Old Books With Grace: Recent Episodes
Dr. Grace Hamman
Listening to the past can help us to understand our present. Dr. Grace Hamman, medievalist and writer, guides listeners to approach often intimidating works of literature and theology and learn to ask questions of our current age. Let‘s read old books together and discover truths about God and ourselves.
Today, the poet and professor Mischa Willett joins Grace to discuss the Romantic era of literature and one of its greatest writers in particular: Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
For Philip James Bailey's Festus: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-philip-james-bailey-festus.html
Mischa Willett is the author of several poetry books, including the forthcoming This Gift Card Has Already Been Redeemed. He is Director of the Whitworth Writers’ Workshop, a low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. His poems, essays, translations, and academic articles appear in a wide range of venues. More information can be found at www.mischawillett.com.
Today is the last installment of this year's Lent series. Grace welcomes Dr. Abram Van Engen to discuss all things George Herbert, much to her delight (a bit of fangirling over Herbert is always in order). They focus on the beautiful, dense, multilayered poem "The Altar."
Abram Van Engen is Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the English Department, and Professor of Religion and Politics (by courtesy) at Washington University in St. Louis.
Van Engen has published widely on religion and literature, focusing especially on seventeenth-century Puritans and the way they have been remembered and remade in American culture. His book, Word Made Fresh, introduces reading poetry as a spiritual practice. He hosts the podcast Poetry for All.
Here is the text, but be forewarned that the shape of it might be altered (get it?) in the podcast notes, so do look it up to see the poem's proper shape.
A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears, Made of a heart and cemented with tears: Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;No workman's tool hath touch'd the same. A HEART alone Is such a stone, As nothing but Thy pow'r doth cut. Wherefore each part Of my hard heart Meets in this frame, To praise thy name: That if I chance to hold my peace, These stones to praise thee may not cease. Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine, And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.
In the latest installment of the Lent series, Grace welcomes Amy Baik Lee to discuss the poignant Sonnet 19 by the great John Milton.
When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” I fondly ask. But patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His stateIs Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.” Amy Baik Lee is the author of This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today. Her cross-cultural childhood gave her a love for a wide variety of musical and storytelling forms; she grew up to study English literature at the University of Virginia and develop a deep interest in the intersection where faith, the imagination, eucatastrophe, and daily life meet. Her work has been featured by the Rabbit Room, the Anselm Society, Cultivating Magazine, the C.S. Lewis Foundation, the Marion E. Wade Center, the Buechner Review, the One Thousand Words podcast, and others. Away from the writing desk, she enjoys baking and watching birds in the garden with her family in Colorado.
Find out more about Grace's new book, Ask of Old Paths.
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Today, Grace welcomes professor and author David Taylor in this installment of the Lenten poetry series. They talk about the great nineteenth-century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and in particular, his masterpiece “The Wreck of the Deutschland.”
W. David O. Taylor is Associate Professor of Theology & Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of ten books, including Open and Unafraid, Glimpses of the New Creation, Naming the Spirit, and the forthcoming, To Set the World Aflame. An Anglican priest, he has written for The Washington Post, Christian Scholars Review, Image Journal, and Christianity Today, among others, while also contributing scholarly essays to The T&T Clark Companion to Theology and the Arts and Theology, Modernity and the Visual Arts. He lives on 21 acres east of Austin with his artist wife and children.
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Grace is delighted to kick off this year’s Lent series. Every other week during Lent Grace will have a guest who has chosen a Lenten-themed poem to share. Today, though, is just a little meditative beginning with three Middle English poems, text below, translations by Grace Hamman.
Westminster Abbey MS 27 (175 in Carleton Brown's XVth Century Lyrics)
Wise men bene but scorned,
& wedows eke foryerned,
Grete men arn bot glosid,
& smale men arn borne doun & myslosed,
Lordis wex euer blynd,
Ffrendis ben vnkynde,
Dethe is oute of mynde,
Treuth may no man fynde.
Wise men are only mocked,
and widows are forgotten,
Great men are flattered,
& the little ones are downtrodden and blamed,
The powerful grow ever more blind,
Friends become unkind,
Death has left the mind,
Truth itself no man can find.
Advocates Lib. 18.7.21 (66 in Brown's XIVth Century Lyrics)
Loue me brouthte,
& loue me wrouthte,
Man, to be thi fere.
Loue me fedde,
& loue me ledde,
& loue me lettet here.
Loue me slou,
& loue me drou,
& loue me leyde on bere.
Loue is my pes,
For loue I ches,
Man to by3en dere.
Ne dred the nouth
I haue the south,
Bothen day & nith,
to hauen the,
Wel is me,
I haue the wonnen in fith.
Love brought me,
Love wrought me,
Man, to be your advocate.
Love fed me,
Love led me,
And love stopped me here.
Love slew me,
Love drew me,
Love laid me on bier.
Love is my peace,
For love I chose
Man to buy so dear [at a high cost].
Dread thee nought,
For I have thee sought,
Both day and night.
In having thee
Well is me.
I have won thee in the fight.
Advocates MS 19. I. II, (111 in Brown's XVth Century Lyrics)
I Haue laborede sore and suffered deyth,
and now I Rest and draw my breyght,
but I schall come and call Ryght sone
heuene and erght and hell to dome;
and thane schall know both devyll and mane,
What I was and what I ame.
I have labored sore and suffered death,
and now I rest and draw my breath,
but I shall come and call very soon
heaven and earth and hell to doom [judgment];
And then shall know, both devil and man,
What I was and who I am.
Today, Grace chats with the poet Paul Pastor on another poet, the revolutionary thinker and artist William Blake.
Paul J. Pastor is Executive Editor of Nelson Books at HarperCollins, an essayist, critic, and poet, writer of The Rose Fire on Substack, and author of several books, most recently The Locust Years: Poems, from Wiseblood Books. He lives in Oregon.
Grace is going to take a sabbatical from Old Books with Grace for a few months as she and her family are in the middle of several big projects and changes. You can keep up with her at gracehamman.substack.com while she's taking a break from the podcast, though!
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Today Grace welcomes Elizabeth Oldfield to recast these ancient ideas of vices and virtues into contemporary language. Why should we care about these ancient and sometimes worn-thin concepts? How can they speak to our world today--even if that world does not believe the same things as the church believes?
Elizabeth Oldfield is the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. She is a speaker, coach, and consultant, and the host of The Sacred podcast. Elizabeth has a masters in Theology and the Arts and lives in an intentional Christian community in South London with her family.
Today, Grace welcomes author Lisa Colón DeLay to discuss the fascinating ancient Christians that we now call the Desert Fathers and Mothers. People like Evagrius, Amma Theodora, St. Moses the Black, St. Anthony the Great, and many others offer deep wisdom in their own time and to us today.
Lisa Colón DeLay is the author of The Wild Land Within and has an MA in spiritual formation. She writes, teaches, and creates products and resources related to spiritual formation. Since 2015, she has hosted Spark My Muse, a top-rated religion and spirituality podcast. DeLay grew up in Pittsburgh, having left her native country of Puerto Rico, and now resides near the Appalachian Trail in a small town in Pennsylvania. Discover more, including more links and more information on her new book and the desert fathers and mothers, at lisadelay.com.
Learn more about Grace's new book, Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life.
