Faith and Letters

Ken Myers

Ken Myers is the founder of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, a quarterly audio periodical that features his interviews with a wide-ranging slate of writers and thinkers, from the well-known and popular to the relatively obscure. Whether discussing medications with a clinical psychiatrist or the music of Bach with a biographer, Ken is continually circling the interests and questions that have fueled his project for thirty years now; questions like, “what is a good life,” “what is a healthy culture,” “what is the shape and order of creation,” and “what might we as Christians most benefit from focusing our attention on?” 

Fred Bahnson

Fred Bahnson's essays and journalism have appeared in Harper's, Orion, Oxford American, Image, and The Sun, among other publications, and he has been the recipient of a Pulitzer Center grant. He is also the author of Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith. 

Fred's work in recent years has featured Christian contemplatives and mysticism, in addition to his longstanding interests in the natural world and our relationship to it as people of faith. Fred and I ended up spending a good portion of this conversation talking directly about his own practice of contemplation, and my struggles with the practice of silence. We later got around to discussing the work of Barry Lopez, a writer who is near to my heart and whom Fred met and wrote about not long before Barry's death in 2020. 

https://harpers.org/archive/2022/08/the-quest-to-save-ancient-manuscripts-gao-mali/

https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/an-unbroken-grace/

Laura Jansson

Laura Jansson is a practicing doula, Orthodox Christian, and the author of Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy, a creative work of theology that examines a broad range of Christian imagery and scripture through the lens of pregnancy and childbirth. From Jesus' exhortation to Nicodemus that he be "born again," to a comparison of labor and birth to the Easter journey through death and resurrection, to meditations on the awesome mystery of a woman's ability to touch the power of God as she participates in literal co-creation, Laura's work is inventive, humane, and deeply moving. Whether you're a parent or not, there's something for everyone here. 

John Mark Reynolds

In 1996, Dr. John Mark Reynolds founded the Torrey Honors College, the Great Books program at Biola University. After many years there, he went on to serve as provost at Houston Baptist University, and later to help start The Saint Constantine School, an Orthodox Classical Christian school in Houston, Texas where he currently serves as president. 

I studied under Dr. Reynolds during my first year at Biola, and I have always thought back fondly on my time in the program. After that initial exposure, I’ve continued to be fascinated by the assumptions and values that underpin classical education, as well the development of the Western canon. I enjoyed reconnecting with Dr. Reynolds, and getting an opportunity to ask about his own take on, and experience with, this ancient vision of human formation. 

Paul Elie

Paul Elie is the author of two big books; The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Reinventing Bach. 

The Life You Save May Be Your Own focuses on the lives of, and relationships between, four mid-twentieth century Catholic writers, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy.

Reinventing Bach tells the story of the life and music of the famed composer through the particular ways in which his music has been interpreted and recorded by well-known musicians of the twentieth century. 

I spoke with Paul about writing about the lives and work of others, the spiritual aspect of Bach’s music, and his time as an editor at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.