A new podcast from Cassidy Hall and the Christian Century examining the intersection of queerness and contemplative life. Based on her forthcoming book, Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality (Broadleaf, 2024). 

The world of contemplative Christianity has yielded to the same voices for far too long, many of whom are from centuries before our time, with lives unlike our own, and often from experiences disconnected from marginalization, oppression, and what it feels like to be an outsider. Cassidy Hall, an LGBTQIA+ Christian contemplative scholar and podcast host, takes us on a journey to queer the contemplative tradition. For Hall, queering is not solely about identifying as queer or applying queer theory; it is about what is gained by seeing things differently. “Queer,” she says, “is the way I tilt my head to look at the world.” As queerness reawakened her own contemplative life, Hall discovered that queering and questioning the tradition allowed her to listen more closely to voices that are queer, marginalized, and oppressed–voices that have long existed but have often been overlooked or silenced. For Hall, that also meant moving differently into contemplation, into silence, into liminality and ritual. In showing us the way, she helps us envision what contemplative faith can look like, what spiritual spaces we can reclaim for welcome–and how queering contemplation, and lifting up queer contemplative voices, frees us to seek the infinite possibility of our own identity and engage our spiritual lives with open hearts and open hands. 

Contemplating Now: A Podcast Exploring the Intersection of Contemplation and Social Justice. In this podcast, I’ll host conversations with scholars, mystics, and activists, as we explore the undeniable intersection of contemplation & social justice – hosted by The Christian Century.

This is a labor of love project created, produced, and edited by me. With no funding or financial support for the project, I hope you’ll consider helping keep the work afloat by joining me over on Patreon.com/cassidyhall.

Support this work on Patreon.

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Encountering Silence explores the beauty and importance of silence from many angles, not just the religious/spiritual/mystical, but also reflecting on the psychology of silence, silence and the arts, silence and politics, silence and education… the list goes on. For a topic that we often don’t devote a lot of time and energy to, silence certainly has an important (if quiet!) role in all our lives.

Find out more by joining the mailing list and catching the show notes at encounteringsilence.com. Support the team on Patreon.

With hosts, Carl McColman, Cassidy Hall, and Kevin Johnson.