Contemplify
209 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★★★ - 153 ratingsThe Contemplify podcast kindles the examined life for contemplatives in the world. Through artful musings & conversations with scholars, creatives, and master teachers each episode delivers a subtly intoxicating* exchange on the contemplative lifestyle with practical takeaways to emulate in daily life.
Host, Paul Swanson, is a husband, father and contemplative educator at the Center for Action and Contemplation and co-host of Another Name for Every Thing with Richard Rohr**.
*Contemplify is best served with a pint in hand. Please listen responsibly.
** All shenanigans, tom foolery and bally-hoo posted on Contemplify are my own. Contemplify is not representative of the Center for Action and Contemplation or Richard Rohr on any matter.
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Episodes
Lo-Fi & Hushed / 2023 Winter Solstice Session / To Know the Dark
January 02, 2024 23:40 - 32 minutes - 26.4 MBEach solstice and equinox Contemplify offers a public Lo-Fi & Hushed contemplative practice session for both free and supporting subscribers of the Non-Required Reading List. For those interested, go tell it on the mountain… The third week of Advent salted on joy. Not because of the circumstances, but despite them. The work remains to create the conditions for the gift of joy to emerge. The candlelight had built around the Advent wreath and solstice was breaking into a light jog. The arms o...
Listen to the Rice, the Rice Will Teach You Everything with Lucien Miller
November 29, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutes - 30.2 MB"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 Lucien Miller received his PhD in comparative literature from Berkely and taught Comparative Literature and Chinese at the University of Massachusetts. He is a deacon, spiritual director, and author. Lucien and I talk about his book, Jesus in the Hands o...
In Hard Times, In All Times, Eat Sacred Words
November 09, 2023 02:21 - 33 minutes - 26.9 MB"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 Carmen Acevedo Butcher, PhD, is an author, teacher, poet, and award-winning translator of spiritual texts. Today Carmen and I talk about the importance of practice; chanting, lectio divina,walking meditation, poetry, drawing, and other customized pecularily particu...
Kim Haines-Eitzen on Practicing the Cello in the Dark and Sonorous Deserts
October 25, 2023 07:02 - 58 minutes - 47.1 MBDr. Kim Haines-Eitzen is a Professor of Religious Studies with specialties in Early Christianity, Early Judaism, and other ancient Mediterranean Religions at Cornell University. Her book Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks—and What It Can Teach Us explores the dynamic relationships between ambient environmental landscapes and the religious imagination, especially in the case of desert monasticism. Dr. Haines-Eitzen was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Nazareth. ...
Lerita Coleman Brown on Waiting for a Word in the Heart
October 11, 2023 07:02 - 58 minutes - 46.7 MB"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 - Editor and Director of the Howard Thurman Papers Project Dr. Lerita Coleman Brown is a retreat leader, speaker, spiritual companion, and professor emerita of psychology at Agnes Scott College. Professor Brown frequently speaks on cont...
Lo-Fi & Hushed Contemplative Practice Session (September 2023 / Autumn Equinox)
September 27, 2023 20:26 - 31 minutes - 25.2 MBLo-Fi & Hushed is weekly space for the contemplative practice of lectio divina with poetry. This practice is graceful, transformative, and subdued. Lo-Fi & Hushed is available worldwide, on Riverside livestream, and you can participate from the hallows of your own home. “I do not complain of suffering for love, it becomes me always to submit to her, whether she commands in storm or stillness, one can know her only in herself. This is an unconceivable wonder. Which has thus filled my h...
David Shumate on When Words Become Thunder
September 13, 2023 07:02 - 1 hour - 49 MB"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 David Shumate is the author of The Floating Bridge and High Water Mark, winner of the 2003 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared widely in literary journals and has been anthologized in Good Poems for Hard Times, The Best American Poetry and The Writer’s Almanac. Shumate is poet-in-residence at Marian U...
Douglas E. Christie on Depth Without Resolution
August 30, 2023 07:02 - 1 hour - 50.6 MBDouglas E. Christie, Ph.D., is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is author of The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Early Christian Monasticism; The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology; and The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss and the Common Life. He is the founding editor of the journal Spiritus and served as co-director of the Casa de la Mateada Program in Córdoba, Argentina from 2013-2015. Doug and I ...
