Perseverance Through Weariness, Exhaustion, and Burnout: The Desert Wisdom of Christian Resilience / Tish Harrison Warren

What sustains faith when prayer feels flat and God seems distant—and there's no clear tragedy to explain it? Anglican priest and former New York Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren joins Macie Bridge to talk about weariness, burnout, and the quiet middle stretches of a long spiritual life. Drawing on her new book What Grows in Weary Lands, she turns to the Desert Fathers and Mothers for a resilience that resists both flaming out and numbing out.

"It felt like the call had dropped, like the line had gone dead."

In this episode with Macie Bridge, Warren reflects on her own season of spiritual aridity and the ancient counsel to stay in your cell rather than escape.

Together they discuss the difference between burnout and weariness, acedia and the noonday demon, perseverance, silence as countercultural practice, and the world as a womb. They explore why escape rarely heals and what it means to trust the slow work of God.

Episode Highlights

"It felt like the call had dropped, like the line had gone dead."

"I do not think vitamin D will solve what I'm talking about."

"We're not having to hold our life together in the midst of weariness with will power and duct tape."

"We kind of bring Times Square with us wherever we go now."

"God doesn't need me to be impressive or achieving."

About Tish Harrison Warren

Tish Harrison Warren is a writer and an Anglican priest. She is the author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, named Christianity Today's 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night, which won both Christianity Today's 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for The New York Times on faith in public and private life and was a columnist for Christianity Today; her essays have appeared in Comment, The Point, and Religion News Service. She currently serves as the C. S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence at Baylor's Truett Seminary, is a senior fellow with The Trinity Forum, and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church. (Source: tishharrisonwarren.com) Learn more and follow at tishharrisonwarren.com, Instagram @tishharrisonwarren, and X @Tish_H_Warren.