March NonRequired Reading List
Contemplify / NRR #100 (huzzah, NonRequired made it to one hundred!)
“What did you go out in the desert to see?”
— Matthew 11:7
“Being is not given: it is the giver of givens.”
— Kenneth T. Gallagher
(In the November 2024 NonRequired Reading I named the intent to take a look at each of these contemplative directives from James Finley—“Find your contemplative practice and practice it. Find your contemplative community and enter it. Find your contemplative teaching and follow it.”— as an instigator for the next few Contemplify missives. In December 2024 I released my musing on practice, January 2025 brought us community, and in February 2025 teaching took its turn, today finds the discerning and wandering pilgrim. )
In the past few months we trotted around an uncomplicated quote that could be operationalized into a plan of action. Because repetition is not redundant1, I will place the line from James Finley before you once again, “Find your contemplative practice and practice it. Find your contemplative community and enter it. Find your contemplative teaching and follow it.” This path is simple enough to get you started today and relentlessly challenging enough to hold you fast for the rest of your days. For there is more to discover. There is always more. Do not be discouraged by the moreness, it emerges from the dance of the depths between these three poles. But you are likely wondering, so now what? For months you have been going on about these three directives, what happens when you walk this path with contemplative community, practice, and teaching? Do angels break out their fiddles when you come round a corner? Does the Kingdom of God unlock from within? Do you become the person who you always wished you would?
Community, practice, and teaching are the stakes we claim in our contemplative life. When claimed it is easier to light a discerning fire at the center, warming and lighting the way ahead. This illuminating fire of discernment welcomes arguments and reflections, shrieks and silence, and unpronounced storytelling. If you find yourself at such a fire, count yourself lucky and draw in a bit closer. Allow the billowing smoke to rise into a cascading roll that covers all those present, serving as an offering and an incense to bless the road ahead.
When our bases are covered and existential debts settled, we exit a phase of life. Often we sense this transition approaching. Typically this tingle hits early enough that it tickles, yet is ungraspable to us until we unknowingly step outside our current phase of life’s front door for the last time. The door shuts, clicks, and locks behind us. Our key no longer catches. We cannot go back in. Even when anticipated this can be confusing and painful. We never quite get everything available to us out of the house from a former phase of life. Only after being locked out do we remember seeing jars and jars of unopened wisdom in the cellar, and those scattered piles of encouragement swept up and into the corners, and hells bells, all of those unmet dirty jokes in the junk drawer never got told!
With the doors locked, you walk out the front gate only to hear those heavy metals clang and shut behind you too. This iron meeting iron reminds you of a proverb. And once again, your jangly bones snap to alignment in the knowledge that the contemplative life is one of discernment and constant renewal. You recall how these fresh starts can be a joyful launch. Sometimes embarking on a world restranged with mystery and best met with a head held high, your sunkissed face smiles and skips toward what lay beyond the horizon. At other times you feel expelled from a phase that felt like home. Wearily you pick up your kit and walk on. Other times still, it feels like a tossing out, a distressing fumble into uncertainty. Even when you turn to the cold iron gates to fling back bitterness at being cast out you get your head stuck between the bars. Humiliated, you weep because you were haunted more than held here. Sometimes protective scales spontaneously grow to cover over vulnerable skin. Survival can be victory in certain phases. Arrested development also happens between phases. Each phase has an origin story and a funeral.
I tip my cap to each of your rebirths. If you are able to move beyond what was, to not cling too tight, the road bends and opens further. It is not easy and not everyone is able to cross each phase of life. Do not take this road lightly. The interstitial phases of life cross, overlap, and merge with one another in discernment and discovery. Put together, these phases make up one wild and trackless pilgrimage. Each necessary departure is an arrival at another leg. Whether you physically moved around the world or just around the corner, over and over again you are met with this newness. So each day walk with a discerning heart. Riding the rising tide of silence and activity.
