Carl McColman's Blog, page 7

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Hi friends!

As you may know, this blog is supported by readers like you through a membership program called Patreon. You can join Patreon for a low monthly fee, and get access to guided meditations, study guides for mystical classics, poetry and other unpublished writings, and the opportunity to participate in Zoom calls with me (Carl).

Plus, depending on the membership level you select, you can get some nifty thank you gifts as well, including autographed books and “contemplative swag” like pos...

On Becoming a Truly Contemplative Spiritual Director

A reader wrote to me:

Hi Carl, how does one study to be a ‘contemplative’ grounded Spiritual Director for spiritual seekers. Jim Finley mentioned this on a podcast. But, how? He didn’t elaborate. He said these types of people can help others find themselves. I would like to know as I start my spiritual direction studies. This could be a good emphasis area. I hope to hear from you. Hopefully, you can enlighten me.

I certainly don’t know if I am capable of enlightening anyone! But I was happy to ...

Encountering Silence: An Interview with Queer Contemplative/Activist Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk

The Encountering Silence team returns with an interview recorded last spring but unreleased until now! Cassidy, Kevin and I sat down for a contemplative conversation with Maki Ashe Van Steenwyk (she/they), a queer mystic who is the author of three books and the executive director of the Center for Prophetic Imagination in Minneapolis.

Ashe (formerly writing under the name “Mark”) is the author of A Wolf at the Gate, unKingdom: Repenting of Christianity in America, and That Holy Anarchist: Refl...

24 Meditations for 2024: Guided Meditations on Zoom for Patreon Members

Join me on Tuesday, January 23 for a free guided meditation on Aspiration and Intentionality — a great way to start the new year! This will take place on Zoom, and is free but pre-registration is required — Click here to register.

Friends, I’m happy to announce that for 2024, I’m creating a series of 24 guided meditations that I will be sharing with everyone who supports this blog with a Patreon Membership.

Over the course of the year 2024, about twice a month I’ll release a new guided meditatio...

Download Your Free Study Guide for “Soul Food” (Anthology of New Contemplative Writing)

I’m so honored and grateful to have an essay included in the recently published book Soul Food: Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership. This book was published in September to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Shalem Institute, the community that first introduced me to silent prayer, meditation and contemplative practice, back when I was in graduate school in the 1980s.

Soul Food includes a diverse range of voices that look at contemplative living and leadership from a ...

Of Love and Silence

This morning I wrote a little poem. I’m no Mary Oliver or John Keats, of course. But perhaps this is something worth saying.

Our words and our myths can connect or divide us.

Only Love and deep silence can truly unite us.

Another Conversation About Mysticism

Friends, I first published this video back in the summer, but I want to highlight it again today, in case you missed it back then. It was actually the first interview I did to support The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism— and my conversation partner is one of my favorite people on the planet, Kate H. Rademacher, who is the author of wonderful books of her own like Reclaiming Rest and Their Faces Shone (check them out!). Kate and I did this interview for the spirituality & writing community th...

Mystics and Institutional Religion: A Word from Howard Thurman

Acts of worship must be tested by the degree to which they remain living channels for the direct release of God into the life of the worshipper. When they become institutionalized they are apt to become dead so the mystic seems always to be the foe of institutional religion. He is very sensitive to the crystallizing of acts of worship into dead forms. It is profoundly true that he does not stand in need of the institution or the institutional forms as such. Even in Catholicism any careful readi...

Conversations about Mysticism: Podcasts and a Video Interview

With the publication of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism, I’ve been making the rounds of doing interviews, for podcasts and for print. Here are a few of the recent ones, in case you want to check any of them out…

First up: an interview for Quest Magazine and the Theosophical Society in America, in conversation with noted author Richard Smoley. The full interview was released on Youtube, so you can watch it below, or check out the print version in the Winter 2024 edition of Quest. What’s u...

“Breathe and Hope and Chase and Love…” Some Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of “Tales from Topographic Oceans”

Things are all in colours
And the size of others shall send you forward
Arranged to sail you toward
A peace of mind
— “The Remembering (High the Memory)” (second movement of Tales from Topographic Oceans)

December 7 is, of course, Pearl Harbor Day. It is my brother’s birthday. And on this day in 1973, the ultimate prog band, Yes, released their controversial magnum opus, Tales from Topographic Oceans.

It has widely been panned not only as Yes’s worst album, but also as the epitome of everything ...