Grace Hamman
11 min read ⭑
“Not everyone’s called to become a medievalist. But I think almost everyone longs to feel less alone, less ‘we are living in unprecedented times,’ to learn how the faithfulness and creativity of Jesus has no expiration date or confinement to particular times and places.”
In defiance of our restless, fast-paced world, Grace Hamman delights in the contemplative, creative and sometimes quirky expressions of faith found in medieval art and writing. With a doctorate in Middle English literature, she writes books like Jesus through Medieval Eyes and Ask of Old Paths to celebrate medieval texts and help contemporary Christians use them to deepen their own walks with Christ. She also hosts the Old Books with Grace podcast, exploring old — and sometimes complex — works of literature and theology to uncover timeless truths.
Join us below for a conversation about everything from finding Jesus in the teachings and art of the past to the virtues of fresh Mexican food, her battle with overthinking and the books that have opened her mind and heart over the years.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
Although I have lived in three different states and now make my home in Denver, Colorado, I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. The desert will always be my heart’s home — that particular rain smell after monsoons, blooming cacti, the best sunsets anywhere in the world — and, of course, Mexican food.
My husband and I met on the first day of college at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Our first date was at a Mexican food restaurant. My favorite restaurant there, even though it’s been many years since I was in college, is a place called Guadalajara Grill. They make fresh salsa at your table, and you watch the fresh tortillas being made — everything is fresh. Plus, there’s margaritas (anytime) and mariachi (on weekends). Every graduation and every birthday during college and my M.A. degree was celebrated there, with sizzling fajitas or decadent enchilada plates or salsa that was a humble pile of chiles and spices a minute ago but now graces a chip.
We make most of our Mexican food at home now. (Sorry, Denver. I love you, but you just don’t have it down Arizona-style.) My husband makes the best chile rellenos I’ve ever tasted. What remains is that Mexican food is the food that most speaks of home and hospitality, specifically the distinct, delicious joys of celebrating one another.
Ch Photography; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
I killed most plants I touched for the majority of my life. No vegetable plant nor delicate bloom was safe from me. What a surprise that I now have a large, somewhat successful vegetable garden! This long strip of dirt nestled against the north fence of my backyard is where the infinite creativity of the love of God meets me every day in tangible forms. It’s a cliché and yet true: growing plants is the most miraculous business.
The medieval writers that I study, 500 years ago and more, often wrote of the soul as a lush, fragrant garden. Christ is the gardener of our souls, in the disguise in which he appeared to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection (John 20:15). He plants us in rich loamy soil, weeds out vices and evils and waters us with the gushing fountain of the Holy Spirit. What better portrait of grace and our own participation in our sanctification? One tiny seed turns into a full harvest of tomatoes far more delectable than any you can pick up in a grocery store. My utterly ordinary suburban backyard becomes a haven for bees and butterflies and ladybugs. That dirt patch becomes an invitation to awe, gratitude and, yes, struggle.
On a less elevated note, as a mom of three elementary school-aged kids, I have found weeding to be an incredible outlet on difficult days. The Lord offers me something to busily destroy rather than vent myself on my kids or husband. Bonus!
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
I love thinking. I got a doctorate in English because I just wanted to keep thinking about words, forever. But overthinking everything in my life is definitely my kryptonite.
Many nights, I lie awake in my bed because I struggle to “turn my brain off,” like an overheated computer. Dissecting every little interaction or piece of news or tough conversation in my head leads to continued battles with anxiety, resentment, insomnia and just being bone-deep tired.
I have come to realize that my overthinking is not just the compulsion of a tired woman, but also evidence of deeper needs in my life. When I overthink something, it is often an attempt to control all the areas or relationships in my life where I am struggling, afraid or needy, especially in motherhood or marriage or writing. I imagine that if I can explain why something happened, come up with the best words in an argument or have an escape plan at the ready for any contingency, then everything will be OK. I can control this situation, own it, make it be the way I want it to be.
This is a fantasy. My inclination to overthink is spurred on by the alluring false narrative in this age of the internet and 24/7 updates that to know things means to be in control of things. I buy into it too often.
Knowledge and thought are both sheer gifts of God that I especially appreciate as a scholar. But I am learning, again and again, to embrace my weakness, my littleness, my lack of control. I practice trusting in the omnipotent, omniscient God of the universe. I am learning to reoffer myself and my fears and my gifts to the Lord over and over.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I grew up in a place where everything had been built in the last 50 years. Simultaneously, I grew up in a branch of Christianity that, though vibrantly full of the life of the Spirit, did not attend much to the historical church. In retrospect, it makes sense that I’d go searching for roots, for meaning and worship unrelated to present-day debates.
So naturally, I became a medievalist. Wait, that’s not a natural next step? Inspired by the profound beauty of medieval literature and great medievalists like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, I got a doctorate in Middle English literature.
Not everyone’s called to become a medievalist. But I think almost everyone longs to feel less alone, less “we are living in unprecedented times,” to learn how the faithfulness and creativity of Jesus has no expiration date or confinement to particular times and places.
In my work, I share the joy, challenge and beauty found in the teachings and arts of the past, especially for folks outside the university context where you’re most likely to encounter these works. I wrote a book called “Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics and Theologians of the Middle Ages” (Zondervan Reflective, 2023). I have a podcast called “Old Books with Grace,” where I dissect and delight in the writings of the past with various wonderful guests. I write a monthly newsletter at gracehamman.substack.com on medieval topics and faith.
Most exciting of all, I have a new book out, again with Zondervan, titled “Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life.” I’m really thrilled about this one. More on that in a moment.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I am an obsessive reader. I love all kinds of books: spiritual writing, poetry, novels, histories. Reading other people’s words nourishes every aspect of my own creativity and has been a conduit for the quiet word of God many times in my own work.
