Rusty Reno on The Ordinary Practices that Shape the Soul

Brian Williams: Greetings, folks. This is Brian Williams, host of Forged, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute about forging lives of discipline, delight, craft, calling that draws tradition wisdom into today's world. We're recording this morning from my office in beautiful Templeton Hall on the campus of Eastern University in Saint David's, Pennsylvania. I'm really delighted to have on the show today Rusty Rootedness, theologian and culture critic who many of you may know. You may know him as the editor of First Things, really America's leading journal on religion, culture, and public life.

First Things is a journal I've been reading and have subscribed to off and on since it was first published back in 1990, and I have very fond memories of reading it alongside Image Journal, and Books and Culture, and Cornerstone Magazine, if anybody remember those fine publications. Some of you may know Rusty as the author of Return of the Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West. You may know his book, Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, or his essays in Fighting the Noonday Devil. He's more than a culture critic and theologian. Like many of us, Rusty is also a husband, a father, and a churchman.

Though unlike many of us, he's also a very experienced rock climber who did some, as we call it, dirtbagging back in Yosemite, over in Yosemite back in the eighties, and worked various industrial jobs, as I understand it, before he made his way to Yale University for his graduate work in religious ethics, and before he became became a professor at Creighton University, where he taught theology for twenty years. So welcome to the Forged podcast, Rusty.

Rusty Reno: Great to be with you, Brian.

Brian Williams: Thank you, sir. And you're coming to us from the first things headquarters in New York. Is that right?

Rusty Reno: Yes. This is world headquarters for first things. Yes.

Brian Williams: That's great. And just a little plug, I will say, we've had a nice collaboration the last couple years between the Temple and Honors College and First Things for their intellectual retreat, which First Things runs every August at the Union League in New York City. We've been privileged to help them run some of their seminars the last couple years and are looking forward to next year's intellectual retreat, on maybe art and beauty, it seems like. So we'll we'll see.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. I'm grateful for your team's done a great job, leading leading the discussions, and it's a opportunity for folks to spend a full day discussing preassigned readings. It's a little bit of a kind of back to college experience, I think, for for folks, and and people find it very enriching and rewarding.

Brian Williams: Yeah. It's been great. Our first year we did it, at least. We reflected on Christian citizenship and the political order, last year on technology, and looking forward to putting together the reader for next summer. Now Rusty, you and I could discuss theology and ethics and philosophy, I'm sure, all day, but I tend to be a little more interested, certainly in this podcast, about conversing about how our theology and philosophy gets fleshed out in our lives.

I'm really interested in the embodied practices that constitute a well lived and flourishing human life. So you do first things. Let me take you back to start here to some first things and get you to reflect a little bit about growing up in Baltimore in the 1960s and 70s. I teach a class to our graduating seniors called The Ordinary Life, and in that class, we reflect upon just what constitutes the well lived ordinary lives that you're gonna be pursuing, and we think about, we frame it with John Finis' idea of basic human goods, and Albert Boardman's concept of focal practices. But anytime we talk about any of the topics from family, to work, to money, to friends, to sex, to marriage, we always reflect first on those practices or ideas we inherited from our own families, the things that we're bringing forward into our our lives.

So let me get you to reflect just a little bit about growing up in Baltimore in the in the sixties and seventies. Were there focal practices and patterns that kind of framed your family life early on?

Rusty Reno: Gosh. You know, I think that I had such a normal I had my childhood was so normal that it was abnormal. It was abnormally normal. I was born in 1959, and my mom I'm one of four kids, and my father was a a young lawyer, and my mom was a homemaker. And, you know, church, I grew up as raised as an Episcopalian.

I went to the same church that my cousins went to and my grandparents went to, that my father had gone to starting when he was a small child. His parents moved to Baltimore when he was two or three years old. So tremendous continuity there. And then, you know, Boy Scouts, you know, sports teams. I was very free range, as they say now.

Okay. But

Brian Williams: what does that mean?

Rusty Reno: Well, I think my parents only vaguely knew what grade I was in. And my dad always said, well, you know, he thought his kids probably weren't gonna have much difficulty with academic work, and he turned out to be that turned out to be an accurate statement. Three of the four of us will end up becoming college professors.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's that's great. Yeah. Were there so when when you think like the weekly rhythms of the Reno household, or daily or weekly rhythms, what what did that look like? Were there you know, like, at my house, you could set your clock by Heather Williams' dinner at 6PM.

I mean, today, if you show up to Meredith and Heather's house, six p. M, dinner's gonna be on the table. It's all gonna be set. Before we went to bed at night, we would read scripture, pray, or stories, or whatever it happened to be, but some of those regular rhythms and patterns that I think ended up framing my very, you know, extraordinary ordinary childhood life as well.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. The family dinner, I always tell younger people that it's the single most important thing you do as a parent is to have sit down family dinner every night. I think a lot of sociological studies indicate that that has a real anchoring influence, and I certainly benefited from that. And my dad was very interested in the outdoors, and we did a lot of hiking.

Brian Williams: Okay.

Rusty Reno: And so the camping, you know, I I can't you know, there was many it was a long time before I stayed in a hotel room. And it wasn't so much a financial, although that's a factor when you have four kids. But it was it was more a matter of both my parents just they loved the outdoors.

Brian Williams: Yeah. So tell me about that. You're growing up in Baltimore, kinda urban setting. So where where did you guys have to go to get into the the outdoors? Is that Blue Ridge Mountains?

Is that Poconos? Or is where would you go?

Rusty Reno: Here we go on winter ski trips to the Poconos, and the Boy Scout troop would have camping trips and various state forests and so on as far as far west as the Shenandoah, you know, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But there's all kinds of places in Pennsylvania and Western Maryland that are actually pretty close. You know, we wound up living in Omaha, Nebraska for twenty years. And one of the striking things about the Midwest is you can make money with the land. Yeah.

And so 99% of the state of Nebraska is privately owned because it's agricultural. Yep. And so, actually, there were less even though you could go out of the city and be in the open cornfields, there was just less kind of outdoors in the sense of woods and a place you could get lost hiking.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's interesting. Okay. So I grew up in Southern Missouri in the Ozark Mountains, on the border of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma down there. And Missouri must be very different then from Nebraska because we have the Mark Twain National Forest, and the whole range of the Ozarks.

So it wasn't hard for us as kids to get lost in the backwoods behind our home, or, you know, about anywhere in the Ozarks. I didn't realize, maybe maybe most of Nebraska is cornfields, and Missouri is too rocky to maybe grow much down

Rusty Reno: right no mountains. There's no natural I mean, typically in the East Coast Of The United States, I live in New York City, people say, oh, you love the outdoors. It must be very hard. I say, well, actually, the outdoors is a lot more accessible to New York City than it was to Omaha. And and part of it is that you have these rugged landscapes that were never farmed.

I mean, you can't farm on a on a on a on a mountainside.

Brian Williams: Yep. That's right.

Rusty Reno: And, you know, just that Iowa's the same way Yep. As Nebraska. Illinois, although Southern Illinois has some big state parks. But but you you you don't notice it until you you miss it.

Brian Williams: Yeah. No. Very much so. Very much so.

Rusty Reno: So I would say that was a big thing for if I look back on my childhood, two two things really stand out. One is just the presence of my parents in my life. As I say, free range, but they were just around. And then secondly was the outdoors. And obviously, that had a big impact on me.

Eventually, I wound up becoming a rock climbing fanatic and all those sorts of things. So that's not that there was a continuity there.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Did you carry that on with your own kids? Like, when you think about building your your your own family with your kids? Did you guys carry on?

Rusty Reno: Oh, endless Did you? Road trips to the Rocky Mountains when the kids were small, camping and so on. But rock climbing is not for everyone, and neither of my kids were my wife and I said, you don't have a choice. Everybody has to hike, but not everybody has to tie on the rope and Yeah. Do something that's frightening like that.

