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How to Die Well / Lydia Dugdale (From the Archives)
jeudi 30 juillet 2026 • Durée 11:27
Why don’t more doctors talk about death? Dr. Lydia Dugdale has been asking this question since she was a medical student. She is the Silberberg Professor of Medicine and directs the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and two books on how we die, including "The Lost Art of Dying."
"Most medical professionals today are very unpracticed at talking to patients about their mortality," she says.
Not only unpracticed, but even themselves afraid.
In this bonus clip from Episode 232 with Macie Bridge, Dugdale traces the path from that early perplexity on the wards to the ars moriendi, the medieval art of dying, grounded in the idea that dying is part of living, so if you want to die well you have to live well.
Lydia comments on the emergence of palliative care and the way it let physicians hand conversations about death to specialists; the doctor who inherited the priest's old place at the threshold between life and death; the death anxiety clinicians carry without examining; virtue as preparation for dying, and community as the other half of living well; the unrepresented patients of New York City who die alone; and a grumpy old man, hospitalized for 20 years, who wept when she read aloud what she had written about him.
Episode Highlights
“Most medical professionals today are very unpracticed at talking to patients about their mortality.”
“we are really the intermediaries between life and death, I'm not saying we're priests, but that used to be the role of the priest. And so it is now the role of the physician.
“If you want to die well, you have to live well.”
We have to be all in or we end up like all of these patients here in New York City who have no one that I can reach out to as they're dying.
“He started weeping and he said, someone finally saw me. Someone finally saw me. I've been in this hospital for 20 years and I didn't think anyone ever saw me.”
About Lydia Dugdale
Lydia Dugdale is a physician and medical ethicist who has spent fifteen years asking why medicine finds death so hard to talk about. She is the Silberberg Professor of Medicine at Columbia, directs the Columbia Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, and co-directs clinical ethics at NewYork-Presbyterian Milstein Hospital, where she still sees patients. She edited "Dying in the Twenty-First Century" and wrote "The Lost Art of Dying," a modern ars moriendi. She trained at the University of Chicago and Yale-New Haven Hospital, holds a master's in ethics from Yale Divinity School, and in 2025 founded the nonprofit Heal the Nation.
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give
You Must Change Your Life (From the Archive)
mercredi 22 juillet 2026 • Durée 11:52
We were made by a Maker to be makers. Bruce Herman joins Evan Rosa to diagnose the quiet illness of a passive consumer culture that trains us to sit in front of screens and scroll and take, rather than make. “When we’re not making something, we’re not whole. We’re not healthy.“ His cure is stubbornly ordinary: go make a loaf of bread, grab a stick and start carving, make a good meal or a good cocktail for the person visiting you—anything is resistance to this hypnotic, passive culture.
From episode 216 of the podcast, in this segment, Herman traces what it means to receive art not as a consumer but through submission—not master and slave, but subject to subject, that vulnerable openness that lets a poem or a painting change your life. He reflects on making as human wholeness, the difference between art and info-tainment, why suffering can rip us open to beauty (from Walker Percy’s writing to Christian Wiman’s poetry), Rilke’s charge that “you must change your life,“ hospitality as the ultimate act of art, and Herman’s closing counsel to make out of love, not fear.
Episode Highlights
We are in relationship, and we were made by a Maker to be makers. If we let that go somehow and we become mere consumers, I think we begin to enter into some kind of illness of one sort or another.
When we’re not making something, we’re not whole. We’re not healthy. And I don’t want to make an idol out of health either, but I do think our culture is unhealthy right now.
We think of it as, we’re discerning buyers. But the fact is we’re being turned into very passive creatures.
One of the best things you can do is go make a loaf of bread. Go out and grab a stick and start carving it. Anything is resistance to this sort of hypnotic passive culture.
If you want to really receive what a poem is communicating, you have to submit to it. You have to let yourself go and enter into what might feel like a bad risk of being changed.
