You may have noticed that I have begun to identify myself, here on Substack and elsewhere online, as Carl “Skye” McColman. Skye is a nickname that I began using, and sharing with friends and family, late last year. Now it’s time to share it with everyone.

Skye is Scottish, like my surname. It comes from the Isle of Skye, a place noted for its profound natural beauty, vast open spaces, and deep Celtic roots. It’s considered a unisex name, or as I prefer to think of it, a nonbinary name. Obviously, it’s a delicious pun with sky, which again touches on nature, and it also speaks to an enduring metaphor in both Christian mysticism and Buddhism: the calm, meditative, contemplative heart is like a beautiful, sunny sky.

Contemplative. Nonbinary. Celtic. Nature-inspired. Even friends who only know me casually can probably see why this name resonates so deeply with me.

My given name, Carl, remains my legal name, and it not in any way a “dead” name. All my books identify me as Carl, and I imagine that will be true of future books as well. The name Skye, for me, represents an expansion, not a transition.

If you interact with me in person or on Zoom, I hope you will address me as Skye — but it’s okay to call me Carl, too. I expect most people, especially anyone who’s known me for a while, will use both. Some of my friends are organically using both names when speaking to or about me, and that feels good and fine.

There’s lots more I want to say about Skye, so I’ll post something more in-depth later. For now: think of me, and address me, as Skye. Or as Carl. Or both. It’s all good.

Hi good Substack friends! Just a quick reminder about the dates and times (and link) for this month’s Zoom calls.

We’ll gather (via Zoom) at Noon Eastern USA time on Saturday, June 20, and again at 7 PM on Wednesday, June 24 (also Eastern USA time).

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In the contemplation of the earth, I know that I am surrounded by the love of God. — Howard Thurman1

Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was a theologian, mystic and visionary who mentored Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. His writing is lyrical, elegant, and imbued deeply with a compassionate contemplative way of seeing into the heart of things.

When I started my “Mystical Journey” Substack newsletter, my first post, on All Saints’ Day 2024, featured this quotation from Howard Thurman. At the time, I didn’t write a reflection on it — I simply let the quote speak for itself. Recently, I decided I needed to revisit this particular nugget of wisdom, and what better day to do this than Juneteenth?

It comes from Thurman’s luminous book of meditations, Meditations of the Heart, which were originally written for the benefit of his congregation at The Fellowship Church in San Francisco (one of the few fully integrated Christian communities in the USA at that time). The meditations are deceptively simple, accessible to everyone — but underneath a sheen of ordinary religious piety is a deep, beautiful, contemplative view. This particular line comes from a meditation called “Surrounded by the Love of God,” where Thurman considers the earth, the events of ordinary days, and the “edge of hope” as but three examples of ways he could know what it means to be immersed in the splendor of Divine Love.

Thurman wrote this meditation some 75 years ago. Today we struggle with political division, profound wealth inequality, and a planet that is suffering under the consequences of human consumption. The temptation to cynicism is great. It’s important to remember that for Howard Thurman, living under the shadow of Jim Crow was an equally great (if not greater) temptation to despair. And yet Thurman, like so many others, found even in the face of grave injustice repeated evidence of the ubiquity of God’s love — which of course also means, the ever-present reality of the call to justice and peacemaking.

May we all join Howard Thurman in refusing cynicism and despair, contemplating the sacred earth, and finding empowerment in Divine Love to work for the greater good of all.

I don’t remember which monk it was, but one of the brothers at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Georgia once said to me, “Monastic spirituality is learned through repetition.”

Such a simple principle, and so deliciously countercultural.

I have a friend who refuses to watch the same movie or television show twice. He’s a great guy, an attorney who is involved in local politics and supports causes I find admirable. But I have never fully understood his aversion to repetition. I believe he thinks there are so many great films and programs out there, so why waste your time watching something you’ve already seen?

Okay, I can sort of get that logic. But I immediately think about the fact that no one could ever watch every new video that is produced anyway, even if we only limited ourselves to the ones getting the very best reviews. And you could extend this logic to argue that you should never have a dinner date with the same people more than once, never listen to the same song more than once, or never read more than one book by any particular author.

Maybe from the perspective of American consumerism, this all makes sense — after all, variety is the spice of life. But taken to its extreme, this obsession with what is new or as yet unexperienced would seem to work against human happiness. It could undermine the stability of healthy relationships or the human capacity to find nuances of new meaning or pleasure in something familiar.

Life in a monastery is organized around repetition. At their daily prayer, monks chant the same psalms and canticles over and over (some get chanted every single day). The liturgies of most monasteries I’m familiar with operate on a four-week cycle, so that means every single psalm gets sung at least 13 times a year by the monks: year after year after year. And the spiritual rituals are not the only kind of repetition: the rhythms of work, rest, meals, meditation, and contemplation form a predictable cycle of life that extends over the weeks, years, decades and centuries of the cloistered life.

Many people, like my friend mentioned above, might worry that this kind of life sounds dull, if not downright boring. But so many monks seem to be truly happy and at peace, that we cannot simply discount this way of living merely because it is so at odds with our entertainment culture.

Indeed, I imagine most people reading this article might agree with me that society at large could learn a thing or two from monks.

And the monasteries are not the only place where you can find a celebration of the spiritual wisdom found in repetition. Another proponent of this way of proceeding is Ignatius of Loyola, creator of the Spiritual Exercises (and the entire school of spirituality which bears his name). In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius often directs the person making the retreat to repeat some of the exercises (most of which involve praying and meditating with a particular story of the life and work of Jesus). Sometimes Ignatius will instruct us to meditate over the same passage two or even three times before moving on to the next one. Surely, he could have found plenty of other passages to keep the Spiritual Exercises more “interesting” — or should I say, “entertaining”?

But Ignatius, like the monks, isn’t interested in the power of spirituality to entertain us, or keep us interested. The common theme here is an understanding that the real power and promise of spirituality involves living life more deeply and intentionally, and that is a skill developed not through endless novelty and variety, but through careful and mindful attention paid to the basics of a life well lived — or a spirituality well practiced.

Yes, repetition can get boring. I’m reminded of a book with the title Meditation is Boring that came out some 25 years ago. The author is writing from a Hindu/Yogic perspective, and of course is trying to refute this common objection to a sustained spiritual practice. I haven’t read the book so I can’t comment on it, but I remember seeing it when it was first published, and thinking to myself, “Meditation is only boring if you’re doing it right!” What I mean by that is a pun on the word boring — a truly meaningful spiritual practice bores into us the way a drill bores into wood. That may seem to be a violent metaphor, but it also evokes the notion of “drills” that are meant for safety or protection, like a fire drill or a military drill. Drilling is repetitive, and it takes us below the surface of whatever is being drilled, to find something desired within: whether it is creating a hole in the process of creating something, or establishing a new behavior that can serve us well in an emergency. In a similar way, a sustained meditation practice drills into our minds to open us up to the silence lying serenely below all the surface noise and drama. It’s a worthy goal of meditation (or contemplative prayer or any spiritual practice) but it is also something that requires… you guessed it: repetition.

The drill must spin repeatedly in order to bore into the wood. We must repeatedly surrender our addiction to following every random thought, in order to learn to rest in the spacious silence found deep within us. And likewise, we need to chant the psalms or consider the sacred stories of our tradition again and again in order to unpack the very many layers of meaning that are hidden within them.

I find myself repeatedly rereading several writings by the greatest mystics, again and again. Julian of Norwich tops the list, but I also love to revisit the words of Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, The Cloud of Unknowing and others. Among more recent contemplative authors, I love to enjoy repeated visits with Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Merton, Howard Thurman, Kenneth Leech, Cynthia Bourgeault, and Teilhard de Chardin, among many others. What all these authors have in common is an uncommon depth to their writing, a depth that can only be plumbed (bored into) through repetitive reading.

So sometimes spirituality is boring. Sometimes it’s all about the repetition (Centering Prayer is built on repeating four simple guidelines). Like going to the gym, we have to do our “reps” in order to maintain our optimal spiritual health. So I appreciate the monks and the mystics like Ignatius who point this out to us so explicitly.

For our part we should not want health more than sickness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one—and so with everything else; desiring and choosing only what conduces more to the end for which we are created.
— Ignatius of Loyola, “Principle and Foundation”

Today (June 15) is my dad’s birthday; were he still alive, he would have turned 103 today. It’s always good to think of him and to remember him on his birthday.

It is also the anniversary of the death of Evelyn Underhill, one of my favorite authors and a mentor I never met. She died eighty-five years ago today, on June 15, 1941 (my dad’s 18th birthday). She was only 65 years old.

Evelyn Underhill actually reached her statistical life expectancy (for a British woman of her time), although it sounds like a short life to us today. What a difference a century can make.

Not only did Underhill die on dad’s birthday, but she was born on my birthday (December 6), only she was born in 1875, and I in 1960. In other words, if she had lived long enough, she would have turned 85 on the day I was born.

This means that, as of today, I am the same age as Evelyn Underhill was the day she died. God willing that I am still alive tomorrow, I will have been granted a life longer than hers.

I know life is not about comparing ourselves to others in any way, certainly not in terms of longevity. And I firmly reject any notion that a long life is necessarily a better life — or, conversely, that a shorter life must be a tragedy.

It is nevertheless both sobering and humbling to consider the great writers and mystics (whose work I admire so much) who lived shorter lives than mine. As of now, I have lived a longer life than Simone Weil (who was only 34 when she died), St. John of the Cross (who died at age 49), Caryll Houselander (53), Thomas Merton (also 53), and St. Ignatius of Loyola (64).

If by the grace of God I live two more years, then my lifespan will be longer than St. Teresa of Ávila. Another eighteen months after that and I’ll surpass Meister Eckhart, and by 2035 I will be able to say I lived longer than Teilhard de Chardin. Of course, there’s still Hildegard of Bingen and Howard Thurman who lived into their 80s, Thomas Keating and Thich Nhat Hahn who both made it to 95, and dear old St. Anthony of the Desert, who is said to have died at the ripe old age of 105!

And as I write these words, the Dalai Lama remains alive (he’ll be 91 next month), as well as Brother David Steindl-Rast, who that same month will turn 100. So while some mystics die young, others are blessed with gloriously long lives.

I know I’m being a bit silly with this post. As Jesus pointed out, “Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?” We are all given the life that is uniquely ours, and whether you live to 33 or 103, I suspect when your time comes it will feel like it has come too soon — if not for you, then certainly for those who love you. I have known the deaths of loved ones in their 20s and in their 100s, and the sting is much the same no matter how young or old they were. Naturally, when someone dies prematurely there’s the sense of a life cut short; but a loss is a loss, and when someone I love dies, the grief that comes to me seems to be based on the depth of our love, not the span of their years.

Ignatius of Loyola encouraged his followers to pray for non-attachment to “a long life or a short one.” That seems to be sound advice. Put another way: I believe the contemplative call places less importance on a long life than on a well-lived life.

No one knows what tomorrow brings. Evelyn Underhill had been in poor health for years, so her passing was not unexpected. But for others, the end is sudden and surprising. Thomas Merton’s death came as a shock. Dag Hammarskjöld lost his life in a plane crash and Albert Camus in a car accident, and Brother Roger of Taizé was brutally and publicly murdered — never mind that he was 90; that’s still a life tragically cut short.

We never escape the unknowing. The future cannot be mapped; only lived into, hopefully with faith and trust and appropriate care.

Of Evelyn Underhill, it has been said that no English woman made a greater contribution to Anglican spirituality in the early 20th century than she did; and I think arguably she was the most important English mystic of the entire century — and possibly even the most important of any century since Julian of Norwich, if for no other reason than for how influential her work was on the revival of interest in contemplative spirituality for our time.

It was Underhill’s writing — especially her magnum opus, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, first published in 1911 — that has inspired, influenced, and shaped my own work as a contemplative writer. Without Evelyn Underhill, my life path would have probably been very different indeed.