And so they did a little, but not very much.

Brian Williams: Okay. Okay. Did your wife rock climb with you

Rusty Reno: as well? When we got married, yes, before kids. I mean, it wasn't a passion for her. She's athletic, and she loves the outdoors, and she was happy to do it with me. Yeah.

But she's also equally happy not to do it.

Brian Williams: Do you do you still get out much? Do you do you have time to get out much? Mean, you're very busy here in New York and running the journal and those kind of things.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. The day job, it kind of gets in the way.

Brian Williams: It does get in the

Rusty Reno: way. But I I my goal is to climb outdoors once a month. Okay.

Brian Williams: And then

Rusty Reno: I go to the climbing gym to stay in shape. And do I achieve that goal? I'd say, not always. But, when I travel for work, some sometimes I get invited to give a lecture, and I say I'll only come I'll only come if you find someone to go rock climbing with me.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Is that right? Okay. I often, when I'm when I'm traveling and speaking, I'll be like, okay. What what are the trails nearby that I can go run?

What's the mountain nearby that I can go summit? Yeah. That that's that's pretty regular for me as well. That's great.

Rusty Reno: Do you do you what you need to do is you need to build that into your ask. Because it's it's so much easier to do something really cool and fun Yeah. If you have a local that of knows where the trailhead is, and like what's the best use of a beautiful afternoon?

Brian Williams: I will say one of the one of the most interesting moments like this I've had, I was in Nigeria last year, about a year ago, speaking outside Joss, and the organizers knew that I love to hike and love to run, but it wasn't safe to do that by myself because there were

Rusty Reno: Oh, no.

Brian Williams: There was there were a few Fulani Fulani Islamists who would be on the lookout for a a guy like me to maybe abduct. And so they had connections in the local Nigerian army. So the organizer contacted the local commander who had three Nigerian soldiers carrying AK 40 sevens take me out into the mountains, into the hills around where we were, and go hiking with with me to to keep me safe.

Rusty Reno: Now that is a unique experience.

Brian Williams: Right? So I came back with some great pictures, will say. So it's the first time I've hiked with guys carrying machine guns, but I did get out into the hills, which is great. So so yeah. So tell me a little bit more about the the rhythms and and practices of your family life.

Did you guys have, like, as you you went out, family dinner it sounds like, were there other kind of rhythms and practices that you've built into either your family life or just your own life? I mean, obviously, rock climbing is one of them.

Rusty Reno: You know, church. Yeah. Books. You know, the our that my house growing up was filled with books. My mom was a huge reader.

My dad too, but my his She was a big really big reader. And and I think that that that obviously you know, I became a college professor and endless books. As my wife laid down the law after we got married that books would not be the main decorative feature of the living room.

Brian Williams: We've had this debate as well, and I think the the the perfect thing for a living room are shelves of books. My wife, who's an artist and art teacher said, no. Actually, that's not true. Let's make you an office.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. That there's our wives are are obviously wiser than we are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Clearly. Hey. So And also, I think the I mean, I you know, probably you're in the same boat here, but just having, you know, your mom and your dad I mean, marriage is is without friction and and tension at times. But to just the over the overriding, you know, the overriding experience or or witnessing two people, two grown ups, men and a woman work out a life together. Yeah.

That's right. And I think, you know, I've always my line is that marriage is the peace treaty and the war between the sexes. And and I think that that it's a very precious thing to give that to boys and girls as they're growing up. Yeah. It it's the single I think it's the it's the and we all have to have some home base, I think of, where we feel like we can we can, you know, we won't get tagged out.

And and the the marital bond provides that kind of stability in in and not just for kids, but for my wife and I. I'm always very grateful. You know, been married for thirty nine years. I guess we have our thirty ninth anniversary coming up next week. I should remember that.

Yeah. You should. Congratulations. One time we moved to Omaha. We just had a baby.

All kinds of things that happened. And my mother-in-law calls, and she's, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm I forgot to call you yesterday to wish you a happy anniversary. And my wife puts her hand on the phone and says, guess what? Yesterday was our anniversary.

And so, obviously, we're made for each other because we both forgot.

Brian Williams: Forgot it. No. No. That's great. Yeah.

I I I agree thinking I I mean, my my experience was similar. Mom and dad still still married. Mom was home for a time, but mom was a nurse, and she made sure she worked to be there when, so she could be there when we went off to school and came home from school, and mom and dad have lived in the same home since I think 1965 or something like that. Mhmm. And in a way, it has allowed me to traipse off to various parts of the the world, to live in Canada, and The UK, and different places in The US, and in part because, now that I think about it, there is that that kind of anchor point that is a kind of stability point for for me as well.

I mean, that that raises questions, obviously, about our contemporary culture, where, you know, a lot of our a lot of my students, a lot of probably your students don't don't have that kind of anchor point.

Rusty Reno: No. I think I really my heart goes out to them.

Brian Williams: Mhmm.

Rusty Reno: It's I mean, everybody has to find a way, and and there are many broken families that that where one or even both of the the divorced parents are really kind of make heroic efforts to compensate. So I don't want to say that it's always a disaster or something like that, but it's it's a it's a it's a it can you're missing out on something that that I you and I kind of take for granted. So it's a hard time. I don't envy young people in the present Yeah.

Brian Williams: What kind of I'm curious. Do you do you have counsel for, you know, young married couples that you give them to, you know, help them think, okay, the significance of the stability of their their their marriage, not only for, you know, themselves, but also for for their families and the kind of micro cultures they live in?

Rusty Reno: You know, I there are two things. I mean, there's there's maybe three things. Well, there's obviously this this family dinner thing. But you know, my mom told me later in life that my father, when he was gunning the engines, you know, trying to make partner at the law firm, that he would come home for from work. It's about a twenty, thirty, twenty five minute drive.

And then have dinner with us, and we go to bed, and then he'd drive back to the office to work at night. Oh, wow. And I actually I recapitulated that as a young professor. I would I would come home with with I was in law school. Then we and when the kids went to bed, I would drive back to my office at Creighton University and work on my various projects.

So I think there's a don't ever underestimate the importance of being there.

Brian Williams: Yeah. And sometimes Right?

Rusty Reno: Well, then also, I often, you know, really think hard about going back. I mean, you know, you our our circles are these sort of high achieving people and these young people, and you want them to move on and and accomplish things. And it you know, sometimes it's the right thing. You gotta go you go to Washington. You go to New York.

You go to Los Angeles, wherever. Tech job in the Bay Area and so on. But if you're if you're from Baltimore or, you know, what your town was in Missouri Yeah. You know, just think about it. Don't underestimate.

You know, like I said, I went to church with my extended family. Mhmm. My cousins. Yeah. My my my father's sister had four kids.

They're the same age as me, so into you know? So that kind of rootedness is a precious thing. And I feel kinda bad from I didn't give that quite to my children.

Brian Williams: Oh, I know. And it's interesting. We just had this conversation. So in my ordinary life class, we finished the semester, every semester, by reading Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. I don't know if you know it, but, you know, one of the guiding threads is Hannah Coulter has these three children who go off and get an education, and instead of coming back to make their place a better place, they go off to try to find a better place that doesn't really exist.

And so we have this long conversation about with my students, are you going back to your place to make it a better place, or are you going on to a different place? And my experience was growing up in Joplin, Missouri, but then going to Vancouver, British Columbia for a decade, a few years back in Kansas, over in The UK, now I'm in Philadelphia, and so I didn't go back to my place, if you will, to make it a better place. My kids' experience is very different than mine. Each of my three kids were born in different countries, and then, you know, lived there, and then moved somewhere else. And so, you know, I'm waiting till they we've started that reflection process.

