The Mystic Cave

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). David's dark days are lightened by a beatific vision that raises new life within him. But not new hope. It's a vision whose fulfillment must be avoided, not embraced. Still, love will have its way, for better or for worse. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https://ww...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). David continues on a downward spiral, all his grand Christmas plans crashing onto the rocks of his flawed humanity. There's not much to give him hope at this darkest time of the year. Except perhaps certain doors closing behind him. Doesn't that always mean new doors opening? Making Contact: Face Book:...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Dark days bring with them dark thoughts, driving David inward.  The sparkling lights of Christmas might have offered him a respite. Instead, like a lighthouse, they serve as a warning: Sailors Beware. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https://www.brianepearson.ca/ Email: mysti...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). David leans into his new job, with all its new possibilities. But a coastal ramble warns him that there are dangers here, too, if he's inclined to mind them. New possibilities seem to be accompanied by new risks. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https://www.brianepearson...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). David's West Coast days are beginning to work their magic on him. It's the long nighttime shadows that remind him he still has work to do. But his way is lightened by something he hadn't anticipated finding here--friends. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https:...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). David faces his two congregations without the practiced decorum he's used to. And he faces his family too, down the long line of a telephone call, without a decent excuse to call his own. Still, he's wondering if there might be something here, just beneath the surface, that's worth paying attention...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It is a week of 'firsts' for Father David, chief among them the loss of his honorific. He’s "just David" now. That will have to be enough as he strives to make his mark in his new community and in his new congregations. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: htt...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). The West Coast reveals itself to Father David in all its eccentric charm. But all the props he might have counted on, to guide him in this strange new world, will not help him here. His ministry--and his life--must now find some deeper source. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site:...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). The church mocks him, the mountains overwhelm him, but the West Coast welcomes Father David, as finally he arrives at his destination. It's not "home," but it may be a place where "home" will reveal itself. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https://www...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). As Father David heads west, through a landscape he has never seen before, what he has left behind him haunts him, like ghosts. But he can't afford to heed them, whether to welcome them or to exorcise them, not yet. He must press on. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Father David hits the road. He can't leave fast enough. His past assurances are crumbling behind him. His future is beckoning in new and terrifying ways. If we all must embark on a Hero's Journey, then , surely, this is his. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https://...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). The ground has fallen away beneath Father David. His instinct is to flee, somewhere far away, to put distance between himself and all that is hurting him. But he can't flee from his own soul. Like with the ancient Israelites, it will "prevent and follow" him into the wilderness. Making Contact: Fac...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Father David seeks sanctuary in the two places that promise him comfort when the world is unsettling--his church and his home. But trouble is brewing in both places, trouble from within and trouble from without. Making Contact: Face Book: “The Mystic Cave” Face Book group Web site: https://www.brianepearson.ca/ E...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Father David is an earnest Anglican priest who is proud of his vocation and uncompromising in his ministry. But as he navigates his way through his daily tasks--a visit to a nursing home and a meeting of his local clergy colleagues--something feels off. The ground is rumbling beneath his feet. Is it the church th...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Doug Van Houten, a soul guide with the Animas Valley Institute, takes seekers out into the wild and, with only a bed roll and a water bottle ...  leaves them there. He's not being cruel. In fact, he's being kind, providing an opportunity for people to have a soul encounter with the Earth. Not only do we...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). We might think of the desert as a wasteland, a place devoid of life. But that's not how Richard LeSueur sees it. He's spent over thirty years not only studying the wilderness of the Middle East but leading pilgrims out into its vastness for overnight excursions. He knows that in the silence and apparent...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Becoming reacquainted with the natural world seems daunting at first. We've lived so long indoors, amusing ourselves to death with things that go Ping!, we've almost forgotten what it's like to be part of nature, how to be, what to do. Michael Trotta, with whom I spoke last fall about myths and fai...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). I had started to think that my Nature Boy days were over. For one thing, I wasn't a boy anymore. And Nature seemed a lot less friendly than it used to, perhaps even malevolent. So why go out at all? Except, that way death lies. A slow death, my body atrophying by degree. But Nature has begun calling to me an...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Hope is sometimes harder to define, out here "on the other side of church land," but it's not hard to find. At Easter, in church services across the land, worshipers joyfully rise to sing "Jesus Christ is Risen Today! Alleluia!" as if that's all the hope we really need. Meanwhile, am...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). People respond differently to childhood trauma. For some, addiction seems to promise something it cannot actually deliver: relief from suffering. The initial high, with its accompanying delusions of power and invincibility, soon dissipates, leaving the addict alone with their pain ... and therefore with the compu...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It is perhaps the ultimate betrayal, the abuse of a child by their own parent. It offends every ounce of decency within us, and hints at a darkness so horrible we don't want to hear about it, much less talk about it. Yet, talking about it is the way we will eradicate it. After over thirty years of working wi...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). If we want to look our enemy in the eye, we needn't look any further than the mirror. Our ego beguiles us, puffing us up, and our fears taunt us, pulling us down, and in some ways we really are our own worst enemy. But a line gets crossed when our delusions scramble our measure of what is real and what is fa...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Abuse is one person's cruel and calculating control over another, the self-aggrandizement of the abuser purchased at the humiliating expense of the abused. It is soul damaging. But it need not be soul destroying. Louise Gallagher's story is a shining illustration of that. Finally free of a four-and-a-ha...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Is Lent necessary? A cornerstone of Christian practice, this season of penitential preparation reminds believers not only that they are frail mortals, but also that they are miserable sinners. Does this have any place in a modern-day spirituality? Is it in any way helpful? After leading my congregations through a...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Catholic theologian Karl Rahner said that the Christian of the future will be a mystic, or nothing at all. Could mysticism save Christianity? Could contemplative spirituality give the church back its life? Could it be a lifeline for those who've left the church but retain their faith? These are the questions...