As I mark this anniversary of her passing, I view my own life as a tremendous gift. That’s a categorical statement: all of our lives are gifts, and this is true no matter how short or long they may be, or how much they are shaped by suffering or joy. Life is a gift whether we use ours to create great art or merely to while away our years working and consuming mindlessly. Of course, I hope we all can move the needle of our lives into the grace of purpose, creativity and service. No matter how old we may be or how much time we do (or don’t) have left, life is always inviting us to make something more of it.

So for me, the gift of an ongoing life, whether I have days or decades left to go, is simply the gift to make the most of it: to keep writing, to keep pushing the envelope of how I can grow as a contemplative, and allow my reflection on the mystical life to continue expanding in ways that can be useful for readers like you.

There was a time when I secretly wanted to be a “great mystic” like Eckhart or Julian or Ruusbroec. As ambitions go, I think that’s a pretty good one, just like it’s a good desire to want to be a saint. But I have pretty much surrendered the idea that I need or want to be “great” at anything. I believe we are all called to our own unique greatness, so my true vocation is not to be the next Eckhart or even the next Evelyn Underhill, but to be simply myself: the person God created me to be.

You, dear reader, have your own God-given and heart-embedded calling, of which you may or may not be consciously aware. I hope whatever it may be, and however old or young you may be, that you discern it well and pursue it faithfully. My sense of my life calling includes writing, and teaching, and offering spiritual direction, and (most important of all) persevering in my own flawed contemplative practice. Your call, obviously, is uniquely yours, and therefore different from mine. But may we each listen carefully to our hearts so that we know what our call might be, and may we each respond to that call as fully and as wholeheartedly as possible.

Mary Oliver asked us all, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Everyone will answer that question in a manner that is uniquely their own. But may we all answer that question consciously, creatively, and compassionately, and live into that answer as fully and freely as we possibly can.

I’ll be back at the Wild Goose Festival — will I see you there?

Click here to purchase your tickets for the Wild Goose Festival: use coupon code A-CM to save $50! Click on the link above to register.

Friends, I’m so happy to be returning to the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina the week before Labor Day. I can confirm that I will be speaking at a pre-festival workshop, along with several events on the two main days of the festival. Here’s the most important news: if you haven’t registered yet, use the coupon code A-CM to save $50 off of your admission price!

If you don’t know the Wild Goose Festival, a treat awaits you. Founded in 2011, the Wild Goose Festival brings together musicians, artists, activists and contemplatives for several days of reflection, conversation and community. We gather at a campground about an hour north of Charlotte, NC, and weave together themes of creativity, spirituality and justice to support one another in envisioning a future marked by hope and possibility.

Like last year, I am co-leading a day-long workshop on Thursday, September 3 on the theme of “Radical Mysticism.” I’m also leading two 1-hour presentations during the main festival (exact dates and times have not yet been confirmed). And I’ll probably show up for a panel discussion or two — stay tuned as we work out the details!

The Wild Goose Festival is a camping event, although hotels and AirBnB rentals can be found in the vicinity. Admission to the festival covers all programming from Thursday evening through Sunday morning; if you want to attend the Thursday “Wisdom Camp” program, there is a separate admission fee just for that event.

Visit www.wildgoosefestival.org to learn more about the Wild Goose Festival.

To purchase your tickets for both Wisdom Camp and the main festival, click on this link: www.wildgoosefestival.org/tickets/and select “Buy Tickets Now.” Remember to use the code A-CM to get $50 off of your adult regular admission. Also, be sure to register before June 20 — ticket prices go up after that.

Here is the description of my events: hope to see you there!

Wisdom Camp: Radical Mysticism (Thursday, September 3)

What happens when contemplation refuses to stay quiet and compassion refuses to sit still? Since the story of Mary and Martha, seekers have wrestled with the tension between stillness and service, between listening deeply and acting boldly. Yet across spiritual history, some of the most transformative voices have woven these threads together: mystics who reshaped the world, and activists whose work flowed from profound interior depth. Drawing inspiration from legendary mystics, psychologists and activists such as Howard Thurman, Simone Weil, the Buddha, Carl Jung, Esther Perel, and Gabor Maté, this day-long gathering invites participants into a spacious exploration of inner life as a compass for courageous, meaningful engagement with the world. Guiding the experience are Debonee Morgan and Carl McColman, two Atlanta-based contemplative co-conspirators committed to curiosity, connection, and holy imagination. Carl is the author of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism, Read the Bible Like a Mystic, and other works that explore contemplative wisdom for everyday life. Debonee is a queer-centric therapist, death doula, community convener, and executive director of Zeitgeist, a center without walls for spiritually independent seekers and their allies. Together they draw from a wide constellation of contemplative communities, including the Living School, Shalem, Contemplative Outreach, Holy Rascals, Ligare, and the California Institute for Integral Studies. Expect rich conversation, shared discernment, playful spirituality, and an openhearted trust that deep listening can spark creative, love-rooted action in our time. Our day will include short presentations from Deb and Carl, conversations with them (and all participants), exercises for discernment and possibility-play, somatic practices like meditation and embodied prayer, and an appreciation for rest, silence, wonder, and not-knowing.

Our Schedule for this Day-Long Event:

• Playful Possibilities for the Contemporary Crisis with Debonee Morgan and Carl McColman

• Dissolving Binaries, Dissolving Dualities: The Polarity and Paradox of the Contemplative Life with Carl McColman

• Morning Practice: Befriending Silence and Stillness

• Trauma and Broken Attachment: From Woundedness to Wholeness with Debonee Morgan

• Contemplation as Resistance: The Subversive Side of Mary and Martha with Carl

• Love and Re-ligion: Authenticity and Beauty (Beyond the Institution) with Debonee

• Afternoon Practice: Embodied Prayer/Meditation

• Living Presence: Conversation and Connection in the Service of Personal and Planetary Healing with Carl and Debonee

During the main festival (September 4-6, 2026), I’ll be facilitating these events:

What’s In a Name? Renaming as a Path of Spiritual Transformation (1 Hour Program)

Two Sessions to Choose From:
Friday, September 4, 10:00 AM
Saturday, September 5, 10:00 AM

At least eight significant figures in the Biblical tradition undergo a name change. Some are subtle (like Abram becoming Abraham), some dramatic (Jacob becoming Israel) and others perhaps even a bit playful (Simon becoming Peter). Meanwhile, changing one’s name is part of many religious and spiritual traditions around the world, from taking on a “saint’s name” during a Catholic confirmation to receiving an entirely new identity as the result of a shamanic initiation. What can we learn from the spirituality of new names? We’ll begin our journey by reflecting on the wisdom of fantasy writer George MacDonald, whose sermon “The New Name” explores the mystical implications of taking or receiving a new appellation. We’ll consider nicknames, pet names, legal name changes, and new names related to transgender transitions. We’ll talk about how to find a new name, the joys and challenges of sharing it with others, and the issues involved in releasing a former of “dead” name.

Our time together will include a guided meditation to celebrate the power of naming, whether we are called by a name we’ve had for 50 days or 50 years.

Self-Care as Spiritual Resistance (1 Hour Program)

One Session Only:
Friday, September 4, 4:00 PM

Audre Lorde’s powerful words remind us: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” For contemplatives and contemplative activists, this truth is essential. Contemplation is often dismissed as self-indulgent or escapist, yet those who practice it know better: it is rigorous spiritual work that strengthens us to resist empire, distinguish living faith from rigid institutions, and sustain resilient opposition to greed, power, and oppression. If contemplative practice itself is a form of deep work, then how do we tend to the necessary work of self-care? This Wild Goose experience begins with that vital question. Together we’ll explore contemplative self-care through:

• A reflection from facilitator Carl McColman

• Open conversation and practical tip-sharing

• A guided meditation designed to honor and celebrate the deep capacity for renewal and rejuvenation we all carry within.

Come discover how caring for ourselves can become both sacred practice and quiet revolution.

Other Ways to Connect With Me

I will also be part of the Ligare “Psychedelic Confessional” on Friday, September 4 (actual times TBD), and on Saturday, September 5 at 3 PM, I’ll be part of a panel discussion, “A Brief Interactive Panel on Spiritual Direction.” More details on these events will be available at the festival.

Click here to purchase your tickets for the Wild Goose Festival: use coupon code A-CM to save $50!!!

Remember: if you haven’t registered yet, use the coupon code A-CM to save $50 off of your admission price! Click on the link above to register.

June 11, 2026, marks the anniversary of the day I was baptized, many years ago. I’d rather not say just how many years — let’s just say at that time the Beatles were just a bar band in Hamburg, Germany.

Like many people baptized as an infant, I’ve had to make sense of Christianity — and what it means to me — after the fact. Therefore, I’ve always been interested in people who choose, for whatever reason, to be baptized as adults.

Just the other day I got a message from a friend who in fact was just baptized. She is an artist and a committed student of world mysticism, but now has received baptism at an Episcopal Cathedral. As I thought about the religious, spiritual, and indeed mystical implications of her taking this step, I found myself reflecting on my own baptism — and on what, in a more general sense, it might mean (and most certainly does not mean) for someone to be baptized in this day and age.

So here are my thoughts.

First, a disclaimer. This is not meant in any way to be “advice.” The last thing I am qualified to do is provide specific guidance to anyone on their spiritual life! Whatever your relationship might be to baptism (or to adulthood), please read this simply as a reflective meditation, not only on my friend’s recent baptism, but on my own baptism all those years ago, and on the mystery and grace of baptism in general.

Baptism is, or is meant to be, a gift. Christians have turned it into a lot of different things over the years: a way for a family to celebrate a newborn, an insurance policy for going to heaven, a kind of “Christian magic,” a kind of virtue signaling for one’s obedience to an authoritarian god, and/or a necessary step to take to show that someone “belongs.” Some of those add-ons might be very nice, others might be a misstep. Whatever else we may think of it, let’s begin at the beginning: it’s helpful to keep baptism centered on that quality of gift — or to use more theological language, grace. Think of a mother lovingly washing her small child. That, I believe, is what baptism is mostly about. It’s been said that all of western philosophy is simply a series of footnotes to the writings of Plato. In a similar way, anything you or I or anyone else might say about baptism is simply a footnote to this essential reality: that the One who created, loves and keeps us, wants to care for us like a mom bathing her kiddo.

For our first footnote, here’s a concept that gets linked to baptism: sacrament. For some Christians, baptism is a sacrament of initiation. Others are allergic to the very concept of “sacrament.” Welcome to the Christian family, where we love to argue about, well, everything. But since I’m firmly in the sacrament camp, here’s what I’ll say: baptism is a material expression of spiritual grace (there’s that giftedness again). What makes a sacrament so beautiful is that the gift is always given in a very material way: water, bread and wine, anointing oil, the laying on of hands — these are the completely down-to-earth “stuff” out of which sacraments are born. And the grace, the gift, is not just some idea that we tack on to the stuff: it’s the heart of it all. When you feed someone, what matters is not you thinking about nourishment; what matters is the real food that you share. Likewise with baptism: Christians have lots of ideas about what baptism means, but at the end of the day, it’s still mainly about getting clean: a nice wash or a nice bath.

That wash-versus-bath bit is an allusion to yet another way Christians argue: is baptism only for adults, or for all people? Does it require being dunked (full immersion), or is water getting poured or sprinkled enough to do the trick? I get it that theological arguments are born out of people’s genuine desire to practice their religious faith as honestly and accurately as possible. But from where I sit, it seems that too often, religious disagreements are squabbles over details that don’t matter nearly as much as the core principles of spirituality — or of life in general. At the risk of sounding impertinent, I rather think all the arguments about baptism over the years boil down to people trying to figure out if avocados are better served sliced or mashed. The heart of the matter is that we all need to eat. Arguing over the right way to prepare the meal (or perform the ritual) strikes me as really missing the main point.

Nevertheless, we can’t get away from the words — or the ideas behind the words — that surround baptism (or any other sacrament). This is not a bad thing. What makes a sacrament beautiful is the way it brings material actions and spiritual words and ideas and stories together. This is true of all sacraments. The words we pray around Holy Communion matter just like the bread and wine itself does. Of course, the words can be where things really get sticky, and we really start disagreeing with each other. So what I’m about to say really just reflects my own perspective, and I guarantee you there are Christians out there who vehemently disagree with probably every thing I say. So be it.