This week, Grace welcomes her dear friend from graduate school, fellow medievalist Dr. Jessica D. Ward, to discuss one of their favorites: Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the great Canterbury Tales! Come for Middle English, discussions of why Chaucer deserves his reputation, and continuing discussion of the backgrounds in Grace's new book, Ask of Old Paths, as Grace and Jessica discuss their mutual interests in the Parson's Tale and penitential literature.
Dr. Jessica D. Ward is an early English literature scholar. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on medieval and early modern literature, culture, and language and has written for various academic journals and collections on these topics. She has served as a dramaturg for professional Shakespeare productions in New York as well as in Texas, where she now lives with her husband, toddler son, and their spunky little lion dog, Oscar, the shih tzu. She enjoys delighting in Middle English and its muses and legacies on Substack in her newsletter Middle English Delights.
Buy Grace's new book, Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life.
Grace invites on one of her heroes (!), Professor Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, professor of medieval philosophy and author of Glittering Vices. They talk Aquinas, vices, Jane Austen, and more in this delightful conversation.
Rebecca DeYoung (Ph.D. University of Notre Dame) has enjoyed teaching ethics and the history of ancient and medieval philosophy at Calvin College for over 20 years. Her research focuses on the seven deadly sins, and virtue ethics, as well as Thomas Aquinas’s work on the virtues. Her books include Glittering Vices, Vainglory, and a co-authored volume entitled Aquinas’s Ethics. Awards for her work include the Book and Essay Prize from the Character Project and the C.S. Lewis prize for Glittering Vices. She speaks widely, including opportunities to teach in prison. She and her husband Scot live in Grand Rapids, near the beautiful Lake Michigan shoreline. They have four adult children.
Check out Grace's new book, Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life
Welcome to season six of Old Books with Grace! Today, the tables are turned. Grace welcomes her very own husband, the wonderfully handsome, talented, and clever structural engineer, Scott Hamman, to interview her on her new book, Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life. This episode kicks off a lovely series on virtues and vices this fall featuring many wonderful thinkers.
Get Ask of Old Paths on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Thriftbooks, Target, Bookshop.org, or best of all, contact your local bookstore, or ask your library to purchase a copy!
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In today's episode, Grace welcomes Dr. Daniel McInerney to think about some big questions: what is the relationship between beauty and art? Art and imitation? This conversation ranges from Aristotle to Austen in its exploration of literary, visual, and dramatic art.
Daniel McInerny is associate professor and chair of the philosophy department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Daniel is the author of Beauty & Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts. He is also a novelist and dramatist and writes the Substack newsletter, The Comic Muse, a review of culture and the arts. Daniel and his wife Amy have three grown children and two adorable grandchildren and live in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
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Welcome to Old Books with Grace! Today marks the final episode in the Old Books with Grace Lent Series, on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Today we read Little Gidding as poet and editor Lisa Ampleman joins Grace for a thoughtful conversation.
Lisa Ampleman is the author of a chapbook and three full-length books of poetry, most recently Mom in Space (2024) and Romances (2020), both with LSU Press. Her work has appeared recently on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily and in journals including32 Poems, Colorado Review, Cortland Review, Ecotone, Georgia Review, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, and Southern Review. She lives in Cincinnati and is the managing editor of The Cincinnati Review and poetry series editor at Acre Books.
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Welcome to Old Books with Grace! Today marks the third episode in the Old Books with Grace Lent Series, on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Today we read The Dry Salvages as poet and editor Andy Patton joins Grace for a lively discussion.
Andy Patton is the creator of the Darkling Psalter, a collection of creative renditions of the Psalms. He holds an M.A. in theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the Director of Content for the Rabbit Room and is a former staff member at L'Abri Fellowship in England.
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Lent is a time of repentance, reflection, and reconciliation. These are actions that happen in time, facilitated by memory and love. So even though we, as followers of Christ, repent, reflect, and reconcile year-round, one hopes, we set aside a time to especially do so, to be as intentional as we can, to pay special attention to our blessed limitations as creatures of God. It is easy to let these things go.
This is what Lent is for. It so happens that these themes—love, memory, time, attention, repentance, creatureliness—are also themes extensively explored in T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece set of poems, the Four Quartets. Each episode in this Lent series, Grace will be discussing one of the quartets with a guest. Today Grace welcomes Professor O. Alan Noble for a thoughtful conversation on East Coker, the second poem.
Dr. O. Alan Noble is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and author of three books: On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, and Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age. Dr. Noble has published articles at The Atlantic, The Gospel Coalition, First Things, and Christianity Today. He lives with his wife and three children.
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Welcome to Old Books with Grace! Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent 2025. And today begins the Old Books with Grace Lent Series, on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.
Lent is a time of repentance, reflection, and reconciliation. These are actions that happen in time, facilitated by memory and love. So even though we, as followers of Christ, repent, reflect, and reconcile year-round, one hopes, we set aside a time to especially do so, to be as intentional as we can, to pay special attention to our blessed limitations as creatures of God. It is easy to let these things go.
This is what Lent is for. It so happens that these themes—love, memory, time, attention, repentance, creatureliness—are also themes extensively explored in T.S. Eliot’s masterpiece set of poems, the Four Quartets. Each episode in this Lent series, Grace will be discussing one of the quartets with a guest. Today is the first, Burnt Norton, and poet and editor Paul Pastor joins Grace for a lively discussion.
Paul J. Pastor is Executive Editor of Nelson Books at HarperCollins, an essayist, critic, and poet, writer of The Rose Fire on Substack, and author of several books, most recently The Locust Years: Poems, from Wiseblood Books. He lives in Oregon.
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Zwingli is one of those names that floats around the ether--but in comparison to his more famous reforming counterparts, like Luther or Calvin, he doesn't get brought up much. Grace welcomes author and professor Stephen Eccher to discuss this radical reformer and his sixteenth-century impact.
Stephen Brett Eccher is Associate Professor of Church History and Reformation Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he has taught since 2012. His academic work focuses primarily on Reformation history and theology, especially at the intersection of the sixteenth century Swiss Reformed and Swiss Anabaptist traditions.
He is the author of numerous journal articles and chapters on the Protestant Reformation and the book Zwingli the Pastor: A Life in Conflict (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2023). Stephen and his wife Cara have four daughters and have been members at Open Door Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina for twenty-three years where Stephen serves as an elder.
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In this episode Grace welcomes editor, writer, and reader Susannah Black Roberts to discuss one of their mutual favorites: the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope. George Eliot loved him. Henry James hated him. What are we to think of this wordy man?
Susannah Black Roberts is senior editor at Plough. She is a native Manhattanite. She and her husband, the theologian Alastair Roberts, split their time between Manhattan and the West Midlands of the UK.
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Welcome to this week's episode in the Advent 2024 series, each featuring a sermon from the past. Last week we longed for the Second Coming of Jesus with Sojourner Truth, this week we long for Jesus's mercy in our hearts right now, with the seventeenth-century Anglican cleric and metaphysical poet, John Donne, in portions of a sermon preached on Christmas Day, 1624.
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Welcome to this week’s episode in the Advent 2024 series, each featuring a sermon from the past. Last week we longed for the historical arrival of the Christ Child with Bernard of Clairvaux. Today, we long for Jesus’s Second Coming with the nineteenth-century preacher, activist, and prophet, Sojourner Truth.
