Read. Pray. Write‪.‬ Read. Pray. Write.

“Now, through vulnerability, a teeming curiosity, embodiment, and interconnection, I continueto step into the rooted contemplative life.” Cassidy Hall 















































In QUEERING CONTEMPLATION: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality, Cassidy Hall considers how all the meanings of queerness might awaken contemplation and life. She shares how pausing contemplatively before engaging is an inner stance, a way of navigating both an interior world and relationships. 















































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Cassidy Hall (she/her/hers) (MA, MDiv, MTS) is an author, award-winning filmmaker, podcaster, ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and leading voice in contemplative spirituality. She is the cohost of the Encountering Silence podcast and the creator of the Contemplating Now and Queering Contemplation podcasts. Her films include In Pursuit of Silence and Day of a Stranger. Cassidy is widely published and currently resides in Indianapolis, where she is studying for her DMin degree.

Psalm 4 remains relevant today because few feelings are more unvarnished than the regret, embarrassment, humility and pain we feel when we must admit our failings, or confess a sin. In this rebroadcast, we meditate on how “trembling and weeping” are restorative, evidence that our hearts have not hardened.

“I had no desire to be perfect and I didn’t want a life of conformity….God was calling me to be authentically myself the person who God made me to be..” Sr. Julia Walsh















































Lent reminds us that perfection is never the goal, even for those called to avowed life.  In FOR LOVE OF THE BROKEN BODY (Monkfish), Franciscan sister Julia Walsh admits that even she fights the “shoulds” when it comes to spiritual life.  















































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Julia Walsh is a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration who is part of The Fireplace Community in Chicago. She serves as a spiritual director and vocation minister plus hosts the Messy Jesus Business podcast. A widely published spiritual writer, her work is found in places such as America, Geez, Global Sisters Report and St. Anthony Messenger. She is host of the podcast Messy Jesus Business. 

“I would not allow hurt to harden my body, mind, and spirit, as it had so many troubled souls in my life.” –– Jean P. Kelly















































All of us recycle pain, but few of us caught in a spiral of suffering have the energy, the knowledge, and the courage to spot and manage deep dysfunction in family and romantic relationships.In Less Helping Them, More Healing You podcast host Jean Kelly offers an approach to reading as meditation that is not another task to add to a fraught day of healing one’s self by one’s self. It is an invitation to join an ancient community of seekers who have practiced, taught, and embodied centeredness—a detachment—achieved through texts of all kinds, not just scriptural or religious.















































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Author, educator, and podcast host Jean P. Kelly believes in the power of stories, both hers and others, to heal and restore hope in both individuals and communities.In her new book, Less Helping Them, More Healing You; The Transcendent Gift of an Ancient Spiritual Practice, Jean teaches that Spiritual Reading can heal because it creates the time, space, and grace necessary to achieve authentic self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-gift, even in times of desperation. Her memoir not only shares how the ancient practice helped her recover from unbalanced relationships, but also offers tips for practical application of Spiritual Reading in your life.Over the last 30 years, Jean’s writing as been published in local, regional and national publications and websites.  She regularly contributes essays, cultural commentary, video lectionary reflections, and journalistic stories to U.S. Catholic, Sojourners and others, often exploring the intersections of faith, intellect, and writing and reading as forms of prayer. 

“We long for restoration of relationship. And we rely on the Father, who understands. After all, we also were wayward prodigals once, living for our whims.” – Mary DeMuth.















































Unparenting children begins the first time we drop them at daycare or a playdate.  That doesn’t make letting go any easier when they are adults, until we remember that they were never ours. Children were and are God’s, writes author Mary DeMuth in her new book, Love, Pray, Listen: Parenting your Wayward Adult Kids with Joy.















































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Mary DeMuth is literary agent, international speaker, podcaster, and she’s the novelist and nonfiction author of nearly 50 books, including 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge (Bethany 2023). She loves to help people re-story their lives. Find out more at marydemuth.com.

“Even before losing my hearing, so much of my identity was upheld by trying to meet expectations, gain and maintain approval, and avoid rejection at all costs. I was deaf to the voice of God calling me the beloved.” Sarah Forti















































“From our center of being grounded in contemplative practices, we can choose to listen for the Holy by receiving the other as a whole person, not merely their words, but God’s intention for them as his beloved,” writes Sarah Forti in “Listening for the Holy,” from Soul Food: Nourishing Essays on Contemplative Living and Leadership.















































 





















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Sarah Forti is the co-director of “Crossing the Threshold”, a two-year Contemplative Leadership program at the Shalem Institute of Spiritual Formation in Washington, DC. Sarah also teaches Group Spiritual Direction at Shalem, and serves as Director of Missions and Ministry Programming at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Bon Air, VA.



































































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