Musings on “The Long and Winding Road”
O Lover, In recent weeks my spouse and I have watched several documentaries focusing on the deep history of planet Earth, particularly the last four billion years when it included some form of life....
Prayers in Winter Blog
Variations on the Theme of “Yet”
[“Though the fig tree should not blossom / And there be no fruit on the vines, / Though the yield of the olive should fail / And the fields produce no food, / Though...
Reverencing the Real Absence
[“‘Is the LORD among us, or not?’” (Ex 17:7)] O Lover, My exámin across recent months has had me noting my awareness, or lack thereof, of Your presence. Rather than being about whether You,...
Ravish Me
[“Batter my heart, three personed God; for you / As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; . . . / Take me to you, imprison me, for I / Except you...
Jesus and Mysticism
O Lover, What, if anything, is distinctively “Christian” about Christian mysticism? If the mystical impulse can appear to have greater prevalence in interspiritual venues than in many explicitly Christian contexts, what is the role...
An Audio Candle in the Darkness
O Lover, These winter days both cry out for, and repeatedly fail to provide adequate expressions of, lamentation. The leadened darkness leaves my spirit torn, my agency on the edge of paralysis: on the...
On Being Drawn Beyond the Egoic
[Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2024.] O Lover, In the above work the Benedictine Bourgeault, drawing on the the work of the Trappist Keating in...
Musings on Mortality
[“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—A time to give birth and a time to die. . . .” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,2)] O Lover, I...
Prayer as Desire
[“As the deer pants for flowing streams, so my soul pants after You, O God. . . .my entire being longs for You; my body pines for You. . . .” (Ps 42:1 &...
Requiem “for the God . . . [Who] No Longer Exists”
[John Welch, OCarm, When Gods Die: An Introduction to John of the Cross. NY: Paulist Press, 1990.] [In 1991 Thomas Keating, OCSO, sixty-eight and on the threshold of what Juan de la Cruz called...
The Christ as Recapitulation
[Cynthia Bourgeault, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2024.] O Lover, In her splendid tracing of the last years of the spiritual journey of Thomas Keating, OCSO (1923-2018),...