The Contemplative Path Podcast

Celtic monks pictured the Holy Spirit not as a gentle dove but as a wild goose — loud, untamed, and just as likely to surprise or contradict you as comfort you. You'll sit with that image alongside a decades-old newsroom memory of wind as a sign of the Spirit, then move to harder ground: how to catch your own ego dressed up as devotion, and ask honestly…

In this contemplative talk, I explore Mary’s Magnificat — “My soul exalts the Lord” — as a mirror for our own hidden thrones of ego, ambition, and control. Contemplate how humility, not achievement, is the doorway to God’s presence, and consider a moment of stillness at your own point vierge. A gentle, grounding sit for anyone navigating grief, restless…

Some passages don't just get read — they get through. This one did, for me: "The Lord is near," from Philippians 4, echoed from Psalm 145's Qarov Adonai. In this guided meditation, we take that single Hebrew phrase and let it become breath — inhale, exhale, Qarov Adonai — until it moves from something you think to something you feel. It's a short practice, meant to anchor you in the truth that God is closer than your next breath, and to send you back into your day carrying that nearness with you.

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Morning congestion has a way of making the first breath of the day feel like a small negotiation. This practice offers a gentle way through it. Drawing on the yogic understanding of prana and apana, we begin with a few rounds of alternate nostril breathing to settle and center, then move into quicker, energizing breaths through the left nostril alone — a technique traditionally linked to awakening the right hemisphere, the seat of creativity and imagination.

Whether or not you hold that belief, the practice itself is enough: it opens the breath, softens the fog, and offers a felt sense of balance to carry into the day. We close with several deep, grounding breaths through both nostrils, easing into stillness as a doorway into seated meditation.

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Social media has taught us that yoga is about the pose — the deep backbend, the peak arm balance, the perfect thumbnail moment. But the word asana actually means “seat.” The original postures weren’t performances; they were simply a stable place to sit for meditation.

In this reflection, I trace that idea through Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation

A short, unhurried movement practice to ease the body awake before your day or your meditation. Working mostly from the floor, you'll open the hips, mobilize the spine through cat and cow, and gently activate the core and glutes before rising to ground through the feet and wake the torso.

Rather than jolting out of bed into frenetic energy, this practic…

On a humid Friday morning — mosquitoes and all — I found myself reflecting on a word I’d been circling for a long time but hadn’t quite named: misfit.

A fellow Substack writer, Bob Holmes, gave me the language I needed. The great mystics and contemplatives who came before us — Julian of Norwich, Hadewijch, Teresa of Ávila, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Thomas Merton — they too didn’t fit neatly into the prescribed boxes of their time.

They held the essential principles of their faith, but they kept walking into open rooms. They refused to put God in a box. They kept finding new names, new characteristics, new expressions of an all-loving, all-embracing Mystery.

In this video I explore the spiral of silence — that quiet, isolating experience of sitting in a religious or social community, hearing something said, and staying silent because you aren’t sure your inner knowing is welcome. And what it costs us when we pretend to believe what we don’t, just to belong.

If you’ve ever felt that your faith doesn’t check all the right boxes, that your spirituality is too wide or too strange or too searching for the community around you — this is for you. You are in a larger communion than you know.

🎥 This video is free for all subscribers — a gift for this Friday, since there was no Wednesday post. If this kind of contemplative conversation nourishes your inner life, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support makes it possible for me to keep showing up in this space — mosquitoes, migraines, and all.

The Contemplative Path is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

There are seasons when the story we’ve told about ourselves for so long begins to feel less like identity and more like a cage. Isaiah 43 speaks directly into that place — not with easy comfort, but with something more startling: the insistence that something new is already moving, whether we have noticed it or not.

This guided Lectio Divina practice moves through the four traditional movements — reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation — using a lyrical rendering of Isaiah 43 that invites you past analytical listening into a more receptive, prayerful presence. The text is read three times, each pass opening a different layer of attention. The final movement leaves you in silence with just two questions: Can you feel it? Do you not perceive it?

This practice is available here as a video. The audio version — lightly edited — will be released to Insight Timer in about a week.

Wherever you are, come as you are.

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This week the days got away from me — the morning quiet crowded out, the prayer rushed, the stillness harder to find than I’d like to admit. So on this Friday morning I did what I always do: I sat down, I settled in, and I let the words of Isaiah 43 do what they’ve always done. Meet me exactly where I am.

This is a Lectio Divina meditation — a practice of sacred, slow reading that invites you not just to absorb words but to let them land in you. We read the passage twice, letting a phrase rise up, letting something stir. Isaiah 43 is about release — of old losses, old victories, the story you’ve told yourself so long it’s become a kind of cage. And it’s about the new thing: already moving, already pushing upward like a seed through winter-hardened ground. Not asked. Not announced. Simply becoming.

A sleepy Shih Tzu makes a brief appearance. So do 11 birds — house sparrow, northern cardinal, American crow, red-winged blackbird, northern mockingbird, fish crow, mourning dove, Carolina wren, American robin, song sparrow, and common grackle — singing in the background the whole time, waiting to be noticed.

That’s really what this is about. Paying attention. Staying awake. Watching for what God is already doing in the wilderness of your unresolved grief, the desert of your depleted hope.

This meditation is free for everyone today — a gift for a Friday. If it found you at the right moment, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Every Friday I record something like this — a meditation, a reflection, a slower and quieter kind of companionship for the contemplative path. Your support makes it possible to keep showing up here, week after week, with something worth sitting still for.

And if paid isn’t where you are right now, sharing this with someone who needs a moment of quiet today is its own kind of gift.

Happy Friday. The birds are singing. The new thing is already moving.

The Contemplative Path is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Some mornings, the breath practice isn't enough. The mind won't settle, the thoughts keep circling — and what you need isn't more stillness, but movement. In this walking meditation recorded just before sunrise, I invite you to step outside with me and discover how changing your environment can break the grip of rumination, reconnect you to the present moment, and open a small door of hope.

Whether you're caring for aging parents, navigating loss, or simply carrying too much, this gentle walk reminds you: you are not alone in this, all things are changing, and this too shall pass.

The Contemplative Path is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.