Eastern wisdom for Western Christians

Rowan Williams presided over the Anglican Communion as archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, during fractious, fracturing times. Now retired as master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, he recently moved home to Wales, where he engages his many commitments in the wider church at a lower profile, though his work as an academic, a prolific author and lecturer, and a well-regarded poet continues unabated. Like Augustine, one figure to whom his mind has continually returned, Williams is known for the questing spiritual fervor that undergirds and deepens his intellectual prowess.

In his latest theological work, Looking East in Winter, the quintessentially Anglican leader looks with respect and even longing toward the riches of another vast Christian stream. He explores the rich resources for spiritual practice from the Eastern churches, the Jesus prayer, and Orthodoxy’s insights on the Trinity and human identity, along with social and liturgical applications. In many ways the book is a culmination: Williams’s graduate school days left him fascinated with Eastern Orthodoxy, and his doctoral thesis mined Vladimir Lossky’s theology. He shares the riches of decades of reflection with a Western Christendom that seems plagued by anxiety and angst over its calling.

My first real exposure to your writing came decades ago with your book The Wound of Knowledge. You were writing about Augustine, anticipating what would become a cultural phenomenon: a keen interest in narrative’s power. “The light of God can make a story, a continuous reality,” you wrote, “out of the chaos of unhappiness, ‘homeless’ wandering, hurt and sin. And so nothing can be left out of account—not even the very first inklings of experience.” In your more recent On Augustine, you write that “the shaping of a sense of self is a narrative business.” How does Augustine model attention to early experiences?