Not submit in a sense that I’m a master and you’re my slave. It’s more like you’re a subject and I’m a subject. Mutual submission.
We’re so guarded so much of the time that it takes something catastrophic to open us up again.
Do away with the nonsense that you’re not an artist. You can’t help it. You were made by a Maker to be a maker. End of story.
The ultimate act of art is hospitality, where you’re welcoming someone in, to make something beautiful for them.
I Don't Know What Faith Means Anymore: Terminal Illness, Poetic Faith, and Theological Doubt / Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman
Épisode 249
mercredi 8 juillet 2026 • Durée 01:04:29
For twenty years, Christian Wiman has lived with a rare, incurable cancer. In the fall of 2022, during a stretch when the illness was especially bad, he wrote to his friend and Yale colleague Miroslav Volf: “I don’t know what faith means anymore. I’m a 56-year-old with a pile of books behind me and an experimental bone marrow transplant ahead of me, and I don’t know what faith means.” That letter became the seed of an extended correspondence between the poet and the theologian, now published as Glimmerings: Letters on Faith between a Poet and a Theologian.
In this special collaboration with Arc Magazine, editor Mark Oppenheimer sits down with Volf and Wiman to unpack the letters that grew out of their long friendship and years of walking together through New Haven.
They discuss what it means to love God, why doubt and absence might be constitutive elements of faith and presence rather than its opposite, and how a terminal diagnosis changed what each of them was willing to say and how freely they said it. They also trace the thinkers who shaped their thinking along the way, from Simone Weil’s account of attention to Etty Hillesum’s wartime writing, to Abraham Joshua Heschel’s theology of the prophets, and they wrestle openly with where their understandings of Jesus Christ converge and diverge.
Along the way, Wiman reflects on writing from a hospital room at Massachusetts General, on discovering that his fear was never death itself but the fear of dying without God, and on why grief, not fear, is what remains even after that fear falls away.
Episode Highlights
I don’t know what faith means anymore. I’m a 56-year-old with a pile of books behind me and an experimental bone marrow transplant ahead of me, and I don’t know what faith means.
I sometimes find it hard to think what it means to love God. I don’t know how to love God.
Faith is what matters. Belief seems to me a matter of the institution and ascending to creeds and things like that.
I think most of my theological thinking is existentially motivated. It’s motivated by the kind of inner logic of the trust in which I’m involved.
Owning Grief Redemptively: The Wound of Loss, the Failure of Theodicy, and the Cry of Suffering Love / Nicholas Wolterstorff
Épisode 248
mercredi 24 juin 2026 • Durée 43:24
More than forty years after his twenty-five-year-old son Eric died in a climbing accident, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff joins Miroslav Volf to revisit the grief behind his classic Lament for a Son and his recent Living with Grief.
“If he was worth loving when alive, he was worth grieving when dead.”
In this episode they reflect together on mourning loss, refusing both the consolations of theodicy and the pressure to move on. Together they discuss owning grief rather than disowning it, lament as a cry that transcends analysis, and the limits of explaining suffering through theodicy. They explore Augustine and Calvin on grief, Karl Barth's “nothingness,” universality hidden in particular sorrow, and the prison classroom where incarcerated men claimed their own grief redemptively.
Episode Highlights
"I could not, and would not, allow it simply to heal."
"If he was worth loving when alive, he was worth grieving when dead."
"In my story I always say: I am one who lost a son. That's part of who I am."
"Children should not die at twenty-five years of age. Nobody should die at twenty-five years of age."
"It was good that I loved Eric. It was worth it. So my grief is worthwhile. And, in this world, love and suffering come together."
About Nicholas Wolterstorff
Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Born in 1932, he earned his PhD at Harvard and taught philosophy for thirty years at Calvin College before joining Yale in 1989. A leading Christian philosopher, he helped develop Reformed epistemology and co-founded the Society of Christian Philosophers. His books span aesthetics, epistemology, justice, and liturgy, including Lament for a Son (1987) and the memoir In This World of Wonders (2019). His son Eric died in a climbing accident in 1983.
