Latter-day Contemplation: Recent Episodes
Latter-day Peace Studies
Latter-day Contemplation exists to largely explore and document our journey of study and faith as we seek to become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. We are by no means experts in anything that we’re going to be talking about, but what we do have is an openness to questions, a hunger to discover truth wherever we can find it, and a desire to live a life of peace for ourselves, our families, and our community. We love that you’re here, and we hope that you find value in this discussion to enhance and strengthen your own discipleship of Jesus Christ.
Christopher and Riley are always searching out new theories and hermeneutics through which to interpret ideas, scripture, literature, or human experience. Recently, they embarked on a concerted study of René Girard’s mimetic theory and let’s just say it has been fruitful and paradigm shifting. They would love for others to join them in a study of this brilliant, Christian anthropologist’s ideas. Girard provides the faithful student a path for understanding the Christian message that doesn’t dilute it as “just another myth”, or worse, a derivative of other myths with nothing unique to offer. They believe you’ll never see scripture, society, or human relationships the same.
We recorded this follow up episode a few weeks after recording Episode #82, Where to Begin, as a follow up to report on our experiences with some contemplative practices we wanted to continue or inaugurate.
In this shorter episode Christopher and Riley discuss the most frequent question we receive from those new to contemplative practice - Where do I begin? We offer some basic ideas, which can be implemented incrementally or all at once to put yourself on the path to becoming a contemplative. The core of contemplation is always stillness. To sit in silence, and preferably, solitude will do more to reveal the benefits of contemplation than anything else you will learn, and yet, there is much more to this lifestyle. We hope you enjoy the episode and will reach out to us with your feedback, ideas, and reports. We’ll follow up with some reports of our own in the next episode.
In this episode Christopher and Riley discuss Joseph Campbell’s well-known model of mythology, The Hero’s Journey, and how it can be used as a model for personal transformation. Joseph Campbell was a renowned author and professor whose groundbreaking work in The Hero With a Thousand Faces did more than describe a pattern in cosmological storytelling, but unlocked a way of looking at our lives that gives us context for our ups and downs, helps us appreciate adversity, and, ultimately discover the elixir], or meaning, of life. Adopting the pattern, taking on challenges, and leaning into our difficulties as part of the journey lead to a more fulfilling life.
“For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.” D&C 89:17
Americans waste nearly 40% of all food, roughly 42 billion pounds per year, and even in this glut of supply we are undernourished nutritionally speaking, because of how our food is produced for appearance and taste. The same can be said for the media and other resources we consume; as long as it’s pleasing to the eye or ear or taste we neglect counting the cost as a substitute for better alternatives, which unavoidably leaves the lowest echelon of society victimized. In this episode Christopher and Riley delve into the practice of contemplative consumption. Most of us live in a society designed around efficient consumption, which carries a heavy unseen cost. Categorically, we consume resources, food, and media without much thought for how it’s produced, delivered, or the intention behind the consumption (profit, social engineering), because it is so efficiently delivered and available. The immediate by-product of cheap and efficient delivery is waste and lack of fulfillment on the part of the consumer, and, at worst, exploitation of the poor. They encourage us to count the cost of our choices and be less passive as agents of consumption. It serves both ourselves and the world when we take responsibility for the consequences of our choices. Christopher and Riley make the case for more mindful use of resources and the richer life that can result from a higher awareness of our impact on the world and its impact on us.
President Nelson has encouraged Latter-day Saints to take personal responsibility for their own learning, but not many members do, relying heavily upon borrowed testimonies and lessons at church. In 2018, as Pres. Nelson introduced the new home centered, church supported gospel instruction plan, he said, “We are each responsible for our individual spiritual growth”. In this episode Christopher and Riley discuss the implications of this individual, spiritual responsibility. They dig into methods, resources, and modalities for rich spiritual growth that can carry you through your mid-life crises and doldrums, while providing support for developing family members and friends on the path of discipleship.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley talk about Heavenly Mother with Kathryn Knight Sonntag, author of a collection of poems on the Divine Feminine entitled, The Tree at the Center (Common Consent, 2019) and a second book on the Goddess, The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother (Faith Matters, 2022).
In this episode Chris & Riley are joined by Dr. Sahar Qumsiyeh. Dr. Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian American Christian who grew up in Bethlehem under Israeli occupation, attended BYU, joined the Church of Jesus Christ, studied in Turkey, and returned to Palestine, before taking a permanent position at BYU-Idaho as a math professor. She recounts her vivid experiences living under a brutally segregationist regime and how it shaped her upbringing. She describes her conversion and ultimate reconciliation to the Jewish people as she prayed for and received the love of Christ for her fellow children of God. Her story gives us hope for the establishment of the true Zion and the future gathering of Israel as a global reconciliation of all God’s children.
For this episode Christopher and Riley were pleased to welcome artist, architect, husband, father, and scripture junkie, Bob Sonntag, to discuss the power of ritual in family and community spiritual practice, language, art, space, and song. Bob has spent considerable time studying ritual in sacred texts and his art reflects this focus on transformation through participatory remembrance. He has also integrated ritual into his family dynamics to connect individuals through generations. They discuss connecting with the “heavenly and timeless” eternal through participating in and contemplating cosmic ritual.
In this episode of Latter-day Contemplation, Christopher and Riley pay tribute to the life and legacy of Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr. Father Rohr, as an ecumenical teacher, speaker, and author is largely responsible for the modern resurgence in popularity of contemplative practices. He has successfully brought together teachers from many Christian denominations into The Living School, teaching perennial truths about the universal nature of the Christ, our mutual, inborn dwelling with God the creator of all flesh, and the brotherhood of man. His message of inner and relational peace has drawn a following of millions.
In Episode 74, Christopher and Riley revisit a topic they’ve previously spoken about on the podcast, but from a different perspective. Episode 5: On Peace deals with inner peace, while this one deals with interpersonal, relational, and world peace. They explore the LDS doctrinal case for renouncing war in Sec. 98 as a springboard to a larger discussion about practical application of peace, as exemplified by Jesus, the anti-nephi-lehis, St. Maximilian and others. They make a case for a non-violent reading of scripture, particularly the Book of Mormon and challenge the listener to take small proactive steps, in concert with others, forming a grassroots movement towards a peaceful world.
The War Prayer, Mark Twain
We are a Warlike People | Renounce War and Proclaim Peace
First Presidency Statement on Basing of MX Missile (churchofjesuschrist.org)
Record of Martyrdom of St. Maximilian, Pg. 244, Acts of The Christian Martyrs, Musurillo
For this episode, Christopher and Riley are joined by LDPS member and contributor, Jeffrey Goddard, for a wide-ranging discussion on justice, sin & righteousness, good & evil, and atonement. In the past year Jeff read or listened to 200 books, and wrote one of his own - The Physician Christ. As a medical practitioner he tends to see the world through a scientific lens which adds critical context to the discussion of individual and social development. Our hosts make it a point to avoid strict, objective definitions of these constructed ideas, but instead try to problematize prevailing understandings so as to point the listener to a more holistic, and universally restorative Christian discipleship; one less concerned with being right about doctrine and more concerned with being in right relationship, with God and each other.
