“How To Inhabit Time” with James K. A. Smith
Shownotes:
James K.A. Smith is a returning guest to The Weight, this time for a conversation about his newest book, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now. He, Eddie, and Chris talk about the redemptive work of God’s love and grace in the broken parts of our lives. Our brokenness is part of our story, and it’s something God uses to bring us to an even better place than we could have imagined. Getting to that better place is difficult, especially as we live in a world that would rather gloss over the problems of our past than acknowledge the pain in order to move forward.
Jamie is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is an award-winning author of a number of books, essays, and articles. His work focuses on building bridges between the academy, society, and the church.
Resources:
Learn more about James K.A. Smith
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Listen to his previous episode on The Weight
Transcript:
Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight. We're talking today to James K. A. Smith, who is a professor and a Christian author. He's written a book called "How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Tuture, Living Faithfully Now." We've had Jamie on the podcast before, but I think this is a better conversation. So good man. So, so good.
Eddie Rester 00:27
You know, my goodness, because I think he talks about something that we all are trying to figure out. How did we end up where we are? Why are we the way we are? And, you know, sometimes we just try to pick up the story and move forward, instead of actually thinking about what are the forces, what are the moments, what are the stories in my history that have shaped me into who I am? And what he helps us think about is that redemption actually requires our history. It's not isolated from it.
Chris McAlilly 01:02
Yeah, there's that Talking Heads song. And we all know that Eddie's a big Talking Heads fan.
Eddie Rester 01:05
Big Talking Heads fan. Yeah, if you need me to go into their discography, we can, you know, we can do that right now.
Chris McAlilly 01:13
Well, there's a line from one of their songs that says, "How did I get here?" And if you've ever asked yourself that, if you've ever wondered kind of how in the world... You know, I've been living in the world. I've gone through all of these things. How did I end up here? This is definitely a conversation for you. Because we talk about Jamie's journey into therapy, into counseling, and the way in which that really has helped him re-narrate kind of his current reality and kind of how he can live into the future for himself. But he also does that... We talk a lot about kind of the larger narratives that we inhabit, the national narratives that we inhabit. And the way in which, you know, America over the course of the last couple of years has been reckoning with its history. Some people come down on the side of we can't look at the past, or the only version of the past that we can talk about is the one that we've received. Other people saying, no, there's this other alternative history. And everybody's kind of up in arms at which version of the story we can tell--the good one or the bad one. And what he says is, you know, we have to look at all of it, our whole history, personal, andthe larger narratives that we inhabit. And ultimately, by doing that, it sets us up to live forward into God's future in a way that's unafraid, but also deeply, deeply hopeful.
Eddie Rester 02:39
And he kept talking about "redemptive." And I think, for me, that so many people live with either shame or embarrassment or fear of their past. And what we miss is that God sweeps all that up to redeem. So I'm thankful for him. I'm thankful for this book. You're gonna love, I think, the conversation. He's brilliant, but brilliant in a way that speaks to the life that we're all struggling to figure out. So I'm thankful for him in this conversation. I hope that you'll share it, write a review of it, help others find it as well.
Chris McAlilly 03:17
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.
Eddie Rester 03:26
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.
Chris McAlilly 03:34
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.
Eddie Rester 03:46
Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.
Chris McAlilly 03:55
We will create space for heavy topics. But we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.
Eddie Rester 04:02
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 04:04
Well, we're here today with Jamie Smith. Thanks for being with us today. We're excited to have you back on the podcast.
James K.A. Smith 04:11
Yeah. Great to talk to you again. Thank you.
Eddie Rester 04:14
Yeah, we're so thankful for your work and your teaching and your writing. I want to share with you something that one of my friends shared. I know that sometimes when you write books, and you teach, sometimes you don't know how does it play out, out there in the world? And one of my friends has read all of your books, he said, except this most recent one, because I was texting him and saying, "Hey, we're going to be interviewing Jamie today," and he said his eldest daughter has struggled with the faith a lot. And so the thing that allowed them to enter the conversation together was your book on St. Augustine.
James K.A. Smith 04:50 Oh, great!
Eddie Rester 04:51
And that he says, this what he said, "It's been our point of contact to explore faith together." She's been studying abroad, and so they went to St. Agustine's Church together in Rome to see the tomb.
James K.A. Smith 05:05 Fantastic.
