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:
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