Voices in My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 623: Hank and Henry Spaulding

Well, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so grateful for all of you who have taken time today to listen to this podcast. I'm especially grateful to my two guests today, father and son, Henry Spaulding and Hank Spaulding, who took time not only to be here with me tonight but to be here late because I fell asleep. And so full disclosure to everybody listening tonight, um, I was on my couch. I came home after a long day at the hospital. They were waiting, and I completely blanked out on the evening. So thank you so much. Uh, I want to just say to everybody listening, these gentlemen were so kind and generous to be able to stay an hour later and do this, uh, even when it wasn't the scheduled time. So thanks so much. So for Hank, I want to say welcome back to Voices in My Head, and for your father Henry, welcome for the first time. So glad to have you both here.

It's good to be here.

So just, you know, full disclosure too for everybody listening, when I was a student at Trevecca, Henry was one of my professors for some wonderful classes that I had. And I remember Intro to Philosophy and Systematic Theology. And so I just, I had some wonderful growing experiences back in those days. And hopefully I have continued to grow in that time. It's been neat to see, Hank, all of the writing that you've been doing. And it's astonishing that you are releasing 3 books, and one of them is with your father. And so I'm so grateful to have a chance to be able to talk to you. We're obviously not going to be able to go super deep on all 3 of those books, but tonight we hopefully can just share some highlights about this. Uh, tell me what it was like, first of all, for both of you to write together. I wonder how that whole experience was.

Uh, it was really great. It's something I've always wanted to do. It's something I've always been planning to do ever since I started working on theology. I know that my dad had already written a bunch of stuff as articles, but he hadn't written a book in a while. And so I thought that this would be the time, kind of in his retirement, to see if he'd be willing to slap something together so that we could publish something together. I don't know, Dad, what do you think?

Well, yeah, certainly a privilege to see that my son has grown up and surpassed me in knowledge and writing depth and that kind of thing. So I celebrate all that he has been a part of. And in fact, when I saw the email that came from the editors, I thought they'd sent it to me by mistake, and I went ahead and thought I hadn't done it yet. I was going to send it on over to Hank. I hadn't read it that carefully, and it turned out he'd done this all on his own. I didn't know that we were committing to it, you know., but it was fine, and it's really been, as you'll see, the cutting-edge stuff is on Hank's side. I've got a few little essays in there that I have done, but he's been on the cutting edge of the stuff. Mine's more— and I'm not sure what year you were at Trebek and where I was at in terms of my own theological development, so it depends on if my memory is, is you were early on, not late in that time, but yeah, I came there in, let's see, I started in 1995, so that would, that would have been when I started. Same year I started.

Yeah, so we came the same year. I didn't even realize that. How about that? Well, I, I remember I was, uh, I was so new to the whole theology thing. All I knew was, uh, the, the Camp Garner Creek where I lived, uh, that was not far, maybe an hour away from Trevecca. Don't even know how I wound up at Trevecca other than I felt like God was calling me to something that was much bigger than I ever knew. Never knew years later that I would not only be doing a career in music, but then followed by healthcare chaplaincy, which has just been the most amazing ministry I've ever been a part of. So, well, thank you both. I feel like both of you have invested in my life in a lot of ways, uh, behind the scenes, probably in ways you didn't even realize. But Hank, especially reading, uh, from your books, you know, and learning from you, and I learned so much in the classroom. So Thanks again for this unique opportunity to be able to share, um, with some of the amazing work that you're doing together. I love this. So, well, why don't we start with the, the book that you wrote together? I think that would be an appropriate place to start. Um, tell us just quickly, give our listeners the elevator pitch about this book.

Well, um, a lot of the essays in this book are ones that were previously a part of the Wesleyan Theological Journal. Many of them are new, but some of them were there.

And by the way, I'm sorry to interrupt, I just want to say the title, and you correct me if I'm wrong because I've got all my notes in front of me but not the books themselves, is Rhythm of Grace, correct?

Yes.

Okay, very good.

