To read the meditation instead of (or in addition to) listening to it, click here.

I wrote the following meditation a while back for use during retreats, especially retreats focusing on Ignatian prayer (prayer using the imagination). Happy to make it available here.

Listen to the recording of this meditation, or read it at your own pace. I recommend pausing as frequently as possible to gently be present to your imagination and how it guides you deeper into this meditative form of prayer. Note: the recording includes about 15 minutes of silence.

Scroll down to read the meditation. If you’d rather listen to an audio version (with plenty of pauses for your personal reflection and prayer), click here.

Imaginal Prayer: the Transfiguration

To enter into this time of prayer, sit in a way that is comfortable for your body and is conducive to being both relaxed and alert. I encourage you to close your eyes and to breathe several gentle, cleansing breaths. Simply be in the moment and trust that the Holy Spirit who is in your heart will guide you in your prayer.

In this prayer, we are going to journey deep into the imagination to encounter the Spirit within. As we take this inner journey, I encourage you to suspend disbelief. Imagination, we are assured by great mystical teachers like Aelred of Rievaulx and Ignatius, is more than merely a mental capacity for make-believe: it is the contemplative theater in which the very Spirit of God may communicate directly with us.

We are entering our inner threshold to the sacred presence. Great mystics like Julian of Norwich invite us to bring a generous capacity for trust into our prayer. So let us trust the Spirit who has been poured into our hearts, and who meets us in the depth of our imaginal awareness. All we need to do is to trust, consent, and imagine. Trust… consent… and imagine…

I invite you now to imagine what it was like to be one of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth: a disciple among those who were his companions on his travels from town to town as he spread his message of God’s radical and infinite love and mercy, bringing heavenly grace and bodily healing to people wherever he went.

Imagine, now, that the company has been on the road for much of the day, walking through the wilderness of Palestine as you and the other disciples accompany Jesus on this mission. Now the sun is setting, and a suitable place for camping has been selected. All the disciples have set up their camps for the night, and while people are busy lighting fires and preparing their evening meal, Jesus motions to Peter and James and John to come to him. Jesus sees you watching, and he smiles and invites you to follow along.

You walk with Jesus and his three closest friends, and they leave the encampment and begin to climb the nearby mountain. Be present with your feelings. Notice the exertion it takes to climb. Observe the kindness in Jesus’s eyes as he waits for you and the other disciples to catch up with him. Gently attend to what you are sensing, here with Jesus in this intimate setting.

Eventually you all reach the top of this high mountain. Take however much time you need to catch your breath, but watch Jesus closely, for almost immediately, he begins to pray.

Notice Jesus praying. What is the expression on his face like? Is he standing, sitting, or kneeling? How is he holding his arms, his hands? Are his eyes open or closed? Be with Jesus in prayer and calibrate your own heart so that you are praying with Jesus, alongside Jesus, in harmony with Jesus.

As you continue to gaze upon Jesus’s face, notice that a miracle happens.

The appearance of Jesus’s face begins to change. He begins to shine like the sun. Even Jesus’s clothes become dazzling white, whiter than anyone could ever bleach.

As you watch, Jesus is being transfigured into pure light and pure love.

As you gaze upon this extraordinary moment, attend to how you react and respond. What are you feeling? What thoughts are moving through your heart and your mind?

Thanks to the radiance emanating from the Christ, you become engulfed in an ocean of light. You remember Jesus proclaiming that he was the light of the world, and now those words carry new meaning for you. You also remember he said that you, and all the disciples, are also the light of the world. Ponder the meaning of these words. As this ocean of light flows to you and through you, notice how you, too, remain in light. You were created from stardust, after all. You are truly light embodied in material form. Now, immersed in the light of Christ, you may notice how your own light is seeking to respond, like a candle burning in the sun. Let your light shine, in resonance with the infinite light of the transfigured Christ.

If you need to, shield or squint your eyes so that you can continue to gaze upon Jesus even in this brilliant light. As your eyes rest on his lovely luminous countenance, notice a new marvel: two companions suddenly appear with Jesus. Even though you have never seen them before, your gut realizes that these two apparitions are great figures from the history of Israel: Moses, who led the people from slavery to freedom, and Elijah, the great prophet.

Observe how they interact with the incandescent Christ. Are they, too, radiant? Reflect on the shimmering communion here between Jesus and his friends.

You notice that Jesus and Moses and Elijah are speaking with each other.

Listen to what these three are saying. They speak about what will happen in Jerusalem, and about what is to come to Jesus. But listen carefully and see if there is anything else that they speak of, anything that might be especially meaningful for you.

Next to you, Peter and James and John seem like they are sleepy, but the glory of the bright light and the remarkable apparition of Moses and Elijah captures their attention. Look at the disciples. Notice how they react to the miracle that is taking place. Does the expressions on their faces surprise you? Can you tell what is going on inside them? How does their reaction to the Transfiguration make an impact on you? What are you feeling right now?

By their gestures and the way that they interact with Jesus, it seems that Moses and Elijah are preparing to leave, when suddenly Peter blurts out, “Teacher, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

It seems like Peter’s voice is quavering.

While he was saying this, a cloud appears and overshadows the mountaintop. Notice what it feels like to enter the cloud. How does the light and the mist meet each other? How do they interact, and how do they change and transform each other?

What are you experiencing? What are you thinking? How is this, too, a way of praying?

Then from the cloud you hear a voice.

The voice says, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him!” What is it like to hear this voice, in the middle of the cloud? How do you respond to the voice? What thoughts, emotions, or insights arise inside you? What does it mean to receive and follow the wisdom of this voice?

Take it all in. Settle into the cool mist of the cloud. See how the light of Jesus’s transfigured radiance meets the foggy mists of the all-pervading cloud. Notice how limited your vision is, and how limited your hearing as well. Ponder the meaning of the voice in the cloud.

Now, notice that Peter and James and John have fallen to the ground.

What about you? How are you responding to this moment? What are you being invited to? What hope and possibility emerges from this moment?

Jesus comes to each of the disciples and says, “Get up, do not be afraid.” Now Jesus approaches you. You are now face to face with Jesus, his face glowing like the sun. What do you see? What is his body language like? What words or wisdom does he offer you at this pivotal moment? Does he invite you to be unafraid? If so, what does that mean to you?

Almost as quickly as it happened, the miracle seems to pass. You and your companions look up, and you see only Jesus. Perhaps there is still the faintest glow in his eyes, or in his face, which you can perceive there in the darkening dusk. Now Jesus beckons the four of you to the path down the mountain. It is time to leave and to return to your friends who are camped far below.

As you walk down the mountain, Jesus speaks. He instructs you to be discreet about what you have seen. He says to tell no one about this until after the resurrection.

What else does Jesus say? Does he have a message that is especially for you?

The other disciples are asking Jesus questions — questions about Moses and Elijah, and about John the Baptist. As you listen to them, consider if you have a question or two for Jesus. What do you want to ask him? What do you want to know, or to hear from his lips? Imagine posing your question to Jesus, and imagine what his reply would be like. Take this time now to silently and prayerfully interact with Jesus.

As you return to the camp with Peter and James and John, see how silent they are. Jesus asked you to say nothing; in other words, he asked you to be silent too. Take some time now to simply be silent in Jesus’s presence. You don’t need to come up with clever thoughts or words. Simply be still, and let your stillness be a prayer.

The time has come now to conclude this time of imaginal prayer. You don’t really need to say goodbye to Jesus or the Spirit, since they remain always in your heart. Simply allow your imagination to rest, so that you are simply in your body, here and now. Breathe gently. Let this process take all the time it needs. When you are ready, and only then, allow yourself slowly to open your eyes. Simply be present in this place, here and now. Be grounded in your body and let that sense of being grounded be your amen.

If you need to write in your journal, take some time for that. Try to hold this experience of prayer tenderly within you, now and in the hours to come.

This meditation is based on Ignatian forms of imaginative prayer. If you’d like to learn more about Ignatian spirituality, I recommend James Martin’s wonderful book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost Everything): A Spirituality for Real Life. Please use this either for personal prayer or in a group or retreat setting. All I ask is that you acknowledge me as the author and include this URL as the source: www.carlmccolman.net … thank you!

In the world of Zen Buddhism, monks ask for support by seeking gifts of rice or other food through that buppatsu or “begging bowl.”

This page is my “begging bowl” — and I humbly ask for your support.

Perhaps the best way to support my work is with your prayer.

Next, please tell others about this Substack, especially anyone you think will enjoy my work.

Finally, if you wish to support me financially (bless you), there are three ways to do so.

1. Subscribe to this Substack. You can purchase a monthly, annual, or benefactor subscription, starting at just $7 monthly or $75 for the annual plan. Visit www.carlmccolman.net/subscribe to get started.

2. Subscribe to Patreon. If you’d like to join with me and other contemplative seekers for Zoom calls several times each month — or watch the recordings when you can’t make a call — then join my membership program on Patreon. The options start at just $11 a month. Click here: www.patreon.com/carlmccolman.

3. Donate through Ko-fi. If you want to make a one-time gift, or even a monthly gift without any benefit attached to it, use Ko-fi. Ko-fi has the lowest fees, so more of your money reaches me. To make your gift, go to www.ko-fi.com/carlmccolman.

