Today on the podcast, I had the real privilege of getting to talk to Tish Harrison Warren. She’s a priest in the Anglican Church in North America as well as an author. She’s written Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which won Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep, which won Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year. And releasing May 31 of this year, she has written Little Prayers for Ordinary Days. In addition to all of that she currently writes a weekly newsletter for The New York Times, which you should subscribe to, and she is a columnist for Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere.
For over a decade, Tish has worked in ministry settings as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations. Now, Tish serves as Writer in Residence at Resurrection South Austin. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.
In today’s conversation, we talk about all the things. We talk about her books Liturgy for the Ordinary, Prayer in the Night and her new release, Little Prayers for Ordinary Days. We talk about her faith journey, the liturgies that form our daily lives, and finding God in the suffering—the importance of liturgical prayer to give us words when we don’t have the words. We also talk about how we can take God off trial and rest in his goodness, love and mercy in the midst of difficult and sad seasons through the hope of the resurrection.
And now let’s listen to my conversation with Tish!
*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.
Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican Priest and Author.
Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Christianity Today‘s 2018 Book of the Year) and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (Christianity Today‘s 2022 Book of the Year).
Currently, Tish writes a weekly newsletter for The New York Times, and she is a columnist for Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere.
For over a decade, Tish has worked in ministry settings as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations. Now, Tish serves as Writer in Residence at Resurrection South Austin. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum. She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area.
Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast
Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.
Show Notes
Guest Links
- Tish Harrison Warren
- Follow Tish on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Transcript
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast. I’m your host, Heidi Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep needs. Today on the podcast I had the real privilege of getting to talk to Tish Harrison Warren. She’s a priest in the Anglican church in North America, as well as an author. She’s written Liturgy of the Ordinary Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which won Christianity Today’s 2018 book of the year, and Prayer in the Night For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep, which won Christianity Today’s 2022 book of the year. And releasing on May 31st of this year, she has written Little Prayers For The Ordinary. In addition to all of that, she currently writes a weekly newsletter for the New York Times, which you should subscribe to. And she is a columnist for Christianity Today.
Heidi Wilcox:
Her articles and essays have appeared in Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, The New York Times and elsewhere. For over a decade Tish has worked in ministry settings as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries as an associate rector and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and nonprofit organizations. Now Tish serves as writer in residence at Resurrection South Austin. She’s a founding member of the Pelican Project and a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum.
Heidi Wilcox:
She lives with her husband and three children in the Austin, Texas area. In today’s conversation we talk about all the things. We talk about her books, Liturgy Of The Ordinary, Prayer In The Night, and her new release, Little Prayers For Ordinary Days. All of which we’ll link in the show notes so that you can order or pre-order your copy as the case may be. We talk about her faith journey. We talk about the liturgies that form our daily lives and we talk about finding God in the suffering. The importance of liturgical prayer to give us words when we don’t have the words. And we talk about how we can take God off trial and rest in his goodness and love and mercy in the midst of really difficult and sad seasons through the hope of the resurrection. And now let’s listen to my conversation with Tish.
Heidi Wilcox:
Well, Tish, thank you so very much for taking the time out of your schedule to talk to me today. You don’t know how much I’ve been looking forward to this conversation and getting to meet you so thank you.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Thanks. I’m glad to be here. It’s fun to be in person for the podcast.
Heidi Wilcox:
It really is. It’s been a long time since we did in person podcasts on the regular so this is a real treat. I definitely want to talk about your books, especially your most recent one, Prayer In The Night For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. But before we do, I want to take a moment to get to know you if we could. How did you first encounter Jesus?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. My parents are Christians and I grew up going to the Southern Baptist church in our small town in Texas. So gives you a sense of the culture and maybe the theology of the church. And was baptized at about age six I think. That just looks like I love Jesus and I wanted to know Jesus and I went to vacation bible school and a huge … Actually I remember a conscious motivation was that everybody else in my church got to have the crackers and the grape juice and I didn’t. Because it was just for baptized people. And I didn’t and was so frustrated about that. And so I wanted that and I wanted to have the grape juice in church. And so we met with the pastor and he asked me some questions, which I think were just sort of like, do you believe that you’re a sinner that does wrong and that Jesus died for your sins? And I apparently said the right answers because he baptized me.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Which is funny because for years I just as a Baptist felt like that was so inadequate. I got baptized in part just to have grape juice and crackers with the church. It felt like it was not real enough. I didn’t believe in Jesus enough. And now that I’m an Anglican priest, I think, oh my goodness, I just theologically … I intuited that the sacraments went together. I mean, I was longing for the Eucharist without knowing I was longing for the Eucharist. Because I felt … I’m sure it was I felt left out and liked grape juice, but also I was eating … My parents let me eat Rolos in church. Candy in church. So I had plenty of snacks. I think I was longing for something I didn’t understand.
Tish Harrison Warren:
And so I grew up … Actually, I ended up in a very Baptist way walking down the aisle and rededicating, re-giving my life to Jesus a little bit older. I was still not very old. I was probably 10 or 11. And that was sort of like this is owning it for myself. This is what I want. And so then I felt my first baptism wasn’t adequate and got re-baptized. This time in a river in Texas, which is not uncommon. If you talk to Baptists, they’ll get to be like, “Well, I’m not sure I was a Christian before,” and get baptized again. Now as an Anglican, I don’t even believe re-baptizing … But if my husband was here, he would say, “No, you didn’t. You didn’t get re baptized, you just got wet in front of a large group of people.” When I believed mostly in believers baptism, I would point to the beginning of my Christian faith with that second baptism.