Like, what has this experience been like for you? One of my colleagues who helps me teach this class, Jeff Dill, he grew up a mile from where we teach, went off to school, and then came back. So he has an experience of that rootedness or the goodness of rootedness that I don't have. My wife's from a small town in Kansas where you don't really move away. The family's intergenerational families, they marry each other, and there's a goodness to that kind of rootedness that I that I will never experience.

Rusty Reno: That's a precious thing. I mean, you know, one of the curses of the academic life is you have so little control of where you end up. I mean Yeah. You know, it's not like you can say, well, I'm gonna take a job. You know?

Especially if you're someplace that doesn't even have a university. Yeah. So yeah. When my mom was dying, she got she died of cancer in 2004, and I went back every month for about eighteen months. And I would go jogging in my old jogging routes.

And I remember how old was I at the time? So 44 or 45. Yeah. And I remember thinking, why did I ever leave? Of course, I was 18 or 19

Brian Williams: That's right.

Rusty Reno: That's exactly what I wanted to do.

Brian Williams: No. That's exactly right. And it doesn't matter where you're from. Mean, I know people who grew up in Vancouver, BC. It was one of those beautiful cities in the world, and they couldn't wait to get out and go somewhere.

And I said, you know, the rest of the world wants to live where you grew up. Right? But for them, it was like, no. We've gotta go off and find

Rusty Reno: our It's of the modern Western Yeah. Vanderlust.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's

Rusty Reno: right. The the new. Yeah. And we're kind of complicated creatures, you know. And I I do think that these two these two aspects, the new, which is nothing I mean, sometimes that can be very enriching, but also we should never lose sight of the of the preciousness of the old.

Brian Williams: Yeah. And that's what I mean, I I don't know if this is a coastal thing. I mean, obviously, I'm from the Midwest and and didn't stay put. But I wonder if And here's where Wendell Berry goes with this. I think the kind of agrarian communities, you may be in smaller communities where that's more common because people haven't moved there, whereas urban centers, everybody's from somewhere else.

Know, I mean, if you met somebody in Vancouver who grew up in Vancouver, sometimes it was surprising because so many people had moved there. Whereas, when you go to Galesburg, Kansas, you don't meet very many people that moved into Galesburg, Kansas because once you're in Galesburg, Kansas, you stay there, but there's not a whole lot, God bless it, to draw other people. And so you end up having these multi generational communities.

Rusty Reno: You know, the the kind of characteristic vice of of the small town is a kind of complacency and and conformism. The characteristic vice of the big city is kind of a rootlessness and lack of connection. And and, you know, I think, you know, in the Return of the Strong Gods book, I mean, part of my my sense is is is that the our our anxieties and fears are shifting. You know, that if for me, I was born in, like, say, 1959, the big middle class consensus, three networks, everybody listening to the same music. Mhmm.

You could kind of take the you could take the kind of coherence of life for granted. And so you want to leaven it with the new

Brian Williams: That's right.

Rusty Reno: New experiences. Well, now I think young people, it's they're floating in a liquid world with no solid place to stand. And so the concern is not claustrophobia. The concern is a kind of disintegration. A disintegrated soul rather than a kind of crimped and cramped soul.

Brian Williams: Yeah. And here Or

Rusty Reno: a formless soul.

Brian Williams: A formless soul. And I mean, I was I haven't read it cover to cover, but I know your book on the Noonday Devil Mhmm. Is about the vice of acedia. Yep. And acedia, I don't know how you would describe it, I think of acedia as a kind of spiritual listlessness, a kind of spiritual lethargy where you feel like nothing really matters, and it doesn't, you know, nothing is important, and so there's a kind of, almost like a spiritual or intellectual sloth perhaps.

Mhmm. And I sometimes tell my students, I think it grows out of our age's vice of cynicism and skepticism. Yes. But I think what we're describing here, this kind of rootlessness, is, I mean, is it also at the heart of the kinda, what I would say, the acedia pandemic that we might see?

Rusty Reno: I think so because it one, you could translate acedia as despair. Yeah. And so the rootlessness is that, you know, there's no what's the point of of getting involved? What's the point of setting down roots? Nothing is trustworthy.

Marriage as an institution isn't trustworthy. I think increasingly young people go to university, they don't really trust the institution. And it's not just the woke stuff, but it's the careerism, the transactional nature of everything. I think it's pretty demoralizing environment. And that's going to lead to because you know, giving your soul kind of a clear form takes work.

Yeah. It's a discipline and commitment and engagement over time of doing something, being someplace, and and and becoming someone. And if you don't feel like you're ever going to make any progress or there's no real goal worth striving for, then you're going to I think that is this spiritual condition of listlessness, as TS Eliot, his line from the four quartets, distracted from distraction by distraction.

Brian Williams: Yeah. And this is what Kierkegaard calls the sickness unto death, and seems like what's Cornel West has that line that our culture is a they're market driven weapons of mass distraction. Yes. It seems

Rusty Reno: Social media.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Right? I mean, all of that distracts us. I mean, think there's also don't you think there's a fear of commitment to something, a tradition, maybe a place, a belief, because we're not sure that we can really trust it. Yes.

Right? I mean, so so our our confidence in our traditions and our institutions and those kind of cultural I mean, those the are those the strong gods that we have jettisoned?

Rusty Reno: The strong gods are the that's my metaphor to describe the the things that win our love and loyalty. Yeah. The things that we're willing to sacrifice for. Right. And, of course, you know, making sacrificing something of, you know, that I want maybe in the near term or even in the medium term is you know, it can be painful.

So you have to be convinced that it's gonna be worth it. Mhmm. And, you know, marriage is a good example. If you're If you think divorce is kind of on the horizon, then you're not likely to sort of do the hard work of getting through the tough times. And if you think that you know, where you're living is going to be torn down you know, to by the developer in order to build something that's more lucrative.

You're you're not likely to beautify it. So I think there are a lot of aspects of our social order that have evolved in such a way that they discourage that kind of devotion, commitment, sort of doing things for the long haul.

Brian Williams: And giving yourself to a people and a place over time, maybe, right, as well that where you you you create a life by committing yourself to, I think, a people and a place in part that that it seems like, you know, maybe our our our culture of always, like you said, the the wanderlust culture, always looking for the new, or the exciting, or the passionate kind of thing, keeps you from settling into the kind of long slow rhythms of the ordinary life?

Rusty Reno: Yeah. Emerson said travel is a fool's paradise. Mhmm. Mhmm. He was thinking of the sort of first generation of wealth from the first industrial revolution in Massachusetts, and was leading the young men and women of these factory owners to go to Italy and France to sort of find true culture.

Right. And of course, he thought that their tasks should be to nurture distinctively American culture.

Brian Williams: Make make culture, not just go find it elsewhere.

Rusty Reno: Right. Right? Yeah. Right.

Brian Williams: Yeah. I think that's right. And I say that as somebody who loves to travel and has traveled a lot and enjoyed that.

Rusty Reno: Well, good for you. I I gotta say, I I I'm not a big I mean, my wife always complains that I like to go to the same place over and over again.

Brian Williams: Is that right? Do you have do you have the one diner you go to in the neighborhood?

Rusty Reno: No. No. She's thinking of the fact that we went to Yosemite like a gazillion times Okay. In the first ten years of our marriage. So

Brian Williams: Oh, that's funny. My brother and are both Let's

Rusty Reno: go on vacation. Where should we go? Oh, let's

Brian Williams: go to Okay. My brother and I are both travelers, and we like to travel together sometimes, but it's getting harder and harder to find countries that neither one of us have been to. And so, you know, we sit and say, okay. Where we do the opposite, I guess. Where have we not been?

And That's so my brother. Goes all

Rusty Reno: over oh, he goes all over the world for work. And I always say, you're my proxy. You know, you've been there. I don't need to go.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Well, just just send pictures. Yeah. So my that's how my brother and I found ourselves traipsing through Latvia and Estonia a few years ago because we thought, well, we've not been there, so let's go see what we can find. And it was marvelous, I have to say, all kinds of reasons.