In this episode of Latter-day Contemplation, Christopher and Riley are joined by a friend of the program and Carl Jung fan, Morgan Aldous, to discuss the concept of the Jungian Shadow. Morgan is a life coach who has spent considerable time in the study of psychology, philosophy, and religion as the means to personal transformation. This concept of The Shadow, which historically finds expression in scripture, mystical poetry and experience, visual & performance art, great literature, and formal psychological treatment methodology has application for those of us pursuing a spiritual path of personal development as well.
In his first interaction with Father Adam and Mother Eve, Lucifer, the father of lies, inducts our primeval ancestors into the cult of binary thought; wherein, they are led to believe that the world is composed of diametrically opposing polarities, repelling each other at all times, totally incompatible with oneness and unity. This allegory could be interpreted to describe one of the challenges of mortality - overcoming the natural man instinct to misunderstand and misrepresent ourselves, compartmentalizing and ignoring our inner shadow, to the detriment of our spiritual development.
Morgan can be reached at www.everyday7.com
In this episode Christopher and Riley draw upon the teachings of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Byron Katie upack the stoic concepts of Amor Fati (love of fate, consent to destiny) and Objectivity as a means of better understanding Christ and our duties as disciples. The evidence surrounds us; life is filled with adversity, or as a Buddhist might say, “life is suffering”. Thermodynamics further affirms the inevitable death and dissolution of all matter. Recognizing and accepting this inevitability can liberate us from despair in our darkest moments of sadness, anger, and grief. Most of the circumstances that confront us conjure up impressions, judgments, and emotions (collectively: phantasia) within us, but are ultimately beyond our control. The stoics viewed these circumstances objectively as largely deterministic in nature, but recognized the space between stimulus and response where we are given the choice to freely act as our best self, ethically, and for the benefit of others. Christ is the archetypal model for this way of living and serving. As he approached his impending torture and crucifixion, he accepted, not without distress but nevertheless freely, the circumstances which would lead to his death, as the most starkly persuasive example of service and love that can be expressed. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” - John 15:13
In this episode, Christopher & Riley take up a discussion on emotions and emotional intelligence. They start from the premise that humans are (contrary to popular opinion) primarily emotional, not rational, beings. Taking this as a given, they search for meaning in the emotional journey, and recognizing our emotional drivers, suggest practices to help us respond appropriately to our emotional triggers. They meander into a discussion about sincerity in emotion (as opposed to manipulation) and imagine a God who only interacts with his children sincerely, as a means of supporting our holistic development into fully integrated emotional intelligences. Relating to the God, (modeled by Christ, but too often obfuscated by scripture) who mourns with us, helps us to identify philosophies, conceptions, projections, and interpolations of men wishing to compel, rather than invite us to “come and see” or in this case, come and feel.
For this episode of Latter-day Contemplation Riley welcomes back Phil McLemore to discuss the power habits and rituals. Habits can be positive or negative and ultimately become the structural backbone of our lives. As we learn to use them in productive ways we are led to lives of inner and outer transformation. However, habits have the potential to become an unconscious, soul and agency destroying cancer that compounds the problems of the “natural man”. Bringing conscious awareness to the individual and accumulated habits which form our routines can help us replace entropic, destructive processes with what Christ called “living water”. They offer specific ideas and guidance based on the book Atomic Habits and their own life experience which can help us break these unhealthy cycles and begin the process of rebirth into a new life.
In this episode Christopher and Riley welcome artist Greg Olsen. Greg is particularly well-known in LDS circles as a painter of Jesus. Our hosts had the opportunity to mine his experiences becoming a professional painter of religious iconography and images that convey the relatable nature of the Savior. Of course, he is much more than his public works and this conversation takes them through his contemplative practices, the nature of symbols, and simplifying our faith by practicing loving-kindness.
In this episode Christopher and Riley welcome Phil McLemore and Ben Heaton, Bhagavad Gita enthusiasts and students of Vedic wisdom, to finish our discussion of the seminal Hindu scripture. Our hosts dive into the usefulness of the book, approaches to understanding it, and a few favorite passages.
The Book of Exodus can be divided into three parts: First, we witness the power of the Lord as he extends his arm against Pharaoh, sending the ten plagues and finally parting the Sea of Reeds, which swallows up Pharoah and his army, letting Moses and the Israelites escape into the wilderness. In the second part, Moses will ascend Mount Sinai and receive the law (Torah). The final section of the book is devoted to the construction and description of the tabernacle, or the portable temple the Israelites will carry with them over the next 38 years they spend in the desert.
A three-part division is also seen in the Sinai episode where the people are gathered at the bottom, the elders are partway up, and Moses is on top speaking with God. We see a similar tripartite division in the third section’s description of the tabernacle with its courtyard, Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies.
Later mystics and teachers would use these three-fold divisions to describe the soul’s journey to God, labeling the stages with terms such as ‘purification,’ contemplation,’ and ‘union’.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss one of their favorite religious texts, an excerpt from the Mahabharata, called the Bhagavad Gita. This seminal Hindu work introduces the various forms of Yoga as an allegorical discourse between the warrior prince, Arjuna, and the reincarnated God, Krishna. Contrary to the Western understanding of Yoga, this has less to do with stretching muscles and more to do with stretching the soul. Christopher and Riley share some favorite commonplaces from their reading and offer their interpretations as a starting point for those wanting to explore the beauty and great value of “the Gita.”
Christopher is joined by guest co-host Shiloh Logan to talk about the history of “Satan” from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible through today. This is not a theological discussion but a historical discussion of how the idea of Satan has evolved. Shiloh and Christopher use scholar Ryan Stokes to show how the idea of “the Satan” was understood before the Jewish captivity in Babylon, how that changed and was possibly influenced by Zoroastrianism, and how the Dead Sea Scrolls solidified the idea of “Satan” that made it into the New Testament. Christopher and Shiloh also use scholar Elaine Pagels, to expand on how our idea of “Satan” affects and influences our view of the other and justifies us in our view. They conclude with a discussion of “Satan” through a Jungian lens, and conclude that the first step in improving our views of the other and our society lies in integrating our own “shadow.”
In a church with global proselytizing reach, which must outgrow its geographic origins theologically and practically, the Great Apostasy, as historically understood in LDS theology, has become problematic. For this episode we welcome back our friend, Sufi al-hajj Daud, a.k.a. Dr. David Peck (www.ofsaintsandsufis.org) to discuss his contribution to the book, Standing Apart, a scholarly collaboration on the historiography of the Great Apostasy. He describes how to deconstruct and reframe the Great Apostasy through the lens of the universal ur-covenant or First Estate. Recognition of this common entry point on the covenant path helps us commune with brothers and sisters of divergent but related faith traditions. We highlight other overlapping ideas between faiths such as the light of Christ in a wide-ranging episode that we hope will open up to you a path of greater and increasing appreciation of other faiths.
