Old Books with Grace

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 Wher...

Welcome to the second 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, speake...

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 Marner is the special book.  Dr. Joy Clarkson is the author o...

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, t...

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 sel...

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 liter...

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 An...

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 Gra...

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 theolog...

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 churc...

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,...

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...

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...

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 m...