On occasion I get emails from people asking me if they can invest in my work. I assume most of these are scams, but just for the record, my work is entirely supported by income (money I earn) and donations (your generosity). While I appreciate it if anyone thinks what I do is worthy of investment, still the best way to support me is through the options above.

Finally, a word about taxes. I sometimes get asked if I am, or am represented by, a non-profit organization. The answer is no — I’m a one-person operation, and my overall revenue is not large enough to justify setting up as a non-profit. That may change in the future, but for now, any gift you send me way is not tax-deductible. Thanks for understanding.

However you choose to support this work — through prayer, telling others, or your generosity — I am grateful and I appreciate your kindness. Thank you!

Hi friends, here are the dates for our Zoom calls for August and September. Please mark your calendars!

I’ve decided I want to reboot the Evelyn Underhill discussion, so we can eventually have recordings for the entire book. This means that for the next two months we will be revisiting the first four chapters. My apologies for this — I beg your forbeara…

Read more

When my first book was being published, my friend Tim asked me how many copies I hoped it would sell.

“I have no idea,” I replied, finding the whole idea embarrassing.

Tim wrinkled his nose. “Wouldn’t you like it to sell, say, one hundred thousand copies?”

I laughed, thinking that was about as likely as me getting invited to be on Oprah. “Sorry, I’m too much of a realist to think like that.”

He laughed. “Well, you won’t sell any books at all, if you don’t believe you can!”

I’ve never been part of the ‘you create your own reality’ club, so this type of logic annoyed me — almost as much as aggressive marketing annoyed me.

“What I believe is irrelevant,” I retorted. “I’m not going to go around trying to talk people into buying my book. I’m going to trust the process, and I believe the book will find its way to the people who need to read it.”

Tim stopped laughing, realizing that I was seriously opposed to any type of self-promotion. At that point in my life I had always worked in corporate jobs where I never had to get my hands dirty with marketing and promotion. As a result, I was both afraid of it and believed myself to be above it. Tim realized he would have to help me to understand why selling books (or any other worthy product) matters, before I’d be open to actually doing something about it.

He paused for a minute, and then asked me a question. “What does it cost for someone to buy your book?”

“The retail price is fifteen dollars, although you and I both know that Amazon will discount it.”

“Yes, that’s true, but many other stores or websites will charge full price. Just for the sake of argument, though, let’s say the average selling price is twelve dollars.”

“Okay,” I said, not sure where he was taking this.

“Now, what is your royalty on just one copy of your book?”

“That depends,” I said, but quickly realized he just wanted a ballpark figure. “It averages out to about 10% of the book’s wholesale revenue, so that means about 90 cents a copy.”

“Let’s keep it simple and say a dollar a copy,” he suggested. “So if you sold one hundred thousand copies, you could make as much as $100,000, right?”

“Okay.”

“But if it’s selling for twelve dollars, that means your book, your own creation, has actually generated about 1.2 million dollars in revenue, right?”

I did the mental math. “Yes, that’s right.”

“So in addition to you making a nice payday, you will have actually helped other people — from your publisher and your editor to the designers, proofreaders, salespeople, the printers, truckers, booksellers, and so forth — to make some money, too. Which means you’ve helped their families, their children. In other words, your book, your creation, your work, has directly helped other people to the tune of more than a million dollars — but only if it sells enough copies, right?”

I had never thought of it that way.

Rethinking Marketing

To me, marketing — especially if it were aggressive or pushy — always felt narcissistic, as if I would be saying, “Buy my book, because it’s better than every other book out there.” But in my rush to avoid being narcissistic, I was actually thinking in a very self-centered way. Authors only make a small fraction off of sales revenue of their books, which I’m sure annoys some people but I think it’s fair, because I know so many other people contribute to getting a book published — they work hard to help edit, produce and distribute the book. But all that work is done in service of the author and their creative vision.

The author’s creativity literally generates wealth, for multiple people — but only when the book sells.

In my distaste for marketing, I was ignoring the fact that my book actually could help dozens if not hundreds of other people to earn their daily bread. I didn’t want to do a lot of marketing because I didn’t want the world to view me as selfish. But holding that position also meant I wasn’t doing anything to help all the other people who had worked to help me get my book published.

Tim wasn’t done with me, though. “So in addition to helping so many other people generate abundance for their lives, think of the hundred thousand people who will actually buy and read your book. It will be a blessing to them, right?”

Suddenly I felt humble. “Well, I hope so.”

“Carl, your publisher and all the others wouldn’t be helping you to get your book out there if they didn’t believe in it. So why don’t you believe in it! Your book can help people. It might not save their lives or transform them completely, but if it’s insightful or enjoyable, it will be worth reading. So with that in mind don’t you want all those people to read your book?”

His logic was unassailable. “Yes,” I admitted.

Tim smiled. “I rest my case. I hope you will begin to think about why it matters for you to go out there and promote your book.”

I certainly can’t say that I turned into a marketing juggernaut overnight, and to this day I remain allergic to pushy marketing tactics. But I began to see promotions — as well as the role that content creation can play in generating abundance for many people — in a new light.

I began to understand that creative work is relational — and that for an author, more relationships matter than just the author-reader relationship. I began to feel so much gratitude for the many people involved in helping a book make the journey from an idea inside my head to a published title that people read, review, discuss, and debate. I began to see writing not only as a personal creative endeavor, but as a contribution to the community at large.

If you are reading this, and you are working on a book (or have one published), I hope you’ll ponder Tim’s way of seeing things. I hope you will find joy in letting others know about your work. I hope you will appreciate that even if it’s not a bestseller, your book can still be a blessing to many people.

P.S. And please, buy some of my books! 😇 Visit www.anamchara.com/product-category/books to check them out…

What is prayer? I don’t know really. But if it’s anything, it must be a repository for the experience of today, a place for reckoning, with yourself, with the story of God that you tell or don’t tell, with the decisions you’re facing, with the guts of yourself. — Pádraig Ó Tuama 1

When I was a teenager, I knew a girl who used to say to people, “I love your guts”! Then she would explain that if you really hated someone, you’d say “I hate your guts,” so obviously to love someone’s viscera is, well, pretty special.

And now here comes Irish poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, who admits he has no idea what prayer is, but links whatever it is to our guts. Prayer is a place of reckoning — and that right there is a delicious pun, for here in the American South when someone says “I reckon” they basically mean they believe something to be true. But I imagine in Belfast “a place for reckoning” probably carries much more weight, something more along the lines of a setting where everything gets examined carefully, and what is real is seen and said for what it truly is.

So casual affirmation or in-your-guts responsibility — either way, prayer is a place where something happens. It’s deep, it’s in your heart, your intestines. It’s here and now, in the present moment, and it’s experiential: embodied, not merely thought about. But this embodied reality dances like Ginger Rogers with the story we tell (or fail to tell) about “God” — whatever that is. I’m reminded of the definition of God attributed to Barry Taylor, the AC/DC roadie who became an Episcopal priest: “God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.”

So what is the story we tell (or don’t tell) about that blanket-enfolded Mystery? And how does it land in our heart, in our faith (or lack thereof), in our moment of deepest accountability or merely in the radical freedom of the present moment? Give your answer for that question to that Mystery and you have prayer.

I can imagine someone replying, “But — does prayer have to be so… heavy? I was just going to ask God to help me balance my budget.”

Okay, so not every prayer rocks the entire cosmos. Or maybe it does? Maybe that frantic plea for a parking spot when you’re ten minutes late for a meeting that could change your life, really does matter. And maybe in those desperate words, you’re reckoning with your guts far more deeply than you realize. Think about this for a bit, and perhaps contemplative silence could begin to make a lot more sense — and call us into its prayerful presence.

Here’s a summer memory that profoundly shapes how I remember my childhood. More than fifty years later, it not only gives me insight into my youth, but into the nature of contemplative or even mystical experience as well — at least, those that occur in the most down-to-earth and seemingly ordinary ways.

This particular July day must have been in the early 1970s — I’m thinking ’71 or ’72. My brother Don and his wife Julie were married in November 1969, so I know it was after that, and I don’t believe I had yet entered junior high school (which happened in the fall of 1973). I was young, maybe 10 or 11 years old. My parents and I were camping at Buggs Island Lake, a beautiful recreational center straddling the Virginia-North Carolina border. My brother and his wife were also there; I can’t recall if they were camping as well or had just driven up for the day (the lake is about 135 miles from the Virginia Peninsula, where we lived). My memory involves a walk that Don, Julie and I took along the lakeside, the morning after the fourth of July.

The beach — not a sandy beach, but a lake shore where trees extended almost down to the edge of the water — was covered with used bottle rockets, a silent witness to the festivities of the night before. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day; I don’t recall it being particularly warm (certainly not like the blistering swelter of summer here in America this year). I recall that Julie found an arrowhead; 1 this land had historically been the home of the Occaneechi people, although I think we can assume that any arrowhead found there in the 1970s had just been recently dropped by a previous passerby. Nevertheless, as a kid I was a bit jealous of her good fortune, and desperately wanted to find an arrowhead of my own. No such luck, though — all I seemed to be able to find were those used bottle rockets.