Among the world’s many religions are shadow traditions that express the esoteric or mystical experience of divine union. In Christianity this is manifest in ecstatic, revelatory examples, such as within restorationist movements, in monastic cloisters, and through spontaneous re-emergence among individuals and small groups accessing truth through mystical experience. Parallel to the ascendance of the Islamic faith was a movement that drew from a deep and ancient well of mystical practices and understandings, called sufism. In this episode we welcome Sufi master, al-hajj Daud, also known as Dr. David Peck to discuss his fascinating discovery of sufism as an active and participating latter-day saint, how it has enhanced his faith, and what we can learn from his journey and discovery. His upcoming book and podcast, Of Saints and Sufis, will both challenge and intrigue those with the courage to continue the path of the seeker.
In the opening of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that the kingdom of heaven belongs now to the "poor in spirit", which translates as "the very empty ones". What does that kind of poverty or emptiness imply? Surely Jesus wants us to have an abundance of His Spirit, but is our vessel empty? In this episode, Christopher and Riley break down identity recognition, formation, and cleansing. They hit on what might be considered positive and negative aspects of the identity formation process, with a view towards the beatitudinal ideal of non-attachment to the identities of what many have referred to as "the false self".
In this episode, Christopher sits down face to face with Riley on a visit to Heber, Utah from Bakersfield California to talk about arriving at certainty through methodological doubt. The conversation begins with the uncannily similar methodological doubt of medieval Muslim philosophical theologian and Sufi mystic al-Ghazali (1056 or 1057-1111) and the first modern philosopher, René Descartes (1596-1650), by which each arrives at certainty through direct experience of what Descartes calls “clear and distinct ideas” and Riley and Christopher share their own experience.
In this episode, guest-host Lindsey Ohlin is joined by educator Tom Bogle as they discuss their similar experiences with an unhealthy relationship surrounding the idea of knowing. What stumbling blocks might we encounter in our pursuit of perfect knowledge and how might that influence how we see our place in the world? What is the relationship between knowledge and faith, and where does wisdom fit into that equation? The pursuit of knowledge can often lead us toward better answers, but can the pursuit of wisdom lead us down a path toward asking better questions?
In this episode Riley and Christopher discuss the contemplative value of stillness. While we’ve referenced meditation multiple times, this means of approaching God in stillness offers us the opportunity to connect with the divine by quieting the sensory processes and becoming aware of autonomic processes such as breathing and heartbeat. So what are we to learn from this? Could it be that chasing answers all the time has become a distraction to communion and revelatory knowing, which is not always the same as propositional knowing?
In this episode Christopher and Riley are joined by Latter-day Peace Studies co-founder and former Latter-day Contemplation co-host Shiloh Logan to discuss his journey of faith. Shiloh’s family’s recent decision to resign from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints created an opportunity to explore faith transition and its relationship to religious identity from a personal perspective. Shiloh, Riley, and Christopher approach the subject both from the perspective of those who remain and of those who leave or resign from the Church. They discuss how we can continue to interact with one another with respect for individual spiritual autonomy and build bridges of healing and reconciliation when someone we love leaves the Church.
Show notes:
“LDS Personal Faith Crisis: ‘Don’t find fault. Find remedy‘,” scholars report to President Dieter F. Uchtdorf.
In this episode, after Christopher read a couple of dozen books on the Bible in a couple of weeks and recorded a three-hour introduction to the Old Testament on our sister podcast, LDPS Presents: Come, Follow Me with his co-host Ben Petersen, Christopher and Riley sat down to record this briefer conversation on the Old Testament. After touching on the complexities of authorship, canonization, translation, hermeneutics, exegesis, etcetera, Riley and Christopher set all of those complexities aside, take a deep breath, and go into contemplative reading of the Old Testament (or any other sacred text) through the Christian contemplative practice of Lectio Divina (Lat. “Divine Reading”) a traditional Christian monastic practice of scripture reading, meditation, and prayer, bringing peace—even just talking about it the practice of Lectio Divina after talking about the complexities of other approaches to reading scripture brought a palpable peace to Christopher and Riley you can sense in listening to the episode—a peace found in communion with the Divine through the Divine Reading (Lectio Divina) of divinely inspired writings.
In this episode Riley and Christopher welcome Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, “a licensed therapist who specializes in working with LDS couples on sexuality and relationship issues,” for a wide-ranging discussion of the Divine Feminine from an archetypal spiritual perspective. The discussion covers, among other things, the attributes of the Divine Feminine, their symbolic implications, the integration of the Divine Feminine, and its manifestation and significance in relationships.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss perennial wisdom and why we should study and incorporate the foreign, yet familiar, truths of all traditions into our own understanding and practice. Within the Church, we have a common misconception that the “fullness of the gospel” found in the “only true and living church” (D&C 1:30) gives us a claim to comprehensive, exclusive truth from God. As Riley and Christopher demonstrate, prophets ancient, modern, and contemporary have not seen things that way but instead have always actively encouraged Latter-day Saints to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” (D&C 88:118) and have consistently recognized that God “bring[s] forth [His] word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth” (2 Ne. 29:7). It is up to each of us individually to bring forth in our own lives the words which the Lord has spoken to men and commanded them to write “both in the east and in the west” (2 Ne. 29:11) and “unto all nations of the earth” (2 Ne. 29:12). By encountering and wrestling with these perennial truths, we can come to a fuller understanding of our own beliefs and grow into a more excellent experience of God’s truth for all his children.
In this episode Christopher and Riley introduce Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and the most accessible abridged translation of one of his most beloved works, The Alchemy of Happiness, itself an abridgment by al-Ghazali of his magnum opus, The Revival of the Religious Sciences. Known as “The Proof of Islam,” Al-Ghazali is the second most important figure in the Islamic tradition after the Prophet Muhammad, and the most important theologian and mystic of Islam. He is also an acknowledged intellectual influence of perhaps the most important theologian in the Christian tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas. In The Alchemy of Happiness, al-Ghazali gives us a typology of the soul of man as possessing a set of divine attributes that both connect us to the base instincts of animals and yet set us apart as God’s crowning act of creation. Al-Ghazali commends spiritual discipline to his disciples, while cautioning that the checklist of command-keeping alone only brings us to the threshold of mystical communion with God. For Latter-day Saints, interested in “truth, wherever we may find it”, one could not do much better than Al-Ghazali.