Anonymous Spiritual Hitchhiking: Emotional Health in the Digital Age / Anonymous
Épisode 247
mercredi 17 juin 2026 • Durée 56:58
We’re used to hostile online encounters with total strangers. It fuels the digital economy. But what if there were a way to experiment with radical emotional honesty with an anonymous other—much the same as you’d experience at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? The anonymous founder of This Life, an audio-only app built on anonymity, joins For the Life of the World to argue that emotional and spiritual progress is still possible at scale.
"What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you."
In this episode with Evan Rosa, Justin Smith (a pseudonym) reflects on what he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, the genius of Bill Wilson, and why our voices carry so much emotional weight, and how sharing them—even (and perhaps especially) anonymously—can be a transformative experience of growth. Together they discuss anonymity as a path to honesty, the "spiritual hitchhiker," negative emotion as a force that wants to win, design as destiny, and becoming a neighbor. They also weigh technology's limits and whether spiritual and emotional progress can scale.
Episode Highlights
"What's really kind is to care about somebody else. And then even more kind than that is to allow somebody else to care about you."
"I believe we live in a society that has given up on the idea of emotional or spiritual progress at scale."
"Honesty with yourself is a skill."
"If you begin to look at unhelpful negative emotion as a force that wants to win, what you'll notice is that we're in a fight that we're not well equipped for."
"Meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people."
About Justin Smith
"Justin Smith" is a pseudonym. The guest is the founder of This Life, an audio-only iOS app he describes as an experiment in emotional and spiritual progress, built around anonymity, self-reflection, and what he calls the "spiritual hitchhiker." A Christian shaped by his time in Alcoholics Anonymous and the writing of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, he draws on figures from Martin Luther King Jr. to E.O. Wilson and Fred Rogers to argue that honesty with others is the foundation of spiritual growth. By his request, and in keeping with the episode's premise, his real name, biography, and social accounts are withheld. Learn more about the This Life app on the iOS App Store.
How to Read William Blake: Imagination and Flourishing Beyond Reason Alone / Mark Vernon
Épisode 246
vendredi 12 juin 2026 • Durée 01:07:29
What does it take to put a fractured world back together? Philosopher and psychotherapist Mark Vernon joins Evan Rosa to explore William Blake as the great counter-Enlightenment guide for our anxious, divided age.
"The world comes to be seen as it truly is, which is infinite, and that can embrace distinction difference as much as similarity and sharing."
In this episode with Evan Rosa, Vernon explains how to read William Blake, and reflects on Blake as the most important post-Reformation Christian mystic—a poet, painter, and philosopher offering not just a diagnosis of modern division but the beginnings of an antidote. Together they discuss Newton's long shadow and the withdrawal of inner life; the fragmentation of humanity from itself, nature, and the divine; the marriage of heaven and hell; cleansing the doors of perception; imagination as abundance rather than scarcity; desire rightly ordered; and Blake's Christ, who acts from impulse rather than rule.
———
Episode Highlights
"I think he's the most important post-Reformation Christian mystic."
"We need these oppositions in order to create the dynamism of life and hence the Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
"The task is to align, align with the goods in the melee, and see how that which is seemingly different for you, might have something to offer you."
"The world comes to be seen as it truly is, which is infinite, and that can embrace distinction difference as much as similarity and sharing."
"The fullness of the love, the fullness of the goods, paradoxically, it can seem, is only revealed when it reaches out to that, which seems to be the opposite of it."
———
About Mark Vernon
Mark Vernon is a writer, broadcaster, and psychotherapist with a private practice in London, and a former Anglican priest. His studies began with a physics degree at Durham University, followed by two degrees in theology and a PhD in ancient Greek philosophy from the University of Warwick; he has also worked at the Maudsley Hospital. He contributes to the BBC, the Guardian, and Church Times, and podcasts frequently. His books range across friendship, wellbeing, ancient philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and the Inkling Owen Barfield. His most recent book, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination (Hurst, 2024), has drawn praise from Rowan Williams and others as among the finest recent studies of Blake. Learn more and follow at , his Substack A Golden String (), and @platospodcasts on X.
