. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, Prospect, The Times, CNN, The Guardian, and beyond. She is also a contributing editor at Comment magazine, a guest lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and former director and now senior fellow at Theos, the UK's leading religion and society think tank. Her new book is Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. 

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The 20th-Anniversary Deluxe Hardback Edition of The Bark of the Bog Owl is now available. It has a new cover by Stephen Crotts, new interior illustrations by Joe Hox, and bonus material (poems, songs, riddles) by Jonathan Rogers. To celebrate the Bog Owl's twentieth birthday, Jonathan reads an excerpt in this bonus episode. 

You can get your own copy of The Bark of the Bog Owl at the Rabbit Room store or wherever you buy books. The audiobook, narrated by the author, is available at Audible.com.

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In this episode of The Habit Podcast, Read Aloud Revival's Sarah MacKenzie sits in the host's chair to interview Jonathan Rogers about The Bark of the Bog Owl, 20th Anniversary Edition, which releases this week. 

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Wesley Vander Lugt  is a pastor, theologian, writer, teacher, nonprofit leader, and arts advocate with a passion for beauty, slowness, cultivation, and kinship. He currently works as the Acting Director of the Leighton Ford Center for Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness and is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte. He is also the Co-Founder of Kinship Plot, a community of learning and practice imagining and embodying resonant relationships of every kind. His new book is Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith that Breathes. In this episode, Wes and Jonathan Rogers discuss just how necessary beauty is.

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Julie Lane-Gay is a horticulturalist and a writer. Her work has appeared in a range of publications including Reader's Digest, Fine Gardening, Faith Today, Anglican Planet, and The Englewood Review of Books. She sometimes teaches courses at Regent College in Vancouver and edits the college's journal, CRUX. She also writes obituaries. Her new book is The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer. In this episode, Julie and Jonathan Rogers talk about finding our identity in stories and language that someone else has written.

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Weakness doesn’t feel like a gift. But author, podcaster, and songwriter Eric Schumacher believes that it is. His new book is The Good Gift of Weakness: God’s Strength Made Perfect in the Story of Redemption. In this episode, Eric and Jonathan Rogers talk about the gifts that follow when we come to terms with our weakness, what it means to be in a posture to receive rather than to strive, and the relief that comes from letting go of the need to control.

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Poet Rebecca Gomez is the author and also the illustrator of Mari in the Margins, a middle-grade novel in verse. Her editor, also a poet, is Rachel Donahue of Bandersnatch Books. For the first time on The Habit Podcast, in this episode Jonathan Rogers is in conversation with both the author and her editor. 

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Lore Ferguson Wilbert writes about spiritual formation, faith, culture, and theology in life. She is the proprietor of an excellent Substack called Sayable.  She has also been known to teach writing and do editorial work. Her new book is The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor. In this episode, Lore and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to really believe that death can’t help but give rise to life. We also talk about mycorrhizal fungi.

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As host of the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast and the Read-Aloud Revival Online Community, Sarah MacKenzie has brought untold joy to bookish families. Besides connecting families with other people’s books, Sarah has started writing and publishing her own picture books. Her latest is Because Barbara: Barbara Cooney Paints Her World. Illustrated by Eileen Ryan Ewen, this picture-book biography tells the story of one of America’s best-loved and most celebrated children’s book illustrators. Because Barbara is available for preorder. If you order by June 18, 2024, you can get free Bonuses, including a Family Book Club Guide, audiobook, videobook, and an invitation to a Zoom Book Party Picnic with the author & Illustrator!.

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Malcolm Guite is a poet-priest. Jeremy Begbie has called him "one of the most important Christian poets of our time." In this episode, Malcolm and Jonathan Rogers discuss imagination as a way of knowing.

This episode is brought to you by The Habit Membership, a community of writers who learn together and give each other a little more courage. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

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Besides being a bird enthusiast, Courtney Ellis is a pastor in Southern California, the author of several books, and the host of a podcast called The Thing with Feathers. Her new book is Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope through Grief. In this episode, Courtney and Jonathan Rogers talk about delight, presence, and cultivating attention. 

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Leif Enger writes novels about good people living through bad times. His new book, I Cheerfully Refuse, epitomizes what the Los Angeles Tines calls Enger's “musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling.” In this episode, Leif Enger and Jonathan Rogers talk about dystopian fiction; courage, literacy, and hope; and the bass guitar.

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Emily P. Freeman spends a lot of time thinking, talking, and writing about discernment and decision-making–doing the next right thing. She hosts The Next Right Thing podcast and created The Next Right Thing Guided Journal. Her latest book is How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. In this conversation, Emily and Jonathan Rogers talk about pointing and calling, the difference between discernment and decision-making, and the counterintuitive truth that, when it comes to discerning the next best step, remembering is more important than predicting.

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Faith Chang struggles with perfectionism. Nevertheless, she pushed through and finished a book–about perfectionism. It’s called Peace Over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You're Never Good Enough. Faith is the guest on this week’s episode of The Habit Podcast.

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Kenneth Padgett and Shay Gregorie are the founders of Wolfbane Books. They are also co-authors of the Story of God trilogy of picture books, beautifully illustrated by Aedan Peterson—The Story of God with Us, The Story of God the King, and The Story of God Our Savior. In this episode, Kenneth and Shay and Jonathan Rogers talk about visual storytelling, Biblical theology (as distinct from systematic theology), mountains, and alligators. 

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When pastor Brian Zahnd was walking five hundred miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago, he contemplated hundreds of crosses and crucifixes. He asked the question, "What does this mean? Why is the image of a man nailed to a tree the most commonly represented story-image in the world?" Those ruminations gave rise to his new book, The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross. In this episode, Brian Zahnd and Jonathan Rogers talk about theopoetics, the eternal recurrence of holy awe, and the role of aesthetics in the life of the church.

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Sarah Arthur has written and published a dozen books over the last twenty years or so, but her new book, Once a Queen, is her first foray into fiction. Once a Queen is a portal fantasy with clear connections to the books of E. Nesbit, The Secret Garden, and the Chronicles of Narnia. In this conversation, Sarah and Jonathan Rogers talk about literary influences (both conscious and unconscious), writers’ groups, and being “a spy for hope.”

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Andi Ashworth and Charlie Peacock live at the intersection of hospitality and creativity. This husband and wife duo founded Art House America, a unique artistic hub of rich hospitality, conversations of consequence, and imaginative creativity. Charlie is a Grammy-winning record producer. Andi is an author, a mentor, and a paragon of hospitality. Together they wrote a new book, Why Everything that Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much. In this conversation, Andi and Charlie speak with Jonathan Rogers about the idea of cultivating a life of the mind while being firmly planted in our flesh-and-bone, earthly existence. We talk about the ways that "Love can be the trustworthy basis of imaginative and creative good.” And we talk about Andi’s journaling practice, among other things.

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Amy F. Davis Abdallah is a professor, writer, speaker, and creator of rituals. Her latest book is Meaning in the Moment: How Rituals Help Us Move Through Joy, Pain, and Everything in Between. Starting with the foundation that rituals are a core, and underexplored, part of Christian practice, she draws from theology, psychology, and personal experiences in creating rituals for herself and others. In this episode, Amy and Jonathan Rogers talk about the difference between communicating meaning and communicating information. They talk about the ways we ritualize without knowing it. And Jonathan asks Amy whether she has rituals around her own writing life.

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Mike Cosper is the director of podcasting for Christianity Today, where he hosts The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and Cultivated: A Podcast About Faith and Work. He is the author of several books, most recently Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found.

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Allen Levi is a singer-songwriter and an exceedingly talented storyteller.  His memoir from a few years ago, The Last Sweet Mile, is a very moving account of his life with his brother–especially the last year before his brother died. Allen has also been a lawyer and a judge. And now he is a novelist. Theo of Golden, Allen Levi’s first novel, is the story of a mysterious and kind stranger who comes to a small town.

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Greg Wilbur is Founder and Dean of Students at New College Franklin. A composer and  church musician, he recently released a new album of hymns and psalms called Securely I Will Dwell: Songs for the Church. In this episode, Greg and Jonathan Rogers talk about collaboration, friendship, and writing for the local church.

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Grace Hamman is a writer and independent scholar of Middle English contemplative writing and poetry. She is also the host of the podcast, Old Books with Grace. Her first book is Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages. In this episode Dr. Hamman and Jonathan Rogers talk about the gift of surprise, the discipline of openness, and old books as a guard against chronological snobbery.

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Joy Clarkson is the author of Aggressively Happy and host of the podcast, Speaking with Joy. She is the books editor for Plough Quarterly and a research associate in theology and literature at King's College London. Joy completed her PhD in theology at the University of St Andrews, where she researched how art can be a resource of hope and consolation. Her new book is You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, And Prayer. In this episode, Joy and I talk about the ways that figurative language shapes the way we think about the world and ourselves, and Joy tries to convince Jonathan that the distinction between simile and metaphor is meaningful.

This episode is sponsored by Writing with Puddleglum, a six-week creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. Find out more and register at TheHabit.co/Puddleglum. Class starts Tuesday, January 30.

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Brian Brown is the founder and executive director of The Anselm Society, an organization dedicated to a renaissance of the Christian imagination. Along with Jane Scharl, Brian edited a collection of essays called Why We Create: Reflections on The Creator, The Creation, and Creating. In this episode, Brian and Jonathan Rogers talk about the Creation, bringing order out of disorder, and the distinctions between cultivating, naming, and subcreating.