In this episode Riley and Christopher are joined by Ben Peterson, co-host of Latter-day Peace Studies Presents: Come, Follow Me, for a conversation on how we read the scriptures and how that determines the meaning we get out of them. In the course of the conversation, they examine a few of the hermeneutics (i.e., ways of reading the scriptures) they have been using in their respective podcasts, and the exegesis (i.e., meaning) each hermeneutic produces. At the end of this episode, Christopher makes an announcement about the future of Ben’s podcast.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley trace the roots of the Logos of God, translated “Word” in John 1:1 in the New Testament, through the early Church fathers Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr to its roots in Ancient Greek Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus. In so doing, Christopher and Riley explore the meaning of the Logos of God in-depth, including in comparative religious perspective with the Hindu concept of Maya through the yogi Yogananda. Ultimately, Riley and Chris conclude with Paul Tillich, “He who sacrifices the Logos principle sacrifices the idea of a living God, and he who rejects the application of this principle to Jesus as the Christ rejects his character as Christ.”
In this episode, Christopher and Riley are joined by Latter-day Peace Studies and Latter-day Contemplation podcast co-founder, Shiloh Logan, to commemorate the podcast’s 50th installment. They look back on the genesis of the podcast, what it has taught them about the contemplative mindset, and express gratitude for those who have contributed to the emerging community of peace-loving disciples of Christ that Latter-day Peace Studies and Latter-day Contemplation has created. In the process, they touch on some of the podcast’s highlights and share their vision for the future of the podcast.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley talk about the need for a church. First, they refer to the Greek word in the Bible translated “church” and bring out its two simultaneously operative meanings. Next, they explore in-depth the need for a church based on those two meanings. Finally, they explore a threefold path one tends to take as a member of the body of Christ we call the church leading from dependence through participation to either disillusionment or leadership. But the leadership they discuss is not the top-down leadership one thinks of when thinking of the church as an institution, but the bottom-up, or grassroots, leadership in which one can participate if one sees oneself correctly as a member of the body of Christ called the church, with each member serving its particular function separate and distinct from all others, and at the same time in concert with them.
What if you knew you were loved unconditionally? In this episode, Riley and guest host Shiloh Logan explore loving kindness. They discuss how it interfaces with Latter-day Saint theological constructs like Zion and degrees of glory, as well as the longstanding Christian call to disciples to nonviolence and detachment from outcomes. The calculus of transactional ROI in religious observance has become a distraction leading to burnout when expected outcomes don’t materialize. Conversely, the “mighty change of heart” resulting from transformational experiences with God helps us escape the perfection trap of the checklist Gospel. Contemplative, communion-centered activities such as loving-kindness meditation can create peaceful expansive experiences of loving-kindness toward ourselves others.
In this episode, Riley and Christopher discuss the critical importance of mentors in our lives. In the process, they wander back and forth through the various benefits and risks inherent in the establishment of mentor/protégé relationships. At its core, mentoring is about teaching, but on a deeper, more personal level. Mentorships include expectations of both parties, involve bi-directional growth. Mentors can help us grow in all areas of our life, secular and spiritual. In particular, spiritual mentors or gurus can help us grow spiritually. A traditional guru/disciple relationship is a long-term devotional practice. Christopher and Riley discuss the necessary discernment and grace that should attend mentor/protégé and guru/disciple relationships, as participants seek to learn and grow together. Realization of our full potential is difficult to impossible without the patient guidance of mentors. Fortunately, mentorship opportunities lie in wait if we prepare ourselves. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Christopher and guest co-host Shiloh Logan talk about the power of the stories that we tell ourselves and the impact that they have on our lives. It has been said that “we don’t live in reality, but, rather, we live in our stories about reality.” What does this mean? Human beings are story and meaning-making entities. We are what makes meaning out of reality, and we do this through the stories that we create around and about events and ourselves. Stories are how we make sense of our world, and they are helpful and beneficial to us until they’re not. A primary problem for human beings is when we can’t differentiate between reality and the stories that they have made about reality. This is problematic because once a story is no longer helpful for us, we often can’t shed it from our lives, repent, and move on, because we confuse the story-of-out-own-making for reality itself. One way of first being able to help us differentiate our stories from reality is to see that our stories can never be purely objective, as anything that we create is going to be inherently and necessarily limited. The entirety of our worldview is constructed from the things we-know-we-know and from the things that we-know-we-don’t-know. However, beyond these two things is the entirety of reality of things that we-don’t-know-that-we-don’t-know. Our stories are made by what we-know-we-know and what we-know-we-don’t-know, and because of this, they will never be entirely objective in accounting for the infinite reality of things we-don’t-know-that-we-don’t-know.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss being present to our values and how we spend our time. They reminisce about the 60-second TV spots “Family. Isn’t It About . . . Time?” (Remember those?) Using these TV spots as a springboard, they talk about the process of formulating values, the difference between the quantity of time and quality of time, and the importance of being present to our values and how we spend our time. Whatever our subjective judgments about which activities might help us attain or keep what we value, hearing God in the process is a function of being present to the “still small voice” that speaks guidance to us in the moments along the way.
“Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou have shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward you openly” (Matthew 6:6). “He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given” (Matthew 13:11).
These scriptures all point to a mystical understanding of Jesus Christ and his mission. At his core, Jesus is the mediator of our atonement with God, our guide and spiritual mentor to the transformed inner life of discipleship, and revealer of our divine nature. In this episode, Riley and Christopher welcome former chaplain and Institute director Philip G. McLemore to discuss the wisdom of Jesus, his mediation, message, and atonement. We discuss the difference between doing and being in the context of discipleship and the transformative power of “inner work.” For those interested in mystical union with God, Jesus doesn’t just point the way, he is The Way.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley are joined by guest Daniel Meehan for a discussion contemplating symbols and their meanings. After a brief discussion defining symbols and meanings, they delve into a discussion of some symbols and meanings beginning at convention and culminating with invention. Dan demonstrates his devotional practice of definition, deconstruction, and reconstruction of symbols and meanings, following the wisdom pattern, as Richard Rohr, OFM calls it, of order, disorder, reorder, to discover differing and deeper meanings of the symbols discussed. Riley and Chris follow Dan’s lead and prove the power of his practice by passing from convention in the interpretation of symbols to invention, discovering differing and deeper meanings of symbols discussed with him.
Mysticism, properly understood, is a process or pursuit of divine oneness or communion with God. While that seems like a worthy aspiration, many can feel uncomfortable with mystical practices such as transcendental meditation. Mystics over the centuries have largely been misunderstood, characterized as heretical, or marginalized to protect orthodox authority. Indeed, Joseph Smith was treated similarly by religious leaders of his time; and yet today within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there exists a strong, literal, materialist tradition which becomes the filter through which we view God, leaving many with unmet spiritual needs. In this episode, Riley and Christopher suggest that our image of God and the ways in which we represent the divine, are inherently incomplete, and were never meant to be the truth of all things. While structure, dogma, practice, and liturgy are all important in pointing us to the truth of God, the first-hand, spirit-filled experience of divine communion itself, untranslated and ineffable, is far more profitable. Fortunately, this pursuit is not only possible but a present reality.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley contemplate good and evil from the loss of paradise in the duality of the fall to the regaining of paradise in a return to unity in the mystery of the conjunction of opposites and the sacred marriage of heaven and earth. In the course of the conversation, Riley and Christopher ponder the problem of evil postulated by Epicurus and the theodicies, or solutions to this problem, offered by philosophers and theologians from antiquity to modernity, and thus the purpose of good and evil from the fall of humanity into duality to its redemption in unity.