Read Sojourner Truth’s narrative of her life.
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Welcome to the first Advent episode of 2024 in Old Books with Grace! In this series, Grace introduces a thinker and a sermon of the past. Each week will focus on one of the advents, comings, arrivals of Jesus Christ: the first, historical coming in Bethlehem; the second coming in the Last Judgment; the present advent of His presence in our hearts. This week is St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on flowers and honey in Isaiah, on Christ the Bee.
Purchase Grace's book, Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages.
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Today Grace welcomes Dr. Erin Risch Zoutendam to talk about how medieval and early modern people were reading and encountering scripture. Highlights include Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Julian of Norwich!
Erin Risch Zoutendam received her PhD from Duke University. Her research examines how late medieval and early modern biblical hermeneutics shaped Christian conceptions of mystical contemplation. She currently teaches at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
In this episode, Grace welcomes historical fiction writer Amy Mantravadi to discuss the Reformers, just in time for Reformation Day! As a medievalist, Grace always has some complex feelings for Martin Luther and company, but Amy brings knowledge and enthusiasm to this conversation about these fascinating sixteenth-century folk, as well as the role of historical fiction in our learning, in our discussion of her new fiction of the Reformation, Broken Bonds.
Amy Mantravadi lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband, Jai, and their son, Thomas. She holds a B.A. in biblical literature and political science from Taylor University and received her M.A. in international security from King's College London. In addition to writing essays on theological topics, she also writes historical fiction and has two novels about the Reformation forthcoming, including Broken Bonds.
In today’s episode, Grace welcomes her friend, Shannon K. Evans, to chat about that fascinating group of people that the church today often calls the mystics. They consider the spirituality of women like St. Teresa of Avila, Margery Kempe, St. Catherine of Siena, and more and what they offer the present-day lovers of God.
Shannon K. Evans is the author of The Mystics Would Like a Word, Feminist Prayers for My Daughter, and Rewilding Motherhood. She serves as the spirituality and culture editor at the National Catholic Reporter and makes her home in Iowa with her family and beloved chickens.
The Mystics Would Like a Word
Jesus through Medieval Eyes
Today, Grace chats with Dr. Thomas M. Ward about the challenging Scottish philosopher and theologian, Blessed John Duns Scotus. He is also the very unfair origin of the word “dunce”! This is ironic when thinking about one of the most complex, subtle scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages.
Thomas M. Ward is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He specializes in the history of philosophy and theology of the Middle Ages. Ward is the author of After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher, and has recently translated, with commentary, John Duns Scotus’s Treatise on the First Principle.
Read Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus
Read Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages
Today, Grace chats with Dr. Lynn Cohick on that enigmatic, fascinating, challenging apostle: St. Paul.
Lynn H. Cohick (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Director of the Houston Theological Seminary at Houston Christian University. She was Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and taught at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Nairobi, Kenya. She serves as President of the Institute for Biblical Research. Her books include The Letter to the Ephesians in NICNT (2020); Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through the Fifth Centuries (co-authored with Amy Brown Hughes (2017); Philippians in the Story of God Commentary (2013); Women in the World of the Earliest Christians(2009).
Check out Lynn's work with the Center for Women in Leadership, the Visual Museum, and her podcast, the Alabaster Jar (you can find the episode with Grace!).
Old Books with Grace is baaaaack for a fifth season! Grace welcomes Haley Stewart for the first episode of this season, on women novelists of the Catholic imagination--including Rumer Godden, Sigrid Undset, and Toni Morrison. If you're like Grace, get ready to dramatically expand your fiction TBR list.
Haley Stewart is the Editor of Word on Fire Votive and the host of The Votive Podcast. She is the award-winning author of The Grace of Enough, Jane Austen's Genius Guide to Life, and The Sister Seraphina Mysteries. She edited a collection of essays on Catholic women novelists titled Women of the Catholic Imagination. Haley lives in Florida with her four children and never has enough bookshelves.
Don't forget to acquire a copy of Grace's book, freshly out in paperback: Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ through the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages (Zondervan Reflective).
In this last episode of season four, Grace welcomes Dr. Lanta Davis to talk about spiritual formation in the beholding of the art of the past.
Lanta Davis is Professor of Humanities and Literature for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. She’s written on literature, art, and history for Smithsonian Magazine, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Parabola, andPlough.
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Today Grace welcomes Laura Fabrycky to discuss the fascinating, stirring, challenging life and context of theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as Laura's own transformative experience as a guide at Bonhoeffer's Haus in Berlin.
Laura M. Fabrycky is a writer, poet, and mother of three. She wrote Keys to Bonhoeffer’s Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Laura is also a PhD student in systematic theology at ETF Leuven. Her family’s diplomatic postings include Doha, Qatar; Amman, Jordan; Washington, DC; Berlin Germany, and Brussels, Belgium. They currently live in the Washington, DC, area.
As a forever English major, Grace loves figurative language. So she was delighted to welcome Dr. Joy Clarkson for this episode on the power of metaphor and her recent book, You are a Tree.
Joy Clarkson is the author of Aggressively Happy and host of popular podcast, Speaking with Joy. She is the books editor for Plough Quarterly and a research associate in theology and literature at King’s College London. Joy completed her PhD in theology at the University of St Andrews, where she researched how art can be a resource of hope and consolation. Joy loves daffodils, birdwatching, and a well brewed cup of Yorkshire Gold tea. Learn more at JoyClarkson.com.
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction.
In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and translation information if need be. Then, I will read you the poem. I will offer five minutes of silence on the podcast. If you’d like to take this opportunity to meditate on the poem, here is space for you. Today's poem is The Agony by George Herbert.
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.
Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction.
In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and translation information if need be. Then, I will read you the poem. I will offer five minutes of silence on the podcast. If you’d like to take this opportunity to meditate on the poem, here is space for you. Today's poem is A Hymn to God the Father by John Donne.
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction.
In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and translation information if need be. Then, I will read you the poem. Then, I will offer something a little different for Old Books with Grace. I will offer five minutes of silence on the podcast. If you’d like to take this opportunity to meditate on the poem, here is space for you. Today's poem is a metrical translation of Psalm 51 by Lady Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke.
O Lord, whose grace no limits comprehend;
Sweet Lord, whose mercies stand from measure free;
To me that grace, to me that mercy send,
And wipe, O Lord, my sins from sinful me.
Oh, cleanse, oh, wash, my foul iniquity;
Cleanse still my spots, still wash away my stainings,
Till stains and spots in me leave no remainings.
For I, alas, acknowledging do know
My filthy fault, my faulty filthiness
To my soul’s eye incessantly doth show,
Which done to thee, to thee I do confess,
Just judge, true witness, that for righteousness
Thy doom may pass against my guilt awarded,
Thy evidence for truth may be regarded.
My mother, lo, when I began to be,
Conceiving me, with me did sin conceive:
And as with living heat she cherished me,
Corruption did like cherishing receive.
But, lo, thy love to purest good doth cleave,
And inward truth: which, hardly else discerned,
My truant soul in thy hid school hath learned.
Then as thyself to lepers hast assigned,
With hyssop, Lord, thy hyssop, purge me so:
And that shall cleanse the lepry of my mind.
Make over me thy mercy’s streams to flow,
So shall my whiteness scorn the whitest snow.
