Casper Ter Kuile, author (The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices), Harvard Divinity School fellow on the difference between habit and ritual, tech sabbaths, avoiding the pitfalls of comparison and how rituals can bring more meaning into our everyday lives, including our writing lives.
During times of enormous change, how can you harness the power of ritual to create stability and creativity? How can ordinary practices, such as writing, help us find meaning and cultivate deeper spiritual lives? We talk to author Casper Ter Kuile (The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices) about the difference between habit and ritual and how to turn habits into meaningful rituals. We explore Casper’s journey in publishing, how he moved past the first draft and his practices for overcoming the pitfalls of comparison.
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Casper ter Kuile is the author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices, co-host of the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and co-founder of startup Sacred Design Lab - a research and design consultancy working to create a culture of belonging and becoming.
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SHOW NOTES
[03:18] Casper talks about his 24-hour tech sabbatical and why rest isn't just about preparing us for the workweek
[07:45] Why Casper, an atheist, was drawn to Harvard Divinity School to study and the surprising pull of community, ritual and tradition in the religious community
[11:18] How his observation of the growing disaffiliation from religion and the fraying of our connections with each other led him to explore the power of ritual
[13:11] The difference between habit and ritual and how to turn habits into meaningful rituals
[15:51] Why we should develop our ability to be choiceful
[17:23] An observation of connection practices during the pandemic, including the absence of ritual
[19:57] Applying the triptych: intention, attention, and repetition to his writing
[22:23] Casper talks about moving past a terrible first draft of his book, The Power of Ritual, and how he landed his book deal
[27:14] How Casper deals with self-doubt and imposter syndrome, including going on long walks
[29:25] Casper shares how he balanced researching and studying while he was writing his first book, also how he deals with the pitfalls of comparison
[31:13] Casper shares advice from Seth Godin for when you're having self-doubt
[32:43] On how to move away from introspection, and writing not just as something to make you great, but as a gift
[35:08] Casper shares how accountability is important in creating practices in new communities
[36:14] How to both hold on and let go of a growing community
[38:23] Casper shares the origin of his podcast with friends, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and the community it built
[41:50] What are the things that started and changed as the podcast community grew, and how did it even bring the community closer?
[44:44] A parting note - understanding the sufficiency of the gift that you have to give
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QUOTES:
“Think of writing, not as something that is going to make you great, but as a gift to someone who might need it."
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RESOURCES
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CREDITS
Production by Victoria Spooner. Artwork by Emma Winterschladen
[Intro] Matt: Hello, and welcome to season one of the London Writers' Salon podcast. I'm Matt.
Parul: And I'm Parul. And each week, we sit down with a writer that we admire to talk about the craft of writing and the arts of building a successful and sustainable writing career.
Matt: These interviews are recorded live with our global writing community. If you would like to join us for the next recording or write with us at our daily Writers' Hour writing sessions, head to londonwriterssalon.com for more information.
In this episode, we interviewed Casper ter Kuile, the author of The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities Into Soulful Practices. Casper is also the co-host of the award-winning podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and is also a Harvard Divinity School fellow and a co-founder of Sacred Design Lab.
This was such a nourishing interview with Casper, not only because of his candidness around his writing and career but because of the specific habits, routines and rituals he's adapted to help him live a life with intention and contemplation. One example that we love, but have not yet adopted is his weekly digital sabbath where he steps away from technology for 24 whole hours.
Casper explains to us the difference between habit and ritual. And how rituals can bring more meaning into our everyday lives, including our writing lives.
Parul: We spoke to Casper about how he deals with self-doubt in his writing. And he shared this piece of advice that really helped him. It was from his friend, Seth Godin, who said, “You don't have to say anything new. You just have to say what's true and can connect with readers.” We also talked about [a] practice that Casper has that helps him deal with the pitfalls of comparison. So this is the rule he has, which is that if he ever says anything about anyone, he must add just like me. So for example, if he's thinking of another writer, “Gosh, she's such a great writer.”
He has to add, “Just like me,” and he's pointing that but we shouldn't make ourselves bigger or smaller than anyone else.
Matt: I do love that. This was truly a beautiful interview with Casper, so many great tips on how we might use habits and rituals to enhance our writing and our wellbeing. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Casper ter Kuile.
Casper, welcome to the stage. Imagine a giant round of applause, you're walking around. Yes. Where's your dream venue in London if you were to—
Casper: Oh my God. I mean, Royal Albert Hall has to be like, kind of a [...] location.
Parul: Nice choice.
Casper: So yeah, I'll take that. Let's just pretend we're in the round.
Matt: Well, that's where we are. So, Casper, we would like to start as an entry point to talking about your work by starting to talk about not working.
And in particular, you have a ritual that you've started since I think it was 2014. Every Friday, you go on a 24-hour tech sabbatical and you post on social media, which I love, a picture of you, at least on Friday it was, and it says, “The work is not done. And yet it is still time to stop.” Can you tell us about that ritual that you started? Maybe why you started it?
Casper: Yeah, absolutely. So this is the tech sabbath practice, and I think, you know, more and more of those conversations about the, uh, the dangerous relationship we have with all phones, especially, and I'm no different for a long time. I was waking up, [the] first thing I would look at, last thing I went to—saw before I went to bed was my phone.