Eddie Rester 05:06
And he said, just, it's been so great. And he said he got that idea straight from the section, one of the sections in "On the Road." And so anyway, thank you.
James K.A. Smith 05:19
That's so encouraging. Thank you for sharing that. That means a lot. You know, books go out like messages in bottles, and you don't always get bottles back. Although I should... It is so rewarding when they do. And it's been encouraging, the response to that Augustine book has been very personal. It's been stories like that. And it was really a book written with the hope of, you know, people who are ready to leave or are curious about exploring, and so that's super encouraging for me. Thank you. Please pass along my gratitude. I will. He wanted to sneak into the podcast and just be a fly on the wall. Eventually, you'll get...
Chris McAlilly 05:58
That's great. What's so cool about that book is that even the table of contents is kind of set up as a map. It's very much this cartography of the soul. And, you know, I think that's one of the lenses through which I think about all of your work is trying to give folks different kind of maps into their heart or into their desire. This most recent book, I think, is similar, but it's different. It's not about... You kind of move from spatial imagery into time. I wonder, maybe, you know, if you think about that, like this... I think that's one of the lenses that I have in reading the book. It's almost like cartography of the temporal world, not just the spatial world. I wonder, how has this book been received? And how are you thinking about it? You know, having written it, I'm sure, a couple of years ago now, kind of how it's come into the world?
James K.A. Smith 06:56
Yeah, no, thank you. By the way, I really like the line you're drawing there. I think it's true that this book is still trying to offer folks tools for orientation. Right? So if you think of that as kind of the goal, it's sort of like, let's get our bearings, let's get a sense of... If the Augustine book was sort of like where we are, this new book, "How to Inhabit Time," it's let's get our bearings by getting a sense of when we are. And in that sense, I see a lot of continuity. I think there's kind of a trajectory that goes from "You Are What You Love" to "On the Road with St. Augustine" to "How to Inhabit Time." And it's, I think, this new book, I've been, again, very encouraged. It's not a formulaic book, as you guys know. So the one thing that's interesting is, as an author, I've just become a little less interested in the merely didactic, and sort of giving people a set of tools and formulas, and you don't necessarily walk away and say, "Oh, I have to change this, and I have to do this. And I now here's how we're going to do this." It's more like trying to inculcate a sort of a sensibility, cultivate a new awareness of how to sort of look at one's life, to look at when we are. But in that sense, I've been really encouraged by folks who... For me, it's significant. It's folks at different stages of their life, too. Do you know what I mean? So I was in Texas last week, and talking to this 83 year old man who finds himself actually in a very difficult season of his life. And he just said, you know, "This helped me to make sense of when I am. It doesn't give me all the answers. It just gave me hope for how to endure when I am." Or, but I could also talk to somebody in their 20s, who said, you know, "This is helping us to think about what it looks like to start a life, almost, in a way," which is really encouraging. So I'm very grateful. It's funny when you said it was written. It is true. Like, now it's kind of was written a little while ago. It was written very much in the midst of the pandemic. It was also very much written in the wake of George Floyd's murder, which you can see how that sort of dynamic of reckoning drives a certain thread of the book, too. So it's fun to keep coming back to it, though, and having conversation.
Chris McAlilly 09:34
Yeah, I think that's one of the things, when you're looking... I appreciate that, the conditionality of when a set of ideas kind of takes life, and you do that when you're introducing certain sets of philosophical ideas in the book. But, yeah, that was one of the things I was interested in. What were some of the things that were conditioning your life and and where you were and what you were seeing around you that might have impacted the books. I appreciate that.
Eddie Rester 10:05
Yeah. So help help us. This is a more personal book for you, just in terms of rooting it in a part of your life story. So talk a little bit about that. How did this book come about? And kind of what are you hoping? And I'm with you. I think the the three point sermons, the seven habits to change your life... If that would have worked, we would have been all perfected by now. We got 60 years.
James K.A. Smith 10:31 Yeah, yeah.
Eddie Rester 10:32
So kind of what's the genesis of this book?
James K.A. Smith 10:36
Sure. By the way, what's frustrating is, those are the books that still sell, man.
Eddie Rester 10:40 I know. It's crazy.