I have found two things to be true: first, that no matter how long a book sits on my shelf, way too often for it to be coincidental, I have picked it up and read it at exactly the right time in my personal or professional life. In one case, seven years after I bought a collection of sermons on First John, I decided to read it and unexpectedly found what I needed for a book project. Before graduate school, I picked up a book on prayer to find it addressed to a 24-year-old at a crossroads in their life. An exact description of myself — only written 600 years before! As a result, I have no guilt about letting books age like wine on their shelf. Their words will quietly dawn or dramatically storm on you when the right time comes.
Secondly, books, specifically the books of the past, draw me into the living reality of the communion of saints and God’s presence in all times and seasons. All these long-dead men and women who loved God in their own messy lives still witness to each person who encounters their words. Julian of Norwich, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott — they all delight me with their language, remind me of God’s faithfulness in every time and place, and strengthen my determination to keep pursuing this vocation.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
There’s a walking trail close to my house, next to an old canal. One hundred years ago, when this area was all farmland, this canal was the main water supply for all the fields. This is where I walk and pray.
Sometimes I feel like the internet and my smartphone have messed up my attention span. I’ve found that I pray most consistently as I walk. After all, my body is connected to my heart and mind, a fact I can sometimes forget!
I often use the ancient practice of prayer beads to keep my attention focused as I walk, praying the Lord’s Prayer, for different family and friends with each bead or the traditional Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” In anxiety, I sometimes lack words, so these ancient prayers give me form and expression.
The scenery changes year-round. Puffy white and gray thunderheads, two massive fourteeners looming in the distance, cottonwoods sensitive to each breath of wind, hummingbirds and magpies, once even a solemn wild turkey — all God’s glory and provocation for my prayers. It seems very fitting that this walk next to the canal, once the agricultural water source, still provides refreshment and restoration in a different form.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
I have some “touchstone” books, books that changed me bit by bit over many years. I’ll go chronologically:
High school Grace: “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis. The idea that grace is always given yet we also make choices about how we live and love that shape our eternal desires blew me away as a senior in high school. You become what you love. Will you keep shrinking by only turning to self, or will you become freer and more real in the expansive love of God? Lewis’ meditations will probably keep forming me when I’m 80.
Just-married Grace: “Life of the Beloved” by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen’s book describes how our lives in Jesus are shaped like the sacrament of communion: we are chosen, broken, given to one another, in the community of the body of Christ. To be broken and yet given and received to bless others and be blessed? Freedom, challenge, joy.
Graduate school Grace: “The Showings” by Julian of Norwich. I had to put one medieval book in here! The 14th-century contemplative writer and first woman writer in English, Julian of Norwich, interprets a series of sights and sounds and meaning she received from God while she thought she was dying. It is beautiful and theologically profound and taught me more about the nature and quality of the love of God than anything outside the Bible. If you’re interested, make sure you pick up the best translation out there, the Colledge & Walsh translation in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. What resource or habit are you clinging to most right now?
This is kind of a cop-out answer, but because I have to narrow it down to one, here it is: the Eucharist. The older I have gotten, the more deeply I appreciate that at church, I show up as I am and take communion. If I have trouble listening to the sermon or singing in worship or having a good attitude, or if I am sad or broken or frustrated or fearful, I still can toddle up to the altar like a sullen child or a baby bird being fed by her mother and receive the bread and wine. Inexplicably, Jesus is with me in that act.
Communion is a reflection of my life as it really is. Everything is given. Jesus is always present in a deeper way than I can imagine. But I tend to live as if those two things are not true. The Eucharist reroots me in reality.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I am excited and scared to launch my new book, “Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life,” out into the world. How can our language help us to learn how to follow Jesus? Why do our words for goodness often feel performative or hollowed out? Can we refresh this language by turning to the art and metaphor and outright weirdness of the past?
In this book, I take up the ancient language of the Seven Capital Vices and their Virtue Remedies — pride and humility, envy and love, wrath and meekness, sloth and fortitude, avarice and mercy, gluttony and abstinence, and lust and chastity — and explore the metaphors that medieval poets, preachers and artists used to portray them for ordinary people. What does it mean that meekness resembles a pillow? Or that envy is like a basilisk, that monster of Harry Potter fame?
Some of these words have been used in awful or boring ways, or simply have lost meaning. Chastity has been used to hurt many people. Sloth is a nothing burger of a word. Meekness is blatantly unattractive.
Yet Jesus describes himself as meek! Paul writes on chastity. And sloth, I now think, is one of the greatest challenges facing the postmodern church.
These words not only provoke us but may also help us love one another more fully in our present moment. Let’s revitalize our Christian imagination for life together. I can’t wait to hear about how people encounter these words with a new (and paradoxically ancient!) perspective.
We live in an age where “newest” equals best and “most advanced” is equivalent to the smartest or most culturally acceptable choice.
But God calls us to remember the wisdom and beauty of the past. “Stand by the roads,” he tells us, “and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jer. 6:16, ESV).
Instead of reaching for the next best thing, what if we took a moment this week to reflect on those ancient paths? Old preachers who stir our souls. Old-fashioned but powerful spiritual disciplines that remind us to depend on God. Timeless hymns and sacred music that are all but forgotten by modern recording labels.
Try it. You may discover fresh wisdom for your spiritual journey ahead.
Grace Hamman, Ph.D. (Duke University), is a writer and independent scholar of late medieval poetry and contemplative writing. She is the author of Ask of Old Paths and Jesus through Medieval Eyes. Her work has been published by academic and popular outlets, including Plough Quarterly and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Grace hosts a podcast called Old Books with Grace, which celebrates the beauty and joy found in reading the literature and theology of the past. She lives near Denver, Colorado with her husband and three young children.
