SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: October 2023 (Art & Theology): Each month I compile a nonthematic mix of thirty faith-inflected songs from a range of sources. October’s playlist is now live. One track I’ll draw your attention to, with a live performance video below, is the soul-baring prayer “Doubting Thomas” by Chris Thile of Nickel Creek; read the lyrics, with annotations, here. (Also, Paul Demer has a nice cover of this song on YouTube.)
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MEDITATION EXERCISE: “Stillness—Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations”: From the Center for Action and Contemplation comes this one-minute video that takes the most memorable line from Psalm 46, progressively paring it down and creating meditative space around each subtraction.
Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, writer, and retreat leader, mentions this chant in her book Chanting the Psalms. “Each time the line is repeated,” she writes, “key words are taken away. The result is a funnel-like effect that leads straight down into silence. . . . Each phrase expresses its own unique meaning and understanding as the prayer moves toward utter simplicity” (185). Bourgeault recommends working with the recording “Be Still and Know” found on the album Songs of Presence: Contemplative Chants for the New Millennium from Praxis Publishing House; I couldn’t find the audio online, but I did find a song by The River’s Voice (Trish and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan) that’s also based on this exercise of Fr. Rohr’s: “Be (Still and Know That I Am God)”:
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PODCAST EPISODES: Here are two podcast episodes I caught up with recently and enjoyed. Both links include transcripts.
>> “Jan Richardson: Stubborn Hope,” Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, October 27, 2020: Kate Bowler, a historian and cancer survivor who has done much academic work on the prosperity gospel, talks with spiritual writer Jan Richardson [previously], whose husband died unexpectedly in 2013, about the hidden rooms of grief, being disciplined by hope, and how the concept of blessing in the Jewish and Christian traditions differs from the #blessed culture of social media. Don’t miss the three discussion questions in the show notes.
>> “Esau McCaulley: How Far to the Promised Land?,” No Small Endeavor, September 14, 2023: Lee C. Camp interviews public theologian Esau McCaulley, a professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and a New York Times opinion writer, about his new memoir, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South. I’ve heard rave reviews from multiple corners about this book, and this conversation has really whetted my appetite to read it!
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POEM COMMENTARY: “Learning about Constellations” by Saddiq Dzukogi, commentary by Pádraig Ó Tuama: On this episode of On Being’s Poetry Unbound podcast, host Pádraig Ó Tuama unpacks a poem written by Saddiq Dzukogi in the aftermath of his one-year-old daughter’s death. It’s from his 2021 collection Your Crib, My Qibla.
Art & Theology 