James K.A. Smith 10:42
So if we're signing... We just need to know, you know, if we're trying to do something else, you're also signing up to be kind of part of a remnant of readers. But then your readers are so treasured, because they're willing to kind of join a different journey. This book, in many ways, its genesis is my own spiritual journey through therapy, very candidly. And I mean, it's not a surprise. It's on the first page. But what happened for me was, in many ways, the adventure of counseling and trying to work towards an emotional and mental wholeness out of dark depression turned out to be a process of both spiritual deepening, but also new kinds of philosophical awareness. I would say that the experience of going through therapy for depression sort of made philosophers and philosophies that I had read twenty years ago light up for me in new ways and with really spiritual tentacles about them into my life. And so that's why... The book is really trying to pull together... It's not saying my story is exemplary. It's just saying I'm going to speak from a place of testimony.
Eddie Rester 12:18 Right.
James K.A. Smith 12:19
I'm gonna bear witness. I think this is a kind of Augustinian project, right? Like I'm going to risk being vulnerable about how I experienced a reckoning with my past and tried to face the future, not because I think you should do what I should do. But here's how I discovered something about what it means to be temporal, mortal creatures, kind of things. And so that was a big part of it. The other thing, though, that's happening in the book, and I think you can see this, is it was written very much in our national climate, right. That's the other sort of water I'm swimming in at that time. And I think we have been going through an era of collective reckoning with our histories and our past. It's almost like a sort of national therapeutic moment, if we're willing to step into it. I'm not sure that we always are. And that's why the book, it kind of toggles back and forth between the personal and individual and the communal and the collective. But it's because I think the dynamics of time and history and formation and habit and hope and future and eschatology play out on both of those levels, too, so maybe I'm a little bit greedy in trying to do both of those in one book, but time will tell, I guess.
Eddie Rester 13:43
What, and I think, for you, what you're trying to encourage us to do is to engage the past, but not in a nostalgic way, not in an "oh, now the world is going to come to an end because, oh, this is the trajectory that we're on." One of the things I've talked to young couples about before they get married is that we live in the ruts that other people have dug for us. And for young couples who are 24, 25, who are just, they're excited about life, and they are charting their own journey...
Chris McAlilly 14:19
And they're the first people that have ever been in love. You know, nobody's ever been in love before them, and nothing could go wrong, right? Nothing could go wrong. Nothing could go wrong.
Eddie Rester 14:29
But as we start peeling back the layers of families and how their families fought and how their family spent money, typically there's a moment where one looks at the other and, "Oh, now I understand you. Now I get you."
Chris McAlilly 14:44 Or not, right?
Eddie Rester 14:46 Or not.
Chris McAlilly 14:47
Or you come to a place of complete unraveling where I don't understand you and how did we even get here? One of the things I love about the way that you write your books is that they're infused with music. And there's a playlist that accompanies it. And, you know, that Talking Heads song is just right there, you know. How did I get here?
James K.A. Smith 15:12 How did I get here?
Chris McAlilly 15:13
Yeah. And it's like, of course...
James K.A. Smith 15:15 This is not my life.
Chris McAlilly 15:16
Yeah, this is not my beautiful house. You know, this is not my beautiful life. How did you accumulate...You know, you would think that that would not be a statement that you would say, because it's accumulation of decisions and choices that lead up to the way your life is right now. But then we all know how that feels, of getting to a place where you look around, and it's like how did this happen? I have no idea. And then, marriages can unravel, relationships can unravel, because of our inability to kind of reckon what it is that we brought to the relationship on the front end.
James K.A. Smith 15:54
I wish I had Eddie for our premarital counseling. It's true, I do think that there's something a bit baked into either kind of rugged American individualism and/or certain forms of Christianity that imagine that they are just tapped into eternal truth. Whatever weird chemical reaction that happens between those things, people imagine that they are not their histories, right? Like we always... We're just our willpower, our ingenuity. We can do this. And I think that sense of sort of recognizing that we've been running in ruts that other people dug is still kind of a revelation for a lot of people. And it feels like, they feel like it's compromising their agency or autonomy or freedom or something like that. Whereas, what I'm saying is, listen, that's just what it is to be a creature.
Eddie Rester 17:04 That's right.
James K.A. Smith 17:04
This is, you know, this is exactly the point about the past is not past, right? It's what we carry with us. And I think there's some allergy that American Christianity seems to have in some places to still that dynamic of reckoning with the past. Whereas I think to embrace our creature hood, to embrace our finitude, to embrace our dependence is just to kind of face up to that, and find in our past both gifts that have been given to us, and then to kind of face the sort of bad habits that have been handed down to us.
Eddie Rester 17:04 Right.