Perseverance Through Weariness, Exhaustion, and Burnout: The Desert Wisdom of Christian Resilience / Tish Harrison Warren
Épisode 245
mercredi 3 juin 2026 • Durée 54:46
What sustains faith when prayer feels flat and God seems distant—and there's no clear tragedy to explain it? Anglican priest and former New York Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren joins Macie Bridge to talk about weariness, burnout, and the quiet middle stretches of a long spiritual life. Drawing on her new book What Grows in Weary Lands, she turns to the Desert Fathers and Mothers for a resilience that resists both flaming out and numbing out.
"It felt like the call had dropped, like the line had gone dead."
In this episode with Macie Bridge, Warren reflects on her own season of spiritual aridity and the ancient counsel to stay in your cell rather than escape.
Together they discuss the difference between burnout and weariness, acedia and the noonday demon, perseverance, silence as countercultural practice, and the world as a womb. They explore why escape rarely heals and what it means to trust the slow work of God.
Episode Highlights
"It felt like the call had dropped, like the line had gone dead." "I do not think vitamin D will solve what I'm talking about." "We're not having to hold our life together in the midst of weariness with will power and duct tape." "We kind of bring Times Square with us wherever we go now." "God doesn't need me to be impressive or achieving."
About Tish Harrison Warren
Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and an Anglican priest. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, named Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night, which won both Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for The New York Times on faith in public and private life and was a columnist for Christianity Today; her essays have appeared in Comment, The Point, and Religion News Service. She currently serves as the C. S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence at Baylor's Truett Seminary, is a senior fellow with The Trinity Forum, and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church. (Source: tishharrisonwarren.com) Learn more and follow at , Instagram @tishharrisonwarren, and X @Tish_H_Warren.
To Be Human Is to Be Unfinished: Anxiety, Existential Psychology, and Flourishing / Dan Koch & Kristen Tideman
Épisode 244
mercredi 15 avril 2026 • Durée 48:05
What if the anxiety you most want to get rid of is the one you most need to listen to? Existential psychologist Dan Koch and marketing strategist Kristen Tideman join Evan Rosa for a conversation about what anxiety is actually for—and what happens when it turns against you. "To be human is to be unfinished. It is to have constantly limits around you, and your choice is to accept them or pretend they're not there." In this episode, they reflect together on the existential roots of anxiety and what it looks like to confront real limits—from an MS diagnosis to faith upheaval to collective crisis. Together they discuss healthy versus unhealthy anxiety and how to tell them apart, the post-WWII origins of existential therapy, boundary situations and “thrownness,” what denial costs us spiritually and psychologically, and how accepting our limits can paradoxically expand our world. The conversation moves between lived experience of multiple sclerosis and philosophical framework about mortality, between Kierkegaard's "dizziness of freedom" and a three-month-old baby in an emergency room—asking not how to eliminate anxiety, but how to let the right kind of anxiety make your world bigger.