This episode is sponsored by Writing with Puddleglum, a six-week creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. Find out more and register at TheHabit.co/Puddleglum. Class starts Tuesday, January 30.

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Emily Jensen is the co-founder and content director of Risen Motherhood. She is the host of the Risen Motherhood Podcast and an author. Her most recent book is He is Strong: Devotions for When You Feel Weak. In this episode, Emily and Jonathan Rogers talk about discerning the different kinds of weakness, understanding the limits of willpower, and taking action in faith when you can’t see the outcome.

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Songwriter Wendell Kimbrough has been writing, recording, and performing songs based on the Psalms for the last few years. His most recent record is called You Belong. In this episode, Wendell and Jonathan Rogers talk about loneliness, perfectionism, feeling like an outsider, learning to belong–and how one writes songs that sound like the Psalms while also sounding like the Gulf Coast.

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In this replay of an episode from 2022, Jonathan Rogers talks with Justin Whitmel Earley about the formation of better habits. Justin is the author of The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose in an Age of Distraction, among other books.

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Garrett Taylor is the art director for the Wingfeather Saga television series. The new Art of Wingfeather book features beautiful work from Garrett and his teams. In this episode, Garrett and Jonathan Rogers discuss "truth of materials" and why the Wingfeather team chose not to use CGI to make their visual world as realistic as possible.

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In 2016, Kevan Chandler and a few of his friends took a trip across Europe. Kevan’s friends carried him—literally. Kevan has spinal muscular atrophy, type 2, a disease that renders him unable to walk. But he left his wheelchair behind, and his friends carried him in a specially designed backpack, giving him access to many more places than a wheelchair could go. Kevan has told the story of that remarkable trip in a memoir called We Carry Kevan, and now in a picture book with the same title. 

Besides being a writer and world traveler, Kevan Chandler heads up an organization called We Carry Kevan, which fosters a culture of creative accessibility by collaborating with families with disabilities around the world–sharing Kevan’s story to encourage and inspire, distributing specially designed carrier backpacks, and having ongoing conversations about friendship and new ideas for customized access.

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Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest and the writer of several books. Until recently she had a column in the New York Times. She has also had a column in Christianity Today. Her new book is Advent: The Season of Hope. It’s part of the Fullness of Time series–books about each season of the liturgical calendar, edited by Esau McCaulley. In this episode, Tish and Jonathan Rogers talk about waiting, and making Christmas weird again.

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Mitali Perkins has always thought of herself as an outsider writing for outsiders. And yet she has a remarkable gift for inviting people in. She has two new books out: Hope in the Valley is a middle-grade novel. Holy Night and Little Star is a picture book for Christmas.

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Illustrator Joe Sutphin has been a fixture around the Rabbit Room for many years. Highlights of his long career include illustrating The Wingfeather Saga and Little Pilgrim’s Progress. His newest book, however, is his most ambitious yet. It’s an almost 400-page graphic novel version of Richard Adams’s classic Watership Down.

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Amber and Seth Haines have each written and published books of their own, but now this married couple have written a book together—The Deep Down Things: Practices for Growing Hope in Times of Despair. In this episode, Amber and Seth Haines talk with Jonathan Rogers about Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing in partnership, marriage, and recognition, among other things.

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Andrew Wilson is Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London, and has degrees in history and theology from Cambridge (MA) and King’s College London (PhD). He is a columnist for Christianity Today, and has written several books. The most recent is Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Historian Mark Noll wrote, “Andrew Wilson’s book is extraordinary in every way: extraordinary in the breadth of research; extraordinary in the multitude of world-significant events that Wilson identifies for 1776; extraordinary in the depth of his insight on what those events meant (and continue to mean); extraordinary in the verve with which he makes his arguments; and, not least, extraordinary in the persuasive Christian framework in which he sets the book. Remaking the World is a triumph of both creative historical analysis and winsome Christian interpretation.”

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Amy Baik Lee has written that in every place her life has taken her, "there have been hints of beauty and great knocks of mercy that have called to me from beyond my surroundings, always speaking of a King and Friend and Father whose presence is truly Home.” That sense of longing, those clues that maybe we were made for a different world, make their way out in every thing Amy writes, and especially in her new book, This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today. In this episode, Amy and Jonathan Rogers talk about homeward longing, the idea of Sehnsucht, and the importance of writing in community.

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In 2001, Henry Louis Gates announced the discovery of an unpublished novel called The Bondswoman’s Narrative, written in the 1850s by an enslaved woman named Hannah Crafts. If Gates had the authorship right, it would be the oldest known novel by an African-American woman. But many people doubted the book’s authorship. In 2013, however, Gregg Hecimovich produced evidence that The Bondswoman’s Narrative was indeed written by a black woman in the1850s. Hannah Crafts, he demonstrated, was the pen name of Hannah Bonds, who escaped from slavery in North Carolina. Dr. Hecimovich’s new book is The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondswoman’s Narrative. It’s a biography of Hannah Bonds. It’s also a detective story, telling how Gregg Hecimovich and many others uncovered the fascinating true story behind Hannah Bonds’s fictional story.

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Dr. Tiffany Eberle Kriner is Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. She is also a farmer. Her new collection of essays is In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm. In it, Dr. Kriner connects culture, ecology, faith, and literature, and invites readers to cultivate fruitful conversations between literature and the environments in which they live.

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Emma Fox is the author of The Carver and the Queen, an historical fantasy novel based on the folklore of Siberia. In this episode, Emma talks with Jonathan Rogers about piano lessons, teaching and mentoring young writers, and how she got interested in Slavic folklore. 

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Philip Yancey has written and published more than 25 books. He is known for his honesty, his willingness to wade into difficult questions–and, more to the point, his unwillingness to give easy answers to those difficult questions. In his latest book, published by Rabbit Room Press, Philip Yancey engages the seventeenth-century poet and preacher, John Donne. Undone is Philip Yancey’s modern rendering of John Donne’s Devotions, a collection of prose meditations that Donne wrote on his sickbed in 1623. Philip Yancey makes Donne’s gorgeous but often convoluted prose more accessible to 21st century readers.

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Diana Glyer teaches in the honors college at Azusa Pacific University. Her writing and research focus on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the other Inklings. Her most recent book is The Major and the Missionary. Dr. Glyer edited this collection of letters between Warren Lewis, the brother of C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Blanche Biggs, a medical missionary in Papua New Guinea. Their conversation spans faith, literature, fear, doubt, tragedy, sickness, health, friendship, and life & death itself. 

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Carolyn Leiloglou’s new middle-grade novel is Beneath the Swirling Sky: Book 1 of the Restorationists Trilogy. It’s a book about art, creativity, and reclaiming the creative energy that comes so naturally to small children. It’s also about a family of people who can go into old paintings and walk around in them. Like her main character Vincent, Carolyn is the granddaughter of art collectors and the daughter of an art teacher. She is also the mother of four wildly creative children.

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Dr. Jennifer L. Holberg is professor and chair of the English department at Calvin University and codirector of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, the home of the Festival of Faith and Writing, which will be happening live and in person next April, for the first time since 2018. Her new book is Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith. In this episode, Dr. Holberg and Jonathan Rogers talk about the stories, true and false, that we believe ourselves to be living in–and how we might tell better stories for ourselves and others.

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Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, a speaker, and the author of several books–most recently, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. In this episode, Curt and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to be hospitable to your own suffering, engaging suffering as the way of redemption, and the role of storytelling in mental and spiritual health.

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Harrison Scott Key's new memoir is How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. It’s the story of how infidelity tore his marriage apart, and how he and his wife Lauren patched it back together. It is hilarious, and it’s wise, and it’s exceedingly hopeful. To quote the jacket copy, “How to stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy.”

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In this, the final episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership tell stories about NEW hometowns. Hometowns change, and for a little while, at least, you can find yourself a stranger in your own hometown. 

• Loren Warnemuende: Michigan 
• Rachel Donahue: Spain
• Desi Ana Sartini: Southeast Asia
• Holly Schurter: Illinois

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Karen Swallow Prior is one of the leading evangelical writers and commentators our time. Her new book is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. In this episode, Dr. Prior and I talk about the role of imagination in the making of meaning, and we talk about what happens when we start to examine the unexamined metaphors that make it possible for us to make sense of the world while also limiting our possibilities for making sense of the world.

Subscribe to Dr. Prior's new Substack newsletter.

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In this, the sixth episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership take us to all four points of the compass. Sara Dredge takes us north to Ontario, Canada. Sarah Bannerman, Lindsay Kyle, and  Monica Olsen take us south to Mississippi and Louisiana. Laura Love goes east to China. And Shannon Stephens takes us west–or, in any case, to the West Virginia of his childhood.

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Russell Moore is Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today. His new book is Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. He invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step into an uncertain future, letting go of the kind of culture-warring, politicized Christianity that has led us to this moment of reckoning. In Losing Our Religion, Dr. Moore shows how we might steer clear of both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church.

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Summer Short’s new book is The Legend of Greyhallow. Kirkus Reviews called it “A delightful, engaging otherworldly adventure sure to charm. This fun read artfully combines our reality with Greyhallow's...fans of The Lord of the Rings and portal fantasies will find much to enjoy.”

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This week’s episode, the fifth in the Hometown Stories series, takes us to Texas. We’ll blow up a gas station in the Panhandle. We’ll check out some tumbleweeds in West Texas. We’ll pop over to Bryan Texas, to wonder how and why Bryan made somebody’s best-of list, and why a big-city reporter would want to deny them their moment of glory. And finally, we’ll go squirrel hunting in tiny Bluff Dale Texas. Featuring stories from the late Thomas McKenzie, Colleen Rudolph, Christie Purifoy, and David Graves.