James K.A. Smith 17:04
Right? To be a creature is to be the kinds of beings who inhabit time, such that we are dependent on what has gone before us. And that dependence is not a negative thing in and of itself, because, in fact, what we have inherited, what has been handed down to us, also makes it possible to live forward in ways. But if what has been handed down to us is malformed and dysfunctional, or if we are not aware of the sort of mixed bag that's been handed down to us, then we don't realize what we're working with, and we replay the worst of it. I mean, you're in Faulkner territory down there.
Chris McAlilly 18:40 Yeah.
James K.A. Smith 18:40
I don't know. Does that make sense?
Chris McAlilly 18:41
It does. One of the images in the book that I found to be provocative was that everybody knows the drawer of keys that's in your house. And, you know, I remember when we're cleaning out my grandfather's house, it was all of this. It was loose change and keys and all the rest. And it's as if that's our inheritance. We inherited a set of keys and some of them, you say, unlock possible futures. They're keys that unlock things for us. And then others are the keys that have chained other people. And so we inherit both of those things, both potential possibilities, and also ways in which we've hurt and oppress other people. And so, part of the work of discernment is to kind of figure out which ones are which and what needs to be discarded or set behind and then what needs to be carried forward. I want to get to discernment. But I wanted to ask you, Eddie, I've heard you say that line, we live in the ruts that others dig for us. I heard you say, I don't know. I've probably heard you say that 100 times or more. But I've never asked you where? How is that? Why do you say that to couples? Where did you learn that?
Eddie Rester 19:59
I'm not sure where I learned it other than when Audra and I got married, we didn't have any... The only premarital counseling we got was, "Eddie, sometimes Audra is going to want to go to Walmart without you, and she doesn't want to be with you, and that's okay." That was it. That was the entirety of it. And both, we got married, we'll both say we got married too young, I was 23. She was 22. And we brought in a lot of family baggage, a lot of family baggage. I've been the product of divorce and alcoholism. She had lost her mom at age eight. And so we were carrying heavy, both of us were carrying heavy bags into the marriage. And so when you talked about the drawer of keys, Jamie, it was, we grew up together trying to figure out which keys can unlock a future and which keys, oh, we can't go in. We don't need to go in there. And so I think that's where it came from is that just out of my own experience. We had to climb out of certain... We had to acknowledge ruts and say, we can't live in those anymore. And we had to acknowledge ruts that we said, "We can stay here. This is good for us. This is good for our marriage. It'll be healthy for our kids." And then we had to say, "We're going to dig some new ones." And so that's where that... I'm an image guy. And that's just always stuck for me. And Jamie, as you talk about all of this. You're so good at this and you talk about... There's a big word that I'm not going to get right.
Chris McAlilly 21:44
Dischronomet...metry? Or something like that. What was that word?
Eddie Rester 21:47
It's better to read than say.
James K.A. Smith 21:48 [???]
Eddie Rester 21:49
Yeah. So basically, out of you, when we aren't able to deal with time, it disorients us in life. That's how I'm reading you. You can say, "Eddie, you're dumb."
James K.A. Smith 22:04 No, no, that's right.
Eddie Rester 22:04
So let's try. So how do we begin? In your own journey, how do we begin to hold on to time--all of it, not just the pieces that we like, not just the easy and nostalgic pieces? Where do we go with this?
Chris McAlilly 22:21
Hey Jamie, before you do that, before you speak to that, I just want to say, Eddie, thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate you sharing that. It's so helpful. I didn't know that part of your story. So thank you.
James K.A. Smith 22:34
Yeah, by the way, I also really resonate. That's so close in parallel to our own story, too. Eddie, it's a good question. I think I don't have an easy or a clean answer to it. Because I think it's a sort of cumulative effect in my own life. So I think I came to this... So I think in some ways, my own experience in therapy was the place where I started to learn this, I'm like, oh, you are your history. What's crazy is, when I was in my 20s, you know, I'm literally professionally studying the work of a German philosopher named Martin Heidegger, who was saying all of this, and I was passing the exams. But for some reason, the real sort of repercussions of it never hit for me. But in that sense, I also have to say, I think philosophical sources sort of primed me to become aware of this. I think the terror and hard work of Christian counseling also then pressed me to think about it. I would say, in some ways, theologically, both a renewed appreciation for the Catholic heritage of the Christian faith, and even living into and out of the liturgical calendar incubates a sensibility of how one inhabits time that I think is part of it. And then I would say, you know, reading James Baldwin. Reading James Baldwin is like this really... You know, I'm not saying that's the necessary portal that everybody goes through. But if I'm tracking my own path to an appreciation for these dynamics, I would say reading Baldwin on America was... And I'm an immigrant, right. So I became a US citizen in 2018. I have come to adopt to this place. And so I've had to kind of, as an adult, learn the story that kids are usually getting in middle school or something. And it messes you up a little bit. And I think maybe that sort of particularity of even my immigration to this country created an occasion to think about how we are the way we are because of when we were and what we were. And I don't so I don't have... It's the kind of a lame answer because I don't have necessarily a kind of program for encountering it. But it is a sort of accumulating sensibility, maybe.