And the title of the book actually comes from a sermon that my dad preached at Nashville First Church, um, in the early 2000s. Um, I always jokingly told him at that time, this is when I was in high school, that if he ever wrote a book, he should call it that. This was my opportunity to realize that on my own, because I told the publishers that they should call it that. They, they liked it too. And so that's where the title comes from. And that sermon is actually republished in the book itself. So if you're interested in that, that's a great place to start. But the elevator pitch I usually give people are, well, is that This is a book that's meant to reclaim Wesleyan holiness theology from a fundamentalist lens of how it is oftentimes in our present context depicted and deployed in various contexts, not just the church or the academy, but everywhere. It's giving it again the broader vision that was initially meant for it when it was first incepted. Do you have any more for that?

Well, you know, I think that you being a musician understand what function, what the function of rhythm is in a song. Yeah. So I was really drawing an analogy to that and holiness. I remember that his best friend at Duke and his wife came by Mount Vernon when I was there, and Hank was there, and she was at that point, I think he's there Wesleyan now, but before that she was closer to a Mennonite or a person, you know, that stripe. And she looked at me, she says— I can still remember the tone in her voice— she says, 'What? How do you get this holiness?' That's how she would say it. And it was kind of comical, but it was a question worth pushing because she was kind of ontologizing the concept of holiness as opposed to to us, to people and life, and she wanted to understand exactly how you can deposit this in. Now, you being a Travecka graduate, you would know that that's been long left behind in that camp, and so I felt like that it was a good experience, you know, sitting there with the two Dukies, and she was a delightful person to talk to, but We talked a little bit about that, and then we, then we moved on. It, you know, there's a difference between a discussion at, um, Buffalo Wild Wings and one in a classroom. I let her off a little bit on some of the ways she was characterizing that. Whatever, if she was taking systematic theology. And I feel like that, um, Rhythm caught the essence of what I think holiness is.

Well, I appreciate that. And you know what I think about Rhythm too, as a musician, um, it really is this thing that is the foundation of all the other music. It's the, the groundwork that is laid. So I appreciate that you're presenting it as such with the Rhythm of Holiness. This is sort of the, the foundational groundwork of what it means to live in holiness, to walk in holiness. Um, so what was the process like for both of you? I, I assume you didn't sit in a room together and just start writing. I've often wondered about people's process whenever they're writing a book together, with some of them being essays and things. Did you have some ideas and kind of pitch them towards each other? And what were some things that you found most intriguing to write about in this process that you both kind of mutually played off of each other, if we're going to use that musician sort of metaphor?

Well, do you want to start with this one, Dan?

Well, I think We wrote independently. In fact, we weren't in the same room ever, except we talked about how it was conceived, and then we, at the end of it, read each other's work and made suggestions, and we moved that way.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was fascinating about the book is realizing that even though we were writing kind of decades apart, there were a lot of themes that intersected kind of the work. Because if you look at just even the table of contents, the middle portion of the book is all about holiness theology and ethics, and we both wrote a great deal on that. But towards the end of the book is where more of the kind of polemical stuff, which has a lot of the newer stuff that's unpublished. We realized that both of us had an invested interest in talking about the current state of holiness theology and how we were envisioning kind of a broader perspective beyond what we oftentimes see there. And so The cool thing about having so much in common in terms of our writing was that we could easily organize the book then according to sections based on our interest, with the first section actually being an essay that my dad and I early on when I was at, I think, a first year at seminary and my dad— actually, no, this is back when I was at Trebek and dad was at NCS. We were asked by Didache, one of the online magazines for higher education in the Holiness Church, to write kind of an essay called Generations where we would talk about our different perspectives on theology. And this is— this would have been around 2008, 2009, I want to say. And so that's in the book. And then we end the book with something that we did together, which was a keynote address at a conference that was held in Mount Vernon in 2000, and I want to say '12 or '11, where we talked about ecclesiology. And so we started off with an essay that we wrote together, and we ended with an essay that we wrote together, and then filled up the, the middle with the stuff that kind of just bounced off of one another, which is kind of a cool thing to see.

I think one of the interesting things about the first essay from the second essay was the first one I took, I edited it. I took the notes of it and I edited the article. And the second one, she edited it, or he edited it. It's not, that shows the difference in the terms of where you kind of, and I've always felt like this, one generation brings the tradition to the next generation. So I was already the president. I might have been the provost at that point. I don't know what it was, you know, every step I took was further away from teaching theology. But, um, but Holiness is about living theology, so I thought that would work as well. But, uh, I felt like that, um, there's a— there's a—

there's—

there's a— has been in the church in Nazarene, probably all churches, unwillingness to let go because of the fear of the previous generation that the new generation is going to corrupt the doctrine or make it less holy or whatever. And so, um, I've never had that fear. That doesn't mean that everything that people in the next generation say is right, but that if you, if you trust your teaching and you've been a part of teaching that generation, you ought to be able to, uh, have that. So do my son. We've had a close relationship all of our life, you know.

