May NonRequired Reading List (+ 3 June days)
Contemplify / NRR #102 (apologies for the NRR leaking into June)
“You can try to square the circle down
But the God that you serve is God of the curve
The irreducible mystery going ‘round”
“This is one of the greatest experiences of my life!” the stranger whispershouted in my ear as he wrapped his leathery mitts around my arm. We had never met, but the exuberance of this elder confirmed my own. I was at the Driftless Water Defenders benefit concert in Decorah, Iowa with my brother and sister-in-law. The lineup was a Midwestern murderers’ row of songwriters; Greg Brown, Dave Moore, Pieta Brown, and Jeffrey Foucault (with Eric Heywood on pedal steel and John Convertino on drums to boot). A night that has already reached lore status in my memory. I have returned to it again and again in conversation, letters, and spiritual direction—all equal spaces punching out further musings.
The evening’s music swirled with kenotic ambience. The tone was set early by poignant—and true to the host organization’s name, driftless—speeches by activists rallying around the health of Iowa’s waterways. The musicians sat in a half circle onstage where I clocked a reserved giddiness on their faces. If ‘reserved’ and ‘giddiness’ feel like contradictory expressions, I invite you to spend more time in the Midwest. What followed was the swapping of songs between old hands, harmonizing on lyrics not fully known, slick guitar solos, stories rewawakened, historic moments held high (Greg read the Gettysburg Address for goodness sake!), cheeky barbs at the expense of the self-satisfied, and (mostly) egoless audience participation1.
The music that night flooded my being, and then, trailed me home to New Mexico like a lost dog a few days later. The night has found shelter in the warmth of memory.
It is by design that humans are porous enough for music to pass through them.2 Upon the first melodic notes of such driftless nights, my soul’s aperture widens so the light can flood in. A soft, hazy hue washes what is shrouded, what is untouched. Music works itself out through my blood, muscle, and bone, often rescuing hidden parts of myself from amputation. This kicks the kenotic can over. A surrendering occurs. The swash buckling ego drops his sword as he gets swept away by what is being poured through the music. When there is no weapon of defense or tool of aggression in hand, a found emptiness begins to align the what is of my personhood with the what is of reality. And a connection fueled by longing occurs. But if this kenosis leads to longing, where oh where does this longing born within lead me?
Longing recognizes longing. Longing remembers. It may be an ache for safety, for the beloved, for wholeness, for God, for a homeland. In the desert morning breeze, longing smells so much like hope. Both are unseen, fragrant, and find refuge when the wind brushes against their bodies. Longing loves to run faster than hope, and runs with the grace and swiftness of a gazelle, to feel the resistance of the wind. When longing runs towards the horizon of absence it can break into the sweaty hope of presence. From my vantage, this is how longing moves beyond desire for what it seeks to know or touch for certain, not by dismissing desire, but by ensouling that exact same desire with faith. Hope is catalyzed by this faith. A raw faith in a Mystery who longs to be present with us. A God who hides in the horizon of absence and the ground of being we run on. Be not surprised, this is God is a trickster, who rolls her smokes into her sleeves. We learn this when hope baptizes the brow of our longing with sweat.3
A thick ambience enfolds you in this sweat, a realization settles in and you are moved by the mystery of faith, though your eyes are blinded to both absence and presence.
I am beginning to horse around with the notion that the Kingdom of God is an ambience. Not ambience that trends toward style, but an undulating, corkscrewing substance that reveals the good, the true, and the beautiful. Ambience that is born out of the blood, piss, and shit of incarnate love4. A love indiscreetly recognized and mutually enjoyed between God and creation. One person can embody it in a room and it is a revelation. When another person is open to it, a conversion happens. And when a whole group welcomes it, well, it starts to sound like a big tent revival. It is a wind that blows where it will, and often trailed by a hoot and a holler. What I am sniffing out here is not your interest in setting up a big tent revival, but walking with your ambientic self straight into the VFWs, shelters, farmers markets, pawn shops, and universities of your community. The youngbloods, the lazy middle-agers, and the oldtimers all need a shot of your presence. Not your perfect presence, but your honest to goodness self.