Rusty Reno: I Isaiah Berlin said of himself that he was a taxi cab, and he came when called. And I feel the same way. I've seen a lot of places, and I've enjoyed them. But the you know, people are what makes life rich. Yeah.

And I do enjoy going to these places, but especially if if it's in part of a sort of activity that you know, whether it's a conference or Yeah. Giving a talk or or even just visiting friends who happen to live in beautiful places. There's just something richer about having it be peopled rather than just sightseeing.

Brian Williams: Yeah. No. I I I agree. And people is important. And my wife reminds me, you can find good people no matter where you live.

Rusty Reno: Absolutely. I think that's a very important message to you know, there are I mean, ultimately, we lived in Omaha for twenty years. I never would have chosen to move to Omaha, Nebraska. It's where I got a job. And so we moved.

And we grew to love the place because of our deep friendships. You can make friends. You know, you've it's it there are interesting people. And some of the most lasting friendships were not with kind of academically oriented folks, but they're people I shared activities with, like rock climbing and cycling and and this and church. And that those those friendships are they sort of pull us outside of our usual you know, you know, you and I are kind of we'll we'll we'll talk as my wife calls it, academic blah blah.

She says, you know, you need your academic blah blah time.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Fair fair enough. I I do remember when we lived in Vancouver, I was there for school, and everybody who was at school was there for school, and we were all transient because none of us were from there, and none of us knew We all knew we weren't staying there. But then my wife got a job at a at a large Anglican church there as a children and family minister, and all of a sudden, we were brought into a community of rooted people, of stable people, and you realized, oh, this community existed before I got here. These people are gonna stay once I'm gone.

And it changed our experience of living there because we were drawn into a stable community that we hadn't been in when our community was simply simply academic students. Right? And because for the same reason, not only were they stable, it was guys who were that guy was laying brick. That guy sells insurance. That guy's in politics.

And and that was made for a much richer experience once we were brought into that that kind of a community.

Rusty Reno: One of the problems that we face as a country is that the sort of elite class is very isolated from everybody else. And I think churchgoing I mean, look. To worship and honor God is a natural duty that we all have, and so that's why you go to church. But there's a kind of a foreseen but not intended aspect of it, which is that it puts you in touch with people who are not like you. You know?

So C. S. Lewis said that philia, the love of friendship is shoulder to shoulder, not face to face. It's engaging in common activities that we share together, that we develop these bonds. And and I would encourage, you know, young people, think about what are what are the things that, know, the activities that, if you will, draw you draw you outside of yourself.

You know, you really want to give yourself to that activity. Whether it's, you know, whether it's some sort of sports thing like rock climbing, or it could be community service, or obviously worship is one of those things, or the museum. People and I've said this about finding a mate. People are at their most attractive when they're doing the things that they really do well and love.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Okay. So let's let's talk about something that you really do well, and something that you really love. So let's let's reflect a little bit on on the rock climbing. I mean, I think you and I both enjoy the outdoors.

I'm a runner, and cover some miles, sometimes out in the trails. Used to race and ride downhill mountain bikes up in British Columbia. Did some rock climbing with a couple

Rusty Reno: Sounds dangerous.

Brian Williams: It was dangerous, and I've got the shattered collarbone and trips to the ER to prove it. Yeah. But yeah. Says the man who I think once fell 200 feet climbing out in Yosemite, so which also sounds dangerous. I climbed with guys who were much better than I was, but we climbed the the Stewamis Chief in Squamish one time, which is a 2,000 foot granite rock face.

Beautiful. Is a beautiful spot. But tell us a little more about your your commitment to this this practice of rock climbing. How did you get into it, and and what's it what's what draws you back to it?

Rusty Reno: Yeah. My dad, like I said, he was outdoors, and Yeah. He had done a little bit of kind of mountain climbing when he was a college student, you know, but then marriage and kids and so on. But as we grew older, he would you know, we went to the White Mountains and hiked up Mount Washington, and he realized my mother always said that children don't put limits on parents. Parents put limits on children.

That kids are actually capable of doing quite a bit more

Brian Williams: than you

Rusty Reno: think is really Mhmm. And so my dad realized, like, woah. You know, these eight, nine, 10 year old kids are really actually up to Pretty capable. He enrolled us in Veracera Club trips in the Rocky Mountains over a couple of summers that offered some rudimentary training in the techniques of climbing. In the seventies, it was a hard thing to get into Mhmm.

Because it was just not it was a very much of a niche

Brian Williams: That's right.

Rusty Reno: Sport. And if Baltimore, hardly a hub.

Brian Williams: No. Fair enough. Boulder, Yes. Baltimore, no.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. But so Yeah. We we did these things and and went on these these various trips. And, you know, my older sister, she caught the bug, and my brother, he's done a lot of he's climbed a lot of mountains over the years. But it was really me who really got bitten pretty severely.

And then so when I graduated from high school, I took a gap year, and somebody said, well, if you're really serious about climbing, you gotta go to Yosemite. And so I thought, well, I'll go there for a couple weeks. Well, a couple weeks turned out to be many, many months. Okay. And so I, you know, was a 18 year old who was proficient with the safety techniques, but not all that experienced with the really high end type climbing.

But, you know, within a week of getting Yosemite, I climbed El Capitan with a couple of guys. Okay. And, you know, one thing led to another, and and I really got very good at at the climbing game very quickly. And and that became a a of fixation of mine for more than a decade.

Brian Williams: So give us that scene. So 18 year old Rusty goes out to Yosemite, and you show up in a car with a tent?

Rusty Reno: Oh, no. No. No. I was hitchhiking.

Brian Williams: You hitchhiked. Okay. Even better. So you

Rusty Reno: No car. I didn't I didn't have the money for a car. It was the nineteen seventies. People weren't as rich as we are now. The country wasn't as rich.

And so, if you I mean, a car a car, you gotta pay for gas. Where are gonna put it when you get to the you know, it's one of these kind of walk in campgrounds camp called Camp 4 in Yosemite. So I just kinda showed up, and it's a it's like a singles bar for climbers Okay. Camp four. You know, there may be a 100.

At that point, there were maybe a 100 to a 150 guys, and I think they were all guys, maybe one woman climber, who were basically, some of them came with their partners, but a lot of people were just saying, oh, hey. What what are you up for? You know, what level do you climb? Oh, would you like to do this tomorrow? And so that one thing led to another, and I I I fell in with this one guy who like, super energetic.

And he he he was also not as experienced, but maybe a little bit more so than me. But I kind of rode on the coattails of his tremendous drive, and he wound up becoming one of the top climbers in the world in the nineteen eighties and founded a rock climbing shoe company called Five Ten.

Brian Williams: Oh, sure. What who was it? Charles Cole. Okay. Okay.

Rusty Reno: Have you seen when I was 18, the first week I arrived in Yosemite. Okay. He had just graduated from college, and he was taking his own gap year between college and actually getting a so called real job, which he never really wound up doing.

Brian Williams: Okay. So what what what yeah. Apparently. What yeah. There's a great documentary called Valley Uprising, which is I think about the the Yosemite climbing culture, right, which is good fun.

So what did mom and dad think? I mean, 18 year old son is out in Yosemite climbing, kinda coming back in it?

Rusty Reno: Little bit anxious. Okay. She knitted me a sweater, which she called my armor. My dad was super enthusiastic. He thought that was a great idea.

Okay. Because it's, you know and then I went to college, and then I dropped out of my freshman year to go back to Yosemite. He was not so enthusiastic about that. There was a little bit of anxiety. But, you know, my dad always said, never make threats that you're not willing to follow through on.

Like, if you drop out, I won't pay for college when you come back.

Brian Williams: Right. Because he was going to.

Rusty Reno: He was going to.