In this episode, Riley and Christopher take on the topic of resurrection. Is resurrection something that happens after we do, or do we need to be resurrected before we die? What would it look like to be resurrected before we die and what does a resurrected life in Christ look like? Christopher and Riley answer these questions and related questions about spiritual death and life with New Testament and extracanonical scriptures from the Gnostics, touching on the ordinances of baptism and the Sacrament and offer suggestions for living a resurrected life in Christ in the present.
The language of the sacred is often poetic, rather than propositional. It speaks of feelings, not facts. The fact is, any experience of the sacred is inexpressible in propositional terms. It should come as no surprise then that many of the sacred texts of the world’s religions are in poetry, not prose: the Hindu Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, and Ramayana; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezequiel, the twelve minor prophets, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon and the Book of Revelation in the Jewish and Christian Bibles; the sacred text of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching; and the Muslim Qur’an. Even philosophers and theologians have tried to express their propositional ideas about the sacred in poetry (e.g. Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe). Finally, Muslim mystics and Christian contemplatives have both expressed their experiences of the sacred in poetry, including in love poetry as evocative as the Song of Solomon in the Jewish Bible. In this episode, Christopher and Riley read and comment on passages from examples of the above-mentioned sacred texts in poetic translations evoking the same images and feelings as the originals.
In this episode, Riley welcomes guest co-host Shiloh Logan to talk about the modality and usefulness of the Word of Wisdom as a contemplative tool. They go into the history of the revelation and its subsequent modified orthodox adoption as a commandment under Heber J. Grant in order to deconstruct the popular understanding that what we read in Section 89 is God’s law of health. While the Word of Wisdom may be the result of a culturally infused, early 19th-century zeitgeist, it nevertheless represents an example of Joseph Smith’s ability to bring awareness to every aspect of our temporal lives in a way that makes all things new and spiritual. Understanding how the Word of Wisdom is used in the Church today, where it has become essentially an “effective boundary maintenance device,” can help us separate the policy from how a revelatory event became a model for incorporating an awareness of what we consume as part of our spiritual growth. Is there a difference between the spirit and the letter of the Word of Wisdom? Will becoming intentional about our consumption help us better connect to God? Is the Word of Wisdom Still relevant as a model of the spiritual/temporal connection?
In this episode, Christopher and Riley explore revelation. What is revelation? Who can receive it? Is it something only prophets can receive? Can we? Is revelation infallible if prophets receive it? How about if we do? Has it ceased or is it continuing? If it has ceased, how do we know we’re interpreting it correctly? Wouldn’t that take revelation too, or does reason suffice? If revelation is continuing, can earlier revelation be abrogated by later revelation? Has this ever happened? If so, does that mean God has changed his mind, or could it mean he has changed our minds? What can we do to prepare our minds to receive revelation? What might prevent us from receiving it? Riley and Christopher do their best to problematize revelation by raising questions about it, to solve the problems by answering them, and to describe contemplative practices to prepare us to be open to receiving continuing revelation despite conservatism.
Latter-day prophet David O. McKay described meditation as the “most secret, most sacred door through which we pass into the presence of the Lord” yet few Latter-day Saints have a regular meditation practice. In General Conference addresses, meditation usually receives, at best, passing mention as a synonym of prayer or pondering. We’d like to see that change. In this episode Christopher and Riley describe their respective meditation practices, give some advice on establishing a practice of your own, and detail some of the benefits they have each derived from regular meditation in hopes that more Latter-day Saints might incorporate this sacred practice into their worship.
In this episode, Riley interviews Christopher on his journaling practice. Christopher keeps seven different journals, including a Morning Pages journal inspired by Julia Cameron, a templated journal inspired by Michael Hyatt, a Five Minute Journal, a feelings journal, a food journal, a reading journal, and even a garbage journal. Each one of these serves a unique contemplative purpose for Christopher. Riley asks Christopher probing questions about journaling, some of which were submitted in advance by listeners like you. While the usual context for journaling in LDS circles is for the purpose of family history, Christopher and Riley explore journaling for the purpose of getting to know oneself.
On February 16, 1832, Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon were studying John 5, and while they “meditated upon these things, the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about” (D&C 76:19). This vision and the way of understanding Heaven it revealed, and which we now refer to as “the three degrees of glory,” was the result of Joseph and Sidney’s experience of Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) of John 5. In this episode Riley and Christopher approach John 5 and Doctrine and Covenants 76 from a present-moment perspective and use them as guides for ascent out of the spiritual malaise referred to as “death” or “hell” into an awareness and embracing of the “everlasting life” that comes from hearing and believing in Christ.
Following US Independence Day with all of its pomp and circumstance, Christopher and Riley raise the question of whether America is a Christian nation. They recount America’s history of subjugation, displacement, and slavery; episodes in US history that do not embody the Christian ideals expressed in its Declaration of Independence and in its Constitution vis-à-vis the stories of Americans that have struggled against power for those Christian ideals. They then walk listeners through a contemplative exercise of juxtaposing Cristian and American ideals in a Venn diagram to discover any overlapping ideals, as a way of answering the question of whether American is a Christian nation.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss the contemplative practice of fasting. Beginning with the usual notion of fasting as abstaining from food and drink, they expand it to include abstaining from any appetite with the potential to be taken to excess or to become an unhealthy coping mechanism or even an addiction for lack of communion with God. Riley and Christopher describe indulgence in excess as a way we try to fill the emptiness in us resulting from a lack of communion with God, with food, sex, or the compulsive consumption of products or media, and draw upon examples and teachings from the Buddha, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Jesus, and al-Ghazali, to expand the scope of fasting as a way of becoming more aware of ourselves, our family, our neighbors, and our wider world.
In this episode, Riley and Christopher tackle the question of the actionability of Christian contemplation, given the fact that it is often misunderstood as mere navel gazing. In the spirit of the saying of the great Sufi, Algazel, who wrote that, “Knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity,” Christopher and Riley make a case for the conjunction of contemplation and action as each side of this seeming pair of opposites is incomplete without the other.
Christopher and guest co-host Shiloh Logan talk about the idea of divine unconditional love. There is some religious controversy over what God’s “unconditional love” means. It has come to mean many things to many people, and there is no congruent doctrine from LDS Church leaders concerning the phrase. For as many statements come against unconditional love, there are more things said in favor of it from LDS General authorities and church leaders. But what are we to do about this? Is God unconditionally loving? Is there a way to contextualize and reconcile the words of the LDS church leaders who speak against “unconditional love” with those who speak about it and forward the message? What does a conditionally and unconditionally love God look like? What are the implications of the conditional/unconditional loving God upon the Sermon on the Mount? While the phrase “unconditional love” is a relatively new phrase within Christian literature, can we find evidence of God’s unconditional love in scripture? What would that look like and how would we find it?