Well, that's wonderful. And, you know, I, I wanted to, to ask both of you, uh, since we're speaking on the topic of holiness, And since all of us have been in academic circles, uh, and both of you live there much more than I do in academia, um, but one thing that, that when you get into education, especially in theology, what happens is you start being exposed to lots of different traditions, even lots of different faiths. And I'm curious about, especially with the way that you write— and, and by the way, I've not had a chance to, to read deeply all three of these books, so I'm kind of just doing scattershot as I've had a chance to look at these— and I appreciate sending them in advance so I could. But you do talk about holiness in terms of beauty and of grace. My question that I want to think about, as you've not only been in academia but have lived your lives there, in that certainly we come to places where we think, I wonder if this tradition doesn't fit me as well as another one would. And we begin thinking about maybe, you know, maybe the Nazarene Church isn't for me, just speaking for myself. Maybe there's another place that I would be more more at home. What is it for both of you that through your experiences, through times, through prayerfully in your life, why have you continued on in the path that you have and maybe not decided, oh, I'm gonna go jump to this other tradition that I feel like maybe speaks better to me? Or maybe I'm not framing the question right, but I'd really love to hear from you. What is it that you are finding beautiful and full of grace about the holiness tradition.

Yeah, I reflect back on, um, on Einstein when he says the, the most essential thing he could say about the universe is it's beautiful.

And the—

and God created that universe. And, and, you know, beauty is notoriously hard to explain but easy to see and to experience. And, um, so part of what, um, I've come to understand is, uh, what Albert Truesdale, former dean at NTS and a colleague in some sense, he said, you know, the holiness— this church, the Church of Nazarene, belongs to me as much as it does to the radical fundamentalists out there. And so you're not going to run me out. Turns out they can do that, and they've been doing a little bit of that lately. But the fact is that as we look at beauty, beauty is a very apt way of expressing holiness and a good way to define theology. Robert Barron is an example of a person. He's a Catholic bishop, but he has his own podcast that's called Word on Fire, and he does talk about beauty. John Milbank, a guy that I got into well after you were gone from Trivaka, talks about beauty. You know, David Bentley Hart has a book about beauty. So beauty is a great theological word if you switch it from a kind of strict metaphysics to an aesthetic. I think that you might have studied Soren Kierkegaard, you think of the aesthetic as being the low level But I think it's also the high level. I think beauty is what attracts us to holiness, and you see it mirrored in the lives of the people who proclaim the doctrine. The doctrine is not proven by logic, it is proven by the beauty of holiness in the world, and no denomination owns that. Then we start thinking about that, we become myopic. I've tried to avoid that in all of my life. My mother told me before I went to Chewbacca— she'd had a bad experience at Chewbacca, didn't really want me to go— but she, um, says, do not lose the simple faith when you go there. Start thinking you're better than everybody else. I never had that trouble, but, uh, the truth is that we are, we are caught in an intellectual loop if we turn the faith into purely intellectual, uh, ism, you know, a Kantianism, so to speak. And I believe that Kant's a very important philosopher in the West, but I don't think that Kant— I think on tiptoes he sees what that is, and I think that people who are not intellectually prone can still grasp what beauty is.

I think that's a good explanation. Thank you. Hank, what about you?

Yeah, I was about to say, it's like, I think you stole my answer in there in the process of that. My, my interest in, in beauty and the essay that I wrote on that topic in the, in the book was to try and think about, um, holiness beyond the lens of just moralisms that we kind of put out there. You know, you're unholy if you do this or do that, or if associated with this or associated with that. There's something about holiness that, as my father just said, that's attractive to it, and I think that's one of the things that is true of the early church when we look at it. The reason why they grew is because the lifestyle that they embodied in the world that they were in was attractive to others, that they would come to it because they believed there was something good there, because there was something beautiful there. And in some sense, I think that holiness is about developing the right taste, sense of taste, in terms of being able to continue to live in that way that is attractive to the world around us. Because in some sense, you know, there's a lot of bad press around the church just in general, not one particular denomination there, but all of them. And so to find a Christian community that is attractive these days is so, so essential. And to live that way, I think, is so essential. To where when people look at the church, they say, there's some good news there that I want to hear about. So that sense of holiness as beauty, I think, is the way that our church can engender that good news as a public-facing reality that invites others in.