Tish Harrison Warren:
But I actually think the beginning of my Christian faith was in that first baptism. And even if I didn’t do it for great reasons or totally understand what I was doing, I think grace was communicated to me. I was baptized in the name of the father, son and holy spirit and I received the holy spirit. And so I think God was after me and I was … You know what? It’s like kids putting on dress up clothes that are too big for them. I had no idea. It was way too big for me, but I was still clothed in this. And the reason I think that’s valid is I still think the clothes are too big for me. And I still don’t think I understand what I’m doing. I don’t understand baptism and I don’t understand the Eucharist. And I put on these … It’s like my little two year old boy that walks around in his dad’s shoes. And that sort of … The whole of the Christian life I think is trying on these things that are way too big for us.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So how did you then journey from that? Because you of course had no idea that you were going to go on to be an author and an Anglican priest. What was the journey like from that point?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Well, I grew in my faith. And I really even as a teenager wanted to know Jesus, wanted to be faithful, wanted to know God. Some of this was there was some rough stuff in my family life with just … I don’t know how much my family would want me to get all into the details, but I’ll say just struggles with mental health and brokenness in my family of origin that really were … It was pretty desolate. It was a dark time for me as a kid. And God showed up in really beautiful ways for me being just a comforter and a father to me. And so Jesus felt very real to me in a way that honestly, that I’ve scarcely even experienced since. But where God showed up to me in suffering in ways that felt fairly undeniable even as a … I’m talking like a 11, 12, 13, 14 year old. And so because of that faith was really important to me at a young age and I got really involved in my youth group and I wanted to know what it was to know Jesus. So I grew in faith in college. Went through a time of theological questioning.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So as a Baptist I had heard about Jesus dying for our sins, about giving our heart to Jesus, but I didn’t experience the reality of myself as a sinner very much. I was a good kid. I made good grades.
Heidi Wilcox:
Same. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tish Harrison Warren:
Sins were specific things people did like drinking too much, having sex before marriage. I don’t know. Doing drugs, lying, stealing. And I didn’t do those things. And so it felt like … I knew I was a sinner. That was the right answer. But I didn’t have much of an … Since I didn’t do those sort of the “bad” sins, it felt like I didn’t … It was more theory. I was in theory a sinner.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So really in college encountering failure, sin and myself, not through necessarily going and then doing all the bad stuff, but through seeing ways that I subtly manipulated people. Basically I think a much more robust idea of sin is the way our hearts are turned inward. The ways our hearts are turned towards self worship, towards self righteousness and towards self ultimately. And so I saw that more and more through some broken relationships I had in college and then went through a period of wrestling, asking for theological questions. Ended up in a Presbyterian church. And what blew me away, what changed my life was I encountered grace. The idea of grace. I’d heard of … I mean we’d sung Amazing Grace, but I had no idea what grace meant. So the idea that I really, really am running headlong away from God and Jesus came after me.
Tish Harrison Warren:
I think my former version of Christianity was that we climb the rungs of a ladder toward God and the point is to become a better and better Christian as opposed to that Christianity is that we’re not climbing rungs of a ladder. The ladder has burned down. It’s fallen. We’re running away from God and he comes and loves us and woos us and rescues us from ourselves. I saw sin in myself in a new way but I also almost immediately I mean, with that, it was like, oh, that’s why you died for me. That’s what the story’s about. That’s why I need atonement. And so it was that recognition that came with a deep recognition of grace and God’s love for me.
Tish Harrison Warren:
A pastor named Jack Miller and Tim Keller and others have put it but it’s I saw that my sin was worse than I thought, but that God’s grace and love for me was more than I could imagine. And that became real through a period of wrestling and doubt. And man, I don’t know. Now the kids might call it deconstruction. That language wasn’t used then and I would not use that language to describe it. I think I was growing.
Tish Harrison Warren:
And so was Presbyterian for a while and then ended up accidentally becoming an Anglican. We were in sort of a gap year between … It was after seminary. My husband was applying for PhD programs and we just needed to find a church pretty quick. And we couldn’t find … We went to several PCA churches and Presbyterian churches and we couldn’t go there for one reason or another. I mean, some of it pragmatically. One was really far away from our house and one was a church plant and we were like, “We’re only going to be here nine months.” So we went to this little Episcopal evangelical church that was lovely. And so we only went for about nine months and we were like, “This is a summer fling. We’re not at doing this forever. We’ll go back to the Presbyterian church.”
Tish Harrison Warren:
And then we were bitten by a bug. We completely, my husband and I both, just totally fell in love with liturgy. With the ancient ways of worship. With having the Eucharist every week. I just couldn’t go back. We just pretty quick … I mean, I cried every single week in church. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it. It was honestly, it was the beauty and it was the use of my body. Those two things that drew me in and I just couldn’t get over it. It ruined me. So we became Anglican. And both of us, my husband and I both, ended up getting ordained. We’re priests together.
Tish Harrison Warren:
How I became a writer’s is a longer different story. But the short story of that is that I felt very called to write and started writing just really small … I mean, I didn’t ever know that this would be a career. I didn’t think it would be a career. It was really a hobby and I wrote for small outlets. And then people read that and shared it and I got asked to pitch for Christianity Today and so I did. And CT, I started working with them and they started publishing more of my stuff. And then on the print side started publishing. And then as people read my stuff and liked it more people asked me to write and more people asked me to write and I just kept writing. And it really grew very organically over years writing for smaller outlets that grew and grew. And I ended up writing two books and the New York Times approached me this summer and asked if I would write. So it’s really been … It’s been by invitation from God and from other people.