And there's, you know, all sorts of indications that even the presence of a phone on a table during a conversation decreases the quality of the conversation that you're having. So we know that these are incredible tools, but that they can also get in the way of the things that really matter in terms of experience of human connection and rest. For me, it was the constant temptation either to go to Twitter or to email and to try and like be on top of everything. And so when in 2014, as you said, I was in divinity school as a gay atheist, I should say kind of an unusual place to be. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that. I had grown up with a non-religious background, but I came across this lovely little book called The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Great Jewish theologian of the 20th century. I was super inspired by this little kind of theological treaties on sabbath, which I had always assumed was kind of outmoded and irrelevant to the modern world, honestly. I didn't get it, but what I loved about what he says in that book, one of the things he really kind of reframed for me was rest is not there to kind of prepare us for the workweek. So often we have that metaphor of like recharging our batteries. So, you know, downtime is so that we can go like, go at him again on Monday morning. And his whole thing is to say basically no, the point of the workweek is for our time of rest. That during the sabbath, we have a taste of heaven.
He uses these lovely images that we enter our palace in time. And I think during COVID, that's especially lovely when we can't travel as much through space. We can travel through time. And so the sabbath was just a really inspiring practice for me, but you know, I'm not Jewish. And so I wasn't about to start practising Jewish stuff, but for me, what it started to look like was finding some sort of ritual to put my phone away and to turn off my laptop.
And so on a Friday night, I turn them both off, I hide them in the bookshelf, which is just off-screen. Because if I see them, it's like tempting. I have to physically hide them. And then I light a candle and I sing a little song and I stand there in the living room, looking out of the window, singing this song from summer camp.
And for me, it's the way I kind of travel into sabbath time. And what's so lovely is that it really feels like going on a little holiday. The experience, the relationship with time is very different for me. I don't have kids so I don't want to say this is the practice for everyone, but the way it shows up in my life is that I then have the next kind of 24 hours.
And in Jewish tradition, it's actually 25 because the sabbath is so sweet we hold onto it for one extra hour. I kind of have that whole day and often it's the most creative time in which it feels like I'm able to sink a little bit below, kind of the topsoil of my thoughts into, you know, some ideas that pop out or just questions that arrive newly or connections between things that I've read that kind of come into shape.
And so often it's a time of rest, but it's also a time of excavating some of the kinds of strands of thought that have been floating around but haven't landed during the week. So if you can create some sabbath time for yourself, I would highly recommend [it].
Parul: I love it.
Matt: It’s beautiful. I mean, I was reading when I was reading about it I was like, this is something I definitely need to start doing, and it's so simple, but I've done it before, but not in the ritualistic way that you have. And it's, it's, it's so great. And one of the things you talk about in the book on the tech sabbath, is you talk about one of the things you might do is journal, and we have a big group here.
We're huge fans of morning pages, in some of your journaling is stream of consciousness.
Casper: Can I just say on morning pages, don't leave your notebook in your ex-boyfriend's bag and then have been read your morning pages, the whole relationship fall apart. So just make sure you actually destroy them as do you like Cameron does tell us to do, but I didn't.
Matt: I have that fear as well. And I think I need to be more vigilant with mine. It's not meant for anyone's eyes. Not even my own.
Casper: Exactly, exactly. Sorry—
Parul: I'm trying to make my handwriting really messy so that no one can read it.
Matt: Yes. Oh, that's great. So you do talk about your entry into Harvard Divinity School before we learned a lot about you.
We might've thought, or I did think, “Oh, Casper. Yeah, really religious guy. And you know, he's going deeper into his practice,” but it sounds like it couldn't have been more far from the truth. It's about atheism, you know, you wouldn't describe yourself necessarily as religious or spiritual. Can you talk us through that decision to go to Harvard Divinity School?
Casper: Yeah, it was unexpected for me. So I grew up in England. My parents are both Dutch and I think along with Denmark Holland is the most secular country in the world. So, you know, any sort of formal religiosity was completely absent from my childhood. I went to a Waldorf school. I don't know if anyone's familiar with Steiner education.
It does have a rich spirituality in the sense that there's a lot of ritual and a very strong community. And that was a really wonderful part of my childhood in many ways. But I ended up going to kind of very cross boarding school and the traditional story of the sad, lonely kid who didn't have any friends in middle school.
And I ended up kind of being really passionate about finding ways to build community and build justice. And I got really involved with the youth climate change movement. And so I was really passionate about trying to shape conversations around climate issues. And again and again, I notice that the leaders that are most respected both now in terms of social justice movements, but also in history very often had some sort of religious or spiritual thing that I was just very unfamiliar with.
I couldn't have told you the difference between a Presbyterian and the Methodist, you know. I actually came to the US to do a public policy degree at Harvard which I did finish, but the conversations with our technical and the conversations that were most interesting to me was less about how do we do this, or how do we achieve that kind of goal and more about like, what are the goals of society?
Why have we structured things this way? What does it mean to live a meaningful life? And those are the conversations happening in divinity school, but I just assumed it was a place for the Catholic priests, like, honestly, I had no idea. And so one of the joys of Harvard Divinity School is not only as the multi-religious schools.
So you have folks who are Buddhist and Catholic and Muslim in the same conversation, but also they welcome people like me. You know, I didn't have any affiliation. As I said, gay guy who had always been very hesitant of religious institutions. So I came in and said, you know, can I come? And they’re like sure.
