Voices in My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 615: James K. A. Smith

Well, welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so grateful for all of you who are here for this new episode of my podcast tonight. Today I am joined by a philosopher and an author, James K.A. Smith, who's here to talk about his new book, which is just about to release, called Make Your Home in This Luminous Darkness. And I'm so glad to be able to have this conversation with you tonight. And you've told me to call you Jamie, so I'm excited to be able to call you Jamie. And with my last name is James, I guess that'll keep the confusion at a minimum here tonight. So, that's great.

Thanks, Rick. Great to talk to you.

Well, I'm so glad to be able to speak with you. And I understand you were not feeling good last week, and I'm so glad you're feeling better now. We were going to record last week and it just didn't work out for the timing. But thank you for rearranging your schedule and being able to come on this week, and I hope you're feeling much better. And we're looking forward to this conversation together. As we get going, I wonder if just briefly, just share with my listeners just a little bit about who you are in case they haven't heard of you or read any of your books before.

Yeah, sure. So I am a philosopher by training and profession. I teach at a liberal arts college in Michigan called Calvin University. I've been there for 23 or 24 years now. I might— so I'm, you know, I'm trained in kind of pretty technical, hardcore philosophy stuff. But I, about probably 15 years ago, I realized that philosophy matters on the ground. And I sort of, I guess you could say, I sensed a calling and a vocation to become a translator of philosophical ideas and concepts for the sake of hopefully inviting people into more intentional practice. And so, um, you and I have chatted, uh, beforehand a little bit about, you know, books like You Are What You Love is one of my books, or On the Road with Saint Augustine. These earlier books are all examples, I hope, of, um, kind of trying to bring the philosophical cookies down to a lower shelf that practitioners and people engaged in ministry could see, oh, this actually is a source of wisdom for us. And so that's kind of the, the calling I try to answer. And it's, it's also what I'm trying to do in my classroom. You know, I spend my day as an undergraduate professor, and in my department we talk about philosophy as a way of life. And it's not just about knowledge, it's about wisdom. And this new book, Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark, is very much in that spirit.

Well, and thank you for sharing that and just helping us to get to know you a little bit. As I was telling you before we started, I appreciated when I found your books years ago, and You Are What You Love really is, is one that reminds us a lot about desires that shape who we are, and the things that we love end up being really the thing that we worship, you know. And, and there are things that you've written about, such as cultural liturgies that we have. And so I, I want to just briefly mention that in case people have never read any of your books before, there are some that are pretty heady material, I would say, in some ways, and then some that I feel like you have broken down for laypeople more to understand. And I feel like that is a great gift that you give to those of us that struggle sometimes. And even throughout my whole graduate degree, I struggled sometimes with the authors I was reading and the philosophers I was reading. So I really appreciate the heart that you have and the heart that you bring in material like this.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you.

So tell us a little bit about this luminous dark. I, I was privileged to have, um, an advanced copy and to read through it, um, but I'd love to hear kind of from you what you mean, what you'd like our listeners to understand about what this luminous darkness is that you are describing in the book.

Yeah, so it's, uh, as, as you know from, from seeing the book in a way, I'm inviting contemporary readers to find a source of wisdom and guidance in some fairly ancient voices that we sometimes call the mystics. And one of, and, and one of the most influential works that comes out of this mystical tradition is called, is by Saint John of the Cross, and it's called The Dark Night of the Soul. And I encountered this work at a very sort of pivotal and difficult season of my life, and I realized that what the mystics were describing in this experience of what they called darkness was kind of an experience where you lose all of your certainty and clarity and transparency and confidence in what you thought you knew for sure. And so it's, it's, it's kind of existentially difficult. Like you enter this period where, man, you're sort of in this whirlpool of questions and wonderings and mystery. And it's, it's experienced as a kind of darkness because what we crave is clarity. What we crave is sort of epiphany and insight. And this is an experience of losing that. And yet what the mystics testify to— I'm probably doing this too quickly— is that somehow by going through this experience of darkness, you actually discover a new mode of awareness that they would call something like wonder or awe or really an appreciation of sort of belovedness. So I feel like I'm doing this too compressed. How can we unpack this better?

