“[Belden] Lane invites us to see the world around us as nothing less than God around us.” — James Martin, S.J. Belden Lane is Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University, author of numerous books including The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality and Backpacking with the Saints: Wilderness Hiking as Spiritual Practice. Belden Lane is a true elder, and in our conversation he exhibits that when we talk about wild places, the rough play and laughter of God, grief after losing a son, what we can learn from trees, and much more. Visit Belden Lane at his …
Author: Swanson
Your Naked Freedom
Good poetry is inherently spiritual. It is a clown car of interpretation. Once a door of perception is opened, endless and surprising “Ahas” tumble out. When you have a spiritual teacher who embodies a poem, their words become thunder and contemplation soaks you. The teacher who is having the greatest impact on me right now does this. And this teacher is uneducated and illiterate. This teacher is my 4-years old son. Two days ago my wife Laura had a meeting with his teacher. Laura learned that that morning our son had been spouting mildly inappropriate song lyrics to his classmates, …
Spare Me Nothing
“I asked God to spare me nothing but life.” — Teddy Macker I first learned to practice from William Johnston’s book Christian Zen back when I was a shaggy haired 20 year old. It was a quake book, a book that shook my foundation, just as Brother Lawrence had done for me 5 years earlier. In Christian Zen the intersection of the disciplined approach of Zen and the pure gift of Christian contemplation spoke to me. As I deepened in my practice, I put Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God on the shelf for a few years, as …