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Tish Harrison Warren on Prayer in the Night
"There are no five easy steps to trusting God in darkness."
Let's go back in time a little. Let's not talk about 2020 for a second. Let's talk about 2017. I don't know how things were for you in 2017, but in 2017, the Rev. Tish Harrison Warren had a terrible year. And it inspired a beautiful book.
The book is called Prayer in the Night: for Those Who Work or Watch or Weep; and it takes up the subjects of pain and grief, in all their opaqueness, in all their dailyness, and our vulnerability in the face of them. It also takes up the way pain can shut down the very things we need most when pain comes: prayer, and a sense of God's presence. And yet, it's also a book about "average suffering" and "common heartache" -- it's not about a pandemic; and it's not a memoir. It's about the things most if not all of us will go through in our lifetimes, whatever the state of the world around us: the loss of people we love, loneliness, tragedies that don't space themselves out politely but come in a quick succession. And it's a book shaped around the practice of Compline. How do the prayers of Compline face and pray through the darkness and dangers of the night?
Tish joins us today to talk about her book, and about her story. She is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. Along with Prayer in the Night, she is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which was Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year. She has worked in a variety of ministries: as a campus minister, an associate rector, in ministries to those in addiction and poverty, and has most recently served as writer-in-residence at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a monthly columnist with Christianity Today, and her articles and essays have appeared in many places including the New York Times.
She interviewed here by the Rev. Dr. Wesley Hill, Associate professor of New Testament at Trinity School for Ministry.
Purchase Tish Harrison Warren's new book, Prayer in the Night.
Register for the free Lenten course, Grace in the Wilderness.