Christopher talks with guest co-host Shiloh Logan about the final Beatitude on persecution. The Beatitudes are understood as a story that starts with the poverty of spirit (i.e., the emptying) and concludes with a blessing upon the persecuted. But what is persecution? Emerson recognized, in at least one sense, the difficulty in identifying real persecution when he pleaded, “Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” Mere or proactive disagreement is not persecution. Yet, even beyond the discussion of external persecution, how often do we persecute ourselves? How often does our false self persecute our true self? Could it be that by recognizing, dealing, and showing grace with the voice of our internal false self that we begin to recognize, learn, and have grace for how to deal with external persecutions as Christian peacemakers?
In this episode, Riley and Christopher explore the unseen world—the realm of all that which we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, but which is real—including unseen metaphysical realities and epistemological or socially constructed ones. Some of the most significant realities that form part of a fully human experience, from love—an unseen but metaphysical reality—to marriage—an epistemological but every-much-as-real one, are part of the unseen world. While science only deals with what can be quantified, the unseen world gives life its greatest quality. As Hamlet said to Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, . . . , than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
In this episode Christopher and Riley discuss the Stoic and Christian spiritual exercise of memento mori (remember you must die). Contrary to the macabre idea of an anxious dwelling upon death, memento mori can be a useful tool to help us live fuller lives of integrity, gratitude, and joy. We hope this message brings you a sense of peace and equanimity, and helps you appreciate the beauty of a purposeful life.
In this episode, Riley and Christopher explore the promise to peacemakers in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God (Matthew 5:9), with guest, Lindsey Ohlin, co-founder of Latter-day Peace Studies. Lindsey shares her transition from politics to peace, how she was able to find her “true self” as a daughter of God, and what that realization has meant to her. Lindsey, Christopher, and Riley discuss what it means to “see God” in themselves and in their fellow human beings. They revisit the importance of righteousness, understood as “right relationship,” whereby “great things [are] brought to pass” by “small and simple things” we do within ourselves, our homes, and our communities as peacemakers.
Also, check out Lindsey Ohlin’s article where she describes her journey, “From Politics to Peace.”
Christopher and Riley return to the topic of the Beatitudes, this time discussing the fifth of the eight Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). They explore what it means to be pure in heart and even how to purify one’s heart, in a wide-ranging discussion including insights from Plato’s tripartite theory of the soul in the Phaedo and the Republic to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, to medieval Muslim mystic al-Ghazali’s Alchemy of Happiness. to ancient and modern scripture. The discussion ranges from the personal to the political, including the City of Enoch, the New Jerusalem, and Zion as the “pure in heart” (D&C 97:21), including a discussion of how to build Zion from the inside out through justice in the soul and in the city.
Riley and Christopher return to the topic of the Beatitudes, this time discussing the fifth out of eight Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:7). They explore mercy in light of it’s apparent opposite, justice, and seek a conjunction of opposites in the justice and mercy of God incarnate as Jesus Christ.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley welcome back Jana Spangler to discuss stages of faith development as touched on in Episode 20: Navigating a Faith Crisis. For decades, theologians and philosophers like James Fowler, Brian McLaren, and Ken Wilbur have attempted to classify and put a name to the stages of the human faith journey. Jana, Riley, and Christopher discuss the value of these models in helping listeners to understand where they are on the faith development continuum so that they might take solace in knowing their oftentimes isolating faith struggles are a normal aspect of growth and discovery. Christopher, Riley, and Jana take the listener step by step through one of the models of faith development in the context of the atonement and the Perennial tradition, and encourage listeners, as Joseph Smith did, to “stretch”, “search”, “contemplate”, “expand”, and “commune with God”.
What is sin? Is it the violation of an unchangeable God-given standard? If so, then why has what is considered sin and its attendant consequences changed so drastically from antiquity to today? What role do social institutions, traditions, and cultures play in framing what is considered sin? In this episode Christopher and Riley tackle this complex and fraught subject, in an attempt to come to a constructive, contemplative understanding of sin. First, they attempt to define sin. Next they approach participation in unjust systems and how it can lead to collective condemnation, hampering our ability to minister to those in need. Finally, they analyze Christ’s example and how he himself dealt with issues of sin and condemnation.
Riley and Christopher contemplate the question of Heaven and Hell. Is there a Hell? Where is it? Is it the underworld called “Sheol” in Hebrew or “Hades” in Greek in the Old Testament translated “hell” in the King James Version of the Bible? Or is it in the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) in the New Testament, also translated “hell” in the King James Version of the Bible. Is it a place where the wicked go after dying or is there such a thing as a living hell on Earth? What about Heaven? Is it above? Is it on another planet called Kolob? Or is it on Earth? Is there heaven on earth? It isn’t obvious whether or where Heaven or Hell are, but contemplating these questions can bring peace on Earth.
Christopher, Riley, and guest, Jana Spangler, a seasoned faith transitions coach, talk about healthy ways of dealing with doubt, difficult questions, and supporting those in a faith crisis. They talk about opening a space for those in doubt to express their doubts and be heard without judgment or attempts to fix them. If we are not to “rehearse [our] doubts with doubters,” where can we turn for validation? Jana explains the mindset of those in a faith crisis. They don’t choose their crisis and want to remain in the fold, but often feel they don’t belong. Jana helps us frame doubt and even faith crisis as necessary steps in the growth, evolution, and long-term endurance of faith. She provides a framework for mutual, relational grace to help us grow towards a healthier discovery and acceptance of our own and others’ spirituality given different types and levels of faith and approaches to seeking truth.
Riley and Christopher address doubting your doubts as a dogma as dubious as the sin of certainty. Both dogmas miss the mark. Spiritual progress isn’t possible without questions and doubts. If you have no questions or doubts, you’re closed off to revelation. It is questions and doubts that have brought about revelation, and revelation brings about questions and doubts. Questions and doubts are essential to faith as knowledge negates the need for faith.
Christopher is joined again with his guest co-host, Shiloh Logan, to talk about the fifth Beatitude. After the last episode’s conversation concerning meekness, there is a better foundation for understanding and experiencing, at least in part, what it means to “hunger and thirst after righteousness.” What is this hungering? How do we experience this in our daily lives, and are we–in our actual lived experiences–truly feeling “filled.” We may say with confidence that we feel the “peace” of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but do we feel the inspiratation of the gospel’s awe and wonder? Is our religious experience reduced to a checklist of things believed and tasks completed, or is there something more to the gospel of Jesus Christ and of our relationship with the divine? Enos, in the Book of Mormon, gives us a good scriptural example through his own initial journey in following the Beatitude-path in hungering and in being filled — but how do we do this for ourselves? Sometimes it requires that we go back to the beginning and start over with the emptying of the first Beatitude and letting God be God in our lives.
