#107: The Life of Eugene Peterson (with Winn Collier)
“I hope readers will encounter in Eugene a picture of what it might look like for a person to become more and more holy and more and more human, at the same time. Because those two things absolutely belong together.”
This week I have the great delight of discussing the life and faith of Eugene Peterson, with Winn Collier, who wrote his authorized biography. Winn has pastored for 25 years and was deeply impacted by Eugene’s work, both in The Message and in his many pastoral books. Winn now directs the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary. We discussed the holy ordinary, a major theme of Eugene’s life, and we reflected on a life lived in pursuit of divine love. Expect warmth and encouragement and hope.
Order A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson, Translator of The Message by Winn Collier
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Once you’ve listened to this, make sure to check out the raw and uncut B-Side interview where my friends and I unpack the conversation in even more detail. Available exclusively on Patreon.
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Transcription
Jonathan Puddle 00:00
Hello, my friends! Welcome back to the podcast with me, Jonathan Puddle. This is Episode 107. My guest today is Winn Collier. Winn is the author of a brand new biography of Eugene Peterson, the translator of The Message and author of a great many wonderful books. I had such a special time in this conversation with Winn, it was really a beautiful, gentle soulful discussion. I kind of felt like meeting Winn was like meeting a kindred spirit. Winn has been a pastor for many years, he was the founding pastor of All Souls Charlottesville, Virginia. He today is the director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary, Michigan. He holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. And, and he's written a number of other books himself. So today, we talked all about Eugene Peterson, and who he was, his values. And there's a lot in here around the subject of ordinariness—of holy ordinariness. And I think an invitation for pastors to a holy simplicity in their work. And so I think there's going to be something encouraging in here for you, whoever you are, I am loving this book, I recommend you guys go and get it. Check the show notes for links to buy the book to learn more about Winn and his work. And of course, for the transcript of this in text, if you prefer to read it. There are a couple of audio glitches throughout this one, we were having some internet connection difficulties. My apologies for that. The transcript is a little clearer if you, if you weren't sure what Winn was saying at any point, go and check the transcript. And I was able to type out the words that were missing. So let's go. Winn, I'm thrilled to welcome you to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today. Welcome to the show.
Winn Collier 01:53
Well, thank you, I'm really glad to be here and to make a new friend.
Jonathan Puddle 01:57
Likewise, likewise, I have been reading the book and I'm loving it. And it's giving me all these memories of my own life. And so I thought I would I would set the stage for this conversation with with a memory of my own. Where it's about, it's got to be 1994. And I am about eight years old, nine years old. And my grandfather was a, I guess what we used to call a lay minister, maybe we'll just call him bivocational now, in the Presbyterian Church. And he had this study off his bedroom, he was also an accountant, and so in his kind of office study, he had all of his financial stuff for all of his clients and trusts and charities that he worked with. And then he had all of his theological books. And he was the only person I knew who had a computer. My grandfather, even up until his death always had the cutting edge technology. And I used to go and play on his old IBM computer before he had Windows. And I remember, he had this book on his bookshelf, this white and blue book called The Message. And it's stuck with me from like eight or nine years old. And often as I was waiting for games to load, I would sit there and I would look through his bookshelf. And there was this, this book, this white and blue book. And so and sometimes it would be up on the shelf, and sometimes it would be on his desk, and I often used to look at it. And I used to go, "hmm, the New Testament in in modern langage," whatever I forget the tagline that was on that for probably probably the first edition of the New Testament. That I realize, in hindsight, he would have had, I guess, I guess he was reading all the new stuff as soon as it was coming out. And so it's felt really special to me to start reading Eugene's story that you've so beautifully written. And, and I'm not I'm not a Eugene Peterson, expert, I, I have not read any of his other works. And I haven't even thoroughly read The Message. And I feel a bit embarrassed to say that; I feel like it's a missing piece of my life that I've kind of orbited from a distance. And so in a certain way, I feel really privileged that I get to actually really start my journey with his whole story. Thanks to your writing A Burning in My Bones. So thank you.
