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Winn Collier is a writer and pastor, a loving husband and father. A pastor for 28 years, Winn now directs the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Winn is an Episcopal priest and holds a PhD in Religion & Literature from the University of Virginia. He’s written five books, including “Love Big, Be Well” and “A Burning in My Bones,” and has contributed to numerous periodicals, including Christian Century, Christianity Today and The Washington Post. 

Winn takes some time to share resources that have influenced his faith journey.  He opens up about how fear has “gobbled up” portions of his life and shares how he’s learned to handle his fears. He reveals some of his go-to spiritual practices, from running to texting, and describes his recent passion for iconography from a particular school in Ukraine.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

I currently live in a beautiful, magical spot on the map known as Holland, Michigan, on the edge of the mammoth Lake that separates us from Chicago. However, I can’t honestly say Holland is my hometown; since I’m a Texan, I’m going to tell you about Marfa Burrito in Marfa, Texas. You may have noticed a few truths about us Texans. Here are two: we’re generally obnoxious about our state, and we’re deadly serious about our Mexican food.

Marfa Burrito is a quixotic shop, a cottage with white ceiling fans and handwriting plastering the walls and hundreds of framed photos of the writers, musicians, and Hollywood stars who’ve stopped in for a deadly serious burrito. Anthony Bourdain visited for an episode of “Parts Unknown,” which instantly makes the place legendary in my book. Marfa is deep in West Texas, near Big Bend National Park, the darkest of the Dark Sky areas remaining in the U.S. You travel to Marfa to jettison the noise, to take a peek at the Prada art installation on Route 90 (but only once), and to get a Marfa Burrito.

What made this moment so memorable for me, though, was the fact that I went with a few friends. Travel post-COVID had just barely opened, and we hadn’t seen each other for pandemic ages. I’d forgotten what it felt like to sit in the sunshine with your pals, to have an empty day in front of you with no responsibilities other than conversation — in the flesh. To laugh. To cuss at everything that needed cussing at. To lock your lips on a massive pile of carne or asado wrapped in a fluffy tortilla the size of a large platter. 

I don’t know that I’ll ever visit Marfa Burrito again, but that moment will be a grace to me the rest of my days.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?

I used to run four miles five or six mornings a week. But then I tore my meniscus, and the doc said I should cut back to two. The tempered rhythm was a sad adjustment, but those two mornings a week became all the more wondrous. Clear air. Clear head. The steady pad-pad of foot to ground. Lifting weights (or being in the gym for any reason at all really) are only slightly lower on my detestable meter than eating Brussels sprouts (and yes, I’ve had them whatever way you’re thinking I should try them). But out on the road, going somewhere with no need of actually getting there, having no need to answer anyone or solve anything — it’s joy. 

I speak of what I do as running, but it’s really plodding — me pointing in a direction and just keeping the forward movement somewhat steady. When someone says, “Hey, I saw you out running,” I usually answer: “Did I look like a gazelle?” The reality is something more like an old mule, dogged, ears nicked, a little gimpy. But persistent. And with a big smile. 

And how can I think of such things without mentioning reading (Nial Williams’ “This is Happiness” recently opened a deep well in me) and being with my wife, Miska, cooking or dancing or having her lead me in yoga. There’s goodness everywhere.

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 broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?

Fear has gobbled up too much of my life. My wife, Miska, and I were engaged twice because the first time I got down on my knee, I melted, overcome by anxieties. “Deer in the headlights” is how Miska described it. One of my truest regrets is how Miska and I didn’t get married sooner. I could have had even more years with this marvelous woman, but my fear got in the way. Then when our boys were little, fear lurked so close, and there were times when I thought it would finish me. I wanted so desperately to be a good dad, and it seemed fear was robbing me of this desire. While therapy and friends and getting older and grace have carried me a long way in this story, there’s often still an old, slithering voice attempting to sink its fangs deep in my soul. 

There’s a lot I’ve learned about fear, but for me, one of the revelations is this: I’m supposed to move toward the fear, not away from it. (This is my story — I can imagine very different situations where this would be awful advice.) If I’m afraid of something (a conversation, a transition, a step into uncertain territory, a relationship), then, in many instances, I’m supposed to move closer in, not follow the protective instinct to move further back.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?

My title is Director of The Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination (housed at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan). So I teach, lead Doctor of Ministry cohorts (one for pastors, one for writers), help to organize our annual Doxology gathering, work on our podcast, etc. 

However, if you want to get closest to my heart, I’m a pastor and a writer. I believe that walking with people in their pain and bewilderment and helping a little community of God’s people live in the good, old story — in Jesus, God is with us, we are never alone, we can by God’s mercies become more whole and more truly human — is such noble work. I believe words are holy, and if we tend to words well, they move us closer to God and closer to ourselves. Words are, as Abraham Heschel insisted, “Hyphens between heaven and earth.” It’s hard for me to know whether my pastoral life has affected my writing more or my writing life has affected my pastoring more. It’s a mysterious alchemy for me.

I’m an Episcopal priest, but my work at the Peterson Center these days means I don’t have a parish. So my work with pastors and my writing for others carries extra weight. I’ve written five books (most recently “Love Big, Be Well,” an epistolary novel, and “A Burning in My Bones,” the biography of Eugene Peterson). My next two books are in the works, and I’m currently writing pieces for my Substack.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace 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?

It’s difficult for me to separate single instances when God was at work versus any other moment because, as I see it, it’s all grace. Every thread. Even the detours. Somehow, even the mistakes. I take one of Wendell Berry’s lines as gospel: 

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.