Great. And so for me, it was this wonderful experience of having spent a lot of years trying to feel like, oh, is my work in the nonprofit world, is in the business world. Is it in the policy world? And then being like, oh, this is where I belong. It's religion. But it really felt like opening this treasure box in which there were all of these practices and, you know, ideas about community and ritual and tradition and music that I had kind of an instinct for, but no one to show me how to go deeper.
And so I think for me, it was this gift of kind of, you know, the hero's journey when the mentor comes along and be like, “It is this way, young man.” That's how it felt like to me to have these professors who were like, oh, you're interested in narrative and social change. “Sure. Let's talk about how Harry Potter works.” or “Sure. Let's think about how sacred texts have been created.”
So for me, it was a sort of homecoming, even though it was, you know, both far away and in this field that I'd never imagined myself working in.
Parul: Well, That's really fascinating. And it's interesting that you talk about that bridge between all the knowledge that you gained from studying all these different religious texts and secular communities to where you are now, which is this analysis.
You've done this deep search, you've done of community, different practices and rituals, and secular communities. I feel like you're that bridge, reading your book made me think about everything differently. I did a workout today and I thought about you. I thought about making it a sacred workout. So thank you.
And that brings me to your book, which is The Power of Ritual. And I'm sure—
Casper: Yeah, there it is, ladies and gentlemen.
Parul: How pretty. And really, it really truly is a marvellously deep book. There's so much to take from it. I feel like I should have studied that at school. I'm curious to know how you describe it when you think about the takeaway that you want readers to have.
Casper: Gosh. Well, the two trends that made me interested in this whole topic, one that kind of disaffiliation from religion so more and more people are less and less traditionally religious. And at the same time, the kind of fraying about social fabric in the sense that more and more people are less connected.
And so we might have many kind of Facebook friends, but that the real quality of our relational life is much less, more people lonely, more people socially isolated. So those are the two kinds of background trends. And so the question I was asking is how can we feel a real sense of connection to ourselves, to one another, to the natural world, into something greater than us?
And so that's kind of the structure of the book is to think about those types of connections and to look at the things that we're already doing every day. And you mentioned working out as one of them. Reading is another one I look at. Resting, we've already talked about sabbath. To try and look at the things that we're already instinctively doing, even as perhaps slightly more secular people, and then to draw parallels to ancient religious traditions and practices that hold so much wisdom that we can still learn from, even if we might now, you know, overtly identify as religious in some way. So the kind of the whole architecture of the book is to affirm what people are already doing. And then to invite us deeper, to learn about these wisdom practices, to learn about some of the theological ideas associated with them, because I think they can help.
For me, it was the joy of thinking like, oh, this thing that I already loved, this thing that I already do, if I think about it as a sacred practice, it sort of becomes a deeper or richer foundation to stand on in my life. It gives me more solidity rather than feeling like I'm being pushed one way
and then the next, so that's what I hope folks kind of take away from reading it, is a sense of being able to reframe the things that we already love as sacred practices.
Parul: Yeah. I love that. And I think that before I read your book, I would have thought of some of the topics that you described, like rest, writing, workout is habits that I needed to cultivate that you've helped me reframe this in terms of ritual, but I'd be interested to know how you connect those to words.
Casper: Yeah, it's one of the challenges of language. And I know everyone's, uh, incredible writers. So you're already wrestling with language all the time. And sometimes there are those words that kind of cloud together. And actually, it's helpful just to separate them in terms of what they really mean. But I think things like habit and routine and ritual often get put together, but I really try and separate them.
So things like habit and routine are one way that scholars talk about them is that they perform a functional purpose in our lives, right? You're walking the dog, you're brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, whatever it is like there's a clear outcome. And ritual often has more of a symbolic orientation or a meaning orientation.
So that in fact, you know what you're doing in the ritual, and you might think of circumcision, for example, can be extremely painful, but the meaning is so laden that we're willing to undergo pain in order to achieve that symbolic meaning. That's an extreme example, but just to kind of separate those two things out. And the way in which I invite the reader to think about kind of moving the habits and the routines to make them into rituals is by kind of following a tryptic of intention, attention and repetition. How do we elevate something that we're doing every day to make it a ritual practice is to find an intention for it, and of course, this one is everywhere now, so I'm sure we're all familiar with the idea of, you know, trying to connect this activity to something of greater meaning.
So it might be about cultivating a virtue, right? Courage, hope, generosity. It might be about connecting with a loved one, living or dead, right? You might want to remember someone is practising. So you’re finding an intention that you want to bring into it. Then secondly, you’re finding a way to pay attention while you're practising it.
So we’re not listening to a podcast at the same time, we're not trying to multitask. And this is why so often in religious rituals, you'll see incense or music or stained glass, or all sorts of ways of capturing our attention so that we're present in the moment. And then finally repetition. So repeating it over and over again.
So we kind of build this lovely layer of meaning every time that we practice it. So that's one way I try and encourage us to think about. For me, spiritual life isn't about going on like massively expensive retreats or like sudden transformations of like, you know, like having to go on epic drug-induced journeys. Like do your thing, but I'm really interested in noble-ing the every day and finding the things that we do and where we're already placing our love and to deepen them to become these practices through that intention, attention, repetition, triptych, as it were. Yeah.
Parul: Yeah. It's very, and it's very powerful. Those three simple words are very, very powerful and that's what I applied to my workout. And I'm hoping to try and put that into different aspects of my life as well. Thank you.
