Ceramics and Surrender: A Praxis Podcast featuring Jack Tripp, MTS ’25

MADDISON TENNEY: So if you could just give our listeners your full name and your pronouns.  

JACK TRIPP: My name is Jack Tripp, and I use he/him pronouns.  

MADDISON TENNEY: And where are you from?  

JACK TRIPP: I am originally from Westport, Massachusetts, so not all that far from Harvard Divinity School.  

MADDISON TENNEY: What is your degree, and do you have a focus?  

JACK TRIPP: I am getting the master of theological studies degree, and my focus is religion, literature, and culture.  

MADDISON TENNEY: And then do you have a faith tradition? And if so, what?  

JACK TRIPP: Yes, I am a Quaker from the Religious Society of Friends, was raised in that tradition and continued to practice it.  

MADDISON TENNEY: I'm so interested to hear more. One of the coolest things about coming to HDS for me was the amount of Quakers that I've met here at the Divinity School. What brought you to Harvard Divinity School?  

JACK TRIPP: I was raised going to meeting every week. I also went to a Quaker school. My family at least knew a lot of people who did divinity school, which I know is not necessarily a common experience. But both my parents, at various points of their life have said it's a pipe dream to go to divinity school. And it was never something that I expected to do.  

But I went to college. I really missed being a part of kind of the strong religious communities that I grew up in and religious communities that were also—always felt very kind of empowering and liberatory to me. And I ended up taking a class my junior year of college called Poetry and Faith. And it was just like — it was like a return to the conversations that my faith tradition inspired, through the lens of literature and through the lens of poetry.  

And in that class, we were having conversations about literature through the lens of faith that I really wanted to continue. So that was the first kind of inkling I had thinking, oh, well, maybe I will think about divinity school.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Were you interested in religious studies at that point, and was that sort of a pivotal experience for you, or did that come after you had taken that class?  

JACK TRIPP: No, that was one of two religious studies classes I took during undergrad. Otherwise, I was an English major and also majored in poli-sci, political science. Yeah, so I was not focused on religious studies, but I think it definitely — the experience I'm having in the religion, literature, and culture focus, and with the classes that I'm taking at HDS are very tied to that interest in looking at the experience of the sacred through the lens of literature.  

MADDISON TENNEY: So you're in undergrad. You're taking these two classes. You're an English major. You're also doing political science. You're busy. How, in all of that, did you decide to go to Harvard Divinity School, specifically?  

JACK TRIPP: I think I was really drawn, because I wasn't necessarily interested in a strict religious studies focus, I didn't really have a driving focus behind that interest besides kind of an interest in books and literature. I wanted to be in an environment where I would encounter tons of different faith traditions and people who are of no tradition and are just kind of exploring spirituality generally.  

So that was my main motivation to look at Harvard, because there are so few divinity schools that have the student body that Harvard does in terms of the diversity of interest and an experience and tradition and all the rest of it.  

MADDISON TENNEY: I remember that was a really big deciding factor for me, as well. And it is so cool and so fun to see everyone and to just learn from them. So you get to Harvard Divinity School. How did you decide the religion, arts, and literature focus? Was that something you had decided before you came? Was that something you decided once you started taking classes? What was that process like for you?  

JACK TRIPP: No, that was pretty predetermined. I was pretty certain that that was the focus I wanted to take. So I felt a lot of freedom in taking classes in that focus area, but also branching out and exploring other areas, too.  

MADDISON TENNEY: I'll be honest, I'm not an expert on Quaker theology. But was that impactful when you decided to do MTS over MDiv? How did you make that choice coming into Harvard Divinity School?  

JACK TRIPP: What a good question. Yes, it was definitely impactful. Liberal Quakers, which is the Quakerism that's practiced in New England and that I grew up in, we don't generally have clergy. And I felt pretty certain that, if I wanted the training that would lead me into kind of a spiritual care profession, I'm not sure that I would have come here to do that training. And I think that if I were interested in spiritual care, I wouldn't necessarily seek that in the classroom, because I wouldn't need accreditation. I don't need the MDiv to practice spiritually in my tradition.  

MADDISON TENNEY: So you've talked a little bit about wanting to take classes where you get to read books. What kind of classes does that even look like? What are you taking? What have you loved? What have you struggled with? What are these classes, if someone is interested in literature and religion, that you would recommend or that you've experienced?  

JACK TRIPP: Well, there are so many options. Anything with Stephanie Paulsell or Matt Potts is bound to include some novels in it. And theirs have been some of my favorite classes. I started out with Religion and Virginia Woolf in my first semester, which was fantastic. And it's devastating that Stephanie's retiring.  