Winn Collier 04:29
Yeah, well, that. I love that story. And as you're telling it, I'm thinking how much Eugene would love that story? Because, you know, um, one thing that I think a lot of people probably don't quite get, because, you know, I don't know 20 million copies or something were sold of The Message and, but he didn't write that for the vast American audience. Really. He wrote that for his his Sunday school class. That's how it started. He was... a lot of fear was happening in the in the late 60s, early 70s. In the Baltimore suburbs, and he realized how overrun his own community was, with fear; buying guns and building bomb shelters and escaping the awful inner city and, and he just thought about how unchristian this was. And so he wanted to lead them through Galatians because it's a book of freedom, and we're to be free people not driven by fear. And he was mesmerized by the text of Galatians. And yet, he said, after three weeks, like, people's eyes were glazing over, they were bored out of their mind. And he couldn't understand it like this, this text is liberating! And so he, he said, "Well, next week, I'm going to translate it in." So if they lived in Hartford County, Mount Maryland, I'm going to translate this into Hartford County. And, and he said, he passed out the white sheets of paper that had that little section translated for that week. And like, nobody even touched their coffee, they were in! And he's like, I'm onto something. And so he kept doing that. And that ultimately made its way into a book he wrote on Galatians, called Traveling Light. And at the beginning of each section, he would, he would offer the little translation he had done. And an editor eventually saw the book, read the book, photocopied the pages, and cut out the scripture part and pasted them all together, and carried them around for like a month reading it and meditating on and reflecting it, and ultimately, very long story, but that's how he ended up writing The Message. But it was for very particular people, it was, it was for these quiet spaces for people who are hungry, and he was hungry too. And he wanted to share a conversation about the Living Word. And, and even when it expanded, and he realized he's writing this full translation that was gonna hit the, you know, the market or whatever, he would say, you know, how, he would have in mind that he was translating for the truck driver that he knew, for someone who was sitting in the third pew, you know. And so all that to say, I think he would absolutely love just this individual story of one person, one grandfather, you sittin' there really wanting to play a video game, and something catches your attention that you just carry with you. Eugene was known for his smile, I think he would be smiling really big at that story.
Jonathan Puddle 07:51
Thank you, that's such a cool... road. You know, I, there's this, I've heard Seth Godin talk about when we try to create something for the world, it doesn't work. But when we can allow ourselves to just authentically create something for one person, it so increases the likelihood that it will connect with them. That that and then ironically, that tends to connect with other people far better, anyway. Which that sounds like The Message is ok, is a proof text for that.
Winn Collier 08:28
Yeah. And I would say that was Eugene's... kind of just who he was. You know, he he meandered through a long wilderness of failures and rejections and, you know, he was never a pastor of ahhh.. what would be considered a large church. Never... he was just an... even toward the end of his life, when people would ask him, what do you, what are you most grateful for about your life? And one of the things he would say is, oh, that I got to be Eugene.
Jonathan Puddle 09:01
Come on.
Winn Collier 09:02
And you know, when you hear that, and you can really like... for a man to have lived his life, to have such deep gratitude that he just got to be the person God made him to be. Because I think most of us actually spend massive amounts of our energy striving to be something we think we're supposed to be or some image. And I do think it takes a kind of humility and, and grace and just comfort with how God's made us to do the kind of thing you're talking about. Well, we can, we can offer the one gift we have for the one person in front of us trusting that God will do something with that or not. And it's not in our making. And I think that's one of the reasons why Eugene was so meaningful to so many people is because there was something that was deeply true about what he offered. That felt like, you know, in a time when Christian publishing specifically was exploding, the, the money around it, the celebrity, the, the building of the platform, all the language, you know, he genuinely detested it and thought it was the kind of thing that puts a soul in mortal danger. And so he actively resisted those things and insisted over and over and over again: this has to be relational, it, it has to be with the person in front of you, it has to start with your neighborhood. You can't do theology without geography, he would say, which means if you don't, if you don't live in your neighborhood, don't try saying anything to the world. And I think, you know, in some ways, among other things, I mean, we're reaping the whirlwind now, for, for not following those kinds of bits of wisdom. And so, yeah, there's a lot, a lot about his resistance to the temptations and seductions of our age, that I think are truer now than they ever were. And all it comes back to this offering what you have, being true, trusting grace, God gets to control the ends, not us. When we start manipulating it all turns sour. It all, I think in literal ways, turns to hell, you know. So be free, live open, be true. Be humble.