Chris McAlilly 25:26
So, the Baldwin on America, two things. One is, w talked a couple of years ago to Jamie about an essay that he wrote on imagination, and James Baldwin's work.
James K.A. Smith 25:39 Oh, yeah, right!
Chris McAlilly 25:39
If you're interested in that, you can go back and find that in the archive. But then also one of the ways, kind of turning away from just our personal narratives and the way past, we live in the ruts that others dig for us, but also thinking about these big, national stories that we inhabit, and that we kind of intersect with. One of the ways in which you kind of, you're kind of wrestling with that, the American story, is through the Avett Brothers song "We Americans." Would you, for folks that maybe haven't heard that song, maybe just kind of talk a little bit about what's going on and why you use it as one of the ways to unpack how we inhabit time.
James K.A. Smith 26:23
Yeah. It's such an interesting... Now, I don't think it's their best song. But I think it is such an interesting study. And what's kind of cool is we heard the debut of the song in Brooklyn, when it was first played. And the first time I heard it, I thought, first of all, this is very courageous for an Americana band from the South to do. And it really is, it's sort of saying, you know, it's saying, it's a hymn of appreciation for the country that they love. But they also are willing to recognize that the history of oppression and brutality and exploitation and enslavement that got us to where we are is also part of the story. So it's not an either or. It's not a binary. But it's--I can never quote lyrics without singing them. But it's sort of like the history of our exploitation is right on the table with the coffee and the sugar, right? It's there in the cotton that you're wearing. It's all sort of woven into the things that we take for granted every day. And these things are here because of the past. And so I think... But what's interesting, because they end the song... So I think they got a lot of heat, because a certain half of their fan base would be like, "We're not talking about this. The red, white and blue is pure and good and true." And they're like, "We love the red, white and blue. And we also see the tears and the blood streaks and the history of this. Why can't we say both? Why can't we say both of these things are true?" We have to, but it ends with the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not the America sucks sweepstakes, as Richard Rorty used to call it. It's a sort of... It's genuinely this dynamic of reckoning, which I just think is exactly kind of where we need to be. We don't have to get too specific or too political. But like, I've just been genuinely sort of puzzled and flabbergasted at how many white Christians just will not countenance anything about the 1619 Project. Do you know what I mean? As if that is just... There's a sacrosanct story that must be preserved at all costs, when it's so clearly a heartbreaking mixture of gift and poison that is our story. And so I credit the Avett Brothers' "We Americans" for leaning into both of those things, you know.
Chris McAlilly 29:16
Yeah. And so, one of... Hold on just second, Eddie. I want to just quote. The end of the song is so good, because it is, I love this country. And also, we've got some serious hard stuff that's there that we want to acknowledge. But then also, I love this country. It's kind of the way it ends is, "I'm the son of God and man, and I may never understand the good and the evil, but I dearly love this land because of and in spite of We the People." it's just powerful man. It's just a really cool...
James K.A. Smith 29:47
"Because of and in spite of." You can put those things together.
Eddie Rester 29:50 Yes.
James K.A. Smith 29:51
And it's, to me, that's the dynamic of reform, right. If you think of reform... Now we're talking about sort of institutional realities, and reform is the labor you undertake when you love and receive the gifts of an institution and a community, but you also see the blind spots, the darkness, the shadows, and you're like, "I want us to be better. I want us to live up to what we say. So I'm invested. I'm committed. But I'm not committed to the charade that we're getting this all right." I think that dynamic of reform, as opposed to, say, just a revolutionary mindset that wants to raze everything to the ground and the illusion that if we start over we will be pure. I mean, that's, that's just... I was going to say "silly," but...