Matt: That's great. I kind of imagine what you're doing with the book is making us get all matrix, like in like the things we're doing, just slow them down and like take a little more attention with them. I love it.
Casper: We can't live in that—at least I can't live in that state all the time. I don't want to exoticize it to make it some sort of like, oh, we're all going to live in a state of nirvana. And they say it's the same as the question we started with technology. It's not to say that, you know, living in a tech sabbath is the place we always want to be.
It's about really developing our ability to be choiceful. That's what I loved about doing a dual degree in divinity and public policy. Like if I was just with the divinity school people, it would get a little bit floaty and shapeless. And if I was just with the policy people, they would get a little bit. laden and not imaginative. And so I'm always trying to find ways that we can like bring soul together with competence. So I feel like it's the same thing with these things. Like we need routines, not everything has to become a ritual, but a life without that richer experience is, you know, I bit like porridge. It's good for you, but ultimately not that interesting.
Matt: Love it. So obviously your book was written pre-2020. I imagine we've had an interesting year and a lot of the practices you talk about whether it's sitting down and eating together or digital sabbath and exercising together, a lot of these things that a lot of us find meaning in connection ritual have been challenged as we've entered lockdown and other things. And I'm curious, have you built upon, expanded or maybe have you been reading or studying or hearing of communities that have been adapting in this times to hold onto some of these meaningful connection practices where we're at home, where, you know, we're in a screen, it's hard to do the digital sabbath thing. Potentially anything that you've noticed since the book during this times.
Casper: Yeah. I mean, the first thing I'd want to say is that you know, every tradition that we now know was once an innovation. So in moments like this, it's actually a very rich time for new rituals to take shape. I'm drawing on Judaism a lot today. But again, if we look at the destruction of the second temple, you know, Judaism was a place-based religion and after the temple was destroyed, folks have to invent new ways of marking their Jewishness.
And so they created things like the sabbath practice, like circumcision, like eating certain foods and not other foods because they were all mobile practices, right. These could be practised in absentia from the place that was traditionally the home. So in some ways, it's really interesting to think about what are the ways in which people, and now marking time, marking relationship marking, you know, major moments like a wedding or a funeral, for example.
So at the beginning of COVID, there were a lot of kind of fun trends to look at. So for example, people were wearing certain clothes on weekdays and other clothes on weekends to try and keep some sort of semblance of changing time. Now that everyone feels like, you know, we’re all working more than before it seems, I think we know what day it is even if we wish it was Friday. So, that's less important.
But I think, you know, the family zoom, for example, that was not a thing. And now so many people even now are still connecting regularly with their family members. But I don't want to paint too rosy a portrait because it's been, I hope I can swear. Like, it's just been shit. I don't want to paint something that's too easy because I think a lot of the things that give us meaning. The communities that we're part of, the places that we go, the things that we do have been taken.
And so there was real loss, I guess that's what I wanted to say. And I think actually it's the absence of ritual. You know, if you think here in America, 200,000 people have died and there's not a single public expression of grief from, you know, the president let alone the rest of the government. And so there's, there's a real sense of an absence of ritual, I think, that is just making us feel like we're all on a tiny bit of ice and it's about to crack, or it's already cracked. It's the need for things to kind of make meaning and to process and to put these feelings in a place. I think that's precisely what w’eré missing.
Parul: Hmm. I hear where you're coming from. I want to turn now to the topic of writing. We've got writers in the room with us, and I love what you were saying earlier. In fact, Matt and I had talked about those three points of intention, attention and repetition. I love those ideas. I love how that leads a habit to a ritual. That seems like the magic or the ingredients. And maybe the answer is simple, but how have you applied that to your writing? What does that look like to you?
Casper: It's interesting. To me, I would say there's a difference for my kind of public writing and more of that journaling that's just me. And I would say that the journaling, writing is more ritualized.
Like I do it, especially on a Saturday and I'll, you know, there's no interruptions, there's a flow and an ease that comes with it. And I don't necessarily read it again. The writing that was kind of productive and especially for the book—I mean, I went to Paris for two months, so we could try and dress that up as a ritual.
Parul: Sounds sacred to me.
Casper: The pastries were.
Matt: It sounds great, Casper. I mean, we—because we love to dig into the nitty-gritty, you know, some writers do you know, every day some writers have to fly to Paris to—
Casper: I admire people who do that honestly. And I'm sure some of the folks with us today have that kind of discipline. I find I just need, honestly, a few days to enter into the world where I'm trying to live with the writing.
Even when I finished this book, we've done the fact-checking and everything else, it was the first time that I thought, “Oh God, I really want to be a better writer because there's so much that I feel like I want to learn.” And so, as I'm thinking about the next writing project for [the] next book, yeah, I'm really trying to develop my kind of writing muscles, but yeah, for me, I needed to be in a completely different place.
The time zone change honestly, was enormously helpful. Just that I didn't have those kinds of interruptions, but I think a lot about the changing places to try, at least to me, was to try and get into it into a mental space into which I wouldn't get too much in my own way. The first draft that I wrote, I called the vomit draft because it was so bad, man.
Like it was so bad. I sent it to my editor and she literally said, “Hm. Usually, people develop their ideas a bit before sending me something.” And I was like, I was so stuck. I just needed somebody else to say, “This is dreadful,” “This is interesting. Tell me more about that.” Well, I'd love to hear more about how this happened.”