Heidi Wilcox:
Which is a beautiful … Yeah. A beautiful way to have it happen.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. There’s no logical explanation for it other than just the holy spirit and God’s work. So when people ask me … I get a lot, I mean, a lot, probably once a month or so someone will contact me and say, “How do I do what you do?” And it’s really hard for me to tell … I mean, other than you write a lot and read a lot and think well, and spend a lot of your time trying to learn and think but also write a lot. And when someone asks you to pitch, pitch to them. But it happened very slowly and very … I just didn’t make any of it happen. It just happened. The lord led the whole thing.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You weren’t trying to achieve or … That wasn’t your end goal. You were just doing the next right thing in front of you.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. It was very much the next right thing. And if there was a longing to achieve, it was to … I wanted to write beautifully and I wanted to say something true and helpful. So the achievement was the craft itself. I think that’s still the longing is like, can I be better at this? Can it be beautiful? I really would like to make something beautiful and true. And so that’s the quest.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I love that a lot. So as you mentioned, you’ve written two books. Liturgy Of The Ordinary, Sacred Practices For Everyday Life and Prayer In The Night For Those Who Work Or Watch or Weep. And then coming out at the end of May, Little Prayers For Ordinary Days. So why did you … Because these two are for adults. Why one for children now?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. It was a surprise too. It was also by invitation. IVP started a kids branch and we had … I have three children and they were little bitty, tiny when I wrote Liturgy of the Ordinary and have sort of grown with the books. And now I have an 11 year old, a nine year old and a two year old now. And so particularly my 11 and nine year old, for years they’ve said, “Mom, why don’t you write kids books? You write these boring books we don’t care about. Write books for us.” And so then IVP had talked to me about doing a kid’s book and even playing off some of the formation ideas that I have particularly in Liturgy of the Ordinary. Because they’re interested in doing books for kids on formation. But I didn’t know what that would look like. I didn’t want to just … I didn’t want to rewrite Liturgy of the Ordinary for little kids. It felt like … I don’t know. How would that even work? Liturgy of the Ordinary is such a particular project where I look at small moments of the day and how that interacts with liturgy. And I didn’t want it just to be boiled down to like, God cares about your day little kids. I didn’t want it to be overly didactic.
Heidi Wilcox:
For sure. Yeah.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Liturgy of the Ordinary isn’t a very didactic book and so I didn’t want to then make it didactic for a kids’ book. So I had my friend Katie was writing prayers with her friend Flo, who I also know but I know Katie better. I didn’t know Flo as well. And so Katie approached me actually asking to connect to publishers. So I talked to IVP about them because they were writing. They are from a band called Rain For Roots, which was with Sandra McCracken that does kids worship music. And so from the kids worship music, they were writing prayers for children. And I asked IVP kids if they’d be interested in this and they said, “Why don’t you join them?” And so we started. I thought it would be an interesting way … If I wanted to talk about Liturgy of the Ordinary without being didactic, instead of saying, “Hey, God cares about your everyday life,” to just pray with kids about their ordinary moments. Felt like it’s communicating the same way, but in a much more invitational, non-didactic kind of way. And so that’s how that book came about.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Well I saw the picture you posted on Twitter of the inside of your book and it’s beautiful. I just loved how everything … You have the picture here is for taking a bath or for brushing my teeth. It’s just a beautiful embodiment of the ordinary things and why we’re doing them without being didactic, as you were saying. It’s just lovely.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Oh thanks. Thank you. I think the illustrator … I just love … I mean it’s a truly visually beautiful book and that is because of … I cannot take any credit for that. That’s largely the illustrator and the graphic design at IVP. They did a great job.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Well it takes a village.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Absolutely.
Heidi Wilcox:
But I will say they can’t … Working with graphic designers, they can do great things but sometimes they need really great words to be able to inspire their design too. So yeah.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
So as you think about liturgy, what is the role of liturgy in our lives? What exactly does that mean?
Tish Harrison Warren:
When I talk about liturgy, particularly when I talk about liturgy in Liturgy of the Ordinary, I am talking about … This word that I’m about to use is from James K. A. Smith. He talks about formative practices. And so there’s two things there. Practices, that’s things we do, stuff we do. And formative means it shapes us or it forms us. It’s connected somehow to transcendence and to meaning. I think that we have lots of formative practices in our life that we don’t recognize how formative they are. And James K. A. Smith who I just quote would certainly agree. He wrote the book. He wrote lots of great books. But one to hear more on that point specifically is he wrote You Are What You Love. And he talks about that. That sometimes I think quite often the things that form us most deeply, we often aren’t thinking about or we don’t think we’re doing a liturgy now.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. Yes. I think of it as a prayer that I say. Like I’m in church doing a liturgy. I don’t think about like, what do I do first thing in the morning? Is it reach for my phone or is it … But that would form me what I do. That’s not necessarily right or wrong. Maybe, but it forms me.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. That’s exactly right. And so we talk about liturgy in gathered worship, which I think is appropriate because those are formative practices. Those are things we’re doing that shape us really intentionally. If your church is intentionally liturgical, these are practices that Christians have developed for over a generation intentionally to shape you. I mean, I would also say if your church says, “Oh no, we don’t do that liturgy. That’s not our thing. We’re a low church.”, that you’re still doing stuff that deeply shapes you, that deeply forms you. It may be that you’re just either not thinking about how it’s forming you or borrowing liturgies from other places like Ted Talks, rock concerts. These are liturgical. People know how to act in these spaces because we have certain expectations. We have seen them, we relate to them in certain ways. People raise their hands at rock concerts. They absolutely do if you look around.
