Contemplify

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 ab...

    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...

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...

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 se...

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 (...

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 t...

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...

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 sexua...

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 seri...

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 wh...

(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 He...

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 w...

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 No...

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, w...

Amy Frykholm is a writer, scholar, and journalist. Long time listener's will recognize Amy as the second guest ever on Contemplify when we spoke about her book on Julian of Norwich. For those new to Amy's story, she has a PhD from Duke University and is a senior editor at The Christian Century . Her wry wit and adventurous spirit deserve a place in her accolades too. Today we talk about her latest...

Stephen Mitchell is a translator, author, and poet. I was first introduced to his work through his translation of the Tao Te Ching . Stephen was educated at Amherst, the Sorbonne, and Yale, and de-educated through intensive Zen practice. He is married to Byron Katie, founder of The Work . Today we talk about his latest work, The First Christmas: A Story of New Beginnings that tells the story of Je...

Blessed Darkness and Blessed Light, this Advent season. Here we are again, In the midst of Season Two of Contemplify and I am sliding in another bonus episode part of the 2nd annual Backporch Advent Outpost on Contemplify. Today's poet is Chris Dombrowski. I first read Chris' book Ragged Anthem and then his earlier work in the book Earth Again . It wakes me to the day at hand. Dombrowski's poetry...