contemplation

Last fall, Lisa Dahill offered a course on contemplative practices and their capacity for being followed within an ecological context. Here is the course description:

This course introduces students to a range of practices of contemplative prayer, centering in a broadly ecological context: both Earth itself as our shared creaturely home and the particular places where students live. Students will engage in experiential elements that are adaptable to the students’ own tradition and/or context, including traditional forms like centering/mindfulness, Ignatian Examen, and lectio divina as...

Chad Thralls has created this syllabus for a course he is offering this spring at Seton Hall University. SSCS members can get a copy by emailing the SSCS Blog moderator. Here is the course description:

Though the terms “mystic,” “mystical,” and “mysticism” are used frequently in our culture, it is not clear what people mean when they use them.  Usually, the term refers to something vaguely mysterious, paranormal, or just plain weird.  This course will explore the phenomenon of mysticism in the Christian tradition using first and third-person perspectives; it will explore the topic in...

Edited by SSCS members Laurie Cassidy and M. Shawn Copeland, this volume includes essays by the contemplative theologian Constance FitzGerald, OCD, along with essays on topics like white supremacy, the climate crisis, and the Carmelite tradition by scholars of spirituality who have been inspired by her writings. Here is the publisher's description of the volume:

For some decades, the work of Carmelite theologian Constance FitzGerald, OCD, has been a well-known secret, not only among students and practitioners of Carmelite spirituality, but also among spiritual directors, spiritual writers...

This essay by Glen G. Scorgie appears in Embracing Contemplation: Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice which according to the publisher “offers a distinctly evangelical consideration of the benefits of contemplation.”

In their introduction to the volume, the book’s editors write that Scorgie

. . . addresses Christian contemplation in relation to other religions’ contemplative traditions. Scorgie rightly notes that it is important to enter into comparison with the other religious practices, not for the purpose of adjusting our own practices (as if Christianity lacked the internal...

This essay by Tom Schwanda appears in Embracing Contemplation: Reclaiming a Christian Spiritual Practice which according to the publisher “offers a distinctly evangelical consideration of the benefits of contemplation.”

In their introduction to the volume, the book’s editors write that Schwanda’s essay

. . . introduces the reader to criticisms of contemplation and spiritual formation that have arisen in popular-level online discourse. Unraveling these criticisms, and showing how they are not based on actual views held by evangelicals, Schwanda continues by giving four features of what...