For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

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.

Helpful Links and Resources

Lament for a Son, by Nicholas Wolterstorff https://www.eerdmans.com/9781467419239/lament-for-a-son/

Living with Grief, by Nicholas Wolterstorff https://wipfandstock.com/9798385201006/living-with-grief/

Calvin Prison Initiative https://calvin.edu/prison-initiative

Show Notes

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"

#NicholasWolterstorff #LamentForASon #LivingWithGrief #Grief #Lament #Theodicy #FaithAndGrief #MiroslavVolf #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #YaleFaithAndCulture

Production Notes

This podcast featured Nicholas Wolterstorff with Miroslav Volf

Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa

Hosted by Evan Rosa

Production Assistance by Noah Senthil

A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about

Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

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.

Helpful Links and Resources

This Life: An Experiment (App Store) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/this-life-an-experiment/id6746807306

Alcoholics Anonymous (the "Big Book"), by Bill Wilson: https://www.aa.org/the-big-book

The Twelve Traditions of AA (Tradition Twelve, on anonymity): https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-traditions

"On Being a Good Neighbor," Martin Luther King Jr.: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/draft-chapter-iii-being-good-neighbor

Show Notes

Anonymous guest, identity withheld

"Justin Smith"—not his real name

The neighbor can be anonymous

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

#Anonymity #SpiritualGrowth #AlcoholicsAnonymous #BillWilson #Loneliness #DigitalWellbeing #Neighbor #EmotionalHealth #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld #Honesty

Production Notes

This podcast featured Justin Smith (Pseudonym)

Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa

Hosted by Evan Rosa

Production Assistance by Noah Senthil

A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about

Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

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 markvernon.com, his Substack A Golden String (markvernon942268.substack.com), and @platospodcasts on X.

———

Helpful Links and Resources

Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, by Mark Vernon: https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination

A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness, by Mark Vernon: https://www.markvernon.com/books/a-secret-history-of-christianity-book

Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, by Mark Vernon: https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake (The William Blake Archive): https://www.blakearchive.org/work/mhh

Mark Vernon's website: https://www.markvernon.com

A Golden String (Substack): https://markvernon942268.substack.com

———

Show Notes

Underappreciated, often typecast visionary

1827—approaching the 200th anniversary of Blake's death approaching

Tumultuous age: Seven Years' War, American and French Revolutions, Napoleonic Wars

London quadruples in size; Hindu, Islamic, and global ideas arrive

"I think he's the most important post reformation Christian, mystic"

Polymath—poet, painter, philosopher, didact

Counter-Enlightenment response to rationalism

Isaac Newton's influence "can't be overstated"

One law binds falling apple and orbiting moon

Locke, Bentham, utilitarianism, calculation as the moral measure

"withdrawing the inner life of human beings"—the objective as gold standard

Fragmentation: dividing humanity from itself, nature, the gods

Reading Blake now offers "the beginnings of an antidote too"

Feeling and imagination complement reason; imagination as the shape of energy

Marvel superheroes analogy—one superpower detached goes wrong

Bacon's dream: tools to restore Eden, and its tragedy

Magnet's two poles—the marriage of heaven and hell

Angels grow complacent, devils too dastardly; tension creates beauty and exuberance

Cleansing the doors of perception; a world in a grain of sand

"align, align with the goods in the melee"

Division never purifies society—"it just leads to a mess"

"embrace distinction difference as much as similarity and sharing"

Heaven and hell as states of mind; participative epistemology

Education that teaches students to divide themselves from learning

Imagination as abundance, not scarcity

Desire rightly ordered—"less than all cannot satisfy man"

Blake's Christ acts from impulse, not rule

Fountains of living water; the closing lines of Jerusalem

———

#WilliamBlake #MarkVernon #ForTheLifeoftheWorld #Imagination #MarriageOfHeavenAndHell #CounterEnlightenment #ChristianMysticism #Theology #Poetry #DoorsOfPerception

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 tishharrisonwarren.com, Instagram @tishharrisonwarren, and X @Tish_H_Warren.

Helpful Links and Resources

What Grows in Weary Lands (newest book): https://tishharrisonwarren.com/whatgrowsinwearylands

Liturgy of the Ordinary (most popular book): https://tishharrisonwarren.com/liturgy-of-the-ordinary

Curt Thompson, referenced on the brain and community: https://curtthompsonmd.com/books/

Show Notes

Writing from the middle of the process

Weariness vs. burnout—bigger than the occupational

"It felt like the call had dropped, like the line had gone dead."