And so, I mean, she didn't even give me any written feedback in that first round. She just kind of gave me some prompts over the phone, but that's all I needed. And then I could have another go. And so kind of getting to a place where I was able to confront how bad I was at it because no one else was there to look at me was very liberating.
Parul: This is really interesting to hear, how that experience was for you. And actually, that leads us to talk about, you know, what is your first writing project, The Power of Ritual. I wonder if you could talk us through that publishing process like the timeline of, I don't know, whatever, whatever comes to mind from having the idea through to actually having the copy in your hand, how was that for you?
Casper: I feel like I'm not unusual in the modern-day publishing scene in that I had a project which built an audience, which is the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Just for context, this is a podcast where every week we read a chapter from the Harry Potter books and we practice sacred reading practices, drawn from Christianity and Judaism with the Harry Potter books as a way to try and ask big questions about life. What that meant was that you know, we had about 65,000 people listening to that show every week. And at some point, you know, publishers start to take notice of that. And I was very lucky that an editor at HarperOne approached me and said, are you interested in this? But the reason why I was excited to work with HarperOne was because that's one part of my professional life.
And then the other is the work I do with Sacred Design Lab where I’ve co-written a paper called How We Gather. And so if Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is one kind of dot on a landscape of new ways in which religion and spirituality and community are happening. How we Gather was kind of like a map looking at the macro level and trying to draw trends together.
And so when the editor said, “I've read both your paper here and I love what you're doing with this project here.” I was like, oh good. This is a way I can bring kind of all my work together because I'd had previous conversations with an academic press and had an agent, a couple of agents who’d approach me.
And so this kind of felt like, oh, this is the person I can work with, so that's an absurdly privileged position to be. In that, you know, people are coming to you. Even then it was still a whole process. I had those kind of two months where I wrote that vomit draft. I then took a kind of three-month break from it, came back to it over Christmas and spent two and a half weeks really turning that first draft into something else. And everyone knows this, but the difference between going from zero to something and from something to something better is so much more pleasant than starting from nothing. So that second draft came much more easily and I remember saying as I sent it off, I was like, if I get run over by a bus tomorrow, and this is what it is, and this is published. Like, um, I'm not going to die of shame. Like I can stand behind this.
And so that was a good feeling, but honestly, I was still shocked, you know. I had to pay for my own fact-checker. The editing was great for my publisher, but in terms of what I expected, the whole person to include, you know, it's an industry and the focus is on making money for the publisher as it should. That's the job.
So, one example of how that took shape for me was the title was not mine. And when they come up with a title, I was so nervous because I had written about connection and spiritual practices. And so when they said The Power of Ritual, I knew it worked as a title because people kind of leaned in when I said it so I was like, okay, great.
And it felt inviting and it felt open. But at the same time, I was like, I am not necessarily like a scholar of ritual in a sort of sociological or anthropology, scholarly context. And so I felt like a real fraud, like, oh God, I better learn just a lot more about the kind of classical study of ritual. The whole process has been a real learning experience of just how the industry works.
And then, of course, you know, how the translations and rights and all of that. It's a whole thing.
Parul: That's really fascinating. And thank you for sharing all of that. It's funny. We had questions around the idea of imposter syndrome. I guess my question is, as you were going through—did self-doubt and the imposter syndrome creeping—
Casper: Oh it was a constant presence. It did not creep in, it just lived in my head. I have to like back to away with a cricket bat. The thing that really helped me was a mentor of mine, Seth Godin who's an amazing writer himself, just extremely generous man. The thing that he said that really helped me was, “You don't have to say anything new.”
And of course, I'm writing a non-fiction book. So this just applied to my context, but they said, “You don't have to say anything new. You just have to say something true in a way that people can hear now.” And that was so helpful because I was so steeped in all of these pages and pages of notes from the Divinity school of these wonderful authors and thinkers and theologians.
And I was like, “Who am I?” Like, I'm like at the time, you know, I'm like 30, like, I don't know, but I was able to try and focus on like, why is this meaningful for me? How could I say this to someone who might not have the Divinity school context that helped me get into these thinkers and to try and build a bridge between, you know, where I'd been pre-Divinity school and what these wonderful traditions and teachers have to say. So I just tried to focus on what is always true and what's just a new way of pointing towards it. That was extremely helpful. But yeah, the whole process, I can't remember who said this, but you know, writing a book is like being locked in a room with the most stupid version of yourself. That was definitely true for me.
Parul: I think we definitely feel that.
Matt: How did you get past some of the self-doubt? Some of us have weird practices, either it's journaling or something else. Like, is there anything that you did, maybe it was a real cricket bat, but like when the thought comes in, how do you keep going? How did you push through to keep it at bay instead of giving it all up?
Casper: I'd say there were two things to me. One was, I have a very, very dear old friend who's in England, who has nothing to do with my professional life, is totally outside of my everyday context, you know, lives in a different country.
And she was at home with a newborn and I happened to have a phone conversation and she said, “Oh, I'll read that first draft.” You know, and for me, it was so nice to have. First of all, of course, an editor who was waiting for drafts, but also a friend who knew that her job was just to tell me it was great, even though what I sent her was absolute, you know, absolute, you know, poor.
