Hints and Guesses

Here's an episode exploring the human shadow. I offer here an image of the psyche, a way to think about projection, and a myth that helps. Enjoy!

It's the time of year to do a like searching spiritual inventory, a Great Annual Examen. This requires discernment, a word that's not all that common anymore. I also want to talk a little about AI and about becoming the kind of person who joins the Cosmic Dance. Happy New Year. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few thoughts on blessing, pilgrimage, monastic creativity, and the new dark age. Wishing you all many blessings. May the road rise to meet you. Enjoy!

I'm borrowing this phrase "covenant with limit" from Martin Shaw. Perhaps it's time to reconsider how freedom is actually found. In this episode, I discuss briefly Wendell Berry's poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, the ancient art of fasting, and the imaginative possibility that we might want to make a covenant with limits before we go mad in the wrong direction. Enjoy!

"We have to know the darkness to be able to search for the light," according to Henri Nouwen. And he goes on to claim that we need lostness, in the search for meaning. With so much disorder, lostness, darkness, denial and confusion, I'd like to read most of a letter written by Nouwen that seems to address our age, people like you and me. I hope you'll hear something encouraging, no matter how wild and meandering your path. Enjoy!

Here's the final episode of The Christ Symbol. This episode is about Authority and Resurrection (stage 6 and 7). What does real authority look like? What does it mean for a "grain of wheat to go into the ground and die?" What is the nature of real change? Hope you hear something from Jesus own transformed life, that may in fact trans-form your own. Enjoy!

Here's the next episode in looking at Christ through a symbolic lens, a life transformed. This episode is about Transcendent Encounter (stage 3), those moments we could not have predicted, manufactured, controlled, or made up. Those moments when we know we are ushered into something larger. Hope you hear a hint or guess for your own spiritual growth. Enjoy!

This is a long-format, unscripted, very personal conversation, with Paul Vanderklay. We talk a bit about our stories, what it's like to be a pastor, what's been happening in the changing landscape of Christianity, and what the future might hold. Check out Paul's YouTube channel for more content. Enjoy!

In this episode, I describe the changes faces of Jesus over the centuries, and what I mean by the Symbolic Christ. I also explore in more detail what I call the three chords of listening to the Bible: story, context and symbol. This is part of a series called Wandering through the Bible, where I return to some of the most important stories and images from the Christian tradition. Hope you hear a hint or guess. Enjoy!

We use the word love for sports teams, friends, partners, food, and even God. What are we talking about? What is love? And how might we grow into more loving people? Here are a few hints and guesses about romance, love of self, love of the other, and the possibility of divine love. Inspiration for this podcast come from John O'Donohue's book Anam Cara, Robert Johnson's books He and She, and St Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Enjoy!

Here's a conversation with Quique Autrey, therapist, author and podcaster, about his new book Green Flags. What does it look like to become a person who's a little more like a "green flag" than a red flag? Where does one even start with "depth psychology?" Quique's highlights a number of accessible ways to turn the gaze inward, toward a healthier relationship with ourselves, which seems necessary in order to be a more generative presence in the world. You can find out more about Quique, and buy the book, at https://www.quiqueautrey.com/ Hope you here a hint or guess for your own path.

Here are few thoughts on feeling stuck, big storms gathering at the window, what it's like when our stories and imagination seem disconnected from the present, a few musings on intuition, the still small voice, the melody below the melody, being defeated, and less metaphorically, moving back to Michigan. The poems that I quote are from Rilke and Annie Lighthart. Enjoy!

I'd like to explore the mystical, not as an expert, but a student. Lately I've been inspired by Evelyn Underhill's insights in her book, Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Conscious which I quote in this podcast. My sense is, that despite the darkness of the age we live in, something of the Absolute wishes to break in, to rearrange our consciousness. When this happens, the old dream and the young see visions. What might it look like for modern people, spiritual - religious - not-so-religious, to open up to the possibility of the transcendent, so that our present mode of consciousness, our small egoic frame, might grow? What if Reality is not what we thought? The mystics left us a few clues for how to listen and how to be.