At some point during our time walking along the lake, something happened. By “something” I don’t mean anything particularly dramatic, as if I had a vision or some awe-inspiring mystical experience. It’s more that I simply and spontaneously dropped into the pure presence of the moment. I wasn’t overwhelmed by any particular emotion or feeling; I didn’t feel that I had any kind of mind-expanding insight or vision. I was just simply there. Fully present, completely in the moment. It was peaceful, serene, beautiful. Looking back from so many years later, I think that part of what may have made this so special is that, if only for a moment, my ongoing sense of anxiety dropped away. Without any sense of the day or the moment being special or extraordinary, I nevertheless seemed to be given, for just a moment, a wider and deeper ability to see into the heart of things.

It was a moment of wonder. And as is so often the case with these kinds of things, it was a moment of wonder that passed quickly by. I didn’t say anything to my brother or sister-in-law, we were just three family members out for a walk. It was an ordinary day, unusual only for all those bottle rockets.

I put it out of my mind for many years.

It was several years later, in 1977, that I had a much more meaningful “peak” experience of feeling oneness with God, which I have written about on several occasions (most notably in my books The Aspiring Mystic and Unteachable Lessons). That was the more remarkable, “oh wow” experience that launched me on my lifelong love for contemplative and mystical spirituality. In comparison, my Buggs Island Lake memory seems sweet but not especially noteworthy.

That is, until I started moving more deeply into my own intentional practice of Centering Prayer and contemplative meditation (a practice that I began in earnest more than ten years after that July day on Buggs Island Lake). As I began to pay closer attention to the grace of silence and of what Cynthia Bourgeault calls “objectless attention” (see The Heart of Centering Prayer for more about this), I came to realize that I had been spontaneously brought into such a singular moment, there on the shore of the lake with all those bottle rockets.

It happened freely. Naturally. Without any intentionality or planning or even conscious desire on my part. It was simply there. Maybe just for a few moments, maybe a couple of minutes. My brother and sister-in-law and I kept walking along. The moment of pure presence passed, and I reverted back to what was “ordinary” consciousness for me. But it made enough of a lingering imprint on my mind that, years later, I could recall it and say “that’s like what I experience when I’m deep into Centering Prayer.”

Consider this insight from contemplative neuroscientist Gerald G. May:

It is my impression that extremely brief unitive experiences happen to most people numerous times each day, but are so very short-lived that they go unnoticed. There is, I am certain, the potential for unitive experience at each blinking of the eyes, at each pause in the breath. But such experiences are seldom recognized.2

Everyone has multiple unitive experiences each and every day, only we’re really good at filtering them out. It’s as if the brain intuitively recognizes that such experiences might be meaningful and wonderful, but they don’t put food on the table. So we have learned to ignore them, unless they are long-lasting or powerful enough to inescapably catch our attention.

Walking along a lake in July, looking for arrowheads and only finding spent bottle rockets, may hardly seem to qualify as a unitive experience. But Saint Ignatius counsels us to find God in all things. Saint Benedict says “we believe the divine presence is everywhere.” What I experienced there as a child so many years ago was purely a matter of grace: I had no idea that meditation, or contemplative spirituality, or the practice of the presence of God, were even things worth wanting. They simply were not on my map. And so, what I did feel, what I did notice, was something I didn’t even have the language to describe, not only to others but even to myself.

This inclines me to sense that mystical experience is, in the words of Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, “Nothing special.” In other words, perfectly ordinary, down-to-earth, humble: and available to everyone. Even for a young child whose family never went to church and whose hero was Mr. Spock (in other words, I was a little science nerd).3 Which means, of course, that the in-rushing presence of the Spirit, manifested through a sense of grace and clear seeing, is available to you, and me, and everyone — even the people we don’t like or think are “not worthy.” The miracle of mindfulness, as Thich Nhat Hanh calls it. The mystery of the divine indwelling. The sacrament of the present moment.

I suppose when you compare my moment by the lake to, say, the showings of Julian of Norwich or the “transverberation” of Saint Teresa of Avila — or even the 4th & Walnut Epiphany of Thomas Merton — then what I experienced was pretty small potatoes. But that’s okay.

The mystical life is not a race, there’s no blue ribbon for the person who has the biggest or most awe-inspiring vision.

Maybe the most down-to-earth encounter with grace can be just as life-transforming as the most profound enlightenment moment. To be sure, I never had a sense that my walk by the lake changed my life. If it did, it did so in such a subtle way that I can tell you nothing about it. Isn’t expecting a mystical experience to yield life-changing “results” just another form of spiritual materialism? Just another game of one-upmanship that we can sometimes play with each other (or ourselves). In other words, it’s nonsense. Don’t evaluate, don’t judge, don’t create artificial criteria that we use to think about our encounters with the mystery. Just have the encounter. That, in itself, is enough.

One of my favorite folks on Instagram and Youtube these days is Britt Hartley, author of No-Nonsense Spirituality and the forthcoming Everything Is Stupid, the World Is on Fire, and Nothing Matters: A Nihilist Survival Guide. Raised Mormon, but after converting to mainstream Christianity as an adult and getting a master’s degree in theology, she lost her faith. Now she identifies as an atheist spiritual director.

Some observers might raise their eyebrows at such a pairing, but I think it’s worth our consideration. Even though I don’t choose to identify myself as an atheist or an agnostic, I have long sensed that mystical spirituality can be a path to a place where the walls separating belief and disbelief just fall away.

By definition, an agnostic is someone who believes they cannot know for certain whether or not God exists. Meanwhile, an atheist is someone who has decided that God does not exist. What they seem to have in common, at least from where I sit, is a sense that belief in God is, at least for them, simply not possible.

Mystics and contemplatives are sometimes seen as people who have such strong experiences of God that for them, faith is simply unnecessary. Toward the end of his life Carl Jung was asked if he believed in God. Apparently his reply was along these lines: “Difficult to answer. I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.”1

Jung later tried to clarify what he meant by this, but the genie was out of the bottle. For the aged psychologist, belief simply did not matter as much as embodied experience. Whatever it was that Jung encountered within, he felt confident in labeling it as God. And thanks to that inner encounter, he felt no need to “believe” in anything else.

That may seem to be a far cry from atheism or agnosticism, but I think they are actually much closer than they appear to be on the surface. As best I can tell, Jung did not consider himself to be a mystic, but rather a scientist. Still, his logic — that experience matters more than belief — is very much a mystic’s perspective. And it is precisely this where I see the common ground between mystics and agnostics or atheists.

Both the mystic and the nonbeliever place more trust in experience than in faith itself. But mystics are more likely to find God in their experience, whereas atheists or agnostics seem more likely to find simply emptiness or nothingness where they might be looking for God.

But here’s the kicker: to mystics and contemplatives, “emptiness” and “nothingness” can be meaningful ways to encounter the mystery called God.

Here’s how I framed it in The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism:

Perhaps one difference between a mystic and an atheist is that the atheist sees the emptiness of God as proving a negation, whereas the mystic, in open-minded and heartful seeking, avoids making any such proof statement, instead seeing the emptiness of God as simply an invitation into an ever-deepening mystery of pure being itself, including the mystery of silence and life and love.2

In other words, mystics actually seem to have the most in common with agnostics: since both are hesitant to make a final statement like “There is a God” or “There is no God.” For both agnostics and mystics, humility matters more than certainty. But even atheists still seem to have something in common with mystics, since they all rely on experience first, before falling back on the supposed certainties of doctrine or dogma.

I don’t know enough about Britt Hartley’s spiritual journey to be able to comment on why she identifies herself as an atheist rather than an agnostic. It seems to me that as she defines atheism, it’s simply the conclusion that one must reach when deciding that there is not enough persuasive evidence for belief in something as consequential as the existence of God. In other words, her atheism sounds pretty agnostic, at least to me.

I don’t remember who first gave me this idea: that when a contemplative has a conversation with an avowed atheist, it might be helpful to say — in all humility — “please tell me about the God you don’t believe in; chances are, I don’t believe in that God either.” Contemplative spirituality involves an ever-deepening process of ripping away beliefs about God that simply don’t stand up — not only don’t stand up to the hard questions posed by logic, science and philosophy, but also cannot stand up to the challenges posed by personal experience.

How many people are discouraged when God simply appears to ignore our prayers? We pray and pray and pray, and yet our loved one dies anyway. Theology has developed plenty of sophisticated arguments to try to square God’s infinite power and goodness with the devastating experience of God’s apparent indifference. But to the person who is grieving, such theological arguments come across as pointless, if not callous.

No matter how deep contemplation and mystical exploration takes me into the mysteries of the cloud of unknowing and the dark night of the soul, I have not yet felt any need to simply jettison the concept of God altogether. Perhaps this is because I so strongly identify “God” with “Love.” But in all honesty, it doesn’t bother me that the Britt Hartleys of the world reach different conclusions — just like it doesn’t bother me that some people prefer Buddhism or Taoism to Christianity. Atheists who have a chip on their shoulder about Christianity or who always want to get into debates about God strike me as rather boring: the “mansplainers” of the spiritual community. But an atheist like Britt Hartley, who is candid in admitting what she doesn’t believe, while continuing to seek meaningful and relational ways to take good care of her interior life, strikes me as someone worth listening to indeed.