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In honor of the Fourth of July, this episode of The Habit Podcast continues the Hometown Stories summer series with five reminiscences of small-town America by writers from The Habit Membership. Prepare for a gauzy, nostalgic look at the kind of Americana that makes you want to eat watermelon and listen to music by John Philip Sousza. Expect parades, fireworks, corn on the cob, pioneers on the Western Plains, and an outdoor concert involving Hank Williams, Junior.

Featuring stories from Amanda Duvall, Carrie Givens, Micah Hawkinson, Megan Cozzens Huwa, and Chelsea Barnwell.

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Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, he’s the author of The Wingfeather Saga as well as two nonfiction books, Adorning the Dark and The God of the Garden. He’s the executive producer of the Wingfeather television series. He’s the founder and president of The Rabbit Room. He’s a sought-after speaker. In this episode, recorded in front of a live audience at The Habit Writers' Weekend, Andrew and Jonathan Rogers talked about how Andrew juggles the roles of musician, writer, and filmmaker, and how those roles influence one another. They talked about sharing art out of love for the audience instead of love of self. They talked about the importance of finding–or, perhaps, making–creative community. And they talked about gardening.

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Hometowns are full of fathers and mothers. In this episode, Andrew Peterson and four writers from The Habit Membership share stories involving their fathers and mothers.

• Andrew Peterson on Lake Butler, Florida
• Gina Gallagher on Morton, Pennsylvania
• Kori Frazier Morgan on Kent, Ohio
• Katie Rizzo on Aspen, Colorado
• Judith Millar on Fivemiletown, Northern Ireland and Amarillo, Texas

Find out more about The Habit Membership at TheHabit.co

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In this episode the Hometown Stories series continues with a trip to California. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, California is large. It contains multitudes. Whatever you envision when you think of California, you can be sure the opposite is also true. This tour of the Golden State is brought to you by four writers from The Habit Membership—Gypsy Martin, Jaclyn Hoselton, Kendra Britez, and Reagan Dregge, all of whom grew up in California but found themselves elsewhere as adults. 

There's room for you in The Habit Membership. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

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This episode kicks off the "Hometown Stories" summer series. As the name suggests, this  series features stories from writers' hometowns. In this episode:

• Jonathan Rogers on Warner Robins, Georgia
• Anna Eastland on New Denver, British Columbia
• Jana Shirk on the Finger Lakes region of New York
• Elizabeth Harwell on Murray, Kentucky

This episode features writers from The Habit Membership.

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For nearly twenty years, Ben Shive has been producing and collaborating with musicians including (but not limited to) JJ Heller, Colony House, Ellie Holcombe, Dave Barnes, The Gray Havens, Andrew Peterson, Melanie Penn, Randall Goodgame, Sandra McCracken, Jill Phillips, and Keith and Kristyn Getty. He recently signed on as a writer for Getty Music. Ben sat down to talk with Jonathan Rogers about hymn-writing and the  benefits and frustrations of limits.

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K. B. Hoyle is a writer of many genres and talents. She’s the author of the teen fantasy series, The Gateway Chronicles, and the adult dystopian series, The Breeder Cycle. She has also done fairytale retelling and science-fiction fantasy. She’s a columnist and staff writer at Christ and Pop Culture, and she is the cofounder, CEO, and acquisitions editor of Owl's Nest Publishers, an independent press specializing in books for adolescents. In this episode, KB (Karin) Hoyle and Jonathan Rogers talk about the ways our cultural narratives act on us individually and in society as a whole. And we talk about stories that woo rather than argue.

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Arthur Boers’s new memoir is Shattered: A Son Picks up the Pieces of His Father’s Rage. In it he reflects on coming of age in an immigrant family scarred by violence. In this episode, Arthur Boers and Jonathan Rogers talk about breaking family codes of silence, living with ambiguity while still taking a clear moral position, and beach glass.

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Claude Atcho is a pastor in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just. As Josh Larsen has said, this work of Christian literary criticism is written "with the passion of a book lover and the urgency of a preacher." In this episode, Claude Atcho and Jonathan Rogers visit some of the great works of twentieth century Black literature. They talk about a kind of theological reading that goes well beyond empathy. They also discuss what it means to acknowledge the image of God in another person—among other things.

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Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is associate professor of art and art history at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Her new book is Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning From Art. In this episode, Dr. Weichbrodt and Jonathan Rogers talk about embodied vision, loving vision, and transforming vision, as well as the importance of paying attention to what you see before making claims about what you think.

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Alan Noble is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University. He’s co-founder and editor in chief of Christ and Pop Culture, and an advisor for the AND campaign. He has written for The Atlantic, Vox, BuzzFeed, The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, and First Things. His new book is On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living. It’s a book about mental suffering, whether diagnosed, undiagnosed, or undiagnosable. 

This episode is brought to you by Writing with Flannery O'Connor, a six-week online creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. The class starts April 25. Find out more at TheHabit.co/Flannery.

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Ashlee Gadd is the founder of Coffee + Crumbs, a website, podcast, and newsletter devoted to encouraging mothers through storytelling. Her new book is Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood. In this episode, Ashlee and Jonathan Rogers talk about the ways that creativity and motherhood, instead of being opposing forces, can actually complement one another. They talk about the need for mothers to know that they have permission to do creative work. And they talk about the creativity of children.

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W. David O. Taylor is Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of several books. His most recent book is A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship.

 In addition to a range of scholarly essays, he has written for The Washington Post, Image Journal, Religion News Service, Theology Today, and Books & Culture, among other publications. An Anglican priest, he has lectured widely on the arts, all over the world. In 2016 he produced a short film on the psalms with Bono and Eugene Peterson.

In this episode, David and Jonathan Rogers talk about the ways that the arts invite us to inhabit our bodies and, through them, to get a grasp of the world. We talk about what happens when we start to take scriptural and theological  language of the five senses  literally as well as metaphorically. And David tells us what the words entrainment and interactional synchrony mean.

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Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University. She is the author of many books, the most recent of which is Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice. In this episode, Dr. Hooten Wilson and Jonathan Rogers talk about the difference between using a book and enjoying a book; they discuss a trinitarian vision of reading; they discuss literal, figurative, moral, and anagogical meanings of a text. Also, they talk about Julian of Norwich. 

The Habit Podcast is brought to you by The Habit Membership. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

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Drew.Jackson is a poet and pastor. His latest collection is Touch the Earth: Poems on The Way. His work has appeared in Oneing, Made for Pax, The Journal from the Centre for Public Christianity, Fathom Magazine, and other publications. In this episode, Drew Jackson speaks with Jonathan Rogers about shared meals, hospitality, abundance, and the tension in his poetry between receptivity and gratitude on the one hand, and prophetic demand on the other hand.

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Besides being an author, Daniel Nayeri is a publisher, a pastry chef, and a raconteur. His book Everything Sad Is Untrue (a True Story), won many awards, and with good reason. His new book is The Many Assassinations of Samir, The Seller of Dreams.

The Habit Podcast is sponsored by The Habit Membership. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

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Recorded before a live audience at The Habit Writer's Retreat, this episode features songwriter and poet Katy Bowser Hutson. Katy and Jonathan Rogers discuss play and creativity, and play as a posture toward reality, 

The Habit Podcast is sponsored by The Habit Membership for writers. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

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Faitth Brooks is a writer, speaker, social worker, activist, and co-host of the Melanated Faith podcast. She has served as the director of programs and innovation for Be the Bridge and as director of women's empowerment for Legacy Collective. In all her work, Faitth Brooks is crafting a communal space where Black sisters can explore rest, tenderness, and softness. Her new book is Remember Me Now: A Journey Back To Myself And A Love Letter To Black Women. In this episode, she joins Jonathan Rogers to talk about code-switching, making the reader feel seen, and the relationship between peace-making, peace-keeping, and disruption.

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Jason Baxter teaches Great Books at Notre Dame University. His most recent book is The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. Just as Lewis reclaimed the medievals' enchanted view of reality, Dr. Baxter reclaims Lewis's vision for our generation. 

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Leslie Bustard and her husband Ned are the driving force behind Square Halo Books and the Square Halo Conference. Leslie’s new poetry collection, her first, is called The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living. 

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Michael Lamb is an associate professor of interdisciplinary humanities at Wake Forest University, where he is also the FM Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, and the executive director of of the Program for Leadership and Character. He is the author of A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought. On this week's episode he speaks with Jonathan Rogers about the ways that hope relates to persuasion, among other things.

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Andrea Yenne is the "Momerator" and driving force behind the Student Edition of The Habit Membership—an incredibly happy and productive fellowship of teenage writers who give each other a little more courage. In this episode, Andrea speaks with Jonathan Rogers about the things she has learned from her experience as the leader of this glad band of writers.

The upcoming online class, Writing Through the Wardrobe, is the entry point for The Habit Membership, Student Edition. Register for the class (student cohort or adult cohort) at TheHabit.co/Wardrobe.

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Carlos Whittaker is committed to creating spaces–online and in person–where people are safe to engage in conversation about the topics that matter most but are often avoided. He’s a speaker, he’s the host of the podcast “Human Hope with Carlos Whittaker,” and he is the  cultivator and nurturer of a huge and engaged instagram community he calls his instafamilia. He has just released a book called How to Human: Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects Us. In this episode, Carlos and Jonathan Rogers talk about courage and creativity, seeing what's in front of you, and Carlos's commitment to "walk with people, not stand on issues."