Episode Highlights
"To be human is to be unfinished. It is to have constantly limits around you, and your choice, among other things, is to accept them or pretend they're not there."—Dan Koch
"I was literally in the ER. I'm holding my three-month-old baby who just got here. I'm like, my life just started—and I don't even know what this means. I don't even wanna Google what it means."—Kristen Tideman
"Our brains are big enough and our minds are strong enough that unlike deer, plants, and coconuts, we can think about the future. We can imagine our own death."—Dan Koch
"There's ways I wanna deny the MS. I wanna deny that that's part of my existence now. I wanna deny even components of my own faith change."—Kristen Tideman
"Is my world getting smaller, or is my world getting bigger?"—Dan Koch
About Dan Koch
Dan Koch is an existential psychologist, therapist, and host of Religion on the Mind, a podcast and media project exploring the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and everyday life. His clinical work focuses on religious change—deconversion, deconstruction, reconstruction—and the downstream effects on identity, family, and meaning-making. He draws on the existential tradition from Kierkegaard and Jaspers through Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom. Koch has spoken openly about his own fifteen-year experience with panic disorder. Learn more and follow at [VERIFY]
Dwell in the Darkness: John's Passion Narrative, Good Friday, and the Education of Desire / David Ford
Épisode 243
jeudi 2 avril 2026 • Durée 50:59
As Christians enter the most solemn stretch of the liturgical year, theologian David Ford — who spent over twenty years writing his commentary on the Gospel of John — makes the case that no other Gospel prepares you for the cross the way John does. "The right question is not so much what happened on the cross, as who happened on the cross. All through the gospel, every chapter, John is saying — who Jesus is is the most important thing." In this episode with Macie Bridge, Ford reflects on why John's Gospel resists rushing past darkness to get to Easter. Together they discuss what the foot washing reveals about power and humble service; how John's prologue frames the entire passion through the mystery of incarnation; Jesus before Pilate and the priority of truth over empire; the horrific interpretive legacy of antisemitism in Luther, Augustine, and centuries of Christian reading; how the Gospel universalizes identity by rooting it in God rather than lineage; the scene at the cross as the seed of the church; and what Ford calls the sheer superabundance of grace — loving "utterly, intimately, vulnerably, mutually."
Episode Highlights
"The one thing one mustn't do with these days is see the resurrection as just coming down off the cross a few days later. That trivializes the cross."
"Jesus is portrayed as being utterly one with God and utterly one with us. He's mortal. He's flesh. He can weep. He suffers."
"The right question is not so much what happened on the cross, as who happened on the cross."
"We are invited into this extraordinary intensity of the divine glory — but it's a glory that is utterly, utterly realistic about darkness, sin, death, suffering, and evil."
"The whole gospel, I think, is an education of desire."
About David Ford
David F. Ford, OBE, is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, where he held the chair from 1991 to 2014, and a Fellow of Selwyn College. He is the founding director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme and a co-founder of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. He has served as theological adviser to three Archbishops of Canterbury. His books include The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Christianity Today 2023 Book Award Finalist), Theology: A Very Short Introduction, The Shape of Living, and most recently Meeting God in John. His commentary on John's Gospel took over twenty years to write and has been translated into Korean. He was awarded an OBE for services to theological scholarship and inter-faith relations in 2013. (Sources: University of Cambridge Faculty of Divinity page; Center of Theological Inquiry profile, Feb. 2026.) Ford does not appear to maintain a personal website or public social media.
How to Read Ecclesiastes: Absurdity, Futility, and the Simple Value of Life / Jesse Peterson
Épisode 242
jeudi 26 mars 2026 • Durée 01:01:37
The book of Ecclesiastes has puzzled readers for millennia with its unflinching observations about absurdity, meaninglessness, vanity, and futility. Biblical scholar Jesse Peterson joins Evan Rosa to discuss his book, Qoheleth and the Philosophy of Value, bringing contemporary philosophy into dialogue with this ancient text and reflecting on what happens when a sage confronts the gap between expectation and reality.
"Can you view your work, your toil, not just as a means to a further end? Can you rather turn to simply enjoy the work itself?"
Together they discuss the distinction between meaning and value, why Qoheleth denies lasting significance while affirming joy, the harm of death and the death of memory, Ecclesiastes and Camus's absurdism, and the book's surprising message about enjoyment as an intrinsic good.
Episode Highlights
"I think what's at the heart of the Book of Ecclesiastes is just to say, maybe not, maybe there isn't a direct line between what you do and what the result will be."
"It's not just that you'll physically die, but meaning that you've accrued in your life, if there was such a thing, that dies with you."
