Amazing view of the God who is, Being, and the Ground of Being. Demonstrating the incredible power of silence and attention before the Light of Light. I’d recommend it to anyone. ( )

As I possibly conclude the Christian period of my life and leave behind some of my Christian angst (people don’t practice! They attack their brothers and sisters! They eat too much food! They won’t listen! Oh why, why, why won’t anyone listen!), I’m actually reading some new (to me) Christian books as I get rid of the ones that no longer sit so comfy with me, although I tend to get them from the library now that supporting the Christian community has slid down my list of priorities. But I still want to understand what Christian practices or influences still sit well with me—like being silent like Raven from the ‘Mists of Avalon’, a way of being which despite being present in other non-Christian cultures, in the lands colonized by Christians IMO often retains a Christian or Christian-y feel to it, at least subjectively— and which Christian ideas and traditions to part ways with. Christian liturgy I won’t really miss, the way it’s practiced in the mainstream churches. It can have an infantilizing feel to it—teach the children obedience, in the desert of our god! About the gay-bashing and anti-feminist preachers (in pulpits, stereotypically white evangelical ones, and online, on Twitter/X and Threads), nothing needs to be said. But I wouldn’t practice my craft alone if I had what I desired; or indeed, be single. So I guess I can’t judge each and every Christian for associating with a large number of nincompoops, even though that was what was part of what made Christianity so stressful for me, when I was part of it….

I suppose one day, though, the bulk of humanity’s spiritual people, whatever our exact practices or specific goals, will have to feel some sense of kinship coming from a shared sense of paying-attention-to-life…. If only out of a shared desire for collective survival, you know.

…. Conversion can be a very traumatic transition, like a death, and I don’t believe anymore in making it this traumatic process where you just ‘splode and die, you know.

You’ll shed something in life whether you decide to or not, but it’s usually not a good idea to ‘splode and die, really.

…. Although I am more skeptical now of some of these sources than I once was—the wheat, the tares, and Saint Augustine: tare soup, kids! Tare soup with Uncle Augie!—I have to say that I have heard the basic essence of these ideas before, and of course, I still believe them. The bulk of it I agree with: perhaps not the ‘clothing’, but from the perspective of ultimate identity in God it would take a real caviller (a Christian, perhaps), to object, or take offense.

But perhaps now in my new life I shall be able to put these ideas into effect in a way that will actually make me happy, you know. Even Christianity is more than its ideas, its proposed ultimate truths; it’s also cultural habits, habitual ways of being. I find those Christian habits don’t really make me happy, you know. But perhaps one day an acorn will fall off the old oak tree, and a new oak will take form; and they will be like one oak, and yet not quite, you know.

But, respectfully, I’m not going to do it for them.

…. I see him really, really trying with the cute (ballet) dancer trauma-story, and the admiration for the couple he refuses to acknowledge as unhappy, you know; but I think a lot of it is monk-guilt: ‘I can’t crush the little people.’ Me, I’ll never have kids I think; it’s a life-span development thing, (35 soon!), and a combination of my personality and how society is. I’d like to get married, but a combo of Aquarius/Aries energy just doesn’t have kids in this wounded-traditionalist contemporary day unless he wants to end up as a Fox News bulletin. If I had kids, I’d get on Fox News. But I’m not ‘better’ than anyone; monks are ‘the best thing’, so it creates a lot of pushback, especially from the woman. (And either guilt or aggression in the monk.) “I’m important too, dammit; I’m the mother! You’re not the boss of me; I won’t change for you—I matter as the mother of everyone and you’re not the boss of me!” And it always has been like that, you know.

…. But it’s not a bad book. It’s actually pretty good.

(blah blah blah; multiplies words: cartoon cereal animal: it’s…. Great!).

…. By which I mean, I try not to talk too directly about meditation and how great it is.

Of course, he says the odd thing that I don’t agree with, but if you had the book in front of you it’d be obvious, so there’s no need to belabor the point.

It’s still a valuable book.

…. The examples are kinda interesting. I guess it’s good that they’re there at all, for all the good-literature reading, monkish types can be rather un-story-y. The protagonists also tend to be female, when before the contemporary period, the example person would probably have been a male, and probably would have associated women with unclean art, you know. (Not limited to Christianity.) Even Teresa of Avila was made to suffer in her personal life for not being a male, and obviously the heavy majority of the aphorism men were male, and they tended to be skeptical of women. And of course, even in our own day, the woman tends to be a probably white, (people in general are white, the way that people in general used to be male—Blackness is impolite; it’s practically female, though unfeminine), probably middle-class, cloistered, or academic, (we’re broad because she’s not all three!), and probably dealing with crippling disability because that’s what makes monks comfortable—absolute weakness vs absolute freedom. In reality, there is a lot of crippling disability hidden underneath surface imperfections “not worth a monk’s time” or whatever, and which present rather differently from the “template crippled academic/cloistered girl”, you know. Basically, there can’t be any man’s woman, you know—“you can tell by the way I take my walk, I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk”: a typical, once-born modern—if a girl wants to talk to a monk she’s has to be a monk’s girl, you know.