I’m breathing because of grace (the Spirit blows God’s very life-breath into my lungs). I’m standing upright because of grace. (The Psalmist says it’s God’s mercy that fills the whole earth; I’m literally held up by God’s love.) We often think we can’t see or hear God, not because God is so absent or hidden but because God is so ubiquitous and so visible. I almost never notice the air or light enveloping me, but they’re absolutely there, everywhere — the most constant realities I’ll experience. I’d be dead without them.

However, if I want to lean in closer and ponder those moments where I become more aware of this everyday grace, then I think the signal for me — when the antennae start to buzz — is when I experience tears. When I was writing “Love Big, Be Well,” my words were landing on the page lifeless and shriveled, flat as roadkill. But I kept at it, every morning at the table in the backyard. If I wanted to see any beauty, I had to look away from my manuscript and off to the West, to the snow capped Rockies. After a few laborious weeks, and just when I was ready to toss it all in the trash, I landed on a character in a scene. As I wrote, my eyes went moist. Maybe 45 minutes later, I stepped away. I knew I’d written something true. I couldn’t have made that moment happen. God knows, I’ve tried. I had to be present, doing the work and then receive the grace when it arrives.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called “nonspiritual” activities?

Most everything we’ve talked about so far acts as a spiritual practice for me, ways my life encounters and responds to God’s presence. Writing is a primary posture of prayer for me. Running (and evening walks with my wife, our oldest son and our dog Gus) provides a rhythm of groundedness and community. Reading is essential: Kathleen Norris and Rowan Williams have been important companions. But maybe I’d point to two other practices.

The first is the most basic rhythm of morning prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). The prayer book is beautiful and freeing for me because I don’t have to plan anything or create anything — I only need to do it. I’m told what Scriptures to pray, what other lines to receive and offer to God, how to pray for my neighbors and my country and the world. And what I like most about the BCP is how, even if I’m in a room all by myself, I’m never praying alone. I’m praying with God’s people across the globe, and (within the communion of saints) I’m praying with those spiritual mothers and fathers who’ve gone before us. Prayer is never a solitary affair. 

The second practice I’d mention is, of all things, a text thread. I have three friends who’ve shared a text chain with me for years. The four of us will write to each other at least every couple days, and some days there’s a real flurry when something’s gotten under our skin or there’s a song or story that has moved us. Friendship is one of those experiences where I most deeply encounter God’s love for me and where I feel most responsible to participate in God’s love for others. John Lennon said he got by with a little help from his friends. Me too, thanks be to God.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff too. What are some of your favorite resources?

Few people have influenced my thinking, my posture, my understanding of pastoring and writing and beauty and prayer and what it means to be human in this marvelous God-drenched world than Eugene Peterson. Eugene’s “Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity” fundamentally reimagined for me what it means to be a pastor and a wide-awake, curious person. Eugene’s works (maybe start with “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction,” “Leap Over a Wall” or “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places”) are wonderful, deep wells that carry us into God’s astounding depths.

Next, I’d say Frederick Bauerschmidt’s “The Love That is God.” It’s the book I most often recommend these days. The claim that “God is love” is the most radical, foundational claim in the universe. It’s the grounds for everything else we believe. If we do not believe this truth about God, then we’ll likely be overcome by some amalgamation of fear, shame, violence, cynicism, isolation (the list goes into infinity). But if God truly is love — and a love beyond our language, beyond our wildest imaginations — then absolutely everything about reality has been permanently reconfigured. 

Finally, I’d say a bit of music: pianist Alexis Ffrench, ensemble Voces8, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and composer Arvo Pärt.

We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it's done for you.

I’ve been captured by the iconography emerging from a new school of Ukrainian iconographers. The seedbed for much of this new work is the Sacred Art Department of the Lviv National Academy of Arts. Icons are much more than flat images; they are windows into encounters with God — a way of praying. Icons tell the gospel story, only not in words. And these icons, coming out of a nation and landscape immersed in such sorrow and violence right now, makes them all the more powerful. Prayer — seeking God and God's active help and the capacity to live in God’s true story — really is our truest hope amid our deep sorrow and pain. 

If you want to contemplate the stories these icons tell, the prayers they offer, you could start with a couple names: Ivanka Demchuk and Natalya Rusetska.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is 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’m well into my next book, which centers on the scandal and fire of God’s love. I’m teaming up with a few others for a new podcast called “Low in the Water.” I’m writing on my Substack and preparing for our next Doxology gathering. Mainly, though, I’m trying to stay close to the home fires. That’s where my deepest passion lands: an astounding Miska and two sons who are becoming more of who they truly are. Love holds us — I’m banking on that.

Winn Collier has cultivated a heart to see the grace of God in all circumstances. He says, “…as I see it, it's all grace. Every thread. Even the detours. Somehow, even the mistakes.” There is freedom in the truth that, as Romans 8:28 says, “.. in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” How has the grace of God been present in both the celebrations of your life as well as the trials? Ask God to help you have eyes to see his grace that is present at all times, in every circumstance. Ask him to help you recognize his grace today in places you may not have known to look.

Winn Collier, a pastor for 28 years, now directs the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. An Episcopal priest, Winn holds a PhD. in Religion & Literature from the University of Virginia. Winn has written five books (most recently the epistolary novel Love Big, Be Well and A Burning in My Bones, the biography of Eugene Peterson) and for numerous periodicals, including Christian Century, Christianity Today and Washington Post. Winn and his wife Miska (a spiritual director and yoga teacher) have two sons and a rollicking dog Gus (short for St. Augustine).

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