Jonathan Puddle 11:46
Honestly, it's like so simple. But it is really countercultural to, to what has become a very common understanding of what Christian life looks like in the West, in the 21st century. Be extraordinary. Be loud, be bold. And obviously, yes, let's be bold, but it's kind of like boldness has been interpreted to mean this outrageous, extraordinary-ness. I, this weekend, I was reading a book called A Theology of the Ordinary, by Julie Canliss, and it was just hitting me in the soul over and over again. And then I start reading your your biography of Eugene and the ordinariness. And you talk about, you use this line, "a context of unspectacular ordinariness." And in that Eugene learn to see it as holy. And I was like, Yeah, I feel like Jonathan Puddle is learning to see that as holy. In in March 2021. Like, I feel like that is what the Spirit is doing in me right now. Which is probably partly why I feel like this is so timely. Tell us more about that about the ordinariness.
Winn Collier 13:06
Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't know if you know this, maybe you do. But I think Julie would say that Eugene is probably the one of the deepest influences in her life. So he was her professor at Regent. And there's even a beautiful a really beautiful story in the biography about an encounter she had with Eugene.
Jonathan Puddle 13:25
Okay,I haven't got there yet.
Winn Collier 13:26
Yeah. Man, there's so much here, Jonathan, and yet it does, it feels, it feels like it's so simple, that it it could be heard in a cliche way. And there's nothing cliche about it, because we're going to the deepest places of the soul. When someone asked me what was like the, at the heart of Eugene's vision, his pastoral vision, he, he fundamentally understood himself first as a pastor. So what what was it? Why, what was what was at the heart of it? And I, you know, maybe pause for a minute before I answer because I'm thinking, this is this answer doesn't sound nearly deep enough. It was, it was God. God. The Holy and, and, you know, maybe at first blush, we say, Well, of course, he's a pastor. So give me the real stuff. You know. And I think that exact thing is, is like, penetrating to our, our core dilemma is we are overrun with God language. God has become an industry. We are up to our eyeballs in God talk in God trinkets in God's systems, but our souls are impoverished. And so right now, I'm actually reading, I'm trying to make sure I've read everything of Eugene's before the book comes out. I'm not sure I have or will make it, I'm close. But I realized I hadn't read a book called Earth & Altar, I think it's actually out of print. It's one of his few books that is, is out of print. And I may be wrong. But right now it looks like it's out of print. It's striking to me that this book is out of print, because it's all about how is a Christian to live in a political society. So most people who don't know Eugene very well, would perhaps criticize him for being overly pietistic, and, you know, maybe being such a contemplative, that he sort of isn't engaged with the world as he should. Which is ridiculous. But this is a book where he's saying, "How are we to live with political responsibilities as a faithful Christian in the world?" But here's what he does. He takes 15 Psalms, and he says, what Christians do is pray. And then he goes on this mind extending, heart stretching, understanding of what prayer is, allow us to sort of fall into these dichotomies to say, Okay, this means I have 5 minutes, and I just pray for our leaders and move on. Prayer is integrating all of our life and our hopes and our our injustices and our dreams and our possibilities, and our families and our neighborhoods, and our economic systems and our vital histories, and our possible futures, and is bringing all of that before the holiness of God. And it is truly trusting and believing that we can be reshaped by a vision of the world that would so transform us that we begin to live as different people, different way. And all of a sudden, what he's really doing is what Christians who have been faithful for millennia have done, and they have said, "What do we do to live our life before God?" And to actually believe that God makes us true humans, that God makes us just, that God makes us right with our neighbor, that God can redeem our, our shattered lives, that God can give us good futures. But what Eugene continually insists, is, we're going to have to allow our visions and dreams of all these things to be reshaped by God, rather than trying to make God fit into our preconceived ideas of what this looks life. And why, back to your actual original question why I think this is so difficult for us, and why we resist the holy ordinary, is because we are really addicted to control. You know, if we, if