Anyway, I know that the above might make it sound like I’m angry and probably makes it sound like I am, and probably am intending to be, incredibly disrespectful, but I’m not saying it’s especially bad or whatever, still less that it has no value. These are just typical limitations of the mainstream religious in our time, and for example the monks and clerics of Christianity, who tend to be rather distanced, rather off putting, even to a man who is a layman. Obviously, in Catholicism, you see it quite literally. They dress up. “I am quite different than you. I am a Christian, and I come from a strange, far-off place, where men are holy.” I have met Protestant clerics, though, who can go to a Bible study or whatever almost self consciously dressed in civilian or street clothes—something they confuse with being “cool”, sometimes, I think, “Because after all, here I am, a Christian, dressed almost like an American!”—who wear this invisible uniform of piety, in their bearing, you know. “I am not like you. You can tell by the way I take my walk, I am no woman’s man—though I be married—and I have time to talk…. Oh, I have Time to Talk…. And you have time to listen, grasshopper. Tell me, what did the Bible look like, before it was written? There are only wrong answers, so take your pick; I know things, you know….”

I think a lot of intellectuals look at past-historical or writes-about-past-times as = worthy, and “Gossip Girl” as being the stain of the ordinary woman and her ordinary man, but my opinion is you should be able to look at a contemporary book as a historical document, and that = no difference/just the way it is, you know.

…. It’s funny, how someone totally smashed to pieces by the rocks, lying on the shore half dead, is closer to the monks than someone lost at sea and nervously eyeing their store of hard-tack, you know. And that makes them smug, on some level. I guess it’s not quite wrong—it is a choice—but it makes them smug. They’re “everyone”, except for the average person not drawn to extremes. And listen: I rage against the normies; I’m an Aquarius; conservative precedent-cultism infuriates me, etc. etc. But a Taurus (or even a Capricorn) isn’t Exactly the same thing as the Devil, you know. Maybe if you’re into Tarot you can use that word symbolically, ironically; “yes, there is much Earth to you, much materialism; I wonder if….” But to the Christians a devil is a movie villain, you know; an actor you don’t like. Even to the average monk the fucking materialist Taurus is someone you make a smug comment about that you don’t write down, and then ignore, basically. “Pleasant Valley Sunday” was kinder to those people. In the 60s you mocked those people until they hated you, even if you were a Monkee; but a monk! Ah, but a monk! They don’t exist for you! “That’s a pretty good deal. But I’ve got a better one: how about I give you the finger: and you give me my phone call…. You can’t scare me with this Gestapo crap. I know my rights.” “Ah but Mr. Anderson: how can you make a phone call…. If you don’t exist?”….

And ironically, that’s exactly how the middle-academic treats religion. Some student wants to talk about how her religious father abused her; some new ager wants to talk about his religion: “No. Religion does not exist. New subject.” My father the fundamentalist literally says that to his wife, you know, when he’s arguing and he wants to win but he’s ashamed to be fighting in the first place: “But this is what I think, and we mustn’t discuss it; you’re too uncivilized. New subject.”

…. So that’s the negative aspect of it, that I addressed.

But in a lot of ways, although I wouldn’t really have said it this way, I don’t quite disagree. It’s a valuable book.

This book is different. There were plenty of books on contemplation the field tired – either wordy and labored were unhelpfully smooth and idealistic. But this is sharp deep, with no clichés, no psychobabble and no shortcuts. It's honesty is bracing, his vision is utterly clear; it is a rare treasure, (Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury)

A deep and powerful dive into the value of contemplative prayer.

The author explores what the contemplative prayer tradition is about: what motivates it, certain types of practices (prayer words, etc.), and its progress. The author explores the "progress" of contemplative prayer in three phases as one gets deeper into contemplation, and even how "progress" is a difficult metric since one easily moves forward and backward in the process.

The author is very sanguine about the challenges and difficulties attending the discipline. He's the first I've seen to basically come out and say there's no specific model, and the whole premise works against a specific model, even though most of those drawn to it really want a model. His descriptions and explanations make sense even to those (like me) who have not moved deeply into the contemplative traditions even though they may seem compelling and attractive.

Throughout the author is conversant with the major characters and themes of the contemplative tradition from the past 1700 years. A highly engaging and recommended work for those who are considering contemplation. ( )

> Voyage au pays du silence. Voici un livre de spiritualité pour votre été. C'est bien connu, pour ne pas bronzer idiot, bronzez spi !
—François Maillot, La Procure

> Ce livre n ut pas comme lu autres. De nombreux livres sur la contemplation dont assez rebattus, qu'ils soient verbeux ou inutilement lisses et idéalistes. Mais celui-ci est incisif, profond, sans clichés, sans psychologisme et sans raccourci. Il est d'une honnêteté vivifiante et d'une absolue clarté de vue. Un trésor rare.
—Rowan Williams, archevêque de Canterbury