Trinity Forum Conversations

Latest Episodes:

A Life Worth Living with Miroslav Volf Apr 30, 2024

Show notes

A Life Worth Living

What makes a good life? What habits of attention, reflection, and action orient us towards knowing, desiring, and doing what is good, true, and beautiful? Such “big questions” may seem unanswerable and intimidating — but their exploration is at the heart of the human quest for meaning.

Drawing on his popular Yale course, theologian Miroslav Volf joined us to reflect on what makes for a flourishing life in our times:

“You realize that there are things that are much more important. I mean this is the life of fullness. This is his life of weight. [It is the] arduous life that is, in fact, the truly happy life.

Despite the real challenge of human suffering and pain, Volf argues that happiness is possible and that an examined life that grapples with the good in our emotions, circumstances, and actions is a life worth living.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in early 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Miroslav Volf.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:
Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav Volf
Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Friedrich Nietzsche

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl
On Happiness, by Thomas Aquinas
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
How Much Land Does a Man Need, by Leo Tolstoy
Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory with Tim Alberta Apr 16, 2024

Show notes

The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory with Tim Alberta

American Christians are certainly not immune to the anger, division, and fear that characterize our political moment. For many, the prospect of another election year is a source of dread or of numb exhaustion; others have responded with aggression or defensiveness.

On our podcast, author and journalist Tim Alberta encourages us toward a better media diet, and to remember where our true allegiance lies:

“I would pray alongside of you that in our political and civic engagement, no matter who it is that we ultimately vote for, no matter what policies we support, that our allegiance is never to the Donkeys or to the Republicans. Our allegiance is never to a political figure.

“We have a king, we have a kingdom, and the best way for us to retain our saltiness is to prioritize that allegiance and that allegiance alone.”

We hope this conversation, coming in a heated election year and at a time of great political import for our nation, is, in fact, a kind of spiritual balm to you. May Tim’s guidance help us to retain our distinctiveness as we engage in the public square for the common good.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in early 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Tim Alberta.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

American Carnage, by Tim Alberta

The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta

Rush Limbaugh

Robert Jeffress

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr

City of God, by Augustine

Politics, Morality and Civility, by Václav Havel

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Connecting Spiritual Formation and Public Life with Michael Wear Apr 02, 2024

Show notes

Connecting Spiritual Formation and Public Life with Michael Wear

In the midst of what is proving to be a frustrating, fractious, and even frightening election year, how can Christians best respond to the situation in front of us, and how can we offer a positive contribution to our common life?

Drawing on the life and work of the late philosopher Dallas Willard, Michael Wear helps us explore what true spiritual formation could mean for the reformation of our polarized political life:

“We need to retrieve a sense that we live in a moral universe in which moral decisions are not optional. We make moral decisions all of the time, and our politics is actually not absent of moral assertion.

“You could say our politics today is actually more robustly full of moral assertions than it has been at any other time this century.”

We trust that you’ll be encouraged by Michael’s call to gentleness in our politics and his practical suggestions of Christian practices that help orient our hearts in the midst of cultural confusion and political fractiousness.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in early 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Michael Wear.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard

Reclaiming Hope, by Michael Wear

The Spirit of our Politics, by Michael Wear

Christian Smith

American Grace, by David Campbell and Robert Putnam

The Allure of Gentleness, by Dallas Willard

Eitan Hersh

The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Abraham Lincoln: The Spiritual Growth of a Public Man

Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.

City of God, by Augustine

Politics, Morality and Civility, by Václav Havel

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura Mar 26, 2024

Show notes

Making as a Spiritual Practice with Makoto Fujimura

If at the center of reality is a God whose love is a generative, creative force, how do humans made in God’s image begin to reflect this beauty and love in a world rent by brokenness and ugliness?

As Mako argues on our latest podcast, it’s in the act of making that we are able to experience the depth of God’s being and grace, and to realize an integral part of our humanity:

“Love, by definition, is something that goes way outside of utilitarian values and efficiencies and industrial bottom lines. It has to…and when we love, I think we make. That's just the way we are made, and we respond to that making. So we make, and then when we receive that making, we make again.”

Artistry and creativity are not just formative, but even liturgical in that they shape our understanding of, orientation towards, and love for, both the great creator and his creation.

We hope you’re encouraged in your making this Lenten season that the God who created you in his image delights in your delight.

If this podcast inspires you, and you’re so inclined, we’d love to see what you create, be that a painting, a meal, a poem, or some other loving, artistic expression. Feel free to share it with us by tagging us on your favorite social platform.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2021. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Makoto Fujimura.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, by Makoto Fujimura

William Blake

Vincent VanGogh

N. T. Wright

Esther Meek

Jaques Pépin

Bruce Herman

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Gift, byLewis Hyde

Amanda Goldman

T. S. Eliot

Calvin Silve

David Brooks

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Babette's Feast, by Isak Dinesen

Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot

Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Walking as a Spiritual Practice with Mark Buchanan Mar 19, 2024

Show notes

What does it mean to walk with God? The spiritual life is so often described as a walk, journey, or pilgrimage that it can be easy to dismiss the practice of walking as a mere metaphor.