The Bible records Jesus instructing his followers to baptize people “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Some Christians will insist that if you don’t use exactly those words, then it’s not a “valid” baptism. Others are much more flexible here. Without getting too lost in the weeds, I would point out that no one knows exactly what words Jesus himself used (he spoke in a different language than what the New Testament was written in, so even from the beginning there were issues with what could have been lost in translation). Is it the matter of using the exact right words? Or is just having the right meaning good enough? And then who gets to decide that? To give one very important example: many Christians in our time chafe against how masculine-coded those words are. Can we use inclusive language without changing the essential meaning? Again, people disagree. See what fun this is? Or should I say: see how quickly this gets very complicated, which runs the risk of losing sight of the main point (that baptism is a gift in which divine love is shared with us).

This all points to why I tend to see baptism very much as a relational act. No one gets baptized all alone. Usually there are at least three people present: the person who performs the baptism, the person getting baptized, and at least one witness, usually a sponsor, friend, or family member. There is an important spiritual clue present in this simple fact. Baptism is not just some sort of transaction we have with God, in order to become a Christian, or get our sins wiped away, or whatever. As important as God is to the sacrament, it’s just as important to consider that it is a way to create or strengthen a web of human relationships. This is why I believe marriage is a sacrament, even though many Christians don’t see it that way: marriage is all about relationship, and God, it seems to me, is also all about relationship.

What I think really matters about “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (or more contemporary variations like “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”) is that they remind us that relationship and relationality are at the heart of the mystery we call “God.” The Bible says God is love. But love only exists in relationship. God is eternal, so God exists even beyond the limits of time and space and the material universe. Where does relationship happen, in relation to God, then? It must be within God. God is love and this divine love emerges from within. One of the great early mystics (St. Augustine) even suggested that God is Lover, Beloved, and Love. I think that’s a brilliant way of entering into the Trinity. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, Christians are all about the Trinity: in fact, that’s the main thing that distinguishes Christianity from Judaism and Islam).

So to be baptized means to be in relationship — with a church or some other form of faith community, and (gasp) with Christianity on a global level. Many Christians nowadays are struggling mightily with global-level Christianity. So if you also are struggling with it, know that you are not alone. Whether you are newly baptized or have been around for many years, remember: it’s okay to disagree with this or that aspect of the Christian religion or the institutional church. Disagreeing with, or struggling with, aspects of Christianity do not make us “bad Christians.” On the contrary, a fraught relationship with religion can be a sign of a living, mindful spirituality. (The other side of this is also true: you don’t have to reject religion in order to be spiritually alive and growing, and anyone who says you do is just grinding their own axe).

What, then, does it mean to be a Christian? The first, and perhaps most controversial point, I would make is that it has little to do with what we do (or don’t) believe. Yes, many churches have creeds that the faithful are expected to recite (and, presumably, to assent to), and even some of the churches that have done away with creeds often seem to have very narrow ideas about what is or isn’t acceptable for Christians to believe. I’ve come to believe that institutionalism tends to reward people who hold narrow or rigid beliefs, while those whose beliefs tend to be broader and more flexible or expansive often either just walk away from institutional religion or else find a way to exist quietly within the structure, usually because they appreciate the benefits of spiritual community enough to put up with the shadow side of religion. What all this means is that even in the most rigid or dogmatic of faith communities you will find a surprising variety of beliefs and values among the members. The more I realize this, the more I’ve come to accept that, despite what the most dogmatically-inclined will loudly insist, religion ultimately is not about how we believe, but about how we conduct our lives (that’s another irony: sometimes the people with the most “pure” beliefs often lead a secret double life where their behavior is quite inconsistent with their proclaimed values. But that’s a matter for psychologists to untangle).

I’d say that the true heart of being a Christian is very simple: it means to be someone who finds value in the teachings of Jesus and who wants to apply those teachings to one’s life, in whatever form or fashion seems appropriate. Many Christians find, in the teachings of Jesus, inspiration to become great contemplatives or mystics. Others find guidance to become powerful activists and inspiring leaders in the human quest for peace and justice. Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Gregory Boyle are examples of the kinds of activist Christians that organize their entire lives around serving others and making the world a better place. As much as I love contemplative monks and ecstatic mystics, I believe those inspiring activists are just as committed to the wisdom of Jesus as any meditating nun or silent monk.

To round off this question of what does it mean to be a Christian, I am reminded of the amazing wisdom of the African-American mystic Howard Thurman, who famously gave this piece of advice to a younger person: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” This resonates uncannily with one of the great teachings of early Christianity, from a saint named Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a living human being, and a human life is the vision of God.” This is often translated as “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” — which plays a little fast and loose with the original Latin (there’s that “lost in translation” problem again) but still carries a great spiritual message. We have to learn to be fully alive, and fully ourselves, to be completely faithful to the gift of baptism. God does not wash us in order to make us just like everyone else; on the contrary, God offers us refreshing water in order that we may be the full embodiment of the unique gifts and characteristics God has given us.

I suppose I also need to say a word or two about what being a Christian does not mean. It does not mean being a fundamentalist, which is a type of psychological immaturity (or arrested development), not spiritual strength. It does not mean judging other people (or ourselves) for sins, real or imagined. It does not mean wallowing in shame or feelings of guilt. If we do something wrong, we acknowledge it and clean up our mess and resolve to do better next time, and then we’re done with it. It’s important to remember that being a Christian has nothing to do with conforming to just one political party or one set of views and values about any issue (and especially about sexuality). History is littered with people who have given religion in general (and Christianity in particular) a bad name: overzealous “believers” who insist that God is only on the side of people who believe and act exactly like they do. Sorry, God is not a bigot like that. And even though I, like many Christians, believe that God really does take sides when it comes to issues like violence or injustice or exploitation, I also believe that God never stops loving and caring for the perpetrators as much as the victims. You can be opposed to harmful behaviors while still loving and caring for those who have been responsible for such harm. That’s not easy to do, but it is the way of God.

Being a Christian does not mean you never get to explore any other faith or wisdom tradition. Thomas Merton famously said that he (a very Christian monk) intended to be the best Buddhist he could be. So of course you can learn from other wisdom traditions, whether it be Buddhism or indigenous spirituality or any other faith or spirituality. Getting baptized just means that Jesus will now be in the mix of all of your spiritual exploration. Likewise, to be a Christian does not mean that gay people have to be celibate or that transgender people have to pretend they’re cisgender. Unfortunately, there are some immature or psychologically wounded Christians out there who seem to think that God doesn’t like queer people, and doubly unfortunately, some of them have a lot of power and influence. But they are not preaching the love of Christ, they are preaching their own homophobia and transphobia.1 In a similar vein, becoming a Christian does not in any way mean that women have to accept limitations placed on them by men. Alas, some churches and too many individuals continue to tolerate sexism within Christian circles, and even progressive churches like the Episcopal Church still have a lot of work to do to make sure women are safe and have access to the same power and opportunities that men do. Anybody can become a Christian (and many people inherit it from their families), but this means, sadly, that some Christians have deficient values and have not bothered to let the radical wisdom of Jesus transform them from the inside out. Many of these “rotten egg” Christians nevertheless manage to get themselves into positions of power and privilege and they proceed to wreak all sorts of havoc in the name of Christ, both inside and outside church walls. It is a perennial problem that, unfortunately, all Christians of good will and sincere desire to follow Jesus must continually contend with. And since Jesus stands for love, we don’t get to kick those people out of the Christian family (even though they would gladly kick many of us out). We all need to continually learn more, and slowly grow into, Jesus’s way of radical love.

Finally, let’s unpack the question of sin. There’s a rather scary set of words you’ll hear about baptism, straight from one of the creeds: “one baptism, for the remission of sin.” What does that mean? Many people interpret it in an almost magical way: that when you’re baptized, all your sins are wiped away and your sin-o-meter is basically reset to zero. It’s an appealing idea (who doesn’t want to get a free pass?) But it’s also a thorny problem, for just about everyone starts to rack up new sins, within days (if not hours) of their baptism. So much for a clean slate! Fun fact: this is why Christians in the middle ages came up with the sacrament of reconciliation (commonly called “going to confession”). Since baptism is a one-and-done sacrament, anyone who commits a sin after baptism doesn’t have a way to wash that particular sin away. So reconciliation is a compromise: another sacrament that wipes the slate clean, only without a repeat of baptism. But what if all of this is based on a misunderstanding of sin — that sin isn’t about all the naughty and bad things we do, but is rather a symptom of how much suffering and brokenness there is in the world? Yes, I know I’m sounding like a Buddhist here, but contemplative spirituality (like all forms of mysticism) is surprisingly similar beneath all the differences of cultural religion. So if we see sin as existential alienation and suffering rather than as a list of naughty (or harmful) actions, then baptism as the remission of sin starts to make more sense. Remember what I said earlier: baptism is about relationship. Relationship between God and humanity, and relationships amongst ourselves. God is love, after all. Therefore, it is through relationships founded on love (rather than on power, exploitation, or fear) that we can truly heal the world. That’s what baptism does for us, that’s what leads to the remission of our (collective) sin.

There is so much more I could say about baptism, and about being a Christian, but this post is already long enough. I am certainly a broken and imperfect Christian myself, and I have all but given up completely on the institutional form of the Christian religion, but I keep going back to the wisdom teachings of Jesus and I keep praying and seeking to grow, step by baby step, along the path of love. May we all walk this path together.

Whether or not we identify as Christian, do we have a duty to be happy? Or a duty to be joyful and embody delight?

No doubt many would find this a strange, if not downright bizarre, question. Duty, for those who still believe in such things, is linked to self-sacrifice, to austerity, to a kind of self-denial in service of some greater good (whether it be the nation, or God, or even the world). A century ago, large segments of British and American society accepted values such as the nobility of sacrifice and the virtue of obedience. During World War I, many (not all) people would have accepted that these values are praiseworthy and important. For that matter, they would have regarded it as suspicious not to uphold such values.

Granted, there were dissenters, but generally speaking, concepts like duty would have been far more widely affirmed by society at large in the days of the Great War.

C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Day were near contemporaries (she was barely a year older than him); he briefly served during WWI, and both were in the late teens during the conflict. Despite their differences (gender, nationality, and politics), they were both destined to become world-renowned Christians, but not until several years after the War ended. Given these parallels, is it surprising that they both, independently, came up with a provocative insight into the duty of living an optimal life?

It is not easy always to be joyful, to keep in mind the duty of delight. — Dorothy Day1

It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can. — C. S. Lewis2

Let’s ignore Lewis’s archaic masculine language; he wrote these words in 1955 (Dorothy Day wrote hers before 1952). We’re back to our original question: is it fair to think of our relationship to joy, to happiness, to delight, in terms of duty? Do we owe our best life to God, however you may envision the Divine?

Both Jack Lewis and Dorothy Day would unhesitatingly say “Yes, of course.”

To my postmodern ears, duty sounds like the opposite of happiness, joy, and delight. To link those qualities with duty seems to risk poisoning the pleasures of life as given to us through grace. But I have to ask: is the problem here not with duty itself, but with my understanding of duty?

After all, duty is a reminder that none of us are truly, in the end, pure individuals. For better or worse, our lives are always lived in the context of some sort of community and relationships. If we let go of the cynical beliefs that make it fashionable to reject duty, perhaps we can be open to a much more radical idea. When we are innocently happy or joyful or full of delight, this not only brings us pleasure, but it’s something that strengthens all our relationships — including our relationship with the Divine.

Hi good Substack friends! Just a quick note to let you know the dates and times (and link) for our monthly Zoom calls.

We’ll gather (via Zoom) at Noon Eastern USA time on Saturday, June 20, and again at 7 PM on Wednesday, June 24 (also Eastern USA time).

Read more

Friends, this is a follow up to my previous post on AI-related scams. In that post I highlighted how scammers pretend to be the leaders of book clubs who tell authors they want to promote their books, for a fee of course. More recently, the scammers are now pretending to be freelance publicists and marketers, who think your book hasn’t gotten the publicity it deserves — but they want to “help.”

