September 2021 Musing on Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of life. Season 2 of Contemplify is getting warmed up on the stove. I'll let you know when it is ready to be served. Visit contemplify.com
This marks the 100th episode of Contemplify. We celebrate the triple digit with a musing and an announcement.
A contemplative musing on machines, lifeblood, and facing the facts of life. Visit contemplify.com for more shenanigans
Scott Ballew is songwriter from Austin, Texas. He earns his keep as the Head of Films and Commercials at YETI, producing and directing films that inspire a life well-lived. During the pandemic, Scott dusted off his guitar and got to writing songs, polishing them, and then to his own surprise, releasing an album out into the wild. Scott Ballew’s first album is called Talking to Mountains . In our conversation we talk about the genesis of his album, the relationship between sobriety and creativity...
There is so much I can say about the poet and essayist Leah Purpura. I’ll give this brief introduction, Lia was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the writer in residence at the University of Maryland, and has been published in all the notable places. I read her two most recent works, It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful , a book of poems, and All the Fierce Tethers , a book of essays, and was graced by her mastery of language and reverence for the awe and wonder in the details. ...
Jeffrey Foucault is a top shelf songwriter. Foucault has a slew of albums worth your collection and his latest album, Deadstock , should be the first one you pick up. Deadstock has been a real good friend to me in the ups and downs of this season. Foucault’s music makes a grown man like me swoon, sway, and slyly sing his lyrics to myself. This is the type of music that keeps me sane and holds my heart in communion with the whole heartbreaking human family. Our conversation holds the tenor of two...
Andrew Krivak is the author of three novels: The Signal Flame (2017), a Chautauqua Prize finalist, and The Sojourn (2011), a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction, and his latest novel, The Bear . In our conversation you hear of Andrew’s formation as a Jesuit, our dwelling in the depth dimension of now, how his novel The Bear relates to that dimension and is also a manifesto against interiority, and so much more. Frie...
Fred Bahnson is an immersion journalist of the soul and one of my favorite public contemplative intellectuals. If you’ve been hanging out around Contemplify, you have likely heard his name or seen links to his work. And I am sure that won’t be changing anytime soon. His most recent piece appears in Harper’s Magazine and is called ‘ The Gate of Heaven is Everywhere ’. It charts the contemplative turning in our times with gusto, charm, and sustained attention to the deep roots of the Christian con...
Beverly Lanzetta is a profound teacher who invites her readers and students to engage in the fullness of Mystery each day through the cultivation of practice and rhythm. I was elated to get my mitts on her latest book A New Silence: Spiritual Practices and Formation for the Monk Within . Our conversation flows out of this work, we talk about contemplation rhythms, parenting, the archetype of the monk, the via feminia and so much more. Reflecting on A New Silence makes up the bulk of our conversa...
I’m closing this Advent Series out with some poetic gifts. A few friends are stopping by to raise a glass and offer a poem or prayer, though I am unsure of the difference anymore. In this final Advent outpost, the Mystery is stirred by a couple of my favorite poets, Teddy Macker and then Todd Davis , before contemplative teacher Beverly Lanzetta brings us home with a prayer. Like I said, prayers and poems dip from the same well. Join us as we take our fill. Visit Contemplify.com...
I’ve asked some friends to swing by and offer a few words. In this second Advent outpost, we move throuogh the course of a day, from dawn to dusk. one of my favorite poets, Chris Dombrowski , kicks us off with a dawn poem from his book Ragged Anthem . I have some words on attention for the life of a day. And artist Jonathon Stalls leads us on a sunset walking meditation to round us out. So lace up and stretch those limbs or roll those wheels to this second Advent outpost. Check out Chris Dombrow...
My wife and I started an Advent neighborhood get together last year; soup, wine, bread, cheese, poetry, stories, hymns, and children bellowing. A eucharist of sorts, but more with an ancient turn to honoring both the light in the darkness, and the darkness itself. Due to Covid this will not be happening this year. So I am attempting to put the spirit of what I experienced in that neighborhood Advent get together into a Contemplify Advent series. Something not churchy, but more in line with the w...
It took me months to read Douglas E. Christie’s book Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology . I found it a joy to read slowly, soaking in the poetics married with scholarship on the Christian contemplative tradition which I so dearly love. It felt like a love letter, albeit in academic one, to a tradition that is still bursting with so much fruit waiting to be tasted by the many. I think it will wet your contemplative whistle, disarm any judgements, and welcome you to be a ...