But in God Walk, author, pastor, and professor Mark Buchanan explores the way that the act of walking has profound implications for followers of the Way.

Buchanan reflects on the ways in which walking can be both a spiritual practice and a means by which we can deepen our connection to the earth beneath us, our fellow travelers, and the God we worship:

“Hurry is the enemy of attentiveness. And so love as attentiveness is listening and caring and noticing, cherishing, savoring, being awestruck, these things that we feel in a relationship. I am deeply loved by this person because they notice me. I think that that’s how God’s built it. And we can’t get that if we’re moving too fast, if we’re in a hurry.”

We hope you’re encouraged this Lenten season as you learn to walk at godspeed, seeing this embodied act as a profoundly spiritual practice.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Mark Buchanan.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Aristotle

Søren Kierkegaard

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

God Walk, by Mark Buchanan

Simone Weil
The Three Mile an Hour God, by Kosaku Koyama

Wanderlust: A History of Walking, by Rebecca Solnit

Knowing God, J.I. Packer

Kai Miller

Related Trinity Forum Readings:
Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard

God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Long Walk to Freedom, by Nelson Mandela

Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Reading as a Spiritual Practice Jessica Hooten Wilson Mar 05, 2024

Show notes

What if we viewed reading as not just a personal hobby or a pleasurable indulgence but as a spiritual practice that deepens our faith?

In her book, Reading for the Love of God, award-winning author and Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Jessica Hooten Wilson explores how Christian thinkers—including Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Sayers—approached the act of reading.

She argues that reading deeply and well can not only open a portal to a broader imagination, but is akin to acquiring travel supplies for the good life:

“What I'm hoping to see more of is that the church becomes again those people of the book that really try to make others belong and strive for a deeper connection, versus the party atmosphere that our world always is tempting us to do.”

We hope you’re encouraged this Lenten season as you learn to read as a spiritual practice, finding grace and wisdom for living well along the way.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2023. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Jessica Hooten Wilson.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds That Came Before, by Jessica Hooten Wilson

Giving the Devil His Due, by Jessica Hooten Wilson

The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints, by Jessica Hooten Wilson

Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice,, by Jessica Hooten Wilson

Walker Percy

The Life you Save May Be Your Own, by Flannery O'Connor

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Boethius

Augustine

Mystery and Manners, by Flannery O’Connor

St. Basil

Origen

People of the Book, by David L. Jeffrey

A History of Reading, by Alberto Manguel

Jerome

Andy Crouch

Dana Gioia

Dorothy Sayers

Ross Douthat

Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Julian of Norwich

Dante Alighieri

Eugene Peterson

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Revelation, Flannery O'Connor

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Augustine's Confessions

The Grand Inquisitor, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Moses Man of the Mountain, by Zora Neale Hurston

God's Grandeur: the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Pursuing Humility, with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn Feb 20, 2024

Show notes

Pursuing Humility, with Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn

In an age when self-promotion is often celebrated as a sign of leadership and strength, humility may seem a lost virtue. Or alternatively, a form of moral condolence for the less successful.

In his recent work, Learning Humility, theologian Richard Foster argues that humility is actually strength, and that learning humility is more needed than ever. As Foster explains, humility releases us from a preoccupation with self, and allows us to live a life of freedom:

“One of the dangers among religious folks is that they can become stuffy bores. And it is hilarity that frees us from that. We don't take ourselves so seriously. We can laugh at our own foibles. If you look carefully… it's not hard to identify humble people. You'll find the freedom that they have to just enjoy life and enjoy other people, enjoy the successes of another person rather than being envious of it. Things like that. And so that's why humility, the most basic of the virtues, opens us up to a life of freedom.”

May Foster’s call to humility, and pastor and writer Brenda Quinn’s practical insights on living it out in leadership and community, inspire you this Lenten season to contemplate the humility of Jesus and the way of the cross.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2022. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Richard Foster and Brenda Quinn.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Learning Humility, by Richard Foster

Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster

Streams of Living Water, by Richard Foster

Sanctuary of the Soul, by Richard Foster

The Life With God Bible, contributed to by Richard Foster
C.S. Lewis

Timothy Keller

The Frenzy of Renown

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Who stands Fast, featuring Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Babette's Feast, by Isak Dinesen

Wrestling with God, by Simone Weil

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Word Beneath the Words with Malcolm Guite Feb 06, 2024

Show notes

Word Beneath the Words with Malcolm Guite

We’re joined on our podcast by poet, priest and songwriter, Malcolm Guite. With grace and insight, Malcolm has written of the mystery, beauty and imaginative force of language and the ways in which our imaginations apprehend truth that our reason cannot fully comprehend:

“Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your mind. And somewhere in all those ‘alls’ is all your imagination. And in fact, when we look at the teaching of Jesus, it's mostly an appeal to the imagination as a way of perceiving truth in a fresh way. He tells stories and parables.”