there's a if there's a world to win for Jesus, then we're going to figure out how to do it, dang it. If there is a wrong to be fixed, then we think that it's our job to go figure that out. And then kind of ask God to bless us on our way. As opposed to coming to God and saying, "God, I don't know. I don't know how to fix this. I don't I can't even hold up the hubris that I'm going to see it all clearly." But I can say with desperation that I, I need you to transform our hearts, collectively, all of us to give up our power, our grasping to learn what it is to truly love and and all of that requires God, and all of that.. it's actually much easier to think about the big picture out there and not think about the person I'm going to be with in the next hour. Or the paragraphs I've been given to write today. Or the fact that my son really needs my space and attention. And maybe some of my big things that I thought we're gonna be the things that were going to change the world aren't actually the thing I'm called to be today.
Jonathan Puddle 19:57
Yeah. Yeah, seriously, oh man, that resonates very deeply with me. It's Yeah, I've been I've been chewing over this passage in John. You know, 14-15, I think: abide. John chapter 15: just abide in me, you can't do anything if you're not in me. And I'm like, Man is abiding enough? Uggghhh, like, so much of my formation would have me believe that abiding is not enough. That I need to go and be very effective for the gospel. And that somehow being effective for the gospel is counterintuitively divorced from abiding. And I, you write about this barbershop that Eugene would would visit, that it was a rough and human place. And that made it holy. And I feel like with each, each, each story, you're kind of like, I feel like, Yeah, you've got that meat tenderizer. And you're just kind of hammering this deeper into my soul. You know, you write as well that Eugene would would search beyond the trite or the theoretical, that he was on a quest for things true and solid. That he, that he had more questions than answers, that he would rather pray with someone then debate theology. And, yeah, I mean, I felt, I felt convicted, I felt inspired. And I felt like, man, I would like many of these things to be said about me. 50-60 years from now.
Winn Collier 21:45
Yeah, Yeah, me too. I think that goes back to, you know, Eugene, never stopped being the son of a butcher. And, to him, that, that space where the whole town met, you know, it was a meeting place. It was it was, it was dirty and gritty. And there were the poor and the wealthy and there wasn't a lot of spectacular significance in the butcher shop. And he was around a rough crew that had dirty white aprons splattered with blood and let out expletives. And, and yet told the truth. And, and so, you know, he, he formed, he was formed in that, in that way. And he always resisted this pull to be elite, you know, this pull to amass power. And he, he distrusted it. And it wasn't because he just naturally pushed away from it, I think he felt the pull himself. But he distrusted it. And, and yet, he believed that everything that was truly spiritual, is lived. And he was always resisting the way to push things into different worlds, you know, we have a spiritual language, and then we have the language when we're really with our friends and being honest, or we have our spiritual time. And then we have our, the rest of our life, right? And he just kept saying, no, it's life. It's why he, and he wasn't consistent about this, but he didn't like using the word spiritual, as if he thought, using it as an adjective it inherently degrades something. Because you're specializing it. A spiritual life, its life. A spiritual book, it's a book! It's not a spiritual story, it's a story, you know. And for being someone who had opinions and convictions and sort of lives in a counter cultural way, he also was not very idealistic. He thought church was massively overrun by Western idealism about you know, so a lot of our church programming and machinations and all this is all about living evidence of what we think the church has to look like. And we're running after an ideal. We're missing the actual people in front of us. We're missing the ordinary graces that are, we're encountering and, and it's no wonder that we end up with these beliefs, and half the people are exhausted, and half the people in our are sort of running on fumes. And, and in, and then we just wonder like, what's happening here, aren't we doing the stuff? And maybe this stuff isn't what we were supposed to be doing to begin with/
Jonathan Puddle 25:05
Yeah, wow. I mean, I, I grew up essentially out of the Vineyard movement. So doing the stuff was very, very important. Right. And I have lots of good stuff in my DNA because of that influence, and yet...