Carmen Acevedo Butcher Follows the Mystical Tugs on the Heart
August 16, 2023 07:02 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBCarmen Acevedo Butcher, PhD, is an author, teacher, poet, and award-winning translator of spiritual texts. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence. Her dynamic work around the evolution of language and the necessity of just and inclusive language has garnered interest from various media, including the BBC and NPR’s Morning Edition. A Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year and Fulbright Senior Lecturer, Acevedo Butcher teaches at the University ...
Lisa Wells on Holding a Fierce and Loving Gaze
August 02, 2023 07:00 - 1 hour - 89.7 MBLisa Wells is an author, poet, and co-founder of a small, nonprofit press based in Seattle, Washington called Letter Machine Editions. Her latest work is Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World. In Believers Lisa locates folks who meet the climate catastrophe with a fierce and loving gaze, with their sights on restoring humanity’s relationship with the planet as best they can. With a poetic and engaging pen, Lisa continually asks how then shall we live? Lisa and I talk about despair...
Scott Avett on Being Here for the Feast
July 19, 2023 07:02 - 1 hour - 58.6 MBScott Avett is a visual artist, musician, and songwriter. No amount of descriptors quite do him justice. Scott’s work was met by my ears before my eyes. His songs slip into the ear stream, reverberate off the rib cage and remind the heart it was born free. Scott’s paintings hold your gaze in absorption, jostle you awake, and drop you off a block later. In our conversation today Scott and I talk about creativity and contemplation, mysterious inputs that need to be absence of the thought of ou...
Haleh Liza Gafori on Putting Mystery in the Middle
July 05, 2023 07:05 - 59 minutes - 47.4 MBHaleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian descent. Her latest work, is a translation of Rumi poems entitled Gold. I first heard one of her translations of Rumi sitting around a campfire on a Sunday morning in Patagonia, Arizona. I was bit by the passion and this conversation does not disappoint. Haleh and I converse about being raised in a family that celebrates poetry, how a translator’s work is never done alone, what clergy of to...
Belden Lane on the Unbroken Desert of God
June 20, 2023 07:00 - 54 minutes - 43.6 MBBelden 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 contempl...
Your Naked Freedom
June 13, 2023 07:00 - 5 minutes - 4.83 MBGood 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. Get a taste of Season Four of Contemplify. First full episode is out in a week. slide over to contemplify.com
Spare Me Nothing
May 12, 2023 12:39 - 5 minutes - 4.64 MBA musing on practice, desire, and its evolutions vist contemplify.com
James Finley on the Healing Path
March 30, 2023 07:10 - 1 hour - 71.1 MBI was overly giddy, strangely nervous, but above all grateful to be in conversation with James Finley about his breathtaking new book, The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation. Each page is a thousand pages deep, that is how Jim walks about the world, drawing from the depths and teaching with winsome grace, poetics, and of course, wisdom. I have read The Healing Path twice now and I don’t see an end to rereading it, it charts the unfolding of Jim’s life; terrorizing trauma and abuse he e...
It's Not About the Beer, It's About the Beer
February 25, 2023 03:21 - 8 minutes - 6.93 MBA musing inspired by Shawn Askinosie's story about Belgium beer brewing monks and the parables of Jesus from Feb 2023 vist contemplify.com
Prairie Eye & Woods Eye
February 08, 2023 13:16 - 4 minutes - 3.73 MBA musing on Bill Holm's "Horizontal Grandeur" pulled from his book of essays, The Music of Failure.
Sitting on the Present Moment
January 24, 2023 09:09 - 7 minutes - 6.12 MBA musing on the present moment of awareness that holds everything.
Engaged Contemplation in a Heartbreaking World with Fr. Adam Bucko
November 27, 2022 13:00 - 1 hour - 49.2 MBFather Adam Bucko has been a committed voice in the movement for the renewal of Christian Contemplative Spirituality and the growing New Monastic movement. He has taught engaged contemplative spirituality in Europe and the United States and has authored Let Your Heartbreak be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation, and co-authored Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation (with Matthew Fox), and The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living ...
Heathen
November 09, 2022 10:00 - 7 minutes - 6.32 MBMusing from November 9th, 2022 inspired by by reading Chris Dombrowski's The River You Touch Visit contemplify.com
Vitality Out of Emptiness with Fr. David Denny
October 21, 2022 20:53 - 1 hour - 48.3 MBFr. David Denny is a lifelong seeker whose commitment to the unfolding mystery of life has brought him to explore the deserts of place and soul. In 1975 Fr Dave entered the Spiritual Life Institute, a contemplative monastic community rooted in the Carmelite tradition. And in 2005, he left that community to co-found the Desert Foundation with Tessa Bielecki. A writer, a poet, retreat master and teacher, Fr. Dave now hangs his hat in Tucson, Arizona. In our conversation, Fr. Dave and I ta...