She would say, “I love this,” or “This feels so like you. I really recognize what you're saying here.” And to just have someone be that loving presence, you know, within a religious context, you might call this a kind of spiritual accompaniment. That was how it felt to me. I'm incredibly grateful to her because it just, I don't know, to know someone cares and wants to hear and read what you're doing is really meaningful and knows that her job is not to critique it is extremely helpful. ‘Cause I was doing all of that in my mind. So that was part one. And then the other part was I listened incessantly to every audiobook that David Sedaris has written while I was in Paris.
I'd just go on these long walks, listening to David Sedaris. And what I loved about—by which I mean, like read people who you enjoy and whose style means something to you. I am not funny in the way that David Sedaris is, and my writing voice is much more gentle, but I just loved hearing his kind of—of course, they are filtered, but it sounds unfiltered—writing on the page or in my ears. And so that would give me just another little bit of energy to go back to it, um, later. So long walks with David Sedaris, I would say is kind of number two.
Matt: It sounds like a title of another book. I love it. Thanks for being open and sharing that. ‘Cause I know so many people in the room or you might be that spiritual guidance for many people just basing it on the chat. So thanks for sharing that.
Parul: I have a quick question—because you mentioned how, you know, once they gave you the title, you have the sort of sense of I'm going to have to be that expert. How did you balance at that point? Or maybe even before the sort of need to research and study and then also to just write.
Casper: Yeah. Well, I was very lucky that a lot of the research I'd already done. So there was a number of papers that we'd written, including the how we gather one that I mentioned, and then a lot of reading from Divinity school.
And one of the things I think I've been lucky enough to develop, and I can't quite remember how I started doing this, but every book I read I'll underline things that are interesting to me or just spark an idea. And once I've read it, I then type up exactly notes and I know it might be easier to just like highlight, copy and paste from a digital version, but it's in the typing them up and rereading those sentences, often the ideas just germinate or start to connect.
And so one of the things that I started with, maybe to a fault, was reams and reams of quotes on ideas that were not mine. And I think one of the processes through editing was to kind of shave away other people's thoughts and allow more of the connections that I had made in my head to kind of really come out as the centre of the book and that's something I'd want to keep getting better at is to develop that.
But yeah, I was lucky enough that I had a lot of that work done already. On the ritual piece specifically, I definitely went away and read a few more books, but honestly, the thing that helped was just reframing, and this was the publisher. They did a great job at helping me just reframe to see what I had written about was about ritual and it is. You know, it's just not the way I, in an academic context, had looked at something and be like, “Oh, that's not my field,” but you know, I don't have a PhD.
I have an MDiv and an MPP. I'm already not a traditional kind of academic scholar. And I really embrace the focus on practice. That's always been the place where my heart kind of goes. I think that sense of not being good enough just never goes away. And it's probably a little bit healthy because if you think you are good enough at everything, it's probably a problem, but it's a fine balance to walk. One of my favourite practises, I can't remember if I mentioned it in the book, but I certainly mentioned the woman who I learned it from a fantastic Catholic nun called Carol. And she says, whenever you're—first of all, if you're ever insulting someone else, “She's a [...], he's so arrogant.” You have to say after that, “Just like me,” but then also if you're giving someone a compliment, “She's so smart. He's so handsome.” You also have to say, “Just like me.” And so it's just such a lovely—it's such a lovely practice of not making yourself as bigger or smaller than anyone else. And so I think that applies in this context as well.
Parul: That is beautiful. Beautiful. Oh my God. That is beautiful. I love that.
Matt: Maybe we can be each other's accountability buddies with it, Parul. To make each other—
Parul: Yeah, That actually made me flush. that's so beautiful. Such a beautiful—
Casper: I’ll pass it on to Carol. She's the best
Parul: I have one final question for you, just on those sort of section of writers because you have this wonderful quote. You talk about introspection and I quote this because many writers are quite introspective, but you say the first step to deeper awareness, I guess for yourself, isn't about introspection. It's about getting radically away from ourselves and go on to say and seek your place in service or to become part of something bigger than us. It seems really hard for writers to do that, particularly when we write in isolation and we write in a bubble.
I just wondered if you had any thoughts about how do we move away from introspection as writers? Because often what we do is to go in.
Casper: Well, I think that quote comes from the chapter, I'm thinking about connecting with transcendence, and I don't want to say like, introspection is bad. But I think that what I'm trying to counter there a little bit, especially in the wellness world or the self-help spirituality wealth, is this so much focus on the self and the whole project is about us and our lives and our happiness, and you know, that there's plenty to work on at least of my life.
But what I love about the wisdom of teaching from traditions is about actually the profound gift of kind of absence thing the self and focusing on the other and the other with a big O as it was. Not just another person, but just that the world outside of ourselves. And I think there's a devotional quality to that, which makes the whole project not one of self-fulfilment, but of kind of self-emptying or generosity. Well, one to think about this, I don't want to say this is right in every case, but to think of writing, not as something that is going to make you great, but as a gift to someone who might need it. And that was definitely something that in the moments when I felt a bit shifted type of thing was to kind of lean into that and be like, it doesn't have to be perfect.
It just has to be good enough to help someone who's trying to navigate the question that I had to navigate. What can I share? And so it just oriented the whole thing in a way, hopefully, that makes it, yeah, a gift rather than a, you know, self-isolating thing. And I tell myself that when I read negative Amazon reviews. So I just, I literally say, “It's not for you.”
Parul: That's a beautiful thing.
Matt: Writing as a gift to work as a gift. That's great. So Casper, our group, here we have a community of writers wanting to share a ritual with you. And because first, we're proud of it just in the spirit of rituals. So we started something right as the UK was entering lockdown called the Writers’ Hour.