Tish Harrison Warren:
People don’t do that on the bus because we know in it’s a liturgical space in the sense that it’s been shaped by habit, ritual, time. And so we know how to interact in certain spaces and it’s because there are social liturgies around those. So I would say liturgy … We talk about it in church services. But what I talk about in Liturgy the Ordinary and what many other people have talked about is that it’s not reserved for that. Any kind of habit or practice that shapes us or forms us even in our daily life, there’s a liturgy to that. So an example I use a lot is I live in Texas and lots of people’s personal liturgy is completely formed around sports seasons in Texas. There’s tailgate season. There’s football. There’s hunting season.
Tish Harrison Warren:
These are the seasons and it absolutely shapes people’s time, people’s family life, the way they spend their money, their emotional realities at different parts of the year. Whether they’re up or down. And so that is absolutely a liturgical practice that shapes whole communities of people even. And it shapes what you love. It shapes what you value. It shapes what you think is worth giving your life to. And we have all kinds of liturgies like this.
Tish Harrison Warren:
It’s the habits and practices that form us. Some other really common examples are, I would say lots of people in our churches are formed by talk radio and that’s become really a liturgy that shapes people. In fact, pastors I know struggle because their people are more shaped by that than what’s happening on Sundays. Like you said, I talk in the book about going and picking up my smartphone first thing in the morning and the way that forms and shapes me. There’s been a lot of research done on habits and how people are so … I think. I mean, I think it’s something like over 90% of what we do is not a conscious decision. It’s shaped by habit. So habits, practices, liturgies, I think all of those are around the idea that the stuff we do shapes and forms us.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. I think until reading your books, I had never thought about my daily routine as a kind of liturgy. But it’s totally a rhythm, a habit, a practice. And so it’s made me start thinking about, is this how I want to be shaped in this area?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. So it’s been really helpful to me too.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Thanks.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. In Prayer for the Night, you guide readers beautifully through the Compline prayer. You explain its power and I loved how you walked through each phrase of the prayer because I’m learning, it’s important to know what we’re praying means. Especially when it comes to liturgy. That it’s broader than maybe the specific words. That there’s more nuanced meaning. So when did prayer change for you and liturgical prayer become something meaningful in your life?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. It was actually quite a bit before I wrote the book. I would say in my 20s. I was an adult though. Kind of my whole life, I really conceived of prayer as one thing, which was talking to God with words that you make up or say or conjure. And so, although of course I knew there was a Lord’s prayer, I never really said it though. I knew it. But prayer meant me telling God my thoughts and feelings and desires and wants and all extemporaneously and unplanned. Which is still … I want to say I pray like that all the time still. I think that’s a really great and wonderful and valid way to pray. It’s possible for me that’s at least at this season of my life, how I’m praying most frequently right now. That wasn’t always true. So that’s fine. But that’s the only way that … That’s what I thought prayer was, period. Full stop.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So when people talked about growing in prayer or going deeper in prayer, I just had no idea what they meant. I mean, I think I thought they meant just feeling it more or being more earnest or spending more time in prayer. Which I had two little tiny … I mean, I had little kids. I’m like how much time can I … I don’t have time. Yeah. How early in the morning do I need to get up to do this? So for me, I think the first time I encountered just the idea of other ways to pray was sometime probably in my mid to upper 20s starting to hear about other kind of prayer books. Something called Valley Of Vision people used which was prayers from different Puritans. And then visiting the Anglican church, seeing liturgical prayer where people were praying other people’s written prayers. They said these are the words, pray them. And I think that I was not skeptical of that. I was really intrigued. Of course growing up I knew that other places, other churches worshiped liturgically and used other people’s prayers, but it just seemed like, why do that? Why use other people’s prayers and what’s that about?
Heidi Wilcox:
I think I thought it might not count if it wasn’t my own words and I somehow had to figure out what the words should be.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Exactly. I think I did too. I think I did too. And so it felt like not real prayer to me. That’s show prayer or fake prayer. And so it was really not until there was a season that I just hid in my 20s where things were rough. I don’t even remember at the time. I don’t remember everything that was happening. But I remember it was a dark season. I had a relationship fall apart, a deep friendship in my life. I think I was newly married and our marriage at the beginning of our marriage was so hard. I mean, we had no idea what we were getting into. The first three years were so hard. I say that in case anyone’s listening who’s just having a rough time in their marriage. I think we have a really beautiful marriage now but we hit a hard brick wall when we got married.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. I appreciate you saying that.
Tish Harrison Warren:
It was really hard.
Heidi Wilcox:
Because I think a lot of people, you get married and you’re like, “Oh, it’s going to be wonderful.” And it is, and it is also hard.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. I’m not sure I would’ve thought it was wonderful at this point. It was just really, really hard. So marriage is hard, friendship was … It was just a really rough time. And it felt like I just couldn’t pray. And of course I could sort of recite words, but the language I use … I think I might use this in Liturgy of the Ordinary. I can’t remember. But the metaphor I use is it felt like prayer was this balloon that got tangled in branches. It felt like it bounced off the ceiling. It felt like I didn’t know how to pray. I had too many questions. I was frustrated and felt lots of emotion and I didn’t have words for them. So I didn’t know how to of tell God all of these things.