Yeah, that's wonderful. And I love that you use the word taste, Hank, um, because I was thinking, just sitting here listening to both of you, uh, a memory that has not left me over the years was when I was a student at Trevecca as a much younger man, and I remember receiving communion in chapel, uh, and, and I remember Henry being one who was helping to serve that day. And I remember taking my wafer up, and we did intinction and dipping it in. And I, I have this vivid memory in my mind of receiving that from you and feeling like I was a part of a much bigger family than just what I had always known, what I was a part of. And I remember even a comment being made about this being a cup full of grace, you know, that we received together together. Um, so I like that you, you chose the word taste because in my mind that was one of the senses that was jogged. I feel like in many ways, uh, we are a family of the family of God. We're a family church. We're a family denomination in so many ways. And so there is a lot of beauty to that. There's a lot of grace. Family has to have grace for each other, um, even, even just in our homes, you know. And so when we're in this, what I think of as somewhat an unfortunate time in parts of the Church of the Nazarene where there seems to be a lot of witch hunts and people trying to drive people out of different areas. I think there still is grace that needs to be offered to even those that would try to divide at times and welcome them back into the family. So thank you for writing this book together. That's part of the rhythm of grace that I think we're talking about and that you're writing about. In this book. So, well, for the sake of time, and thank you for answering those questions, I want to get to the other two books as well. I mean, it's, it's always riches whenever I have one book to talk about, but to have three and to try to fit all those into a podcast, I want to make sure we give equal time for that. And, and maybe, Henry, if you have any comments about these other two books, uh, even though you weren't part of the writing of them, I, I know that you're awfully proud, and I'm sure you have comments about them on the way. So I think what What book I'd like to talk about next is, Hank, if you could give our listeners an idea of what the book Between Two Gileads is all about. I'd love to also let them know about that, and then we'll close out our time about the third book that is about the Gospel of the Incarcerated Christ. But let's start with Between Two Gileads and just tell us again, give us the pitch, what this book is about and what you think is important that listeners would need to know.

Well, I think it picks up really well from your question on beauty. I mean, I'm somebody who has recently come to enjoy reading novels. I haven't always been that way, but it was during COVID I was doing a lot more of that, and I had been also watching a lot of streaming, as many of us were, and I was streaming the show The Handmaid's Tale while also reading a novel by a woman named Marilynne Robinson. Which is entitled Gilead. And I noticed that in the show The Handmaid's Tale, there was a reference to the fact that the state they were living in was called Gilead. And I thought it was an interesting coincidence because both of these places are very deeply informed by the Bible. You can tell in a literary fashion, one of which is this small town in Iowa called Gilead and these, you know, churches that seem to be larger than life in that community. And then you've obviously got The Republic of Gilead where you have this very kind of like puritanical fundamentalist regime that's taken over kind of a post-apocalyptic United States. And so I thought about that, the different representations of the Bible that are played there. And it led me to read actually The Handmaid's Tale for the first time as a result of that. And one of the things I really enjoyed about those books is that they both really wrestle with scripture, which I thought was fascinating. If you read through especially the now 4 books that are part of the Gilead series. And if you read through not only The Handmaid's Tale but the new book by Margaret Atwood called The Testaments, which is now itself actually streaming, a streaming series on Hulu, so it's also becoming a televised action— they both grapple with the Bible. And one of my favorite pieces, there's these 2 parts of, um, The Handmaid's Tale that really grapples with me, or that I really just took me was in The Handmaid's Tale. There's a part where the main character Offred, who's also the main character in the TV show, rewrites basically the, um, the Lord's Prayer as a kind of act of rebellion against Gilead. And in some sense, it paid more homage to the scriptural narrative from which Jesus is preaching than just those who would merely recite, um, the words that— of the Lord's Prayer. They would, you know, obviously do that in a variety of fashions there in Gilead. They they would quote the Bible all the time, but never quite get what the scriptures were about. And the same thing is true if you go to the Testaments, there's this moment, and not to get too much into the story or spoil too much, there are these two characters, these two young women who are learning how to read, and in Gilead, women aren't able to read. They're not supposed to learn how to read unless they become what's called an aunt. And an aunt is basically in charge of like training younger women in Gilead. And so part of becoming an aunt, you actually get to learn how to read. And the first book you get to learn how to read is the Bible. And so they give them a Bible to learn to read. And one of these older aunt trainees looks at the younger one and says, listen, the Bible isn't what they say it is. You can either believe in God or you can believe in Gilead. And that really stuck with me. This is far beyond an elevator pitch, I'm realizing.