To ear and heart send sounds and thoughts of gladness,
That bruised bones may dance away their sadness.
Thy ill-pleased eye from my misdeeds avert:
Cancel the registers my sins contain:
Create in me a pure, clean, spotless heart;
Inspire a sprite where love of right may reign
Ah, cast me not from thee; take not again
Thy breathing grace; again thy comfort send me,
And let the guard of thy free sprite attend me.
So I to them a guiding hand will be,
Whose faulty feet have wandered from thy way,
And turned from sin will make return to thee,
Whom turned from thee sin erst had led astray.
O God, God of my health, oh, do away
My bloody crime: so shall my tongue be raised
To praise thy truth, enough cannot be praised.
Unlock my lips, shut up with sinful shame:
Then shall my mouth, O Lord, thy honor sing.
For bleeding fuel for thy altar’s flame,
To gain thy grace what boots it me to bring?
Burt-off’rings are to thee no pleasant thing.
The sacrifice that God will hold respected,
Is the heart-broken soul, the sprite dejected.
Lastly, O Lord, how so I stand or fall,
Leave not thy loved Zion to embrace;
But with thy favor build up Salem’s wall,
And still in peace, maintain that peaceful place.
Then shalt thou turn a well-accepting face
To sacred fires with offered gifts perfumed:
Till ev’n whole calves on altars be consumed.
Welcome to this year's Old Books with Grace Lent Series.
This year's series is on penitential poetry. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on need, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction. Such poetry is part of an ancient tradition, dating back to the Psalms themselves. Today's poem is "Desire," by Thomas Traherne. You can read along below, or listen as I read:
For giving me Desire,
An Eager Thirst, a burning Ardent fire,
A virgin Infant Flame,
A Love with which into the World I came,
An Inward Hidden Heavenly Love,
Which in my Soul did Work and move,
And ever ever me Enflame,
With restlesse longing Heavenly Avarice,
That could never be satisfied,
That did incessantly a Paradice
Unknown suggest, and som thing undescried
Discern, and bear me to it; be
Thy Name for ever praisd by me.
My Parchd and Witherd Bones
Burnt up did seem: My Soul was full of Groans:
My Thoughts Extensions were:
Like Paces Reaches Steps they did appear:
They somwhat hotly did persue,
Knew that they had not all their due;
Nor ever quiet were:
But made my flesh like Hungry Thirsty Ground,
My Heart a deep profound Abyss,
And evry Joy and Pleasure but a Wound,
So long as I my Blessedness did miss.
O Happiness! A Famine burns,
And all my Life to Anguish turns!
Where are the Silent Streams,
The Living Waters, and the Glorious Beams,
The Sweet Reviving Bowers,
The Sadby Groves, the Sweet and Curious Flowers,
The Springs and Trees, the Heavenly Days,
The Flowry Meads, the Glorious Rayes,
The Gold and Silver Towers?
Alass, all these are poor and Empty Things,
Trees Waters Days and Shining Beams
Fruits, Flowers, Bowers, Shady Groves and Springs,
No Joy will yeeld, no more then Silent Streams.
These are but Dead Material Toys
And cannot make my Heavenly Joys.
O Love! ye Amities,
And Friendships, that appear abov the Skies!
Ye Feasts, and Living Pleasures!
Ye Senses, Honors, and Imperial Treasures!
Ye Bridal Joys! Ye High Delights;
That satisfy all Appetites!
Ye Sweet Affections, and
Ye High Respects! What ever Joys there be
In Triumphs, Whatsoever stand
In Amicable Sweet Societie
Whatever pleasures are at his right Hand
Ye must, before I am Divine,
In full Proprietie be mine.
This Soaring Sacred Thirst,
Ambassador of Bliss, approached first,
Making a Place in me,
That made me apt to Prize, and Taste, and See,
For not the Objects, but the sence
Of Things, doth Bliss to Souls dispence,
And make it Lord like Thee.
Sence, feeling, Taste, Complacency and Sight,
These are the true and real Joys,
The Living Flowing Inward Melting, Bright
And Heavenly Pleasures; all the rest are Toys:
All which are founded in Desire,
As Light in Flame, and Heat in fire.
Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson joins Grace on this episode to discuss her new book, Why Do the Heathen Rage? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress. How does O'Connor's last novel, left unfinished at her death, fit in with the rest of her work? How does one even begin to reconstruct a fragmented manuscript?
Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University. She is the author of several books, most recently Reading for the Love of God. She is a Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum.
Grace welcomes Nadya Williams, professor and author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church. What do the early Christians--and not just the martyrs and great leaders, but the ordinary folk--have to teach us today in their witness, writings, and historical record?
Nadya Williams (PhD, Classics and Program in the Ancient World, Princeton University) is a military historian of the Greco-Roman world and the co-editor of Civilians and Warfare in World History. She is Book Review Editor at Current, where she also edits The Arena blog. She is a regular contributor to the Anxious Bench, and has also written for Plough, Front Porch Republic, Church Life Journal, History Today Magazine, History News Network, and The Conversation.
This year’s Advent series is about the poetry of the Holy Family, the center of Advent and Christmas. Today, we arrive to worship at the manger, brother and sister to the ass and the ox looking lovingly and with great confusion into the unusual bundle resting in the hay. Welcome to the final episode of Advent 2023, on Baby Jesus and love, alongside Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Crashaw.
Welcome to the second episode in the 2023 Advent series of Old Books with Grace. Each Wednesday, this series will look at a member of the Holy Family--Mary, Joseph, and Jesus--and a theological virtue--hope, faith, and love. In this episode, Grace meditates upon Joseph, doubt, and faith alongside three greats: W.H. Auden, George MacDonald, and Madeleine L’Engle.
Welcome to the first episode in the Advent series for 2023. Each Wednesday, this series will look at a member of the Holy Family--Mary, Joseph, and Jesus--and a theological virtue--hope, faith, and love. Today, Grace Hamman meditates upon Mary and the stretching, longing virtue of hope alongside a fourteenth-century Middle English poem full of Marian imagery.
Poems from this episode:
Heyl, leuedy, se-steorre bryht
Marye, mayde mylde and fre
Grace's book: Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages
Today, Burl Horniachek chats with Grace about pre-nineteenth-century Christian poetry from other parts of the world that he collected in a lovely volume from Cascade Books called To Heaven’s Rim. From early Syrian poets like Romanos the Melodist to seventeenth-century Chinese artist Wu Li, the selection of Christian poetry is wide and fascinating!
Burl Horniachek is a Canadian high school teacher, poet, translator and editor. He was born in Saskatoon and grew up near Edmonton. He studied Ancient Near Eastern Studies (Hebrew/Ancient Israel) at the University of Toronto and creative writing at the University of Alberta with Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott. He currently lives near Winnipeg with his wife and two kids.
Calling all Louisa May Alcott fans! In this episode, Grace chats with Americanist scholar LuElla D’Amico about children’s literature and the work of Louisa May Alcott in particular... including hard-hitting questions like "Should Laurie have ended up with Jo?!" (there is disagreement on the answer).