Brian Williams: He was going to. Yeah.

Rusty Reno: Yes. So and they probably knew me better than I knew myself. So I went off, and I worked on an oil rig, and I went to Yosemite. I didn't have any money, and it was and I I you know, it was by November after of the what would have been the fall semester of my sophomore year. But I'm living in Rawlins, Wyoming, and I I realized, this is crazy.

I need to get back to college.

Brian Williams: Is that right?

Rusty Reno: Yeah. Okay. The guys I worked with, I mean, they they had me tagged. So what are you doing?

Brian Williams: What are you doing here?

Rusty Reno: You're a book you're a book guy. Yep. Get get back to where you belong.

Brian Williams: Yep. Fine. But let me ask you this question. I mean, it is that were parents in the seventies and eighties comfortable with a higher degree of risk than we are now? Because sometimes my wife and I describe parenting like the seventies is when we let our kids go off and do something.

I mean, I as a 10 year old in 1978 would ride my bike you know, Webb City, and then to Carthage, and then, know, back home. And I'd be gone for eight hours a day, you know, on my little huffy dirt bike. And mom had Dad had no clue where I was. Or I was walking the train tracks, you know, with a packed lunch, and it was fine.

Rusty Reno: Oh, yeah. I mean Right? They would drop my cousins and I would go backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. They'd drop us off on Friday afternoon and pick us up on Sunday night. Yeah.

And then we would make we even we were I mean, 15, 16 years old, but I'm not sure they would let a 10 year old do that. But

Brian Williams: Yeah. But I mean, would come back for dinner at night, but still it's that sense of

Rusty Reno: like No. My mother would kick me out of the house in the summer and said, don't come back until it's dark.

Brian Williams: Oh, well, yeah. And then you you wouldn't stay out until it got dark, and then she'd come call you in. But it does seem like, you know, a different we're we're less comfortable with risk maybe these days than than we were coming out of the seventies and eighties.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. I mean, partly, we there are fewer people have fewer children, so, you know, if you only have one child, the risk, you know, and that's like, woah.

Brian Williams: You know? I gotta pay. Yeah. Yeah. You keep track of this one.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah. And and it was we had, you know, the Great Depression, the World War two.

There there people had been through, you know, difficult times. And so what whereas we've you know, if you're 45 years old now, it's really all sort of been in good

Brian Williams: Pretty good.

Rusty Reno: By and large. And so so it's hard for you know, it's a paradox. The better the better things are, the more you think you have to lose.

Brian Williams: Mhmm. Hey, let me I'm gonna I'm gonna read a paragraph back to you that you wrote, and I'd love to have you reflect on it. Mhmm. And I think it was in the context of of rock climbing, because I think one of the regular practices that make for a well lived ordinary life is being embodied and living into our bodies. And I mean, it's it's, you know, for for me, I know that's been true for the course of my life.

I think it's very hard when you're kind of career driven, and you've got family commitments to set aside time for that. But I'd love to Let me read this back to you, and I'd love to reflect just what is that experience of pushing your body? Why does that feel good to us? Whether it's me running 30 miles on the trails, or you climbing up El Capitan. So here's what you wrote.

You wrote, I'm struck by the paradox. Under physical strain, courting danger exposed, and enjoying the peace that comes from concentrated fluid and purposeful activity. It's a familiar experience. I enjoy climbing even when, perhaps because, it sometimes brings exhaustion, physical suffering, anguishing uncertainty, and moments of terror. Which doesn't sound very fun.

I I ran a 50 mile race on my fiftieth birthday, and one of my students commented, you and I celebrate our birthdays very differently.

Rusty Reno: We have to recognize, Brian, that we are outliers.

Brian Williams: Yeah. I know. I And said, well, this is one of those profound experiences of my life. But you go on to say, to rock climb with Elan, to run fluidly, to leave the floorboards at the foul line, and soar to the basket for a triumphant dunk, I've never experienced and never will. You say these are moments of unimpeded activity, times when everything clicks.

The activity is done with effort, but at the same time effortlessly because of the effort is integral to one's very self. How do you hear those words coming back to you when you think of like the context of of rock climbing and what drives you or has driven you back to the rock wall so many times?

Rusty Reno: You know, Aristotle said happiness is unimpeded activity. And I mean, the physical element is obviously part of it to train your body so that you can so that it it performs. But actually, we're body soul composites. And my experience of rock climbing is that it's really, if you will, a spiritual trial as much as it is a physical trial.

Brian Williams: And what do mean by that?

Rusty Reno: You know, you're on the edge of when you're hanging off El Capitan a couple thousand feet off the ground, your brain is aware that, of the reality of gravity. Yes. And so you have to you're that you have to sort of gather yourself towards that activity of and and that there there's a kind of a a kind of freedom from even your own mortality in in a slight sense. In in the in the physical concentration necessary helps. You know?

You're you're focused on the move, not on, you know, your your your precarious situation. And it's that it's it's that and I would submit that a 50 mile run race you know, the biofeedback that your body is giving you is that you're in mortal danger.

Brian Williams: That's right.

Rusty Reno: I mean, you're not in mortal danger in the sense you're gonna fall off a cliff to your death, but it's the same thing when you're if you do I mean, you're hungry. You're all the biofeedback

Brian Williams: is Things are shutting down, or you're fearing that they're shutting down, and you're always doing this full body scan. What hurts in this mile that might just be a niggle, and you know 10 miles from now, that's gonna be raging,

Rusty Reno: and you think Yeah. You're trying to manage it. But Yeah. Underneath your management, your your soul is I mean, this is the the desert monks emphasized fasting because we live in this world where people don't die of hunger in The United States, and so we don't really recognize the way in which the hunger mechanism is closely connected to well, I mean, thought it was closely connected to sexual. Mhmm.

So they would fast in order to conquer their sexual desires. They're both appetites. Not just both appetites, but they both concern life and death. Okay. And and they're very they're much more primitive than we realize.

And I think that one of my friends who did she was a very accomplished, you know, ultramarathoner in her

Brian Williams: Mhmm.

Rusty Reno: In her forties and fifties. And she said that there's an advantage to age actually in the ultramarathoning space

Brian Williams: That's right.

Rusty Reno: Because young people get frightened. In other words, they they don't know where their real limits are. And they the the biofeedback is coming to them, and they say, no. This this is too much. And as you age and and you get more experience with being at the absolute limit of your physical capacity, you're aware that there's this elastic possibility on the very edge.

You're able to overcome what I think is a a kind of fear. Rock climbing has the same obvious in a more in a much more immediate way. I don't have to be exhausted. I could just be doing something that's particularly exposed or or has an element of danger, objective danger to it. And that you have to you have to attain a degree of self mastery.

And I think that's that experience of self mastery, which is a condition of the soul and not the body. Although the body you know, again, you have to train the body so that

Brian Williams: it'll

Rusty Reno: it'll it'll function, you know, otherwise, you're across purposes. Yeah. But it's really it's really a self mastery is a quality of the soul, and I think that's the deep satisfaction that people get when they push themselves to their limits.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Because that's kind the question you

Rusty Reno: a physical limit. I mean, there's a physical limit, but, you know, you and I are are, you know, probably genetically on the on the far out spectrum, you know, way up way or we're on the tail. But a person could be much more in the median in terms of endurance and speed and all that kind of stuff. But they can also push in their own way to their limit, and they can attain some of the same the same kind of deep inner satisfaction that you and I have experienced. So you don't have to be a world class x, y, or z in order to do that.

And, you know, and it it's not just in in the athletic side of things. I mean, being a parent, being an academic, you know, finding that you're able to do things that you really never realized you could do.

