The Habit

Carolyn Leiloglou’s new middle-grade novel is Beneath the Swirling Sky: Book 1 of the Restorationists Trilogy. It’s a book about art, creativity, and reclaiming the creative energy that comes so naturally to small children. It’s also about a family of people who can go into old paintings and walk around in them. Like her main character Vincent, Carolyn is the granddaughter of art collectors and the daughter of an art teacher. She is also the mother of four wildly creative children.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Jennifer L. Holberg is professor and chair of the English department at Calvin University and codirector of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, the home of the Festival of Faith and Writing, which will be happening live and in person next April, for the first time since 2018. Her new book is Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith. In this episode, Dr. Holberg and Jonathan Rogers talk about the stories, true and false, that we believe ourselves to be living in–and how we might tell better stories for ourselves and others.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, a speaker, and the author of several books–most recently, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. In this episode, Curt and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to be hospitable to your own suffering, engaging suffering as the way of redemption, and the role of storytelling in mental and spiritual health.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harrison Scott Key's new memoir is How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. It’s the story of how infidelity tore his marriage apart, and how he and his wife Lauren patched it back together. It is hilarious, and it’s wise, and it’s exceedingly hopeful. To quote the jacket copy, “How to stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy.”Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this, the final episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership tell stories about NEW hometowns. Hometowns change, and for a little while, at least, you can find yourself a stranger in your own hometown.  Loren Warnemuende: Michigan  Rachel Donahue: Spain Desi Ana Sartini: Southeast Asia Holly Schurter: Illinois Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Karen Swallow Prior is one of the leading evangelical writers and commentators our time. Her new book is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. In this episode, Dr. Prior and I talk about the role of imagination in the making of meaning, and we talk about what happens when we start to examine the unexamined metaphors that make it possible for us to make sense of the world while also limiting our possibilities for making sense of the world.Subscribe to Dr. Prior's new Substack newsletter.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this, the sixth episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership take us to all four points of the compass. Sara Dredge takes us north to Ontario, Canada. Sarah Bannerman, Lindsay Kyle, and  Monica Olsen take us south to Mississippi and Louisiana. Laura Love goes east to China. And Shannon Stephens takes us west–or, in any case, to the West Virginia of his childhood.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Russell Moore is Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today. His new book is Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. He invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step into an uncertain future, letting go of the kind of culture-warring, politicized Christianity that has led us to this moment of reckoning. In Losing Our Religion, Dr. Moore shows how we might steer clear of both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Summer Short’s new book is The Legend of Greyhallow. Kirkus Reviews called it “A delightful, engaging otherworldly adventure sure to charm. This fun read artfully combines our reality with Greyhallow's...fans of The Lord of the Rings and portal fantasies will find much to enjoy.”Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week’s episode, the fifth in the Hometown Stories series, takes us to Texas. We’ll blow up a gas station in the Panhandle. We’ll check out some tumbleweeds in West Texas. We’ll pop over to Bryan Texas, to wonder how and why Bryan made somebody’s best-of list, and why a big-city reporter would want to deny them their moment of glory. And finally, we’ll go squirrel hunting in tiny Bluff Dale Texas. Featuring stories from the late Thomas McKenzie, Colleen Rudolph, Christie Purifoy, and David Graves.Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/memberSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.