Mysticism: Meister Eckhart & Bruno Barnhart

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Mysticism: Meister Eckhart & Bruno Barnhart

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, we turn to two mystics—Meister Eckhart and Bruno Barnhart—who challenge the idea that God is somewhere "out there" and invite us instead to discover God as the very ground of our being. It's a vision of faith less about searching for the Divine and more about coming home, and learning to grow up into the kind of secure, mature love that makes us capable of real connection.

Science: St. Hildegard of Bingen & Ilia Delio

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Science: St. Hildegard of Bingen & Ilia Delio
Mike Roth

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, Mike draws on the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen and contemporary Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio to make a case that science and Christian faith aren't enemies—they never were—and that evolution, consciousness, and cosmic convergence can deepen rather than threaten the ancient mysteries of incarnation, Trinity, and atonement.

Creation: St. Francis & Wendell Berry

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Creation: St. Francis & Wendell Berry
Ben Conachan

During the long stretch of the Christian year from Advent to Pentecost, we are invited to ponder the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, atonement, resurrection. The remainder of the year, Ordinary Time, turns to the generations of every day saints, the Jesus-followers who keep pushing the Divine Story forward. In an age where American Christianity seems to have lost the plot, we can turn to the stories and examples of mystics and poets, women and outsiders who have kept the way of Jesus alive in times ancient and modern. This series will explore pairs of saints whose lives and writings inspire us to keep moving forward today.

This week, St. Francis and Wendell Berry guide us into a different kind of Christian imagination—one where creation isn't a backdrop to human salvation but belongs to it, and where learning to love the world around us turns out to be some of the most ancient and most human work there is.

Trinity Sunday: The Divine Dance

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Trinity Sunday: The Divine Dance
Megan E.M.

Today, the First Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate Trinity Sunday–a feast day that the universal Church has commemorated since 1334 A.D. In one sense, every Sunday is a festival of the Trinity because the whole Trinity is at work in every moment, brooding over chaos and calling forth life, catching creation up into the dance of renewal and transformation. Co-equal, self-giving, mutually loving, the ancient picture of the Trinity as a dancing circle–perichoresis–inviting humanity into the all-inclusive feast of belonging.