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Edmund Spenser's 1590 epic poem, The Faerie Queene, is one of the monumental works of English literature. But it doesn't get read much any more. Rebecca Reynolds is doing something about it. She has rendered Spenser's 36,000 lines of very difficult poetry into much more accessible prose. Artist Justin Gerard has painted beautiful illustrations. The books start coming out later this year, but you can get involved now by contributing to the  Kickstarter campaign.

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Chris Nye is a pastor and an academic. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and other publications. He is the author of three books, most recently A Captive Mind: Christianity, Ideologies, and Staying Sane in a World Gone Mad. In this episode, Chris and Jonathan Rogers talk about ideological captivity, the writer’s temptation to confirm the reader’s biases, and the ways we can be consumed by the content we consume.

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Jen Pollock Michel's latest book is In Good Time: 8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace. As we look ahead to a new year, with all its goals and resolutions, Jen’s thoughts on productivity, fruitfulness, and time are especially helpful.

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Loren Warnemuende is the author of Exile, Book 1 of the Daughter of Arden trilogy. She started writing Exile in 1995. But life intervened, and the story languished for two decades and more. That delay, as it turned out, made it possible for Loren to write a better book. Anyone who has faced writing roadblocks will find Loren's story encouraging.

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Dawn E. Morrow writes poems for people who think they don't write poetry. Her debut collection is The Habit of Hope.

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Drew Bratcher is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in Oxford American, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review, Nowhere Magazine, Garden & Gun, and Image Journal. His debut book is Bub: Essays from North of Nashville. It combines memoir and arts criticism—particularly country music criticism. In this episode, Drew Bratcher and Jonathan Rogers talk about oral storytelling, jam sessions, and MFA programs, among other topics.

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Rachel Marie Kang is the author of Let There Be Art: The Pleasure and Purpose of Unleashing the Creativity Within You. In this episode, Rachel and Jonathan Rogers discuss creative collisions, finding balance between art-making and other life-responsibilities, and creating right where you are.

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Sean Dietrich is a blogger, a storyteller, a musician, a novelist, a memoirist, and a columnist. On his blog, Sean of the South, he posts a new story every day about the people and places of the American South. His new book is You Are My Sunshine: A Story of Love, Promises, and a Really Long Bike Ride.

In this episode, Sean and Jonathan Rogers talk about paying attention, talking to strangers, and the unconventional path that took Sean to his work as a writer.

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Andrew Roycroft is a poet and pastor in Northern Ireland. His new collection, 33, consists of 33 poems, each 33 words long, meditating on the life and words of Jesus from the Gospel of John—plus 33 essays about the 33 poems. In this episode, Andrew and Jonathan Rogers talk about poetry's power to distill meaning, the poetic implications of John's idea of Logos made flesh, and Seamus Heaney.

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Audrey Elledge and Elizabeth Moore started writing liturgies and prayers for their local church in New York City as a way of helping their friends and co-congregants deal with the fear and isolation of the COVID-19 lockdowns in their city. Those liturgies grew to become their new book, Liturgies for Hope: Sixty Prayers for the Highs, the Lows, and Everything in Between. In this episode, Audrey and Elizabeth talk with Jonathan Rogers about the connections between poetry, prayer, and liturgy, and the connections between creative work, friendship, and community.

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MaryAnn McKibben Dana is a writer, a free-range pastor, a speaker, and a leadership coach. Her most recent book is Hope: A User's Manual. MaryAnn embarked on this book as a way of writing herself back to hope after a grueling few years of life and world events. In this episode, MaryAnn and Jonathan talk about hope that is not predictive, the difference between hope and optimism, and the ways that hope orients us toward the good, not necessarily toward success.

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James K.A. Smith is a philosopher and a professor at Calvin University. He is also the editor in chief of Image, a quarterly journal at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery.His work has been especially formative for me. His new book is How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now. In this episode, Jamie Smith and I talk about Ecclesiastes, no-when-ness, and celebrating the truth that we are “thrown” into the world.

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Journalist Bonnie Kristian writes opinion pieces on foreign policy, religion, electoral politics, and more. Her column, "The Lesser Kingdom," appears in print and online at Christianity Today. She is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank, and her work has been published at outlets including The New York Times, The Week, USA Today, CNN, Politico, Reason, and The Daily Beast.  Her new book is Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community. She joined me to talk about epistemology, virtue, intellectual honesty, and the ways the internet has broken our brains.

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Ron Block is the banjo player for Alison Krauss & Union Station and the author of Abiding Dependence: Moment by Moment in the Love of God. In this episode, Ron and Jonathan Rogers discuss finding one's true identity, repentance without negative self-talk, and getting free of the anxiety and fear that eat up processing power for a writer or artist.

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Katelyn Beaty is the author of Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called the book "a must-read for anyone invested in the fate of evangelicalism." In this episode, Katelyn and Jonathan Rogers talk about the difference between fame and celebrity, the need to challenge (and not mimic) celebrity culture, and the importance of embodied community in an ever more digitized world. 

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David Zahl is the founder and director of Mockingbird Ministries, editor-in-chief of the Mockingbird website, and co-host of The Mockingcast. His new book is Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself). He writes, "Low anthropology keeps the avenues of communication open. It provides a bulwark against burnout. It has led to a kinder view of myself and a fount of curiosity, courtesy, honesty, humor, compassion, connection, and love." 

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Melanie Penn is a singer-songwriter with a background in musical theater. Through the pandemic, she produced and released twenty pop singles. Those singles have been bundled into two albums: More Alive, Volumes 1 and 2.

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Joshua Stamper is a composer and collaborator on projects that cross genres and disciplines, from jazz, classical, and avant-garde music to film, dance, visual art, and poetry. In this episode, Joshua Stamper and Jonathan Rogers discuss discord and dissonance, complexity and contingency, and paying attention to the music that is all around us.

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Doug Powell is a musician, songwriter, designer, coder, Christian apologist, amateur magician, and now a fiction writer. He recently published Among the Ashes, the second in his Graham Eliot series of biblical archeological thrillers.

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Sarah Mackenzie is the host of Read-Aloud Revival, a podcast, website, and membership that helps parents nurture warm family relationships and book-loving children through reading aloud. Her new book, is itself intended to be read aloud. Sarah recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for her picture book A Little More Beautiful, which was illustrated by Breezy Brookshire.

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Over the last few years, Lore Ferguson Wilbert has been moving toward a more contemplative and expansive faith. She has learned to be more curious, living into questions as a way of being present with God, rather than seizing too quickly on answers that may not be as helpful–or true–as they first appear. That trajectory gives shape to her new book, A Curious Faith.

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Julian R. Vaca is the author of The Memory Index, a novel set in a world where a disease has ravaged human memories, and people depend on artificial recall.

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Richard Gibson and Jim Beitler are English professors at Wheaton College. In 2020 they published a book together called Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue through Words, in which they explore the ways that writing can be a spiritual discipline and a means of loving God and loving our neighbors. 

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Glen Scrivener is the Director of Speak Life, a UK-based organization that shares the love of Jesus through creative communication. He is a speaker, a producer of online content, and the author of several books. His latest book is The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. In it, Glen makes the case that Western culture isn't as post-Christian as we may have thought.

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Dave Connis has written young adult novels in the past—Suggested Reading and The Temptation of Adam. But his most recent books are icture books that explore the connections between human creativity and the creativity of the God in whose image we are made. The Inventions of God (and Eva) came out in 2021. The Stories of God (and Kiki) came out earlier this year.

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Mary McCampbell is Associate Professor of Humanities at Lee University in Tennessee. She is also the author of Imagining our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy. In order to truly love and welcome others, she argues, we need to exercise our imaginations, to see our neighbors more as God sees them than as confined by our own inadequate and ungracious labels. 

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Nancy Guthrie is a Bible teacher and speaker and the author of twenty-something books. Her most recent book is Blessed: Experiencing the Promises of the Book of Relevation.

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Singer-songwriter Allen Levi lost his brother and best friend Gary ten years ago this summer. He memorializes his brother's life—and especially the year he was his brother's full-time caretaker—in The Last Sweet Mile, recently re-released by Rabbit Room Press. In this episode, Allen and Jonathan Rogers discuss the impossible challenge of putting words to the things that matter most, and the reasons for trying anyway.

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Helena Sorensen is an author, speaker, and writing coach. This episode was recorded live at the first Habit Writers' Retreat at Nashville's North Wind Manor. She speaks with Jonathan Rogers about the particular challenges faced by women (especially mothers) who are struggling to find the permission they need to write.

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Pastor Scott Sauls is the author of six books, most recently Beautiful People Don't Just Happen: How God Redeems Regret, Hurt, and Fear in the Making of Better People. In this episode, Scott speaks with his old friend Jonathan Rogers about the beauty that can grow out of past hurts.

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Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School. He teaches systematic theology and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. He is a senior member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an affiliated lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge.

Along with David O. Taylor and Daniel Train, Professor Begbie co-edited the recently-released collection of essays, The Art of New Creation, in which artists, theologians, and scholars explore the ways in which the biblical promise of new creation informs the work of artists of all kinds.

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Robyn Wall is the author of the picture books My First Book of Beards and My First Book of Tattoos (Random House Kids), as well as a story in The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad. In this episode, she speaks with Jonathan Rogers about perfectionism, baby steps, and watercolor lessons.