Dr. LuElla D'Amico is an Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the University of the Incarnate Word. Her primary research interests lie in girlhood, girl culture, and religion in early and nineteenth-century American literature, and she has published numerous articles in this vein for academic and popular venues. She also has edited a volume about the history of girls’ series books in the U.S. titled Girls’ Series Fiction and American Popular Culture and is co-editor of Reading Transatlantic Girlhood in the Long Nineteenth Century. Her current book project is titled, Wondrous Reading: Encountering the Catholic Faith in Children’s Literature. She lives on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas with her husband, two children, and rambunctious chihuahua, Leroy.
In this special episode about Grace's new book, Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages, Grace gets interviewed on medieval ideas about Jesus in art and literature by none other than the inestimable Scott Hamman, her wonderful non-medievalist structural engineering husband (or in his words, "Mr. Dr. Grace Hamman").
Preorder Jesus through Medieval Eyes on Amazon, B&N, or your local bookstore.
Grace welcomes Karen Swallow Prior to discuss her brand-new book, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023), and from that book, the power of imagination and our formation through literature and products of culture.
Karen Swallow Prior (Ph.D., State University of New York, Buffalo) is a reader, writer, and professor. She is the author of multiple books including The Evangelical Imagination, On Reading Well, and Fierce Convictions. She and her husband live on a 100-year old homestead in central Virginia with dogs, chickens, and lots of books. She writes on Substack at The Priory.
Grace chats with Marianne Wright on the novels and sermons of the great Victorian writer and Presbyterian minister, George MacDonald. Why did this somewhat obscure (for us today, at least) novelist inspired some of the most well-beloved writers of the twentieth century, like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton?
Marianne Wright, a member of the Bruderhof, lives in southeastern New York with her husband and five children. She has edited two books for Plough, Anni and The Gospel in George MacDonald. She writes at seasonsofcommunityliving.substack.com.
In this first episode of season four, Grace chats with Reverend Elizabeth Felicetti, author of Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women Without Children, on the dignity and humanity of women without children and their gift to the church.
The Rev. Elizabeth Felicetti is the rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia and the author of the new book Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women Without Children. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Christian Century and numerous other places. She holds a Master of Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary and an MFA in Writing from Spalding University.
To join the launch team for Grace's new book, Jesus through Medieval Eyes, click here: https://mailchi.mp/80cb6173698f/jtmelaunchteam
In the last episode of season three, Grace talks with Dr. Michael Lamb on the great African bishop and theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo, and the virtue of hope.
Michael Lamb is the F. M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, Executive Director of the Program for Leadership and Character, and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Wake Forest University. He is also a Research Fellow with the Oxford Character Project. He holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University, a B.A. in political science from Rhodes College, and a second B.A. in philosophy and theology from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. An award-winning teacher, his research and teaching focus on leadership, character, and the role of virtues in public life. He is the author of A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought (2022), which offers a bold new interpretation of Augustine’s virtue of hope and its relevance for politics. His work has been published in leading academic journals across numerous disciplines.
With the close of this season, if you'd like to support this podcast, please leave a review, share with a friend, or go to https://www.buymeacoffee.com/gracehamman to help keep OBWG ad-free and with a working microphone and website! Thank you for listening this season!
It's a magical confluence of Mother's Day week, Grace's actual birthday, and the 650th anniversary of Julian's experience with God, so Grace had to mark it in a special way herself. Yes, that's right, Grace is her own guest this week, and she even answers her own get-to-know you literary questions. The main star of the show, however, is the wondrous fourteenth-century contemplative writer, Julian of Norwich, and her beautiful vision of Christ as our Mother.
Preorder Jesus Through Medieval Eyes:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Thriftbooks
IndieBound
Normally, obviously, Grace talks about old books. But every now and then, OBWG presents an episode on old art. Because encountering old art is just as much about reading, interpretation, and attention as reading old books is! Today, Grace is delighted to welcome Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt as a guest.
Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis) is an associate professor of art and art history at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia and author of Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art. As a biracial Japanese-white woman, she has navigated the joys and tensions of a hybrid identity. Dr. Weichbrodt has published on topics ranging from contemporary Black photographers to the patronage of Hawaiian landscape paintings to documentary photographs of Japanese Americans during World War II. She also enjoys writing for general audiences on the intersection of art history, politics, and pop culture.
In this episode, Grace chats with Dr. Scott Newstok on William Shakespeare (whose birthday is this week!) and the principles of a renaissance education.
Scott Newstok is Professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College. A parent and an award-winning teacher, he is the author of How to Think Like Shakespeare, as well as Quoting Death in Early Modern England, and the editor of several other books, including a forthcoming edition of Michel de Montaigne’s educational writings.
This year’s Old Books with Grace Lent series, called “A Book that Changed Me,” offers four different conversations with guests on a book of their choice that changed them, made them think deeply about transformation, brought them closer to truth. Books can be mirrors—they can help us to consider ourselves in new light. Books invite us into conversation and reflection we would not have known to participate in without their guidance. Each of the guests in this series has chosen a book that invited them into reflection, remembrance, and self-knowledge. Each conversation is quite different—some more personal, others less—and the books span from the Middle Ages to the 1960s. The last guest of the series is Claude Atcho, who has chosen to talk about the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by the witty, wonderful Oscar Wilde.
Claude Atcho resides in Charlottesville, VA where he lives with his family, serves as a pastor of Church of the Resurrection, and enjoys coaching his kids in basketball and soccer. In addition to his preaching and pastoral work, Claude speaks and writes about literature, film, music, and culture from a theological perspective. His writing has been featured at The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Think Christian, and Christ and Pop Culture. His writing often lives at the intersection of theology, culture, and African American experience. He is the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just.
Welcome to the third episode of the Lent series on Old Books with Grace, exploring literature, self-knowledge, and transformation. In today’s A Book that Changed Me, Grace chats with Kaitlyn Schiess about Madeleine L’Engle’s marvelous young adult novel, A Wrinkle in Time.
Kaitlyn Schiess is the author of The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture has been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here (Brazos, 2023) and The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor (IVP, 2020). Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, The New York Times, Christ and Pop Culture, RELEVANT, and Sojourner. She has a ThM in systematic theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and is currently a doctoral student in political theology at Duke Divinity School.
Welcome to the first offering in this year's Old Books with Grace Lent series. “A Book that Changed Me” offers four different conversations with guests on a book of their choice that changed them, made them think deeply about transformation, brought them closer to truth. Today, Jason Baxter is the special guest, and Dante's Inferno is the special book.
Jason Baxter is a college professor, speaker, and author of five books, including A Beginner's Guide to Dante's Comedyand, most recently, The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis.He now lives in South Bend, where he is teaching great books at Notre Dame.
Welcome to the first offering in this year's Old Books with Grace Lent series. “A Book that Changed Me” offers four different conversations with guests on a book of their choice that changed them, made them think deeply about transformation, brought them closer to truth. Today, Joy Clarkson is the special guest, and George Eliot's Silas Marneris the special book.
Dr. Joy Clarkson is the author of Aggressively Happy: A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life, and a research associate in theology and literature at King’s College, London. She received her doctorate in theology from St Andrews University, where she researched the ways we can use art to prepare ourselves for a good death. She hosts a podcast, Speaking with Joy, and is the Books & Culture editor at Plough Quarterly.
Have you heard of the midcentury fiction writer, Elizabeth Goudge, author of classics like The Little White Horse or The Scent of Water? Julie Witmer, founder of the Elizabeth Goudge Book Club, comes on Old Books with Grace to talk about Goudge's life and writings, from her talent for writing children, to her love for her characters, to her mischaracterization as a romance writer!