Brian Williams: So do you think I mean, you When you think about it, because I've tried to explain this to people too, and I've used the language of satisfaction and satisfying, and sometimes I'll say, you know, training for a long race is more about training your mind sometimes than it is your body. Because in a long race, you gotta figure out what to do with your head for, you know, five, ten, fifteen hours. So for you, as I'm just as I'm hearing you describe it, for you, is it is it more about that discipline and self mastery, and pursuing, you know, accomplishing kind of a long range goal that brings that satisfaction more than because you could say, no, we're embodied souls. We're in sold bodies, and so using my body in this kind of a way brings a kind of satisfaction that can't be experienced any other way because I can't replicate what I do with my body when I'm not using my body.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. When I turned 40, Charles my friend Charles Cole and I went up to Half Dome to do some route, and he said, you know, we're friends because we both like being tired.

Brian Williams: Hey. Get me in another ultramarathon around, and we'll talk running for, you know you know, all all afternoon.

Rusty Reno: But I I think that when I look back on on I mean, when I was really pushing myself to at the highest limit when in my late twenties was when I really pushed the highest limits for climbing. I I I started climbing without a rope at the local climbing area. Easy things that I was confident on. But to basically that's mental training. So that you what you're do and I did that because I wanted to be able to climb confidently well above my Yeah.

Protection. Because when you go to the Canadian Rockies and do some extreme north face, you might not you might have to basically risk a very, very long fall. Yeah. And you have to be able to master fear. And and so that kind of mass mastery, as I've I've written on this, that it's like you're giving the you're not it's not a death wish.

It's a life wish in the sense that you want to give the finger to death, which you can't which you can't do at a at a at a distance.

Brian Williams: Well, and you can't you can't do sitting on your couch eating Doritos playing video games, as I tell my kids. Right? I mean, there is an element of, like, being out there in my body, putting my body at that at that kind of Well, that's a you know, kind place.

Rusty Reno: Right? These days about, you know, gotta touch grass. And and there's a kind of but I I I was never I mean, I'm old enough that the the social media digital world had had yet to didn't exist. I mean, the TV and things like that, but there were no video games when I was a And so so just being out there was kind of a given. And I was very kinetic, so it was just natural that I gravitated towards sports and all that kind of stuff.

But the climbing was more it was it was my entry actually into the spiritual life. And I I think it was again, it had to do with this you know, I give you life I give you life abundant. And I had these realizations, even though there were these kind of if you call them peak experiences when I was 18, 19 years old, living in Yosemite. I was kind of vaguely aware that this isn't the real thing, or it that's not accurate. There's something more.

I mean, obviously, a real thing. But there's something more. Don't be confused by, if you will, natural transcendence. Don't confuse it with supernatural transcendence. And that's what kind of got me going in the direction of go to college and reap you know, take classes.

And next thing you know, I'm majoring in religion. Like, where the hell did that happen? Anybody who met me when I was 18, 19 years old would be very baffled that I I wound up being a theology professor. What? Where was that coming from?

Brian Williams: Yeah. I still have I still meet friends who knew me when I was punk rock, you know, high school, Brian. And they're like, wait a second. You teach ethics? Hold on.

Yes. Exactly. I'm just trying to understand my earlier life. You know? And put it in context.

Rusty Reno: But the pathway did seem to go through like, you know, you're when you are in these extreme situations, you you you can't be just a sort of adolescent punk. No. It may it requires you to draw, you know, draw upon you know, there's something of the will that has to be hardened. You know? And again, we use this term self mastery.

And then, know, Saint Augustine says, you know, but what am I but a guide to my own self destruction? And you begin to realize that, well, mastery, while it may be a necessary condition, it's not a sufficient

Brian Williams: No. That that's yeah. That's that's exactly right. But first, I think for some some folks, it's not a condition at all. There is no self mastery.

So if nothing else, you know, kind of the athletic pursuit does

Rusty Reno: I think for those who have an interest in it Yeah. I think it can be a very it can be a very helpful way to, if you will, get outside of your your your little self and find a larger self.

Brian Williams: Yeah. I think that's right. And recognizing that it is a good worth pursuing. We are made in our physical bodies, and so there is a sense in which this is a good worth pursuing and sacrificing for. And for an academic like you you and I, I know for me, I live in my head most of the time, and the only time I'd get out of my head sometimes would be to go race down a mountain on my mountain bike.

And it felt like, weirdly, even though I was pushing my body to the extreme and and sometimes breaking my body, I would I would finish and I'd I'd feel so refreshed because it was like a reprieve of my mind. I could stop my thinking because if you weren't concentrated concentrating on what you were doing on that downhill mountain bike, you were really gonna hurt yourself, so you had to be fully present.

Rusty Reno: And thinking about work. I had

Brian Williams: to I I could forget about work. I forget forget about

Rusty Reno: That's what I tell people to say. Why do you go rock climbing? It's well, because it's relaxing. My what? Well, I mean, there's an element of danger, so therefore you can't think about work.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I find that so so satisfying. Maybe that's part of what draws me back to gets me outside

Rusty Reno: core of self. And there are ways that we should probably be thinking, and and people who are do these things. But what I learned, you know, I got good at something at age 18 or 19. And I went to college. I said, well, wait a minute.

You know? I should work at this. I should actually be good at this. Mhmm. You know?

I I I kind of drifted through my first year, like I say, and dropped dropped out. Then when I came back, it was like, oh, no. Come on. You know? If you can get if climb Mount Capitan, you should be able to get As

Brian Williams: You can do this.

Rusty Reno: In your college classes.

Brian Williams: Yeah. And that's part of, I think, the the value and the satisfaction that many people find in dedicating themselves to a craft, whatever that craft happens to be. Whatever that You we think about it as a hobby, fine. But it kind of Whatever that craft happens to be, whether that's woodworking, whether that's, you know, stone carving, whether that's cooking, whatever that is, to give myself to a craft over time, it become To excel at it.

Rusty Reno: Well, we learn what excellence we learn what excellence is. You know, Plato, he urges that the young be taught, was it music and geometry? Because it it develops in them a desire for truth. Because, you know, it's like the adamantine truths of geometric proofs or That's right. Woah.

Wow. I want more of that. Yeah. But also I think it's because it, if you will, developed our taste buds for truth, so we can tell the true from the false. And and I think learning what it what excellence is now, of course, excellence and we're working is not the highest excellence.

But you you learn what excellence is, and then you move up the ladder, and, you know, you realize as I said, I attained a kind of excellence in rock climbing. And I said, wait a minute. I I should pursue excellence in the life of the mind. And then what about, you know, as my faith grows and I become more serious about Christianity, well, shouldn't I be shouldn't I, like, not just be satisfied with being a mediocre Christian? Mhmm.

Brian Williams: How's that gone?

Rusty Reno: Oh, I mean, it's a struggle, but Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would get out of shape, rock climbing, I have to get myself back in shape. Know, it's like Martin Luther says, you you fall off the horse, you get back on again. Right?

Brian Williams: Yeah. And I find, you know, and I'm sure most people do, I I find that if I'm disciplined in one area, it helps me be maintain discipline in another area. You know, my my sleep, my exercise, my eating, my reading, my spiritual devotion. All of those seem to like, you know, fall apart at the same time.

Rusty Reno: Yes. And then

Brian Williams: if I if I bring one back into place, it's like, okay, that helps me. Right? That helps you with all of the other ones.

Rusty Reno: You know, the Aristotle's notion of the unity of the virtues, which is I mean, we all know that I mean, there's a kind of overly rigorous way of reading that, but but I think the the obvious truth is the interconnectedness of the virtues.

Brian Williams: Mhmm.

Rusty Reno: That they you know, years ago, my kids, you know, they were very into chorus classes and choir in high school, and so they wanted to take outside voice lessons. And so I took my daughter, and I signed up. Yeah. She did her one half hour one, and I did a half hour Okay. And one of my friends said, why are taking voice lessons?

So I said,

Brian Williams: well, it's because

Rusty Reno: I wanna become a better writer.

Brian Williams: Okay. Explain that.

