All month here at Patheos, we’ve been exploring the topic of Passing on the Faith to our children. How do we pass on this faith we cherish so much to our beloved children? A fantastic group of voices and perspectives from across the religious spectrum have weighed in on this important question, from Progressive Christians (Phyllis Tickle, Mark Yaconelli, Melvin Bray, to name a few), to Hindus to Pagans to Catholics. Check out the Symposium here. I had a chance to... Read more
(an excerpt from SOULJOURN, my new novel) We worked all day. Dad and Rachel were on one team, Father Crespi and I were on another, refilling tanks, cleaning up trash around them, and placing new ones. Five new blue flags, marking the new tanks, waved defiantly against the demon of thirst, and fluttered in the breeze over the desert at sundown that evening. The crew enjoyed a dinner at Rachel’s house prepared by the Women’s Society of the Federated... Read more
When I think about spiritual disciplines as something I need to do in order to be a “good” Christian, every fiber of my being rebels. But when I think about them as roadmaps, paths that a great cloud of witnesses have traversed for thousands of years before me, then there is a stirring in my soul. Read more
Mimetic Theory. It’s a phrase that’s been popping up in conversations and blogposts about violence, and particularly the violence in the Bible, from the likes of Brian McLaren, Kevin Miller, Christian Piatt and other progressive Christian thinkers as of late. Being new to the concept myself, I decided we needed some experts to come and unpack this theory for us at Patheos. Starting today, we’ll begin a Mimetic Mondays weekly series, in which Suzanne Ross and Adam Ericksen of The Raven... Read more
A dozen bug bites and one gold intention bracelet. My arm, currently adorned with both, has become a living totem pole of sorts this week, a reminder of two different spiritual communities I entered into, and was gifted by, within a week of each other. From the hot, humid and muddy campground of the Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina (the bug bites) to the serene, flower-filled air-conditioned rooms of the Wake Up Festival in the Rocky Mountains... Read more
St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystical priest of the 16th century, drew a map of the soul’s journey, and entitled it The Ascent of Mt. Carmel. The path up the mountain was marked with the words “nada nada nada nada”. His was the “via negativa”, the way of negation that led to direct encounter with God. By embracing nada – nothing – the soul released its attachments to all things so that, unencumbered, it could climb to its... Read more
An excerpt from SOULJOURN, my new novel (Chapter 6): I went home, said goodnight to Dad, and went to bed. The moonlight bathed my bedroom. The silence seemed to beg to be filled. I opened the bedroom window and leaned out and looked up at Cobre Mountain, faintly glowing in the white light. I felt like I could reach out and touch it, it seemed so close. The weight, the mass of the mountain overwhelmed me. There really was something... Read more
My branch of mostly-white Protestant Christianity is obsessed with its own death. It frets about its demise constantly, asks itself how to prevent its decline, worries about its legacy, and, like a dying plant, apportions its resources in bare maintenance patterns, often in levels too low to really support life. But I think we sometimes miss the forest for the trees. Read more
I don’t know if I’ve ever had an ecstatic religious experience before. Certainly those experiences aren’t readily had in my branch of white Protestant Christianity. I could probably point to moments throughout my years at evangelical summer camps, youth group, college Bible studies, and church services where I have been transported, transfixed, and moved by experiences. But I don’t know if anything will ever compare to the Indigo Girls show on Saturday night of the 2013 Wild Goose Festival. I... Read more
Humidity is a kind of spiritual practice. I never thought about it that way until this very day, but I am now convinced that it is true. Humidity has never bothered me much before; I was raised in the South, and where other people wither when the air is damp, I thrive. Out West where I live now, people rave about the low humidity, but my skin, conditioned to all that moisture, physically hurts on particularly dry days. I’m not... Read more
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