Grace welcomes Dr. Anthony Domestico, author of Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period and chair of the literature department at Purchase SUNY, to Old Books with Grace today to chat about modernist poetry including my favorite twentieth-century poet, T.S. Eliot.
Warning: this episode is slightly longer than usual episodes because Grace lost track of time in her excitement about Eliot!
Today, Grace concludes the Advent series with some very, very old poetry. Poetry, in fact, that you’re already familiar with. You likely sing a form of it, or listen to it each year. Grace dives into Old English and Middle English translations of the Great O Antiphons, better known to us today as the foundation of the wonderful Advent hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Let’s look for the Dayspring, the Dawn, the Sun of Justice on this darkest day of the year.
Welcome back to this year's Advent series on Old Books with Grace. This episode meditates on Christina Rossetti's A Christmas Carol, and William Langland's Piers Plowman.An interesting duo, separated by 500 years--and you'll find out why Grace pairs them in a contemplation on nature imagery and incarnational love.
In this second installment of the Advent series on poetry, Grace meditates on George Herbert's marvelous poem, "The Bag." Listen to Herbert command despair away as Christ becomes incarnate and carries our prayers in his very body.
In the first episode of the Advent 2022 series exploring Advent & Christmas poetry from the past, Dr. Grace Hamman meditates on T.S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi and our status as pilgrims in the world.
Read The Journey of the Magi.
Grace welcomes Robert Elmer, the editor of Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans and Fount of Heaven: Prayers of the Early Church, the first two books in the Prayers of the Church series from Lexham Press. Grace, a medievalist slightly suspicious of Puritanism, learns about the beauty of these prayers from the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries and about Robert's own processes of finding and selecting these historical and powerful prayers.
Beauty is just as significant to our spiritual and moral lives as truth and goodness. Sarah Clarkson has often found this beauty in literature. Grace welcomes Sarah, author of This Beautiful Truth: How God's Goodness Breaks Into Our Darkness, to discuss the intersections between story, beauty, and suffering. Along the way, some very recognizable names come up as sources of profound beauty in literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, L.M. Montgomery, George Eliot, and more...
Grace welcomes Gina Dalfonzo, editor of The Gospel in Dickens (Plough Publishing House) and founder and editor of Dickensblog, to chat all things Charles Dickens. What is the appeal of this wordy writer (whom, as Gina reminds us, was NOT paid by the word)? Join Gina and Grace for a fun conversation discussing why we love and return to Charles Dickens over and over despite his foibles and flaws.
Dr. Eleanor Parker joins Grace to discuss the beauty of Old English and her delightful new book on the Anglo-Saxon calendar year, Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year.
Eleanor Parker is Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford. She is the author of Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England (2018), Conquered: The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England (2022), and Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year (2022). She has also written for History Today and is the creator of the Clerk of Oxford blog.
On the season premiere of Old Books With Grace, Grace welcomes Dr. Zena Hitz, author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life, tutor at St. John's College, and founder of the Catherine Project. Why is it important to love learning for its own sake and not instrumentalize it? How can we cultivate an intellectual life? What does Augustine of Hippo mean by curiositas? Hear Grace and Dr. Hitz's thoughts on these questions and more...
In this last episode of the season, Grace welcomes Dr. Fritz Bauerschmidt to chat about reading difficult authors of the past, like Thomas Aquinas, the love of God as the central feature of Christianity, and the flexibility and strength of tradition.
Frederick Christian (Fritz) Bauerschmidt is Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland, specializing in medieval and modern Catholic theology, and a deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, assigned to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. He is the author of several books, most recently The Love That is God: An Invitation to Christian Faith (Eerdmans 2020), The Essential Summa Theologiae: A Reader and Commentary (Baker Academic 2021), and How Beautiful the World Could Be: Christian Reflections on the Everyday (Eerdmans 2022).
Grace welcomes Dr. Chris Armstrong to the podcast to talk about his book, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians, and think through medieval Christian humanism's influence on C.S. Lewis, and how some of these medieval ideas might help think more creatively and faithfully about community, faith, and history today.
Dr. Chris R Armstrong is an educator, academic entrepreneur, author, editor, and church historian (Duke Ph.D., Gordon-Conwell M.A.). He currently serves as Program Fellow in Faith, Work, and Economics for the Kern Family Foundation (WI). He taught from 2004 to 2013 at Bethel Seminary (MN). From 2014 to 2018 he served as faculty member and founding director of the Opus faith & vocation initiative at Wheaton College (IL). His Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C S Lewis (Brazos, 2016) retrieves the Christian humanism of the Middle Ages. Chris serves as Senior Editor of Christian History magazine (www.christianhistorymagazine.org) and blogs at gratefultothedead.com. He enjoys playing tabletop games with friends, listening to jazz, and improving his jazz piano skills.
This week, Grace welcomes Kaitlyn Facista, creator of the online community Tea with Tolkien. Naturally, they drink tea and talk Tolkien! Topics of discussion include: the upcoming Amazon series (and Kaitlyn's sneak peek of it in London!), how to throw a Hobbit party, why the Silmarillion matters, and the ever controversial Tom Bombadil, among other things.
Kaitlyn Facista is a Catholic convert, wife, mother to four babies at home + two in heaven, and hobbit at heart. She lives with her family in the Midwest. Hobbies include thinking about Tolkien (obviously), making friends on twitter, and spending time with Our Lord in her parish Adoration chapel. She is the author of To Middle-Earth and Back Again and Thirty Days in the Shire and contributor to Catholic Hipster: The Next Level: How Some Awesomely Obscure Stuff Helps Us Live Our Faith with Passion. She has also written for The Grotto Network and The Catholic Woman.
Beth Allison Barr, author of Making Biblical Womanhood, is here and we are talking about history and how it shapes us, resisting the urge to impose our norms and ideas back onto the past, about medieval women, gender-bending medieval saints, good places to start reading medieval texts, and more fascinating topics...
Larissa Tracy's Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection of Middle English Saints Lives
Beth Allison Barr (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is James Vardaman Professor of History at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where she specializes in medieval history, women's history, and church history. She recently served as president of the Conference on Faith and History (2018-2021) and is an active supporter of Christians for Biblical Equality. Barr is a regular contributor to The Anxious Bench, the popular Patheos website on religious history, and has written for Christianity Today, the Washington Post, Religion News Service, The Dallas Morning News, Sojourners, and Baptist News Global. Her work has been featured by NPR and The New Yorker. She is also a Baptist pastor's wife and the mom of two great kids.
Welcome to the last season of the Seven Capital Vices and their Remedies Lent Series! It's time to discuss lust and chastity. Rather than think through actions, Grace gets to the bottom of lust: depersonalization of others for the sake of pleasure. Chastity, in contrast, is like a blend of fidelity and the gift of seeing all people as full, precious image-bearers, never to be reducible to bodily pleasure or for that matter, just bodies.
In this episode, penultimate in the Lenten Vices & Virtues series, Grace probes the vice of gluttony and the virtue of abstinence, which includes restraint and fasting. And what's more Lenten than to talk about fasting? And as is usual for the series: we talk about gluttony and abstinence in highly simplistic ways. Gluttony has little to do with pounds on the scale, and take courage: you're not a glutton for merely enjoying tasty food. Listen to find out more.