The River You Touch with Chris Dombrowski
October 02, 2022 15:46 - 1 hour - 68.4 MBI have been waiting years to have this conversation with author, poet, and fly-fishing guide Chris Dombrowski. There is a kinship I feel with Chris's lens on life. He is a top-shelf writer to boot. The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water comes out October 11th, 2022. I have read it and pre-ordered multiple copies for friends and family. If you are a longtime listener, you know I do not ever do a hard sell. Buy this book for yourself. And another for any friend who seeks to live ...
Inarticulate as Watercolors, Brazen as Graffiti
September 17, 2022 01:23 - 6 minutes - 5.03 MBMusing from September 16, 2022 visit contemplify.com
Nine Poems from Coffin Honey by Todd Davis
August 31, 2022 09:00 - 31 minutes - 25.4 MBI asked Todd Davis if he could read some of his poems from his latest collection called Coffin Honey. And he generously said yes. Take a beath, find a comfortable seat, preferably out of doors and let the poetry of Todd Davis seep in through your pores and raise forth the best of you. **Before we get started, I want to note that in this episode of poems from Todd Davis include content about sexual assault and self mutilation. If that sounds like poetry you are not comfortable listening to,...
A Revelatory Elegy of Unknowing with Todd Davis (author of Coffin Honey)
August 30, 2022 09:00 - 53 minutes - 43.2 MBThe poems of Todd Davis sharpen a reader’s spirit and focus, on the bloodstained teeth breaking apart the day-to-day doldrums and on the mythic imagination necessary to bear witness to this daunting moment in our species, on our planet. Todd Davis and I spoke back in 2019 about his book Native Species and he has read his poems in the last two years on the Contemplify Backporch Advent Outpost series. Today we focus on Todd’s latest book of poems, Coffin Honey. We step into the rich imagery...
Contemplative Gleanings from the Hermits of Big Sur with Paula Huston
August 16, 2022 08:30 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBPaula Huston has written a book, The Hermits of the Big Sur, that charts the history of the New Camaldoli Hermitage. A history born amidst Vatican II and World War II with even deeper contemplatives roots back to the 11th century in the mountains of Italy. Paula follows the ragtag set of novices who become the elders of the community, those who wandered to follow other calls, and those hermits who it their life’s work to be enfolded by Mystery. Paula Huston is more than author, but oblate of...
Bill Porter (Red Pine) on Zen and Taoist Masters, Mountain Hermits, & the Life of a Translator
August 02, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour - 49.1 MB(My audio starts shaky, but gets better after 8 minutes) Bill Porter, aka Red Pine, calls the hermit life, "graduate school for the spiritually inclined." Bill Porter is a translator of Buddhist and Taoist mountain poets that uncross your third eye and waft the scent of a fine scotch. What can I say about Bill Porter that he won’t say better about himself? I first stumbled on his book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits while on retreat. His adventures and chitchats with h...
Here There Are Woods, Foxes (Season 3 Trailer)
July 30, 2022 20:14 - 7 minutes - 6.35 MBThe hermit life is cool. That is the stone that skips across this season of Contemplify. The urging, the calling, to retreat from the hustle of the red dirt economy. To wash your face with cold water. Blink away the dust. Sit still in the sun and watch the shadows kneel in prayer. This season of Contemplify highlights a few folks who touch the hermit life by study, proximity, and by craft. There will always be those who are called to live the hermit life. Then there are those of us who te...
Solitude at the Center of All Beauty with Fenton Johnson
February 05, 2022 18:28 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBFenton Johnson is the author of At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life. His book Geography of the Heart: A Memoir received the American Library Association and Lambda Literary Awards for best LGBT Creative Nonfiction, while his book Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks received a Lambda Literary and Kentucky Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction. A regular contributor to Harper’s Magazine, Johnson has received fellowships from the Gugge...
