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Season Five

EPISODE FIFTEEN | season finale
Peter Traben Haas on Prayer as a Practice of Centering, Abiding, & Radiating

“These prayers act as both a holy pause – a space to rest into when our own words seem to fail us – and a spark – a way of igniting our recommitment to be a loving presence in the world. Full of gratitude, humility, and devotion, Haas calls us back into communion with ourselves, with creation, and with the Holy One.”

— Christine Valters Paintner

EPISODE FOURTEEN | BONUS
Backporch Advent Outpost with Hadewijch and the Mother of Love

“We must, without sparing, lose all for all.”

— Hadejwich of Antwerp

EPISODE THIRTEEN
Katherine May on Enchantment, Building Community, Tasting Words, and a Drink of Lake Water

“I love Katherine May’s new book, Enchantment.… It’s a beautiful offering of light, truth and charm in these strange, dark times.”

— Anne Lamont

EPISODE TWELVE
Andrew Krivak on the Inheritance of Loss, Death as a Character, and Like the Appearance of Horses

“Krivak is a novelist, poet, and memoirist whose work has been compared to William Faulkner’s in its rich sense of place, to Wendell Berry’s in its attentiveness to natural beauty, and to Cormac McCarthy’s in its deep investigation of violence and myth. Yet all of Krivak’s writing, and especially his fiction, presents a truly singular vision.”

— Image Journal

EPISODE ELEVEN | BONUS
Remembering Dr. Barbara Holmes (Replay of 2016 Conversation)

“Dr. B was passionate about expanding our understanding of the Christian contemplative tradition, reminding us that contemplation isn’t the sole domain of those who can retreat to quiet places. She understood, from her own life and from the traditions she carried forward, that contemplative practices must also arise in the midst of struggle, in the heart of communities pressed against the weight of history and oppression. She helped us see that the Christian contemplative tradition, too often framed through a narrow, Eurocentric lens, was far richer and more diverse than we had realized. It’s a tradition that belongs to all of us—and she called us to honor it fully by embracing its breadth and depth.”

— Brian McLaren

EPISODE TEN
Amy Leach on Becoming Salt of the Universe

“I was recently giving a sermon and found myself spontaneously quoting from Amy Leach’s singular and surprising new book. I expect many readers will find their own lives troubled (in the Biblical sense) and enlightened by her fresh perceptions. She has lived into a hard-earned and entirely credible wisdom, the best evidence for which is her irrepressible sense of humor. One feels companioned by this book, and sorry when it ends.”

— Christian Wiman

EPISODE NINE
Ben Katt on Getting Quiet, Midlife, and the Power of Ritual (also, we chat about David Hasselhoff)

“A fantastically written, powerfully wise offering from Ben Katt…a gift to our world of pain and promise.”

— Krista Tippett

EPISODE EIGHT
Jeffrey Martin on Thank God We Left the Garden, Letters, and Literature

“Songs that are stark in their simplicity, yet emotionally rich in a way that can catch your breath in your throat or leave your eyes suddenly damp.”

— Paste

EPISODE SEVEN
Susan Murphy on Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis, the vast meaning of Country, and Cooling Fires

“A powerful and important plunge into the reality of the mind and climate.”

— Joan Halifax

EPISODE SIX
Drew Jackson on Touch the Earth, Poetry as a Lifesaver, and the Importance of Lucille Clifton

“In Touch the Earth, Drew Jackson’s poetry offers a word-weary world a new language of engagement, disruption, and insight.”

— Dr. Barbara Holmes

EPISODE FIVE
Tracy Cochran on the Art of Presence, Mistakes as Practice, & the Grief of Awakening

“This is a wonderful, wise, and tender book. Its elegant and gifted storytelling will change you.”

— Jack Kornfield

EPISODE FOUR
Brian McLaren on Life After Doom, Patient Urgency, & Complexifying Hope

“As rich and thoughtful as all of Brian McLaren’s work, but with a particular urgency!”

— Bill McKibben

EPISODE THREE
Cassidy Hall on Queering Contemplation, Letting Go of Thomas Merton, and Expanding Foundations

“Hall retrains our imaginations for a spirituality that is more strange, more beautiful, and more honest than the doctrines we’ve often been cornered into.”

— Cole Arthur Riley

EPISODE TWO
Dr. Larry Ward on America’s Racial Karma, the Fragrance of Wisdom, and Learning How To Suffer Less

“In this taut, fearless, and well-argued manifesto, Larry Ward offers us a deeply insightful analysis of America’s racial karma—of how it operates individually and collectively—and how it can be worked with and transformed. Drawing on Buddhist psychology, trauma theory, neuroscience, and years of practice … the result is a searing, liberative, and tender work—a book that is both urgent and necessary.”