Today I talk avarice and generosity. Let’s begin with something really important that you probably would not know from looking at the lives of most Christians: scripture contains more warnings about money than about sex. Avarice, or covetise, as medieval English authors often called it, is the umbrella term for a whole host of disordered attitudes about money and acquisition. Let's explore further into something that likely afflicts each and every one of us...
Sloth is probably not what you think it is. It really has almost nothing to do with potato chips and couches and reality television. Sloth instead is a spiritual vice afflicting our willingness to do hard things in the service of love. The gift of strength and the virtues of constancy and perseverance are opposed to it. Listen in and learn about the most misunderstood of the vices.
Anger is tricky. It can be good or bad, depending on its provocation and its expression. Because of that complexity, it does not have one clear remedy in the medieval tradition. So we talk patience, meekness, "evenhead," even the gift of knowledge. Alongside medieval writers, Grace explores the balance of feeling feelings and learning righteous anger, and rejecting hatred and wrath.
Envy is the only vice with no pleasure. All the others have a wickedly delicious flavor initially, but envy is embarrassing, and in it, we despise others and we despise ourselves. Grace unpacks this unsavory vice and its remedy, the answer to its deepest lack, love.
In the first real episode of the Lent Seven Capital Vices series, meet the Queen of the Vices, Pride, and the foundation of the virtues, Humility. Hear from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Jane Austen, moral philosophers and theologians of today, and several medieval manuals on pride and humility, on self-deception and self-knowledge, presumption and arrogance, childlikeness and good pride, and more...
In this introductory episode to the 2022 Lent series, Grace dives into the history and meaning of the Seven Capital Vices, their remedies, and their timeliness for Lent. What’s this ancient way of thinking about human behavior worth to us today, when we have so much new and wonderful information on human behavior in general? What even is a vice or a virtue, strictly speaking?! Let's find out.
Grace welcomes Sophfronia Scott, author of The Seeker and the Monk, and director of the MFA creative writing program at Alma College. Sophfronia and Grace discuss learning to have meaningful dialogue with books as you read, even when they were written by long-dead writers, and Sophfronia shares her wisdom on reading Thomas Merton and on the practice of reading contemplatively.
This week, Grace welcomes Jessica Hooten Wilson to Old Books With Grace, to chat about her new book, The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints, and the power of literature to reveal the subtleties of the good life. Sometimes holiness can be alarming, bizarre, and fascinating... and novels and their novelists, like Flannery O'Connor, C.S. Lewis, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, can help us to conceptualize the holy life in all its difficulty and otherworldliness.
Grace welcomes Kayla Craig, author of To Light Their Way, a collection of prayers and liturgies for parents, and the creator of the wonderfully helpful @liturgiesforparents instagram account. We talk prayer books, the definition of liturgy, how written prayers help us find words, and the wonderful, ecumenical prayer sources and books that Kayla has enjoyed and recommends.
Grace welcomes Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, professor and author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. We talk about some of my favorite questions: How can virtue be learned and practiced through stories? How do narratives of the past change us? Why is fiction important in learning to live and love well?
A bit on the history and meanings behind the Christmas song, "O Come All Ye Faithful." How might we follow the invitation in the chorus, "O come let us adore him"? Dr. Grace Hamman thinks through that with the aid of medieval monk and theologian Bernard of Clairvaux.
Grace meditates on the robustly theological hymn by Charles Wesley, music by Felix Mendelssohn, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." What do we make of the gift of weakness in God laying his glory by? What do we make of the gift of our own weakness?
In this episode, we encounter the Coventry Carol, which is the opposite of a holly, jolly Christmas song. It comes from medieval mystery plays, and is a lullaby sung by the mothers of the baby boys about to be killed by King Herod as the Holy Family flees to Egypt. Historically, Advent was not just a time of waiting and reflection—it was also a fasting time for repentance and mourning before the merrymaking feast of Christmas. Listen to learn more and meditate on the Coventry Carol.
Learn about the ancient history of the song, "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and meditate on its beauty and meaning just in time for Advent with Dr. Grace Hamman.
Victoria Emily Jones of Art & Theology discusses some wonderful art depicting the Annunciation, from poetry to visual art, from medieval to modern day, with Grace. Victoria and Grace unpack the multilayered meaning of these beautiful works in their exploration of Mary's encounter with the Angel Gabriel, as we prepare our hearts for Advent and receiving God alongside Mary. You can see all the art from this episode on social media or on oldbookswithgrace.com, or on YouTube.
Shannon Evans, author of Rewilding Motherhood, joins Grace to talk about the powerful and poignant image of Jesus as our Mother. How does this ancient metaphor affect our lives today? Shannon and Grace talk Julian of Norwich, motherhood, and the theology of this idea.
At last, Gawain comes to the mysterious, terrifying Green Chapel. What happens next? Find out, meditate on the results, and rejoice over the wonderful poetry of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, with Grace.
There are more traps at Bertilak's castle than you think, Gawain... and loads of stylish hunting poetry! Welcome to part III of the series on the incredible medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight!
Fitt II of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Wander through the icy woods with Gawain as he searches for the Green Chapel, to meet his fate with the Green Knight. Grace explores the medieval context of this fantastic poem and thinks with the poet on what it means to be human.
Ever since the siege ceased at Troy, betrayal and treachery has ruled the forebears of Sir Gawain... so we are plunged into the fantastical fourteenth-century masterpiece, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Let's meet Arthur, Guinevere, a host of secondary characters, our hero Sir Gawain... and a gigantic knight, green from head to toe... Grace considers this strange beginning, the sins of our forebears, the wonderful poetry itself, and the spooky delight of the Green Knight.
Want to think about a spooky, wonderful medieval poem together for October? This episode kicks off a series on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem about magic, humanity, creatureliness, and failure written in the fourteenth century by an anonymous poet. It's one of my favorites. You don't have to read the poem to enjoy this series--let's go meet a green knight!
Grace Hamman welcomes podcaster, speaker, and fellow mom writer Haley Stewart of Carrots for Michaelmas and Fountains of Carrots. Haley and Grace chat Jane Austen, Madeleine L'Engle, faith, and the challenging vocations of being writers and mothers (and which Jane Austen adaptations they think are the best and the worst).
Dr. Grace Hamman and her special guest this week, her husband Scott, discuss love, communication, resurrection, learning how to learn, and gush over Austen's profundity in depicting relationships in Persuasion. They also freeze in slight horror and pause the recording awkwardly when their four-year old son emerges to pee at 10:30 at night while they record. Welcome to the grand finale of the Summer Old Book Club!
Welcome to the penultimate week of the Summer Old Book Club! Grace invites her friend Goodwyn Bell to chat about the continuing drama with Mr. Elliot, if where you grew up affects how you read Jane Austen, Anne's charming, blush-filled interactions with Captain Wentworth, the importance of Bath, the confusing lies of Mrs. Smith, what Jane Austen thinks of friendship, and so much more...
Welcome to Week 6 of the Summer Old Book Club and perhaps the first ever podcast episode featuring a grandmother and her granddaughter discussing Persuasion in great detail! Join Dr. Grace Hamman and her 86 year-old Grama, Carol Irwin, as they think through Mr. Elliot, Mrs. Smith, the intricacies of rank and society in Bath, what a "good" pride entails, and so much more...
