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--Year-- 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2004 --Month-- December November October September August July June May April March February January

July 2015

July 08, 2015

Principles for Contemplative Spirituality (Part Two)

Last week I shared six principles that guide me in my understanding of what Christian...

July 06, 2015

Do You Need a Spiritual Teacher?

A reader of my blog wrote the following message to me: I have been meditating...

July 01, 2015

Principles for Contemplative Spirituality (Part One)

A couple of years ago Rob Bell wrote a book with the title What We...

June 2015

June 24, 2015

Artist, Mystic, Pilgrim, Companion: An Interview with Christine Valters Paintner

Recently I had the opportunity to interview author and contemplative artist Christine Valters Paintner of...

June 17, 2015

Letter and Spirit: Thoughts and Silence?

In his sermon On Conversion, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux quotes Acts 26:24, only he paraphrases it...

June 12, 2015

What Has Not Yet Been Revealed

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is I John 3:2. Here is a lectio divina meditation...

June 10, 2015

The Rule, the Discipline, and Spiritual Growth

I bet if I took a poll, almost everyone who reads my blog would agree...

June 05, 2015

Life is a Pilgrimage — So Embrace the Journey

Christine Valters Painter is one of the most creative and visionary of spiritual directors with...

June 03, 2015

Better to Light a Candle (of Silence) than to Curse the Darkness (of Language)

Does language always limit the way we talk about, think about, or even pray to, God?...

May 2015

May 27, 2015

What Do Contemplatives Want?

First a disclaimer about my headline. I'm answering this question (What do contemplatives want?) based on the...

May 20, 2015

The Last Instructions of Christ to His Disciples

In the first chapter of The Acts of the Apostles, Jesus gives his disciples their...

May 19, 2015

Seven Lessons I’m Learning on the Grief Journey

Today would have been my daughter Rhiannon's 30th birthday. We're calling it her "first birthday...

May 15, 2015

The Intelligent Person’s Guide to Prayer

Like so many folks in the blogosphere, I was fascinated by the story of Leah...

May 13, 2015

Contemplation and the Ocean of Presence

Here's a little video I filmed last month at the Gulf Coast. It's only about 45...

May 12, 2015

Advance Praise for “Befriending Silence”

What do Brian McLaren, Fr. Daniel Horan OFM, Fr. Michael Casey OCSO, Br. Patrick Hart...

May 06, 2015

Contemplative Leadership with Saints Benedict and Ignatius of Loyola

In recent months I have become very interested in the topic of leadership. Which might...

April 2015

April 29, 2015

Please Fill Out My Reader Survey!

Please fill out my reader's survey — and help me to make this a better blog. I'm asking...

April 29, 2015

Five Ways You Can Enjoy a Deeper Personal Prayer Life

"We need to deepen our own personal prayer lives." — The Most Reverend Wilton D....

April 24, 2015

When Contemplation Feels Like Dying

"For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3)....

April 22, 2015

A Prayer for Contemplatives

O Divine Beloved, you are the source of life and the fountain of all goodness....

April 17, 2015

What To Do When Your Prayer Doesn’t Get ‘In The Zone’

A reader named Kevin wrote the following comment to me on Facebook, in response to...

April 15, 2015

Contemplation and Grieving

A reader named Monika wrote the following comment and left it on one of my...

April 10, 2015

Why Is “Mysticism” A Dirty Word?

In the introduction to her book Writing the Icon of the Heart, Maggie Ross makes...

April 08, 2015

Contemplation and Conflict, or, How the Prayer of Silence Changes the Way We Think About Possessions, Theft, and Just About Everything Else

I simply love this story of two desert fathers, which Thomas Merton recounts in his...

April 02, 2015

What Good is Religion? A Contemplative Perspective

Bloggers on Patheos have been asked to reflect on the question "What Good is Religion?"...

April 01, 2015

Joyful Contemplation (No Fooling!)

If you are engaged in a serious and sustained practice of silent prayer and contemplative...

March 2015

March 28, 2015

You can do it, my friend: you can thrive with a daily practice of silent prayer

In my travels I hear a lot from people who get discouraged regarding silent prayer. Some...

March 25, 2015

Psalm 131: Humility, Silence and Hope

Sometimes I get asked "Where is contemplation in the Bible?" One obvious answer to this...

March 23, 2015

Rocking Justice & Spirituality: Like the Two Movements of the Breath

When I met the Anglican writer Kenneth Leech, who is one of my heroes, he...

March 19, 2015

“Just a touch of wildness” — or, How Evelyn Underhill schooled C. S. Lewis on the ways of God

One of my favorite contemplative authors from the early twentieth century — Evelyn Underhill —...