In the upcoming episode of the Mid-faith Crisis podcast, Joe and I discuss the recent article wot I wrote on wisdomness. Here’s the opening as a bit of a taster: Writing an article about wisdom may be one of the most stupid things I’ve ever done. I mean, most days I have imposter syndrome, but this time it is overwhelming. Because I don’t feel wise at all. I make snap judgements, I talk too much, I confidently issue opinions on subjects I know little about, I say ‘yes’ to things I shouldn’t (such as writing an article called ‘How to be wise’).

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Lots of interesting discussion this week drawing on feedback from listeners.1 We talk a bit about heresy, something I have written on quite a lot, because you can’t really do church history without encountering the concept of heresy, not to mention all the accusations, counter-accusations, excommunications and, tragically, executions. The word first crops up in the second century AD, notably in the work of Irenaeus of Lyon who wrote a whole book called Against Heresies.

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This week’s episode is a really good interview with Brian McLaren about his new book, Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. A few things really stood out for me. I loved how he argued that constant denial is exhausting. We often think it’s the other way – all this doom and gloom is wearing me out – but McLaren argues that, in lots of cases, once we face up to the issue, once we acknowledge the reality, then actually that can be a source of energy.

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I am still working on my book on the history of Britain’s churches, a book which has taken is taking me much longer to write than I anticipated. The book is about rediscovering churches, rediscovering, in fact, the idea of sacred spaces. And one of the things I’ve experienced while working on it was how, throughout all my research and writing so far, I’ve felt like I have been treading a path walked by many others before me, albeit in very different ways.

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So, the question I posed was this: ‘Why does God get all the praise when I did all the work?’ By which I don’t mean that I necessarily need or want more praise (being English I find any praise rather embarrassing anyway. Not to mention ill-judged) but I was trying to explore the relationship between human skills, creativity and effort and the inspiration and work of the Divine. Of course all things come from God and of your own do we give you, as it says in the Prayer Book.

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Lots of stuff in this week’s episode, but it seemed to me to have a common theme of depth. We talk about reading the Bible not more widely, but more deeply – learning a passage, or simply taking one verse and dwelling on it for a long time. And following on from last week’s recap on the idea of stages of faith, we discuss how the Mid-faith Crisis could simply be motivated by a desire to go deeper, to find out more, to go beyond the superficial.

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On the podcast this week I reference T. S. Eliot's lines from Little Gidding: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. This week I am angry at the state of the world and the state of the church, I am grieving the loss of an old friend. But poetry is comfort.

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