listening
-
Love Sees That There’s No Such Thing as a Little Thing
“How great it is to be faithful to a little thing,” I remember contemplative psychotherapist Jim Finley reminding me when my phone again randomly selected a track on a walk earlier in the day: “It’s not measurable.
-
The Truth Takes Care of Us
The very indication of what it means to live a contemplative life is “to have faith that our own heart in its most childlike hour did not deceive us.”
-
The Unnamed Mystics | A Conversation with Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw
“contemplation is a much more deliberate activity, a person decides to engage in this work…mysticism is much more involuntary.”
-
Opening Unto Mystery | A Conversation with Dr. Elyse Ambrose
How am I willing to be changed by what I encounter in the mystery?
-
The Privilege of Contemplation | A Conversation with Dr. Anthea Butler
“being a contemplative doesn’t mean that you escape society, or you escape the world, but that you find a place to anchor yourself firmly first of all, and then secondarily, take care of those things in the ways in which you need to take care of them.”
-
Solitude in a Toolshed
Although the hunt for more solitude was a pattern in Merton’s life, the sense of “arrival” was palpable for him in rat-infested toolshed
-
Things are Different: Grieve, Slow Down, Pay Attention, Stay Tender.
Things are Different: Grieve Our lives will be forever changed. The grief and loss we now face will forever change us. They already have changed us. They will continue to change us. As long as I keep letting it in, grief is tenderizing me in ways my body had yet to feel. Loss is softening…
-
The Wall Between Grace & Domination
Parking along the street felt ordinary enough. Our group of seven got out of the car to see ourselves flanked between an everyday row of homes and the Arizona/Mexico border wall. What a strange thing to see amid a neighborhood. What a strange thing to opt traveling to. As we walked along the wall on…
-
A Monkish Friendship: Fr. Charles Cummings, OCSO (1940-2020)
“The monastic night watch is good practice in the art of waiting, as we patiently look for the coming of dawn. Monks and nuns wait in the dark, longing for the light of dawn but unable to hasten its coming. No one can force the dawn or bring it about in any way. It dawns…
-
Be The Hope, Now
Islamophobia is not just a problem for Muslims, it is a problem for all of us. It is not the “job” of the marginalized, persecuted, or attacked group to solve the problem. To ask the even more deeply grieving “what do you need,” or “what can I do,” puts even more agony upon them. This…
Dr. Cassidy Hall, DMin, MDiv, MTS, MA 