Carl McColman's Blog, page 67

Spirituality, With or Without Religion

Photo by Fran McColman

“I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.”

It’s become such a common way of self-describing spiritual identity that observers have attacked it (“Spiritual But Not Religious”? Please Stop Boring Me), have defended it (God in the Gray Areas), have tried to reduce it to an acronym (“SBNR”) or even come up with cutesy abbreviations (Nones, since such persons when asked what their religious affiliation is will say “None”). This segment of our society is very diverse, covering peo...

The Silences of the Lamb (of God)

Silence: A Christian History

Speaking (or writing) about silence is an enterprise embedded in paradox; every word represents a departure from, an obstacle to, the subject at hand. Oxford don Diarmaid MacCulloch (who created a splash with his Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years) begins this improbable task of recounting the story of Christian silence by appealing to a dog who did not bark in a Sherlock Holmes story. The great detective discerns a clue in the animal’s silence (a dog tha...

A Celebration of Pollination

Here is another treasure from filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg. Take a 4½minute break and watch this video, filled with lush and sensual imagery from the natural world. It’s a trailer for an 80-minute documentary film called “Wings of Life” (you can stream it through Netflix hereor buy the Blu-Ray and DVD from Amazon here).

Here’s what the filmmaker had to say:

This video was shown at the TED conference in 2011, with scenes from “Wings of Life”, a film about the threat to essential pollinators that...

Circle the World in Prayer… with Shalem

Shalem’s Logo

My journey into contemplative practice began at Shalem.

Before I discovered the Shalem Institute in the spring of 1984, mysticism and contemplation were pretty much just topics I liked to read about. That’s not to say these topics weren’t meaningful to me, or that they did not give me a sort of intellectual spirituality that accompanied me during my college years. I’m an introvert and it’s my style to read about something before I’ll actually take the risk to go and meet someone w...

Salvation and Wellness, Holiness and Therapy

Photo by Fran McColman

Last week when I wrote about the distinction between mindfulness meditation and contemplative prayer, one reader left this comment:

I would also like to hear your comments on salvation vs therapy.

I feel a bit of trepidation taking this on, for the simple reason that I am not a professional counselor, therapist, psychologist, social worker — I have none of those little sets of letters like “LPC” or “MSW” that tag along after a person’s name to indicate that he or she is qu...

Where to buy my books…

Alas, I am better at reading my books than at selling them (photo: Phil Skinner/AJC)

My friends, please forgive me for such a blatantly commercial post. File this one under “Yes, authors have to make a living, too.”

This morning someone asked me on Twitter, “Where can I buy your books?” And I realized, marketing genius that I am, that I didn’t have one centralized “where to buy” page. So this post seeks to rectify that.

Here, in one handy location, arelinks for each of my three most recent books...

After the Book Festival (and Looking Forward to a New Contemplative Prayer Gathering)

AJC Decatur Book Festival

Happy Labor Day, everyone. This post is chock-full of Atlanta (really, Decatur) news. So if you live outside of Atlanta, please bear with me. Then again, what I have to say about Contemplative Prayer Groups might be of interest to you no matter where you live; even if you are a long way away from Decatur, GA, perhaps this will be an inspiration for you to start your own contemplative practice gathering.

I’m still a little buzzed from the wonderful time I had Saturday a...

Seamus Heaney reads “St. Kevin and the Blackbird”

I’m sad to learn of the death of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, who has been called Ireland’s most important poet since W. B. Yeats. Among the many treasures in his body of work, I especially love “St. Kevin and the Blackbird” which we can see the poet reading in the following video. This was on the occasion of Heaney’s 70th birthday and his publisher’s 80th anniversary; with that in mind, his comments at the beginning of the video before reading the poem are well said, and quite important in...

Following the Path

Photo by Fran McColman

I think a lot about the trend toward more and more people identifying themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” I know this polarizes a lot of people — some churchgoers, even liberal ones like UCC Minister Lillian Daniel, dismiss this kind of spirituality as symptomatic of our culture of narcissism; while other folks, like Rabbi Rami Shapiro, see it as a positive sign: a sign of being (in Rabbi Rami’s words) “spiritually independent.” Here’s another way to look at it:...

A Gift for Lorraine

Okay, my friends, get your kleenex ready. This video tells the story of a 96-year-old man who wrote a song for his recently deceased wife (of over 70 years), and how a local recording studio helped to bring the song to life. Part of what’s so cool for me personally is that we share the same anniversary (June 26), although of course they celebrated their golden anniversary three years before Fran and I got married.

And be sure to download the song from iTunes (I have).