The Habit

Singer-songwriter Ellie Holcomb has just released a new solo album called Canyon —which, she says, is about a deeper sorrow, a higher hope, and the brokenness that is integral to our humanity. Hopefully she will come back in a later episode to talk about that project. But in this episode we’re going to talk about the times she and her husband Drew found themselves performing in communi...

Andrew Osenga is a singer-songwriter, an artist & repertoire director, and the host of the podcast The Pivot: Stories of People Who Have Made a Change . In this installment of Sad Stories Told for Laughs, Andrew talks about performing to empty seats, losing a toe, and playing a music festival organized by a money launderer. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omny...

The “Sad Stories Told for Laughs” series continues with Maryrose Wood, author of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place  and Alice's Farm: A Rabbit's Tale . Before Maryrose Wood was a novelist, she was an actor. In this episode, she tells the story of her Broadway debut, in one of the most spectacular flops in Broadway history. It is a story of youthful naïveté, pub...

"Sad Stories Told for Laughs" is a special summer series of episodes in which writers speak of their public humiliations for your edification and entertainment. In this episode, memoirist Harrison Scott Key, author of The World's Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? tells about the strange places he's done readings and the dream that wanted to eat him. Support the show: https://ther...

Songs from the Silent Passage  explores the literary career of Walt Wangerin, Jr. through a collection of essays by Wangerin's friends and colleagues—including Eugene Peterson, Luci Shaw, Philip Yancey, and John Wilson—edited into its final form by Matthew Dickerson. In this episode, Matthew and Jonathan discuss the relationship between pain and beauty in storytelling and the idea...

Sho Baraka is a hip-hop artist, an activist, a co-founder of the AND Campaign , and an author. His new book is He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair a Broken World . In this episode, Sho and Jonathan Rogers discuss memory and imagination, constructing a new normal through storytelling, and the perils of accepting a smaller identity than the one God gives us. Support the...

In this 100th conversation of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and producer Drew Miller play back and discuss favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, as identified by listeners. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this 100th episode of The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and producer Drew Miller play back and discuss favorite moments from the first 99 episodes, as identified by listeners. To help The Habit celebrate this milestone (and to help other listeners find this podcast), would you consider rating and reviewing? Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listen...

Lancia Smith is the founder of Cultivating, a quarterly online magazine, and the Cultivating Project, a nurtured community of writers and artists committed to pursuing spiritual maturity and creative excellence. Lancia writes about brilliant people doing brilliantly good things related to faith, character formation, and the creative arts. She is also a photographer and portraitist. In this episode...

Janna Barber is a blogger, poet, and memoirist. Her most recent book is Hidden in Shadow: Tales of Grief, Lamentation, and Faith . This memoir is one woman’s honest reckoning with the truth that even as our faith waxes and wanes, God is constant, and he loves his children even when they don’t know what he’s up to. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See...

Stephen Roach is a poet, musician, speaker, and creative coach. He hosts the Makers and Mystics podcast and is the founder of The Breath and the Clay, a creative arts movement. His latest book, a collaboration with Ned Bustard, is Naming the Animals: An Invitation to Creativity . In it, Stephen and Ned make the case that creativity isn't just a talent given to the chosen few, but an invitation ext...

Rachel Pieh Jones has been living and writing in the Horn of Africa for the last eighteen years. Her new memoir is Pillars: How Muslim Friends Led Me Closer to Jesus . In this episode, Rachel and Jonathan Rogers discuss the value of being an outsider and what it means to be a witness. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every Moment Holy, Volume II is a book of liturgies and prayers for seasons of dying and grieving. Doug McKelvey spent two years in dialogue with bereaved and dying readers as he wrote this book. In this conversation, Doug speaks with Jonathan Rogers about loving the reader, stewarding gifts and opportunities, and listening to the people you wish to serve in your work. Support the show: https://th...

The poet Malcolm Guite wears waistcoats. He smokes a long-stemmed pipe and blows smoke rings. He often ambles about in the countryside. He's not very tall. He loves breakfast. Draw your own conclusions. In this episode of The Hobbit Podcast, Malcolm Guite and Jonathan Rogers (who is not himself a hobbit, only hobbit-adjacent) discuss first breakfast, second breakfast, and elevensies. Thanks to Dre...

Wingfeather Tales  started out as a Kickstarter stretch goal for The Warden and the Wolf King , Book 4 of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. Andrew recruited five of his friends to write stories (and a poem) set in Aerwiar, the world of the Wingfeathers. He also recruited some of his favorite illustrators to illustrate. That compilation has been re-released in hardcover by Waterbrook P...

Winn Collier  is the Director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Seminary in Holland Michigan. He was friends with Eugene Peterson and was chosen by the Peterson family to write his authorized biography,  A Burning in My Bones . In this episode, Winn and Jonathan Rogers discuss friendship, “earthy spirituality,” and writing that goes beyon...

Author, gardener, and woods-walker  Hannah Anderson  wrote, “More than a metaphor, the natural world is a living, pulsating experience of truth that surrounds and enfolds us, teaching us deep realities without words.” She puts words to many of those wordless realities in her new book,  The Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit . In this episode, Hannah...

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a history professor at Calvin University and the author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation . In this episode, Kristen Du Mez and Jonathan Rogers discuss stories as a means of reframing reality, the role of fear in political storytelling, and confirmation bias. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member...

This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Benjamin Myers, author of A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation . In A Poetics of Orthodoxy , poet Ben Myers makes the case that Christian orthodoxy provides a “reality-based way of knowing what kinds of poetry, what poetic characteristics, most resonate with true human experience.” Poetry, he argues, is a kind of re-incar...

David O. Taylor is a theologian of the arts, Associate Professor of Theology at Fuller Seminary, and a director of initiatives in art and faith. His most recent book is Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life . In this first-ever practical episode of The Habit Podcast, David Taylor walks listeners through the spiritual practice of writing psalms of lament. Click here for more resources re...

This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Jen Pollock Michel , author of A Habit Called Faith: 40 Days in the Bible to Find and Follow Jesus . Jonathan and Jen discuss the inescapability of seeing what we expect to see, habits as creating your own momentum, the stifling posture of spectatorship, and the lessons to be learned from finishing well. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/m...

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers and Tish Harrison Warren discuss the difference between true human vulnerability and the "curated" vulnerability of Instagram, writing as an inescapable encounter with one's own weakness, and the under-appreciated gift of receiving well-placed criticism. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for pri...

Lisa Deam is an art historian and the author of 3,000 Miles to Jesus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life for Spiritual Seekers . (She also blogs at The Contemplative Writer .) In this episode, Lisa and Jonathan discuss the process of writing as a pilgrimage, the human desire to leave signposts for those who come after us, the infamous “long middle” of the writing journey, and the instructive...

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with songwriter and storyteller Matthew Clark. They discuss the many facets of Matthew's mission to "make things that make room for people to meet Jesus," his tour van that he calls "Vandalf the White," and human creativity as a posture of synthesis rather than analysis. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystud...

This week on The Habit Podcast, Jonathan Rogers talks with speaker, singer, educator, and activist Ruth Naomi Floyd. They discuss the intimate relationship between truth and beauty, the liberating power of art, and the immense legacy of the African American spiritual. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.