That's all right.

I just wanted to explain the metaphor there. But when you go to the Gilead by Marilynne Robinson book, um, that one is very much a different kind of active scripture. Scripture there is not meant to control, but it's very much an invitation. Uh, one of the main characters, Lila, um, who— she has her own novel from her perspective. I love the books because they're all the same story told from a different perspective, different character. And so in— but in reading those novels, you get a good sense of like the whole story that's going on. But one of my favorite commentators on the these books says you get a perspective on what it's like for God to experience our reality because God can see it from everybody's perspective simultaneously.

Wow.

And so there in that story, Lila is reading— she's reading through Genesis. And in Genesis, she finds this like really detailed story about loving one's neighbor and how important that is. And she actually then is forced to live it out. And so for her, the scriptures are less about this story of trying to gain control, but how do I open up myself in compassion to others? So those— that was the reason for the two Gileads, was looking at the difference between this life of living in radical hospitality to others versus this life of control, which both use scripture, and so the title of the book is meant to kind of dictate the fact that we're stuck between these two Gileads. We can either read it towards this coercive kind of control, or we can read it towards this radical hospitality, and specifically the text that I wanted to zero in on this book was Romans 13. My first book was about Paul, and so it seemed only right that I would go back there at some point, and so this text, this book is meant to kind what does it look like to live as that other Gilead, that second Gilead? And what does it mean to understand that book or that passage of scripture, Romans 13:1-7, in light of that second Gilead? Um, and how do we get there? What does it look like to get there? And all those kind of things. And so the elevator pitch is basically there are two ways of reading scripture. There are obviously more than that, but the way towards domination or the way towards death, the way towards life. If we want to go in a Deuteronomistic sense, uh, choose life. Yeah, that's the goal of this book, is to try and say like, what would it look like for the church to choose life in this day and age and not fall over to the side of the Republic of Gilead?

Well, and I think that ties into what we were just talking about with the book that both of you wrote together too, with— there are some people that feel like they are the holiness gatekeepers and they're, they're not willing, uh, to allow any different interpretation or any different generosity and understanding. So I think that actually complements the, the way our conversation has gone tonight, and I'm looking forward to diving more deeply into the, the Two Gileads. I think that's a fascinating way to read. And I only recently just picked up The Handmaid's Tale book too. I haven't seen the series, and I've been wanting to read it for a while, so I'm looking forward to hopefully being able to read those kind of in conjunction with each other for sure. So, well, Henry, as, as Hank was talking, and, and I assume maybe you have already read this book about the two Gileads. I just wonder if you had any comment along the way that, that you have found helpful or inspiring about reading that work.

Well, um, there's always been at least the entirety of my education, because H. Ray Dunning was the theology professor when I went there, and he was fixated on the, um, on the fundamentalism issue and why that's not holiness. I didn't know then that Paul Bassett, a very celebrated, now deceased unfortunately, a church historian who was at NTS, wrote a book on— not that— not— he didn't approach it the exact same way as H. Ray did, but the fact is that it's awful easy to get caught up in the geometry of holiness and fundamentalism until you read it in print. It's in some ways incarnational to see here's what fundamentalism looks like how it twists holiness into a state, and then what it looks like to see Gilead, where the small graces— I remember I went to a conference, as did Hank, at Wheaton on Marilynne Robinson, and I was struck first of all by how much she looked like my paternal grandmother. She was just exactly a spitting image of her. Much different person, person with a PhD in Shakespeare. So she's certainly an intelligent, well-read person, but I didn't meet her personally. I just heard her talk, and she is a person who exudes grace and insight. She stood next to Rowan Williams for an hour and a half and stood as tall as he did. I've really appreciated over the years Rowan Williams. To see that put on screen, it's not on screen yet, I'm talking about to paint a picture of it, to embody that and show people the difference between graciousness and gracelessness, it was very powerful for me.