Today’s episode is first. It is one voice among many podcasters from around the globe releasing the same episode, a collective call for awareness, grief, and loving action in our climate emergency and our sacred duty to participate whole-heartedly-bodily-mindfully in the healing of our home in the cosmos. This episode includes Scientists, activists, farmers, poets, and theologians who talk bravely and frankly about how our biosphere is changing, about grief and hope in an age of social collapse ...
Ruminations on divine union and the contemplative uprisings available in each moment. Visit contemplify.com to sign up for the Contemplify NonRequired Reading List
Exploring the subtle sacraments that animate our lives and the process of quieting the mind in words and silence. Visit contemplify.com to sign up for the Contemplify NonRequired Reading List
“The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.” - Henry David Thoreau
A plucked musical movement, hairpin poetic turns, mythical stories in rough harmonics. Baptize me into this Kitchen Music Society of Delights and Sorrows. No time like a pandemic to establish a new society. Perhaps by the end of this, you’ll join the membership. To learn more about Contemplify, head over to contemplify.com
"Christian Miller teaches us that the road to virtue lies in humility about our own virtue and an acceptance that others are struggling with their flaws. This is a very valuable book at a moment when our society could use a dose of openness and a sense of forgiveness." - E.J. Dionne Jr., Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture, Georgetown University visit Contemplify.com for drink pairing and other goodies...
"Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection." Wendell Berry , Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front In this episode, we’ll explore the God of tree trimmers and the souvenir of deep breathing.
Birthdays are akin to over-excited neighbors. You either appreciate their intrusions or avoid them like Homer Simpson does Ned Flanders. I treat birthdays like Flanders. I love a good party, cake, and sing-song version of ‘Happy Birthday’, but I am slow to allow the spotlight to turn squarely onto my face. A strange confession for a guy with a podcast. But I do love the birthday questions...
"Many poets feel that they know the natural world, Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind. He is a fine, rare poet." - Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall
“Although Manning has been lauded throughout the country for his work — garnering accolades from some of the major poets of our time, like W.S. Merwin, in addition to the numerous awards he has received — he has found his place in this literary life, wearing it now as effortlessly as the patterned chambray shirts he favors. He is a man of the people, intent on bringing poetry and scenes of rural beauty to them, words of the past, but also the present — the poetry of preservation, of all of us." ...
“In that larger tradition of transcendent art, if we let them into our hearts, these new poems from Jericho Brown will awe and unsettle us.” - Frederick Speers, New York Journal of Books
I hoped for some last gesture beyond a handshake, writes Chris Dombrowski in Ragged Anthem , a soulful book of longing that is as comic as it is reflective. These poems sing of humankind in need of something it can only seem to get from the natural world, and of how we won t get it until we begin to understand ourselves as natural as any tree or river. Or as Dombrowski himself says, Again / I took daybreak for granted, easy / as mistaking pinecone for wasp nest, / wasp nest for shed antler, antl...
"Chris Dombrowski has proven himself to be among the best poets of his generation. As one of those readers who admired and enjoyed his first two books — better put, who has gone to the poems for spiritual sustenance, for wisdom, and for the magic of being transported to the landscapes where the poet makes his life—I’m happy to report that Ragged Anthem continues to sing those essential songs in beautiful and unexpected ways." – Todd Davis , author of Native Species and Winterkill...
This series will introduce you to two poets who help me circle the mystery: Chris Dombrowski and Jericho Brown. My hope is that through these conversations you’ll get a taste of poetry as a contemplative gateway. Poetry has played that role for me as a contemplative practice; seeing reality from an angle that I had not yet noticed. Clear enough to see and yet cloudy enough to draw me closer, to engage all of my faculties in this new perception of reality. This practice of poetry drops me into th...
This final episode of the Life of a Day series is all about you. It is about offering a reframing of your day with a new way of seeing, a new way of showing up as a contemplative in the world.
“The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far away, but I will walk carefully.” — Russian proverb I raise this frosty pint in your direction for this fifth installment of the Life of the Day series here on Contemplify where I'll be exploring my interpretation of the divine hour called ‘Compline’.
‘There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.’ - Thich Nhat Hanh My intention here is to be present at hand to the dish in my hand. Perhaps we’ll strike gold today and I’ll communicate some semblance of that in this fourth installment of the Life of the Day series here on Contemplify.
