Latter-day Contemplation

In this episode, Riley interviews Christopher on his journaling practice. Christopher keeps seven different journals, including a Morning Pages journal inspired by Julia Cameron, a templated journal inspired by Michael Hyatt, a Five Minute Journal, a feelings journal, a food journal, a reading journal, and even a garbage journal. Each one of these serves a unique contemplative purpose for Christop...

On February 16, 1832, Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon were studying John 5, and while they “meditated upon these things, the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about” (D&C 76:19). This vision and the way of understanding Heaven it revealed, and which we now refer to as “the three degrees of glory,” was the result of Josep...

Following US Independence Day with all of its pomp and circumstance, Christopher and Riley raise the question of whether America is a Christian nation. They recount America’s history of subjugation, displacement, and slavery; episodes in US history that do not embody the Christian ideals expressed in its Declaration of Independence and in its Constitution vis-à-vis the stories of Americans that ha...

In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss the contemplative practice of fasting. Beginning with the usual notion of fasting as abstaining from food and drink, they expand it to include abstaining from any appetite with the potential to be taken to excess or to become an unhealthy coping mechanism or even an addiction for lack of communion with God. Riley and Christopher describe indulgence in...

In this episode, Riley and Christopher tackle the question of the actionability of Christian contemplation, given the fact that it is often misunderstood as mere navel gazing. In the spirit of the saying of the great Sufi, Algazel, who wrote that, “Knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity,” Christopher and Riley make a case for the conjunction of contemplation an...

Christopher and guest co-host Shiloh Logan talk about the idea of divine unconditional love. There is some religious controversy over what God’s “unconditional love” means. It has come to mean many things to many people, and there is no congruent doctrine from LDS Church leaders concerning the phrase. For as many statements come against unconditional love, there are more things said in favor of it...

Christopher talks with guest co-host Shiloh Logan about the final Beatitude on persecution. The Beatitudes are understood as a story that starts with the poverty of spirit (i.e., the emptying) and concludes with a blessing upon the persecuted. But what is persecution? Emerson recognized, in at least one sense, the difficulty in identifying real persecution when he pleaded, “Let me never fall into...

In this episode, Riley and Christopher explore the unseen world—the realm of all that which we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, but which is real—including unseen metaphysical realities and epistemological or socially constructed ones. Some of the most significant realities that form part of a fully human experience, from love—an unseen but metaphysical reality—to marriage—an epistemologi...

In this episode Christopher and Riley discuss the Stoic and Christian spiritual exercise of memento mori (remember you must die). Contrary to the macabre idea of an anxious dwelling upon death, memento mori can be a useful tool to help us live fuller lives of integrity, gratitude, and joy. We hope this message brings you a sense of peace and equanimity, and helps you appreciate the beauty of a pur...

In this episode, Riley and Christopher explore the promise to peacemakers in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God (Matthew 5:9), with guest, Lindsey Ohlin, co-founder of Latter-day Peace Studies. Lindsey shares her transition from politics to peace, how she was able to find her “true self” as a daughter of God, and what that realization has mean...

Christopher and Riley return to the topic of the Beatitudes, this time discussing the fifth of the eight Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). They explore what it means to be pure in heart and even how to purify one’s heart, in a wide-ranging discussion including insights from Plato’s tripartite theory of the soul in the Phaedo and the Republic to Aris...

Riley and Christopher return to the topic of the Beatitudes, this time discussing the fifth out of eight Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). They explore mercy in light of it’s apparent opposite, justice, and seek a conjunction of opposites in the justice and mercy of God incarnate as Jesus Christ.

In this episode, Christopher and Riley welcome back Jana Spangler to discuss stages of faith development as touched on in Episode 20: Navigating a Faith Crisis. For decades, theologians and philosophers like James Fowler, Brian McLaren, and Ken Wilbur have attempted to classify and put a name to the stages of the human faith journey. Jana, Riley, and Christopher discuss the value of these models i...