And what it looks like is that every morning at 8:00 AM we open up a zoom room. People come in with a hot cup of something. We set our intentions in the chat. What we're going to work on. We read maybe sacredly, maybe we can do better, a word of wisdom from a Mary Oliver or Ryan Holiday, something like that. And then we cheers our drinks. We get to work.
Casper: I love that.
Matt: So for 50 minutes we go on mute and most people's camera's on, and we just write. And then for the final five minutes, we check in, “How did you do?” And we hear from a few people in the room. I love that. That is so wonderful. It speaks directly to one of the big themes that showed up in a lot of the research that these new communities that I was looking at, where these practices are taking shape and that's the desire for accountability as a lot of that relational fabric is kind of fraying, I think when looking for structures that can hold us. And I just love this as an example of that, where people are willing to kind of—to be held accountable in that way. And it's a structure that's invitational, but also strong. And so that's beautiful.
Matt: Yeah. I wanted to share that with you. We're proud of a lot of people in the room, but also we wanted to ask your advice too. So, you know, it’s we are—the community's growing. We do it three times a day, with 350 people joined us for a Writers’ Hour today.
Every weekday it's about that. But as we grow, one of the things that we're wrestling with is how do we hold on to what we're doing and lead, but let go and keep the original magic, but to let the community step up too, and just any advice, any thoughts you have in the communities you've studied, anyone that's done that really well that maybe we could study or take some advice from.
Casper: Oh yes. These are the perennial questions of community leadership. Uh, we want it to grow, but we also don't want it to grow because we lose the thing that made it special. I think one of the things to think about is if we look to the kind of evangelical megachurches as a reference point, one of the reasons why they work so well is that they have the moment where the whole community sees itself, that kind of large worship gatherings on a Sunday morning.
And then the thing that sustains those communities is small groups. Always, always, always small groups. It gives people the chance to be known and to be loved, but to be vulnerable. Methodism in its founding didn't allow you to come to the Sunday worship session if you haven't gone to the Wednesday night small group where you would literally get a ticket that would give you entry.
So I think the question I would ask is about how can you design for both intimacy and being known and being loved in a small context and then moments where people can feel that they're part of something bigger and see the impact of what it means to be part of this community. It's such a big scale.
And so if a group that was 40, 60, maybe a hundred is now growing beyond that, it might be time to think about, are there smaller groups that meet for those, you know, hour, day things, and then once a week or once a month, who knows a chance for everyone to be together and have that sense of bigness and to not set that in stone forever.
But to say for the next eight weeks, we're going to try this, right? So you give it a kind of timed experiment. And because if there’s an end, people know that the end is coming, so they're more willing to say yes to the commitment. That's the way I would think about that question.
Matt: That's great. Love that. I'm going to have to revisit your answer.
Parul: Yeah, it’s really helpful.
Matt: I want to talk a little bit about Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. And so in one interview you said, what you were doing with it is, you know, people were already using Harry Potter as a sacred text. You just gave them, we just gave them a name and a community. And obviously we're experiencing something similar here.
Can you tell us the origins of that podcast? Did it—I think it maybe started as a small meetup and then [...] into the podcast. So the origin of the podcast, and then, you know, when did it move? From its smaller origin to the bigger thing.
Casper: Yeah. So it really started with my friendship with Vanessa Zoltan, who was a classmate of mine in the Divinity school. And she was writing her thesis on treating Jane as a sacred text. She grew up in the US [...], grandparents of her as well were Holocaust survivors. And so for her family, although they were very Jewish, God died in the camps. And so she did not want to return to that traditional sacred text of Judaism in the Torah. And of course, I haven't grown up with anything, particularly in terms of the text. And I was sitting in my Hebrew Bible class, you know, the Old Testament class, learning about its origins and its different authors and context and ancestry. And I was like, this is interesting, but it doesn't feel like it's my text.
And so I don't really understand how people believe in this. And so I started thinking about, well, what is my text, you know? I love the Lord of the Rings films, I was into Game of Thrones. I was thinking about these kinds of epic narratives that ask the questions about friendship and commitment and love and betrayal and family.
And I was like, well, Harry Potter is actually a really interesting example of these questions of life and death and friendship. And so Vanessa was running this lovely group, just with three other women on a Wednesday night reading Jane Eyre as a sacred text. And I went along to understand what that meant, like what is reading something as a sacred text and the way she had structured it was to take little snippets of texts, the line of words, maybe even, and then to go through these multistage reflection processes, which are known as kind of sacred reading. Technologies, you could say, things like lectio divina, or havruta or pardes or florilegia, or all sorts of ways in which these traditions that engaged text, not to read them as a story, right.
Not to read them to like, oh, what's happening in the plot? What happens to this character? What does that—but to ask, what does this mean for my life? And so we started to run a small group on Wednesday night, 07:30 to 09:00. We invited people in the community to come. You know, we had regular 30 folks coming every Wednesday where we would read the Harry Potter books in this particular way.
And we started to hear from people all around the country and then the world, saying, “Oh, this is so cool. I want to do it.” And we thought, well, let's try it as a podcast. And so we spend a lot of time thinking about the structure of the show. So we bless a character at the end of every episode, we include a listener voicemail, so do check it out.