Here’s a question I sometimes get asked:

Do I have to be a member of a church to be a Christian mystic?

The short answer is no, you don’t. But that’s not the whole story, of course.

The longer answer is much more nuanced — and begins with an ancient question posed to the desert mothers and fathers. And no matter how we approach this subject, we need to be thinking about the difference (and similarity) between church and community.

Whose Feet?

First, the question. It’s a helpful reminder that our generation is not the first to say “no thank you,” to getting involved in your local church. But it’s also a challenge to us all, no matter where we might be on a Sunday morning.

When Christians were moving out into the desert in the fourth century to live in solitude, St. Basil the Great asked a question to challenge them.

After all, the idea that spirituality is about washing each other’s feet comes from the top. It was a teaching that Jesus gave to his followers the night before he was killed. It’s a metaphor, of course (even though many churches ritually re-enact it the night before Good Friday). To wash feet means to serve and to care for others.

But that’s not always easy, is it? And churches are not always the best forums for providing us with ways to truly care for one another.

Does Mysticism Thrive Best in Community?

One of the most obvious differences between the first edition of The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, and the second edition (now called The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism) was how my thinking had evolved regarding the relationship between mysticism and the institutional church.

In the first edition, I devoted an entire chapter to making the case that mysticism, at least in its Christian form, thrives best in community.

Here’s an example of what I had to say:

Relationship forms the heart of Christianity, whether we are relating to God or to one another. Christianity undermines the idea, prevalent in our secularized society, that God is nothing more than a metaphor for the deepest, highest, or best parts of ourselves. While faith in Christ invites us to seek God within ourselves, we are not seeking just a part of ourselves. Rather, we are seeking to become part of something much bigger than ourselves — the God who is greater than the cosmos. We can seek this because, paradoxically, this transcendent God has been seeking us all along. We love God in response to God’s love for us. Likewise, Christianity also offers an alternative to the pervasive narcissism and self-obsession of our time, by calling us to look for God not only inside ourselves, but also through each other… Since God is in each of us, when we gaze into the eyes of our friends and neighbors and fellow Christians, we are gazing into the Temple of the Holy Spirit. (page 137)

That chapter, “The Mystical Body” (chapter 9 in the first edition, chapter 13 in the second) was almost entirely rewritten — even though this particular paragraph survived with only minor changes. In the new edition, I give much more space to acknowledging religious trauma and the fact that many contemplative seekers find church to be either indifferent to, suspicious of, or downright hostile to, the exploration of the mystical life.

But even though I have become much less convinced that participation is a church is necessary for mystical Christianity, I continue to believe that there is an essential necessity of finding some sort of spiritual community to both nurture and challenge our spiritual lives. For many of us, that might not look like our neighborhood church congregation. But community is worth fighting for — or seeking out, even if we have good reasons for giving the local house of worship a wide berth.

As wisdom traditions go, the heart of Christianity is not enlightenment, or unitive consciousness, or the ability to work miracles — any and all of these things can happen, and there have been mystics who have reported precisely these phenomena. But they are not the heart of Christian mysticism.

The heart of Christian mysticism is love.

Chances are, most people reading these words live in America or Australia or Western Europe (and even if you don’t live in those places, you are probably somewhat influenced by their culture). The culture of these lands tends to be highly individualistic — the mythology of the U.S., for example, lionizes solitary figures like Paul Bunyan and the Lone Ranger. “To thine own self be true” is our creed, and the unspoken shadow of that dogma is “because no one else really matters.”

Now, I do not fault the emergence of a healthy adult personality, which includes forming a unique sense of self and the ability to follow one’s own conscience even when it means going against the grain. Those are good values, so individualism certainly is not all bad. But as a spiritual tradition that places so much emphasis on love, community, and service, Christianity naturally challenges us to balance our individuality with a commitment to others — to family, to friends, to community, to colleagues, and yes, to people who share our faith.

I realize I have moved from talking about “Christian mysticism” to simply talking about “Christianity.” But that’s because the heart of Christian mysticism is, well, to intimately follow the teachings of Jesus, the Christ. And such intimacy implies following the Christian path — mystic or no.

The Pros and Cons of (Mystical) Church Membership

But does this mean you have to join a church, for heaven’s sake?!?!

Friends, I get it. Howard Thurman got it. Simone Weil got it. Brian McLaren gets it. There’s a long history of tension between mystics and contemplatives and church. Even among those who are completely in love with the wisdom of Jesus and the amazing mystics that follow his path, from Meister Eckhart to Julian of Norwich to Thomas Keating.

I understand how many people — including many people with a genuine interest in the mystics — find church to be the last place they want to be, on Sunday or any other time during the week.

There are so many reasons for this. Many people have been hurt by churches. And not just in terms of extreme trauma (like clergy sexual abuse), although that does happen to the church’s shame. But even beyond such outrageous harm, many people are hurt in much milder/smaller — but still painful or traumatizing — ways. People get shamed for a variety of reasons — from expressing their sexuality to questioning the pastor to showing an innocent interest in interfaith exploration. Sexism, racism, and homophobia often create climates in churches that can be unhealthy and even dangerous. Churches can be abusive in other ways — to learn more about this unhappy topic, read Healing Spiritual Wounds by Carol Howard Merritt.

Some churches seem to be too political — which can be a problem no matter what “side” you are on. Other churches clearly cater to a specific “tribe” of people — from “country club” churches where everyone at least appears to be wealthy, to “blue collar” churches where everyone appears to be just getting by. Too many churches appear to cater only to one specific skin color or ethnic identity. While it might be spiritually adventurous to join a church where everyone seems to be different from you, that can also be psychologically taxing. The only thing worse than that, of course, is a church where everyone is just like you.

And don’t get me started on how boring church can be.

I have lots of friends who are pastors or church musicians, and I don’t want to be unfair in my criticism of them. It’s hard to write a good sermon or perform meaningful music for a diverse congregation, week after week after week. Church leaders, at least the ones I know, are dedicated and sincere people who do their best to create worship experiences that are engaging and spiritually meaningful. But even they are facing cultural headwinds. Entire churches have been ripped apart by internal conflicts over what music to play, what language to use (just the matter of God’s pronouns can reveal deep divisions), and whether the tone of the service should be solemn and reverent, or joyful and upbeat.

But even in the congregations that are blessed with dynamic music ministries and superb preaching, the larger problems facing church today can creep in. Too many churches have, or have inherited, a culture that seems to stress conformity and nostalgia rather than truly grappling with the radical teachings of Christ (let alone the mystics). If that’s what being a Christian is all about, is it any wonder that so many people vote with their feet?

And then there’s the fact that so many churches are devoid of people interested in the teachings and practices of the mystics (but more on that below).

In Search of the “Good Enough” Church

So how do we integrate Christianity (and Christian mysticism)’s commitment to love, joy, compassion, and the importance of community, with the often problematic nature of too many churches that fall too short when it comes to truly embodying the teachings of Christ?

First, I think we have to acknowledge that we live in an imperfect world, and this extends to everything — including church. If our only complaint with church is that it is unfulfilling or boring, maybe our standards are just a bit too high: we are looking for church to be fun and exciting, rather than to be a place where we can serve. Our culture worships entertainment, and that seeps into every corner of contemporary life: including religion. I don’t think it’s unusual for people to look at church in terms of it existing “to serve our needs” — but that’s really not the point, is it? Churches are not spas. They are places where we have the opportunity to love others, and to serve God — by being in relationship with others. And that kind of thing is often the opposite of glamorous, like it or now.

But what if you are a survivor of spiritual abuse? What if the only church in your town is filled with political extremism and a conformity culture that is just plain toxic? Not only are these fair questions, but they are important ones. And this is where the difference between community and church matters. The Christian wisdom tradition is a tradition that calls us into community, but toxic or dysfunctional churches are not what Christian community is meant to be. Leaving a toxic church is like leaving an abusive marriage: it’s an act of courage, and I believe God blesses people who are willing to make that brave choice.

Fortunately, healthy churches do exist, even if they often seem to be lacking in the mystical/contemplative department. Especially if you live in an urban area, you can find churches with a strong commitment to social justice, with pastors who sometimes quote the Dalai Lama (or even Thomas Merton), where people attending do not all look the same, where LGBTQ+ people feel safe and can be visible, and where the atmosphere is genuinely warm and friendly. Such churches do exist (in fact, I’m describing the church where I am a member).

Healthy churches are transparent about their finances. They have safeguards in place to keep children and other vulnerable adults safe. They are as committed to prayer and spiritual growth as they are to service and justice — and vice versa.

There may be other signs for you to look for, these are some of the signs I look for, to help me recognize that a church is healthy.

Ultimately, it’s a place where I can say “yes” to questions like “Can I truly pray/meditate here here?” “Can I truly be of service here?” “Can I truly be myself here?”

It’s worth it to try to find a healthy church. A healthy church is like a loving marriage and a creative, fun, challenging work environment — life is too short not to take the time to find (or foster) these qualities in our lives.

