Jan 31, 2017
Genuine hardship is an essential part of the work of maturity in the Christian life. And one of the most damaging fallacies of pop-Christianity is that experiences of distance from God, isolation and aridity are signs of regression (or as my tradition so often refers to them: “back-sliding”). One need look no...
Jan 24, 2017
How do you know when God is talking? There are some people who claim to hear the voice of God constantly – in every impulse they have, every chance event or random encounter. And others who have never had an inkling of divine communication. The classical tradition says that neither of these pictures is accurate....
Jan 22, 2017
Is it possible to have an unmediated experience of God? A direct encounter with the divine that transcends any use of the senses or even the intellect? The classical answer is – yes! And its pursuit is the goal of the mystic tradition (an element of the spiritual life that is accessible to us all, […]
Jan 17, 2017
In this episode, we turn to the next of our spiritual “personality types” (i.e., attraits) – the apophatic-speculatives. What defines an apophatic is a basic desire to escape distraction. They are the ones who love the very idea of a silent retreat or the spiritual practice of “simplicity.” They are not...
Jan 14, 2017
Just as some people need faith to make intellectual sense, so others need to feel it – to have the emotional experience of God’s presence, to know in the manner of the heart and not the head. These are the “affectives.” (And all of us are affective to a degree, some just more so than […]