In this contemplative practice, "Lectio of Belonging: Resting in the Voice of Love," John Farrelly guides us in a meditation on Psalm 100:3.

John Farrelly has been married to Mary for 40 years and is a dad and grandad. He is a Special Needs Assistant working with 5th- and 6th-grade children with autism. He is a spiritual director and coordinator of the Guided Prayer Centre at Knock Shrine in Ireland. He leads contemplative retreats and founded the Silence@Six online prayer community that gather each day for 30 minutes of silent prayer in The Online Meditation Chapel. He contributes regularly to Contemplative Outreach’s Word of the Week reflections and is just now birthing a new Substack called Living from The Quiet Heart.

Liza Moore reads her poem "Under Van Gogh's Stars," and Johanna Caton, O.S.B., reads her poem "Little Dog" from our current Winter issue.

Liza Moore is an artist and storyteller who resides with her husband and son in Round Rock, TX. She has created three children’s books, and some of her artwork, poetry, and essays have been published in various journals, including Fathom Mag, Ekstasis Magazine, EcoTheo Review, Apple Valley Review, Thimble Lit Mag, Humana Obscura, St. Katherine Review, and Calla Press. To learn more about Liza and her creative work, please visit https://campsite.bio/liza_moore_art.

Johanna Caton, O.S.B, is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey, in Kent, England. Her poems have appeared in a number of publications, including The Christian Century, St. Austin Review, Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, One Art, Today’s American Catholic, Fathom, Fare Forward, Windhover, The Catholic Poetry Room, and in two anthologies published by Amethyst Press: All Shall be Well, Poems for Julian of Norwich and Thin Places and Sacred Spaces. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

In this episode, Luke Wood guides us in the contemplative practice of silence, from our current Winter issue. We invite you to find a quiet spot during a pause in your day to engage in this meditation.

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Luke Wood is a writer and artist who serves in the fields of spiritual formation, ministry, and counseling. His work explores the integration of spiritual formation and psychology, helping others experience healing and transformation. He lives in Colorado with his wife and their three children.

Trevor Cunnington reads his poem "Banlieue Blues," and Richard Jackson reads his poem "The Centurion's Report," from our current Winter 2026 issue.

Trevor Cunnington is a writer/artist/educator who lives in Toronto. They are the poetry editor of KayTell Ink, and their work has appeared in Poetry Super Highway, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Literary Heist, BlazeVox, God's Cruel Joke, and others. You can find them on Instagram @trevorcunnington.

Richard Jackson is the author of eighteen books of poems as well as a dozen of essays, interviews, translations, and editions. Winner of Guggenheim, Fulbright, NE, NEH, and The Order Of Freedom from the President of Slovenia, his poems have been translated into seventeen languages.

Rachel Grandey reads her review, "'A kind of tribute to what we are': A Review of Marilynne Robinson's Reading Genesis."

Rachel Grandey is a UK-based doctoral researcher in Extinction Studies, exploring religious perspectives around environment and culture in South East Asia. Her writing has featured in Agape Review, Amethyst Review, Paper Dragon and Monk in the World. She can be found on social media as @RachelGrandey or at rachelgrandey.wordpress.com.

Temima Weissmann reads her poem "It Happened," and Dion O'Reilly reads her poem "It Is What It Is."

Temima Weissmann is an eighteen-year-old poet from Passaic, NJ. She was the Editor-in-Chief of her high school literary journal Sambatyon, and was awarded The Hersh & Fannie Fluss Memorial Award for Excellence in Hebrew Literature at her high school graduation. Previously published in The Lerhaus, Temima's poetry explores the presence of religion and faith in everyday life.

Dion O'Reilly is the author of Sadness of the Apex Predator (Cornerstone 2025), Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books 2020); and Limerence, a 2025 finalist for the Floating Bridge Chapbook Competition. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, Rhino, Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, The Sun, and Rattle. A ​podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective and co-editor of Ent•Trance Journal, she splits her time between California and Washington.

In "Making Sense of Things in Community," poet Jon Bishop speaks with Vita Poetica Interviews Editor Christopher Honey about the influence of his Catholic faith and monastic community on his writing, teaching, and intellectual life.

Jon Bishop holds an MFA in poetry from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His work has appeared in both print and online, and he lives in New Hampshire with his family.

On the podcast today, Kelly Sawin reads her poems "In the Beginning" and "Study in Light" from our current Winter issue.⁠

Kelly Sawin's work has appeared in Ekstasis Magazine, The Windhover, River Teeth: Beautiful Things, the Appalachian Review, Susurrus, the Virginia Literary Review, and elsewhere. She was a finalist in the 2024 National Poetry Series, a semifinalist in the 2025 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry and in the 2024 Orison Poetry Prize. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with her husband and three small children.

K.D. Battle reads his essay "In Defense of Bad Meditation" from our Winter 2026 issue.

K.D. Battle is a multi-genre writer and teacher living in Kalamazoo—he's a father, Navy submarine veteran, and a composer of musical theatre, and more. Battle's poems, stories, and essays have been published in anthologies and literary journals like White Wall Review, Line of Advance, and Vita Poetica, and he recently won the Wright Memorial Writing Award. He earned his MFA from Western Michigan University, where he is now pursuing a PhD and serves as the nonfiction editor for Third Coast. Battle is a Buddhist and invites you to walk the Dao with kindness, humility, and grit.

Mary B. Moore reads her poem "Everything in the Dream is Me, Says Jung," and James B. Nicola reads his poem "Epiphany XIV: Nigh."

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Mary B. Moore’s newest poetry collection Amanda Chimera, won Madville Publishing’s Arthur Smith prize and came out January, 2025. Prior poetry books include Dear If (Orison Books 2022), a contest finalist; Flicker (Dogfish Head Prize, 2016); The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State U Poetry Center, 1997); and prize-winning chapbooks Amanda and the Man Soul and Eating the Light. Poems have appeared lately in New Letters, Catamaran, POETRY, I-70 Review, South Dakota Review, Birmingham Poetry Review (BPR), NELLE, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner. ⁠

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James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.⁠