Doing the work (and by golly, it is real work) takes training. Grace precedes and infuses the training. It is only by joining in the work and enjoying the grace of the Beloved that jaded burnt edges get flicked off in practice. The real work cracks open the hard candy shell to reveal the gooey centers of vulnerability in our communities and helps us hunker down to welcome the treaded wisdom of a tradition. We dedicate our efforts in this way. Our world tires of our marmelading bullshit. Our planet longs for humanity’s grounded presence. For each of us to be barefoot and pregnant with Christ5. To birth what needs living and to pass on what needs passing, one must abide in what demands abiding. The contagious ambience of the Kingdom of God can be felt growing in your womb and right between your toes.
Where can the ambience of the Kingdom of God be seen and who sees it? These have been the questions seated on my shoulder and whispered in my ears as the world bears the genocidal desecration in Gaza, the rise of global anti-semitism, and the “One Big Beautiful Bill” unfit for the common good. Loaded words and weighty consequences. I cannot escape it. I eat breakfast with my mind on the hungry children in Gaza, I hug my wife as a prayer for the two enjoined souls that died on the streets of D.C., and wash my eyes as a ritual offering for those with unhelpful excess.6 The Kingdom of God has not arrived in its fullness. Ambience is nuanced in its presencing of what is, and it proliferates when participated in. Hence we see it in ambientic flashes only after jumping in.
I believe amientic flashes of the Kingdom is like eating watermelon; one perfectly ripened watermelon is too much for a single person. The hydrating sweetness begs to be shared, with running juices perfuming your mouth and chin and sticking to your skin as you pass a slice on. There is a particular ambience to this earthy delight, and then before you know it, the inscendent7 moment has disappeared and you are left with a hard rind in your hand.
The Kingdom here and still coming could use a hand. To poach some words from the from the tip of this musing so it can land back on its tail, “You can try to square the circle down / But the God that you serve is God of the curve / The irreducible mystery going ‘round”. Most of life is walking around with a rind and this remembrance. Hopefully, that is enough to stir us into continual longing for this hidden and thankless work.
Contemplify seeks to encourage all contemplatives to step into this ambience. Each offering of Contemplify (podcasts, NonRequired Readings, Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practices) is meant to point to that ineffable presence. Thanks for your particular 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 ones, I raise my glass 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 top shelf community of practitioners or with the recording. Good, clean, contemplative fun. Hope to see you there.
(Also…because I am trying to make explicit what is 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 ever be a barrier to contemplative practice or contemplative community. Practice makes practice. Always delighted to add more practitioners to the circle).8
May NonRequired Reading List
Rediscovering the Divine: New Ways to Understand, Experience, and Express God by Cyprian Consiglio (Get it at the Public Library or Bookshop)
I have read Rediscovering the Divine twice. Once for each hand, action and contemplation. It is the type of book that begs return reads. The monk-musician-teaacher-writer Cyprian Consiglio's opening metaphor dropped me into a refreshing cold mountain lake. Where the visible nature of God are floating as islands on the water’s surface. Down below the islands tips are the unseen unmanifested mountains. What is seen, discovered, and danced with is the joy of the read. From the jump, Consiglio allows the universal energies of the Persons of Trinity to sway their hips.
Rediscovering the Divine is as mystical and as it is practical in relating to the Mystery of God. Drawing from the work of the late Bruno Barnhart (a fellow Camaldolese monk), Consiglio does the work of integration by laying the imaginal bricks sculpted from the clay of philosophical, scriptural, theological, interspiritual, and mystical sources. The easeful rediscoveries vivify the readers understanding of the Trinity, allowing the reader to relish the living metaphors they encounter,9 “the breath image stays strong, particularly if we think God is constantly blowing the breath of life into us, not just once at creation.”10
This book is for contemplative readers sitting with receptive hands for the gift of the Christian stream while gratefully being splashed by the wisdom of other traditions. Read it once, read it twice, submerge below the surface of what this text has to offer.
The Reenchanted World: On Finding Mystery in the Digital Age by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Get it at Harper’s Magazine )
Fair warning: There are some writers whose work I would read it if was written on toilet paper stuck to a zookeeper’s shoe. Karl Ove Knausgaard is one such writer. I read this twice as well (must be a season of rereading). Knausgaard puts himself as the living question mark in the query - why do I struggle to understand our ungrounded relationship to the technology we daily depend upon?