Christopher and guest co-host, Shiloh Logan, talk about the third Beatitude on meekness. When we read of Jesus’ temptations after 40 days of fasting and when Satan showed him the whole earth, our typical interpretation is that Jesus recognized and rejected the temptation–from a rather contemporary Lockean standpoint–because the world was already His (because He had already mixed his time and labor in creating the world). Why would Jesus worship Satan to receive something that was already His? Yet Jesus would soon explain that this was not the reason the world was His. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ taught us that the meek inherit the earth. The earth was His, not because He had mixed His time and labor with it, but because He was meek. That is the foundation for our possession and claim on the earth. But what does this mean? What is the connection between meekness and inheriting the earth? Satan’s temptation was to take power and control over the earth, but these are not God’s ways. God’s power and glory are found in His “grace, equity, and truth, full of patience, mercy, and long-suffering, quick to hear the cries of his people and to answer their prayers” (Alma 9:26). This power and glory are not found in control or coercive dominion, but they are found through meekness.
Christopher and Riley have guest Travis Patten back on the podcast to discuss the soul’s descent from, and ascent to, God in light of Dante Alighieri’s journey from that “point midway on our path in life,” when we find ourselves in “a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost,” unable to commence our ascent to Paradise, to the presence of God, the “love that moves the sun and other stars.” Only through our descent into the Inferno God created to reveal to us our false selves can we reach the point of ascent of the mount of Purgatory to purify ourselves to fly to God’s presence.
Podcast Edited by: Christian Hurtado
Riley and Christopher and guest, Travis Patten, go all the way back to Classical Antiquity to explore contemplation from the incubation practices of Presocratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles—something like today’s sensory deprivation tanks—to the influence of the Late Antique philosopher Plotinus on the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Plotinus’s invitation is to “withdraw into yourself and look” to see that “we are not separated from spirit, we are in it” since “to set oneself above intellect,” rather, “ is immediately to fall outside it.”
Christopher and Riley explore the spiritual exercises of cosmic consciousness and cosmopolitanism as practiced by the Roman Epicureans and Stoics, and the early Christians. These spiritual exercises were taught by Roman philosophers Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. They were also taught by Jesus of Nazareth, who was Seneca’s contemporary, as recorded in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas as well as in canonical Scripture. Cosmic consciousness and cosmopolitanism are a way past cherubim and the flaming sword back into the paradisiacal garden of Eden where we can experience the peace of the presence and love of God in unity with Him in the eternal now free from duality and enmity.
Riley and Christopher answer one of the most frequently asked questions they get from listeners of this podcast in this episode: What is contemplation? While a definition of “contemplation” is easy enough to come by, the range of contemplative practices is vast, and the depth of experience they provide is unfathomable. Riley and Christopher give an extensive, if not exhaustive, list of contemplative practices, including more and less familiar ones, from among those they have practiced, and those they have observed. Along the way, they share powerful personal experiences of the divine from their own contemplative practices, as well as the palpable peace they have found through them–a deep abiding peace,” the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”
Christopher and Riley have guest Morgan Aldous back on the podcast this week to explore correspondences between the alchemist’s ascent of the Mountain of the Adepts through seven stages of alchemical transformation and our own ascension of the eight rungs of the ladder of the Beatitudes to personal transformation as taught by Christ in His Sermon on the Mount. The correspondences they find between the widespread idea of the eight beatitudes as rungs on a ladder, ultimately leading us upward to the presence of God and the peace found therein, point the way to personal transformation and peace, and peaceful community with our fellow man in a Zion society.
Riley, Christopher, and guest Morgan Aldous take you back to the true inner meaning of alchemy. That’s right, alchemy! If you are among those who think alchemy is just misguided proto-chemistry, you’re in for a big surprise! As Morgan put it, “While we tend to see alchemy as a primitive, mistaken form of chemistry that was redeemed by the Scientific Revolution, in reality, alchemy lost its sacred meaning and became mundane science.” While it’s true the Scientific Revolution took the exoteric (i.e., the outer) practices of the alchemists denuded from their esoteric (i.e, their inner) meaning and brought us many mundane conveniences we all take for granted today and seemingly couldn’t live without, we lost more than we gained in losing the esoteric meaning of those exoteric practices. For alchemists, the outer practices of alchemy were signs and symbols of deeper inner meanings. The gold the alchemists sought was not common gold. Morgan, Riley, and Christopher take you through both the esoteric and the exoteric meaning of alchemical practices from antiquity through the Renaissance and Reformation to the Restoration and current applications of alchemy, revealing lost inner meanings of the gospel’s ordinances from baptism and confirmation to the temple endowment and the marriage sealing. By elucidating the metaphoric language of alchemy, Morgan, Riley, and Christopher delve into alchemical symbolism not only in the above-mentioned ordinances along the covenant path, but in the story of the Brother of Jared in Book of Ether in particular, and in the Book of Mormon in general, and even in the person of the Savior himself, offering you the possibility a deeper, richer experience and understanding of gospel ordinances, the scriptures, and even the Savior Himself, as Morgan walks you step-by-step through an esoteric alchemical practice you can easily apply in your own spiritual practice to gain the benefit of alchemy in your personal relationship with the Savior in walking the covenant path back to your Father in Heaven. Walking the path to exaltation and eternal life is an alchemical practice. Understanding that elucidates and facilitates that path.
Christopher and Riley talk about the esoteric (inner) and exoteric (outer) experience of religion and finding a balance between the two. On the one hand, there’s holding so tightly to the letter of the word of God that’s the iron rod that we can’t let go long enough to take a step forward in the darkness in faith to walk the path the iron rod is meant to lead us down to the presence of God. On the other hand, there’s failing to hold to the rod at all and getting lost in the mists of darkness that are the temptations of the devil. How does the church support us in walking the path back to the presence of God? Much like the iron rod helps us stay on the path to God, the Church acts as scaffolding, as Stephen R. Covey put it in his book, The Divine Center, for the family where we learn how to and are supported in waking the path that ultimately we must walk alone in faith, trusting in God, according to our agency. Thus our church experience is an outer experience that is meant to support our inner experience of transformation. When we see the outer shell as the kernel itself, we may fail to do the inner necessary work to build the Kingdom of God Jesus Christ said is within us, satisfied with “working on the scaffolding” as Covey put it. At the same time, the path back to God, the Covenant Path, is paved with ordinances the Church serves to prepare us for and to provide us. But just going through the motions of the transactional “Checklist Gospel” (the exoteric) isn’t enough to get us back to God; we must do the inner (esoteric) work along the way. Our inner intention matters as much as, if not more than, the actions we take, for even the right outer practices not only avail us nothing, but even count against us if our hearts are not in them.