The Harmonic Resonance Found in Unknowing with Brie Stoner
January 21, 2022 07:30 - 1 hour - 58.3 MBBrie Stoner is a juggernaut of creativity who channels these forces as a musician, artist, podcaster, writer, teacher, and mother. Her latest project is a podcast called Unknowing; a conversation series with artists, spiritual teachers, authors and friends as she explores the practice of unknowing as the (beautiful, surprising, messy) spiritual path of creative possibility. As some of you know, we were co-hosts on the podcast Another Name for Every Thing with Richard Rohr. Check out Brie Sto...
A Wild Mystical Woman of the Desert with Amy Frykholm
January 07, 2022 07:30 - 1 hour - 62.1 MBAmy Frykholm is a writer, scholar, and journalist. Long time listener’s will recognize Amy as the second guest ever on Contemplify when we spoke about her book on Julian of Norwich. For those new to Amy's story, she has a PhD from Duke University and is a senior editor at The Christian Century. Her wry wit and adventurous spirit deserve a place in her accolades too. Today we talk about her latest work, Wild Woman: A Footnote, the Desert, and My Quest for an Elusive Saint. This cheeky quest f...
Enlivening the First Christmas with Stephen Mitchell
December 17, 2021 07:30 - 1 hour - 56.4 MBStephen Mitchell is a translator, author, and poet. I was first introduced to his work through his translation of the Tao Te Ching. Stephen was educated at Amherst, the Sorbonne, and Yale, and de-educated through intensive Zen practice. He is married to Byron Katie, founder of The Work. Today we talk about his latest work, The First Christmas: A Story of New Beginnings that tells the story of Jesus birth with imagination, humor, historical context and red-blooded gusto! As someone who has be...
Backporch Advent Outpost with Chris Dombrowski (#2)
December 12, 2021 07:30 - 9 minutes - 7.93 MBBlessed Darkness and Blessed Light, this Advent season. Here we are again, In the midst of Season Two of Contemplify and I am sliding in another bonus episode part of the 2nd annual Backporch Advent Outpost on Contemplify. Today’s poet is Chris Dombrowski. I first read Chris’ book Ragged Anthem and then his earlier work in the book Earth Again. It wakes me to the day at hand. Dombrowski’s poetry has been a constant companion to me during this pandemic, his connection to earthbound attent...
Backporch Advent Outpost with Todd Davis (#1)
December 05, 2021 14:48 - 8 minutes - 6.69 MBBlessed Darkness and Blessed Light this Advent season. Here, In the midst of Season Two of Contemplify I am sliding in a bonus episode. This is the first episode of the 2nd annual Backporch Advent Outpost on Contemplify. This year there will be one poet in each outpost, offering their poetry to gild the thin space beyond waiting or reception. Pour a tea or a finger of rye, consider this your Advent nightcap. Todd Davis, will be reading two poems from his forthcoming book of poetry Coffin...
The Monastic Heart & Prophetic Imagination with Sr. Joan Chittister
December 03, 2021 07:30 - 49 minutes - 39.4 MBSister Joan Chittister is a member of the Benedictine Sisters, played a huge hand in developing the Charter of Compassion, was president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious., director of Benetvision, founder of Monasteries of the Heart, passionately advocated on behalf of peace, human rights, women’s issues, and church renewal, written over 60 books, and has a bird named Lady Hildegard. The focus of our conversation today is Joan’s book, The Monastic Heart: 50 Simple Practices fo...
Slow Yourself to be Awed with J. Drew Lanham
November 19, 2021 07:30 - 57 minutes - 46.2 MBJ. Drew Lanham is an Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Master Teacher, and Certified Wildlife Biologist at Clemson University . He's the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature and the collection of poetry and meditations, Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts, which is the focus of our conversation today. And I just gotta share this self-descriptive line by Drew, “I am a wondering wander in love with nature and all the se...
Gary Nabhan (aka Brother Coyote) on Wisdom Gleaned from Fishers & Farmers
November 05, 2021 06:30 - 1 hour - 53 MBGary Nabhan (aka Brother Coyote) is an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, a first generation Lebanese-American, seed saver, agro-ecologist, ethnobotanist, agrarian activist, and author. A former MacArthur Fellow, he has been called the "father of the local food movement" by Time. He currently holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Food & Water Security for the Borderlands. Gary has engaged with farmers and refugee farmworkers in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, and Oman. Nabhan keeps orchards, gardens and gr...