Winn Collier 25:20
Yeah.
Jonathan Puddle 25:21
Feel like there's certainly a course correction that I think the Spirit is inviting many of us to, that I think you've painted such a beautiful picture of surrounding Eugene's life. Can you fill in the gap for us about you and your relationship and why you're the one bringing the story.
Winn Collier 25:43
So in 1989, I was in Colorado. A bi-vocational pastor at a small church. We'd gone there for my wife to go to grad school. And an elder after church one Sunday handed me a copy of Eugene's pastoral book called, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity. And he said, I think you'll enjoy this. I think what he meant was, I think you need this. And I got home and before Sunday afternoon nap, I started reading. And just was only, I don't know, a couple paragraphs in and something just pierced me. I, I, I'm not sure that I realized at the time how how much of a wanderer I was. How lost I felt.
Jonathan Puddle 26:36
We'll take a quick break, so I can say thank you to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. My latest patrons are Antony and Sophie. Thank you both for coming on, such a blessing to have you here. And I hope that you are enjoying the B-Sides and the other things you have access to as a Patron. Friends, if you would like to chip into the show, you can do so for $3 a month or $30 a year, or more if you prefer. You can go to patreon.com/JonathanPuddle and sign up right there. You'll gain access to the B-Sides which is my new thing. Every week, I record a behind the scenes, a kind of unpacking greater depth conversation, with some friends of mine around the episode. And so this week on the B-Side, I've got two of my favorite pastors, my own pastor Amy Ryan, who's been on the podcast before and one of my good good friends Mark Schelske who pastors outside of Portland. And the two of them and myself share thoughts of how this discussion with Winn impacted us and challenged us. So thank you so much everyone who supports the show and my work. Much love. Back to the show!
Winn Collier 27:40
Here I was doing pastoral work. Called to this. And I... and yet I just, I was really disillusioned. I didn't, I didn't know anymore what the basics were of being a pastor. And and all of a sudden, Eugene began to give a language and it was it was almost like my heart found a way to describe what it was aching for. And so I started to read him. A couple years later, when I was publishing my first book an editor who had worked with Eugene gave me his address. I started writing him letters, we wrote letters, over 15 years or so. I met him on occasion, just a couple times really. In 2016 I was going back to Montana for a pastoral retreat. I was going to see Eugene and Jan, was going to be the final time to see them, I thought, and asked him to pray a prayer blessing over me, which they did. And and when I got back I was thinking about how someone was going to write his story and I started, I started thinking through what I hoped this story would be and how it would be and that it would that it would they would imbibe Eugene not just give the facts and, and started thinking about what I hope it wouldn't do... like that it would really honor how he resisted lots of pressures and polarities and and let there be tensions where there's tensions and show the humanness where there's failings. And and so I wrote him a letter, told him my thoughts, knowing there's no way, he is not interested in a biography written about him. He called me back a couple weeks later, we started talking. I just described it all to him again. And I said so Eugene, does this make you energized or tired as I'm talking to you about this. And he, you know, his raspy voice he just said, "Winn, it makes me tired." And I just chuckled. I said, Well, that's what I figured. And so I thought the conversation would end but for some reason we kept talking and I don't know why, Holy Spirit, I guess and, and about 10 minutes later, he said, "Winn, I think I'm energized now, I think you're supposed to do this, and I'm gonna help you." So Jan, and Eugene just really opened up their life, their home, spent a lot of time with him at the lake, lugging boxes and boxes of journals and letters and manuscripts back to Virginia, where we lived at the time. And yeah, I spent four years writing and doing scores of interviews, and here we are.