It's called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. And we've been going now for four and a half years. And we're coming to the end of book seven, which is the last in this series. Um, so it's been a real kind of pilgrimage through the text and it's been amazing because around the text now, of course, the Harry Potter fandom is very active, has built this incredible community through which we have raised money for things like Black Lives Matter or Immigration Justice. People started a mutual aid fund when COVID hits. It's incredible. We have over 90 local groups that get together and do this in their local communities. One of the ways that we think about what makes a tech sacred is if it's generative and Harry Potter is being, you know, there’s musicals, there’s songs, there's a Tumblr galore.
So it's a text that has been generative and it's, yeah, it's been wonderful to kind of see that community build around that podcast.
Matt: Yeah, it's great. And to have such a following and a community that has started and gathered and doing all these things, it seems like you're practising what you've studied too.
Casper: Right, right.
Matt: I'm just curious. Is there anything in particular that you either started doing or changed or anything while you were growing that community that you notice really change things for you or kind of set it off? And I guess thinking about the context of where we are and what we're trying to do, is there anything that was particularly special that changed things or connected people or grew the community?
Casper: From what I know, I think you’re both already doing this, but I think what sets us apart from probably most other podcasts is the way in which we really respond to and work with the folks who are listening to the show. So, literally, we have a voice in every episode of one of the listeners. So people really get a sense of who else is listening.
We've always done a lot of events, so we would go on tour together and we now do kind of online classes and we did an online summer camp this summer, even in the merch that's created, you know, we'll feature people's artwork in the merch that we make. So it's a very—and not just one, you know, them to us and us to them, but to try and build the relationship infrastructure for people to connect with each other.
And that's my favourite thing about the small local groups that meet is, you know, they don't really talk about us. Like we're just the way in for them to meet each other and talk with one another about the texts and their lives. You know, it's more of a kind of a snowflake model rather than a broadcast model.
Um, and I think that's honestly the future of media is using the podcast or the book or the whatever, to invite people into relationship around something that they share a caring for. So that's definitely something I think we do slightly differently to our podcast.
Matt: That's wonderful. Well, that's great, yeah. Great to watch it grow and to be practising what you research and preach. What's next for you, Casper? Where do you hope this book sits in the journey of your career and what are you excited about coming forward?
Casper: I hope they let me do another one. You know, obviously the last, it's painful and awful at moments, but then once you're done, you're like, “Oh, can I do another one?”
So I think the next one's going to be about God. What, why, who, where when God. Mostly because actually really, because of this relationship between capitalism and culture, I just think there's something really interesting for us to excavate as a secular society and what God can be. So very early days of my thinking, but I hope I'll be able to do that.
And then day-to-day, I continue my work, the Sacred Design Lab, and yeah, as I said, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text will finish in February, March and playing around with some ideas for another podcast as well. So, hopefully, more things to come.
Parul: Yeah, we'll definitely watch the space. I have a final question. There's a particular passage that really struck me. And I have to say there are lots of pieces from your book that I scribbled down and we'll probably read out in our quotes and write it down, but this statement, and I do believe you really speak to them 'cause I felt like he was speaking to me, you say there is nothing that can get between you and life's deepest connection. Nothing, no matter how powerful, can ever take that away. Not depression nor anxiety nor assault nor addiction nor grief, nor jealousy, nor poverty, or wealth. Each of us is entirely worthy and beloved. Even you, especially. Our shared human condition means that we forget this all the time, which is why we practice to help us remember.
So first of all, bloody beautiful. With that in mind, I just wonder if you had any parting words for many of us who can often feel overwhelmed by the road ahead of us as creatives.
Casper: I was inspired to write that by words that were said at my wedding by my friend and mentor and now colleague Sue. I found myself writing, especially at the end of the book, it was as much for myself as anyone else.
And so I think so often that the gift we have to give the world is often the thing that we most need ourselves. To believe in the sufficiency of whatever that is for you to not have to be more or want more than the thing that you have to give, because it's at least going to be useful to you, and by that is going to be helpful to so many other people.
So, yeah, that's the sufficiency of the gift that you have to give. I hope, I hope we can all remember that.
Parul: Beautiful.
Matt: It is beautiful. On that note, Casper, thank you so much. You've been such a joy and so generous.
Casper: Aw, thanks, friends.
Matt: And so this has been so much fun too, so—
Casper: I really appreciate it.
Matt: We can't wait to watch how your career develops and we'll be watching and reading and listening.
Casper: Hopefully, this won't be the last time we got to be together. Thank you, everyone.
Matt: Thank you so much.
Parul: Thank you so much.
[Outro] Parul: Thank you for tuning into the London Writers' Salon podcast. If you'd like to join these weekly interviews live for the chance to ask our guest writers your burning questions. Well, you can become a member at londonwriterssalon.com forward slash pound membership. You'll get access to our library of salon interviews and workshops, our private online community, where you'll find world-class resources on the craft of writing and find creative friends.
Honestly, we think it's the best writing community in the world, and we would love for you to join us.
Matt: And if you're a writer struggling to find time to write like so many of us, you're welcome to join our free virtual hour-long, silent writing sprints called the Writers' Hour. We hold them four times every Monday to Friday.
And all you need is something to write with, a hot drink to cheers us with, and the desire to write. We think it's the world's best virtual co-writing space for writers, creatives, and, frankly, anyone who just needs to get something done. You can sign up for free at writershour.com, and we hope to see you there until we write again. Cheers, everyone.