Eddie Rester 30:47
I'm going to connect one of the quotes from the book to what you're saying. You wrote, "it's the body with scars that has resurrected. It's the me with a history that is redeemed, forgiven, graced, liberated." When you think about that, if you try to say, "I'm going to be resurrected perfectly, because that's who I was, or that's who we were as an institution, or who we were as a country," you miss resurrection. There's no need to be redeemed, forgiven, graced, liberated. We have to own those pieces of us that are the things that we are ashamed of or the things that we wish we could write out of our story. But we just can't write them out of our story.
James K.A. Smith 31:34
And I just think it's so powerful that God exemplifies redemption of all things in the first fruits of the resurrected Jesus. And when he has conquered death and the grave, he shows his wounds and scars. I mean, that's... If we were writing this story, I don't think that's the way it goes. Do you know what I mean? It'd be like, oh, no, no, we've erased and effaced all that has gone before. We want to think of redemption as a reset button. It's like, "Oh, no. Start over." And I think, on both a personal level and a communal and collective level, if we fall into that trap, we don't see all the ways that God wants us to integrate and pick up even the suffering that we have gone through to make us a different people and different people going forward. And it's not, none of it is like some sort of theodicy of justifying at all. It's just rather saying, what is so remarkable about God's redemption is he doesn't erase history. But rather, God takes up the particularities of our stories, like your--since you've shared so vulnerably about your own marriage and your own story, your marriage will be a redemptive force, because of what you have undergone, and what you inherited. And you are now released, to sort of be image bearers to the world and to your neighbors in a way that you couldn't have if you hadn't undergone that. And I just think that's such a remarkable... I think there's something very unique in the mystery of the gospel that's at work there.
Eddie Rester 33:25
And when I think about our friends in AA and NA who own their story, but not just own their story. They own their story as a part of God's redemptive work--that now, my life story, I'm not proud about it. I'm not trumpeting my own wonderfulness, but now my story, because I own all of it, can be used and others can draw strength from me sharing my story. I think one of the things in mainline churches that we lost along the way was the ability to hear witnesses to hear testimonies to hear the stories of faithful people who hit the rocks and God allowed, worked through that rock bottom moment or that struggle or that loss. And sometimes we don't, even as the church, want to be seen as people who have a history.
James K.A. Smith 33:56
Yes. Exactly. And it's, I think that is so right. So we all show up, and we all got our Sunday best on, and we all got it together, and so we're all pretending. And to me, that's exactly what generates shame. So I think shame is un-Gospel. But what generates shame is precisely this pretension of perfection or the erasure of a past and say, oh, that. I don't want to talk about that because that's ugly, as opposed to testimony. I have a friend, Chris Thomas, who teaches at a Pentecostal seminary in Cleveland, Tennessee. And he says that poetry, no, testimony is the poetry of Pentecostal experience, which I just love that line. And it is so true, because I think there's something deeply narratival, imaginative, effecting about poetry. It's one of the reasons--or about testimony. It's one of the reasons why I sort of took the risk to include some memoir in this book. Because I think there's something deeply human in how we find and hear and see one another when we share our own stories, like you did already earlier in this hour. So I think that's right, that we're talking about a way of grappling with and wrestling with our past, that doesn't try to lock it away in a basement, that doesn't try to pretend it never happened, that also doesn't just say, "Well, that's what God meant it to be," you know, justifies it all. It's this even more miraculous, unbelievable thing that you can be born again with that past. The me that's born again is the me that had that past. I think that's really liberating, in many ways.
Chris McAlilly 36:26
Yeah, one of the prayers that's at the end of the book that's so powerful, that's worth, I think, raising at this point in the conversation is a post-communion prayer that you heard in DC at a French church, and I'll just read the prayer, because I think it's worth--not the whole thing...
James K.A. Smith 36:47
It's worth saying that the prayer comes out of Kenya.
Chris McAlilly 36:49
It comes out of Kenya. Very nice. So here's the prayer: "Oh, God of our ancestors, God of our people, before whose face the human generations pass away, we thank you, that in you we are kept safe forever, and that the broken fragments of our history are gathered up in the redeeming act of your Son, your dear Son, remembered in His Holy Sacrament of bread and wine. Help us to walk daily in the communion of saints, declaring our faith and the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body. Now send us out in the power of the Holy Spirit to live and work for your praise and glory. Amen." What is it that kind of gathers up all the thoughts of the of the book in that prayer for you, Jamie?