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. I'm glad for that story as well. That gives me even more meaning as I start to read her books myself because I've never had the privilege of reading that so far. So, well, you know what, we're just about out of our time that I had allotted. And again, I've taken up so much of both of your time tonight, but I really want to talk about this third book. I'm saving maybe at least one of my favorite topics for last. I'd love for you to be able to share with us, Hank, about your third book called The Gospel of the Incarcerated Christ, and just tell us what that is about. I think a lot of people will be able to figure out some of what it is just from the title alone. But please take us a little bit deeper. Tell us your passion about this project.

Well, it came from one of my first experiences teaching right out of my PhD was teaching for a university that offered courses for students who are currently incarcerated. And now both my father and I teach for that program. But I remember the— I was teaching an ethics course. It was just an introductory to ethics course. The first the first essay or responsibility that a student had to write was like, tell us about a time when you knew yourself to be facing a moral problem. And many of the individuals in those courses, they would write about the thing that led to their incarceration. And I think I'm haunted slash just constantly mentally and like intellectually engaged by one of the students who wrote this essay about how when he was, he was deployed in the service, he came back from overseas. He didn't have, you know, 2 cents to rub together to his name. And he and his girlfriend at the time were, you know, living in this apartment. They're really struggling to pay rent. And this drug dealer basically said, listen, I will give you this much of my product if you'll stand on this corner and sell it. I'll give you 6 months' rent and you can kind of try and figure out your life. It's a very altruistic drug dealer in this the story, but he kind of details that. And he talks about how he made this promise, two promises to his wife, one of which he would never go to prison, and the second of which was she would never have to live on the streets. And he's contemplating those two choices as he, you know, he ultimately does decide to do, uh, like sell the drugs, and that's what leads to him going to prison. Um, but one of the things that he says near the end of the essay, you know, reflecting on these two choices He says, what is it? He says, how can one live a good life when one is only given bad choices to make? And I think that's such a profound question, you know, and I present that to my students all the time whenever I teach, but I've never found a book that does quite what I would really want it to do. And so this book was born out of trying to answer that question. And in some sense, we base ethics on certain choices that you can make or not make. Make. And so here's the good people that have made the good choices, and here's the bad people that have made the bad choices. Um, but in some sense, if we believe the doctrine of original sin, uh, especially to some of its logical conclusions, you know, we have a sense in which, like, the world in which we live in is filled with all kinds of opportunities for failure, moral failing, and all different kinds. And that dividing between good and evil in that way, which is of course arising from original sin— I mean, Bonhoeffer makes makes this pretty clear in his ethics essay, and that's where ethics is born. The problem that arises from that is that we kind of live into the original sin when we cordon off the world according to that dichotomy. Here's the good people, here's the bad people. You know, failing to listen to Bonhoeffer's cry, you know, at the beginning of that ethics book, which really starts off like in a really powerful place about that kind of reflection on the difference between good and evil. The book that I wanted to write, and this is the book that I came from there, is that actually the thing that we all start out with when we make ethical choices is not to try and be good over and against someone else who we conceive of as bad. I mean, we get scriptures littered with different examples of people trying to do that, but rather the moral life is actually lived in response to the grace that we've all been given, and it is only in light of that the will of God, namely, that one can learn to live a good life in any kind of reasonable, sensible word. And so it's not about deciding between who's good and who's bad, but it's about all of us together living the good life. And so I'll end with this: the kind of main picture that I, like, wrestle with in the middle of that book is what I call the Dostoevsky dilemma. And for those who've read it, It comes from Dostoevsky's great book, The Brothers Karamazov, where Ivan and his brother Alyosha are arguing about, about God. And Ivan basically says— this is the famous grand inquisitor section— he says that he refuses a ticket to any kind of heaven that is built off of the suffering of an innocent an innocent person or an innocent child or something like that, and so basically the whole book is saying we should reject any ethics that is built off of the suffering and rejection of any particular person, but rather that we can only think of the moral life insofar as we are moral together, bound to one another, living with one another in the world as God intends, and so that book Dad hasn't had a chance to read yet because that's just still with the publisher. Setting it right now in terms of getting it ready, and so once it's done, Dad will have a chance to read it, but it's, yeah, that's kind of— it's what I wanted to have as a book to start off all of my Christian ethics classes is the reflection on this, and so I did it kind of selfishly too, but also built out of the really cool conversations I've gotten to have with the students who are incarcerated within the institution that we both teach at.