Well, that's all right. Well, as I think about kind of what you're trying to describe to us tonight. And I think you're doing a very good job, by the way. I experience it in a way that a few years ago I felt a call into healthcare chaplaincy. So what I do now is, is full-time working in a hospital 40 hours a week and doing this very difficult work. At the time, which was back in 2021, I had no idea what a chaplain did. No understanding, no desire to do it. There was nothing. All I could say about it was I felt this mysterious pulling, what I would call a call, that I was supposed to do this thing even though I didn't want to do it. And I kept using a line from a song by the late Rich Mullins that said, I can't see where you're leading me unless you've led me here where I'm lost enough to let myself be led. That's what it said.

And so that's good. And so I love that.

So when I think about what, what I think you're trying to describe in the book, and, and as we're having this conversation, there is a sense in which our letting go of certainty and entering into what we might call a luminous darkness, so to speak, actually enables us to follow God, to follow what our heart is craving, uh, that we may not even know what we're craving at the time. And, uh, and as I heard it once said, um, even about God. God cannot necessarily be loved, or be known as much as God can be loved. But that loving becomes sort of a way of knowing, you know, in the midst. So, and what I'm— is what I'm saying somewhat correct as to what you're experiencing and writing about?

Yes, exactly. Totally resonates. Let's say, I think, especially those of us who maybe have a sense of religious or spiritual identity and journey, So often we think of that pursuit or that following or that quest in terms of truth, and then we think about truth in terms of knowing, certainty, clarity, and in a sense what the mystics testify to is that way of approaching God in terms of, you could say, maybe something like dogmatic categories or theological concepts or knowing. For the mystics, that's actually a fairly elementary way of relating to God and knowing God. And, and, you know, in a sense, to be thrown into an experience where all of your prior knowledge kind of doesn't apply anymore is frightening. Like, there's a— there's a— it's anxiety-inducing. Like, when you're answering this call, you're like, I don't even know what you're calling me to. I feel like I'm being thrown into this cloud of ambiguity, but I'm trying to be faithful in hearing this whisper that's leading. And in some sense, what I experienced, what I learned from the mystics is what you first experience as kind of anxiety-inducing and like, I don't know what to believe, I don't know what to think, I don't know what I know, is actually weaning us from this more elementary way of thinking about God in terms of categories and concepts that we know. And inviting us into this like whole new register of relationship and awareness where now somehow it's not knowledge about God, it is union with God, it is presence in God, it's being enveloped by God, and it eludes and transcends and obliterates all of our usual sort of binary categories and concepts, which is also why the mystics sometimes got in trouble. But what they're really trying to do is they're trying to follow this journey through the dark to arrive in almost like a country that, like you said, you don't even— you didn't even know you wanted to be there until you answered the call. And then you realize, oh, this is the country that is the home I've been made for.

Yeah, what a great way to say that. I didn't even know this was going to be home, but then it turned out to be there. Yeah, yeah, I'm living in that place. So yeah, um, so in, in some ways, I think you're also describing knowledge without relationship, knowledge without love is not sufficient, you know. It's just having that knowledge on its own. And yeah, and there's a lot of things we could talk about, but we have such a short time on in a podcast format of what you've written about. Kind of springboarding off of what we're talking about, I wonder if we could discuss your claim in the book that tech can be a distraction while arts are more of a path to contemplation, and that arts really lead us sort of through this luminous dark in some ways. And I think about, you know, we have tech all around us all the time. We have phones that are rarely far from us, it seems like. We all the information in the world, um, and yet all of this knowledge and all these things we have don't necessarily lead us to fulfillment. And, and matter of fact, it leads us to a lot of isolation, leads us to a lot of loneliness. Even as connected we are, we are more disconnected than ever before. So I wonder if you could talk to us just a little bit about what you are, are experiencing and hoping that readers will take when you talk about tech being a distraction and arts being a path to contemplation.

Yeah, no, I'm so glad that you're, you're drawing this this out because I actually think this is an important part of it. Let me set up just a little context for your listeners. So we kind of started with the luminous dark.

Yeah.