Jonathan Puddle 30:43
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. That's really beautiful. And the number of pastors who I, who I know could put themselves into that state of your life as well. What are some of the things that you hope that people will, will experience or encounter as they read?
Winn Collier 31:07
You know, some of us have never had a real pastor. Thankfully, many of us have. There's so many good pastors out there, and most of them, we'll never know their name. Because they're not building a mausoleum to themselves. They're out there doing the work with the circle of people in their parish, that they're to love. And it's such a noble thing I guess for, for pastors like that, I hope they would hear in powerful words, that your work really matters. And don't listen to the siren calls that say, if you're not known, or publishing books, or, you know, being asked to speak at conferences, that, that your work isn't important, because most of that stuff is smoke and mirrors. What you're doing is the real work. I think for those who maybe never had a pastor, I hope they would have a sense of an experience of what it's like to have a pastor in your life who isn't trying to use you. But who, who loves God and loves you. And I think for everyone who reads whether they're people of faith, or people who are curious about faith, I hope they would encounter in, in Eugene a picture of what it might look like for a person to be becoming more and more holy, and becoming more and more human at the same time. Because those two things absolutely belong together. And it is one of the great, great tragedies of whatever has transpired in our modern discipleship life, or theological understanding, or whatever, that somehow these two things are separated. So we might not say they're separated, but intuitively we feel like they are. So a lot of us, you know, maybe are perceived as having some kind of holiness, but you scratch very deep and it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of humanness there. It's, it's stilted and plastic and and then there's other others of us that we might think, oh, they're really human, you know, like, they're really free and but you scratch too deep, you're like, ah, but where's the, where's the holy? Where's the... where's the sense that God is... sometimes makes us tremble, and is describing a kind of existence that we don't actually fully know yet and is mysterious. And, and in Eugene, I see imperfectly, and always growing, but I see those two things held together as they should be. Because, you know, in the incarnation, we learned that, to become truly truly human is to become more like God. And, and somehow, we've severed this and it's, it's disastrous. And so it probably means that our holiness is, is is is stunted if it's not, doesn't have deep humanity rooted into it. And it probably means our sense of humanity is also stunted if it doesn't have a deep sense of holiness rooted in it. So I think, you know, one of the prayers that Eugene prayed, he only, the only place I've ever heard this or seen this with him was when I opened up his journals, so never saw in any other context. And that matters, something that was between him and God. But the first time I read it in his journals it it brought tears to my eyes, because because I knew that this was not something... I knew what he meant when he was saying, and he said, "God, make me a saint." And that was not coming from a place of make me some grandiose Christian, make me well known, you know, it was in the quietness of his own interior life with his God, his deep cry of his heart, that he would become so transfigured by the love of Christ, that He would become the kind of human who was overflowing with the radiance of the love of God in a way that was so rooted in this world, and giving himself with love to this world. And he prayed that prayer repeatedly, early on, I, I had this short hope, that we could incorporate that into the title, you know, to be a saint or something. But I knew we couldn't, frankly, because I knew it would be misunderstood. And it would immediately be heard the wrong way. But I hope that people will come to find in Eugene, one story of one flawed man who truly was becoming more and more consumed by the presence and love of Christ.
Jonathan Puddle 36:41
Amen. That is a beautiful and holy work. And certainly, in the reading that I've done so far, that's what's it's just, it's capturing my imagination. It's capturing my hunger and passion. And, and I feel both transported because of the rich storytelling, but rooted to where I am. And I feel like I'm imagining Montana, I'm imagining Seattle, I can picture these places. But I'm also looking around at my living room, and the glass of wine I've got and my children, and I'm going, this is good. Yeah, this is good.
Winn Collier 37:26
Yeah, that's right.
Jonathan Puddle 37:27
I wonder if you, if you'd read us that that little introductory story, that's so beautiful in the book.
