The Habit

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Amy Baik Lee Has a Homeward Ache (from the Archives) May 05, 2025

Show notes

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 perhaps we were made for a different world, make their way out in every thing Amy writes, and especially in her book, This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today. In this episode, a replay from 2023, Amy and Jonathan Rogers talk about homeward longing, the idea of Sehnsucht, and the importance of writing in community.

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Daniel Schwabauer on The God of Story Apr 28, 2025

Show notes

Besides creating the One Year Adventure Novel and Cover Story writing curricula for students, Daniel Schwabauer has also written fiction and nonfiction for writers of all ages. He also teaches English at MidAmerica Nazarene University near Kansas City. His new book is The God of Story: Discovering the Narrative of Scripture Through the Language of Storytelling. In this episode, Daniel and Jonathan Rogers discuss ideals of power vs. ideals of principle, story as a means of defamiliarization, and story as a truly terrible flight simulator.

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Mark Meynell on Art in the Immanent Frame Apr 21, 2025

Show notes

Mark Meynell is a freelance writer and speaker based in the UK. He’s the author of Life After Life and A Wilderness of Mirrors. He’s a co-host of the Tryptich podcast, and he’s an aficionado of Cold-War spy stories. In short, he’s a polymath and an excellent conversationalist. In this episode, Mark and Jonathan Rogers talk about the "immanent frame," instrumentalized art, and the power of beauty to challenge 'buffered selves' with the possibility of transcendence.

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Matthew Clark on the Love that Outlives Death Apr 14, 2025

Show notes

Matthew Clark is a singer/-songwriter, a storyteller, and a free spirit. He drives around America in a van he calls Vandalf, taking his music and stories and wisdom to audiences across the country. For the last six years he’s been working on a project he calls The Well Trilogy. Three albums of eleven songs, each accompanied by a collection of eleven essays inspired by the songs, written by friends of Matthew. The latest installment, Where the River Goes, comes out this week. In this episode, Matthew and Jonathan Rogers talk about aligning with reality, overcoming despair, and the love that outlives every kind of death.

This episode is sponsored by The Habit Writer Development Cohorts, a six-week online small-group writing intensive designed to help writers develop their unique voice, refine their ideas, strengthen their craft, and build sustainable work habits. TheHabit.co/Cohorts

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Allen Levi is a Good Talker. Apr 07, 2025

Show notes

In this episode, Allen Levi and Jonathan Rogers discuss this connections between writerly voice and the voice with which the writer speaks every day. Allen Levi is a singer-songwriter and the author of The Last Sweet Mile and Theo of Golden.

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Tish Harrison Warren and Doug McKelvey on The Liturgy of the Ordinary (from the Archives) Mar 31, 2025

Show notes

This archive episode of The Habit Podcast, from the first season, features a three-way conversation between Tish Harrison Warren, Doug McKelvey, and Jonathan Rogers. Tish is an Anglican priest, a former columnist for the New York Times and Christianity Today, a senior fellow at The Trinity Forum and the author of Prayer in the Night and The Liturgy of the Ordinary. Doug is best known as the author of the Every Moment Holy books. In this episode, Tish, Doug, and Jonathan talk about the liturgies of the writing life, finding meaning where it is to be found, and liturgy as a way of making room for mystery to assert itself.

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Flannery O'Connor Turns 100 Mar 24, 2025

Show notes

Flannery O'Connor's 100th birthday would have March 25, 2025. In this episode, Jonathan Rogers celebrates the life and work of this remarkable writer in an essay adapted from the introduction to his book, The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O'Connor.

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Ben Palpant Talks to Poets Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

Ben Palpant loves, for reasons that become apparent in this episode. On assignment from the Rabbit Room, Ben sat down to interview a few poets. He enjoyed it so much, he interviewed a few more, then a few more. When he had interviewed seventeen poets, he collected those interviews into a book called An Axe for the Frozen Sea. It’s a fascinating look into the minds and hearts of poets who work out of gratitude, out of abundance—sometimes out of grief, never out of grievance.

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Love, Happiness, and Creativity: An Essay Mar 03, 2025

Show notes

This week's episode is an essay, written and read by Jonathan Rogers. "Love, Happiness, and Creativity" begins (and ends) with an idea from Taylor Leonhardt's song "Diamonds"—the theme song for The Habit Podcast: "You are not an afterthought: Love himself dreamed you up."

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Kelly Kapic Doesn't Think Too Highly of Himself (from the Archives) Feb 24, 2025

Show notes

Kelly Kapic is a professor of theology at Covenant College near Chattanooga. His most recent book is You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's design, and Why That Is Good News. In this episode, Dr Kapik and Jonathan Rogers talk about productivity, shame, gratitude and the truth that finiteness is actually a blessing. Also, they talk about magnanimity and pusillanimity.

This week’s episode comes from the archives. This conversation with Kelly Kapic first aired in January of 2022; it’s one of the Habit Podcast episodes I think about the most often.

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