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Flo Paris Oakes and Katy Bowser Hutson have been longtime songwriting collaborators through the Rain for Roots collective, which makes singable scripture songs for kids and grownups alike. Both children’s ministry directors, they think a lot and very deeply about the spiritual formation of children. In this episode, Flo and Katy discuss their most recent project, Little Prayers for Ordinary Days, a book of prayers for children that they wrote  with Tish Harrison Warren.

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Matthew Clark is a singer-songwriter, podcaster, and essayist. He’s exceedingly thoughtful and well-read, and all that thinking and well-reading makes its way into everything he makes–and every conversation. His most recent project is an album called Only the Lover Sings, and a companion book of the same title–a compilation of essays by various writers inspired by the songs on the album.

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Esau McCaulley is a Bible scholar and Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College. He’s a contributing writer at Christianity Today, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. His book Reading While Black won the 2021 Christianity Today Book Award for the category “Beautiful Orthodoxy.” His most recent book is a picture book called Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit.

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Singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken released her first book in 2021. Send Out Your Light: The Illuminating Power of Scripture and Song is a memoir of a creative life and a meditation on the creative process.

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The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad is a collection of "newly discovered" tales of the Arthurian knight's adventures in the Wild Forest. In this episode of The Habit Podcast, husband-and-wife editorial dream team Pete Peterson and Jennifer Trafton discuss their work in bringing this work to life.

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Leslie Bustard is a writer, a teacher, a conference organizer, a publisher, and a museum-goer, among other things. She recruited forty writers to contribute essays to Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for your Children, a book she curated and edited with her daughter Carey Bustard and editor Thea Rosenburg.

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Mitali Perkins has been a nominee for the National Book Award. She was born in India, but has lived all over the world. So it comes as no surprise that her books for young readers all explore the crossing of borders of one kind or another. Her newest book, Bare Tree and Little Wind, is a picture book that tells the story of Holy Week. In 2021, she published her first nonfiction book for adults, Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh our Tired Souls.

In this episode, Mitali and Jonathan Rogers discuss the benefits of being an outsider, the transmission of morality and hope, and literary "aunties and uncles."

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Tom Douglas is a country songwriting legend and a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He recently released a movie—a one-man show called Love, Tom: A Letter of Hope to a Desperate World, streaming on Paramount Plus. It's a beautiful, wise, and honest meditation on the creative process. In this episode, Tom Douglas and Jonathan Rogers talk about harnessing hurt and rejecting idolatry in the creative process, and steering a middle course between apathy and anxiety.

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Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She has written books about Flannery O’Connor, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Walker Percy, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Her most recent book is The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints. In this episode, Dr. Wilson and Jonathan Rogers talk about the ways that reading great works of literature cultivates an imagination that moves us toward holiness.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with author and pastor Russ Ramsey.

Russ is a pastor in the Nashville area, a masterful storyteller, and Jonathan’s go-to resource for all art-related questions. His love of art and story come together in his new book, Rembrandt Is In the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith. It’s an art history book, but more importantly, it’s a book about the beauty that comes out of stories of human brokenness. Beauty matters; nobody makes that case better than Russ Ramsey.

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Caroline Cobb is a singer-songwriter from Texas. In 2011, she decided to write a song for every book of the Bible in one year. That ambitious goal set her on a path that she’s still on, more than ten years later. She has said, “That year, I discovered that I love writing songs from the Bible: delving into a passage, putting myself in each character’s shoes, trying to understand how this one small story connects with the whole, then coming up with a way to communicate that story through song.” That project has led to four studio albums so far: The Blood and the Breath, A Home and a Hunger, A Seed, a Sunrise, and, most recently, A King and His Kindness.

In this episode, Caroline speaks with Jonathan Rogers about producing without striving, the upside-down-ness of the Gospel, and the reasons she decided to take a sabbatical.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, we invite you to listen in on a conversation between poet Dana Gioia, former Poet Laureate of California and former head of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Cherie Harder, President of The Trinity Forum. They discuss the ways that poetry works as a kind of enchantment, creating a state of heightened consciousness and heightened receptivity, and Dana Gioia makes the case that beauty is a way of knowing the world as it really is. He also reads a couple of poems. This interview was recorded in 2020, relatively early in the pandemic, as part of the Trinity Forum’s Online Conversations series.

If you don’t already know about the Trinity Forum, we hope you’ll seek them out. They’ve been good friends to the Rabbit Room, and we love the work they do to contribute to the renewal of society by cultivating and promoting the best of Christian thought, and helping leaders to think, work, and lead wisely and well.

Find them at TTF.org & tune into their Lenten podcast series by searching “Trinity Forum Conversations” wherever you get your podcasts.

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Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist and founder of Being Known, an organization that develops resources for hope and healing at the intersection of neuroscience and Christian spiritual formation. His books include The Soul of Shame and The Soul of Desire. In this episode, Curt and Jonathan Rogers discuss the left brain and the right brain, the power of beauty to awaken us to goodness and truth, and Andy Gullahorn.

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Christie Purifoy is a writer and gardener committed to growing flowers and growing community and cultivating beauty. Her newest book is Garden Maker: Growing a Life of Beauty and Wonder with Flowers. She’s also the host of the Black Barn Garden Club, an online community for aspiring gardeners.

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Dorena Williamson is an author, a bridge-builder, a speaker, and a co-planter of a multi-racial church that has been doing beautiful work in Nashville for 25 years. Her most recent picture book, Crowned with Glory, is an ode to Black hair and Black girl joy.

In this episode, Dorena and Jonathan Rogers talk about representation, writing the books you want to read, and the perils of "color-blindness."

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Activist and author Lisa Sharon Harper spent three decades researching ten generations of her family’s story through DNA research, oral histories, interviews and genealogical records. That research is the basis of her new book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World—and How to Repair It. In this episode, Lisa Sharon Harper and Jonathan  Rogers discuss truth-seeking, truth-telling, forgiveness, and repair.

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Philip Yancey has written more than 25 books, including What’s so Amazing about Grace, Disappointment with God, Where is God When It Hurts, and The Jesus I Never Knew. His most recent book, from 2021, is his memoir Where the Light Fell.

In this episode, Philip Yancey and Jonathan Rogers discuss the complex interactions between identity, memory, and memoir, and the journey from fear to gratitude.

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David French is a political and cultural commentator and senior editor at The Dispatch. He’s a contributing writer at The Atlantic Monthly and the author of several books, including Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation as well as the French Press newsletter. He’s the co-host—with Curtis Chang—of the new podcast, Good Faith. 

In this episode, David French and Jonathan Rogers discuss persuasion in a polarized and ideologically super-charged climate.

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Kelly Kapic is a professor of theology at Covenant College. His most recent book is You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News. In this episode, Dr. Kapic and Jonathan Rogers discuss productivity shame, gratitude, and the truth that finitude is not a sin.

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Amy Baik Lee writes essays and short memoirs for The Cultivating Project and on her own blog, A Homeward Life. She is also the co-director of the Arts Guild of The Anselm Society. In this episode, Amy and Jonathan Rogers talk about the discipline of noticing small splendors, the ways that art reminds recipients that they mean something to someone, and the ways that time and distance unpack our memories to show us meaning that was there all along.

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It's a new year, and a new season of The Habit Podcast. if you are looking to form better habits, heed Justin Whitmel Earley, author of The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose in an Age of Distraction. His most recent book is Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms.

The new theme music for Season 4 of The Habit Podcast is Drew Miller's song "Grace."

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John Cal is a celebrity chef—at least among those who have participated in the Rabbit Room's Hutchmoot gathering in the past few years. His food-related essay/orations are a Hutchmoot highlight. In this final Habit Podcast episode of 2021, John Cal and Jonathan Rogers talk about feasting, fellowship, and other pleasures relevant to the Christmas season.

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Shawn Smucker has published five novels in the last five years—most recently, The Weight of Memory. He has also co-written some thirty books. Shawn and his wife Maile Silva coach, teach, and encourage other writers in a creative community they call The Stories Between Us. They host a podcast of the same name.

In this episode, Shawn Smucker and Jonathan Rogers discuss revision, point of view, and when it's ok for writers to stop pushing and take a break.

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Daniel Grothe is a pastor, a rancher, and the author of The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age. In this episode, Daniel Grothe and Jonathan Rogers talk about embracing obligation, the value of thinking small, and the possibility that God is a materialist.

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Jill Phillips is a singer-songwriter and the star of the Gullahorn Happy Hour along with her husband, Andy Gullahorn. She’s also a Marriage and Family Therapist. Jill will soon be releasing a new album called Deeper Into Love, a collection of songs that take a journey through grief, healing, and redemption.

In this episode, Jill and Jonathan talk about the gap between the truth and how it feels, integration and disintegration, and going boldly into the house of grief.

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Carolyn Leiloglou writes books for children. Her picture book Library's Most Wanted was a 2021 WILLA Award Finalist. She was also a 2018 finalist for the Katherine Paterson Prize. Her poems and stories have appeared in children's magazines around the world, including Highlights, Ladybug, Cricket, and Clubhouse Jr.

In this episode, Carolyn and Jonathan discuss rule-following, characters who take themselves too seriously, and other things.

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Memoirist Carolyn Weber is the author of Surprised by Oxford and Sex and the City of God. This conversation between Dr. Weber and Jonathan Rogers was recorded in front of a live audience at New College Franklin, where Dr. Weber is a professor. They discuss St. Augustine, spiritual memoir, and the idea that "selection is the hardest part of creation."