But, but the fact is, it's a path to get there. And so the way I set it up, the way I kind of try to encapsulate mystical wisdom is by seeing mysticism not as this, like, rapturous, ecstatic experience, but instead thinking of it as a path. It's this, it's this path you walk. And to get to this place of the kind of upending dark, that's the portal to liberation, you first have to journey through what I call solitude and silence. And this is just, you know, retrieving what ancient monastics and the mystics talk about. So, solitude is where we kind of look for ways to bring our attention back to center, to stillness. And in that stillness, and solitude. We dwell in silence. And this is where a new kind of awareness and attention percolates. So that's a quick way of saying, here's why you're rightly asking about distraction, technology, and so on. Interestingly, the mystics already in, you know, the 14th and 15th and 16th century were very aware of the dynamics of distraction and had never heard of Instagram. Right now, now we have whole industries that exist to distract us in order to capitalize on our attention and turn it into money. So, it would be hard for them to imagine actually what we fight against. But distraction, what happens in distraction is my attention is just frittered away and dissipates into a million different things so that I never attend to sort of my interiority, my inward life, which is the place where I'm going to meet the sort of fullness and infinity of God. So I think one of the reasons why I think the mystical tradition has surprising relevance in the 21st century is because it is inviting us to become contemplative. People. What do we mean by that? To be contemplative is to be people who know how to resist the distractions of a culture in order to focus and reflect and listen and dwell quietly in solitude and silence. And that's where things start to sort of percolate for us. Part of what I'm suggesting in the book is if you find yourself, you know, maybe not very inclined to like sign up for monasticism and mysticism right out of the gate, to be a contemplative, in a way, I think the arts are a kind of on-ramp, a prelude to experiencing this sort of quiet and contemplation. Like Rick, for example, I think it's amazing if you're in New York City, you're in just the bustle and madness of Midtown, and you hike up 53rd Street and you sneak inside the Museum of Modern Art and you go up to the second floor and you step into— I'm particularly interested in modern and contemporary and abstract art in many ways. But, you know, you get to a space where you can stand in front of Agnes Martin's remarkable work called Friendship. And one of the things that should strike us is how quiet it is in there. In some ways, the gallery, the modern art gallery, the modern exhibition space is like one of the last quiet spaces where you can sort of be with this work and your thoughts in a way that you can attend to your emotions, your experiences, your thinking, your reflection. That's like a little bit of practice for contemplation. I would say that's the beginning of a kind of spiritual muscle exercise that, that has dividends to pay off for the spiritual life. What does that make sense?

It does, it does. You know, one of my great heroes in life is the late Fred Rogers, you know, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

And God bless his memory, he had such a way of—

I think whenever I will watch an old episode of that show, he had a way of, I think, helping children cultivate some solitude. And there was— there were times when he would be interviewed on shows or talk shows and things, and he would turn the interview around because he would start to listen to what the interviewer would say. And suddenly he was interviewing them and he would ask them questions like, do you get enough quiet? You know, this world is such a noisy place. And you could tell that he would disarm people, but at the same time it would get uncomfortable.

And I love that.

I remember even an episode of the show where he wanted to show children how long a minute was, so literally set a timer so they could just sit in silence and wait and see how long a minute was around there. And those kind of practices are so rare. You're exactly right, we have so many distractions. We literally have companies that are, are made to distract us for sure. And I hadn't thought of it quite in that way of of a museum, I think in my mind it might be a better illustration actually than, than when I think of— I want the house of God to be that. But there are so few times in our present situation where I even go to church and find a quiet moment, a moment of solitude, which is a sad thing. We're always trying to distract and fill the air and make more noise and not give people time to catch up with what God might be doing in that moment.

That is so true. Like, I mean, in some ways, if our congregations could create Sabbath moments of silence within our gatherings, we would be helping people co— like exercise the muscles they need to become contemplative. And I would say, Rick, that in some ways, the reason why we are so susceptible to distraction, or at least a reason, is we are actually anxious for attention in return. In some ways, there's a, there's a weird manifestation of a hunger that's going on there where, you know, we get sucked into our social media feeds and in a way We're sort of looking at others, but I think it's a manifestation of wanting to be seen, wanting to be recognized. And that's what the mystics say you ultimately find in the solitude and silence of contemplation is you get to the deepest reality, which is that you're never alone. You are always beloved of God, and God will never leave you or forsake you. And if you can get to that place, you become fearless, actually, because now you're not like striving to get everybody else's attention. You live in the world in such a way that you know that you dwell in the cosmic attention of the Creator. I just think, you know, do you know the writings of Henri Nouwen? Oh yes, of course. Of course. So Nouwen, one time when he was on sabbatical, you know, he's, he's a priest, but he's very busy priest, very active priest. And so one time he went to, on sabbatical, to the Genesee Abbey in upstate New York. And he wrote a book about his 9 months in the Genesee Abbey. And at one point he says, you know, you retreat into the solitude of the abbey and eventually you start to realize that no one is missing you anymore. You know, like at first, you know, the first few weeks, like, oh, where's Henry? I haven't seen Henry. But then he says, you get to a point where you're in there and you realize No one's thinking about you. No one is remembering that you're not there. And he says that is the point at which you are either liberated or you realize you are an addict for everybody else's attention. If you can, if you can get through that point, yeah, now you've just discovered a center of your existence that is kind of, um, an incredible strength, right? Because now you're not performing for everybody else all the time. In many ways, I do think, I think Fred Rogers, to me, he is just one of the sages, uh, that we have witnessed who I think carried in him such a non-anxious presence that he could be present to everyone else in such a way that spoke of love and attention. That, that, that to me is the dream, to be that kind of person, to be so centered. And I think that's what this contemplative mystical path is sort of offering.