While writing this I have been wondering, is approaching life as a pilgrimage a bit much? Maybe even an over spiritualized stretch of the truth? After much thought and silence passed between my ears, I concluded that life as a pilgrimage is not too grandiose.2 Pilgrimage is an intentional attentiveness to context and rhythm within the whispers of God. Trekking with meaningfulness, ordinary feet kiss holy ground with beer breath.3 The inbetween presence and prayers, relationships and failures write the story to each section of the pilgrimage. Attend to each with a buoyancy and sincerity of heart.
Pilgrimage is a useful metaphor here because it is a spiritual practice you cannot fake, buy, or sub someone in for you. The poet Antonio Machado said it plainly, "Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar" ("Wanderer4, there is no path, the path is made by walking"). Sure you can buy your way onto a fancy pilgrimage travel package, but you have to walk it yourself. One could pretend to make a pilgrimage, but your paned eyes will betray your unmarked soul. You could try to siphon from the tank of another’s pilgrimage but that leaves you with a mouthful of gasoline. There is no dress rehearsal for a pilgrimage, life prepares you for the next passage whenever your mind belly flops into your heart. Of course charlatans will fake it (social media), attempt to buy it (consumerism), and live off of someone else's (celebrity). These fools have been hanging around these parts for ages, they have just taken new forms in our day. Pay them no mind. Your way is going to give you enough guff. For your life as a pilgrim does not vacate your responsibilities to your community and neighbor, in fact it expands the definition. Traipsing through a context of tyrannical officials and poor leadership while on pilgrimage is to be expected. Pilgrimage terrain is never flat or without predators. And if you are indeed immersing in a life of contemplative community, practice, and teaching—I hate to spring it on you, friend, but you are living the contemplative outlaw life (lest we forget Thomas Merton ambushing us with the saucepan saying that “to be contemplative is therefore to be an outlaw”5, just look at the radical nature of Jesus—born a refugee and died an outlaw. What a crew to join.).
The full embrace of life on pilgrimage is risky. A discerning heart is cardinal direction. Thus, there are as many encouragements as there are warnings on pilgrimages. For example, if the discerning heart gets quieted6, the navel starts to glow. And a pilgrim will gaze ever so closely at their bright navel while whispering sweet spiritual nothings about the romantic life of a pilgrim. Eventually the pilgrim will tip over and bruise their eyebrows on the pavement. Selfish raptures lead to unconscious self-induced harm. Consider it a banged-up warning about how approaching life as a contemplative pilgrimage can be littled into another identity to don for the benefit of your ego. Another status symbol. A pinning on of a spiritual button proclaiming, I am special, to no one in particular. While in truth, you are stardust that eats cornflakes and farts in public.
Pilgrimage is not for the pious but for the madcap wanderer. True pilgrims are setting out to learn to see Christ everywhere, to realize that every sentient being is on their way to becoming a Buddha. And for that, you will need to draw from your practice, from your community, and from your teaching. If it puffs up your spirituality identity, do not tarry, strip off those costumes and douse yourself in Rumi for “your naked freedom is your shield.”
Without a discerning heart we get caught in smallness by overidentification, rather than celebrate in the humble largess of cosmic wonder.
With that, I am stepping away from these words, consenting to silence, and walking towards the discerning fire again. Rekindle my heart in prayer and point my peepers up towards the night sky. A spot of respite on this pilgrim way.
Contemplify seeks to stoke the discerning fire. The Contemplify community tosses logs into that fire each and every time you crack open one of the offerings of Contemplify (podcasts, NonRequired Readings, Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practices). Thanks for your presence. Nothing more precious than your presence and time. For those who wish to support Contemplify through monetary means, you can do so by pressing the button below. Becoming a paid subscriber is a sweet kindness that keeps Contemplify a free resource for contemplatives in the world. Some folks want to support with a few bucks simply for the sake of supporting Contemplify (Hidden outlaws, I tip my hat towards you).
Those who become paid subscribers are automatically invited to join the weekly Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Session on Wednesday mornings. A regular communal contemplative practice that supports the rhythms of your one wild and precious life. You can practice live with me and a community of practitioners or with the recording. Good contemplative fun. Hope to see you there.