But let’s say you simply cannot find a truly inspirational/healthy church. What then? Back to community. Fortunately, there are many ways to foster community in our lives. We can participate in online groups or forums dedicated to spirituality or mysticism. We can become active in neighborhood organizations or centers for community activism. And — especially in terms of your interest in Christian mysticism — we can find communities that share our interest in spirituality, such as Centering Prayer groups, monastic oblate communities, or even a book club dedicated to reading spiritual literature (hey, suggest one of my books!)

So, back to the question: “Do I have to be a member of a church to be a Christian mystic?” In an absolute sense, strictly speaking, the answer is no, you don’t — especially if being involved in a church could be unsafe or (re)traumatizing. But remember St. Basil’s challenge to find those dirty feet. Church may be optional, but community is essential. We all need feet to wash: which is to say, we need a place where we can love and serve others. As imperfect as every church is, a basically healthy church can often provide that community for us. So please, don’t write church off too quickly. And no matter what, look for a some kind of community where you can grow spiritually and learn to love.

A Final Thought

I know many people who are drawn to mystical spirituality have yet another reason why church no longer makes sense. It’s easy to abandon church because, well, most churches are not particularly mysticism-friendly. The institutional bias against contemplation and mysticism is real. Too many clergy are still the product of seminaries that are great at filling their heads with facts, but far less effective at teaching them how to pray, how to contemplate, how to be silent, and how to be present with the spiritual needs of others. This has changed much for the better in my lifetime, but there’s still a long way to go.

No church is perfect — and a corollary to this, unfortunately, is “very few churches are friendly to mysticism (Christian or otherwise).” So if you participate in a church because it’s a place where you can serve and love others, you might still need to find your spiritual nurturance some other way. You might need to join (or start) a Centering Prayer group, or become a monastic oblate, or begin working with a spiritual director. Fortunately, resources do exist to help us grow deeper spiritually. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a workable one: participate in a church to serve, and then find other groups or relationships for contemplative, mystical, spiritual nurturing.

I’m in my office, although it doesn’t look anything like my office in waking life. But, alas, my desk seems just as messy. I have a book open to a chapter from a novel by Jane Austen (I don’t recall which novel or which chapter); the book was large, like it was an omnibus of her complete works. As I come up to the desk, perhaps to continue reading, I notice that, right above the book, a baby pygmy elephant is sleeping. The elephant is very small, tiny even, only a few inches tall — but perfectly formed, kind of like the tiny liquor bottles you can get on a plane. It’s adorable! And sound asleep.

Right next to its tiny head and tiny trunk is the toe of an old brown shoe, that for some inexplicable reason, I have sitting on my desk, diagonally next to the book (I told you, it was a mess). I feel like I have to get a selfie of this amazing “still life” moment on my desk; not “still life with woodpecker,” but still life with tiny elephant. It seems only one thing was missing — I should be sleeping next to my little pachyderm friend. But if I pose like that, a) how would I keep from disturbing the tiny napper, and b) how to take the selfie? With my essential tremors, taking a selfie is challenging in any situation, but this seems almost impossible to engineer.

Nevertheless, I gently bend down so that my face is next to the elephant, practically nose to trunk. I am very quietly attempting to position my phone above the desk so as to take the picture, when my wife walks up. “I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper, then I point out the sleeping animal and explain what I want to do. She agrees to take the picture. As I position my head on the desk to pose as I wanted, it occurs to me that if my mom were still alive and she saw this picture, she’d want to know why a shoe was on my desk. Just then, my beloved asks, “What’s that shoe doing on the desk?”

I decide I need to write a haiku to commemorate this wonderful moment. Even though I know that a 5-7-5 syllable count is truly not necessary in writing English haiku, still I figure since this is my first attempt at writing a haiku I should try to be respectful of the traditional form. I compose the poem in my head, and tweak it a few times, until I am finally happy with it.

Open book on desk
Pygmy elephant naps there
A shoe by its head

Nota bene: This is a dream I had, just this morning. It was lucid; the giveaway was the minuscule elephant (in real life, even newborn pygmy elephants are three feet tall and weight 200 lbs!).

The allusions to Jane Austen and George Harrison were very much in the dream, and I suppose the nod to Tom Robbins was as well, but I didn’t realize that one until I was writing it down.

What’s especially playful about this dream is that tonight I am, for the first time, leading a two night retreat at Ignatius House on “Mystical Poetry and Spiritual Verse as a Sacred Practice.” It’s an interfaith-themed retreat, based on an afternoon presentation I did there last year, as part of Ignatius House’s ongoing series of interfaith programming.

The retreat will follow this format: tonight will be a reprise of the presentation from 2025; tomorrow in the morning I’ll lead the participants on an exercise writing pantoums, with the afternoon devoted to haiku. In the evening we will have an opportunity to read and reflect on our favorite poems, and then on Sunday morning we’ll write our own prayer poem, using as a starting point Pádraig Ó Tuama’s wonderful instructions on writing collects (which I learned from him when I attended his workshop in Atlanta last fall).

When I shared this dream (and the haiku) with Fran this morning, she asked me if I were going to read it to the retreatants. I said, of course. And then I figured it was worth posting here as well.

I love to write down my dreams, but I rarely share them with others unless they seem to be deeply contemplative or even mystical in their tone. This dream was much more playful and childlike — but isn’t that “mystical” in its own right? Last night I did some writing on the relationship between mysticism and playfulness (actually, I was lamenting the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much of a relationship, at least in western religion). So perhaps that was another tributary to this remarkable subconscious moment.

Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny (1947-1978), better known by her nickname Sandy, was a British singer and songwriter, known for her contribution to the music of bands like the Strawbs, Fairport Convention, and Fotheringay, but also for her four solo albums. To many people of my generation, she might be best known as a guest vocalist on Led Zeppelin’s song “The Battle of Evermore.” She died tragically young, at age 31, after sustaining injuries from falling down a flight of stairs.

At her very last concert, just weeks before her sudden death, she ended the evening by singing “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” a wistful ballad about losing friends as our days inevitably pass — a song that became her signature tune, as well as being covered by artists like Judy Collins and Nina Simone. It’s an achingly beautiful but profoundly sad song, acknowledging the inevitability of grief and loss. Still, the most beautiful moment in the song comes when Denny sings, with an almost angelic defiance, “I have no fear of time.”

Perhaps most people would share Sandy Denny’s courage. But often we dread what time brings to us: inevitable losses of those who die or go away, the limitations of old age, the infirmity of disease, the finality of death. We may not fear time, but we fear what it seems to bring our way.

Yet Denny makes this bold statement in the midst of a song about the necessary losses that come as a result of the passage of time. So she is not in denial when she speaks of having no fear of time. She is a realist, she knows that suffering comes to everyone sooner or later, and still, she faces the inevitable from a place of fearlessness.

Take it further: not only does she lack dread — she seems to actually trust time. For most of us, this could only be possible through the grace of contemplation. Which makes me wonder if we (all of us) relate to time in a manner similar to how we relate to God. So many people seem to carry a quiet awe for God that too easily prevents us from ever seeking divine intimacy. We try not to be offensive or rambunctious, we keep a respectful distance. As a Mennonite friend of mine once said, “We watch God the way the mouse watches the cat.” This might help us to maintain a polite religious observance, but does not ultimately nurture the soul.

By contrast, the First Letter of John reminds us that, spiritually speaking, love casts out fear. Perhaps for Sandy Denny, time is not only to be trusted, but even to be loved.

What could life be like if we accepted, affirmed, and even cherished the relentless passage of time? I’m not sure that any of us could answer that question, left to our own devices. But “with God all things are possible,” especially grace. Grace helps us to choose love and confidence over angst and self-protection. It’s not a magic bullet, of course, but it is a quality of a life well lived. May we all find the capacity to trust the flow of life’s passage, and to live in a manner consistent with the faith that the life-giving Spirit places in us.

Unfortunately, almost no video footage of Sandy Denny is available; but here is a brief clip of her with Fairport Convention in 1975 that gives you a taste of her heavenly voice.

Mystery Beyond All Naming,

Be with me in my faith and in my doubt.

Be present when I effortlessly trust in your loving grace, and when I question all concepts, all myths, all images associated with you.

Guide me to remain non-attached and serenely indifferent to the questions that swirl around you and through you.

Help me to remember that uncertainty is not the enemy of faith, nor its opposite. Illuminate my eyes so that I may realize what a gift a centered and contemplative doubt can be.

Show me those places where shame can be released, where anxiety can be assuaged, and where judgment can be gently surrendered into the infinite splendor of love.

Breathe with me, so that I may find love, truth, beauty, wonder, and goodness in every breath, and so that I may find limitless nurture in limitless silence.

And having received so many graces from you, inspire me to be a source of blessings and healing and compassionate care for others as well.

All this I ask in your unspeakable name and unknowable knowing.

Amen.

This prayer is inspired by Brian McLaren’s enormously helpful book Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It (St. Martin’s Press, 2021). Brian offers a roadmap for adult spirituality, going through four periods of simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony; and he points out how a crisis of belief is often the psychological process that ushers us from one dimension of faith to the next. It is also inspired by an old Buddhist saying that there are three essential elements to Zen practice: great faith, great doubt, and great perseverance (or determination).1

Those who walk the contemplative path might feel tempted to shy away from perplexity or questioning; I know that when I am gripped by uncertainty, it generally feels like I have a problem that needs to be solved. But what if such a crisis of disbelief is not the enemy of spiritual growth, but rather its helper and initiator? If any one stage of faith is like children’s teeth, then isn’t doubt the equivalent to a tooth falling out? Perhaps it’s a bit unpleasant, but ultimately necessary and life-giving because it creates the space in our hearts for a more mature spirituality to take root. But unlike baby teeth that fall out only once in a lifetime, faith can yield to doubt over and over again throughout the lifespan, since we are (at least potentially) always available to grow spiritually.

