Carl McColman's Blog, page 35

With Great Reverence and Above Reason: Two Keys to the Mystical Adoration of God

If you talk to an old-school Trappist monk, he’ll tell you that “adoration” is something properly given to God alone.

I learned this the hard way, when in the acknowledgements section of my book Answering the Contemplative Call, I wrote a comment about how much “I adore” my wife. Reading this (in manuscript form), my old monastic mentor Fr. Anthony said, “You can love your wife all you want, but you should only adore God!”

It seemed like semantic word-splitting to me, but I didn’t want to...

“The Settling of the Mind Into Silence” — How a Definition of Yoga also Defines All Forms of Contemplation

The first four lines of the ancient text, theYoga Sutras of Patanjali, offer a basic definition of yoga — that might surprise many westerners who are used to thinking of yoga primarily as a form of physical discipline. But the kind of yoga practiced at your local gym or yoga center is simply one type of yoga — Hatha Yoga. Yoga is a much more broad term for spiritual discipline, just as “prayer” is a much broader term than Centering Prayer or charismatic prayer or liturgical prayer.

The word...

Have We Given Up on “Happily Ever After”?

First, an admission: I have a guilty pleasure in costume dramas, especially the kind that show up on PBS. FromDownton Abbeyto Lark Rise to Candleford toVictoria to the endless adaptations of Jane Austen novels, I love to let my feminine side come out to play whenever a show set in the past comes along.

Like many PBS fans, I’ve enjoyed the recent seriesSanditon, based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen. And — apparently like many other fans — I was bitterly disappointed by the show’s...

What’s the Best Church for Contemplative Christians?

A reader writes:

Carl, do you think the Catholic Church has more scope to welcome contemplative Christians? I attend an Anglican church and I’m very high Anglican in my thinking. A friend calls me a secret Catholic. I’m growing weary of the evangelical fundamentalist direction of the church… I’m a bit lost to be honest.

I’m sorry you feel lost, and I think it’s not unusual, especially when someone discovers contemplative spirituality, to feel a bit out of place if your local church does not...

Contemplation and Emotional Intensity

One of this blog’s readers wrote to me this past Saturday (February 15, 2020) to ask a question about Richard Rohr’s daily meditation for that day.

Here’s the quote (emphasis added):

Contemplative prayer always requires hospitality to your deep self, to the deep parts of your self. It demands the openness to receive whatever might arise in you and then gently release it into God’s hands. But in prayer you are not alone as you open yourself to whatever might emerge. You do so in a relationship...

Mysticism is a Love Story: A Baker’s Dozen of Contemplative Books for Valentine’s Day (or Any Day)

Simply put, mysticism at least, Christian mysticism is all about love. To explore Christian mysticism basically means to explore love. It’s an invitation to join the noblest of human aspirations. Love has inspired poets and philosophers for as long as human beings have enjoyed telling a good story. Without love, we would have no Romeo and Juliet, no Tristan and Isolde, no Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, no Wandering Aengus and the Glimmering Girl and, for that matter, no Song of Songs, no...

“For Darkness is as Light to You” — Why Mysticism Isn’t Afraid of the Dark

One of the most powerful images in the Bible is the distinction between light and dark. Light represents God, or Christ, or goodness; darkness, by contrast, represents ignorance, or evil, or sin.

Consider, for example, this passage from the first letter of John:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true;...

Seven Mystical Affirmations

Currently I’m reading two classic self-help books, both for my personal edification and as research for a project I’m working on. The books are Julia Cameron’sThe Artist’s Wayand John Bradshaw’sHealing the Shame that Binds You.

If you’re not familiar with these books, they have long been perennial bestsellers in the self-help market: Cameron’s book is a program for releasing inner obstacles to creativity through an exploration of the relationship between art and spirituality, while Bradshaw’s...

Less than 12% of the Catholic Catechism is devoted to spirituality. That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the church today.

Over the years I have discovered that there are three types of people interested in Christian mysticism and contemplative spirituality:

Some are practicing Christians, active in their local parish or church but frustrated by what they see as the lack of spiritual nurture that takes place in such settings; Others are people who may have been raised in the church, but really have no connection to institutional Christianity; they are interested in spirituality but not religion, and while they...

Magic and Miracles: What’s the Difference?

The other day I was having a conversation with an acquaintance who asked me to comment on the difference between “magic” and “miracles.”

It was an interesting conversation, especially given my history — that I spent a number of years explore magical spiritualities like Wicca and Celtic paganism, only to eventually forsake those paths in favor of returning to a more established mystical path: the contemplative expression of Christianity.

I don’t have a negative feeling about either magic or...