Tish Harrison Warren:
It felt like whatever words I could use to encapsulate the grief and the frustration and the disappointment and disillusionment that I was dealing with at the time, it felt like I don’t have words to capture this or I can’t … There just felt like vast territories in my life that I knew I just yearned for God, but had no way to tell him or talk about that. This is really hard to articulate. Unless you’ve experienced that and been there, then it’s hard. But it felt like … It’s not that I needed fancy words or better words, it was just literally, what could I say besides help? And so I said help, which is great, but I wanted other ways of prayer. I wanted other ways to capture this. So a couple of ways of prayer became really important to me.
Tish Harrison Warren:
One was prayer with my body. Literally started to kneel in church for the first time. Because it was the first time we were going to an Anglican church. And so I’d never knelt to pray in public before. I’d knelt to pray privately, but not in public. And so kneeling, just that experience of God, I don’t have words, but I can kneel and I will hold out my hands and I need you to hear the prayer of my body, of my posture here. The surrendering posture of prayer. And also to pray the words of other people. The Psalms, the Lord’s prayer and also just receive prayer in the prayer book. So that was incredibly helpful. Particularly at that point, The Lord’s Prayer, but also ended up also through the prayer book leading me back to prayer.
Tish Harrison Warren:
That happened again in a deeper way in 2017. Both deeper doubt, deeper struggle and deeper … It was very difficult to pray. It was actually, I think harder at that time because I was struggling. I think I was struggling with doubt a lot and more deeply then. And so that’s where the book picks up and I talk about writing. I think the first time that I really started using received prayer had been a decade or so before then. And that led me into liturgy. And then through that I started praying Compline and church offices. And so church offices are just the four offices of prayer in the Anglican book of common prayer. So that’s what I mean by that. But yeah, so I think then. And then on and off, I’ve used it a lot.
Tish Harrison Warren:
There was a time before I wrote Prayer in the Night where I went through a really difficult church experience. A pretty … I don’t know. A Traumatic, somewhat spiritually abusive church experience. And liturgical prayer was incredibly helpful after that. I wanted to pray for those who had hurt me. I wanted to forgive, but I did not have the words. And so using prayer … There’s prayers for enemies that are written. Using other people’s prayers really helped me pray for my enemies because I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get there on my own.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. You didn’t have the words or the-
Tish Harrison Warren:
Right.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
So I want to talk a little bit about the Compline prayer, where you pick up in the book. If you wouldn’t mind talking to us a little bit about how and why that prayer became so important for you in that moment.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. Well, there’s a few things. So Compline is a whole prayer office. It’s a collection of prayers. I do frame the book around one prayer and it’s one of my favorites, but it’s not … It was really the whole office of Compline. And part of the reason Compline specifically was important to me, I had prayed it for several years on and off before 2017. And there was something about it that felt deeply comforting to me. Soothing and soporific. It’s a nighttime prayer. But also very honest about the vulnerability we face. I talk about this in the book, but I think something about the fact that it’s written for nighttime. That some of that sense of precariousness gets into the prayer. So we pray that we’d be guarded from all perils and dangers of this night. So it acknowledges that it’s perilous and dangerous to live life.
Heidi Wilcox:
Because the night is always more dangerous because it’s dark. I like how you explained when the prayer was written that it was real dark. Not security lights, not any of this. And I was like, that’s terrifying.
Tish Harrison Warren:
I know. Because Christians have been … We have hard evidence that at least since the second, third century, there were Christians rising in the middle of the night around midnight to pray vigils. And when you think about it, there’s no 911. There’s no firemen. Just the nights were so vulnerable. And I experienced that. I lived briefly, very briefly in east Africa and where I was, was really far from a city. It was really … There just was no electricity. The literal translation of their good morning was how is the night? Because night … There is just a sense of anything. It’s so vulnerable in the darkness. And so you get that sense in the prayers themselves. And I was feeling that.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So 2017 where the book picks up, I had moved across the country. My father had died a week after I moved. I had had a miscarriage and then a hard pregnancy and another miscarriage. The hard pregnancy ended in miscarriage. A second trimester miscarriage. So it was this time of grief and it was this time where I felt deeply that I was frail. And then the prayers sort of pick up on that. That sense of all human frailty and vulnerability. But it also prays be our light and the darkness. It’s calling forth in this place of darkness for Jesus’s light to be, to shine in that. It repeats throughout Compline that awake we may watch with Christ, in the sleep, we may rest in peace. Rest in peace, literally what we say when people die. RIP, right? And so there’s this recognition of death over and over again in the prayers and there’s this recognition of human vulnerability and frailty.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So it became important to me. So why was that important to me? Two reasons. It was difficult to pray. Maybe three reasons. It was difficult to pray and these were words I could receive. But also secondly, nighttime specifically became really hard for me. And I’ve heard this from a lot of people in grief is that during the day you can get busy, you can keep going. And those hours at night, those long dark hours feel like they amplify grief and loneliness and just being fragile. So I would get night anxiety and just could not sit still. The way that I dealt with that was to go to Twitter or to get online or to stay up late. And so sitting still in silence at night was extremely difficult to me. And honestly, if I’m being honest, even now I’ve written the book sitting by myself and in silence at night is extremely difficult for me.
