About

Cassidy Hall is an author, filmmaker, podcaster, student, and trained counselor. she now works as Director of Communications for the Heartland and IKC Conferences in the United Church of Christ – overseeing communication for hundreds of churches in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Indiana. She is ordained pending call in the United Church of Christ and continues to re-imagine alongside the modern world what it means to be the church. 

Cassidy’s writing has been published in the Convivium Journal, The Thomas Merton Seasonal, The Thomas Merton Annual (Vol.  32), and has been featured on The Huffington Post, Patheos, and the National Catholic Reporter. She has also worked on the editorial staff of the Wilbur Award-Winning Blog, Sick Pilgrim.

In 2012, while working as a counselor and reading Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, Cassidy made a pilgrimage to all seventeen Trappist/Cistercian Monasteries of the United States. While there, she wrote, interviewed monks and nuns, and photographed her entire experience within these seventeen spaces. Her personal quest for silence was written about in this Des Moines Register feature article by Mike Kilen.

Born and raised in Iowa, Cassidy moved to Los Angeles in 2013 to work on the production team of the documentary feature film In Pursuit of Silence. The film’s success on the festival circuit and beyond led to its worldwide theatrical release. Her directorial debut short-film, Day of a Stranger, paints an intimate portrait of Thomas Merton’s hermitage years and is anticipated for release in the summer of 2020). 

Her podcast, Encountering Silence, with co-hosts Carl McColman and Kevin Johnson features interviews with contemplatives, modern-day mystics, and explores the ambiguity of silence in our modern-day lives. Some guests have included Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr, Dr. Barbara Holmes, Jim Forest, Jim Finley, Mirabai Starr, and many more. Encountering Silence can be subscribed to on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Cassidy is available to be booked for speaking events, film presentations, and photography. Contact Cassidy.

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