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Elizabeth Harwell's new book is The Good King's Feast—An Invitation to the Lord's Table. It's a picture book that helps children understand Communion. In this episode, Elizabeth and Jonathan Rogers discuss writing for children and what it means to invite them into a story that they are already a part of.

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Luci Shaw is one of the great living Christian poets. She has been a pioneer and role model for generations of writers. Her poem "The O in Hope" is now a picture book, illustrated by Ned Bustard.

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Hannah Hubin is a writer, poet, lyricist, and the originator of All the Wrecked Light, a stage show that explores Psalm 90 through song and spoken poetry. In this episode, Hannah and Jonathan discuss collaboration as a way of reaching beyond one's own limits and what it means to pray, "Establish the work of our hands."

Hannah is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to produce a studio album of All the Wrecked Light. Find out more at kickstarter.com/projects/hannahubin/all-the-wrecked-light.

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Dave Barnes is a singer-songwriter, a standup comedian, and a cohost of the Dadville podcast. This episode, the 2021 finale of the Sad Stories Told for Laughs series, was originally released in video form as part of the Rabbit Room's onllne conference, Hutchmoot: Homebound. In this episode, Dave talks about awkward radio promotions, disastrous shows, and doing standup comedy for patrons who thought they had come to hear music.

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Don Chaffer is a singer-songwriter (Waterdeep), a composer-lyricist-librettist (Son of a Gun, The Unusual Tale of Mary and Joseph's Baby), and a professor (Lipscomb University's School of Music). His stories are often sad and often funny—and often at the same time. In this "Sad Stories Told for Laughs" episode, Don Chaffer talks to Jonathan Rogers about the difference between embarrassment and shame, ironic distance, and other matters.

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Alan Noble is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and editor-in-chief of Christ and Pop Culture. His new book is You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World. Tim Keller has said “Alan is, I hope, the beginning of a new generation of scholar-writers who can bring the insights of [more esoteric thinkers and philosophers] down to earth and apply them in the most practical, compelling, and helpful form.”

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After years overseas, poet Rachel Donahue settled into life on a property that had been in her husband's family for generations. Paying attention to that piece of land transformed her poetry. Beyond Chittering Cottage is a collection of the poems that grew out of that new attentiveness. In this episode, Rachel and Jonathan Rogers talk about stewardship, place, and writerly friendship.

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Ben Palpant is a poet, memoirist, novelist, and writer of nonfiction. His new book, Letters from the Mountain, is a collection of letters to his daughter about writing, creativity, paying attention, and generativity. He speaks of these and other matters with Jonathan Rogers in this episode of The Habit Podcast.

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Ashley Hales is a writer, a speaker, and the host of the Finding Holy Podcast. Her new book is A Spacious Life: Trading Hustle and Hurry for the Goodness of Limits. In this episode, Ashley Hales and Jonathan Rogers discuss a paradox: embracing your limitations can create more space and lead to greater creativity.

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Dave and Licia Radford constitute the husband-wife duo, The Gray Havens. Their upcoming album, Blue Flower, is inspired by C. S. Lewis's autobiography, Surprised by Joy and explores "inconsolable longing" and every human's homesickness for a place they've never been. Most of the album's songs are available on Spotify.

In this episode, Dave Radford and Jonathan Rogers talk about the ways that joy is both a spur and a guide for creative work. You might also check out the Blue Flower Podcast, in which Dave talks through the origins of each song on the album.

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Singer-songwriter Taylor Leonhardt's second solo album, Hold Still, releases in September, 2021. (You can hear several of the songs already on streaming services.) In this episode of The Habit Podcast, Taylor and Jonathan Rogers discuss what it means to be God's idea, and coming to terms with the truth that we are all in suspense and incomplete.

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Carrie Givens is a publisher and co-founder of Bandersnatch Books. She is also the author of the recently released novel Rosefire. In this episode, Carrie speaks with Jonathan Rogers about writers' groups, dry spells, the role of "namers" in our creative lives, and characters who arrive unbidden in our stories.

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Bill Haslam was a two-term governor of Tennessee and a two-term mayor of Knoxville. In a political climate marked by metastasizing outrage and division, he found success by finding common ground and treating everyone—allies and opponents alike—with decency and respect. Bill Haslam is the author of Faithful Presence: The Promise and the Peril of Faith in the Public Square.

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Professor Diana Pavlac Glyer is an expert on Tolkien and Lewis, especially with regard to their collaboration in the Inklings group. She is also the editor of A Compass for Deep Heaven—a collection of essays about Lewis's Ransom Trilogy. This book is the fruit of Professor Glyer's practicing what she preaches in generous collaboration with emerging scholars.

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JJ Heller writes lullabies with her husband Dave and sings them for children, their parents, and the children inside the parents. Since 2017, the Hellers have released a new song on Spotify the first Friday of every month. One of those songs, "Hand to Hold," grew into a picture book by the same title, released a couple of weeks ago. In this episode, JJ and Dave talk with Jonathan Rogers about bedtime liturgies and the work of giving language to parents' deepest hopes for their children.

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For a decade and a half, Buddy Greene and Jeff Taylor have been making music together in a wide variety of venues and a wide variety of costumes. They are remarkable as performers, but even more remarkable is their friendship and good humor. As Jeff says, even a worst-case scenario performance is redeemed when it becomes a sad story told for laughs shared between friends.

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Doug McKelvey is best known as the author of Every Moment Holy, “new liturgies for daily life.” He has also been a songwriter and a screenwriter. In this episode, the Sad Stories Told for Laughs series continues with Doug’s stories of fan letters gone wrong, fostering misunderstanding for the sake of humor, and a finger puppet.

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Jessica Hooten Wilson is Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She’s a much sought-after speaker and the author of books about Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor. Spring of 2022 will see the release of her new book, The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints. The academic world is a rich source of Sad Stories Told for Laughs. In this episode, Jessica Hooten Wilson tells some of hers.

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Thomas McKenzie is an Anglican priest, the founding pastor of Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, and the author of The Anglican Way. Also, he once blew up a gas station.

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Singer-songwriter Ellie Holcomb has just released a new solo album called Canyon—which, she says, is about a deeper sorrow, a higher hope, and the brokenness that is integral to our humanity. Hopefully she will come back in a later episode to talk about that project.

But in this episode we’re going to talk about the times she and her husband Drew found themselves performing in community college cafeterias, the time they got kicked out of a community college cafeteria and instead had to play a study room, and other sad stories told for laughs.

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Andrew Osenga is a singer-songwriter, an artist & repertoire director, and the host of the podcast The Pivot: Stories of People Who Have Made a Change. In this installment of Sad Stories Told for Laughs, Andrew talks about performing to empty seats, losing a toe, and playing a music festival organized by a money launderer.

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The “Sad Stories Told for Laughs” series continues with Maryrose Wood, author of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place and Alice's Farm: A Rabbit's Tale. Before Maryrose Wood was a novelist, she was an actor. In this episode, she tells the story of her Broadway debut, in one of the most spectacular flops in Broadway history. It is a story of youthful naïveté, public chagrin, a brutal review in the New York Times, and, ultimately, perseverance and triumph.

(The documentary The Best Worst Thing That Could Have Happened tells the story of Merrily We Roll Along, the show that was Maryrose Wood's Broadway debut. You can find it on Netflix.)

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"Sad Stories Told for Laughs" is a special summer series of episodes in which writers speak of their public humiliations for your edification and entertainment. In this episode, memoirist Harrison Scott Key, author of The World's Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? tells about the strange places he's done readings and the dream that wanted to eat him.

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Songs from the Silent Passage explores the literary career of Walt Wangerin, Jr. through a collection of essays by Wangerin's friends and colleagues—including Eugene Peterson, Luci Shaw, Philip Yancey, and John Wilson—edited into its final form by Matthew Dickerson. In this episode, Matthew and Jonathan discuss the relationship between pain and beauty in storytelling and the idea that art "won't hug a pulpit."

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Sho Baraka is a hip-hop artist, an activist, a co-founder of the AND Campaign, and an author. His new book is He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair a Broken World. In this episode, Sho and Jonathan Rogers discuss memory and imagination, constructing a new normal through storytelling, and the perils of accepting a smaller identity than the one God gives us.

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In this 100th conversation of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and producer Drew Miller play back and discuss favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, as identified by listeners.

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In this 100th episode of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and producer Drew Miller play back and discuss favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, as identified by listeners. To help The Habit celebrate this milestone (and to help other listeners find this podcast), would you consider rating and reviewing?

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Lancia Smith is the founder of Cultivating, a quarterly online magazine, and the Cultivating Project, a nurtured community of writers and artists committed to pursuing spiritual maturity and creative excellence. Lancia writes about brilliant people doing brilliantly good things related to faith, character formation, and the creative arts. She is also a photographer and portraitist. In this episode, Lancia and Jonathan talk about the relationship between editing and discipleship, the balance of sensitivity and maturity, and the habit of cultivating wonder.

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Janna Barber is a blogger, poet, and memoirist. Her most recent book is Hidden in Shadow: Tales of Grief, Lamentation, and Faith. This memoir is one woman’s honest reckoning with the truth that even as our faith waxes and wanes, God is constant, and he loves his children even when they don’t know what he’s up to.

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Stephen Roach is a poet, musician, speaker, and creative coach. He hosts the Makers and Mystics podcast and is the founder of The Breath and the Clay, a creative arts movement. His latest book, a collaboration with Ned Bustard, is Naming the Animals: An Invitation to Creativity. In it, Stephen and Ned make the case that creativity isn't just a talent given to the chosen few, but an invitation extended to all, an essential part of God's design for partnership for humanity.