Yeah, I think you're right. And the more that I think about it, I'm going through my head and thinking of all the times that Henri Nouwen would write about staring at a piece of art or being in a place like an abbey or, you know, some sort of place of solitude and silence. And by the way, he and Fred Rogers were good friends, by the way. And Fred grieved deeply when Alan died. They would write letters and correspond with each other. And so I think they were kindred souls. What I think—

It's also interesting, Rick, that in just in that spirit, in his book, The New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton also draws this parallel. Between prayer, a kind of prayerful contemplative attention, and what you offer or what an artwork invites from you. And, you know, I talked about painting, but we could— I think this can happen with a poem. I think this can happen with a novel. I think this can happen with a film. You know, I think of films where I am just wrapped with attention, not because it's glitz and special effects and things blowing up, but because it's like the quiet of human faces who are presented to me in all their vulnerability and beauty and haggard— the lines on their face tell a story. And in a sense, I am more present to other people and to myself because I experience the contemplation that such films invite. So yeah, I think, I think the arts are this prelude, a propaedeutic, a stepping stone into— and, and maybe actually some people who don't even think of themselves as religious at all, but are willing to devote attention and contemplation to the art might might be able to see that actually they have a kind of spiritual practice of sorts. I guess I would like them to consider it in that way, because I think if you can learn how to attend to an artwork carefully and quietly and contemplatively, you are resisting the sirens of distraction. And that's going to be more and more important for being human in the 21st century.

I agree, and I want to go just a little bit deeper in what you're saying too. I feel like the art that is created actually comes out of this place of listening and this place of solitude. And one thing that has been interesting to me as I've been becoming a chaplain more and more, one thing that you actually used the words non-anxious presence a minute ago.. And we are trained to enter a room to be a non-anxious, non-judgmental presence for a person. And the founder of what we would call chaplaincy today, his name was Anton Boisson. I don't know if you know much about him.

No, no, I'd be interested to know.

He would— again, I think he would be a kindred spirit with what you write about in this luminous darkness that you're writing about. He actually was a patient at one point in a place of mental health where he needed it when he was at one point in his career. And he said the thing that helped him the most was when someone just spent time quiet listening to him. And he came up with this concept of seeing the person in front of you as the living human document, he called it. So we're not looking at charts, we're not trying to find out all this medical, uh, things about a person, but we're just paying attention to that person who is right in front of of us. And, and in doing that, we always find something so much deeper. And it really is a matter of listening, watching. And as, as I hear what you're talking about tonight, I think you're right that there is something about us that so wants to be heard and so wants to be seen. I think that's why things like Instagram and TikTok and all these things— people are crying out, see me, hear me. Yes, sometimes they don't. But the problem with it, I think, is there's not always a lot of substance to that because they don't have anything necessarily worth being heard because they're trying to be something other than themselves, you know. And I hope that makes sense when I say that. And yeah, and I think if we are learning what I, what I believe you're drawing us to in your writing, if we can learn to be people who can just simply be in, in the midst of our lives, um, and we do that sometimes by paying attention to the other in front of us. And we become these differentiated people that don't have to change with every whim along the way. And then we actually become something interesting that other people actually want to pay attention to.