We comfort our children when they lose their teeth by promising them a visit from the tooth fairy — a Tinkerbellian equivalent to Santa Claus who visits the child at night to remove the tooth from under their pillow, replacing it with a gift of money (when I was young the “payout” was generally 10-25¢ per tooth; I imagine nowadays most kids are expecting at least a dollar if not five!)

If a “faith fairy” could visit us at night to console us every time we’ve traded our belief for doubt, perhaps we would be more willing to go there, trusting that an inner crisis is not necessarily faith destroyed, but often is simply a cocooning of the heart — a caterpillar’s self-giving to make way for a new butterfly of deeper spiritual meaning and purpose.

Friends, if you haven’t already done so, please check out the new Substack that my colleague and co-conspirator Debonee Morgan and I have created, called “Radical Mystic.” We envisioned it as a resource for the one-day workshop we will be presenting at the Wild Goose Festival, called Wisdom Camp, which will take place in early September (please come if you can). The theme of Wisdom Camp is “Radical Mysticism,” which of course leads to the name/concept of our Substack.

Of course, we hope that this Substack will take on a life of its own even beyond the gathering in September. So even if you aren’t going to be at the Wild Goose Festival, come join us around the circle at Substack.

To help whet your appetite, here’s a link to a post I published on Monday called “Twelve Ways to Be a Radical Mystic.” I think you’ll like it. Check it out — and subscribe, already!

One evening I was asked to speak to a small house church in my neighborhood on the spirituality of silence.

This particular community is evangelical, and silence is not something that they have traditionally placed a lot of emphasis on. But their pastor (who lives across the street from me) is discerning in his heart a call to greater silence in his prayer, and knowing that silence is “my thing” he invited me to come share with the community.

It seems to me that for a community like that, the best way to introduce them to the spirituality of silence is to share with them a variety of Biblical verses that affirm the beauty and importance of silence, as well as stillness and solitude.

So I drew up a list of the Biblical verses, and figured it was worth sharing here. The first ten verses come from the New Revised Standard Version; Psalm 65:1 comes from the Jewish Artscroll translation, and I Thessalonians 4:11 is my own translation (see a note at the end of this post about those two verses in particular). However, almost any scholarly Bible translation will reveal how important silence is in these passages. What I love about each of these passages is that they look at silence not in human terms (i.e., keeping silent — or speaking out — when relating to others), but rather they all point us to the beauty and meaning of silence in how we relate to God.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to keep silence…” Ecclesiastes 3:1,7

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

“For God alone my soul in silence waits.” Psalm 62:1

“But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!” Habakkuk 2:20

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15

“Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is at hand; the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, he has consecrated his guests.” Zephaniah 1:7

“It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” Lamentations 3:26

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” Mark 1:35

“When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” Revelation 8:1

“He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” I Kings 19:11-12 (other versions render this as “a still small voice” or “a light silent sound”)

“To You, silence is praise, O God in Zion.” Psalm 65:1 (see note below)

“Honor your heart through contemplative silence.” I Thessalonians 4:11 (see note below)

A Note on Psalm 65:1 and I Thessalonians 4:11

We all know the concept of something getting lost in translation. These two Bible verses are poster-children for that principle.

In its original Hebrew, the first verse of Psalm 65 links the Hebrew word for contemplative silence (ḏūmîyāh) with the concept of praise (təhillāh). But ḏūmîyāh also carries a sense of “waiting,” and so there is a long tradition of scholars translating this verse into some version of “Praise waits for you, God.” But that is grammatically convoluted: how can praise have agency to wait? So other translations have gone even farther from the Hebrew meaning with renditions like “Praise is due to you.” Some translations, however, like the Jewish Artscroll version, prefer to read the Hebrew more literally, which results in a verse luminous with contemplative meaning: “To You, silence is praise, O God in Zion.”

Meanwhile, in the New Testament letter to the Thessalonians, the author (Paul) offers a series of brief words of advice and encouragement in chapter four. Among them is verse 11, which the NRSV translates as “aspire to live quietly.” That seems like good and wise counsel. But if we look at the Greek original, once again we find a contemplative sense that didn’t make it across the translation. In Greek, this phrase is φιλοτιμεῖσθαι ἡσυχάζειν (philotimeisthai hēsychazein); philotimeisthai literally means “love honor” while hēsychazein likewise means “being still” or “keeping silence” — but specifically connoting an interior silence, not just the absence of speech. Famously, this word became associated with Greek Orthodox monks who practice the contemplative spirituality associated with the Jesus Prayer (also called “the prayer of the heart”) — to be a hesychast is to be a contemplative, a practitioner of deep inner silence. This all points to Paul’s actual point being “love the honor you will find in interior silence and stillness” — or, to make this flow a bit more elegantly in English, “honor your heart through contemplative silence.”

I know that it’s dangerous to use proof-texts, but still, I can’t help but believe that these verses taken together make a powerful witness to how silence is an essential nutrient for the spiritual life — and not only in the Biblical tradition, but as an example for spiritual seekers world over.

July 14 is International Non-Binary People’s Day. Non-binary refers to a sense of gender as being neither exclusively male nor female — a word that describes an embodied experience, not just some sort of political or ideological viewpoint.

For those of us who are contemplative or journeyers along the mystical way (regardless of our gender identity), I think we can discern a fascinating point of convergence between non-binary gender and non-dual spirituality.

To have non-dual consciousness means to be someone whose way of seeing emphasizes what unites us rather than what divides us. Mystically speaking, this primarily means to see union with God as a more real and pervasive reality than the sense of being separate from God (even though it is normal to have that sense of separation). Non-dual spirituality does not pretend that dualities don’t exist: there are still real distinctions between good and evil, healthy and unhealthy, heaven and earth, and so forth. But a non-dual consciousness sees a unity that is deeper and more stable than even the most all-encompassing distinction. “Evil” people are still deeply loved by God. Democrats and Republicans share a common humanity that matters more than our adversarial politics (yes, I know that one’s hard).

Richard Rohr calls Jesus the first non-dual teacher in the West, and I think that’s an apt and mystically illuminating recognition.

Compare that with this fascinating, if startling, insight from activist Jacob Tobia (b. 1991): “You also know that Jesus was nonbinary… God is clearly too big, too wise, too omnipotent to have an easily discernible binary human gender. I mean, God made all the genders, so clearly God isn’t just one. God is genderless, or rather, genderful.”1

Feminist and queer theologians and spiritual teachers have been pointing out for years how limiting it is to reduce God to just the masculine gender. To say “God is our Father” is to negate the beautiful insights that come from calling God our Mother. Of course, even feminist theologians readily acknowledge that it would be just as narrow and limiting to view God as exclusively feminine.

If God is neither exclusively masculine nor exclusively feminine, doesn’t it make sense to describe God as non-binary?

Non-binary is a word that gender-nonconforming people have been using for some time now to describe the experience of sensing one’s gender identity as neither fully male nor fully female (regardless of what the person’s biological sex might be)2. But like non-dual, the weakness of the word is that it is fundamentally negative: it stops at saying what it is not, leaving no space to affirm what it positively is.

For Jacob Tobia, God is genderful: God’s gender encompasses all possibilities. It is therefore a non-dual gender, and perhaps human beings who are non-binary can find within their gender identity a path to a non-dual appreciation of the mystery of human gender — or even the mystery of divine love.

But just as genderful is a wonderful alternative to non-binary, we contemplatives need a positive word to balance non-dual. My votes goes to unitive, the word Evelyn Underhill uses to describe the experience of union with God (what traditionally has been described as theosis or deification, theological terms to point to the experience of divine union).

To be unitive is to be “Godful” and therefore to see all things through the eyes of divine love. May we all open our hearts to such a heavenly perspective.

Recently I led a day of reflection for an ecumenical group of lay ministers. Our theme was “Creating a Personal Rule of Life.” Inspired by the covenants that govern monastic and other religious communities, a personal rule of life is an individual statement anyone can create to express their aspirations for a disciplined and regular spiritual practice. It’s almost like a personal mission statement for the mystical life.

As I was preparing for this event, I recalled a book I read years ago, called Wishcraft. As the punny title implies, it’s about the “magic” of achieving one’s goals, although its advice is actually quite down to earth. One point the author of that book made was to assert that writing down your specific goals put you much closer to actually achieving them than if they were simply fond ideas in your head.

In fact, researchers at California’s Dominican University studied the correlation between writing goals and achieving them; their findings suggest that people who write down their goals on a regular basis are 42% more likely to achieve them than those who don’t. 1

Now, here’s the catch: the spiritual life is not about setting and achieving goals — or, at the very least, that’s not the central point.