Winn Collier 37:34
Sure. A few minutes after 7am with sun streaming through a kitchen windows on a fresh Maryland day. Jan Peterson scooped hot eggs on the five plates next to scrapple and fried Apple rings. Eric, she called, Go tell dad breakfast is ready. Yes, ma'am. Eric answered. The oldest Peterson boy ran to the top of the stairs that lead down to his father's home study and stopped short. His dad would be intensely focused and immersed in quiet. With the nine year old, with a nine year olds mischief Eric tiptoed down. The basement smelled of must and old print. He stepped onto the chilly tiled floor and catwalks with a burglars stealth to his dad's study door. Most days Eugene spent an hour before daybreak, reading scripture, and a second hour reading commentaries. A hand-me-down desk set under a single window beside a long bookshelf packed to the ceiling. Its books were arranged mostly by author, Barth, Dostoevsky, Newman, Teresa of Avila. A rocking chair, the favorite seat for reading set in the corner. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling but Eugene rarely flipped on the cold bulbs. A lamp on the desk shed a warmer glow. The old communion table from their church, Christ our King, set against the wall, holding a pottery chalice and paten ready for wine and bread. Alongside the Eucharist dishes sat an Italian fiasco long emptied of chiante holding a single white candle with a year's worth of wax splattered over the straw basket covering the dark glass. A monk's cell. Dad's space, Gene's space. Pastor Pete's space. Eric turned, Eric turned the knob slowly, silently. He peered through the crack. And even now, Eric's eyes turn moist as he tells me the memory while we sit together. A small woven rug, lay on a tile floor beside his dad's desk. Candle light flickered from the wine bottle. Eugene rested on his knees with a tallit, the tasseled Jewish prayer shawl wrapped around his shoulders. A Hebrew psalter splayed in front of him. He rocked gently, engrossed in the world of the scriptures, surrendering to ancient prayers. Eric watched, hushed. He slowly closed the door and crept back upstairs to the clink of forks against plates. Only a boy, but he knew he'd witnessed something holy.
Jonathan Puddle 40:38
Thank you, Winn, it's beautiful. Would you would you pray for us?
Winn Collier 40:44
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God, we bless you. We bless you for this day. We thank you for each person who has joined us in this conversation. Even if we don't know their name or see their face. God, would you fill them with your love. Would you be present with them and their questions. Would you whisper to them in their pain, and shout to them in their joy. May they, they know that you are true. You reverberate in every corner of this world, that we might ignore you but you cannot be missed. And that you are relentless, that you are always near, that you are never far away. And that our hearts and our minds and our imagination would open and receive all of the goodness and love that you are so ready and willing and eager to pour in to us. That we might know your light, be undone by your love and be remade as true humans. In Jesus name, amen.
Jonathan Puddle 42:19
Amen. Thank you, Winn. Weren't you just touched by his gentle soul? I sure was, I've been really enjoying following him on Instagram as well and getting to know him a little bit better. Go hit the shownotes to find links to his social media, to order this book it is out now: A Burning in my Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene Peterson, by Winn Collier. Also my friends, right now and just for a few more days, my book, You Are Enough is on sale on Kindle for 99 cents. It came out just over six months ago. And to celebrate that fact, I dropped the price way down as low as I could on Amazon. And so go grab that, that'll be just a couple more days because I dropped the price on Monday and I'm only gonna keep it up there for a week. So you need to head over to Amazon right now search for You Are Enough by Jonathan Puddle and grab that for 99 cents while you can. Now if you want the text transcript for this show, you can go to JonathanPuddle.com, click on this podcast and you'll be able to read the entirety of this podcast. That is thanks to my patrons who chipped in so that I could start providing these transcripts every week. I'm really glad to do that and actually producing them each week, I'm really enjoying it. Something about reading the words hits me differently than listening to them. And so maybe maybe you will enjoy them also. Go check those out. Thank you so much for listening this week. I'm glad that you're here. Share this with a friend if you enjoyed it. You'll find me on social media @JonathanPuddle. I look forward to connecting. Much grace and peace to you. We'll talk soon.