How do we stay present for the people and the world around us, particularly in an age of infinite technological distractions? Kell went to a Buddhist retreat in search of answers. The Four Mantras of True Presence, as described by Thich Nhat Hahn, are beautiful and economical pieces of wisdom that point us to the practice of presence.

On the way to meet Jean Vanier in Chicago on May 5, 2006, on assignment for the Chicago Sun-Times, where she was the religion columnist at the time, Cath got a phone call telling her she'd won a two-week trip to Africa. Little did she know how that news and her sacred encounter with Vanier a few minutes later would be the catalyst for a seismic shift that changed her life and the lives of her family forever. 

“Your beloved and your friends were once strangers,” John O’Donohue wrote in Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.“Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them.”

PRECISELY! Cath has two best friends, or, rather, a BFF (Kell) and her "best, good friend" Bubba the cotton farmer from Yazoo City, Mississippi. She's had both of these precious, hilarious, marvelous Anam Cara for almost 30 years, and cannot imagine life without their equally goofy arses.  

Kell and her little brother Trip made a pilgrimage to Omaha, Nebraska to do a three-day silent retreat with Gravity Center. It was the first time they'd seen each other since they both started their journey with contemplative spirituality. Six months ago, Trip invited Kell to join him on his 11th Step journey not knowing how much change it would bring to her own life and faith. In this episode, Kell and Trip talk about Trip's road to recovery, the 11th of the 12 Steps, and how prayer and meditation are key to finding our healthy and whole, true selves.

Kell says: "Well, we survived the silence. We thrived in it, actually. Trip and I talk on the way home from Omaha to St. Louis, about the three-day silent retreat and what the power of contemplative prayer and the peace of community—even when no one's talking—can bring to our lives.

Kevin Mello, the co-founder and president of Hotel California By The Sea (the premier age & gender specific substance abuse treatment and life wellness centers in Southern California and Washington State), sat down with Cath in his Laguna Beach home recently to share with her one of the most extraordinary stories of redemption, resurrection, and hope we've ever heard. From the depths of despair where he very much walked through the valley of the shadow of death and a living hell of alcoholism and heroine addiction, a ray of hope reached Kevin in rehab in the form of the Dalai Lama's book The Art of Happiness. It "cracked me open," says Kevin, now sober for more than 16 years, and helped him begin to work the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, finding a "spiritual solution to a spiritual problem" of addiction. Last Christmas, in India, he got to spend time one-on-one with His Holiness to thank him for being the catalyst for his recovery. 

It's a powerful, hopeful tale you won't soon forget.

Kell’s meta-tation on her time in silent retreat, the voice that seemed to come out of that silence, and the healing it provided.

Also, Dame Julian of Norwich respects a hazelnut, Thomas Keating teaches us about our core needs, and Richard Rohr explains why, for the mystic, respect is about listening to the other.  

And get this: It’s all connected.

A meta-tation by Cath about her enduring (if counter-intuitive) draw toward silence, experienced at a Quaker meeting, by avoiding church for 15 years, and in the film she's seen more times than any other (even The Big Lebowski): the 2.5-hour documentary film about Carthusian monks at a monastery in the French Alps—Into Great Silence.

About six months ago a friend asked Kell if she was going to go to an audition in town. Kell’s reply: “Meh. I don’t think so. I think I’m gonna be a mystic instead.”

Join us for this journey “into the mystic” as Van Morrison would say.

How do I start centering prayer?  

How can I go on retreat? Where?

We also answer a few questions that have come up from Issue 1 on the Enneagram.

Don’t think of this as homework.

But Kell’s a teacher, so...it kinda is.

Kell & Cath explore *everything you ever wanted to know about the Enneagram but were afriaid to ask.

What is the Enneagram? Where did it come from? How do you use it? What are its spiritual, psychological, group dynamics, familial, and parlor game applications? How do you figure out what your number is? What if you don't like your number? 

What are these nine types and, more importantly, how do they correspond to the cast of The Big Lebowski? Who's the more classic SIX: Jeffrey "Real Men Also Cry" Lebowski, the Chief of Police of Malibu, or "Kieffer" aka Nihilist No. 2 (played by the ever-versatile Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers)?

All this and more (including swag give aways) in Issue 1, Episode 1.