This interview is a joy - worth listening to more than once.

James Carroll speaks a genuinely Christian faith which is deeply rooted in human experience. As I listened to him, I kept thinking that my son the priest and my Jewish son-in-law could listen to what Carroll is saying pretty simply - neither would have to filter or interpret churchy in group language to get to a point of conversation. In fact I think our religiously diverse family might be able and to at a deeper level for listening to this. I look forward to his longer address at Trinity Institute.

This July after 35 years of parish ministry, I embarked on a new stage of work which has meant a lot of travel, and even when I'm home it's meant worshiping in a different church almost every Sunday. That's my context for hearing this - lots of preaching from people I'd never heard preach before. Sometimes it's been really, really good. We have some extraordinary preachers in our church. Other times I hear us struggling with a serious language problem, straining for authentic language to talk about faith. Or straining life to fit faith. (What I love about this intellectually responsible, faithful address is that it stays grounded in experience.)

When we're not grounded, as Carroll is here, the strain seems to go two opposite directions. Sometimes we take the language of faith as a given and use to bend and stretch our ordinary experience to fit what faith says it ought to be. Experience ends up unrecognizable. Other times studied ordinariness reduces faith to nothing except folk wisdom (or the contemporary version of it - ever so slightly left of center NPR politics). Those are the sermons that make some kind of sense, but leave me wondering whether it made any difference at all to gather in God's name to say it.

I don't think I've ever heard James Carroll speak before. Here's a Roman Catholic whose voice reminds us Anglican/Episcopalians what it sounds like when scripture, reason (experience), and tradition are in healthy, natural dialogue.

In Bangkok I share with Buddhists, Baptists, Muslims and Jews. I appreciate Carroll's comments, and the skills of the interviewer, in making this conversation shareable.

Wow! That is a terrific interview! What a wise and godly man Carroll is. I have read his books and his columns in the Boston Globe, but I have never heard him speak before. In his quiet way, he is a powerful voice.

Thanks for posting this.

June Butler