We trust that you’ll be inspired by the beauty of Guite’s poetry, and by the ways in which the poetic imagination brings healing to the false divide between the subjective and the objective.

04:44 The Connection Between the Priestly and Poetic Vocations
12:02 The Role of Imagination in Apprehending Truth
17:48 The Responsibility of Language and the Power of Words
23:24 The Idea of Being Spoken into Being
32:25 The Destructive Power of Words
36:23 The Importance of Intellectual Hospitality

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2024. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Malcolm Guite.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

John Donne

Love, Remember, by Malcolm Guite

Parable and Paradox, by Malcolm Guite

Theology and the Poetic Imagination, by Malcolm Guite

The Singing Bowl, by Malcolm Guite

Waiting on the Word, by Malcolm Guite

Lifting the Veil, by Malcolm Guite

Sounding the Seasons, by Malcolm Guite

The Word Within the Words, by Malcolm Guite

Gerard Manley Hopkins

George Herbert

R.S. Thomas

Seamus Heaney

John Keats

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Wiliiam Wordsworth

William Shakespeare

C. S. Lewis

Sir Andrews

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

John Milton

Edmund Spenser

Thomas Clarkson

Pilgrim's Progress

Diana Glyer

David's Crown, by Malcolm Guite

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

Spirit and Imagination, selections from Samuel Taylor Coleridge with an introduction by Malcolm Guite

Bulletins from Immortality: Poems by Emily Dickinson

God's Grandeur: The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Sacred and Profane Love, featuring the poetry of John Donne

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd Jan 23, 2024

Show notes

Music, Creativity & Justice with Ruth Naomi Floyd

How should we think about work within, and live faithfully within a world that was called and created to be good and beautiful, and yet everywhere is marred by ugliness and injustice?

Jazz vocalist and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd joins our podcast to discuss the intersection of music, creativity, and justice, and to help us think deeply about our role in repairing, re-envisioning, and creating new places of beauty, justice, and flourishing:

We know that art shapes and reshapes us and that it's there in the cross of Jesus, I believe, where beauty and violence collided and beauty won. And so that act of loving someone…purposely trying to love someone, especially those that seem or are viewed or deemed unlovable, is…directly connected and intrinsically connected to our art making.

We hope you enjoy and are encouraged by Floyd’s artistic journey, how she finds beauty in the midst of suffering, and her vision for the role of love in creativity.

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2021. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Ruth Naomi Floyd.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

The Frederick Douglass Jazz Works

It Was Good, Making Music to the Glory of God, by Ruth Naomi Floyd

The Problem of Good, by Ruth Naomi Floyd

Dr. John Nunez

Toni Morrison

Martin Luther King Jr.

Vincent van Gogh

Hans Christian Andersen

Miles Davis

Francis Schaeffer

Joshua Stamper

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Letters from Vincent van Gogh

Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.

Revelation, by Flannery O'Connor,

Bulletins from Immortality, by Emily Dickinson.

Related Conversations:
A New Year With The Word with Malcolm Guite

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

Tolkien, Lewis, and the Realities of War with Joe Loconte Jan 09, 2024

Show notes

Learning in Wartime with Lewis and Tolkien and Joe Laconte

Trinity Forum Senior Fellow Joe Loconte joins our podcast to discuss the friendship and legacy of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He highlights how their wartime experiences, and their subsequent refusal to become disillusioned and disenchanted in the aftermath of World War I allowed for some of the greatest works of literature in modern history.

In the moral and cultural tumult of the inter-war years, their example of resilience and imagination is inspiring. As Joe Loconte shared, they were using their art to actively resist the totalizing and dehumanizing ideologies that were ascendent in their day:

And it's just no coincidence. They are deliberately pushing back, I think, in a way that, that some biographers have not maybe fully appreciated. They are pushing back in their writings against the totalitarian impulse and trying to defend the role of the individual, the choices that individuals have to make.

Joe Loconte reminds us of the surprising return of hope for those who look up—as Samwise Gamgee says in the Lord of the Rings,” In the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”

This podcast is an edited version of an online conversation recorded in 2020. Watch the full video of the conversation here, and learn more about Joe Loconte here.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

C.S. Lewis

J.R.R. Tolkien

The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt, by Joe Loconte

The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler's Gathering Storm, by Joe Loconte

God, Locke, and Liberty: The Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West, by Joe Loconte

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and A Great War, by Joe Loconte

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

John Locke

Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway

Erich Maria Remarque

The Wasteland, by T. S. Eliot

The Inner Ring, by C.S. Lewis

Owen Barfield

Hugo Dyson

Phantastes, by George MacDonald

The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

A Time to Stand, by Helmuth James von Moltke

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Children of Light and Children of Darkness, by Reinhold Niebuhr

The Golden Key, by George MacDonald

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcast and to join the Trinity Forum Society and help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society

Special thanks to Ned Bustard for our podcast artwork.

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