“The gate of heaven opens for us all, but the hinge swings outward as much as inward, leading not into some hermetically sealed chamber, but a spacious meadow where we find every person we’ve ever known, a field of solitaries loved beyond measure, a destination as near as our next breath.”
— Fred Bahnson
Immersion Journalist of the Soul with Fred Bahnson
Fred Bahnson is an immersion journalist of the soul and one of my favorite public contemplative intellectuals. If you’ve been hanging out around Contemplify, you have likely heard his name or seen links to his work. And I am sure that won’t be changing anytime soon. His most recent piece appears in Harper’s Magazine and is called ‘The Gate of Heaven is Everywhere’. It charts the contemplative turning in our times with gusto, charm, and sustained attention to the deep roots of the Christian contemplative tradition. Check it out, you’ll dig it.
Much of our conversation plunges into Fred’s book, Soil and Sacrament which is a record of a pilgrimage of depth across the topsoil of sundry landscapes. Bahnson traverses through community gardens (Christian & Jewish), a Bennedictine monastery, and communal subsistence farming in Mexico. Within these pages, The incarnational questions I always walk around with in the back pocket of my heart echo throughout – how then shall I live? How then shall we live?
Our conversation covers a lot of ground on top of this, Fred’s incredible articles at Harper’s, The Sun, and elsewhere, contemplative practices within family life, conversations with Barry Lopez, Irish music, and so much more.
For those of you new to Fred’s work, here is the breakdown…Fred Bahnson is author of Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith (Simon & Schuster). He directs the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being Program at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. A former Kellogg Food & Community fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, he is the recipient of a 2012 North Carolina Arts Council fellowship in creative nonfiction. He previously served as the director of Anathoth Community Garden, a ministry he co-founded at Cedar Grove United Methodist Church. His writing has appeared in Orion, The Sun, Christian Century and “Best American Spiritual Writing 2007,” and he is co-author, with Norman Wirzba, of Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation (IVP).
Seriously folks, Fred is a rare journalist, he brings a contemplative mind and spirit to his stories and interviews. In my opinion, that is why they breakthrough the noise of fast food faith and culture to reveal a much bigger and more beautiful Mystery begging to be explored in word and deed.
Follow Fred Bahnson on Twitter: @fredbahnson
Episode Show Notes
Resources & People Mentioned
- Iraneaus
- Blue Sapphire
- Thomas Merton
- Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
- Abba Moses
- Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Reader Come Home by Maryanne Wolf
- St. Isaac of Syria
- Barry Lopez The Sun Interview
- The Sun
- Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
- Crossing the Open Ground by Barry Lopez
- Light Action in the Carribbean by Barry Lopez
- ‘Sliver of Sky‘ Harper’s piece by Barry Lopez
- Maurice Manning
- Wendell Berry
- Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
- James Finley
- James Joyce
- Richard Rohr
- Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture by Ellen F. Davis
- Caol Ila Single Malt Whisky
Drink Recommendation
Questions
- Why did you learn to play the fiddle?
- When you hear the word “contemplative”, how does that moniker relate to you or your work?
- How does that manifest in your day-to-day life in practice or a rhythm?Family life?
- If someone were going to teach a class on the contemplative formation of Fred Bahnson, what would be the 3 mandatory readings or works that formed you that would definitely be on that syllabus?
- Your interview with Barry Lopez in The Sun was a piece of deep reflection for me and a couple of friends, what is it about Barry Lopez outlook or constitution, that speaks to you?
- I read Soil & Sacrament overlooking Lake Michigan while visiting some family. It was the perfect setting for me to read your book. I found it a joy to read slowly, soaking in the poetics of your writing and the landscapes and interior folds that your were turning over. It felt intimate and communal, what type of person were you hoping would pick it up?
- Try something brand new for this podcast, I am going to list some short phrases or ideas that stem from your book and I invite you to reflect on their contemplative importance in your life or the life of a contemplative…or not, may just be a quirk I picked up from my perspective. Kind of a kaleidoscope view of the immense beauty of your book. No wrong answers, just curious to see how these flow in your being
- Tell me what the phrase “We beg you, God, make us truly alive” means to you?
- “You put your body where the question is, then you walk the question.”
- In the chapter on your time in Chispas, Mexico you say “Instead of following Jesus I had been following abstract ideals: Activism. Social Change. These had become my idols.” (75). To me this relates back to walking the question, how does abstraction and incarnation play out in your days now?
- One of my favorite ideas that i’ve read in the last year and that you brought to life was that the “edge is not so much a place as it is a heightened transfer of energy that happens in the meeting of two distinct entities” (117) and you say the same is true for relationships. Beyond being a classic Bon Jovi song, what does “living on the edge” mean to you?
- You observe this perennial longing seeded within you and you traverse to 4 different communities of faith in the Divine, human, non-human, soil, and seed. In this posture of humble attention, what great allowings seemed to grow more naturally in this type of environment?
- What shifts do you see in this landscape of whole-making in a contemplative ecology that bring you hope?
- What drink would you pair with this conversation?
photo by Contemplify
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