Rusty Reno: Well, they're connected, aren't they? Yeah. In some way? You begin to develop ability to in some small way Mhmm. Be able to sing more beautifully.

You're hitting a tuning fork in your brain somehow that will probably carry over to be able to make the words more beautiful.

Brian Williams: Yeah. No. I think that's right. Giving yourself to any craft gives you a sense of what it takes to be good at that craft, a desire to be good at that craft, and an understanding, yeah, maybe an incentive to become better at whatever the craft is.

Rusty Reno: You know? I think I'm more of a platonist than you are. I think Oh, yeah? I think it's not just I think there's a there's a there's a kind of the transcendentals are up there communicating with each other and I am a I

Brian Williams: am a solid Aristotelian. I will say that. And so I'm always skeptical of my Platonist friends a little bit, and this it comes out in conversation over time. So so you think when we're when we're pursuing a craft let's stick with this for just a second because I'm curious to if this is what you mean. When we're pursuing excellence in a craft and we're pursuing whatever it happens to be, you know, I'm trying to create a beautiful I'm sitting at a beautiful table.

I'm using a beautiful coffee mug in my hand here. Is that allowing us to participate in the transcendent somehow through the mere creation of a beautiful object, through the mere pursuit of an element of truth, or through a, you know, a good action. Is that what you're saying?

Rusty Reno: Well, I I think what I I mean, there's obviously there's the craft side of making the beautiful furniture, and you have to master the techniques. And that there's something intrinsically ennobling about that kind of mastery. But the beautiful table, when it's done, is it's it if you will, like I say, it kind of hits a tuning fork in your soul. Mhmm. So that you can you see beauty elsewhere.

You can you can distinguish it. You can kind of recognize it. You can savor it. And we have to be trained to do that. It's not automatic.

Brian Williams: That so is that is that part of your love of architecture and interest in architecture? I mean, because I I know that part because is it is it

Rusty Reno: That was my backup plan. If I didn't Oh, is that right? Yeah. If I didn't get into the graduate program I wanted in theology, I was gonna go to architecture school.

Brian Williams: Well, I'm just thinking so much of our conversation has revolved around the embodied life here, and embodied practices, and climbing, and architecture. I mean, is is architecture a kind of training in beauty? When we're in beautiful spaces, it's kind I hope walking so. Right? Well, well

Rusty Reno: If only it could be more so. But I I I mean, I was interested because I think I came at it from the craft side. I, you know, I I could never get an office job. I think I was too much of an insubordinate personality. And so all my work when in my twenties was in various construction type jobs.

And so I developed capacity to lay bricks and plaster and things like that.

Brian Williams: So you have real skills.

Rusty Reno: As my wife says, actually, you know, you you can be useful sometimes. Exactly. And so the for me, the architecture was, you know, it was from the material world, but I was also interested in the aesthetic side. So that there was that combination that kind of thrilled me. Okay.

Architecture, all art is embodied. You know, the oil on the oil pan on the canvas, the the sculptor and the clay. So it's all embodied. But architecture is is really it it's it's a it's a collective project. Oh.

It has to be Like nothing I've ever been part

Brian Williams: of. Absolutely.

Rusty Reno: It has to be envisioned, designed, and then executed. And it's really quite it's a social it's a social form in the way that, you know, you can architect has to get a client to be able to realize his dreams. Whereas, know, if you're an artist, I mean, you you maybe you need a little bit of money for your materials, but you can you could do your art and just leave it in your studio. Yeah. It doesn't have to be seen by the world.

Brian Williams: And you can write a book that nobody reads too. Right? Often.

Rusty Reno: Yeah. Like yes. Yes.

Brian Williams: Like that happens. Yeah.

Rusty Reno: It does happen. And so whereas architecture is intrinsically public in nature. Yeah. Which is part of why it's also probably I was interested in it also. It's a nascent interest in ethics and political theory and stuff like that.

It's also the most political art because it structures the public square. Yeah. Gives form to the public square. So it it's always you know, if you have some if you have some Marcel Duchamp artwork, you can put it in your home and nobody has to look at it. But if you do a sort of avant garde building with a toilet bowl hanging from the giant toilet bowl hanging from everybody has to look at it.

Brian Williams: That's right. And it shapes our experience as a as a collective, as a community. Right. I mean, this is this is Churchill after World War Two's famous line when they're thinking about redesigning the houses of parliament. And he says, right, first our First we shape our buildings, and afterwards they shape us.

Yes. And so like I said, we spent five years putting up Templeton Hall where I'm at right now, and it was the most collaborative thing I've ever been a part of Mhmm. To be sure. But then pretty quickly, once students indwelt it, we realized the building has now become part of our curriculum, and part of our pedagogy in a kind of wordless way because it shapes our community life, and I hope tutors our students our students' affection for beauty so that when they see when they when they don't see it elsewhere, they they feel the kind of unsettledness. Right?

Rusty Reno: Yep. No. We had at Creighton, one of our Jesuit presidents went on a big building spree of dorms that were in the where they were dignified buildings in a traditional style. A little bit value engineered, as they say, because of resources. But I told them, said, thank you for doing that.

These young people, many of them grew up in suburban Kansas City, and it's shopping malls and office parks and tract housing. They deserve to experience something that's elevated. Elevated aesthetically. And they deserve that. That's an important part of education.

Because as I was saying, it kind of trains our our taste and allows us to savor. And it also makes us, you know, more vigilant in

Brian Williams: Mhmm.

Rusty Reno: In in trying to avoid ugliness.

Brian Williams: Well, I think that a lot of university classrooms, and maybe school classrooms too, k to 12 schools I've visited, they remind me of, like, a doctor's examination room. Right? They right? They're they're sterile. They're they're nondescript.

You know, in a doctor's examination room, you wanna get out of there as quickly as possible, and nobody decorates their living room like that. Nobody wants to live in that kind of sterile space. So when we designed this building, I said, you know, we wanna create classrooms and spaces that people want to live in. Right? That people want to settle settle into in a kind of human way.

And I I wish, I suppose, I wish that were more more prevalent in the way we design schools, you know, buildings, to think, is there a human that would want to live in this space? Or what kind of space should we create in which humans would just naturally, you know, feel at home in? And I think those are beautiful spaces when we do it right.

Rusty Reno: I'm not an anti modernist. I mean, there can be, if you go to the it's called the Lever House on Park Avenue. It's a little jewel box built in 1949, first generation, international style. It's it's a delicate, fabulous building. And I would love to have offices in that building.

But, you know, New York is full of these kind of cookie cutter

Brian Williams: Yeah.

Rusty Reno: You know, blah. Like glass faceless places that communicate so little. And they they they're they're sterile. And I think that that's always been the danger in in the modernist architecture is that it's a it it can cord a kind of austerity that can lead to have a kind of sterile environment.

Brian Williams: Mhmm. And then I think a kind of environment, again, that humans don't want to live in, or foster community in, it seems like to me. So, hey, as we as we close, I'd love to I'd like to spend all afternoon chatting, of of course, but I I wanna ask you in a second to if there's a a a poem or a passage that has been significant to you over the years that you understand your own life and vocation. But before I do, some rapid fire questions for you because our podcast is about discipline, delight, craft, calling. So so discipline.

What's a what's a discipline that you've pursued that has sustained, you know, your your pursuit of a of a well lived ordinary life?

Rusty Reno: You know, I became Catholic in 2004, and I've worked very hard to go to daily mass. Okay. So to to sort of, you know, be in the presence of God every day. And that doesn't require you to go into a church, but it certainly helps because it, you know, I kind of get all unwrapped in my job. Mhmm.

So it's That's been an important discipline for me for the last twenty years.

Brian Williams: Okay. Yeah. That's huge. Okay. What about a delight?

Is there something you especially delight in?