Heidi Wilcox:
It’s so hard, right?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. I still find it really hard. But because of that, I mean, it got crazy where I was just staying up so late. I was online and I just wouldn’t be still at night. And so prayer specifically for nighttime, sitting in prayer at nighttime was a huge challenge, but it was also something that I just knew that I needed to do it to connect with God and to connect with a grief that I was avoiding during the day. I mean, I was just really avoiding my own grief.
Tish Harrison Warren:
And then the last thing I would say is at the time and still I think, but especially at the time I needed … I wanted God. I wanted to know God. But I struggled a lot with trusting God. And so I felt like I needed a lifeline. I needed someone to throw me … Yeah, I guess, a life ring as I was drowning in the sea of doubt. So I needed the gospel but I needed it to be from people who were really honest that life is hard and that there’s sorrow. And I remember at the time I was trying to listen to this podcast from this British evangelical person who’s lovely but their exegesis felt so chipper and upbeat. And I was just like, I cannot do it. I could not receive. It was too positive, if that made sense.
Tish Harrison Warren:
And I just needed someone to say, “No. This is hard. Living is hard. Living this life.” Even for the folks like me with privilege and education, it’s difficult. And God is good in the midst of that, but I needed that first acknowledgement. So the prayers, it was prayers from other people and night but I also felt like in what we were talking about, the vulnerability of the prayers, it allowed me to listen to them in a way that I was unwilling to listen to people that were upbeat at the time.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Was it the prayers were a form of catechesis a little bit?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Absolutely. I think prayer is always a form of catechesis. There’s a really old saying in the church that the … [foreign language 00:45:46]. The law of prayer is the law of belief. And it’s because the way we pray shapes how we believe. So prayer is always catechetical, which is one of the reasons it’s very helpful to not just rely on your own prayers, to receive prayers from others, because it’s teaching you.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That’s beautiful. That really is lovely. Yeah. What did you learn about God during your season of grief? And after reading your book and just living life, I’m not sure that grief is a season. I think it’s more … From my experience, it’s more intense sometimes. But I think it’s a both and throughout. At least that’s what I’ve found throughout my life.
Tish Harrison Warren:
That’s right.
Heidi Wilcox:
So what did you learn about God during this season?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Well, I definitely learned God is more mysterious than I could ever … I would’ve said God is mysterious, but I think that I experienced that in a way that I’m just not going to get answers for things. There’s just things we’re not going to get answers for. And I don’t think that’s something deficient about the Christian faith. I mean, take your atheists and I think there’s just things, if they’re honest, that they’re not going to have answers for. I just think that part of what it means to be a limited human being is that we all are enduring a deep mystery and we long for things that have not yet come to pass. So I think I entered in a mystery more deeply, but I also … So it’s sort of funny to be like, what did you learn about God? And I’m like, I learned how much I don’t know. I mean, I learned mystery.
Heidi Wilcox:
But that’s a big of it.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
And to be okay with the not knowing.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. But I also have to say, I think I wrote this book because I really struggle to trust God. And I think in the first or second chapter, I can’t remember, I write, “If we cannot trust God to keep bad things from happening to us, then how do we trust God at all?” And I wrote that. I remember typing that. And that question kind of coming out of me, writing that. And I stopped writing and I said, “I don’t have any answer to that. I have nothing to say. And I’m only on the first or second chapter and I’m contracted for this book and I have nothing to say.”
Tish Harrison Warren:
And I literally just stopped. I walked away from the computer. I was done for the day and I didn’t come back for days, maybe weeks. I write every day. I mean, this is part of my job, but I just didn’t have an answer. And so the rest of the book was me like, okay, so … That’s the rest of the book is me wrestling with that question. And my first draft was something like 80,000 words. I mean, just ridiculously enormous. And I cut down about half. But it’s just because it took that I just was pouring out sort of all my thoughts, all my questions, everything I’d read and studied. It was just sort of this massive kind of … This book is an introspective struggle with how to trust God. How I trust God. But what I can say more than I could have at the beginning of the book …
Tish Harrison Warren:
And I’m sure in the future I’ll struggle with doubt and I’ve struggled with doubt since I wrote this book. So I’m not saying, and now it’s one and done and my faith is infinitely victorious now. But I do think that God loves me, which is so … It’s like, I’ve learned God loves me. It’s the Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so. But I think that God is out to get us, but he’s out to get us not because he’s cruel or not to hurt us, but absolutely to love us and to set us free.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So I think in a way that I probably didn’t know before this book, this is what I’ve realized. That there will be grace. There will be mercy. There will be beauty. There will be goodness in my future, whatever that is. And if that means that the worst things that I imagine happen, there will be grace waiting for me there that I can’t now see, and God will … Jesus beat me there. I mean, he got there first and will be waiting for me there. And so just the tenacity that the love of God really, really does move closer to us and move faster to us than the tragedy and the brokenness of the world. And when you’re there, when you go to the folks in the places of tragedy, what they tell you is stories of mercy. So this will sum up what I learned. Before I wrote this book I said I did not want to write this book. I told God three reasons that I did not want write this book. And I’m happy to tell you all three, but one of them was, I know how this goes and if I write this book, everyone is going to come and tell me the worst thing that ever happened to them. Like when you put yourself out there a book about suffering and-
Heidi Wilcox:
Because you were very vulnerable. And I felt like that’s why it connected so much. Yeah.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So when you talk about this and when you speak about this, people come up and tell you about hard things that have happened to them. And when their children died in accidents and when people they love committed suicide and you hear these stories. And I knew that because I’m a pastor, I knew that would happen. And I knew that if you talked about suffering, people would talk about their suffering. And I said, “I don’t think I can emotionally handle this. And I’m not sure I theologically handle this. I’m struggling to trust you. If I hear the worst thing of everyone’s life.”