"In this moment of working on what I'm working on, whatever it is, I am fully alive."
"You have a little piece of the pie, and just own it. Absorb yourself into whatever that may be."
"Can you view your work, your toil, not just as a means to a further end? Can you rather turn to simply enjoy the work itself?"
About Jesse Peterson
Jesse Peterson is an Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies in the School of Theology and Honors Program at George Fox University. He previously taught at Purdue University, Fordham University, and St. John's University. He earned a PhD in Hebrew Bible from Durham University (UK), an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a BA in music and Jewish studies from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. His work on Ecclesiastes has appeared in Harvard Theological Review, Vetus Testamentum, and the Journal of Theological Studies. He is the author of Qoheleth and the Philosophy of Value (Cambridge University Press).
Challenge the bad news with a recognition that daily kindnesses are being poured out everywhere, on every street. Don’t give in to fear, because it’s not a basis for anything good.
About Bruce Herman
Bruce Herman is a painter, writer, and educator whose work has been shown in more than 150 exhibitions across the United States and internationally, and held in collections including the Vatican Museums in Rome, the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, and the Grunewald Print Collection of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. He taught at Gordon College for nearly four decades, where he founded the art department and held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts. His books include “Through Your Eyes“ and “Ordinary Saints,“ and he was a collaborator on the touring “QU4RTETS“ project with Makoto Fujimura, Christopher Theofanidis, and Jeremy Begbie. His most recent book, “Makers by Nature: Letters from a Master Painter on Faith, Hope, and Art,“ was published by IVP Academic in 2025.
Most of the books that I wrote, I’ve written for myself. I’m one of those writers who doesn’t have an audience.
There is grace in my life if I can just keep my eyes open enough to see it.
His mistake in some ways lets him see that the world is right, that there’s a rightness to the world.
What becomes clear is one’s longing for God. Everything is stripped away and very little else seems to matter.
What I want most in my life is the presence of God. And I fear dying without that. Just being alone at the moment of death.
I was worried that he won’t have God in that situation of need because attention might be lacking.
About Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman
Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. He is the author of Exclusion and Embrace, the NYT bestseller Life Worth Living (with Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Matt Croasmun), The Cost of Ambition, and more than twenty other books.
Christian Wiman is the Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts at Yale Divinity School. He has written and edited numerous volumes of poetry. He has lived with a rare blood cancer, Waldenström macroglobulinemia, for more than twenty years, an experience he wrote about in his memoirs My Bright Abyss and Zero at the Bone.
Grief as an open wound
Two books, forty years apart: Lament for a Son and Living with Grief
Eric Wolterstorff's death at twenty-five in a climbing accident, Austria, 1983
Lament as a cry, not an analysis
"I could not, and would not, allow it simply to heal."
Grief-process books that failed: "inviting me to look away from Eric"
"If he was worth loving when alive, he was worth grieving when dead."
Owning grief versus disowning it; narrative identity
"I am one who lost a son"; grief as part of who you are
Augustine's moral disowning; shame over loving too much
Owning grief redemptively; good that couldn't have come otherwise
Calvin Prison Initiative, Handlon Correctional Facility, Ionia, MI
Prison classroom: "we were in grief but didn't know how to express it. You have given us the words."
Universality in particularity
The pallet of finished books: "What have I done?"
Grief brought on oneself: "not an assault, but we brought it onto ourselves"
Karl Barth's "nothingness"; evil God will defeat
"Children should not die at twenty-five years of age."
Love that knowingly risks grief: "love and suffering come together"
Startup founders and self-help gurus—equally annoying
How the app works: an audio-only experiment
Spoken note—talk to yourself, your God, or both
"Spiritual hitchhiker"—paired daily with a stranger
One rule: no politics
"A much more intimate and powerful sort of access to a human consciousness."
