Carl McColman's Blog, page 2

Mark Your Calendars — Upcoming Events in Georgia, South Carolina, Maryland…

Hi friends, just want to make sure you’re aware of some upcoming events I have scheduled. Especially if you can join me in person in Georgia, South Carolina, or Maryland (events online or in other locations to be announced, so stay tuned).

— March 23, 2025: Interfaith Afternoon at Ignatius House in Atlanta: Ignatius House, the Jesuit Retreat Center in Atlanta, sponsors a series of Interfaith Afternoon Events on topics related to art and spirituality. I’ll be leading this event on the topic of “S...

Can Love Be Saved?

Can Love Be Saved?

Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine who is a hospital chaplain. She was lamenting how challenging it is sometimes to bring a prayerful presence to the patients, many of whom may not share her faith — or hold any faith at all. To illustrate this, she reflected on a dying person she met recently, who shared how difficult it was for him to believe in God. He wasn’t hostile to the idea of God, just had difficulty offering God any kind of faith.

As I listened to my friend...

The Theology of the Hail Mary: Contemplative Wisdom or Dualistic Fear?

A long-term reader of this blog recently wrote to me and posed this question:

Carl, w hat do you think the last line of the Hail Mary means? 

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death?”

I think it is a plea for salvation at the last moments of our lives. I see that as pathetic and yet frightening. I stopped praying the Rosary some years ago because of it. I don’t like praying the Hail Mary once, let alone 53 times in the Rosary, imagining myself dying and ple...

Pre-Order “Read the Bible Like a Mystic” Today

Hello friends, here’s just a friendly reminder to pre-order your copy of Read the Bible Like a Mystic today.

Where to buy Read the Bible Like a Mystic:
Amazon • Barnes & Noble • Broadleaf Books
Bookshop.org • Books-a-Million
www.anamchara.com (autographed copy)

Pre-ordering books help with the publication launch. When the big retailers like Barnes & Noble or Amazon get pre-orders for a book, they will increase their inventory levels which makes the book more visible to shoppers (whether in perso...

Quotations and an Examen for Making Our Contemplative Practice Real

This weekend I had the honor of giving the closing talk at the 2025 Centering Prayer Summit, sponsored by Closer Than Breath. Since my talk was the last talk of the conference, I was asked to speak on how to bring the wisdom and energy of the conference into our daily lives. I called my talk “Making It Real: Integrating Mystical Wisdom into the Spiritual Practice of our Daily Lives” and I explored how even when we have “mountaintop experiences” during Centering Prayer (or any other spiritual pra...

Guidelines for Centering Prayer (Video)

This video is an excerpt from a talk I gave recently on Patreon, as part of my new Practical Mysticism series of monthly Zoom calls. It’s simply my explanation of the four basic guidelines of Centering Prayer. Hope you enjoy it. (And if you’d like to participate in the Practical Mysticism monthly Zoom calls, join Patreon by clicking here).

Judge or Healer: Some Thoughts on a Mystical Approach to God

A reader of this blog recently wrote this message to me:

Hi Carl, I recently enjoyed your book Eternal Heart. I have a fundamentalist/Evangelical background and am relatively new to mysticism. Can you help me fit in the Bible passages of God’s judgment and wrath of God which seem very dualistic (Ephesians 5:1-7 comes to mind; Paul contrasts godly behavior and ungodly behavior and promised judgment on the ungodly). Are there any good articles or books addressing the subject of mysticism and God’s...

The Radical Sacred Podcast: A Conversation About Contemplation, Mysticism and Merton

I recently was invited to be a guest on the “Radical Sacred” podcast, hosted by spiritual director Jenny Misslin and Methodist minister the Rev. Phillip Dieke. They had gotten their hands on a copy of Befriending Silence and began our conversation by reading an excerpt from that book where I talk about Thomas Merton’s famous street-corner epiphany. Needless to say, that led to a wonderful conversation about Merton, mysticism, monasticism, and various other topics related to contemplative spiritu...

Religious Pluralism and the Fractal Theory of Religions: An Appreciation of Perry Schmidt-Leukel

From time to time I like to spotlight on this blog books and authors that I am finding interesting and/or compelling. These days, one such author if Perry Schmidt-Leukel.

Schmidt-Leukel is Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology at the University of Münster in Germany, where he serves as the head of the Institute for Religious Studies and Inter-Faith Theology. He has also taught at the Universities of Munich, Innsbruck and Salzburg, as well as the University of Glasgow. Much of...

Join Patreon and Get Access to a Meditation Library

Throughout 2024 I wrote and recorded twenty-four meditations, based on wisdom teachings from three spiritual traditions:

The Eight Beatitudes from the wisdom teachings of Jesus;The Noble Eightfold Path from the wisdom teachings of Buddha;The Wheel of the Year, based on Celtic traditions.

These meditations were given live over Zoom, but each one was recorded, and they are now available for members of Patreon — a membership website for people who support artists, writers and musicians. My writ...