(I’m learning French right now and had to change the title when I realized I f’ed up my grammar. Ha!)
This is the first of what will be a (mostly) weekly roundup of things that are knocking around my brain. Not just the recommendations I’ve been doing lately, but an expansion into things I’m pondering and ideas I want to explore but am not ready to write a whole essay on.
The End of Shangri-La
In a high mountain meadow not far from Aspen, CO, lies a Trappist monastery, St. Benedict’s, that for the last 40 years or so has been a pilgrimage destination for those in the contemplative Christian world. It was the home of Father Thomas Keating, co-creator and the great popularizer of a meditation practice called Centering Prayer. The theology of Centering Prayer is rooted in the medieval spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing, though the methodology has some DNA from Zen (and, I suspect, a bit of Transcendental Meditation).
For CP practitioners, doing a 10-day silent retreat at Snowmass (the nearby village and mountain that became shorthand for St. Benedict’s) was always on the bucket list. I did mine in 2015, and was privileged to be present for one of the few private Q and A audiences Fr. Thomas was able to grant in his waning years. He passed away three years later at the age of 95.
Trappists are a reformed offshoot of the Cistercian order, who are themselves reformed Benedictines. After the success of Trappist priest Thomas Merton’s autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain in the 1950’s they became instrumental in the revival of a sort of mystical medieval apophatic Christianity, one that dovetailed neatly with (and was very much a response to ) the fascination with eastern spirituality that pervaded the counterculture of the time.
Trappists have been at the forefront of interspiritual dialogue between Eastern (particularly Buddhist) and Western practitioners, at least in the States (there’s a whole other British/Continental lineage for this sort of thing), beginning with Merton’s interest in Buddhism, and continuing with Thomas Keating’s Snowmass Dialogues. Their monasteries all have retreat centers that welcome people from all spiritual walks. Besides the retreat at Snowmass, I have spent a month living with the sisters at Our Lady of the Redwoods Abbey in Northern California, and I often take quiet days to walk and meditate at Mepkin Abbey here in the Lowcountry.
I learned about the impending closure of Snowmass from one of my contemplative teachers, Cynthia Bourgeault. She has a pretty thorough breakdown of the reasons, informed by a long relationship with the monks there. Snowmass truly is a special place, and I’m sad to see it go. But as the big J himself said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
I know Fr. Thomas and Snowmass have scattered seeds of spiritual awakening far and wide. During my own 10-day Centering Prayer retreat, I witnessed a conservative evangelical Republican white man and a prison-abolitionist inner-city Black woman build a connection and open their hearts to one another. That’s something that has the potential to bear a lot more fruit further down the road.
Contemplative Outreach, the independent nonprofit that continues to disseminate the CP practice and Keating’s teachings lives on, though it has seemed to me to be winding down as many of the original students and founders die off. As much as I love and am grateful for the teaching of Centering Prayer, the spirituality engendered there always struck me as a bit dry and overly masculine. My own sense is that we are ripe for a new awakening of Christian contemplation and mysticism, one that relies less on the secularized Buddhism of the late 20th century, and rooted more in the multi-spirited, quasi-animist sacral materiality of medieval alchemy and folk practice. Perhaps that is just my wishful thinking, but either way, I am sure the legacy of Thomas Keating and Snowmass will continue to germinate.
What I’m Watching Right Now
Two beloved shows of the past several years, Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, are currently in their final seasons. Lasso has had two absorbing seasons full of heart and empathy and character growth… as well as a (welcome, given its tendency toward the sentimental) turn toward the dark side in the character of Nate. Unfortunately, season 3 is making a giant hash of things, spooling multiple plot lines out into baggy, bloated episodes and splitting up the beloved pairing of Roy and Keeley for characters (Shandy, Jack) that go nowhere. I’ll watch it to the end anyway.
Maisel, on the other hand, is going out with a bang, as it builds up to 1950’s housewife turned comedienne Midge finally getting her big break, while also revealing the relational damage accrued along the way. I’ve always had a soft spot for ballsy, self-centered female characters that ride that heroine/anti-heroine line. Maisel is smart and funny and snappy and eye-popping stylish even as it shows us glimpses of the dark underbelly of becoming a star.
That’s it for today. I was going to write more, but I have a cold— my first real illness since 2019 (weirdly, I’ve never gotten Covid)— and I’m a bit cranky. Have a great weekend!
I’d say that an animist-contemplative movement is alive and well, it’s just not super online (although it’s not not online). If you ever have any time to spend in Asheville, NC it is a hot bed of this sort of stuff right now. People aren’t necessarily completely abandoning their original faith (be it Christian or Buddhist) but expanding on it and finding crossroads with each other across faiths through things like nature based ritual, herbalism, permaculture, mindful movement practices, psychedelics, and what have you. I like your writing because I see the same spirit in it, a rootedness in tradition with a simultaneous openness to connect across tradition.
"My own sense is that we are ripe for a new awakening of Christian contemplation and mysticism, one that relies less on the secularized Buddhism of the late 20th century, and rooted more in the multi-spirited, quasi-animist sacral materiality of medieval alchemy and folk practice."
I also have a sense of something like this coming over the horizon, so I don't think it can be just your wishful thinking. And there's a power in naming it the way you did here. I keep coming back to the lyrics of this track by the theologian and songwriter David Benjamin Blower, which feels connected to what's coming, or at least what's called for:
https://benjaminblower.bandcamp.com/track/home