We can get so caught up in creating a spiritual task list that it can actually be deeply counterproductive. If we turn the invitation to a deeper spirituality into a set of obligations and must-obey rules, we can actually set ourselves up for a subtle kind of resistance — if not outright rebellion.

Spiritual practices such as Centering Prayer, the Daily Office, lectio divina, and Ignatian/imaginative prayer are like any other discipline that we can undertake: sooner or later, the novelty wears off. What initially feels like an exciting commitment can eventually turn into a kind of pointless drudgery.

The real heart of a spiritual rule of life is not a list of action items to complete every day (or every year) — even if it is, indeed, helpful to have a clear sense of how we want to be disciplined in our spiritual life. But far more important than the to-do list is what I might call the to-love list: or maybe the to-love statement.

Spiritually speaking, a personal rule of life is a statement of love. We love God. We love our neighbors. We love ourselves. We love the earth and even those we find difficult to relate to. Any commitment we make to our regular practice only makes sense when it is an expression of our commitment to love.

The contemplative life prioritizes the grace of being over the necessity of doing (even though the doing may be very important indeed). So when it comes to creating a personal rule of life, choose the being of love first, and then the doing a disciplined spiritual life will sort itself out, sooner or later. If love leads, discipline will follow.

I first heard of the desert father Evagrius Ponticus when I read a book by church historian Roberta Bondi, where she wrote this electrifying sentence, “Evagrius Ponticus taught a highly disciplined kind of “imageless prayer” or “pure prayer” that was very similar to Zen meditation.” 1

When I read those words, I had been engaged for about a decade with the practice of silent, meditative prayer as taught to me through Shalem, a Christian contemplative ministry. But I was also very much interested in Buddhism in general, and Zen in particular, thanks to my engagement with counterculture writers like Alan Watts or Ram Dass. Intuitively, it seemed to me that contemplative prayer and zazen were similar practices: after all, silence is silence is silence.

What I lacked was any sense of historical perspective that could help me to see the underlying spiritual unity beneath and between these two religious practices. Evagrius Ponticus (346-399) provided me with a 4th-century bridge to that unity.

When I turned to the ancient writer himself, I was not disappointed. Many of his writings have been preserved as short, aphoristic sayings, similar to what one might expect from a desert elder. His most spiritually accessible writings have been preserved in two works, Praktikos — which could be translated into English as “The Practical Life (of Contemplation)” — and the Chapters on Prayer. These have been published in a combined volume by Cistercian Publications.

Like so much of the literature from the early Christian desert monks, some of it seems harsh or even dualistic — overly concerned with self-denial or moral purification. But that’s typical for the writing of his time.

Nevertheless, when he gets down to the business of offering advice on prayer, his words quickly become luminous.

Stand guard over your spirit, keeping it free of concepts at the time of prayer so that it may remain in its own deep calm. — Evagrius Ponticus, Chapters on Prayer 2

We do not “stand guard” over our spirit like a prison warden watching an inmate; we keep watch like a faithful sentinel tasked with protecting our heart while it settles into its “deep calm” held lovingly in the arms of God. Concepts — distracting or disturbing thoughts or images — may not necessarily be bad, but during the time of contemplation they need to be kept away from the tender vulnerability of the soul’s silent center. To stand guard like this is to set gentle boundaries as an act of love: love for the divine, of course, but also a most appropriate and healthy self-love.

Hi Friends — info on our upcoming July Zoom calls (the first one is tomorrow afternoon). Hope to see you online…

July 10: Informal “Fireside Chat” Call

On Friday, July 10, at 1 PM Eastern USA time I’m hosting another informal meeting. This will consist of time for Centering Prayer, and then an open forum where you can ask me questions about my writing, or…

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Even within a single religious framework like Christianity, mysticism has an unnerving tendency to contradict itself and deconstruct itself in bewildering and playful ways. — The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism1

Anyone who has ever lived with a kitten knows that they are tiny furry agents of chaos. More than once I have heard my wife mutter under her breath “God made them cute so we wouldn’t kill them” as she dealt with whatever the latest kittenly swath of destruction might be. From broken glass or claw marks on the curtains, to the ungodly banshee wails that they could emit when rumbling with each other (how can something so very tiny emit such banshee-level sounds?), the one thing you can safely predict about kittens (well, and really cats in general), is simply how hopelessly unpredictable they are.

But they are cute! Adorable, funny, charming, affectionate, endearing. When one of those five-pound balls of claws and fur climbs into your lap and starts to purr, it is just about the sweetest thing anyone can experience (with due acknowledgment that those who are allergic to cat dander will naturally have a very different response).

I suppose it might be stretching most people’s imaginations to compare God to a kitten. But maybe it’s not quite so far a leap to assume that we human beings might be like kittens in the eye of God! Maybe we are not all cute and cuddly, but I rather think that chaos follows us mortals around the way a kitten will tag along behind whatever human it has bonded with.

I bring this up to comment on a sentence you’ll find in chapter two of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism. I aver that mysticism can be internally self-contradictory and fosters the experience that we have come to call “deconstruction” — to enter the mystical life is to render ourselves vulnerable to a kind of spiritual (and/or religious) chaos.

The apostle Paul insisted that religious activities should be performed “decently and in order.”2 In other words, don’t put the kittens in charge. And I might add, don’t put the mystics in charge either.

It’s not that contemplatives are hostile to dignity and good order! But there’s a quality in the mystical life that places the liberating action of the Spirit above all other concerns. Sometimes our staid and stuffy ways of doing things need a kitten-quality shake-up. Such destabilizing moments can be upsetting — but if we listen carefully, they might result in some purring as well.

Join me for an online conversation on some of the ideas and themes in The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism! This free Zoom call takes place July 22, 2026 at 7 PM EST. Everyone is welcome, but pre-registration is required. Click here to register.

Forty years ago, I spent the Fourth of July with my brother and sister-in-law on an island in the Chesapeake Bay. Then I went home to northern Virginia, where I went to a concert that changed my life.

My brother Don and his wife Julie lived in a sweet little house on Gwynn’s Island, Virginia. Don worked for a car parts company in Newport News and Julie ran the lab at the hospital in Williamsburg, so they balanced two demanding jobs with a peaceful home in an island forest. I was living in Falls Church at the time, 25 years old, single, with a master’s degree in professional writing but most decidedly had not found my voice yet. At that point in my life I was in the midst of what would be a fifteen-year run managing college bookstores (I was working at the George Mason University Bookstore in Fairfax, VA; the following year I would move to Atlanta to take a similar position at Georgia State University, and have remained in the Deep South ever since).

Spiritually, I had discovered contemplative prayer and spiritual direction, but was very much a novice at both. Just a few months earlier I had joined the Episcopal Church, and had completed a 6-month program on personal spiritual development through the Shalem Institute in DC. All this to say, my life was sweet but nothing really tied it all together.

After a quiet day just living life away from the pace and stress of city life, we watched fireworks from a boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Even though the following morning was only Saturday, I packed up to go back to DC — because I had tickets for a stadium concert on July 6, featuring three musicians I liked but none of whom I had ever seen before: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead.

The concert took place at RFK Stadium, with over 50,000 people in attendance. It was the last stop of a three-city tour that included Akron, OH and Buffalo NY before heading to DC for two shows (I caught the first night). Sunday, July 6, turned out to be a blisteringly hot day, with temperatures peaking at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.1

While I was looking forward to seeing all three acts, my primary motivation for going was to see Bob Dylan. I knew that he would be sharing the stage with the Heartbreakers, so I figured the Dead would be the opening act. How surprised I was when the concert began with Petty and the Heartbreakers performing, and Dylan joining them after just a few songs.

I was a bit scandalized. While I liked the Grateful Dead and was happy to be seeing them, I felt that they were far less “important” than Dylan, whose place in the rock and roll firmament, in my mind, was equaled only by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

By comparison, the Dead were just a respectable band that had scored a few minor hits over the years (like “Truckin’” and the deliciously weird “Casey Jones”), but were remarkable more for their ties to the LSD counterculture than for their music. The great Bob Dylan, opening for a (relatively) minor band like that? Give me a break!

But before the day was over, I would understand why.

Listen to the Thunder Shout

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers opened with an economical set including songs like “The Waiting,” “Don’t Do Me Like That,” and “Refugee.” Joining them on stage, Bob Dylan played some of his classic songs like “Positively 4th Street,” “Masters of War,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

My friends and I spent some of the time on the stadium field baking under the cloudless sky, but eventually we climbed up into the upper deck and found seats where the sound wasn’t nearly so good, but we were in the shade where we could relax and enjoy the show — and the ambience.

None of us would have thought of ourselves as deadheads, as the Grateful Dead’s intensely devoted fans were called. But we all loved music, and here was an opportunity to see a band that, by that point, was 20 years into its career and so had their bona fides as rock and roll legends (even if they were not the luminaries I considered Dylan to be). When they took the stage, I was immediately struck by the excitement in the crowd. We may not have been intensely devoted fans, but most everyone else there clearly was.

Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist and one of the band’s vocalists, was the only member whose name I knew. But even up in the nosebleed seats (this was long before Jumbotrons), I could easily pick him out. Sporting a red t-shirt over his corpulent frame, his thick beard and unkempt head of grey hair made me think that he was putting off a definite “Santa Claus” vibe.