Tish Harrison Warren:
And what happened was the book came out and exactly what I said, people came up and told me about the worst thing that had happened in their lives. But this is what I wasn’t expecting is when people did that, they talked about these terrible things that had happened in their life and then they all start talking about how God met them. And they talk about grace that they would not have known had this not happened. And not that it makes it okay or worth it, but that they were standing and they were still believers and they were still intact and there was still beauty in their lives. And they saw God in ways that I had not seen God. They saw parts of God and colors on the spectrum of God that I had not because I have not experienced that kind of need.
Tish Harrison Warren:
So I told God I can’t write this book because I don’t think I can handle hearing about all these tear things in the world. But what I didn’t realize is that it’s story after story of God’s love and seeking people in the midst of that. And so I feel like what I’ve learned from this book is it’s the just reckless love of God is … It’s more. It just is inexhaustible. I think that’s it. if there’s something I’ve learned, it’s that I’m not going to be able to exhaust mercy.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. That part of the book that you were talking about really resonated with me as well about, I think you were telling the story about this couple whose child was having some pretty serious surgery and keeping God on trial. Is he good or not good? One, because this is happening. Two, if the or surgery doesn’t go as planned, then we lose our child. And I think it was the husband who came to the wife, or I don’t remember for sure, but they were talking to each other and they said, “We have to decide now.”
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. It was the wife. It was missing my friend Julie. Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. We have to decide now if God is good or he will be on trial for the rest of our life. So my question is, how do you take God off trial? Because bad things are still going to happen. People are going to get cancer and people are going to die and all that stuff. But how do we just take him off trial and trust that he is good in the suffering, in all of that, when it doesn’t seem good?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. Well, I think … Learning from my friend, Julie, I think in that moment, she realized I have to decide before I know the results of the surgery. I have to decide now. Meaning we have to … She was saying I can’t base my view of God’s goodness on whether or not the surgery goes as planned. And what she looked to was Jesus. Was the story what God’s goodness shown in Christ. And I said, that’s going to be the basis of my belief that God is good and not what happens to my son. And by the way, their son is now like 30 years old and doing great. But I think this is also a process. I think that it’s okay to acknowledge that. In other words, I think what Julie was doing at that moment was surrendering the results of that surgery to God and trusting the Lord with whatever happened.
Tish Harrison Warren:
And my guess is that’s probably not the last time Julie had to do that. I mean, I could be wrong. I don’t know. I could ask her. But I think that for me at least, learning to trust God, as opposed to put God on trial, is this almost constant work. It’s this constant coming back again. This is a dumb example of this maybe. Maybe it’s not, but-
Heidi Wilcox:
I don’t think there is a dumb example.
Tish Harrison Warren:
But coming up here to Asbury my son, my little baby two year old, who’s just has my heart. I just love this little boy. And he had the flu last week and it was … He had a 104.5 fever. It was awful. And I called them and said, “I don’t know if I’m coming.” And decided to make the decision on Saturday.
Tish Harrison Warren:
And Saturday he was well, no fever, doing good. I said, “Yes, I’m coming.” And then my flight was leaving Sunday. And Sunday he spiked a fever again and was sick. And so I got on the plane crying. And the reason this is dumb is he wasn’t going to die. I mean, you know.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right.
Tish Harrison Warren:
But as an anxious mom, I got on the plane crying that I was leaving my little baby who wanted me and needed me. And I wanted to be with him. And I felt tricked. It felt like God, you tricks me here. Like he got better on Saturday. And so to believe like, well, is the character of God that I feel tricked right now as the character of God who he has revealed himself to be as one who loves me?
Tish Harrison Warren:
And so what I did … Because I was mad at God and I told him, and I think that’s fine. I mean, I said, “I’m very angry at you right now. You could have kept his fever away and you didn’t, and I’m mad. And I trust that you’re not this trickster God of Greek mythology. I trust that you are God who blesses children because you came to earth and you blessed children.” And so on the plane I told God, “I don’t see mercy here and I need to see mercy. And I’m having a hard time seeing it.” But partly because I wrote 80,000 words and did this work, I realize there is mercy. I just can’t see it. My eyes are not dial … It’s like how your pupils dilate in the night to let in light.
Tish Harrison Warren:
My pupils had not dilated to see mercy. So on the plane, I wrote down every glimpse of mercy that I could find from, I mean, just everything. Of course the revealed person of Christ who Jesus is. But also that I was really thirsty and I was given water on the plane. Also it was a safe flight. And also that my son has a father that loves him and takes care of him. I wrote down every small thing down to that I had a place to sleep that night. Just honestly looking for mercy. And there’s a way it could be like, okay, so you just have got on trial, but you’re just focusing on the good things. But my heart wasn’t like, well, let me write down all the bad things and all the good things or let me just write down the good things and ignore the bad.
Tish Harrison Warren:
My heart was like, “Look, my emotions right now are telling me that you are not trustworthy and that you are out to get me, that you tricked me. What I know of you from who you showed yourself to be in Jesus and also just faithfulness to me over the last 42 years is that you love me. And so I’m just going to let you help me be grateful and show me moments of being loved.” And so for me, even that practice was a surrender of … It was a surrender and it was … What I told the Lord was, “I don’t see mercy. So I need you to open my eyes to it.”