Season Two Trailer
October 30, 2021 04:00 - 2 minutes - 2.42 MBOn the cusp of season 2, I was ruminating on how I might introduce the tonality of this series of conversations. The September musing jumped to mind. In this musing, I reflected one some words to live by according to Ralph Waldo Emerson And there was one Emerson line that stuck to my ribs. No matter how hard I scraped, it would not leave me alone. "Nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm." Not cheerleader or car salesman enthusiasm. But enthusiasm as the fire within, ...
Your Work Should Be the Praise of What You Love (September Musing)
September 21, 2021 07:00 - 7 minutes - 6.3 MBSeptember 2021 Musing on Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy of life. Season 2 of Contemplify is getting warmed up on the stove. I'll let you know when it is ready to be served. Visit contemplify.com
Like People or Dogs
August 17, 2021 07:00 - 11 minutes - 9.49 MBThis marks the 100th episode of Contemplify. We celebrate the triple digit with a musing and an announcement.
Charlie Chaplin in the Gears of Modern Times
June 17, 2021 13:30 - 7 minutes - 6.23 MBA contemplative musing on machines, lifeblood, and facing the facts of life. Visit contemplify.com for more shenanigans
Scott Ballew on Talking to Mountains & the Sublimity of Sad Songs
May 23, 2021 07:00 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBScott Ballew is songwriter from Austin, Texas. He earns his keep as the Head of Films and Commercials at YETI, producing and directing films that inspire a life well-lived. During the pandemic, Scott dusted off his guitar and got to writing songs, polishing them, and then to his own surprise, releasing an album out into the wild. Scott Ballew’s first album is called Talking to Mountains. In our conversation we talk about the genesis of his album, the relationship between sobriety and creativ...
Tending to the Spiritual Interior of Language with Lia Purpura
April 18, 2021 22:15 - 1 hour - 58.7 MBThere is so much I can say about the poet and essayist Leah Purpura. I’ll give this brief introduction, Lia was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the writer in residence at the University of Maryland, and has been published in all the notable places. I read her two most recent works, It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful, a book of poems, and All the Fierce Tethers, a book of essays, and was graced by her mastery of language and reverence for the awe and wonder in the detai...
Deadstock in the Storm with Jeffrey Foucault
March 09, 2021 15:26 - 1 hour - 94.8 MBJeffrey Foucault is a top shelf songwriter. Foucault has a slew of albums worth your collection and his latest album, Deadstock, should be the first one you pick up. Deadstock has been a real good friend to me in the ups and downs of this season. Foucault’s music makes a grown man like me swoon, sway, and slyly sing his lyrics to myself. This is the type of music that keeps me sane and holds my heart in communion with the whole heartbreaking human family. Our conversation holds the tenor ...
Being is Action with Andrew Krivak
February 07, 2021 07:30 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBAndrew Krivak is the author of three novels: The Signal Flame (2017), a Chautauqua Prize finalist, and The Sojourn (2011), a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Chautauqua Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction, and his latest novel, The Bear. In our conversation you hear of Andrew’s formation as a Jesuit, our dwelling in the depth dimension of now, how his novel The Bear relates to that dimension and is also a manifesto against interiority, and so much more. F...
Immersion Journalist of the Soul with Fred Bahnson
January 17, 2021 07:30 - 1 hour - 65.4 MBFred 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 c...
Answering the Monk Within with Beverly Lanzetta
January 03, 2021 07:30 - 59 minutes - 47.3 MBBeverly Lanzetta is a profound teacher who invites her readers and students to engage in the fullness of Mystery each day through the cultivation of practice and rhythm. I was elated to get my mitts on her latest book A New Silence: Spiritual Practices and Formation for the Monk Within. Our conversation flows out of this work, we talk about contemplation rhythms, parenting, the archetype of the monk, the via feminia and so much more. Reflecting on A New Silence makes up the bulk of our conve...
Advent Outpost from the Backporch (#3)
December 21, 2020 16:53 - 8 minutes - 7.06 MBI’m closing this Advent Series out with some poetic gifts. A few friends are stopping by to raise a glass and offer a poem or prayer, though I am unsure of the difference anymore. In this final Advent outpost, the Mystery is stirred by a couple of my favorite poets, Teddy Macker and then Todd Davis, before contemplative teacher Beverly Lanzetta brings us home with a prayer. Like I said, prayers and poems dip from the same well. Join us as we take our fill. Visit Contemplify.com