But for anyone who will have the chance to take it this fall, I think they're lucky. Yeah, and then Forgiveness, of course, was a very popular class at the Divinity School in this last spring semester, with Matt Potts. And that was a lot of novels, but I thought a really fruitful exploration of that intersection between religious thought and people who are writing, but not necessarily thinking that they're thinking religiously.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Thinking about your experiences, you're doing arts and religion and literature. You're diving deep into religion and literature. What sort of outside-of-the-classroom experiences have you had while at the Divinity School?  

JACK TRIPP: Well, as you mentioned, we are both users this summer of the Harvard Ceramics Studio, and that has probably been my most time-consuming commitment outside of class and school and homework. Yeah, so I spend many hours there with my hands in the mud trying to make something.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Do you feel like your ceramic practice and your spiritual practices are connected?  

JACK TRIPP: I think they are. I mean, I've always grown-up doing things artistically. My dad's worked as a house painter but is also a beautiful textile artist and watercolorist. And so my family spent a lot of time focusing on artistic things. Whenever you are going through the creationary process, there's some sort of surrender involved in that. And I think that experience is very similar to what many of us find the religious experience to be.  

Any time, especially in ceramics, where you're taking dirt and putting it in a very hot oven and then covering it with glass and then putting it back into a very hot oven. There are things that go wrong and things that are hard and things that don't work out. And so I think that process of, for me at least, relinquishing control and relinquishing that desire to control and kind of just giving yourself over to the clay is very much a spiritual process.  

MADDISON TENNEY: How did you start to cultivate that experience for yourself?  

JACK TRIPP: Yeah, well, I took a ceramics class for the first time, I think, in eighth or ninth grade. And so it's something that I kind of did intermittently since then. And then, senior year of college, I really got back into it. And I was like, I'm going to go consistently. I'm going to go weekly. I'm going to be disciplined.  

Yeah, and then I came to Harvard, and they have this big, beautiful ceramic studio. At this point, I just can't do without it. Yeah, I'm hooked.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Will you be taking classes in the fall?  

JACK TRIPP: I will be taking classes in the fall. Infinite Bowls is my class name, and we are just focusing on bowls, which, yeah, a lot more thought goes into bowls than people think. They're a lot of work.  

MADDISON TENNEY: If an HDS student were to come up to you and want to get involved with the ceramics like you have been, do you have any suggestions or anything you would direct them to?  

JACK TRIPP: Well, you know, it's really hard to register for classes, as you know. So I would recommend that they are online the second that classes drop. And unfortunately, that's the best that I could do for them.  

But it seems like ceramics have been really popular recently, and I think it's such a cool thing to know so many people who are interested in ceramics. And yeah, hopefully if they don't make it into the Harvard Ceramics Studio, they can find another studio nearby, since they seem to be cropping up all over the place.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Jack, this has been a wonderful interview. And I'm very fascinated how you've really incorporated your experience as an undergrad to your time at Harvard Divinity School, and you've created this sort of curiosity about the creativity of spirituality. Where do you hope to go after Harvard Divinity School? What does your next step look like?  

JACK TRIPP: Oh, such a good question. I wish I knew. I think I could easily see myself in a number of different fields. Yeah, I work with the Center for Public Service at the college. So I could easily see myself going into nonprofit work or service work. I could see myself going into teaching. Yeah, so we'll see where the next year leads. And it's nice to be surrounded by so many people at the Divinity School who are also figuring things out.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Well, Jack, we always do a final quick speed round of quick questions that we want to ask students. So in a sentence or less, what musician or artist are you currently listening to?  

JACK TRIPP: I'm currently on a little bit of an ABBA kick because I recently watched Mamma Mia for the first time, and it has really gotten stuck in my head.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Such a good choice. Second, if you could create any class at Harvard Divinity School, what class would you create, and why?  

JACK TRIPP: Yeah, this is such a hard one because now I'm just thinking of the classes that other professors already teach. But it would probably be something like that undergraduate course that I first took. And it would be a syllabus with my favorite novelists or poets or authors and some kind of unifying theme around them.  

MADDISON TENNEY: I love it. And then, lastly, any words of wisdom you would give to your younger self starting at Harvard Divinity School?  

JACK TRIPP: Yeah, I think the best advice I probably could have received is just take it slow and one day at a time, because it is a surprising place with tons of different experiences and opportunities, and very unpredictable in that way, but wonderful in that unpredictability, often.  

MADDISON TENNEY: Jack, thank you again so much for being on the Praxis Podcast. We are so excited to see the magical ceramics you create and hopefully to have you back in the near future.  

JACK TRIPP: Always lovely to see you. 

MADDISON TENNEY: This has been a Harvard Divinity School podcast. Thank you to Caroline Cataldo and Jonathan Beasley for editing this podcast. For more information on the show, you can view the show notes or go to the Harvard Divinity School website.