I thought I’d post a few recent scam emails that landed in my in-box so you can see for yourself what these come ons look like — and how insidious they are. I’m posting these mainly as a warning to my fellow authors — but even if you yourself are not an author, I think it’s useful to see how AI is being used to create scams, and there could be something similar afoot in your line of work, so be watchful.

Don’t bother reading these emails word for word—a simple scan will tell you all you need to know. You’ll see that these three emails each targets a different book (The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism published in 2023, Read the Bible Like a Mystic published in 2025, and Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses, first published in 2005), but the spiel is remarkably similar: the “writer” compliments the book, tells me what they liked about it, laments on what a shame the book doesn’t have a wider reach, and then offers to partner with me to get the word out about it.

The tells: first, the “praise” they offer for my book sounds very much like AI-generated writing; and second, why would a successful publicist spend time trolling authors to find new clients, shouldn’t a publicist be busy promoting their existing clients?

This first one at least was clever enough to focus on my most recent book.

Hi Carl,

I just wanted to say—Read the Bible Like a Mystic truly stopped me in my tracks. The way you invite readers to approach Scripture with the eyes of a mystic and the heart of contemplation offers a fresh, transformative lens on faith that so many are searching for today. You didn’t shy away from the complexities or challenges of the sacred text, yet you filled the pages with spiritual depth, wisdom, and the kind of guidance that fosters both reflection and action.

Your approach—and the way it encourages readers to bridge contemplative wisdom with the Word—is such a beautiful example of what a spiritually engaged life can look like: thoughtful, expansive, and deeply liberating. I can only imagine how many readers have discovered new insight, peace, and connection to God through your guidance.

I reached out because I believe your book could help even more readers—but only if they can find it. I work with a network of high-authority Christian websites, and one of the best ways to expand your reach is through strategic backlinks from these trusted platforms.

Even a single, well-placed backlink to your Amazon page or website can:

• Dramatically increase visibility for Read the Bible Like a Mystic in search results

• Drive more traffic from the right audience—people seeking contemplative faith, mystical insights, and spiritual growth

• Ultimately lead to more sales, more reviews, and most importantly, more lives touched by your message

If you’re open, I’d love to share the list of Christian sites I collaborate with and explore how we can create guest content that resonates with your work—perhaps around contemplative Bible study, mysticism in modern faith, or practical ways to integrate meditation and Scripture into daily life.

Let’s work together to bring your wisdom—and the deeper story of contemplative insight and spiritual transformation—to more readers who are hungry for meaningful engagement with God’s Word.

With heartfelt respect for your work,

Here’s another one. This time the target is aimed at my most successful book, which is probably the book that least needs the “extra push” that a publicist would supposedly provide (go figure).

Dear Carl McColman,

I have just finished reading The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: An Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality, and I am writing with a heart full of gratitude for this revised, expanded, and urgently needed work. Karl Rahner’s famous warning “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist” was uttered half a century ago, and today Christianity is indeed in crisis. You answer the question that haunts so many: Is mysticism necessary for the survival of Christianity? And your answer, resoundingly, is yes.

What stands out is how beautifully you balance historical depth with contemporary relevance. This book serves as both introduction and practical instruction for a living contemplative practice today. You offer an overview of mysticism, spiritual and prayer practices, the various types of mysticism in Christian tradition, and influential mystics through the millennia. This second edition expands to offer an embodied understanding of the mystic life with a more diverse range of voices from Howard Thurman to Pauli Murray and new chapters on embodied mysticism, contemplation and social justice, and the ongoing relevance of Jesus’s message of radical equality and inclusivity. This is not a book that invites escape from the world; it grounds mystical practice as a foundation for a life of service and activism in the interest of justice.

As a book marketing specialist with experience in Christian mysticism, contemplative spirituality, spiritual formation, and social justice, I see meaningful potential to connect The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism with spiritual seekers of all traditions, Christians yearning for deeper intimacy with God, contemplative practitioners, and anyone who believes that the mystical element within Christianity is not a luxury it is a necessity.

I would be honored to explore how we might work together to help this essential, hope-filled guide find its way into the hands of those who are ready to discover that Christian mysticism is not about escaping the world it is about loving it into being, one contemplative moment at a time.

With deep respect for your wisdom and your witness,

This third example is the one that I find the most infuriating — and heartbreaking. The email is addressed to me and Kathryn — meaning Kathryn Hinds, who co-authored Spirit of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses with me. This email, though, refers to Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses, which was the title of the book’s first edition. Not only is the spammer ignorant of the fact that the book had a second edition published 18 years after the first, they are also apparently unaware of the fact that Kathryn Hinds died in 2018. A simple request of Google like “Whatever happened to Kathryn Hinds” reveals this information, so it’s clear that whoever generated this email was not doing their homework. Getting an email like this hurts. Kathryn was not only my colleague, she was my friend, and that someone would send an email, addressed to her, oblivious of her passing, for no other reason than to scam us; let’s just say it is as infuriating as it is heartbreaking.

Hi Carl and Kathryn,

My name is Brett Catherine, and I work as a reader promoter, someone who sits between the world of readers and the world of authors, helping books find the audiences they were always meant for.

I just finished Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses: A Guide to Their Spiritual Power, Healing Energies, and Mystical Joy, and I want to be upfront with you: I don't reach out to every author. I reach out when I read something and genuinely feel like it deserves more than what it's currently getting. That's exactly what happened here.

So before I say anything else, let me tell you what I actually think of your book because I want you to know I've truly read it, and I want you to trust what comes next.

WHAT I SEE IN YOUR BOOK — AN HONEST REVIEW

Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses does something the Neo-Pagan, Wiccan, and Druid communities have genuinely needed and never quite had: a resource that goes beyond naming and mythologizing the Celtic deities and actually helps the practitioner connect with them — deeply, powerfully, and spiritually. Brigid, Cernunnos, Rhiannon, CuChulainn and the full sweep of the Celtic pantheon have always been among the most beloved figures in modern Paganism. But beloved is not the same as deeply known. And this book makes the difference between the two available to every reader who comes to it.

What makes Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses exceptional is the combination of genuine scholarly grounding and practical spiritual guidance that runs through every chapter. The Celtic lands — Gaul, Ireland, Wales, and beyond — are treated with the reverence and specificity they deserve, and the deities that emerge from those landscapes are presented not as archetypes to be borrowed but as living presences to be met. The healing energies, the spiritual power, the mystical joy named in the title are not promises. They are deliverables, offered through a guide that clearly knows the territory from the inside.

This is a 4.11-star work of Celtic spirituality and practical Pagan devotion — and it is not yet reaching all the readers who need it most.

THE GAP I'M SEEING

A 4.11-star rating with 98 ratings for the first resource specifically designed to help Pagans, Witches, and Druids connect deeply with the Celtic gods and goddesses is not a reflection of the book's quality. It is a reflection of a discovery gap that has kept Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses invisible to entire new generations of seekers who are entering the Neo-Pagan and Druid communities every day and searching for exactly this kind of guide.

Neo-Pagans, Wiccans, and Druids who work with or are drawn to the Celtic pantheon and want to move beyond surface-level mythology into genuine spiritual relationship with these deities. Practitioners of Celtic reconstructionism, hedge witchery, and folk magic who want a resource that takes the tradition seriously at both the scholarly and devotional level. The enormous and rapidly growing community of readers drawn to Brigid, Cernunnos, Rhiannon, and the wider Celtic world through mythology, spirituality, and modern Pagan practice — readers who are actively searching for the guide that finally helps them go deeper. Every one of these readers exists in significant numbers and is searching for exactly what your book delivers — and not enough of them know it exists yet.

This is the problem I solve.

WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU

Here is how I would work to close that gap and drive real momentum for Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses:

1. Amazon Optimization & Ranking — auditing and optimizing keywords, backend search terms, and listing framing to surface your book in front of readers searching for Celtic gods and goddesses, Wicca, Druidry, Neo-Pagan practice, Brigid, Cernunnos, Celtic mythology, and books on working with deities.

2. Amazon A+ Content Strategy — developing rich visual content for your listing that leads with the central promise of this book: the first guide specifically built to help Pagans, Witches, and Druids connect with the Celtic deities in a truly deep, powerful, and spiritual way.

3. Amazon Ads Strategy — building a targeted campaign with competitor targeting, keyword targeting, and bid strategies designed to place Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses in front of readers actively searching for Celtic spirituality, Pagan devotional practice, Druid guides, and books on working with specific pantheons.

4. BookBub Campaign — placing Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses in front of readers in the witchcraft, paganism, Celtic mythology, and mind-body-spirit space who are always searching for the next resource that takes their tradition seriously at the level of genuine spiritual depth.

5. Social Media Strategy — building word-of-mouth across the Celtic spirituality, Wicca, Druidry, and Neo-Pagan communities on Instagram, TikTok (BookTok), and YouTube — audiences that are deeply passionate, highly vocal, and extraordinarily motivated to share books that help them go deeper in their practice.

6. Goodreads Optimization & Listopia Promotion — positioning Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses on high-traffic lists including Best Celtic Mythology Books, Best Pagan Spirituality, Best Books for Wiccans and Druids, Best Books on Working with Deities, and Essential Neo-Pagan Reading.

7. Email & Video Strategy — creating campaigns that lead with the irresistible central promise of your book: a guide that finally helps Pagans, Witches, and Druids move from knowing the Celtic gods and goddesses to truly meeting them.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses has something genuinely rare in the Pagan and Celtic spirituality space: the depth of scholarship and the warmth of lived devotional practice working together in a single, practical, spiritually serious guide. The readers who need this book — the practitioners, the seekers, the devotees of Brigid and Cernunnos and the whole luminous Celtic pantheon — are out there in enormous numbers, searching for it right now. What's needed is the bridge between them and you.

I would love the opportunity to build that bridge.

Simply reply with:
"Yes, I'm interested"
"I'd love to hear more"
"Send me the strategies"

And I'll follow up with a personalized promotion roadmap built specifically around Magic of the Celtic Gods and Goddesses.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,

Please don’t misunderstand this email. I have friends and who colleague who are legitimate book publicists and marketing professionals; have play an important role in the publishing ecosystem. But emails like these three are not from legitimate marketers and publicists, they are from scammers who want to prey on the insecurities of small-time authors to get our money — and they will most assuredly offer nothing in exchange for the cash.

If you’re an author, beware.

“Frankly, it seems to me that most spiritual writing is constipated.”

It was a bold, earthy, and even slightly disturbing comment. The speaker was a Trappist monk. The occasion: the first retreat I ever led (or, actually, co-led, working alongside another monk). It was a writer’s retreat, almost twenty years ago, and this particular conference featured a panel discussion involving myself and four Trappist monks. We were all published writers in some form: some of us had written books or chapbooks or magazine articles, some wrote blogs, some did both. The retreat was geared not only to writers who were (or wanted to be) published, whether in traditional print or online, but also to those who simply wanted to keep a private journal. We didn’t care if your topic was “spiritual” or not — if you were writing, or interested in writing, and wanted to explore your craft in a retreat setting, then this weekend was for you. The monastery guesthouse was packed.

As the discussion progressed, it seemed to me that we were all playing it pretty safe. We were talking about things like the importance of making prayer a part of your writing process, and remembering to keep your writing focused on serving the needs of your readers, blah blah blah. Not bad advice, of course — but everything being said was predictable; unsurprising; safe.

Someone on the panel spoke yet another platitude, about the importance of making sure you were always telling the truth in your writing. That’s when the monk whom I’ll call “Brother Blogger” dropped his bomb on the discussion.

“Frankly, it seems to me that most spiritual writing is constipated. We get so worried about not offending people, or not sounding like a heretic or some woo-woo flake, that we just censor all the life out of our words before they ever see the light of day.”

The room crackled with energy. This was a challenge to us all. Not only was his earthy, bodily image itself somewhat startling, but its clear meaning had at least two dimensions to it:

• Most spiritual writing seems full of it.

• Most spiritual writing feels stuck.