— Jan Willis

EPISODE ONE
David James Duncan on the Unintentional Menagerie of Sun House, Friendship, and the Beguines

“Sun House is not a mere book, but a singular world in which to reside, and to feel more alive. Laced with humor and high-lonesome lyricism, this sweeping tale locates the grand in the smallest particulars, reaches its heights by flooding us with light and loss, and arrives, ultimately, in hard-won hope.”

— Chris Dombrowski

TRAILER
Harmonizing In The Empty Fullness

“All things speak God…all creatures would like to echo God in all their works.”

— Meister Eckhart

Season Four

EPISODE SIXTEEN / BONUS
Turn the Morning into Forever

“a thousand years may be beyond me / but I can turn this morning into forever.”

— T’ao Ch’ien

EPISODE FIFTEEN / BONUS
Reduced to the Scale of Our Competence

“We must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence.”

— Wendell Berry

EPISODE FOURTEEN / BONUS
Eat the Wild Thing

“Let the wild rompus begin.”

— Maurice Sendak

EPISODE THIRTEEN / BONUS
Lo-Fi & Hushed / 2023 Winter Solstice Session / To Know the Dark

“To know the dark, go dark.”

— Wendell Berry

EPISODE TWELVE
Listen to the Rice, the Rice Will Teach You Everything with Lucien Miller

“Oshida’s life and legacy is an experience of the spiritual senses knowing the mystical voice. Biblical in sources and Buddhist in form, reading this book took me as a reader to the great pause of silence.”

— Sister Meg Funk, OSB

EPISODE ELEVEN / BONUS
In Hard Times, In All Times, Eat Sacred Words

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”

— ‘Wild Geese‘ by Mary Oliver

EPISODE TEN
Kim Haines-Eitzen on Practicing the Cello in the Dark and Sonorous Deserts

“A meditative blend of history and travelogue . . . brings the soundscape of the desert to life.”

— New Yorker

EPISODE NINE
Lerita Coleman Brown on Waiting for a Word in the Heart

“I highly recommend What Makes You Come Alive to churches, religious and educational institutions, and spiritual seekers everywhere who are looking for an inward journey that finds its home in the world of nature, people, and things.”

— Walter Earl Fluker

EPISODE EIGHT / BONUS
Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practice Session (September 2023 / Autumn Equinox)

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

— Mary Oliver

EPISODE SEVEN
David Shumate on When Words Become Thunder

“David Shumate’s High Water Mark is absolutely fresh and unpredictable. . . . You will be surprised by your confrontation with the utterly first rate.”

— Jim Harrison

EPISODE SIX
Douglas E. Christie on Depth Without Resolution

“I have been pursuing the love ‘born of and nurtured by darkness’ all of my life. In The Insurmountable Darkness of Love, Douglas Christie invites readers to embark on a journey of ‘silent attention’ awakening, shedding, and finally the embrace of what cannot be known. So, how do you write about something that cannot be captured in words? Christie uses vulnerability, life stories and memories as well as excellent scholarship. The end result is breathtaking!”

— Barbara A. Holmes

EPISODE FIVE
Carmen Acevedo Butcher Follows the Mystical Tugs on the Heart

“Everything is possible for those who believe, even more for those who hope, still more for those who love, and most of all for those who practice and persevere in these three powerful paths.”

– Brother Lawrence

EPISODE FOUR
Lisa Wells on Holding a Fierce and Loving Gaze

“We are living in an extreme moment, and one where it’s very hard to know what effective action looks like against crises of a scale we’ve not before encountered. These accounts of people trying to grapple with that reality are sometimes inspiring and often cautionary, and always a spur to thinking about how the rest of us might accomplish the most we can.”

– Bill McKibben

EPISODE THREE
Scott Avett on Being Here for the Feast

“When you look out his [Scott’s] window he’s painting for you.”

– Eric Fischl

EPISODE TWO
Haleh Liza Gafori on Putting Mystery in the Middle

“Haleh Liza Gafori’s ecstatic and piercing translation has lifted a veil, bringing Rumi closer into the quick of our present. Each poem is a divine invitation. Free your mind. Drown in love.”

— V (formerly Eve Ensler)

EPISODE ONE
Belden Lane on the Unbroken Desert of God

“[Belden] Lane invites us to see the world around us as nothing less than God around us.”

— James Martin, S.J.

SEASON FOUR TRAILER
Your Naked Freedom

“Your naked freedom
is your shield.”

— Rumi