Even the most committed Christian sometimes wonders if it’s worth it to participate in the institutional church. Religion can be a huge commitment of time and resources, and especially in our day, more and more people are saying “no thanks.” It’s an honest question that we all face sooner or later: “Do I stay Christian?” Now we have one of the leading progressive Christian voices of our time, Brian McLaren (who wrote the forward to my book Unteachable Lessons) reflecting... Read more
Almost from the beginning of the Christian era, mystics and saints and theologians and spiritual teachers have reflected on one of the most beautiful and poetic of the “wisdom writings” in the Bible to explore the mystery of the love of God and how that love seeks intimacy with us, God’s human creatures. I am referring to the Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon or the Canticle of Canticles. It’s not so much a “book” as... Read more
With the news that Elon Musk is acquiring Twitter, once again the question of how social media functions (or ought to function) in our society is back on peoples’ minds. Ever since I saw the movie The Social Dilemma, I have been conscious of the challenges that social media brings to our common life. Chief among those challenges is the question of how we navigate our social and political differences and disagreements. Christians are not immune to these social and... Read more
I’ve been working my way through Mystical Theology and Contemporary Spiritual Practice: Renewing the Contemplative Tradition, a book in Routledge’s “Contemporary Theological Explorations in Mysticism” series. There’s a delightful essay in it called “Unlikely Mystics” about the sense of wonder and numinous reality that people encounter when visiting medieval cathedrals. Based on her research at Durham Cathedral in England, author Rosalind Brown describes the cathedral as “mystical space for ordinary people.” Telling the story of a visitor to the cathedral who had... Read more
Friends, here is a new video I’d like to share with you. God willing, this will be the first of a series of videos I will be creating in the months to come. This video, like all my online content, is funded through Patreon. When I set up my Patreon account, I set several goals: commitments for new content or new projects that I would undertake when the number of patrons supporting my work reached certain levels. One of those... Read more
Thomas Keating loved it. So did Basil Pennington and Bede Griffiths. In our time, Cynthia Bourgeault and Therese Schroeder-Sheker have praised it — enthusiastically. So why, pray tell, are these leaders of the contemplative community endorsing a book with a title like Meditations on the Tarot? Written in the 1960s and published only after the death of its author in 1973, Meditations on the Tarot is a unique book that explores the contemplative imagination — how our God-given powers of intelligence, intuition, insight... Read more
I’ve recently been re-reading one of the most fascinating and unusual books of mystical wisdom to have been written within the last 100 years. This is actually my third time through the book, and I know I will read it again, certainly more than once. It’s one of those rare books that rewards multiple readings, each new journey through it yielding new insights. I’m not the only one who feels this way about this 20th-century contemplative masterpiece. Look at some... Read more
Last week, the George Harrison estate released a new, “official” video for Harrison’s 1970 masterpiece, “My Sweet Lord” from his magnum opus All Things Must Pass. It’s a playful and fun video, with a kind of goofy X-Files plot, featuring a star-studded cast (Mark Hamill, Fred Armison, Vanessa Bayer, Weird Al Yankovic, Rosanna Arquette, Joe Walsh, Kate Micucci, Claudia O’Doherty, along with Harrison’s wife and son, Olivia and Dhani, and his former bandmates Jeff Lynne and Ringo Starr; conspicuous in their... Read more
I was speaking with a few friends of mine who are spiritual directors recently, and we were talking about the work they do accompanying people who seek to draw closer to God. If you are not familiar with spiritual direction, it is a ministry of interactive care, in which a person supports another in the journey into deeper intimacy with God. A spiritual director does not “direct” in the sense of giving orders, but may provide a sense of orientation... Read more
My latest book, Eternal Heart, was published this past summer by Broadleaf. Broadleaf Books is an imprint of 1517 Media, the publisher that may be more familiar to you under the imprints Fortress Press and Augsburg Books. Working with Broadleaf has been a wonderful experience, and my relationship with them has just gotten a bit more “serious.” Broadleaf recently acquired the rights to take over publication of five of my older books, including my bestseller, The Big Book of Christian... Read more
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