Rusty Reno: The outdoors is still I mean, there's just nothing you know, I go on these hikes and just getting to the top. You know? It my wife just is always perpetually amused, you know, at we go to Europe, and I wanna walk climb up the cathedral tower. There's just something about that's sort of deep. It was probably predates my climbing, but there's something there that that gets great delight.

Brian Williams: Okay. Great. I resonate with that entirely. What about a craft? Have you pursued a craft?

And and and if not, what craft would you like to pursue had you, you know, infinite expanses of time?

Rusty Reno: You mentioned cooking. I mean, I do all the cooking in the family.

Brian Williams: Okay.

Rusty Reno: It started it probably had to do with who had to pick up the kids from Yeah. School and all that kind stuff. So I was the one home first, and my wife's a very good cook. But I I got really into it, so I Okay. I take great pleasure and creativity.

I don't use recipes.

Brian Williams: Okay.

Rusty Reno: I read recipes for inspiration, but I don't follow them.

Brian Williams: Okay. Well, next time I'm in New York, I'm coming over for dinner. That's good to that's good to know. And then calling. Well, so how do you understand your calling?

Either it's kind of singular or plural. I mean, because sometimes I remind my students, your calling and your career doesn't always line up. So when you think of, you know, Rusty Rootedness calling, what's what's your calling?

Rusty Reno: I think it was always teacher.

Brian Williams: Was it?

Rusty Reno: Yeah. And I think it still is. I mean, you know, I mean, a teacher, a docent, going more back to the Latin, to sort of be a guide, and to, you know, to lead, to conduct people forward. I mean, that's certainly what how I envision First Things. That's the role I would like it to play in the lives of readers, as a kind of trust guide.

So even though I'm not in the classroom, I'd still feel like there's a continuity there.

Brian Williams: Yeah. You just anticipated my question, which was how does First Things allow you to live into that vocation?

Rusty Reno: It's been I've been a very lucky man. Yeah. I've I've I've never as an adult Not since I mean, I had of jobs in my twenties, as I say, construction and all that kind stuff, which I kind of liked actually. But but for most of my life, I have never had to do anything I didn't want to do. Mhmm.

Mhmm. I mean, my my dad always said, do you know if you love your work, you don't ever have to go to work?

Brian Williams: Yeah. Yeah. I've I've heard that. Though it still sometimes feels like work.

Rusty Reno: There's side. There are aspects to it. But he was a he practiced law at the same law firm for fifty seven years, and he loved he said, yeah. I was just he thought he was a lucky lucky man.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Okay. Hey.

So I asked you if there was a poem or a bit of a, you know, a paragraph or a reading that has been significant to to you over over time. And I I know you selected one. I'd love to have you just, like, tell us what it's from and the context, and read it, then just reflect for us on, like, why this why did this passage come to mind or this poem?

Rusty Reno: Yeah. This is from a novel by Simbeni Usmane called God's Bits of Wood. And Usmane was a Senegalese filmmaker and writer. He passed away, I think, about a decade or more ago. And I don't know how this book fell into my hands, but it was I was probably 19 years old.

I think I was a it was the soft spring semester of my freshman year. And it's a cine cinematic, fittingly, novel about labor unrest on the railroad that traverses Senegal. And and, you know, the various characters, and and it's, as they say, kind of cinematic, visually rich evocation of a place and the struggle. And all of that is completely forgotten in my mind. And the only part of the book that really stuck with me, and it really did all these decades, was the very ending.

And it's I'm I'm not sure he made this up or whether this is a traditional kind of song that he recounts at the end that this blind woman sings, and I'll read from one son to another, the combat lasted. Now, the evocation here is the combat of the labor strike and all that kind of stuff. But it's it's now shifting gears to sort of view a kind of transcendent view. Fighting together, blood covered, they transfixed their enemies. And then the sort of final line of the book, I think, I think I wrote about this, is, but happy is the man who does battle without hatred.

I think my translation, happy is the man who fights without hatred. So maybe it was that I was this, you know, moralistic, crusading, you know, male personality ready to go and do battle. And I and I think I remember that stuck with me and think that should be a lifetime's aspiration.

Brian Williams: What's that? To battle without hatred? To fight without hatred?

Rusty Reno: It's a great accomplishment.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Did you see yourself as a fighter? As a battler? Were you pugilistic? Did you did you do you enjoy that?

Rusty Reno: Oh, I think one of my Climbing buddies said that I'm a I'm an a b personality. Okay. Type a most of the time except when I'm not.

Brian Williams: Okay. Okay.

Rusty Reno: And so, yes, I think that those who know me well know that Yeah. There's a there's a very there's a strong in there that if if untempered by the sentiment that, you know, ultimately you have to do everything in the spirit of love would could be pretty ruthless.

Brian Williams: Yeah. Fair enough. So so tell me, has has has this line, has this come back to you at times over your life? Remind you to say, Rusty, happy is the man who does battle or who fights without hatred? Have you needed to hear that at times?

Rusty Reno: Of course, I think anyone engaged in, as First Things Is, and I am as its editor, engaged in the battle of of the cultural and civilizational battle of our time. It's a spiritual one, and it's a political one. And I think we all feel it very acutely that we're at a time of transition, and that it's very easy, I think, be swept into that those battles, especially if you're on the front lines. It's very easy to be swept into those battles, and and lose sight of the importance of this sentiment.

Brian Williams: How do you maintain that? Like, what are what are the what are the Are there are there virtues or practices that ensure that you are a man who does battle without hatred, or keeps you from hatred? Because culturally, we're driven to hatred. Right? Mean I mean, just like in our current moment, we think about political polarization.

Yes. It's not hard to drift towards that direction. But you're trying to model something. If this is what you're trying to do, I mean, then you're you're modeling an approach we don't often see in our

Rusty Reno: particular role. Battle, and so it's not a false kind of a false sort of nothing's really at stake. Don't really worry. We shouldn't be in conflict. No.

No. No. No. There are important issues at stake, but we have to be we have to be clear about, like, what you know, because hatred is is a it's a terrible asset on the soul. Mhmm.

And I think if you if we keep in mind God's providence, that the end of Lincoln's second inaugural is a it has such spiritual depth because he he presumes God's providential governance of the terrible affairs, the reality of slavery, the fratricidal violence of the civil war. And that that is a reminder. Ultimately, it's not up to us. And so and I think you can there's a bitterness and a kind of dangerous zealotry that can arise when we think that the future is finally something that's in our hands. So I think that's that's that's helpful.

And then, you know, prayer, you know, to you know, to actually pray for, you know, the conversion of those that you're battling against so that they won't be your enemies.

Brian Williams: Yeah. That's right. And and that call to love our enemies, recognizing that we do have we are pursuing different ends, and we are on opposite sides of this. But yet I love you, right, as somebody made in God's image that I'm called to come alongside even though we've come to different conclusions about whatever the topic might be that matters.

Rusty Reno: And to work, you know, ultimately evil doesn't is a kind of a it's the specter of nonexistence. And so most most I mean, in in almost all circumstances, people are wrongheaded because they love the wrong things in the wrong way. Mhmm. But the things that they love are usually worthy in themselves, but they're loving them in the wrong way and at the wrong time and in the wrong place. And so part of the discipline, I think, of the soul that's helpful, especially people who are intellectually minded, is to try to fathom the like, what what is the sort of deep fear or desire that motivates the people I'm opposed to so that their positions actually make sense, however wrongheaded they may be?

Brian Williams: Well, God grant that we can all be happy as the man or woman who does battle without hatred. Amen. Yeah. Thank you for that. And thank you.

Huge thanks to Rusty Rootedness for joining us here on pod on Forged. This is Brian Williams, and you've been listening to Forged, a podcast about discipline, delight, craft, and calling that draws the tradition, of wisdom into our contemporary times. Thank you so much.

Rusty Reno: Great to be on the on the podcast.