James K.A. Smith 37:38
Yeah, in fact, now that I think back, I heard that prayer in the spring of 2018. And in many ways, I think it was a huge catalyst for even conceiving this book. Because what I love there is this sense that, first of all, before God, who is eternal, all human generations passed away. So there's this just this naming the mortality of who we are as human beings. And that that's not a surprise to God, that God actually responds very compassionately to our mortality and our finitude and our creaturehood. But then this notion that God gathers up the broken fragments of our history. And for me, it was, as soon as I heard it, all I can picture is God is picking up all the broken fragments and is making a mosaic. And the mosaic is beautiful, right, and it's not something we ever could have constructed. It is a redemptive work of grace. But from those broken fragments, which are still brokennesses, you know, like, there's still those...
Eddie Rester 38:48 Have sharp edges.
James K.A. Smith 38:50
We would not have chosen them for ourselves. You could even say they're not the way it was supposed to be. And yet, what God has done is what was meant for evil is now turned to good, because it's now caught up in God's story and what God is doing in Christ. So, yeah, it's precisely why. So the book does spend a good chunk of time focusing on this dynamic of reckoning with our pasts. And I think that's partly because there's something in sort of the American psyche that's often resistant to that. But the whole point of that reckoning with our past is precisely to help us live forward into a future and really governed by eschatological hope. So inhabiting time is actually living eschatologically towards a kingdom we're hoping for that. And it's that sense of being kind of pulled through time by hope that I hope also comes through.
Eddie Rester 39:55
One of the phrases out of that prayer that just jumped out at me was "the communion of saints." Just the power of acknowledgement, even, that within the sweep of redemption and restoration, that it's not just my brokenness that gets dealt with alone, that there's a sense of the people of God--that we're in this together. My story of my family and my wife's family and your family and other people's family, it's not the only story of brokenness, and that when God does the work, which is God's work of redemption, when we bring that brokenness to it... Anyway, it's just powerful to me that the role that the communion of saints plays in all of that.
James K.A. Smith 40:44
Absolutely. And thinking of that in like, you know, the most powerful sort of metaphysical, theological way that we are heirs of those who have gone before, and we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. But then there's also this sense of... Later in the book in the chapter on seasons, I tried to talk about why I think intergenerational friendships are such a powerful and beautiful crystallization of the communion of saints across time, in a way. Because in a sense, when I'm a young person, if I'm befriended and mentored by an older person, it's a little bit like time travel, right? Like, they can kind of report to me from a future that I haven't experienced yet, but they have undergone and gone through maybe what I think I'll never escape, right? Or like, I can't see a light at the end of the tunnel, or I'm like, is it always gonna be like this? Or, you're raising toddlers, and you're like, "Oh, my gosh, is it always going to be like this?" And then you're talking to an empty nester. And first of all, you're looking at their life, and you're very jealous. And you're like, "Oh, man, wow, I wish I could have that." But then they talk to you, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, well, guess, let me just tell you what. When I was... We've been there, let me assure you, there's hope on the other side." I think that kind of tangible expression of the communion of saints is also just really crucial, and something that is harder and harder to find. And I would hope that the church would be a sanctuary, a reservoir for those kinds of friendships.
Chris McAlilly 42:30
Intergenerational friendship, what's great about it is that it's not just... I think it's different, taking it out of the context of worship, what you're hearing in those kinds of friendships are the giving and receiving of story. It's not just a single testimony, but you're getting testimony after testimony. You've got this give and take of conversation. And it goes both ways. It's both that those who are younger receive maybe some hope that what they're going through is not all there is, but there's an energy and a vitality to being around folks who are young, who have not... It's not just idealism. It's something more than that. There's a kind of... I can't remember exactly where you say it in the book. But there's a critical vigor, you know, that you see in young people to meet the challenges of the moment or to face the past or to live into the future that I think sometimes the passage of time can, for older folks, can kind of wear you down. And so I don't know. There's something... I do think it goes both ways. The friendships...
James K.A. Smith 43:39 Absolutely.
Chris McAlilly 43:39
Are, they're mutually edifying. This is why Eddie likes to spend time with me, because I have critical vigor.
James K.A. Smith 43:45 Yes.
Eddie Rester 43:51 That's right. I'm an old man
Chris McAlilly 43:51 ... that he doesn't have.