(Also…because I am trying to make explicit what was implicit. If the Lo-Fi & Hushed Practice Sessions call to you but you don’t want to (or cannot) become a paid subscriber—no sweat—just add your name and email to this form and you will be included in the practice for free. Money should never be a barrier to contemplative practice or contemplative community. Practice makes practice. Always delighted to add more practitioners to the circle).7
March NonRequired Reading List
Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic by Cynthia Bourgeault(Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
This was unexpected. Thomas Keating was one of the giants of the contemplative renewal in the 20th century. Most notably for democratizing (and popularizing) contemplative practice through Centering Prayer. I had read some of his books, heard him teach, and even joked around with him on one occasion. But Cynthia Bourgeault's account of Thomas Keating journey shifted my understanding of his work into a new gear. Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic is not hagiography or cold biography, but a mapping of Thomas Keating’s evolution as a monk, teacher, and mystic so that practitioners might follow suit.
For longtime followers of Keating’s work in Contemplative Outreach this book may stretch you beyond comfort, for others friends, this may seem like the natural outflow of a life surrendered to God. Cynthia Bourgeault was the only one who could write this modern classic. For example, there has been this pesky problem in Christian contemplative circles around non-duality and a personal God. Can they co-exist? Because of this, Christianity has sometimes been slung on a lower rung in the supposedly nonexistent ladder of interspiritual banter with the recommendation that a personal God was someone to outgrow. Bourgeault elegantly connects the dots from Thomas Keating’s words and writings of the polyphony she calls the nondual personal. See for Thomas Keating “in ‘available’ mode, God can be anybody or nobody—anything or ‘no-thing’—whatever works best to support the immediacy of the connection.”8 Hot diggity dogsky, this quote is bedded between sturdy posts of mystical experience and theological articulation.
Another aspect that makes this such a special book is Bourgeault’s continual vivification of Thomas Keating’s poems expressing his transitions in divinization. Bourgeault expertly nods and notes how these poems mark Keating’s breakthroughs that surpass traditional Christian developmental maps while congealing into a trustworthy unmanifested ground. Read it, study it, and repeat.
Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic is for the contemplative reader willing to walk the edges of their own experience under the guidance of a wisdom teacher with precise words describing the unsayable.
Journey to the Wild Heart: Four Invitations to Contemplative Living by Amy Frykholm (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
Amy Frykholm has written a smart simple book in Journey to the Wild Heart: Four Invitations to Contemplative Living. Broken into two parts, the first part introduces you to the aforementioned invitations (discover, behold, bewilder, and discern) and the second part brings you ten opportunities to put them into practice. That is the structure, and the contents are playful, poetic, and mischievous truthfulfulness.
“The Spirit’s work within us is always in the now, and it is always more than we can expect or imagine. So we orient ourselves to the present moment with this open stance. Prepared, yes, like anyone embarking on a journey, but also ready to be led anywhere.”9
Like a leaf boat floating down stream, each invitation yields to the turn. In every session of part two you try on the movements of discover, behold, bewilder, and discern within the practice of your own life. Sound formulaic? Amy Frykholm would never do that to you. Each prompt is a wrestling match against the ropes, a joyful stretching into surprising places.
Journey to the Wild Heart is for contemplative readers who seek guideposts without strict instructions for a wily spirit.
Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop) and Some Stories: Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop) by Yvon Chouinard
I was getting pissed off about the way the majority of businesses operate, for profit and nonprofit. A longtime fan of Yvon Chouinard, I picked up a copy of Let My People Go Surfing from the library while also cracking open my coffee table version of Some Stories. The difference between the two is that Let My People Go Surfing is a structured book on the incredible story and lessons of a dirtbag climber and surfer (reluctantly) building the company, Patagonia. Some Stories on the other hand is a collection of articles, letters, photographs, and snippets from Chouinard’s adventures and travels. Let My People Go Surfing accompanied me on a work trip and Some Stories sat bedside.