Tish Harrison Warren:
And so I don’t know. I mean, that’s a very small moment. My son wasn’t in surgery and I wasn’t making this choice of what Julie was, but I … So how do you take God off trial? You take God off trial by meditating on his love and goodness over and over and over and over and over. And if you have a heart like mine where you find trusting hard, I think that it takes … I’ll just be totally honest. It’s a lot easier for my husband to take God off trial than me. He has a gift of faith and trust I just don’t have. And so for me, it is a walk up hill to trust God and to take God off trial. So it’s an exercise. Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
I like that. That’s very helpful because I feel like it should be like it is for your husband. That it’s easy and whatever happens is fine. I’m not saying he thinks that, but you said he had the gift of faith and trust and so it’s more like this is hard and it will be … You know?
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah.
Tish Harrison Warren:
But I think looking to Jesus. I know that I said the answer is Jesus, but I think meditating on who Jesus is and that there’s not a hidden bad God behind the back of Jesus is really an enormous need for us to trust God.
Heidi Wilcox:
And I like what you also said in that section too, that when we’re asking God, why is this happening, that what we’re really asking is for all to be made right. And in that I found immense hope because I was like, that is exactly what I’m asking when I’ve heard other people ask underneath their question. And I was like, oh, that makes me feel hopeful because it will all be made … I mean, I believe it will all be made right.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yes. Which is why some of this how do we take God off trial, the answer really is the resurrection. Honestly. When I have got on trial it’s because I don’t believe the resurrection. And so coming back to … Because we’re coming up on Easter, this is appropriate.
Heidi Wilcox:
And your podcast releases the Tuesday after Easter so it’s perfect.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Tim Keller called Easter the universal solvent. He said it just eats through every fear, every, all despair. And I think that’s it. I think our hope really, really is the resurrection. And so when I think that my hope is my life going well and my kids being safe, my dreams coming true, the things that I want that are really, really good, honestly good things from God, those happening, then that becomes my hope and not the resurrection. And it’s because my belief in the resurrection is often pretty thin. I’m a Christian and I hope God has mercy for that. But my belief in the resurrection is wavering all the time. And I think it’s to the extent that my belief in the resurrection waivers, that’s when I put God on trial to show he’s good some other way. And so for me, I mean, I just need mercy to believe the resurrection and the renewal of all things to come, which is based on the resurrection.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right. Because I think for me, I was like, I would never say I don’t believe the resurrection because of course you do. I do. But I don’t always live like I believe it.
Tish Harrison Warren:
That’s right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s the struggle is to live like we believe the resurrection actually happened.
Heidi Wilcox:
Right? Yeah.
Tish Harrison Warren:
That is the struggle. That is the project of my whole life.
Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been quite a conversation. I feel like we could just go on talking, that we’re kind of just getting started. I have one question that we ask everybody who comes on the show, but is there anything else that you want to mention that I didn’t know to ask you?
Tish Harrison Warren:
I don’t think so. You should tell your listeners I have a New York Times newsletter every week on faith and I would love it if they subscribed. And they have to subscribe to the New York Times to get it. But they can subscribe to just the digital, the low a level of subscription and then they can get it.
Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, awesome.
Tish Harrison Warren:
I would love for them to do that. That’s a little self-promotion but I would love for them to do that.
Heidi Wilcox:
Well, we will do that. I’ll link to all of that in the show notes so that people can be sure to find it. And then after reading your books, I would definitely encourage anyone listening to grab a copy of those as well and we’ll link that all in the show notes too.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Great.
Heidi Wilcox:
Now, the one question that we ask everyone, because the show is called The Thrive with Asbury Seminary Podcast, what is one practice or more that is helping you thrive in your life right now?
Tish Harrison Warren:
One practice or more. One of them is I’m trying to read more poetry and I’m specifically reading it when I wake up in the morning or before I go to bed and that’s been really wonderful. I love poetry and it’s a delight. And it also … I don’t know. It slows down my body and it slows down my brain and it helps me pay attention to my life. To pay attention to the liturgies that are forming me. And so that’s been good. Poetry. I mean, there’s so many. I just wrote about this, but our family … Slow Saturday mornings have become a really important thing for me. My job, because I have weekly deadlines now with the New York Times, it’s pretty intense. So having just … So slowness has become a real huge priority for me. To have times of very intentional slowness. And so Saturdays, we get up and we make pancakes or biscuits, something that takes a second to make. And then we usually go hiking and we take it really slow. And that’s been a sustaining practice for me.
Heidi Wilcox:
That’s lovely.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah. So those are two of them.
Heidi Wilcox:
Poetry and slow Saturdays.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Heidi Wilcox:
I like it.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
I like it.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Yeah.
Heidi Wilcox:
Well Tish, thank you so very much for being on the podcast today. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.
Tish Harrison Warren:
Thank you. It’s been good.
Heidi Wilcox:
Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Tish Harrison Warren. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. I especially appreciated her authenticity, her vulnerability and the way she thinks deeply about her faith. It just left me with a lot of hope and I hope it did the same for you as well. Of course, I want to encourage you if you haven’t already be sure to grab a copy of any of her two books, soon to be three books, if you haven’t already done so, and be sure to thank her for being a part of today’s episode. As always, you can follow @asburyseminary in all the places, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @asburyseminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.