Mm, well, thank you for sharing that. I'm really excited to look deeper into all three of these books. And, you know, I don't know why it just popped in my mind, but earlier today with a couple of other chaplains, we were— we try every day if we can to spend a few moments of reflection together, and one of our chaplains will always lead the rest of us. And today, uh, our director read a passage from Henri Nouwen And he said— I wrote it down, it was so good— he said, impatience is trying to get away from where we are. And I was thinking about that in terms of like incarceration. And what if your only choices are bad choices, I think is how you had phrased it a moment ago. And sometimes we're not present to our moment. We're not present to the possibilities that could be even in a situation where we feel like things are bad. We always want to get to the next place. We want to get to the next moment. And when I heard that Nouwen quote today, that reminded me that my impatience is often trying to get away not only from where I am, but maybe from where God has placed me, you know, in this moment. I think all of this fits together with the books that you have both presented to us tonight, that wherever we are and whatever moment we're in, whatever tradition we come from, we have this vast God with all these viewpoints and all these different ways of being that is calling us to to stop, to be still, to be present, and to find him in the moment and to find him with each other. So thank you for, for bringing these new books. And Hank, I appreciate you reaching out, telling me about these new releases, and just excited about the work that you're doing. That it's exciting to see a book that you both have created together, which is wonderful. And I, I know that there's going to be many more in the coming days, and I look forward to hearing some of the dialogue that comes out of these. So for someone listening, um, who tonight has kind of heard this smattering of 3 books really, real quickly, is there anything that either of you hoped we would talk about tonight on the podcast that we just didn't cover or didn't have time to get into? Or maybe you're thinking, you know what, I really want people to hear this about any of these books tonight. I'd love to just give you a couple moments to be able to share if anything like that comes to mind?

Well, the thing I'd like people to remember from Rhythm of Grace is that wholeness is about joining in the chorus of reality and presenting a rhythm, sometimes a re-narration of the brokenness and disembodiedness of sin itself, and that wholeness is a rhythm that can guide us through all of life, all of its twists and turns, all of its disappointments, and its pains, but also its beauty.

Wonderful.

Yeah.

Hank, any other thoughts from you tonight?

Uh, well, the first thing I would say is that, uh, to anybody who was a former student of my dad, there's a lot of stuff in there that, um, is kind of first time into the world other than, like, you know, the people that he presented it to. And so, um, I've had a lot of his former students come forward and say thank you for getting some of his stuff into print, but there's more stuff that he's probably— he hasn't written and put into print that's in this book. And so if you're somebody that's interested in his thoughts on holiness theology, specifically even his thoughts on holiness theology right now, you know, you should check out the book. I think it's a good opportunity to kind of pick up those ideas. But in terms of, you know, what was something I wish we talked about, I think when I go back to the Gilead book, which is a— I think a favorite book of mine at this point in terms of what I've written. I, I, it just seems like we can't get past this kind of cultural divisiveness around politics and theology in the church. And there's in this text, I think, a really deep call to remember what is the good news of the gospel in the first place. And so recovering what that is so that we can develop a full-throated theology to engage the world that we're in, that, that's what I'm hoping that these books do.

Well, thank you so much. I appreciate both of your thoughts, especially at the closing tonight. For everyone who is listening to Voices in My Head, I do hope that you will check out these books and we will have links as best as I can provide them, not for the ones that haven't released yet, but I definitely want to give links to everyone to other resources that you have. So thank you both so much, not only for coming on the podcast tonight, but thank you for having grace with me this evening as I fell asleep on the couch and wasn't here. It was quite a day at the hospital today. So thank you for rescheduling for an hour later and being able to come on to talk tonight. Really appreciate it. I'm grateful for both of you, and I want to just say thank you both for being a couple of the voices in my head this week.

Thanks, Rick Lee James.