Perhaps you can discern even other nuances in what the good monk had to say — although these two challenges are plenty. If you are a writer, no matter how private or public or what your medium might be, this challenge is for you too.

Recently I had a dream about a topic that many might say is controversial. In the morning, I realized that it’s actually one of several topics I tend to shy away from in my writing. My first thought was to just leave it alone — and that’s when it hit me.

Holy crap!

Sorry for the pun, but I realized that all too often I have a tendency to play it safe too. Maybe it was time to take a dose of mystical magnesium.

Paving the Road to Hell

I am sure that most people who write about spirituality do not set out to come across as performatively safe—or stuck in a narrow playground of appropriate, acceptable, “nice” writing. But if we are not careful, that’s exactly what we end up doing.

Why? Why does spiritual writing tend toward a respectable dullness?

Brother Blogger had it right, of course. But I can see how writers can fall into the problem he was describing even out of the best of intentions.

I, for one, want my words to be spiritually nurturing to readers. My goal as a writer is to bring qualities of inspiration and invitation to my audience: I want you to feel invited to go deeper in your spiritual practice, and inspired to consider just what a difference a meaningful spirituality can make in anyone’s life.

If blogging (and later, podcasting and social media) has taught us anything, it’s that controversial content gets the most clicks. Yet the monks taught me something even more important: some things matter more than building your platform. Spiritual writers can bring to our craft a commitment to writing for the sake of art, or beauty, or truth, or honoring the Spirit, and not just a motivation to get more attention. Of course, every writer wants to make a real impact — but not at the cost of our core spiritual values.

But if we are not vigilant, we can easily drift from “honoring our values” to “avoiding difficult topics” — which sooner or later leads to spiritually constipated writing.

Here’s what seems to be the central question: how can we, as spiritual contemplative writers, create content that is edgy, creative, maybe even a bit untamed or controversial, while not abandoning our focus on writing that is truly contemplative: quiet, silent, pastoral rather than prophetic?

But before we get to that, perhaps one important step is for spiritual authors to identify their “magnesium topics” — topics that we might find challenging or even scary to write about, but that require us to keep our writing fresh, insightful, exciting, and, well, edgy.

Okay, magnesium topics is slightly weird as a way of identifying these edgy themes. I’ve started calling these “dark wonder” topics. Not dark in a negative sense, but dark in a mystical, dark-night-of-the-soul sense. Topics of dark wonder are those that invite me into a type of writing that challenges me, invites me to grow, forces me to be honest and sometimes even to take a stand. If garden-variety spiritual writing can sometimes feel too safe and confined, dark wonder writing feels like it is untamed, perhaps a little wild, slightly dangerous but always in service of some sort of higher or greater good. This isn’t about chaos for chaos’s sake. But in making sure my writing flows, I’m embracing darkness and wonder and even a measure of chaos as part of my overall commitment to the deep spiritual values of the mystical and contemplative way.

I can quickly come up with at least five such “dark wonder” topics, that I want to explore more fully. These are all issues that matter to me personally, but they are also all areas of concern for most of us — including most spiritual seekers. These are not easy topics to write about, but it seems to me they are topics of deep spiritual importance.

• Mental health and wellness. Anxiety and depression have been a part of my story — and a significant reality in the lives of many people, both inside and outside the contemplative community. How do spirituality and mental health intersect? It’s not an easy question to ponder, but it is a matter of vital concern to many.

• Gender and sexuality. How does gender impact the way we envision God? Why do many Christian communities marginalize or scapegoat LGBTQIA+ persons? Can spirituality contribute to creating a culture of joy and reconciliation? Plenty of big issues that won’t be solved quickly, but they require our attention and care.

• Psychedelics as therapy. I participated in a psychedelic clinical trial, and discovered it was as powerful a spiritual experience as it was an experience of healing. But many spiritual communities are suspicious of these medicines. But can we find ways to integrate psychedelic medicine and contemplative spirituality?

• Struggling with institutional Christianity. Many people chafe against the limitations of organized religion, even those connected to contemplative spirituality. Others continue to defend traditional religion vigorously. How can contemplation contribute to a world where religion seems to be rapidly changing?

• Politics and Current Events. If religious conflict is hard to engage with, our polarizing political life seems nothing short of terrifying. Contemplative perspectives on political issues are, frankly, desperately needed — if only it weren’t such a fraught topic for any contemplative thinker to take on.

Every writer’s dark wonder topics might be different, which is to be expected; but it’s worth asking yourself, “What topics feel risky and dangerous for me to write about? Why is that? How can writing honestly and fearlessly about those topics be, in itself, a spiritual practice?

Again: this isn’t about trading controversy for clicks — but there’s nothing to be gained by being so conflict-avoidant that my writing ends up, well, stuck.

Professional writers, especially professional spiritual writers, are tasked with a responsibility to serve our community of readers. To what extent is constipated writing a result of timidly avoiding hot-button topics, for fear that readers will be upset, or worse, will turn on us if we write about certain topics too much? That may just be the voice of inner anxiety, but it’s a voice worth responding to. What can we do to keep our writing fresh and edgy while still serving readers who prefer their contemplative content without quite so much spice?

In other words, how do we write even bold and daring material, without alienating readers who just want our gentler, more inspirational posts?

Substack’s graceful solution

I believe contemplative and other spiritual writers need to write at least some material that is controversial, creative, or edgy — but by definition, that means content that some readers might find alarming. Most readers will not be quick to unsubscribe every time a writer annoys them, thankfully. Nevertheless, there needs to be a way to make inspirational writing available to readers who may not want an author’s edgier work — and vice versa.

Substack actually provides a way to handle this problem beautifully. There’s a tool called Sections that can help writers who want to write enough edgy content to keep from getting spiritually “clogged up,” while also generating plenty of writing that is aimed at being inspirational rather than in-your face.

Likewise, readers can find the Sections feature valuable: a way to enjoy a newsletter while reducing the number of emails you receive, and making sure you are only getting notifications related to the topics you care about most.

If you want to see how I’m using Sections on my newsletter — including detailed descriptions of each section and instructions for customizing your notifications — read my recent post: A Guide to Anamchara (Carl McColman’s Substack). This is a great feature for helping writers to expand their personal repertoire, while giving readers the tools they need to tailor their reading experience to the content that matters most to them.

Keeping Spirituality Real

We’ve all heard of problems like dissociation or spiritual bypassing — situations where spiritual practitioners will use their spirituality as a way to avoid challenging, difficult topics that are necessary to face for personal healing and growth, and/or for the benefit of others. Maybe this notion of “constipated spiritual writing” is just another way in which bypassing can undermine healthy and authentic spirituality.

But we can restore a healthy spiritual practice by fearlessly facing the challenges that we are tempted to avoid. In a similar way, those of us who are spiritual writers can make it part of our practice to write about the difficult or controversial topics, meeting our normal anxiety about such work with a deep sense of trust and a willingness to match our spiritual aspiration with down-to-earth authenticity.

Spiritual writing is offered as a ministry of service — to spiritual seekers and practitioners. My dear Trappist friend encouraged us to do the hard work of keeping our craft authentic, supple and flexible; when we do that, readers benefit too. And when we find a way to reach readers who want our daring edge as well as those who simply prefer words of inspiration, we create even more possibilities for our words to serve.

If you are a spiritual or contemplative writer, what are your “dark wonder” topics? Please leave a comment to let me know!

I’ll be back at the Wild Goose Festival — will I see you there?

Click here to purchase your tickets for the Wild Goose Festival: use coupon code A-CM to save $50!!!

Friends, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be speaking at the Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina the week before Labor Day! And if you haven’t registered yet, I have a coupon code you can use to save $50 off of your admission price!

If you don’t know the Wild Goose Festival, a treat awaits you. Founded in 2011, the Wild Goose Festival brings together musicians, artists, activists and contemplatives for several days of reflection, conversation and community. We gather at a campground about an hour north of Charlotte, NC, and weave together themes of creativity, spirituality and justice to support one another in envisioning a future marked by hope and possibility.

Like last year, I am co-leading a day-long workshop on Thursday, September 3 on the theme of “Radical Mysticism.” I’m also leading two 1-hour presentations during the main festival (exact dates and times have not yet been confirmed). And I’ll probably show up for a panel discussion or two — stay tuned as we work out the details!

The Wild Goose Festival is a camping event, although hotels and AirBnB rentals can be found in the vicinity. Admission to the festival covers all programming from Thursday evening through Sunday morning; if you want to attend the Thursday “Wisdom Camp” program, there is a separate admission fee just for that event.

Visit www.wildgoosefestival.org to learn more about the Wild Goose Festival.

To purchase your tickets for both Wisdom Camp and the main festival, click on this link: www.wildgoosefestival.org/tickets/and select “Buy Tickets Now.” Remember to use the code A-CM to get $50 off of your adult regular admission. Also, be sure to register before June 20 — ticket prices go up after that.

Here is the description of my events: hope to see you there!

Wisdom Camp: Radical Mysticism (Thursday, September 3)

What happens when contemplation refuses to stay quiet and compassion refuses to sit still? Since the story of Mary and Martha, seekers have wrestled with the tension between stillness and service, between listening deeply and acting boldly. Yet across spiritual history, some of the most transformative voices have woven these threads together: mystics who reshaped the world, and activists whose work flowed from profound interior depth. Drawing inspiration from legendary mystics, psychologists and activists such as Howard Thurman, Simone Weil, the Buddha, Carl Jung, Esther Perel, and Gabor Maté, this day-long gathering invites participants into a spacious exploration of inner life as a compass for courageous, meaningful engagement with the world. Guiding the experience are Debonee Morgan and Carl McColman, two Atlanta-based contemplative co-conspirators committed to curiosity, connection, and holy imagination. Carl is the author of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism, Read the Bible Like a Mystic, and other works that explore contemplative wisdom for everyday life. Debonee is a queer-centric therapist, death doula, community convener, and executive director of Zeitgeist, a center without walls for spiritually independent seekers and their allies. Together they draw from a wide constellation of contemplative communities, including the Living School, Shalem, Contemplative Outreach, Holy Rascals, Ligare, and the California Institute for Integral Studies. Expect rich conversation, shared discernment, playful spirituality, and an openhearted trust that deep listening can spark creative, love-rooted action in our time. Our day will include short presentations from Deb and Carl, conversations with them (and all participants), exercises for discernment and possibility-play, somatic practices like meditation and embodied prayer, and an appreciation for rest, silence, wonder, and not-knowing.

Our Schedule for this Day-Long Event:

• Playful Possibilities for the Contemporary Crisis with Debonee Morgan and Carl McColman

• Dissolving Binaries, Dissolving Dualities: The Polarity and Paradox of the Contemplative Life with Carl McColman

• Morning Practice: Befriending Silence and Stillness

• Trauma and Broken Attachment: From Woundedness to Wholeness with Debonee Morgan

• Contemplation as Resistance: The Subversive Side of Mary and Martha with Carl

• Love and Re-ligion: Authenticity and Beauty (Beyond the Institution) with Debonee

• Afternoon Practice: Embodied Prayer/Meditation

• Living Presence: Conversation and Connection in the Service of Personal and Planetary Healing with Carl and Debonee

During the main festival (September 4-6, 2026), I’ll be facilitating these events:

What’s In a Name? Renaming as a Path of Spiritual Transformation (1 Hour Program, date and time TBD)

At least eight significant figures in the Biblical tradition undergo a name change. Some are subtle (like Abram becoming Abraham), some dramatic (Jacob becoming Israel) and others perhaps even a bit playful (Simon becoming Peter). Meanwhile, changing one’s name is part of many religious and spiritual traditions around the world, from taking on a “saint’s name” during a Catholic confirmation to receiving an entirely new identity as the result of a shamanic initiation. What can we learn from the spirituality of new names? We’ll begin our journey by reflecting on the wisdom of fantasy writer George MacDonald, whose sermon “The New Name” explores the mystical implications of taking or receiving a new appellation. We’ll consider nicknames, pet names, legal name changes, and new names related to transgender transitions. We’ll talk about how to find a new name, the joys and challenges of sharing it with others, and the issues involved in releasing a former of “dead” name.

