What If Prayer Isn’t What You Think It Is? with Malcolm Guite
From Everything Happens with Kate Bowler by Everything Happens Studios
March 17, 2026 · 37 min · Season 16 · Episode 6
About this episode
Kate Bowler discusses the nature of prayer and faith with poet and theologian Malcolm Guite.
What if Lent isn’t about giving something up, but about learning how to sit with what’s already gone? In this episode, Kate talks with poet, priest, and theologian Malcolm Guite about the kind of faith that can hold contradiction—the yes and the no, belief and doubt, beauty and sorrow. Malcolm, a Life Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge and author of Sounding the Seasons and Lifting the Veil, reflects on prayer as attention, poetry as a language spacious enough for ambivalence, and why faith might need less forced resolution and more honesty. SHOW NOTES Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite Lifting the Veil by Malcolm Guite Seamus Heaney, Station Island George Herbert, “Prayer” Gerard Manley Hopkins, the “terrible sonnets” (including “No worst, there is none”) and The Wreck of the Deutschland T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets C.S. Lewis, “Blue Spells and Flowered Spheres” Tour dates & tickets: katebowler.com/joyfulanyway Watch the live conversation on YouTube Join Kate Bowler on Substack for the season of Lent: katebowler.substack.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
People in this episode
Host: Kate Bowler
Guest: Malcolm Guite
Topics covered
- prayer
- faith
- Lent
- contradiction
- poetry
- ambivalence
Keywords
- belief
- doubt
- beauty
- sorrow
- honesty
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Sounding the Seasons, Lifting the Veil, Station Island, Four Quartets
Books & works: Sounding the Seasons and Lifting the Veil, Sounding the Seasons, Lifting the Veil, Station Island, Prayer, The Wreck of the Deutschland T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets C.S. Lewis
Places: Cambridge
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