Two years at The New York Times—top of a career, bone-tired

Spiritually tinged exhaustion, distinct from depression

Comprehensive difficulty—work, marriage, church, politics, drama

Post-COVID burnout talk; why the church rarely names this

Craving emotional highs in contemporary Christian faith

We lack stories of long, steady faith

"I do not think vitamin D will solve what I'm talking about."

Discovering the Desert Fathers and Mothers

Acedia, the noonday demon—sloth, boredom, irritation, doubt

Flame out, numb out, or go deep

The cell as guiding metaphor—a rhythm of prayer and work

"Stay in your cell"—counsel of St. Moses and Arsenius

Resisting the lie that escape elsewhere brings contentment

"The cell is actually this transformative place."

Curt Thompson: the brain isn't made to do hard things alone

A desert mother's maternal metaphor—the world as a womb

"What is happening right now matters"—hope without escapism

Grace: "we're not having to hold our life together... with will power and duct tape."

"Part of our weariness is it is too noisy. The world is too noisy."

"God doesn't need me to be impressive or achieving."

Trusting the slow work of God

#TishHarrisonWarren #WhatGrowsInWearyLands #ChristianResilience #Burnout #DesertFathers #SpiritualFormation #Weariness #Acedia #Hope #ForTheLifeOfTheWorld

Production Notes

This podcast featured Tish Harrison Warren

Interview by Macie Bridge

Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa

Hosted by Evan Rosa

Production Assistance by Noah Senthil

A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about

Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

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 religiononthemind.com [VERIFY]

About Kristen Tideman

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]

Helpful Links and Resources

Religion on the Mind https://www.religiononthemind.com/

Religion on the Mind https://religiononthemind.substack.com/

Religion on the Mind https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/religion-on-the-mind/id1448000113

Tidy Studios https://www.tidystudios.com/

Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl https://www.beacon.org/Mans-Search-for-Meaning-P602.aspx

Dan Koch on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/dankoch

Show Notes

Why tackle anxiety now—geopolitical overwhelm, media firehose, personal crisis converging

Kristen's competing anxieties: new motherhood, MS diagnosis, ongoing faith change

Dan's path into existential psychology through clients navigating religious change

Existential psychology's post-WWII roots—Viktor Frankl, concentration camps, the search for meaning

The atomic bomb as psychological turning point—from imagining one's own death to imagining collective annihilation

"Our brains are big enough that unlike deer, plants, and coconuts, we can think about the future. We can imagine our own death."

Healthy vs. unhealthy anxiety—the central distinction in existential thought

Healthy anxiety broadens your world; unhealthy anxiety becomes self-referential spiral

The inner critic mistaken for motivation—when unhealthy anxiety masquerades as drive

"I was literally in the ER. I'm holding my three-month-old baby. I'm like, my life just started—and I don't even know what this means."

Philosophy becoming flesh—studying mortality vs. receiving a diagnosis

"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."

Ontological anxiety vs. pathological anxiety—Kierkegaard's "dizziness of freedom"

Avoidance vs. acceptance as the fundamental hinge in existential psychology

The body carries what the mind tries to bypass—emotions as literal electricity in the nervous system

Thrownness—Heidegger's concept of being tossed into unchosen circumstances

Jaspers' shipwreck, Sartre's blind man on a raft, Kierkegaard's captain in a storm

Boundary situations—MS, new parenthood, AI, sociopolitical chaos, loss of shared reality

Kristen on maturity: "Anything that comes at us, we can use as an excuse to weaken our resolve or to strengthen it."

"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."

"Is my world getting smaller, or is my world getting bigger?"

Neurotic anxiety spins us inward; accepting limits pushes us toward collaboration and community

Emmy van Deurzen and Irvin Yalom—real problems require more than one person

Loving your neighbor as a practical consequence of accepting your own limits

#ExistentialPsychology #Anxiety #MentalHealth #FaithDeconstruction #HumanFlourishing #Kierkegaard #ViktorFrankl #ChronicIllness #MSAwareness #ForTheLifeOfTheWorl

Production Notes

This podcast featured Kristen Tideman and Dan Koch

Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa

Hosted by Evan Rosa

Production Assistance by Noah Senthil

A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about

Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give