James K.A. Smith 43:55
I think it's why I feel so, so fortunate to teach at an undergraduate institution, you know. It's like, you're just constantly meeting 20 year olds, and if you just have enough of an ear to listen, there is always something to be learned, and that that mutual exchange of gifts. Absolutely.
Eddie Rester 44:20
I think about this couple in our neighborhood. They set up a circle of chairs, and about 4:30 in the afternoon, they just go sit in the chairs, and the neighborhood gathers. And they offered popsicles for the kids, drinks for the adults, and people just come and go. It is amazing. They are the caretakers of our neighborhood. They didn't set out to be. They wanted to meet people and anyway. We could have a whole...
James K.A. Smith 44:52
That's really beautiful. Really beautiful.
Chris McAlilly 44:54
I wanted to end with, to me, one of the most spectacularly beautiful images in the whole book, it's at the beginning of the chapter, "A History of the Human Heart," where you're talking about trees that grow in the far north. So maybe, would you mind just kind of... I guess there's an anecdote here from writer Barry Lopez that's talking about kind of living in the Arctic Village and realizing that time functions differently in the far north. Would you maybe lay that out, kind of summary? Just give us a little picture of that image.
James K.A. Smith 45:33
Yeah, I mean, it's from a remarkable book by Barry Lopez, who's an incredible writer, called "Arctic Dreams." And what he points out is that, the Arctic north, technically gets as much sunlight as the equator. It's just that it's not distributed very well. So you get the incessant sunlight in the summer, and then just soul numbing darkness for months and months at a time. And so, because what counts as a day almost changes, growth is relative to how you receive the sun, right? Like it's... And so people sometimes say, he points out, you'll be walking across the Arctic tundra, and you look around, and there are no trees, right? You don't see any trees on the horizon. But Lopez says, well, actually, you have to look down. And those things that you are brushing your hands across the top of? Those are trees. Because to grow 24 inches in the dark of an Arctic winter is an incredible feat. Do you know? Like, that is resilience That is life. That is strength. And when I read this, I just thought, wow, that is such a powerful metaphor, analogy for the way sanctification works. Do you know what I mean? Like some of us, some people have lived through such long Arctic winters, and you might look and say, "Man, what is going on?" You know, "I don't see much evidence of growth." But the fact is, they're alive. They've survived. They were running in terrible ruts, and they've managed to hop that card out, and they're making something new, and they might be going slow. But they're moving forward in hope. I just find that sense that God, what God's grace looks like in a life is different based on when you are, and how you experience time, and what has been handed down to you. And I think it should translate into a lot of compassion and empathy for one another, but even sometimes for ourselves. I think we sometimes... Maybe what we realize is, we were handed down more poison than we thought. And, in a sense, we could be ashamed of where we are. And yet there is a sense in which we can tell the story now of God's faithfulness to even give us to here. And I hope it's a sense of how intimate God's understanding of us is, and how utterly singular the work of grace is in every life. So that, you know, there's a forest that we sometimes can't see, and yet it is a spectacular, beautiful evidence of God's light.
Chris McAlilly 49:03
Yeah. Would you humor me by reading just the last paragraph the the page 53? Just, I feel like this sums it up so well, because it's about comparison, over to the next page, over to the next page. I think that'd be a good way to close it down here.
James K.A. Smith 49:22
Thank you. I'm glad you like this. I really kind of enjoyed working on this section.
Chris McAlilly 49:26 It was awesome.
Eddie Rester 49:27
An incredible image. Yeah.
James K.A. Smith 49:29
Thank you. So here's how the section ends. "Don't compare the trees of your tundra existence to someone else's equatorial rainforest. God doesn't. They live in different conditions. The sun shines upon the just and the unjust, but not at the same angle or with the same intensity. The birch saplings that have punched up through the crust of your prior life are miracles of grace. Remember when you thought nothing could ever grow there? They've never lived through your winter. They don't know how long your night has been. By the grace of God, you've endured the dark."
Chris McAlilly 50:15
Amen. Powerful stuff, man. Jamie, thank you so much.
James K.A. Smith 50:18 Thank you so much. Thank you.
Chris McAlilly 50:19
Thanks for the book. Thanks for the conversation. Just just a real joy.
James K.A. Smith 50:23
Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for your interest, and thanks for reading so charitably and attentively. That means a lot to a writer. Thank you.
Eddie Rester 50:30
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Chris McAlilly 50:39
If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]