Shiloh, Riley, and Christopher Hurtado all open up space for a conversation about the healing power of mourning. A part of the baptismal covenant is to “mourn with those who mourn” (Mosiah 18:9), but do we really comprehend the incredibly healing power that mourning has on our fellow man? What does “mourning” here even mean? In the Beatitudes, after we empty ourselves and are poor in spirit, we experience a mourning from letting go of those false identities and ego. This personal step allows us the ability of being able to mourn with others. Mourning with the other, at least in part, is an experience of being with and seeing the other person without judgment, without guile, and without ridicule. It is not a moment to correct or adjust the other, but it is an experience where we are able to see the other person as God sees them in their true self. We have all had the common experience of not being or feeling seen, heard, or understood, but mourning with another offers that moment of grace in seeing, hearing, and understanding one another. We are always seeking for our own comfort, and really seeing, hearing, and understanding another person is often uncomfortable. Mourning with the other bridges the gap or chasm of separateness, and by allowing ourselves the possibility to connect with another we find new ways of connecting with ourselves. In a world wrought in social, religious, and political pain and anguish, the only way that we can truly begin to heal with those we perceive as our “enemy” is to learn how to mourn with them. All of the reasons and justifications against mourning with the other or our “enemy” are the very reasons and justifications that perpetuate and keep the chasm between us all present. Jesus Christ said that “if ye are not one ye are not mine” (D&C 38:27), and being able to see, grieve, and mourn with those who mourn are the first steps of unity.
Riley and Shiloh open up a space to talk about the subject of prayer. We have all been taught the standard posture of praying with our eyes closed, head bowed, arms folded, and kneeling, all while using the proper formula by addressing Heavenly Father by name, expressing gratitude, asking for what we need, and closing in the name of Jesus Christ — all while using the proper “honorific” pronouns. But is this the only way to pray? Are there other postures and forms of praying that also connect us to God? Are we already praying in other equally valid forms without even realizing it? What would other forms of prayer even look like? Many people are surprised when they first recognize what they are already naturally doing to connect with the divine, and that others have written and expounded upon these ways of prayer for centuries. How often have our prayers become reduced to mere moments of spoken transactionalism? When was the last time that our prayers were truly transformational? When have we experienced prayer as “a sacred place, when… our own heart is the place where Jacob’s ladder touches the earth”?
Shiloh and Riley open up on a topic that they have both been thinking and sitting with for a while: worthiness. The scriptures talk about "worthiness" quite a bit, but how do we reconcile a truth that we are "always already being worthy" with the scriptural concept of "unworthiness"? Is "worthiness" a description of our being? Is it a description of what we do? If we can be inherently unworthy of beings, then why would Jesus Christ atone for an unworthy being? Can it be that we have infinite and absolute worth and that "worthiness" is something else entirely? There are so many layers and levels of this discussion that followers of Christ often feel and believe that they are inherently unworthy of God's love, or that they have to qualify for (and always seemingly find themselves in failing) to be worthy of God's love. In this discussion, Riley and Shiloh attempt to separate worthiness from performance (that we are not the sum of our actions), talk a bit on the concept of "purity codes," and reassert a God of infinite love, compassion, love, and mercy. We are always already worthy in God's eyes -- even when we don't feel that we are worthy of it.
Riley and Shiloh open up a conversation about what Thomas Merton calls the True Self and the False Self. The LDS Bible Dictionary defines repentance as "a change of mind, i.e., a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world." Merton observed that so much depends on our idea of God, and what we initially believe about and how we view God says more about our own projection and less about how God really is. This is the same message that we get in the Doctrine and Covenants where Jesus Christ says that "every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his god" (D&C 1:16). Initially, we build a God in our image and project our own emotions and beliefs onto God's nature, but it is through repentance where we sacrifice and leave behind our false identities (i.e., our False Self) and through seeing God fresh and anew that we begin to see the True Self that has always already been and that we have just failed to recognize. Shiloh and Riley discuss their own experiences in recognizing their own False Selves and in how they're learning to let go of these false identities and to just sit with God and let Him awaken their True Selves.
Shiloh and Riley talk on various themes of peace. What part does myth play in both forming our identities and in bringing about peace? Riley and Shiloh use this discussion of myth to dive deeper into an understanding of how the Garden of Eden story is an example of the human journey, as it defines and develops our human experiences that lead us back to experiencing peace through partaking of the love of God. The Savior taught that we must empty ourselves of our natural man through being "poor in spirit," and it is through that experience of "emptying" ourselves that we experience our interaction with Cherubim and a flaming sword as spoken of in the Garden myth. Shiloh and Riley also discuss contemplative ways to read scripture in how to bring daily peace, as Riley leads us through a meditative reading of John 14:27. They conclude with talking about how expectations can lead us into living false realities that rob us of our peace.
A Contemplation Prayer on Peace:
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you...
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give...
Peace I leave with you, my peace...
Peace I leave with you...
Peace I leave with...
Peace I leave...
Peace.
Riley and Shiloh talk about the various ways that we, and others, have experienced God. They explore how the preparation for experiencing God is, in itself, an amazing divine experience, as there are multiple ways that each of us partake of the divine gift of sitting with God. While we often talk in terms of "feeling" the Spirit or God, sometimes we experience God in completely unique ways that aren't within the realms of "feeling," aren't commonly recognized or spoken of, and that sometimes we don't even realize ourselves without careful and intentional self-reflection. Many times in those moments when we recognize those precious and unique ways that God is touching our lives, we seek for validation and, as weird as it may sound, "permission" from others that what we're experiencing is acceptable and sufficient. We hope to impress and encourage everyone in their walk with God to validate their divine experiences that bring peace and good fruit into their lives.
Riley and Shiloh talk about being born again as an emptying that is necessary to being filled with all that God has waiting for us to experience. What is waiting for us when we're able to empty ourselves every day? Is there a way to start over, even emptying our very concepts of God to allow the divine to work within us into something new and wondrous every day? The LDS Bible Dictionary's definition of repentance is "a change of mind, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world." As repentance is a daily process, then we must learn to see God, ourselves, and the world anew every day. Although we may have been "born again" yesterday and the day before that, as Alma asks, "if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" (Alma 5:26). We hope you enjoy!
Shiloh and Riley talk about the Sermon on the Mount from a variety of perspectives. When we take a primary or solely rationalist approach to scripture, we often unintentionally end up "rationalizing away" the most difficult parts of the Sermon on the Mount that don't seem possible to follow. By taking a more contemplative approach to scripture, is there a way of allowing the scriptures to open up to us in a new way in giving us access to being with God? Riley and Shiloh express some initial thoughts on Lectio Divina and how that has changed their own relationship to the Lord through the scriptures and especially the Sermon on the Mount. We hope you enjoy!
Shiloh Logan and Riley Risto open up about their experiences and what led them to starting down a path of Christian contemplation. They talk about their interests in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount and in how the Savior’s teachings have brought them peace in their lives.