The intuitive genius of Yvon Chouinard is that he seeks to solve hard problems. In business he surrounded himself with smart motivated people, challenged frumpy assumptions, and felt he owed the world more than the world owed him. Chouinard and his wife Malinda did not settle for creating a lazy, money-grabbing business that made them fat cats, they pushed themselves to become a beacon of possibility of responsibility towards the planet, their employees, and their customers.
Yvon Chouinard is an elder, and Some Stories reads like an open invitation to flip through his old journals without asking. And then saddle up next to him with precocious questions; what did you tell your daughter before she went off to college? On that surf trip where you hitched a ride on that slow, broken down boat that quickly ran of out gas with those two green knucklehead sailors—did you regret the mode of transport when you were yakking your meals over the side of the boat? How has your relationship to simplicity changed over the course of your life? You can find his responses and related photos to these questions (and more) in Some Stories.
Let My People Go Surfing and Some Stories are for contemplative readers who need the reminder that both business and adventure offer challenges to the accepted norms in work, life, and spirituality (and that they are never really separated). Yvon Chouinard will teach you to pay attention to every movement in your life.
Contemplify Update
Season Six is in the works, until ready, you can circle back through the first five seasons. Though patient folks can hear me on Mischke. As always you can find the complete list of Contemplify episodes here and below are the four most recent episodes of this season.
Peter Traben Haas on Prayer as a Practice of Centering, Abiding, & Radiating (Season 5, Ep 15 - Season Finale)
Backporch Advent Outpost with Hadewijch and the Mother of Love (Season 5, Ep 14, Bonus)
Katherine May on Enchantment, Building Community, Tasting Words, and a Drink of Lake Water (Season 5, Ep 13)
Andrew Krivak on the Inheritance of Loss, Death as a Character, and Like the Appearance of Horses (Season 5, Ep 12)
All episodes are available from Contemplify through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts worth their salt.
Arts & Articles
BLACK SHEEP OF BROADCASTING IS BACK (Contemplify.com): I have listened to more hours of T.D. Mischke’s voice than just about anyone. The radio renegade was my companion weeknights when I was in high school on the AM dial and helped me fall in love with the allure of offbeat banter done with sincerity, reflection, and joy of the mundane. Mischke has a new podcast that rallies the energies of his old radio show. It is simply called Mischke. I am so grateful to have him back in my ears.
FAITH OR FASCISM: WHEN OUR SPIRITUALITY BETRAYS THE OPPRESSED by Fr. Adam Bucko (Contemplative Witness with Adam Bucko): Adam Bucko is writing some of the most faith-filled and fervent perspectives on the pressing and calamitous times we are living in, calling us to stay awake, calling us to act.
KEEP MERTON WEIRD art by Adrienne Hunter and words by Rose M. Berger (buy the T-shirt): This shirt is rad!10 (h/t to Cassidy)
May this rekindle
your heart and prayers
and point your peepers
back up
to the night sky.
A spot of respite
on this pilgrim way.
by the fire,
Paul
All Bookshop purchase links give a kickback to a local New Mexico bookstore and Contemplify. Big thanks to all who support in this way.
Another James Finley phrase
In fact it is not magnanimous enough.Perhaps you know of word that is more expansive.
Destinations are just a necessary excuse to start. As so many have said, all the way to heaven, is heaven.
Sometimes translated as ‘pilgrim’
From his essay ‘Rain & Rhinoceroses’
Usually occurs outside of community
Contemplify never wants money to be a filthy barrier to practice. So if you want to practice weekly with this contemplative basecamp at Lo-Fi & Hushed but aren’t able to offer support (no sweat!), drop your name and email here, I will add you to the next practice. We would be thrilled to have you practicing with us.
Bourgeault, Cynthia. Thomas Keating: The Making of a Modern Christian Mystic (Boulder: Shambhala, 2024), 171.
Frykholm, Amy. Journey to the Wild Heart: Four Invitations to Contemplative Living (New York: Orbis, 2025), p 15.
Except for the QR code, but I will forgive it.
When it’s chilly outside,
pondering pilgrim poets
huddle by the hearth.
...
The moving mystics,
the wondering wanderers,
spend nights in the heart.