Resilience for the Spiritually Weary, with Tish Harrison Warren

We tell conversion stories. We tell deconversion stories. But where are the stories of the long, complicated, and faithful middle? Author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren joins Mark Labberton on her new book What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience—a vision for faith that endures the long, often dry middle of life. Drawing on the Desert Mothers and Fathers, she names a quiet crisis many believers know but rarely speak: spiritual weariness, prayer that goes silent, and the cultural pull to blow up your life rather than stay in it. "Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be." In this episode with Mark Labberton, Warren reflects on her own burnout as a writer, mother, and priest, and what the ancient monks taught her about how to keep going. Together they discuss revivalism's distortions, stability of the heart, the church in exile, patience as resistance to consumerism, communal hope, and what it means to stay in your cell. Episode Highlights "What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith." "Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be." "We meet God in the midst of that, not on the other side of that." "If the moral majority was kind of dressing Jesus up and putting him in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to just, for then, to me, put Jesus in a blue tie." "Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin." About Tish Harrison Warren Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and Anglican priest in Austin, Texas, and the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life (Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year), Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep (Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year), and her newest, What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for the New York Times and was a columnist for Christianity Today. She serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for the Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, a senior fellow with The Trinity Forum, and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church. Helpful Links and Resources What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/whatgrowsinwearylands Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren https://tishharrisonwarren.com/liturgy-of-the-ordinary Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren https://www.ivpress.com/prayer-in-the-night The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope by Curt Thompson https://curtthompsonmd.com/books/ Immanuel Anglican Church, Austin https://www.immanuelatx.org Tish Harrison Warren online https://tishharrisonwarren.com https://www.instagram.com/tishharrisonwarren/ Show Notes Award-winning Anglican priest, author, and former New York Times newsletter writer Origins of What Grows in Weary Lands—a season of mid-career weariness Sandwich generation: young kids and a mother with Alzheimer's "It felt like I told my husband, like the line went dead." Reading from chapter one—revivalism, deconversion, and the missing middle "What our culture and what the church tends to lack are stories of a long, steady continuation in faith." Perseverance—the "eat your vegetables" of the spiritual life "Grit is an essential ingredient of grace, and resilience is indispensable if we are to become who we are made to be." Reconversion, not deconstruction Stabilitas cordis—stability of the heart The eat-pray-love trap and mid-life self-reinvention Striving, and treating God like an app or an Uber driver Desert Mothers and Fathers, third through fifth century "Stay in your cell"—a holistic call far beyond quiet-time advice Benedict's vow of stability, drawn from desert wisdom The American church as a church in exile, not a promised land "If the moral majority was dressing Jesus up in a red tie, it didn't seem like a solution to put Jesus in a blue tie." "Our primary exile isn't a political state, it's that we're in sin." Charlie—incandescent joy after a long, hard middle Hilda—fifty-eight years of daily prayer for her father's conversion "Impatience is what keeps you buying things. Patience doesn't make anybody any money." Resilience is communal—Curt Thompson on brains that cannot hope alone The long view: small repair, slow institutional change, hope carried together #ChristianResilience #TishHarrisonWarren #WhatGrowsInWearyLands #DesertFathers #StabilityOfTheHeart #SpiritualFormation #AnglicanFaith #FaithAndCulture #ConversingPodcast #MarkLabberton Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.