As soon as the band began playing — a song I had never heard before, but later learned was called “Hell in a Bucket”2 — the deadheads started to dance. That may not seem so remarkable to many readers today. But I was a white middle-class kid who had grown up listening to bands like Yes, Pink Floyd, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Led Zeppelin and so forth. These were bands famous for making what we used to call “head music” — which meant it wasn’t really about the body. In other words, we didn’t dance. We listened to the music, maybe indulging in a little bit of air guitar or air drumming, but that was about as far as it went. The musical soundtrack of my childhood was very much a cerebral experience.

By contrast, the deadheads, regardless of their gender or the depth of their childhood repression, were all dancing, with abandon and obvious joy.

Some of them unfurled huge banners from the stadium’s upper deck, mostly featuring lyrics from songs which, once again, I was not familiar with. One, however, particularly caught my eye, with a message that seemed so appropriate in Reagan’s America — and even more urgent now in the age of Trump:

It did not escape me that this was in Washington DC, the natural habitat of all those rock-hurling politicos.3

The band played for just under an hour before they took an intermission. I did not know a single song, and sitting up in the nosebleed seats, it was pretty hard to truly appreciate the music. I do remember the closing song of the set, a lengthy tune that featured a striking set of lyrics in its refrain:

When later on I reviewed the setlist from that concert, I could see that it was not especially remarkable, although it contained a number of songs I would grow to love over the following years, “Sugaree,” “Row Jimmy,” “Cassidy,” “Let it Grow” and in the second set, “Iko Iko,” “He’s Gone,” “Throwing Stones,” — and if I had stayed all the way to the encore, I would have finally heard one song that I knew: “Brokedown Palace,” a lovely ballad from what is one of the band’s best studio albums, American Beauty.

But my friends and I were all there mainly to see Bob Dylan, so the happy dance-y deadhead love fest was largely lost on us, and we finally left the stadium while the band was playing “Iko Iko” — an old New Orleans groove stomper that had been covered by the Dixie Cups, Dr. John and even Cindi Lauper. As my friends and I walked down the stairs and reached the ground level, that’s when it happened.

By “it” I mean, I could hear the music clearly. And I was blown away. It wasn’t the most virtuoso playing I’ve ever heard (that honor probably went to Yes), nor was it a particularly polished performance. But the band clearly was on a roll,4 the audience was clapping a complicated, intricate eight-beat syncopated handclap, in perfect unison (we’re talking upwards of 50,000 people) — something far more intricate and complex than a normal four-four backbeat clap you might hear when a church choir sings an upbeat gospel song.

The gathering of deadheads had organically become part of the performance, their rhythmically sophisticated clapping collectively functioning almost like a third percussionist.5 But even more hypnotic to my ears was Garcia’s lead guitar playing, lyrically trilling above the beat with a singular, hypnotic beauty. I stopped and listened for maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute, before my friends urged me to go on with them. And so we left the concert.

Learning to Shake My Bones

Readers, you know what happened next.

First, I went home and began listening much more closely to the few Grateful Dead albums in my own record library. Then I hit up my roommate David to borrow the records he had — I was thrilled when I played the album Wake of the Flood and recognized “Let it Grow,” the song about the thunder shouting “I am.”6

I went to Penguin Feather, our local independent record shop (oh, those glorious days before streaming or ordering CDs online) and bought a few more Dead LPs. A week or so after that, my roommate and I were at Tyson’s Corner, our local shopping mall, and I bought some Grateful Dead merchandise, like a keychain, bumper sticker, and T-shirt. Watching this, David laughed and said, “You’ve turned into a deadhead.”

“I have not!” I muttered defensively. “I just really liked them, that’s all, and so I figured I needed to, you know, get to know their music better.”

“And wear their T-shirts,” he smirked.

“Well,” I huffed, “you’re not a deadhead until you start trading concert tapes with other deadheads. And I don’t even have any such tapes.”

David’s smile got bigger. “I could introduce you to a buddy of mine who has a huge collection of Dead concert tapes. I bet if you bought him a box of blank tapes, he would get you started.”

“Would you?” I asked, excited at the thought.

The guy he introduced me to did kindly trade a box of blank cassette tapes for a selection of some of the band’s greatest shows: Ithaca in 1977, Kezar Stadium 1973, and Richmond 1985, among others.

Eventually I would go on to see the Grateful Dead some 36 times (including five shows in Europe), which in the deadhead world is not that impressive a number, but it was enough for me to sink deep into the music and (especially) the ecstatic experience of attending multiple nights of Dead shows, dancing — yes, dancing — for hours on end and losing myself to the Dionysian wonder of it all.

Eventually I grew weary of the energy and expense it took to chase after the Dead, and by the time I met Fran and Rhiannon, it was easy for me to trade the youthful indulgence of being a deadhead for the much more responsible adult tasks of marriage and parenting. But to this day, I can’t hear a song like “Eyes of the World” or “Franklin’s Tower” without feeling a surge of joy and an embodied desire to dance.

What the Dead did for me

Why did any of this matter?

Why did going to see a hippie jam band in 1986, when they were arguably well past their prime (I’m of the opinion that 1977 was their best year), make a difference in my life, so much so that here I am writing about it, forty years later? Here are a few thoughts.

The Grateful Dead have always been about more than just their music — while I think they are much better than their detractors are willing to admit, I also understand that for most people, their quirky, rootsy/psychedelic jamband music is definitely an acquired taste. But the magic of the Dead was always primarily embedded in the countercultural world of their fans: the deadheads. In other words, the dancers spoke to me even more than the band who made them dance.

Going to a deadshow, especially in the 80s and 90s, felt like a time travel experience: for just a few hours, we were plucked out of the nightmare funhouse of the Reagan/Bush era, and invited back into a world where peace, and consciousness expansion, and creativity, and communal living, all mattered more than conspicuous consumption and big-money capitalism. When I first encountered the deadheads, not only did they give me permission to dance, but they also were the kind of people who were reading Alan Watts, Ram Dass and Starhawk — at a time when The Art of the Deal (ahem) and The One-Minute Manager were sitting at the top of the New York Times Bestseller lists.

So for me, becoming immersed in deadhead culture meant more than just wrapping myself in patchouli and tie-dye — it meant finding an “alternative narrative” that helped me to see beyond the dogmas of the 80s.

And this even went so far as to impact my relationship with religion as well. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, by 1986 I was in spiritual direction, a member of an Episcopal Church, and learning the ropes of contemplative practice through classes at the Shalem Institute. By all indications, I was on the road to becoming a thoroughly respectable, if liberal, contemplative Christian.

And clearly, contemplative Christianity has been, and continues to be, an essential part of my understanding of what a healthy and visionary spirituality can look like. But even liberal Christians have their dogmas, their blind spots, and their temptations: chiefly a temptation to a kind of upper-middle-class respectability that can easily ignore those who don’t fit in.

The Dead, and deadhead culture, kept me honest: because I didn’t fit in to proper Christian culture. Even though I spent a number of years trying to fit in. Like it or not, I was a hippie. I liked loud music and loud clothes. I thought the war on drugs was morally wrong. I was suspicious of the devotion to greed that the Reagan era made fashionable (one of the poster children for that culture of avarice now lives in the White House). I thought feminism made sense, that gay pride (as we called it back then) was healthy and good, that our government wasn’t doing enough to combat AIDS, and that care for the environment mattered more than unfettered capitalism. Meanwhile, as much as I loved mystical and contemplative Christianity, I still intuitively understood that indigenous and eastern spiritualities were just as valid paths to both inner and societal liberation.

And for some reason, falling in with an aging acid rock band and their tie-dyed, Rainbow Family followers encapsulated for me these various “counterculture” positions. My heart belonged to the likes of Thomas Merton and Evelyn Underhill, but the Dead helped me remember that my heart also belonged to the likes of Ram Dass and Starhawk. Not either or: both/and. And that creative tension continues to enliven and inspire me to this day.

But most of all, the Dead and the deadheads inspired me to dance.

The early 20th century anarchist Emma Goldman was famous for loving to dance, and for insisting that being a radical did not require or demand “the denial of life and joy.” Her stance has been immortalized in a line which she never directly said, but it certainly captures her spirit:

Amen, Sister Emma. Deadhead culture is a dancing culture, but it is (or can be) also a revolutionary culture: advocating for radical care for the environment, sustainable economics, peace and justice, and dismantling the systems of privilege that oppress women and queer people. This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of conservatives who love the Dead (just like there are plenty of liberals who love Catholic spirituality). But the center of gravity in the deadhead world is people who dance and shake their bones as an act of resistance against all the politicians and others who are throwing stones.

There’s a lot of talk in the contemplative Christian world about action and contemplation. It’s an important conversation, and I’m happy to chime in whenever I feel like I have something to say. But I think we need to be careful with this conversation, because it’s too easy to see activists and contemplatives as polarized opposites. What we really need are people who seamlessly embody both the quiet stillness of a monk and the revolutionary dancing of Emma Goldman. I suppose the particulars of that will look different for different people, and that’s okay. For me, it looks like Ram Dass and Evelyn Underhill hanging out together. They meditate deeply, but then, I like to imagine, they would get up and dance.