The Mystic Cave

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It would be understandable, and perhaps forgivable, if we entered the New Year with fear in our hearts. All we'd have to do is begin listing the troubles confronting us: a worsening climate crisis; festering justice issues; the darkening geo-political landscape. But artist,  life coach, and podcaster Liz Wil...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Every year I'd rise in the pulpit on Christmas Eve and try to make sense of a story about a baby born two thousand years ago, and attempt to offer an interpretation of what that story means to us now. Every year I failed. Its meaning eluded me. But hidden within that story were other stories that the origina...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Reluctant to move on too quickly from my recent conversations with Michael Trotta and Philip Shepherd, I invited my friend Don McLeod to spend some time with me processing what we'd heard. Don, the co-founder of the Wisdom Centre, sees connections between what Michael and Philip were saying and the ancient W...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It's not that we think too much; it's that we think too much using only our heads! We have cut ourselves off at the neck, losing touch with the natural intelligence of our bodies. Philip Shepherd wants to remove the barriers between the head and body and return to a wholeness we have not known since the...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Myths and ancestral stories don't tell us who we are. But they set our feet on a journey to find out. Storyteller Michael Trotta left the confines of the education system to explore and to teach these deeper life-changing tales. Wherever we find them, myths and stories contain the power to open us to wonder...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Why is it so difficult to find our way in the world, our true way? Why is a feeling of success, of having arrived, having made it, so elusive? And why can no one ever answer these questions? Storyteller Michael Trotta thinks it's because we trust logic when we should be trusting something else--stories. In t...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It's been a rich exploration, these past six weeks, talking about death and dying. But what does it all mean? What have we learned? Where does it lead us on the spiritual journey? Perhaps, right back to where we started ... to the path stretching out beneath our feet, to this life. Live well now , in other w...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Spiritualists like Jane Fleming are well acquainted with the strange phenomena associated with death and dying. But they know that the larger purpose of that phenomena is to help us on our spiritual journey toward our ultimate union with the Creator. In this lifetime we may get glimpses from beyond the veil, but...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). We might ask, "What happens when we die?" in order to gain wisdom about how to live. But finding out, at the end, might prove too late. What if we asked, "Why was I born in the first place?" If "heaven" is the same at both the beginning and the end of life, it might be the same quest...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Deathwalkers, psychopomps, ancestors--we may be alone on our final voyage, but we needn't be lonely. The Universe itself will welcome us home, just as it birthed us in the first place. Death, it turns out, is a wondrous window on life itself, and who better to remind us of this than a death doula and ritual...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It was difficult enough when Jessica's husband Sean died suddenly, leaving her as a widow and a single mom. But posthumous revelations about his secret life turned her grief into rage. When it appeared he was trying to reach out to her from beyond the grave, she might not have returned his calls; but somethi...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). With this episode I introduce a series of conversations on death and dying ... on the other side of church land, or, what the church never told us. Tara Livingston joins me as we share thoughts and experiences of funerals, "good deaths," and what happens on the other side. Contacts: Tara Livingston: www...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Welcome to the first episode of a new season of The Mystic Cave, a reflection on the soulful experiences of summer, including our return to nature and our return to the past. Credits: "Into the Mystic": words and music by Van Morrison; performed by Colin James; licensed for use by SOCAN; "How the S...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). "There is a crack, a crack, in everything. That's how the light gets in"--Leonard Cohen Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight , 2005; licensed under SOCAN 2021 Links: Web Site: https://www.brianepearson.ca Face Book G...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Clergy aren't perfect. Far from it. They may announce each week God's bountiful grace for all. But even they want to get the edge when faced with the possibility of losing out. Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight , 2005;...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Being nice has its limits. Jesus himself was not always very nice. He knew that our 'pleases' and 'thank-you's' don't take us very far ... not when we're confronting the powers of hell.  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). "All are welcome!" All churches say that. But do they really mean it? And what would have to change, if they did?  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight , 2005; licensed under SOCAN 2021 Links: Web Site: https://www.briane...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Material things have no value in and of themselves. They only have the value we ascribe to them. So, what we value may say more about us than we really care to  know.  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight , 2005; licensed under SOC...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). "Don't cast your pearls before swine," Jesus told us. He wouldn't have been thinking about brides and grooms, would he? But if the snout fits ...  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight , 2005; licensed under SOCA...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Blah, blah, blah! Sometimes it feels like we are drowning in a world filled with words. It takes something wordless, like a mime, say, to remind us of what those words were saying in the first place.  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Lim...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Forgiveness should be a way of life. It's not. It's a way back to life when we've lost our way. Unfortunately, this is not something we can learn without experiencing it, which means, after it's too late. Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin Ja...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It is said that faith is "caught, not taught." If that's true, looking back, how we did we catch it, if we did; or how did we miss it, if we didn't? And what is it that others might "catch" from us?  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Col...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). People often ask God for things that, were they to receive them, might make them wonder what they were thinking of in the first place. Brotherly love, for instance. It sounds good, in theory.  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Colin James, from the album, Limelight ,...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). There is no funeral service for chickens. But what we think we're grieving is not always what we're actually grieving. Funerals, inevitably, are about more than whoever’s lying in the box. They’re about all our losses.  Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison, performed by Col...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Have you ever thought about the road not taken, the path we chose not to follow? Might it have had a life, a trajectory even, of its own, as if in some parallel universe? And what if that path crosses the path we did take? Would we feel the connection? Credits: Music Credit: "Into the Mystic" by Van Mor...