Douglas E. Christie, Ph.D., is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is author of The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Early Christian Monasticism; The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology; and The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss and the Common Life. He is the founding editor of the journal Spiritus and served as co-director of the Casa de la Mateada Program in Córdoba, Argentina from 2013-2015. Doug and I...

Carmen Acevedo Butcher, PhD, is an author, teacher, poet, and award-winning translator of spiritual texts. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence. Her dynamic work around the evolution of language and the necessity of just and inclusive language has garnered interest from various media, including the BBC and NPR’s Morning Edition. A Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year and Fulbright Senior Lecturer, Acevedo Butcher teaches at the University...

Lisa Wells is an author, poet, and co-founder of a small, nonprofit press based in Seattle, Washington called Letter Machine Editions. Her latest work is Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World. In Believers Lisa locates folks who meet the climate catastrophe with a fierce and loving gaze, with their sights on restoring humanity’s relationship with the planet as best they can. With a poetic and engaging pen, Lisa continually asks how then shall we live? Lisa and I talk about despair...

Scott Avett is a visual artist, musician, and songwriter. No amount of descriptors quite do him justice. Scott’s work was met by my ears before my eyes. His songs slip into the ear stream, reverberate off the rib cage and remind the heart it was born free. Scott’s paintings hold your gaze in absorption, jostle you awake, and drop you off a block later. In our conversation today Scott and I talk about creativity and contemplation, mysterious inputs that need to be absence of the thought of...

    Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian descent. Her latest work, is a translation of Rumi poems entitled Gold. I first heard one of her translations of Rumi sitting around a campfire on a Sunday morning in Patagonia, Arizona. I was bit by the passion and this conversation does not disappoint. Haleh and I converse about being raised in a family that celebrates poetry, how a translator’s work is never done alone, what clergy of...

Belden Lane is Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University, author of numerous books including The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality and Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice. Belden Lane is a true elder, and in our conversation he exhibits that when we  talk about wild places, the rough play and laughter of God, grief after losing a son, what we can learn from trees, and much more. Visit...

Good poetry is inherently spiritual. It is a clown car of interpretation. Once a door of perception is opened, endless and surprising “Ahas” tumble out. When you have a spiritual teacher who embodies a poem, their words become thunder and contemplation soaks you. Get a taste of Season Four of Contemplify. First full episode is out in a week.   slide over to contemplify.com

A musing on practice, desire, and its evolutions vist contemplify.com

I was overly giddy, strangely nervous, but above all grateful to be in conversation with James Finley about his breathtaking new book, The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation. Each page is a thousand pages deep, that is how Jim walks about the world, drawing from the depths and teaching with winsome grace, poetics, and of course, wisdom. I have read The Healing Path twice now and I don’t see an end to rereading it, it charts the unfolding of Jim’s life; terrorizing trauma and abuse he...

A musing inspired by Shawn Askinosie's story about Belgium beer brewing monks and the parables of Jesus from Feb 2023   vist contemplify.com

A musing on Bill Holm's "Horizontal Grandeur" pulled from his book of essays, The Music of Failure.

A musing on the present moment of awareness that holds everything. 

Father Adam Bucko has been a committed voice in the movement for the renewal of Christian Contemplative Spirituality and the growing New Monastic movement. He has taught engaged contemplative spirituality in Europe and the United States and has authored Let Your Heartbreak be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation, and co-authored Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation (with Matthew Fox), and The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living...

Musing from November 9th, 2022 inspired by by reading Chris Dombrowski's The River You Touch   Visit contemplify.com

Fr. David Denny is a lifelong  seeker whose commitment to the unfolding mystery of life has brought him to explore the deserts of place and soul.  In 1975 Fr Dave entered the Spiritual Life Institute, a contemplative monastic community rooted in the Carmelite tradition. And in 2005, he left that community to co-found the Desert Foundation with Tessa Bielecki. A writer, a poet, retreat master and teacher, Fr. Dave now hangs his hat in Tucson, Arizona.  In our conversation, Fr. Dave and I talk...

I have been waiting years to have this conversation with author, poet, and fly-fishing guide Chris Dombrowski. There is a kinship I feel with Chris's lens on life. He is a top-shelf writer to boot. The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water comes out October 11th, 2022. I have read it and pre-ordered multiple copies for friends and family. If you are a longtime listener, you know I do not ever do a hard sell. Buy this book for yourself. And another for any friend who seeks to live a...

Musing from September 16, 2022 visit contemplify.com

I asked Todd Davis if he could read some of his poems from his latest collection called Coffin Honey. And he generously said yes. Take a beath, find a comfortable seat, preferably out of doors and let the poetry of Todd Davis seep in through your pores and raise forth the best of you. **Before we get started, I want to note that in this episode of poems from Todd Davis include content about sexual assault and self mutilation. If that sounds like poetry you are not comfortable listening to,...

The poems of Todd Davis sharpen a reader’s spirit and focus, on the bloodstained teeth breaking apart the day-to-day doldrums and on the mythic imagination necessary to bear witness to this daunting moment in our species, on our planet.  Todd Davis and I spoke back in 2019 about his book Native Species and he has read his poems in the last two years on the Contemplify Backporch Advent Outpost series. Today we focus on Todd’s latest book of poems, Coffin Honey. We step into the rich imagery...

Paula Huston has written a book, The Hermits of the Big Sur, that charts the history of the New Camaldoli Hermitage. A history born amidst Vatican II and World War II with even deeper contemplatives roots back to the 11th century in the mountains of Italy. Paula follows the ragtag set of novices who become the elders of the community, those who wandered to follow other calls, and those hermits who it their life’s work to be enfolded by Mystery. Paula Huston is more than author, but oblate of...

(My audio starts shaky, but gets better after 8 minutes) Bill Porter, aka Red Pine, calls the hermit life, "graduate school for the spiritually inclined." Bill Porter is a translator of Buddhist and Taoist mountain poets that uncross your third eye and waft the scent of a  fine scotch.  What can I say about Bill Porter that he won’t say better about himself? I first stumbled on his book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits while on retreat. His adventures and chitchats with...

The hermit life is cool. That is the stone that skips across this season of Contemplify. The urging, the calling, to retreat from the hustle of the red dirt economy. To wash your face with cold water. Blink away the dust. Sit still in the sun and watch the shadows kneel in prayer. This season of Contemplify highlights a few folks who touch the hermit life by study, proximity, and by craft. There will always be those who are called to live the hermit life. Then there are those of us who...

Musing from May 31, 2022

Fenton Johnson is the author of At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life.  His book Geography of the Heart:  A Memoir received the American Library Association and Lambda Literary Awards for best LGBT Creative Nonfiction, while his book Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks received a Lambda Literary and Kentucky Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction. A regular contributor to Harper’s Magazine, Johnson has received fellowships from the...

Brie Stoner is a juggernaut of creativity who channels these forces as a musician, artist, podcaster, writer, teacher, and mother. Her latest project is a podcast called Unknowing; a conversation series with artists, spiritual teachers, authors and friends as she explores the practice of unknowing as the (beautiful, surprising, messy) spiritual path of creative possibility. As some of you know, we were co-hosts on the podcast Another Name for Every Thing with Richard Rohr. Check out Brie...