252: Unabridged Interview: Ronald Rolheiser

No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp

Lee Camp

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 555 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is our unabridged interview with Ronald Rolheiser. What if the final chapter of your life could become your greatest gift? In this deeply wise conversation, Father Ronald Rolheiser joins Lee C. Camp to explore the spiritual invitation of aging. Drawing from his latest book ⁠Insane for the Light: A Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years⁠, Rolheiser reflects on loneliness, diminishment, forgiveness, and what it means to give not only our lives—but our deaths—away. This episode offers profound wisdom for anyone seeking authentic human flourishing in the final seasons of life. Key Ideas: Give Your Death Away The final stage of life invites us to offer our vulnerability and diminishment as a gift, leaving behind a spirit of peace rather than resentment. Choose Your Old Fool Aging makes us all “old fools”—but we can become pathetic, angry, or holy, depending on whether we cling, resent, or receive with grace. Grieve So You Don’t Grow Bitter Unhealed wounds harden into anger over time, but grieving what cannot be undone allows the soul to mellow. Live from the “Above Mind” Jesus’ call to metanoia invites us out of defensive paranoia into open-handed trust, courage, and love. Practice Gratitude and Forgiveness In the wisdom years, the spiritual vocabulary simplifies. Two words remain: gratitude and forgiveness.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources and Transcript⁠⁠ for abridged episode with Ronald Rolheiser⁠⁠⁠ Thank you to our sponsors: Boll and Branch: Get 20% off plus free shipping by visiting ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BollAndBranch.com/NSE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join NSE+⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ — our subscriber-only community — for ad-free listening, member-only bonus content, and early access to live show tickets. Your membership helps make No Small Endeavor sustainable. No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@nosmallendeavor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@leeccamp ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends Lee C Camp here. You're listening to No Small Endeavor. This is our unabridged interview with Father Ronald Rollheiser.
0:09.7	Father Rollhaier is a Catholic priest who's done an immense amount of work on spirituality, spiritual formation, perhaps one of the most read scholars, theologians on spirituality in the English speaking world.
0:23.2	It's a delight talking to him about his most recent book, The Third and a Trilogy on Spiritual Formation at various stages of our life.
0:31.3	This last book is entitled Insane for the Light, a Spirituality for Our Wisdom Years. I've been watching people that I love,
0:40.3	people close to me here of late, growing old, and one of the things that it's brought me as I've
0:46.1	watched and paid attention is something like a new mantra that I keep reminding myself of,
0:50.6	namely we grow old with our habits. And in many ways, this is what Father
0:55.3	Ron Rulheiser is pointing us to, that we can become a person who holds on to our bitterness
1:01.0	or learns early in life the habits and the practices that make us a person who can give
1:08.2	our death away, that our death and the way we face our death, the way
1:11.5	we face our diminishment, the way we face the vulnerability of old age can become a gift
1:17.2	to the people around us, even in the midst of the hardship that all that diminishment and
1:22.2	decline might bring us. A lovely challenge and a lovely vision of what the last season of life might look like. I hope
1:30.2	you find this helpful. Here's Father Ron Rollhizer. Hey friends, Lee Camp here. We all need advice, but it's not
1:37.1	always clear who to ask, even in 2026, which is why I recommend checking out how to the longstanding advice show and 2026 Amby Award nominated Best Personal Growth Podcast.
1:50.3	No Small Endeavor was also just up for the very same award in that category.
1:54.0	So you know how to must be a great companion to our show.
1:56.8	More than that, How To is back with new episodes and a new host with award-winning journalist Mike Peska.
2:03.0	Each week, Mike tackles a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond
2:09.0	with help from world-class experts who actually know what they are talking about.
2:13.4	Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without a copay or awkward silence.
2:19.4	No questions too big or too specific, like how to protect the elderly from scammers,
	...

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