Exactly. I mean, I think it is, you know, if I'm critical of our sort of social media, you know, obsession, it's only because I don't think it offers what we're looking for, right? I see it as the manifestation of what is a deeply human hunger to be seen and known and loved. I think why it doesn't satisfy is because it creates an environment and an ethos in which we have to perform for that attention. We are, we are being subtly evaluated or not so subtly evaluated. You're liked or thumbs up or thumbs down. And that, that sense of having to perform to be loved is the very antithesis of grace. It's just the very— it's the very antithesis of the being of God's love, which is more like what you say, which is to get to a place where you realize you can just rest in your being and are loved, that you don't have to earn or perform or strive or win. That, I think, is what the mystics are most profoundly inviting us to see. And it— and then everything arrives as a gift. But you know that you are gifted with that attention. And it is unconditional. And what's interesting is, you know, the mystics talk about you retreat into solitude and you dwell in the silence and you go through the dark. And it could sound like, oh, this sounds like a recipe for kind of like hiding from the world or like getting egocentrically folded in on ourselves. And what's interesting is the Mystics universally attest that actually by walking this path, I become more compassionate. Because in fact, the more that I am— I live with a sense of being known and seen and loved by the cosmic creator, the more I see every other single human being the way God sees them. And now, you know, there's— I'm not I'm not subtly judging people's performances, or I'm just— I see in them, like you're the founder of Chaplaincy, they are these living documents that I can read, and every single one of them is a fascinating story of infinite depth and worth and dignity. Each of them is like little stars that shine, and if we can get to the place where because of our centeredness in being beloved, we start to then see our neighbors in that way. Now that compassion just transforms social networks, you know. Um, it's a very, very different place from which— so I do think it resonates with what you're saying about what the chaplain is trying to be. Yeah, it would probably say something about what you have to do to cultivate your own sense of identity to be that person in the room for others.

Very much so. And, and I think that's why when, when I read your new book, I think that's why it hits home so much with me, because I've had to learn how, uh, to be more silent, how to be more quiet, and even in the mornings to find more space to spend alone where I can listen. And just, just even using my sense, uh, my five senses sometimes to just go through what it is, uh, that I'm experiencing as I enter into a day It can be so powerful. And I find that even my prayer times, or it's not as centered as it once was, maybe on certain practices as much as it is on just be quiet. Just walk and listen and, you know, hear the things around you and sense and see. And it can have such amazing results. I mean, the things that we discover about ourselves and the world around us. And I think that's what you're calling us to really, and, and what you've been writing about. Um, there's so much depth here, and, and we just barely scratched the surface in the time that we've had together tonight. And I can't believe we've been talking for almost 40 minutes, 35 or 40 minutes at this point, uh, on this end. Um, but just before we end our conversation together, I want to make sure that you have a chance, um, if there's something that you would like to leave with listeners, especially tonight. And, and I want to make sure also to let everyone know that in the show notes, I will have links to Jamie's new book and where you should be able to go on and preorder because it comes out very soon.

Yeah.

But yeah, please feel free and just share with our listeners something that's just been very important to you that you'd like them to hear before our podcast is done tonight.

Oh, Rick, I just appreciate the conversation. I think you've drawn out so many of the themes that really kind of are the reason I, I wrote this book. I think, um, I would just love for your listeners to know this is, this is a book that comes out of my own sort of existential struggles in this regard. So in a way, I'm not just trying to be didactically instructing people about these historical sources. It's sort of, this is, I, I want to be on a journey, uh, with them. And I think probably what I'm hoping people would most find there is, um, what Saint Teresa of Ávila always used to love to quote from the New Testament, which is that perfect love casts out fear. And, uh, I just think we find ourselves in an age in which all sorts of fears beset us, um, and understandably, completely understandably, there all kinds of good reasons to be fearful. And in a sense, the mystics invite us to be honest about those fears and to enter into the difficulty of them. But if we can walk this path through solitude and silence and into the luminous cloud of darkness, what we find on the other side is a love that overcomes fear, a perfect love that casts out fear. And, um, that, that's ultimately, uh, the invitation that I hope people would hear in the book.

Wonderful. So where our fear leads us to want to control things, uh, love, love actually makes room and allows people to be who they are supposed to be.

Yes. And it's amazing how liberating that can be. It liberates us for compassion. It liberates us for solidarity. It liberates us for care. And it's not hiding from the realities of the world. It is just giving us a center from which we can live with these uncertainties. We can live in the midst of them and meet our neighbors there and shoulder to shoulder, hopefully care for them. Wow.

Well, thank you so much again for spending time this week. I'm so glad you're feeling better and we were able to have this conversation tonight. I hope we'll be able to do it again sometime in the future. Uh, just for everyone who was listening, in case you missed the title one more time, it's Make Your Home in This Luminous Darkness, and it is the new book by my guest this week, James K.A. Smith. I will have the link in the show notes of this podcast, so you should be able to easily access it and go there. So as I say to my guests every week on this show, Jamie, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week.

Thanks, Rick. Great to speak with you. Thank you very much.