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Rachel Pieh Jones has been living and writing in the Horn of Africa for the last eighteen years. Her new memoir is Pillars: How Muslim Friends Led Me Closer to Jesus. In this episode, Rachel and Jonathan Rogers discuss the value of being an outsider and what it means to be a witness.

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Every Moment Holy, Volume II is a book of liturgies and prayers for seasons of dying and grieving. Doug McKelvey spent two years in dialogue with bereaved and dying readers as he wrote this book. In this conversation, Doug speaks with Jonathan Rogers about loving the reader, stewarding gifts and opportunities, and listening to the people you wish to serve in your work.

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The poet Malcolm Guite wears waistcoats. He smokes a long-stemmed pipe and blows smoke rings. He often ambles about in the countryside. He's not very tall. He loves breakfast. Draw your own conclusions. In this episode of The Hobbit Podcast, Malcolm Guite and Jonathan Rogers (who is not himself a hobbit, only hobbit-adjacent) discuss first breakfast, second breakfast, and elevensies.

Thanks to Drew Miller, the visionary for this podcast.

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Wingfeather Tales started out as a Kickstarter stretch goal for The Warden and the Wolf King, Book 4 of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. Andrew recruited five of his friends to write stories (and a poem) set in Aerwiar, the world of the Wingfeathers. He also recruited some of his favorite illustrators to illustrate. That compilation has been re-released in hardcover by Waterbrook Press.

In this episode, five of the contributors—Andrew Peterson, Jennifer Trafton, Pete Peterson, Doug McKelvey, and Jonathan Rogers—discuss collaboration, community, and Wingfeather Tales.

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Winn Collier is the Director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Seminary in Holland Michigan. He was friends with Eugene Peterson and was chosen by the Peterson family to write his authorized biography, A Burning in My Bones.

In this episode, Winn and Jonathan Rogers discuss friendship, “earthy spirituality,” and writing that goes beyond the informational and motivational.

 (The Eugene Peterson Center is currently taking applications for a Doctor of Ministry cohort focused on "The Sacred Art of Writing.")

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Author, gardener, and woods-walker Hannah Anderson wrote, “More than a metaphor, the natural world is a living, pulsating experience of truth that surrounds and enfolds us, teaching us deep realities without words.” She puts words to many of those wordless realities in her new book, The Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit.

In this episode, Hannah and Jonathan Rogers talk about observation, repetition, “gardening shame,” and cooperating with forces of a broken world.

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Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a history professor at Calvin University and the author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. In this episode, Kristen Du Mez and Jonathan Rogers discuss stories as a means of reframing reality, the role of fear in political storytelling, and confirmation bias.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Benjamin Myers, author of A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation.

In A Poetics of Orthodoxy, poet Ben Myers makes the case that Christian orthodoxy provides a “reality-based way of knowing what kinds of poetry, what poetic characteristics, most resonate with true human experience.” Poetry, he argues, is a kind of re-incarnation (not THAT kind of reincarnation), and so works against the disembodying tendencies of the digital age. 

In this episode, Ben and Jonathan discuss the dangers of gnosticism and the embarrassment caused by beauty, among other things.

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David O. Taylor is a theologian of the arts, Associate Professor of Theology at Fuller Seminary, and a director of initiatives in art and faith. His most recent book is Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life. In this first-ever practical episode of The Habit Podcast, David Taylor walks listeners through the spiritual practice of writing psalms of lament.

Click here for more resources related to the writing of psalms of lament, including a worksheet, a chapter excerpt from Open and Unafraid, and a forum where you can share and discuss your psalm of lament.

Click here to watch the short film in which David Taylor gets Bono and Eugene Peterson together to discuss the Psalms.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Jen Pollock Michel, author of A Habit Called Faith: 40 Days in the Bible to Find and Follow Jesus.

Jonathan and Jen discuss the inescapability of seeing what we expect to see, habits as creating your own momentum, the stifling posture of spectatorship, and the lessons to be learned from finishing well.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and Tish Harrison Warren discuss the difference between true human vulnerability and the "curated" vulnerability of Instagram, writing as an inescapable encounter with one's own weakness, and the under-appreciated gift of receiving well-placed criticism.

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Lisa Deam is an art historian and the author of 3,000 Miles to Jesus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life for Spiritual Seekers. (She also blogs at The Contemplative Writer.)

In this episode, Lisa and Jonathan discuss the process of writing as a pilgrimage, the human desire to leave signposts for those who come after us, the infamous “long middle” of the writing journey, and the instructive power of inefficiency.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with songwriter and storyteller Matthew Clark.

They discuss the many facets of Matthew's mission to "make things that make room for people to meet Jesus," his tour van that he calls "Vandalf the White," and human creativity as a posture of synthesis rather than analysis.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with speaker, singer, educator, and activist Ruth Naomi Floyd.

They discuss the intimate relationship between truth and beauty, the liberating power of art, and the immense legacy of the African American spiritual.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Joel Clarkson, author of Sensing God: Experiencing the Divine in Nature, Food, Music, and Beauty.

They discuss writing’s role in waking us up to the physicality of the world, Jesus as both firstborn of creation and firstborn from the dead, and the limits of intellect to account for the depth of what it means to believe.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Renee Mathis, fellow writing teacher and mentor at the CiRCE Institute's apprenticeship program.

They discuss Renee's experience as a Jeopardy champion, her philosophy on mentoring teachers, the teaching methods used by Jesus, rhetoric as the pursuit of truth in community, and the still-relevant application of Aristotle's principles of rhetoric.

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It's the season for writing Christmas letters. This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with letter-writer Reagan Dregge.

They discuss the art of physical letter-writing, the personal attention it involves from sender to recipient, and the inherent embodiment that comes with putting pen to paper.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Randall Goodgame, songwriter, TV show host, and leader of the Slugs & Bugs universe.

They discuss the essential role of collaboration in all of Randall’s work, the importance of writing out of freedom and not out of condemnation, and the irrepressibility of childlike joy.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Christiana Peterson, author of Awakened by Death: Live-Giving Lessons from the Mystics.

They discuss the link between mysticism and mortality, our culture’s lack of rituals for confronting death, the writer’s role in engaging with mortality as an antidote for self-absorption, and death’s ability to teach compassion.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Tsh Oxenreider, teacher, podcaster, literary tour guide, and author of Shadow and Light: A Journey into Advent.

They discuss the challenging art of graceful endings, the perils of absolute accessibility, and what sets the Advent season apart from merely a "happy clappy countdown to Christmas."

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan talks with Crystal Downing, author of Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers.

They discuss the danger of Christian celebrity, the strategy of shock in Dorothy Sayers' work, and the subversion at the very heart of the Christian faith.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Charlotte Donlon, author of The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other and host of the Hope for the Lonely podcast.

They discuss the two-way street between loneliness and belonging, the power of stories to de-stigmatize our loneliness, and the crucial difference between loving someone and understanding them.

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Jonathan Rogers talks with Dane Ortlund, former Senior Vice President of Bible Publishing at Crossway and current Senior Pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church near Chicago.

They discuss the simultaneous necessity and insufficiency of theological correctness, the recovery of beauty as a meaningful philosophical category, and sanctification as the ongoing renewal of surprise.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Andrew T. Le Peau, former Associate Publisher at InterVarsity Press and author of Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality.

They discuss the simple power of physical exercise to generate creative ideas, what Andrew has learned as an editor about what gets in the way of the writer's voice, and the constructive tension between Jonathan's emphasis on self-forgetfulness in writing and Andrew's claim that all writing is autobiographical.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Anne Snyder, editor-in-chief of Comment Magazine and host of the podcast, The Whole Person Revolution. 

They discuss our culture's antipathy towards institutions, the role of theological reflection during a time of crisis, and her work with Comment Magazine to serve both readers and writers in uniting thought and action.

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Jonathan Rogers talks with music industry legend Brown Bannister about the difference between “Here I am” and “There you are” personalities, the similarities between producing a record and teaching students, and how Brown has stayed away from cynicism over his long career.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Russell Moore, President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and author of The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul.

They talk about the various ways that fear presents itself to the writer, the self-sabotage of chasing relevance, the temptation to write our own life stories, and the timeless danger of trying to be no more than who your audience wants you to be.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers interviews Barnabas Piper, author of Hoping for Happiness.

They talk about the unrealistic expectations that artists can sometimes project onto their craft, how much easier it is to write while sad than while happy, and the distinction between hope and optimism.

Transcripts are available for The Habit Podcast. View them at RabbitRoom.com/podcast.

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This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with Marilyn McEntyre, author of Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict.

They discuss the rich etymological depth of the word "conversation" and its connection to "dwelling with," the lost art of visiting, the transactional nature of conversation in a capitalist world, poetry's abiding danger to the status quo, and the recovery of metaphor.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Dr. Irwyn Ince, pastor and author of The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best.

They discuss beauty's refusal to be possessed, the aesthetic impact of pursuing racial justice, and the joy to be found in responding to God's calling—even and especially when that call entails "divine dissatisfaction."

