Introducing...
Low in the Water: A Good Word for Pastors (and anyone else who needs life in the word)
Two trailers introducing the new weekly podcast, Low in the Water, produced and distributed from the Peterson Center at Western Theological Seminary release today! A longer form conversation will be released to coincide with the Doxology Gathering taking place at Western next week. Then a weekly conversation-based 10 minute episode inspired by the common lectionary will be released toward the beginning of every week. I’ll (Nathan) host the weekly conversation and be joined by these other wonderful voices: Andrea Taphorn, Winn Collier, Mandy Smith, Brian Keepers, Eric Peterson, and Dave Wollan. Produced with original music by Jonathan Gabhart and Michigan I-O.
Listen, like, share, and subscribe from your favorite source of podcasts. An organic way of supporting this work is to share a link with a minister you know who might be encouraged by a good word just for them.
Every week we will be going “low in the water” like a loon who dives contemplatively deep to find “what keeps” us and those in our charge “alive.” One word you can count on in each short episode is a benediction for the listener.
The name Low in the Water comes from a lyric in one of Eugene Peterson’s poems, Quiet, published in Holy Luck:
"Quiet" E.H. Peterson in Holy Luck
Our latest guest, a common loon,
Arrived this winter unannounced
And bringing gifts - guests do that,
Bring gifts - filling heart and home
With beauty: wild, elusive, sleek,
Low in the water, this contemplative
Loon is an icon for living present
But detached. I rarely see him fly
But he can fly. This loon dives, dives
Long and deep. No mere surface
Bird, he goes for the depths. When he dives
I think he prays, searching deep waters
For what keeps him and us alive,
Grace and quiet, buoyant with Presence.
Eugene Peterson’s discussion on “a kind of rough language map” in his chapter First Language, from The Contemplative Pastor is helpful in what I am trying to communicate.
Language 1 is the language of intimacy and relationship. It is the first language we learn, primary/primal language.
Language 2 is the language of information, the major language used in schools.
Language 3 is the language of motivation, the major language of advertising and politics and propaganda.
“When I first started listening to language with these discriminations, I realized how thoroughly culture-conditioned I was. Talk about being conformed to this world! My use of language in the community of faith was a mirror image of the culture of a lot of information, a lot of publicity, not much intimacy. My ministry was voiced almost entirely in the language of description and of persuasion—telling what was there, urging what could be. I was a great explainer. I was a pretty good exhorter. I was duplicating in the church what I had learned in my thoroughly secularized schools and sales-saturated society, but I wasn’t giving people much help in developing and using the language that was basic to both their humanity and their faith, the language of love and prayer.” The Contemplative Pastor, 92-93.
I want to hear (actually, I NEED TO HEAR) Language 1, and want to speak it too, and imagine it to be the region of the Language Map where this podcast will find a home.