What is sin? Is it the violation of an unchangeable God-given standard? If so, then why has what is considered sin and its attendant consequences changed so drastically from antiquity to today? What role do social institutions, traditions, and cultures play in framing what is considered sin? In this episode Christopher and Riley tackle this complex and fraught subject, in an attempt to come to a c...

Riley and Christopher contemplate the question of Heaven and Hell. Is there a Hell? Where is it? Is it the underworld called “Sheol” in Hebrew or “Hades” in Greek in the Old Testament translated “hell” in the King James Version of the Bible? Or is it in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) in the New Testament, also translated “hell” in the King James Version of the Bible. Is it a place where the wicked...

Christopher, Riley, and guest, Jana Spangler, a seasoned faith transitions coach, talk about healthy ways of dealing with doubt, difficult questions, and supporting those in a faith crisis. They talk about opening a space for those in doubt to express their doubts and be heard without judgment or attempts to fix them. If we are not to “rehearse [our] doubts with doubters,” where can we turn for va...

Riley and Christopher address doubting your doubts as a dogma as dubious as the sin of certainty. Both dogmas miss the mark. Spiritual progress isn’t possible without questions and doubts. If you have no questions or doubts, you’re closed off to revelation. It is questions and doubts that have brought about revelation, and revelation brings about questions and doubts. Questions and doubts are esse...

Christopher is joined again with his guest co-host, Shiloh Logan, to talk about the fifth Beatitude. After the last episode’s conversation concerning meekness, there is a better foundation for understanding and experiencing, at least in part, what it means to “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” What is this hungering? How do we experience this in our daily lives, and are we–in our actual live...

Christopher and guest co-host, Shiloh Logan, talk about the third Beatitude on meekness. When we read of Jesus’ temptations after 40 days of fasting and when Satan showed him the whole earth, our typical interpretation is that Jesus recognized and rejected the temptation–from a rather contemporary Lockean standpoint–because the world was already His (because He had already mixed his time and labor...

Christopher and Riley have guest Travis Patten back on the podcast to discuss the soul’s descent from, and ascent to, God in light of Dante Alighieri’s journey from that “point midway on our path in life,” when we find ourselves in “a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost,” unable to commence our ascent to Paradise, to the presence of God, the “love that moves the sun and other stars.” Only th...

Riley and Christopher and guest, Travis Patten, go all the way back to Classical Antiquity to explore contemplation from the incubation practices of Presocratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles—something like today’s sensory deprivation tanks—to the influence of the Late Antique philosopher Plotinus on the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Plotinus’s invitation is to “...

Christopher and Riley explore the spiritual exercises of cosmic consciousness and cosmopolitanism as practiced by the Roman Epicureans and Stoics, and the early Christians. These spiritual exercises were taught by Roman philosophers Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. They were also taught by Jesus of Nazareth, who was Seneca’s contemporary, as recorded in the apocryphal Gospel of T...

Riley and Christopher answer one of the most frequently asked questions they get from listeners of this podcast in this episode: What is contemplation? While a definition of “contemplation” is easy enough to come by, the range of contemplative practices is vast, and the depth of experience they provide is unfathomable. Riley and Christopher give an extensive, if not exhaustive, list of contemplati...

Christopher and Riley have guest Morgan Aldous back on the podcast this week to explore correspondences between the alchemist’s ascent of the Mountain of the Adepts through seven stages of alchemical transformation and our own ascension of the eight rungs of the ladder of the Beatitudes to personal transformation as taught by Christ in His Sermon on the Mount. The correspondences they find between...

Riley, Christopher, and guest Morgan Aldous take you back to the true inner meaning of alchemy. That’s right, alchemy! If you are among those who think alchemy is just misguided proto-chemistry, you’re in for a big surprise! As Morgan put it, “While we tend to see alchemy as a primitive, mistaken form of chemistry that was redeemed by the Scientific Revolution, in reality, alchemy lost its sacred...