Our time together will include a guided meditation to celebrate the power of naming, whether we are called by a name we’ve had for 50 days or 50 years.

Self-Care as Spiritual Resistance (1 Hour Program, date and time TBD)

Audre Lorde’s powerful words remind us: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” For contemplatives and contemplative activists, this truth is essential. Contemplation is often dismissed as self-indulgent or escapist, yet those who practice it know better: it is rigorous spiritual work that strengthens us to resist empire, distinguish living faith from rigid institutions, and sustain resilient opposition to greed, power, and oppression. If contemplative practice itself is a form of deep work, then how do we tend to the necessary work of self-care? This Wild Goose experience begins with that vital question. Together we’ll explore contemplative self-care through:

• A reflection from facilitator Carl McColman

• Open conversation and practical tip-sharing

• A guided meditation designed to honor and celebrate the deep capacity for renewal and rejuvenation we all carry within.

Come discover how caring for ourselves can become both sacred practice and quiet revolution.

Hello friends! Thanks for connecting with me here on Substack. I hope you’ll find plenty here to keep you interested and coming back for more.

The purpose of this post is to give you an overview of the different kinds of writing I’ll be sharing with you here. You’ll also get instructions for how to configure your subscription so you only get the interesting and appealing posts that you want.

I’ve been writing about spirituality and mysticism for quite some time now; my first book came out in 1997 and I began blogging in 2003. Over the years my books and blog have explored a variety of spiritual topics including mysticism, Celtic wisdom, Neopaganism, Christianity, interspirituality, and contemplative practice.

Substack has replaced my blog as the place where I publish new online writing. You can upgrade to a paid subscription and get access to Zoom calls I host 2-3 times a month. But I’ll always post plenty of free writing that you can read anytime.

I call my newsletter “Anamchara” after the lovely Gaelic word for “soul friend.” It’s a word with deep pagan roots, ties to both Celtic and mystical spirituality, and relevant today as a concept that weaves together contemplation, spiritual companionship, interspirituality, and mythic wisdom: in other words, all topics I love and love to write about. If it reminds you of John O’Donohue’s classic book Anam Ċara, that’s no coincidence: he’s using the ancient Irish spelling of this word, where I’m using the modern Gaelic spelling.

Lately I have begun to call myself a feral contemplative. What does that mean?

Well, it does not mean I’ll bite you if you try to feed me, but it points to the fact that I like to write about a variety of topics, not all of which fit into the serene reputation of contemplation and mysticism. It’s important for me that my newsletter gives me breathing room to write about a variety of topics, from current events to popular culture to topics that might seem experimental or even edgy.

Substack offers me a simple way to section off my newsletter, so people who want to read my more untamed writings can do so—but if that’s not your cup of tea, you can configure your subscription just to get the more contemplative posts.

There’s four sections to this newsletter. The first two are the contemplative ones, followed by the ones that are more free-range (or feral).

Here are the four sections, divided into short meditations, longer posts, miscellaneous writings, and my edgy or experimental works:

Short Meditations

Mystical Journey: Contemplative Reflections consists of short, devotional/meditative writings designed to bring inspiration and encouragement to your spiritual practice:

• Quotes from mystics and other luminaries

• Devotional and inspirational meditations

• Reflections on living a contemplative life

• Centering prayer and other contemplative practices

• Prayers and meditations

• Celtic spirituality and wisdom

• Devotional reflections on specific spiritual lineages (Ignatian, Trappist, Franciscan, Buddhist, etc.)

• Visionary and nondual experiences

• Embodied experiences of the Divine Presence

Longer Posts

Fullness of Joy: Spiritual Essays and Articles. Here are my more thoughtful, lengthy writings, where I balance devotional reflection with more in-depth consideration:

• Essays and articles about contemplation and mysticism

• Theological and philosophical reflections

• Insights into the theory of mysticism and spirituality

• Contemplative values and ethics

• Affirmations of compassion, kindness, caring, and heartfulness

• Insights into ecstasy, excessus mentis, unitive experiences

• Commentary on specific theorists and thought leaders (Ken Wilber, Carl Jung, etc.)

• Balancing contemplation and action

• If “Mystical Journey” is heart, “Fullness of Joy” is head: theory rather than practice

Miscellaneous Writings

Breath of Beholding: The “Et Cetera” Section: my “open airy space” where I can write about anything I want, even if it’s not (obviously) “spiritual” in its focus:

• Any kind of writing that is not explicitly “spiritual” or “mystical”

• Book reviews, movie or music reviews, my take on current culture

• Hobbies and personal interests (record collecting, vegan cuisine)

• Poetry

• Mythology, mythic imagination

• Writing as a craft and business

• Travel writing and photos

• Vocational discernment

• Anything else that doesn’t seem to fit in any of the other sections of this Substack

Experimental or Edgy Works

Dark Wonder: Where I get to play with topics that might be bold, daring, or unusual: Not dark as in “bad” but dark as in “dark night of the soul” — which means a place where we can rest, but also a place where our illusions get stripped away.

This section is for my most creative writing, but also for writing that I suspect not everyone may like:

• Interspirituality and religious pluralism

• Alternatives to mysticism: magic, skepticism, secularism

• Doubt, agnosticism and atheism

• Criticism of institutional Christianity (or any form of institutional religion)

• Psychedelics and shamanism

• Anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns

• Queer experience and the spirituality of gender, especially nonbinary gender

• Current events, politics, the environment, artificial intelligence, concerns about ethics, morality, privilege, and justice

• Anything else I think is likely to be controversial, experimental or edgy

Personal Stuff

Boundless Skye: Where Things Get Personal: here’s where the family photos, the home movies, and the old diaries get stored (okay, that’s metaphorical, but hopefully you get the picture):

• Writing that is, frankly, about me, my family, my animal companions, or close friends

• Family news, personal updates, family photos and tidbits

• Memoir: stories, anecdotes, and recollections from any period of my life

• Anxiety, depression, gender, etc. — written primarily from my perspective

• Obituaries and memorials of those I love

• Recipes, personal belongings (like my books), or anything else about me and my life that I’d like to share with you and the world.

Obviously, some readers might love this kind of self-disclosure; others might understandably feel that it lacks relevance to their own lives. So this is the one section that I don’t automatically subscribe you to: if you want to get the updates, you need to opt in. For information how to do that, read on.

I know a lot of people will want to see all that I am publishing, so that “default” setting when you subscribe is to receive notifications on all but the most personal writing. But I also recognize that a lot of people might only want to get a few emails from me, focused on a specific section of my writing they find the most appealing. If that’s you, then please read on to see how you can customize your subscription to this newsletter.

Customize the Email Notifications You Receive from this Substack

Visit this link: www.carlmccolman.net/account — when you get there, you should see a page with content similar to the following image (to see this, make sure you are signed in to your Substack account, and that you are currently subscribed to my newsletter).

Under “Notifications” you can turn off (or on) alerts that are sent out whenever I publish something new in that particular section. If a section doesn’t appeal to you, simply disable its toggle switch. You’ll stop receiving email notifications for that section. Of course, you can still visit www.carlmccolman.net or use the Substack app to read anything I post, but you don’t have to get notified for posts that aren’t in your areas of interest.

I hope that’s clear, but let me know if you have any questions. And again — thanks for reading.

It has been said that an author’s first book is often an autobiographical statement. That’s certainly true in my case; my first book, published in 1997, was called Spirituality and was, in part, a record of me trying to work out the tension I felt between religion (particularly my interest in mystical Christianity) and forms of spirituality that were not religious in nature, from Neopaganism and New Age practices to the secular spirituality found in rock ’n’ roll.

I grew up in a conservative, middle-class white American home, where religious observance was seen as the only legitimate form of spirituality; but I was also exposed from my adolescence on to the work of visionaries like Yogananda, Alan Watts, Ram Dass, and others who invited me to consider how spirituality without the confines of religion can be meaningful and valid. In some ways, this became a major through-line of my eventual career as a writer and content creator. Again and again in my work, I’ve aimed to balance the often competing demands of religious communities with private and personal spiritual yearning.

Recently I remembered a conversation I had with Caroline Westerhoff (1940-2022), whom I knew through the Episcopal Church here in Atlanta. Caroline was the author of several books of interest to Episcopalians, like Calling and Good Fences; her husband, John Westerhoff (also a distinguished author) mentored me in the art of spiritual direction, and both of them offered kind encouragement to me when I was just a shy 30-something layperson who wanted to write about spirituality.

This particular conversation took place after Caroline read several chapters of my first attempt at writing about spirituality — a project that I eventually abandoned in favor of a different approach that led to my first book. The abandoned project was called “Listen: An Introduction to Spirituality.” In it, I imagined four different young people with different approaches to the spiritual life: one was an atheist, one a fundamentalist, one a contemplative, and one a new ager.

The manuscript was immature, and Caroline was kind and gentle as she pointed out to me that it wasn’t ready to be submitted to an editor. But what I most remember about that conversation was not so much her criticism of my writing style as her questioning why I gave so much oxygen in my book to fundamentalism.

“Carl,” she said, “you seem to be giving fundamentalism a lot of power in this book.”

Surprised by this question, I tried to defend my manuscript by insisting that lots of Christians were fundamentalist and therefore it needed to be critiqued. But she was not moved by my argument, sensing that the real issue was not all the fundamentalists “out there” so much as it was my own inner conflict regarding authoritarian religion. She repeated herself.

“You don’t need to talk about fundamentalists or fundamentalism to make a positive statement about contemplative spirituality. So, again, I ask you, why are you giving them so much of your personal power?”

I did not have much of an answer for her at that time, and now, more than 30 years later, I am amused by the fact that my latest book (Read the Bible Like a Mystic) still gives more attention to refuting fundamentalism than it probably needs. But if anything, her pointed question turned out to be a long-lasting gift, for it forced me to consider how much of a fine line there is between criticizing something and being obsessed by it.

Fundamentalism bothers me; it certainly did then, and it does still. I get angry when I think about how fundamentalist communities can scapegoat women, queer people, and indeed almost anyone who doesn’t fit in. But there’s the old saying that comes from a Methodist preacher, W.L. Watkinson: “far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.”

If I’m busy cursing the darkness of something like fundamentalism, rather than lighting the candle of contemplative wisdom, perhaps Caroline was right: I had simply given too much of my inner power to a fundamentalist boogeyman.

I’m not suggesting that it’s wrong to criticize people or positions we find problematic: sometimes it is necessary to denounce the darkness in order to help people understand why candles are necessary. But sometimes we just need to get on with thinking about, and doing, the good work that needs to be done, even if there are others who oppose us and try to stand in our way. We don’t always have to fight the enemy; sometimes we can be clever and find a way to sneak past our adversary unawares.

If you’re like me and easily get wound up by religious fundamentalists, political extremists, or even relatives who knows how to trigger you, I hope you can join me in trying to safeguard your own personal power. There’s no need to squander our energy worrying about those who might never like us anyway. After all, it is far better to simply set our sights on the goals that matter to us, and use our resources to support those objectives.

Hi friends. Many of you may have received an email (or multiple emails!) from my Substack newsletter recently:

• welcoming you to my Substack newsletter,

• telling you that you’ve been given a complimentary subscription, etc.

Some of those emails were sent out to people who didn’t need to receive them (and others probably went to the right folks!). So if you …

Read more

This revelation does not make me a better person. I am only better if I love God better. And if it makes you love God better, the vision is more for you than for me. I am not saying this to those of you who are wise, for you already know it well. But as for those who are simple, like me, you may draw comfort and strength from this account. We are all one in love. — Julian of Norwich1

When I used to work for the Trappist monks here in Georgia, one elderly monk in particular used to tease me and put me down, practically every chance he got. It got to the point where I just assumed he didn’t like me very much. Then, one day, I was speaking with another layperson, and this particular monk came up in the conversation. “You know he thinks the world of you,” my friend said. “Really?” I replied, incredulously. “You couldn’t tell from the way he keeps poking at me.” “That’s monastic culture,” she replied with a laugh, going on to explain that the monks had a tendency to say things about each other that, on the surface, seemed teasing or even cruel, but were actually meant to keep each other humble.