Grace welcomes Dr. Jessica Hines to the fifth week of the Summer Old Book Club discussing Jane Austen's Persuasion. Grace and Jessica talk about the mysterious Mr. Elliot, the perplexities of Lady Russell (do we like her or not??), Anne's move to Bath, and bring in some of their great loves: medieval things like Thomas Aquinas and virtue ethics!
Dr. Grace Hamman and her special guest and best friend since kindergarten, Chelsea Swanson, lose track of time as they endlessly dissect three chapters of Persuasion that perhaps have the most incredible emotional and interpersonal subtext of all chapters but the end. Plus, discussion of the most stupid Jane Austen injury: Louisa Musgrove jumps off the Cobb!
Welcome to week three of reading Jane Austen's Persuasion with the Summer Old Book Club! Today, Grace chats with her old friend Marisa Tualla, a math curriculum specialist, about ch. 7-9 of vol. I. They talk Jane Austen on gender, loneliness, the fascinating and unusual presence of children in this section, among many other things...
It's week two of the Summer Old Book Club! Read alongside Grace and her brother, John Irwin, as they discuss chapters 4-6 of volume I of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Grace and John talk about meeting Captain Wentworth (in memory) for the first time, Jane Austen's meanest and most phallic joke, Regency-era ideas about class, the wretched Mary Musgrove, and so much more...
Welcome to the Summer Old Book Club with Jane Austen's Persuasion! Grace and Dr. Jessica Ward, an English professor at Mercy College in NYC and one of Grace's grad school buddies, talk about our introduction to the characters, Austen's cutting humor, personality types, and more.
We all know who Jane Austen is. But a little more context and background can help us to better understand her writing and her world, before we enter into her final novel, Persuasion. Join the Summer Old Book Club!
"There is in God, some say, / A deep but dazzling darkness..." What does Vaughan's famous line mean? Let's think about this beautiful poem and its Welsh 17th-century author together.
Feeling broken, distended, fragmented? Me too. This episode meditates upon spiritual and bodily wholeness, via the ancient origins of the word "whole" and supplemented by Augustine of Hippo.
We, too, are representations of Jesus, images of God, which medieval folks know well. This episode thinks about the mystery cycles of late medieval England, Lollard heretics, and a non-medieval poem (gasp!) to help us think about the many faces of Jesus.
In honor of Good Friday, this episode considers medieval portrayals of Christ on the cross. They paid deep attention to Jesus's bodily suffering in order to recognize his divine love. Let's learn from sermons, anonymous poets, Herrad of Landsberg, Fra Angelico, and Mathias Grunewald.
How do we adapt Jesus to our agendas? How do we make him safe for us? This episode in the Lent series considers how Nicholas Love, a monk in the fifteenth-century, created a "good medieval Christian" Jesus.
In this episode in the Lent series, "The Many Faces of Jesus," we meditate on Jesus as Our Mother. Join medieval monks and anchorites to think through the beauty of this image.
If you’re a Protestant, or even if you’re a particular kind of Roman Catholic, the word scholasticism may cause you to grimace. But this episode in the Lent Series, "The Many Faces of Jesus" is going to think through the methods of scholasticism in talking about Jesus... and hopefully convince you that there's a lot of value there today for us in modernity.
Done is a battle on the dragon black! / Our champion Christ has confounded his force!
So begins a crackling, exciting poem by William Dunbar that thinks through the Resurrection with Jesus as a knight battling death and evil. We will meditate on this image together, especially through William Langland's vision of Jesus as a knight in the fantastic fourteenth-century poem, Piers Plowman.
This episode explores the ancient tradition of portraying Jesus as our intimate lover. There's some fascinating writers and art here: the fifteenth-century writer Margery Kempe, Pope Gregory the Great, medieval lyric poetry, and some... interesting... drawings of Jesus's side wound. What can we learn from this image today?
The second most ubiquitous representation of Jesus in the Middle Ages, after the Crucifixion, was Jesus seated in judgment on Doomsday. This version of Jesus is certainly less popular today! Grace considers the ramifications of this image for us through its appearance in Old English poetry and in the Doom paintings on the inside of all English medieval churches.
We have finally reached the last episode in the series on Julian of Norwich's fourteenth-century masterpiece, Revelations of Divine Love! Here, Grace discusses the stunningly beautiful ending and Julian's idea of living as penance.
Julian of Norwich, medieval contemplative writer, writes about Jesus as our Mother. We will think together about how that comparison helps us to understand the nature of Christ. This section is Grace's favorite part of Julian of Norwich's writings! This is the penultimate episode of an eight-week series on the fourteenth-century anchorite, Julian of Norwich, and her insightful, profound work on the character of God and ourselves.
A sneak peek and some background info into the new Lent Series, "The Many Faces of Jesus"!
Welcome to a particularly challenging week of reading Julian together! Grace tackles Julian of Norwich's difficult showing of the Lord and Servant, part of her visions that she had meditated on for over twenty years. In this showing, Julian considers the Fall, sin, God's love, the Incarnation, time... are those enough things to consider? This episode is the sixth of an eight-episode series on this amazing medieval contemplative writer.
This week, Grace discusses chapters 41-50 of Julian of Norwich’s incredible contemplative work, often entitled “Revelations of Divine Love.” This is the fifth episode of an eight-episode series on this 14th century mystical writer and thinker. Some hot topics for this week: prayer and God's character. Enjoy!
Grace reads chapters 27-40 of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love. These chapters include Julian's famous quote, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." But surprise! We often cut the first part of that quote out, which is about sin. In fact, this whole section of Julian's writing raises a lot of interesting questions about that tricky topic, which we explore together.
This is the third of eight episodes meditating on Julian of Norwich's contemplative, theological masterpiece, often entitled Revelations of Divine Love or The Showings. Grace thinks through the tricky topic of Julian's interest in suffering and God's care for us.
This is the second of eight episodes meditating on Julian of Norwich's contemplative, theological masterpiece, often entitled Revelations of Divine Love or The Showings. In this episode, Grace thinks through the common themes and important moments in chapters 10-14. Check out the blog at oldbookwithgrace.com if you wish to see the text version.
Merry Christmas from Old Books With Grace! In this episode, I think about the great poet and thinker T.S. Eliot's midcentury poem, "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees," and the darkness and light of this season. Check out the text on oldbookswithgrace.com.
We may not be literal medieval anchorites or undergoing visionary experiences, but Julian of Norwich, walled into her church and interpreting often complex visions, speaks to us today in surprisingly relevant and beautiful ways about who we are and who God is. This is the first of eight episodes meditating on Julian of Norwich’s contemplative, theological masterpiece, often entitled Revelations of Divine Love or The Showings. This episode considers the common threads that draw together the different visions of chapters 1-9. Check out the blog at oldbookswithgrace.com if you want to read the text of the podcast or find details on the translation.
I'm Dr. Grace Hamman and I want to explore the intersections of literature and theology with you. Old books speak to us and allow us to break out of our hidden assumptions and biases about the way the world works. Today, I'm introducing us to the work of Julian of Norwich, the brilliant fourteenth-century contemplative writer, and her background. Check out the accompanying blog at oldbookswithgrace.com