The voice as the best vehicle for the spiritual
Looks always color how we treat each other
Design is destiny
"We live in a Star Wars civilization with stone age emotions" (E.O. Wilson)
Bill Wilson refused Yale's honorary doctorate
"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities." https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-traditions
Negative emotion as a force that wants to win
"Honesty with yourself is a skill."
Mandela, Mother Teresa, Mr. Rogers—all struggled
"Meaningful spiritual development is impossible without honesty with other people."
No longer "people in my way at the Starbucks line"—strangers with inner lives
Personal responsibility and the courage to become a neighbor
Kristen Tideman is the founder of Tidy Studios, a marketing strategist and creative consultant. She holds a master's degree in philosophy and has brought that background into her work exploring questions of meaning, anxiety, and faith in public conversation. She lives with multiple sclerosis and is a new mother. Learn more and follow at [VERIFY—need Tidy Studios URL and social handles]
Why John's Gospel is the "matured gospel" — distilled from years of meditation, eyewitness reports, and rewriting
"From his fullness we've all received grace upon grace" — the theme of superabundance running through John
John wrote for both beginners and the experienced — simple Greek, inexhaustible depth
Ford's biggest hope after 20 years writing his commentary: that readers would become "habitual rereaders" of John
The prologue as the most influential short text in the history of Christianity
"In the beginning was the Word" — the only framework for understanding Jesus is God and the whole of reality
"The Word was made flesh" — utterly one with God, utterly one with us
The farewell discourses of chapters 13–17 as probably the most profound teaching in the New Testament
Chapter 17 as the most profound chapter in the Bible — Jesus' final prayer before the passion
The foot washing: "All things having been given into his hands — and then what the hands do is wash the feet of his disciples"
"Loving utterly, intimately, vulnerably, mutually" — the heading Ford gave to Maundy Thursday; used as the title of the Korean translation of his commentary
"If you want to be great, wash feet"
The "as" in John's Gospel — love as Jesus loved, sent as the Father sent — requiring us to go deep and then endlessly improvise
Jesus washing Judas's feet — the radicality of love extended even to the one who betrays
John omits the Eucharist from the Last Supper — placing eucharistic theology in chapter 6 to keep the focus on who Jesus is
"I think nobody is in favor of the real absence of Jesus" — Ford on disputes over the real presence
The beloved disciple as the model disciple, Peter as "all the rest of us" — the one who tries, fails, and is restored
"The anonymity allows us all to write our names there" — reading ourselves into the beloved disciple and the mother of Jesus
The threefold "Who are you looking for?" and the threefold "I am" at the arrest — echoing Exodus 3:14, the very name of God
Before Pilate, facing the most powerful empire in history, Jesus headlines one thing: truth
The scene at the cross as the seed of the church — Jesus sending his mother and the beloved disciple to each other
"Here is your mother, here is your son" — the Greek verb for "received her" is the same as "whoever receives the one I send, receives me"
"The right question is not so much what happened on the cross, as who happened on the cross"
Nelson Mandela as a distant analogy: "Apartheid happened to Mandela, but Mandela happened to apartheid" — likewise, sin happened to Jesus, but Jesus happened to sin
Denise Levertov's poem on Julian of Norwich: "the oneing with the Godhead opened him utterly to the pain"
"He handed over the spirit" — not "gave up his spirit"; a possible first breathing of the Holy Spirit from the cross
Scriptural Reasoning: its origins with Jewish textual reasoning scholars working out what it means to be Jewish after the Shoah
Peter Ochs and the founding of Scriptural Reasoning at Princeton
Ford on reading John chapter 8 with Peter Ochs: facing the "appalling inheritance" of antisemitic interpretation
Adele Reinhartz's reading: John isn't anti-Semitic — John is Semitic; the Gospel relativizes ethnic identity
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on doing justice to incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection — all three, not just one
Receptive Ecumenism — looking at yourself first, asking how we can be better Christians rather than telling others to be like us
"The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness does not overcome it. But it doesn't say the darkness disappeared."
"The whole gospel, I think, is an education of desire"
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