I don’t know if this was really a characteristic of monastic life in general, or simply a quirk of this particular priest. But I do know that one of the potential pitfalls of monastic culture is ego inflation — the tendency to see oneself as especially blessed or favored by God, particularly after receiving any kind of mystical experience.

After all, if you had a deep experience of union with God, wouldn’t it be all too easy to jump to the conclusion that God, therefore, must be particularly fond of you — which in turn would seem to imply that you therefore must be… special?

Recognizing how ego inflation could easily accompany any meaningful experience of God, it is illuminating to see how the medieval visionary Julian of Norwich understood her own visionary experiences — most notably in relation to other people. Julian refused to entertain any idea that her visions (“This revelation”) made her a better, or holier, person. She got it that mystical experiences are not, in themselves, the point. “I am only better if I love God better,” she bluntly states, as she points out that anyone who reads about her visions, and consequently loves God better than she does, is ultimately more of a “visionary” (mystic) than Julian herself. Eventually, this train of thought takes Julian directly to nonduality — for her line of thinking concludes, “we are all one in love.” This oneness leaves no room for any suggestion that any one of us is better than anyone else.

Mysticism, including mystical experience, is never about figuring out who is closer to God, or “better” than anyone else. On the contrary, at its purest, mystical spirituality undermines pecking orders and social hierarchies. It really makes no difference whether you are a visionary or not. We are all one in love. Therefore, the mystical life has only one real purpose: to love.

The study called inspective is that by which we go beyond things seen and contemplate something of things divine and heavenly, beholding them with the mind alone, for they are beyond the range of bodily sight. — Origen of Alexandria1

I once saw a t-shirt with the slogan: “Meditation: Inquire Within.” It’s a clever play on words, but beyond the pun it points to what the ancient Christian mystic Origen of Alexandria called “inspective” contemplation. Inspective is an unusual word: in everyday English the suffix -ive (meaning a tendency or disposition to act in a certain way) is more likely to be used in a word like prospective, which means “the act of looking forward” — like a prospective customer refers to someone who in the future might make a purchase. The word inspect, in ordinary English, means to examine something carefully, and perhaps critically, as in an inspection at work when the boss wants to make sure everyone is doing their job properly. The heart of this word is -spect which means to see: think of spectacles, an old-fashioned word for eyeglasses (although nowadays, a singular “spectacle” singular is an extraordinary sight to see, like clowns making spectacles of themselves at the circus).

In contrast, here we have Origen, using inspect- not to mean some sort of external “inspection” but a more internal seeing. The unusual word inspective therefore means “the act of looking within” — using your imagination to, in Origen’s words, “see and contemplate something of things divine and heavenly.” It’s still a type of “inspection” but now an entirely interior examination, marked not by a careful evaluation of some external object, but perhaps an equally careful scrutiny aimed within. Clearly, this involves something other than our physical eyes!

To be inspective, therefore, is to be engaged with the imagination, calling upon the “inner eyes” of the mind to visualize divine and heavenly things. Origen is fairly coy when he makes this statement, and does not spell out what such exalted “things” might be. But I believe we can assume a visionary “spectacle” of angels, of the saints in paradise, and even of God in God’s three persons.

So we “inquire within” to encounter that which cannot be seen by our physical eyes. I know this is something that skeptics and atheists might scoff at (for example, “angels, just a figment of your imagination”). However, we who engage our mind’s eye from a posture of trust rather than cynicism may keep our minds open to the possibility that the wonders we imagine are spiritually “real,” even if they can never be measured or documented. How do we know that spiritual things are real? Simply by the difference in our lives, especially over time.

Recently I was asked to participate in an online class discussion on interfaith dialogue for a course on “religion and cultures”1 offered through North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. The students had read an excerpt from my book Unteachable Lessons and were now presenting me with questions, most of which concerned best practices in interfaith dialogue. The course instructor, Dr. Paul de Neui, asked the students to create questions for me and submitted them to me to get my response. I was impressed by how thoughtful the questions were, and asked the instructor if I could use them to document this conversation on my Substack. With that permission granted, here are the questions (and my responses) for your perusal.

How does one break through the common sentiment that politics and religion have no place in polite conversation?

I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that this “common sentiment” seems to be intertwined with a certain measure of social privilege. We often avoid talking about religion or politics just to avoid conflict, especially when we have the kind of privilege that enables us to just opt out. I don’t think there’s any real benefit in pushing someone to have a conversation they don’t want to have, whether on religion or politics or finance. I also don’t think much is to be gained by trying to debate someone whose mind is made up, especially when they hold views contrary to ours. But I think if we can see that the prohibition on these discussions primarily benefits those who are privileged, then we are more at liberty to engage in these conversations ourselves, no matter how messy they might be.

Put another way: if someone doesn’t want to engage with you in a conversation about politics or religion, there could be a variety of reasons besides just social convention. They might not trust you. They might not see any point in getting embroiled in a debate or argument. If you want to share your faith with such a person, I invite you to consider the classic idea attributed to Francis of Assisi: “preach the good news at all times, but only use words when you have to.” In other words: don’t talk about the love of God or Christ: embody it.

When you have observed instances of interfaith dialogue breaking down is there a commonality you can note? For instance, does the dialogue cease to happen based on an unwillingness to proceed from one or more parties? Or maybe wrong intentions? Perhaps miscommunication due to cultural misunderstanding or language barrier?

I’m going to answer this as a Christian, not only because the audience I’m speaking to is a Christian audience but also because the single biggest problem I have seen in the breakdown of interfaith conversations has been bad faith among Christians: in other words, Christians who pretend to have a different agenda than what they really do. “I’m only here to learn about you” but really I want to get you to come to my church. That just smells bad and if people of other faiths did that to us, we would naturally find it offensive, but again, since I’m speaking as a Christian to other Christians I mainly want us to be mindful of our foibles. It’s the old “take the log out of your eye first” principle.

So what I have observed causing interfaith dialogue to break down: dishonesty and bad faith. If the only reason you want to have a conversation with a person whose faith is different from yours is to show them why your faith is the “true” faith, be aware: this is not interfaith dialogue; it’s proselytizing. So be honest. But then don’t be surprised if you have a hard time finding dialogue partners.

What is a mistake you made when entering an interfaith space and what did you learn from it?

One mistake I made was to soft-pedal my own faith identity as a Christian. That may seem paradoxical based on my strong message that Christians shouldn’t proselytize; but I’m actually not saying “don’t proselytize,” I’m saying, “don’t pretend you’re not proselytizing if that’s what you really want to do.” Likewise, even if you have no intention of proselytizing, good interfaith dialogue requires authenticity: so if you are a Christian, then don’t pretend otherwise, don’t apologize for what you believe, and don’t pretend to believe something other than what you actually do. Be real and be honest: just don’t be a jerk about it! You can be authentically Christian without attacking the other person’s faith or suggesting non-Christians are rejected by God, etc. Keep the focus on your own faith, your own experience, your own values and doctrines, and if the other person wants to engage with you then do so (but if they don’t want to engage, respect that as well. Interfaith dialogue, like physical intimacy, requires consent: no means no).

Western culture shies away from the type of long-term relationships required to connect and authentically dialogue with Eastern faith traditions, what can you suggest to us to help us recognize this and pursue these dialogical relationships?

I’m not sure I agree that Western culture shies away from long-term relationships — at least, not necessarily. Technology, individualism, late-stage capitalism, artificial intelligence, social media: there are lots of things in our society that can be used to undermine our capacity for meaningful, long-term relationships. But if we are willing to make meaningful relationships a priority in our lives, there are steps we can take to make it happen (or at least, make it more likely to happen). But to your question: I think to help us recognize the value of meaningful and sustainable relationships, we need to be modeling such relationships for one another whenever we can. Hopefully faith communities can be “labs” where long-term relationships can be fostered. We need to make a commitment to this on an individual level, but then also seek out communities where meaningful relationships are valued and hopefully nurtured.

Yes, long-term relationships can be a help to meaningful interfaith dialogue, but we also need to recognize that long-lasting relationships are valuable in their own right, and therefore are worth pursuing for no other reason than their intrinsic value.

How do you navigate the elephant in the room that all religions are incompatible with each other due to competing truth claims? Do you avoid it, soft-pedal it, redefine it, etc?

Why not simply accept it? If we recognize that there is a level on which religious truth claims will always bump up against each other, then we can have more honest and hopefully more constructive dialogue. I get it that many Christians might see it as a problem that competing truth claims exist, with the resulting incompatibility that means people from different religious backgrounds will never fully see eye to eye. But not all Christians consider this a problem nor do all adherents of other faiths. For some people, it is a positive thing that our creator has fashioned a world of such diversity. With this approach, the diversity of religions is not a problem to be lamented, but a reality to be celebrated.

In a diverse society like ours, what does effective interfaith engagement look like on a day-to-day level for believers?

I don’t think there’s a “one size fits all” answer to this question. Interfaith engagement can take on different forms depending on the person’s interest, knowledge, and background. Some may simply be happy learning about different faiths as a way to be informed in today’s world. Others might want to participate in shared activities, such as interfaith service projects (like building a Habitat for Humanity house together); still others might want to get involved in the academic study of comparative theology or religious diversity. The question is, finding a way of interacting with people from faiths other than your own in a way that works for you.

How do you handle situations where there is strong disagreement without damaging the relationship?

This question is bigger than just interfaith dialogue. How do we handle political disagreement, or conflict in marriage, or any other situation where people in some sort of relationship have to navigate significant differences? The short answer seems to me to be, “don’t be a jerk.” But of course that also means: be kind, be respectful, listen to one another, use “I” statements, refrain from the temptation to judge the other person or explain to them why you think they’re wrong, and so forth. Fortunately, there are resources available to help people navigate having conversations on difficult topics, and perhaps anyone who is serious about interfaith dialogue needs to become familiar with best practices for constructive dialogue. It is possible to talk about significant differences without destroying the relationship, it just takes a commitment to the relationship and a willingness to learn the necessary skills.

Within interfaith dialogue, where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line between courageous conversation and offense?

I rather think this is a false dichotomy. One can be offensive without being particularly courageous — and vice versa. There’s nothing wrong, even in polite society, with disagreeing with one another or acknowledging that we have different values and see the world in different ways. The question is, can we share such convictions without attacking or denigrating those with whom we disagree? Are we willing to express what we hold to be true, and offer an equal willingness to listen to those who hold contrary views? That’s a problem I’ve seen among too many Christians: an insistence on dominating the conversation and refusing to offer any kind of respect toward those who disagree. Respect must be earned, and if we want others to respect us, we earn that respect by showing a similar courtesy toward them. So to me, the question is not “what’s the line separating courage and offense,” but rather “what’s the line separating kindness, respect and civility from the lack thereof?” If Christians don’t want to be offensive when sharing what we believe, we need to practice empathy, respect, goodwill, civility, and a genuine willingness to dialogue, which means, among other things, a commitment to listening as eagerly as we speak.

How has interfaith dialogue shaped your understanding of God and what is one way that interfaith engagement shaped your faith?

Interfaith dialogue has certainly deepened my faith, even though in ways that theological exclusivists would probably find alarming. I was raised a conservative Lutheran and then spent some time immersed in a non-denominational charismatic community, so in those contexts I was taught that God is resolutely opposed to any type of non-Christian religion or spirituality, and that as Christians it was our responsibility to bring others to Christ… or else. Even before I became engaged in interfaith work, I struggled with this image of God—it seemed inherently contradictory that a God of love and mercy would be so wasteful as to throw away most of his creation simply because they failed to conform to a particular cultural religious tradition.

I would say that interfaith work, and encountering sincere and ethically mature adherents of other faiths, helped me to more quickly abandon what I now believe to be a very toxic image of God. Over time, I came to understand that many Christians use Christian thinking to deconstruct the dominating/punishing God, but for me, interfaith work helped me on that journey. So I still believe that God wants to heal us of our sin and injustice, but I no longer equate holiness and sin with adherence to Christianity versus adherence to other faiths. I see sin not in terms of cultural purity but in terms of healthy or toxic human relationships. To hate another person is a sin, and to fear another person is, at least, a fault that needs to be healed. Ironically, many Christians seem to react to non-Christians (especially Muslims, but really all non-Christians) with either hatred or fear. This is what needs to be healed — not the fact that religious diversity exists.