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Nashville singer/songwriter Ross King about the instructive power of rejection, the complexities of writing for a living in today's world, and advice for dealing with artistic competitiveness.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Vesper Stamper, illustrator and author of A Cloud of Outrageous Blue. They discuss how illustration became for Vesper a doorway into storytelling, what her research into the Middle Ages for her new book has taught her about plagues, and synesthesia as the beginning of metaphor.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Gina Dalfonzo, author of Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis. They discuss the often overlooked friendship between Dorothy Sayers and C. S. Lewis, Sayers' innovative depiction of Jesus in The Man Born to Be King, and her lifelong wrestling with Lewis on the issue of artistic conscience and calling.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with bestselling author, pastor, and podcast host Daniel Darling about the complex mix of motivations that go into online interaction, the double-edged sword of content curation, and how to communicate well in an age that prioritizes communicating quickly above all else. Daniel Darling's new book is A Way with Words: Using our Online Conversations for Good.

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Jonathan Rogers talks with Christine Flanagan, English professor at the University of the Sciences in Pennsylvania and editor of The Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon.

They talk about the fascinatingly elusive influence of Caroline Gordon on Flannery O'Connor, the mystifying invisibility of some writers in our collective historical record, and the indispensability of thoughtful, engaged critique from a trusted mentor.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with singer/songwriter and hymn writer Sandra McCracken. They talk about the formative power of hymns, the ancient balance established by the psalms between lament and a vision for what lies ahead, Sandra's first book, and the role of true confidence in human flourishing.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Cindy Bunch, author of Be Kind to Yourself and associate publisher and director of editorial at InterVarsity Press. They talk about how to maintain a healthy relationship with the inner critic, the many misplaced wishes that writers often throw onto their writing, and the mystery of which readers resonate and which readers don't.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with music industry veteran and host of The Pivot podcast Andrew Osenga. They talk about what Andrew’s podcast has taught him about listening, the multilayered complexities of career, and how Andrew's own pivots have changed the way he approaches songwriting.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with singer-songwriter Claire Holley. They discuss the role of fear in writing, object writing prompts, how to discern what music is “saying,” and what Claire has learned over time about her songwriting process.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Emily P. Freeman, author of The Next Right Thing, creator of the Next Right Thing Podcast, and co-founder of the online writing community Hope Writers.

They discuss writer’s block as a form of decision fatigue, the demand on our attention created by unmade decisions, the problematic desire “to be great,” how her training as a sign language interpreter has made her a better listener, and what a difference can be made by merely investing in our aspirations to write.

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Jonathan Rogers loved Matt Conner's interview with Jericho Brown so much that he wants you to hear it, too. Jericho Brown won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection The Tradition and is one of America's great literary geniuses.

Originally aired on The Resistance Podcast, Matt and Jericho discuss the necessarily conflictive posture of the poet as one who speaks truth to a culture he must also inhabit. Jericho's work has called him to become both insider and outsider, and it's taken a special kind of resilience to follow that call.

You can follow The Resistance wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Jonathan Rogers talks with Amy Alznauer, author of The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity and The Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor..

They discuss Flannery O’Connor’s early-onset fascination with birds and the ways O'Connor's birds taught her how people react to strangeness; how Amy’s father taught her to love mathematics; and the ways in which both math and writing invite the discovery of a happiness that was there before you found it.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Michael Ward, C. S. Lewis scholar and author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. They discuss Michael’s surprising thesis about the Narnia books, the medieval notion of the “music of the spheres,” and the necessity of allusivity in communicating theological reality. Find out more about Michael Ward's work at MichaelWard.net.

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In this episode, Jonathan and Scott discuss the difference between being for and being against, why we've recently seen such a renewed interest in Fred Rogers, writing as an instrument of peace, and how gentleness can survive in a world that has made hostility into an asset.

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Jonathan Rogers talks with Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well and Booked. They discuss common mistakes in how we read classic literature, the vaster meaning of the word “comedy,” the excellent new film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, and the difference between portrayal and endorsement in art.

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Jonathan Rogers talks with Leif Enger, author of Virgil Wander and Peace Like A River. They discuss Leif’s love of beautiful places in his favorite novels, the ability of readers to feel the delight of the author, and the magic of discovering the way a story goes as you’re writing it.

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Jonathan and Diana discuss how the Inklings got started and the factors that contributed to their health, the sharpening power of writing groups, and the “curse of knowledge”—knowing so well what you’re trying to say that you’re unable to say it well.

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Poet-priest Malcolm Guite has become one of the most important Christian poets of our time. In this episode, Jonathan and Malcolm discuss the “salvaging of the mistakenly abased gift of imagination,” the vital distinction between what things are and what they are made of, how Malcolm inherited the gift of poetry from his mother, and the invention of writing as the gateway both to remembering and forgetting.

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Scott James is a pediatric physician and author of Where Is Wisdom? A Treasure Hunt Through God's Wondrous World, Inspired by Job 28.

In this episode, Jonathan and Scott discuss the practical complexity of applying wisdom, the role of empathy in good reading, the instructive power of story for life's moral questions, and grace as God’s surprise ending.

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This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Laura Fabrycky, author of Keys to Bonhoeffer's Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

They discuss the multiple competing narratives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the centrality of place in the stories of our lives, and connections between writing and civic housekeeping.

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In this episode, Jonathan and Nancy discuss the invaluable resource of deep focus, research as practicing the posture of learning, and the clarifying power of talking before writing.

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Ned Bustard is a graphic designer, illustrator, author, and printmaker from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In this episode, Jonathan and Ned discuss the fraught topic of success in art, the clarifying effect of working for one’s community, and how he and his wife, Leslie, have planted seeds in their hometown.

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Jeremy Casella is a singer-songwriter in Nashville. In this episode, Jonathan and Jeremy discuss songwriting as a means of processing life, the abiding value of failure, and the centrality of truth-telling.

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Trillia Newbell is the author of several books including United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity, and, most recently, Sacred Endurance: Finding Grace and Strength for a Lasting Faith. She is a former journalist and currently the Director of Community Outreach for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Jonathan and Trillia discuss the role of endurance in a writer’s life, the importance of being realistic about what it means to do the work, and writing as bearing witness to reality rather than inventing it.

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A man of many interests, Lee Camp is a theology professor, the host of the Tokens variety show, and the author of Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. In this episode, Jonathan and Lee discuss Lee’s controversially orthodox assertions, the necessity for a hermeneutic of love, and the inextricability of true hope and the courage to encounter a new story.

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Going all the way back to 2008, here's an episode of the old Rabbit Room Podcast in which Jonathan reads aloud his release day review of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness—with an introduction by Andrew Peterson impersonating Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah, we never were sure exactly what that was about.

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Francis Su is the author of Mathematics for Human Flourishing. In this episode, Jonathan and Francis talk about revealing the unseen, the ability of math to teach virtue, and what it might mean to re-enchant the discipline of math.

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In this episode, Jonathan and the Circe Institute's David Kern reminisce about the work of the recently deceased Charles Portis. They discuss the connections between fiction and flim-flammery, the role of the ridiculous in comic storytelling, the importance of leaving some work for the reader to do, the world's smallest perfect man, and one of the world's most perfect opening sentences.

David Kern heads up the Circe Institute's Podcast Network. He hosts the Close Reads podcast, The Daily Poem podcast, and the Libromania podcast. A shortened version of this conversation will be posted as an episode of Libromania.

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Jen Pollock Michel is the author of three books, most recently Surprised By Paradox: The Promise of And in an Either-Or World. In this episode, Jonathan and Jen discuss the role of paradox in writing, the difference between either-or and both-and, and the difference between mystery and paradox.

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Writer and photographer Seth Haines is the author of Coming Clean and The Book of Waking Up. In this episode, Jonathan and Seth discuss the slow process of waking up in the "key of joy," the instructive power of pain, and the under-publicized companionship between creativity and sobriety.

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Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher are co-authors of Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women. In this espisode, Jonathan, Elyse, and Eric discuss writing as an antidote to reducing other people to categories, the church’s responsibility to defend victims of sexual abuse, the cowriting process for Elyse and Eric, and how they have chosen to navigate a politically fraught topic.

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Lore Ferguson Wilbert is the author of Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry. She has been blogging since 2000 at Sayable.net. In this episode, Jonathan and Lore talk about the idea of touch as the mother of all senses, the exceeding vulnerability of Jesus, and the surprisingly symbiotic relationship between tenderness and resilience.

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Heidi Johnston is the author of Choosing Love, a book that tries to tell teenage girls the truth about relationships. Jonathan and Heidi discuss the various roadblocks to writing—particularly procrastination and imposter syndrome—the task of writing to tell a truer story, and the wellsprings of originality. 

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Meredith McDaniel is the author of In Want + Plenty: Waking Up to God's Provision in a Land of Longing. She's also a licensed professional counselor. Jonathan and Meredith discuss the deep connections between counseling and storytelling, the importance of bodily liturgies for a writer, and learning to give no more or less than what we have to give.

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Memoirist and humorist Harrison Scott Key is the author of Congratulations, Who Are You Again? and The World's Largest Man, which won the Thurber Prize for humor. In this episode, Jonathan and Harrison discuss the difference between anecdote and memoir, the value of not knowing everything about your own stories, and the link between memoir-writing and therapy.

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Jonathan and Andrew discuss the relationships between creativity and loneliness, the problem of ambition, and the paradox of the age-old search for originality.

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A veteran of the publishing business, Don Pape is publisher at NavPress. In this episode, Jonathan and Don discuss all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into publishing a book, how Don got into the business himself, and the many curious intersections of creativity and industry.

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S. D. (Sam) Smith is the author of the much-loved Green Ember series. In this episode, Jonathan and Sam explore storytelling as an act of love and service, a magic trick, and an occasion for practicing true humility.

Sam is currently offering a free audiobook of The Green Ember, the first book in his series.