Prayers in Winter

[“We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time” (T. S. Eliot,...

[Bourgeault, Cynthia, Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2024. Bourgeault, OSB, is an Episcopalian priest, theologian, and practitioner of centering prayer; Keating, OCSO (d. 2018), was a Roman...

O Lover, On this fair June day I am pondering the macro meaning of “gravity,” that force causing an object to be drawn toward the center of another object possessing mass. It is a...

[“‘ . . .My servant Moses, / He is faithful in all my household; / With him I speak mouth to mouth, / Even openly, and not in dark sayings, / And he beholds...

[“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to...

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....

[“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...

[“‘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,...

[“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...

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...