Jesus was a practical guy, and his practical approach to spirituality seems to easily lost in the midst of contemporary theological and theoretical debates. This episode invites you to take a very practical approach to your spiritual life by asking the question, "What should I do?" And rather than take the 'just try harder' approach, we can become wise and skillful at choosing the kinds of active practices - real life stuff - that will teach us how to trust and partner with God in the everyday mess of life. 

This season we are discussing three main areas of Christian practice. First stop: Contemplative Practice- what is it and why does it matter? What's the difference between meditation and contemplation? Who was Guigo II and why should you care? Is there still a case to be made for regular bible reading and prayer? 

I hope this little talk inspires you to try some new/old ways of connecting with and receiving from God. For more reading, check out Guigo's book "The Ladder of Monks". For daily guided contemplative practices, check out the "Pray as You Go" app, or their website.

Many of us with evangelical "roots" were handed a belief system called Christianity, and much of that system has been called into question in recent years. The current crisis of faith that many are experiencing could rightly be called a crisis of the failure of belief systems to deliver the promises found and hoped for in the gospels. It has also created a crisis of identity - what does it mean to be a Jesus follower, a Christian, a believer, etc?

This next season of episodes will explore practices, rather than beliefs, as the sphere in which we "work out our faith." The challenge is that so few of us emerging from the evangelical milieu have a comprehensive picture of what constitutes Christian practice and why. So let's explore that!

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I wish I heard more people talk about the spiritual life in such plain language! Evelyn, in her final chapter of the book "The Spiritual Life" addresses some of the biggest and most common challenges presented to those pursuing the spiritual life (at least in the early stages) in the shortest chapter of her book. I offer a brief summary of each, and a practice at the end that I think wraps things up nicely :)

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In this episode we are looking at the active life - all the things we do in a day - and asking, "How can we cooperate with God in the middle of all this?" What does my mundane life have to do with divine reality? Is spirituality simply seeking contemplative experiences and disregarding everything in between? Evelyn Underhill's book "The Spiritual Life" helps us address the need to learn how to live in cooperation with God as we do all that we do, and gives us (through St. John of the Cross) a simple test we can use to know if we are cooperating with God.

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In this episode, I attempt to get as practical as possible when talking about connecting with God. What is the difference between doing religious or spiritual activities in a way that connects us to God versus doing them in a way that disconnects us. The Pharisees (as recorded in the gospels) are an interesting study in how one can try really hard but end up on the wrong path. I am willing to be that many of us have tried things in the past, but struggled with feeling like we were successful. But there is a way to practice that actually ushers us into the Kingdom of God, and it might not be what you think. 

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Let's think about what we mean when we talk about connecting with God. In this episode I am using Evelyn Underhill's second talk in a series of four on the Spiritual Life to help us, and I think her description is prescient for the situation we find ourselves in today. I hope this discussion is thoughtful and challenging, and I hope you can discuss your thoughts with others. We will be having an in-person discussion around these ideas on August 25 - see the event page if you're interested in joining that conversation.

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In this season, we will be using Evelyn Underhill's book "The Spiritual Life" as a guide for provoking us to think bigger about Christian spirituality. As always, we will try to bring a very practical approach while dealing with such big ideas. In this episode, we ask the question, "What is the spiritual life?" In other words, how did Jesus (and the many great spiritual teachers within our tradition) see the project of connecting with God, and how do they encourage us to see it and approach it? 

For a reference to the practice I describe at the end of the podcast, see Francis de Sales' "Introduction to the Devout Life", Part 2, ch. 2, 10, and 11. Here's a link to a free pdf of his book.

This is my attempt at wrapping things up by tying the concepts together from the last 5 episodes! I hope you have enjoyed this series, and that it has in some way enlarged and excited your vision for life within that plane of existence Jesus called the Kingdom. 

If we are hoping to get a sense of what Jesus means when he uses the phrase "The Kingdom of God," we might not find a better word than freedom. It essentially means freedom from coercion and control, and freedom to be whatever and whoever we truly are. But controlling and dictatorial pressures exert their influence on us in a variety of ways, both from within and without. This means that becoming free will require different processes depending on the source of our bondage. In this teaching, Jesus invites a group of excited people to join in the freedom of the Kingdom, but when he tells them what it will like they turn into an angry mob set on killing him. What did they miss? Why could they not join him?