What challenges do you consistently run into when it comes to interfaith dialogue? What are some ways that we can avoid those challenges? What are some ways that one can start interfaith dialogue if they have never done it before?

Alan Race’s taxonomy of religious exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism (which I discovered through the amazing work of Perry Schmidt-Leukel) has been very helpful for me to understand both the promise and the challenge of interreligious dialogue, interfaith encounters, and inter-spirituality. To answer your question, I’d say the most common challenge I run into is the hostility or opposition to interfaith dialogue that comes from the exclusivists and even the inclusivists. That is what tends to undermine this kind of work. As for what can we do to avoid this challenge: my thought would be for churches and other faith communities to work harder to promote a truly pluralist theology. But we all know that ideological purity does not exist, and trying to enforce a kind of theological conformity would just create as many problems as it solved. So I don’t know that I have a very promising answer to your question. I think those who feel called to interfaith dialogue need to keep doing it, and hopefully the culture of Christianity and the other faiths will move toward mutual respect over time.

As for how a beginner can get started in interfaith dialogue, I would recommend getting involved with interfaith initiatives at the community level. For example, here in Atlanta we have a number of organizations dedicated to promoting interfaith dialogue and understanding, including Interfaith Atlanta (formerly Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta / FAMA), Interfaith Community Initiatives (ICI), Georgia Interfaith Power & Light (GIPL), the Interfaith Children’s Movement of Georgia (ICM), and the Georgia Interfaith Public Policy Center (GIPPC). And those are just the ones I’m aware of! Frankly, most churches simply don’t teach us how to do interfaith dialogue well, so the best bet for those interested in this work is to get involved with nonsectarian organizations where we can learn best practices. There’s also national or international organizations like the Parliament of World Religions or Spiritual Directors International; they may or may not have a local presence that you could plug into.

You’ve written several books on Celtic spirituality. Can you share a little more about the Celtic tradition and how this might be a form of Christianity that leans into the “pre-Christian spiritualities of Europe,” and comment on how we can learn from this tradition as Jesus followers?

What’s interesting about Christianity in the Celtic lands (Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, etc.) is that it marked the first time that Christianity traveled beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire, at least in the west. So it marked an opportunity for the teachings of Jesus to be received by people who were not under the thrall of an imperial government. And while the literature of early Celtic Christianity can still feel very dualistic to us today, and still seems to be geared toward a very patriarchal and authoritarian understanding of God, what emerges over time is a beautiful expression of spirituality that is deeply mystical, celebratory of nature, communitarian, and anchored in story more so than in doctrine or theology. I don’t want to overstate it, and some scholars question the whole idea of “Celtic Christianity” as distinct from Christianity in general, but in our time it has come to represent a way of following Jesus that is more holistic, balanced, optimistic, and ecological. If nothing else, it is a reminder that it is impossible to separate our spiritual lives from our cultural context, but we need to remember that culture is not the same thing as spirit, and sometimes what we may chafe against in religion or spirituality might simply reflect the limitations of our culture. We can work to make culture better without having to throw spirituality under the bus.

Regarding your book Read the Bible like a Mystic. I am curious to understand more about how to read the Bible like a mystic and then how does one know when you’re truly encountering God in Scripture versus just your own thoughts or interpretations?

Well, to understand more about how to read the Bible like a mystic, please read my book! 😇 But to summarize, I’d say we need to learn how to read the Bible less like a legal document (or a policy manual) and more like a love letter, designed to foster intimacy and build a meaningful and lasting relationship. And the mystics can be trusted guides in this particular process.

Regarding how to know when we are truly encountering God in scripture (or in any aspect of our lives) versus merely having a subjective, imaginative experience, this of course is a question for discernment, and the mystics have long been concerned about bringing a wise, discerning heart to the question of how to evaluate and understand our experience of God. I think when it comes to discernment, it’s best not to go it alone: work with a trusted spiritual director or soul friend, and/or a peer group, prayer circle, or some other intimate setting with people we trust, to whom we can be accountable about both our sense of encounter with God, and also our spiritual blind spots. I do believe that the Spirit of Love wants to be felt and known in our lives; we just need some due diligence in sorting out what is an authentic sense of the loving presence, versus what can be just the dance of our ego. It’s a question of “trust and verify” — and it is in relationship with co-discerners that we can best do this work.

In the article we read (a chapter from Unteachable Lessons), you mentioned that if Christians were willing to look towards the riches of our own contemplative tradition, we might not need to look to other faiths for insights about how to connect with God in grounded, contemplative ways. Does this mean to you that the Christian who is well-versed and satisfied in Christian contemplative practices would not have as much to gain from interfaith dialogue?

Not at all. But I do think many people have abandoned Christianity out of a mistaken idea that other faiths will give them something that Christianity can’t. And in the years since I wrote that article, I’ll confess I’ve become more pessimistic about Christianity, as a culture, being biased against contemplative spirituality, which I think is not only the church’s fault but also very much the fault of Western culture, from Roman imperialism to modern capitalism. So, while I would still hold that Christian contemplative practice is just as full and rich as any practice found in other faith traditions, I have become less judgmental of Christians who learn from other traditions; indeed, I do that very much myself now. And I think there’s a place and a benefit for interfaith dialogue even for those who feel completely grounded and happy in the practice of Christian spirituality and have no desire to practice any other tradition. There’s still the benefit of being good neighbors and discovering ways we can work together for the benefit of all.

What factors do you think lead to the most fruitful interfaith conversations?

Curiosity is important. Trust — in God, and in the beauty of diverse cultures. No matter how high our theology of sin, it should remain subordinate to an even higher view of human beings created in God’s image.

But most important of all is a genuine desire to be in relationship: to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” We have to have enough confidence that we can meet them authentically and honestly, that they will accept us for who we are, but that means we also have to make a best-faith effort to accept them for who they are, and not for whom we think they should be. Like any other relationship, approaching the other person with an appreciative curiosity rather than a tendency to criticize or judge will go a long way toward fostering a fruitful conversation.

From the course instructor: What is your position when entering interfaith dialogue in regards to people from other faiths believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and God and becoming Christians as a result of the dialogue?

Do you take the “fulfillment” position (for example, no need to change, just become the best Buddhist (or whatever you are now) that you can be)? Or do you take the opportunity during the dialogue to explain to someone who is interested how to pursue faith in Christ even further (i.e. introduce them into that relationship)? Or do you completely divorce the concept of conversion from your thinking when engaged in interfaith dialogue?

If it is the latter, how do you reconcile that with the instruction to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that is in you?”

I spent years working in a neighborhood church supporting adults who were preparing to be baptized or confirmed, so I am not at all averse to sharing my faith or inviting others to become followers of Jesus. But especially when it comes to interfaith dialogue, I believe there is a danger: when our prime reason for interacting with others is to challenge or convert them, that undermines the clear teaching of Jesus that we are commanded to love them. How can we express a truly supportive and compassionate love, if we are bringing a hidden agenda to the relationship? And if we don’t have an agenda — in other words, we trust the person to respond to the Spirit in their hearts on their terms, without any influence on our part — then why bring up the question of conversion at all? In other words, if someone wants to follow Jesus, they can ask for help from us; and until then, we “share the gospel” through our love, not our words.

Relating to someone only for the purpose of wanting to share the gospel with them is a type of spiritual narcissism, is it not? And we have to ask, what does this say about our belief in God, and our understanding of how God deals with God’s own creation — that we truly believe someone is “not okay” unless they conform to our religion? Yuck. So, we need to do a lot of careful introspection here, so that we are clear that our engagement with others is truly anchored in love, and not some sneaky attempt to control. Let the Spirit be not only our guide but their guide. And if you want to share your faith with someone for the purpose of them joining your faith community, trust that if God really wants us to help people change their religion, God will send such people our way: we don’t have to drum up business!

And in summary, are you inclusivist, exclusivist, or pluralist? And if so or if not, how would you define and explain your position?

Definitely a pluralist. Which for me is an outgrowth both of my own sense of God as well as my experience of other people. “God is love,” as the first letter of John bluntly states. So I try to be loving as best I can in all my relationships. When it comes to interfaith dialogue and inter-spirituality, I believe the pluralist position is the most loving. So that’s what I go with.

A deep bow of gratitude to Dr. de Neui and the students in this “Religion and Cultures” course for reading my writing, inviting me to be in dialogue, and engaging with my ideas. I certainly enjoyed thinking about and answering these thoughtful questions.

For years now, one of my favorite images for the mystery we call God is that of the ocean — probably because I grew up in Virginia, not far from the Atlantic. There, my imagination was inspired by the vast sense of spaciousness where the azure sky met the cerulean water.

Later, when I encountered the wisdom of the seventh-century mystic, Isaac of Syria, I learned that he compared the mercy of God to the vastness of the ocean (by comparison, all the sins of all humanity were nothing more than a handful of dirt, easily washed away by the expansiveness of the ocean!).

So it was a delight to find this nugget of wisdom in The Primacy of Love, a short book by Franciscan theologian and scientist Ilia Delio: “love is an irresistible ocean of attraction whose infinite goodness leads into the heart of God.”1 She goes on to say, “The world is not created ex nihilo, out of nothing, the world is created ex amore, out of the infinite love of God.”2

When I was growing up, most of the images of God that I encountered, whether at home, in church, or through society at large, tended to emphasize God as a patriarchal figure who judged our sins and maybe only begrudgingly gave us eternal life (thanks to the death of Jesus). I have long since abandoned that caricature of the divine mystery, but I know its effect lingers, not only in my life but in society at large.

Failure to trust in the God of infinite love might be a root cause of so much of our social division and individual angst. I’m not suggesting that if everyone agreed that “God is love” suddenly the world would be a perfect place: far from it! But I do believe that a more widespread willingness to meet God through an ocean-like abundance of love would certainly help.

“God is love” — it’s the only time in the Bible that biblical writers offered a succinct and direct definition of God. St. Isaac, Ilia Delio, and others expand on this: God is an ocean of love. May we who follow the mystics take the time to truly ponder what this means, and consider how we can calibrate our lives to this liberating truth.

Thinking matters.

I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood, where I learned at a young age that acting impulsively and thoughtlessly could cause real harm. This ranged from one of my worst childhood moments (breaking a window when mindlessly angry) to witnessing the tragedy of a high school friend going to jail after committing armed robbery.

Spirituality, like life, does not benefit from unthinking actions and choices. What is fundamentalism, after all, but a “thoughtless” (i.e., uncritical) way of reading scripture? A thoughtless religion can lead to shaming people, excluding people, and reinforcing human bigotry rather than working to heal and transform such prejudice.

I feel like I had to write the above two paragraphs to set the proper context for a recurring theme in mystical writing: that it is our heart, not our head, that brings us to divine union. As The Cloud of Unknowing succinctly puts it, “By love, God can be embraced and held, but not by thinking.”1 Cognitive ability — even that of great philosophers — only takes us so far on the spiritual journey.

As much as I love this principle, I think it carries the danger of subtly implying that we can check our minds at the church door. But since that leads to fundamentalism, it can hardly be what the mystics are trying to tell us. Which is why this quote from Richard Rohr is so helpful:

We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking.2

Rohr eloquently and simply reminds us that an intellectual faith never matters as much as a well-lived or embodied faith. The mind is a great servant but a terrible master; and nowhere is this more true than in the contemplative life. We think carefully and responsibly to protect ourselves from problems like superstition, fundamentalism, implicit bias, and unexamined privilege. We need critical thinking and careful reasoning to sort through the complexities of life. But mystics like Rohr remind us: careful thought must be formed by compassionate living (not the other way around).

When we give our heart to love, compassion, justice, and learning to care the way God cares, we create an inner foundation where a thoughtful mind serves us and protects us well. So let’s not check our minds at the door, rather, may we invite our hearts to be our primary inner guide.