That may not be full question that you read, but it is the one that snagged me. In part one of this longform article, we get the problem, in part two. we get Knausagaard’s personal experience of dealing or ignoring the problem, and in part three, Knausgaard interviews technologist and philosopher James Bridle. And off to the races we go. The two wordsmiths eloquently banter on the abstraction of computing, the digital gap we experience between us and the world, and how computers dilute our incarnational experience of the world. The mystery of being is not irreducible to abstraction. Bridle goes as far to say, “The reason we are in the hopeless state we are in is that science doesn’t believe that what is unsayable is real.”
I will likely read this again, I have more to understand what is at play in this piece.
If you do not like Karl Ove Knausgaard’s writing this is not the article for you. If you enjoy a writer walking with you as they jot down notes of their discovery (relevant or not), you are in a for a treat.
Contemplify Update
Season Six is so, so, close to being launched. Pinky promise. Until then you can circle back through the first five seasons. 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
RESPONSIBILITY AS DESTINY: THOUGHTS ON THE MAHA MOVEMENT (YouTube) by Teddy Macker: One of my favorite poets, the great Teddy Macker, is speaking in public on the dignified necessity of prioritizing health. Doing this in a polarizing political environment, with nuance, with an eye beyond the limited landscape is daring. Pay attention to those seeking to unify at great cost in a befuddling system that dropkicks anyone who appears to be on the ‘other side’ other than their preferred one. Bravo, Teddy. You can also read the written version here.
HOW I PRAY (bedegriffithssangha.org.uk) by Fr. Bede Griffiths: I love this brief one page article by Fr. Bede Griffiths, succinct with guidance on how to pray, here is a taste, “If anyone asks me how I pray, my simple answer is that I pray the Jesus prayer. Anyone familiar with the story of a Russian pilgrim will know what I mean. It consists simply in repeating the words: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” I have used this prayer now for over 40 years and it has become so familiar that it simply repeats itself. Whenever I am not otherwise occupied or thinking of something else it is almost mechanical, just quietly repeating itself, and other times it gathers strength and can become extremely powerful.”
TIME TO TELL THE TRUTH (Front Porch Republic) by Emily Harrison: “It is no secret that teenagers throughout the developed world are in the throes of the worst mental health crisis ever documented. And it’s no secret that the proliferation of smartphones and social media has played a massive role in this crisis.” An important piece for parents related to how menacing smartphones and tablets can be for our kids.
THE WORK SONG (YouTube) by Dan Reeder: The most polarizing episode of Contemplify ever was musician and artist Dan Reeder. I heard lots of complaints. The cussing. His perspective. I had a blast in conversation with him and think him a wildly inventive and bold artist. Here is but a taste of Dan’s music, not appropriate for the ears of kids (and some adults). He sings the tune with his daughter and a choir of misfit beards.
Ambience!
Ambience!
Ambience!
Walking around with a rind,
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.
Mostly because there was a couple sassholes in the crowd without a clue.
My hunch is that you feel this too; perhaps in some other medium, but an opening of body, mind, soul, and spirit.
As my namesake St. Paul blesses in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Forgive the indelicate language, seems me need scrappier words these days to talk about love.
This an illusion to Meister Eckhart’s ‘birth of the Word in the soul’, not antiquated ideas.
And any of us who make over $60,000 USD, we fall into the global 1%, which is always worth remembering as invitations into sustainable simplicity as a practice of solidarity and generosity.
Inscendence: the impulse not to rise above the world (transcendence) but to climb into it, seek its core. (Thomas Berry) a la Robert MacFarlane
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.
obviously drawn from deep practice
Cyprian Consiglio, Rediscovering the Divine: New Ways to Understand, Experience, and Express God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2023), p.151
How do you write like this! It touches my soul: such a beautiful gift X Thankyou
Good thoughts (and writing), Paul. Thanks! You might dig the song "New Threats From The Soul" by Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band. He's got a line in there about seeing the kingdom from a tailgate but not from the front of the line. Your words seem to be written from the tailgate. Cheers.