Relating experience: Spiritual practice and the poetry of Judith Beveridge, Kevin Hart, Robert Gray and Michael Heald

Through the Lens of Gurdjieff

Fieldwork in Religion ◽

10.1558/firn.31487 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 36-52

Author(s):

Michael Pittman

Keyword(s):

Participant Observation ◽

Field Research ◽

Spiritual Transformation ◽

Spiritual Practice ◽

Asia Minor ◽

Eastern Asia ◽

The Caucasus ◽

Successive Generations ◽

Spiritual Conversation

G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1866–1949) was born in Gyumri, Armenia and raised in the Caucasus and eastern Asia Minor. He also traveled extensively throughout Turkey to places of pilgrimage and in search of Sufi teachers. Through the lens of Gurdjieff’s notion of legominism, or the means by which spiritual teachings are transmitted from successive generations, this article explores the continuing significance of spiritual practice and tradition and the ways that these forms remain relevant in shaping contemporary trends in spirituality. Beginning with Gurdjieff’s use of legominism, the article provides reflection on some early findings done in field research in Turkey— through site visits, interviews and participant-observation—conducted in the summers of 2014 and 2015. The aim of the project is both to meet individuals and groups, particularly connected to Sufism, that may have some contact with the influences that Gurdjieff would have been familiar with, and to visit some of the sites that were part of Gurdjieff’s early background and which served to inform his work. Considerations of contemporary practices include the view of spiritual transmission, and practices of pilgrimage, prayer and sohbet, or spiritual conversation, in an ongoing discourse about spiritual transformation.

Download Full-text

The Sacred Art of Listening Forty reflections for cultivating a spiritual practice. Lindahl K. ISBN 1-901557-65-0 Wild Goose Publications

Health and Social Care Chaplaincy ◽

10.1558/hscc.v6i2.44 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 44

Author(s):

Dora Bennet

Keyword(s):

Spiritual Practice ◽

Sacred Art ◽

Wild Goose

Download Full-text

Kenotic Gestures

Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology ◽

10.1558/isit.36643 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (1-2) ◽

pp. 198-218

Author(s):

Michelle Voss Roberts

Keyword(s):

Gender Norms ◽

Spiritual Practice ◽

Aesthetic Theory ◽

Power Structures ◽

Christian Love ◽

Love Of God ◽

Shed Light

Christians sometimes take Christ's ken?sis, or self-emptying, as the pattern for Christian love of God and neighbor. Feminist critics suspect that this model reinforces unhealthy gender norms and oppressive power structures and contest the nature and extent of this template. Interreligious study can shed light on the debate. The Gau??ya Vai??ava tradition employs the categories of Indian aesthetic theory to explain how types of loving devotion (bhakti rasa) toward Krishna are evoked and expressed. The subordinate and peaceful modes of love for Krishna can serve as a heuristic for understanding Sarah Coakley's and Cynthia Bourgeault's retrievals of ken?sis in spiritual practice. A comparative reading suggests that objections to Coakley's version, which resembles the subordinate love of God, are more intractable due to the rootedness of its aesthetic in oppressive human experiences, while Bourgeault's reclamation of ken?sis aligns with a peaceful or meditative mode of love that feminists may more readily appreciate.

Download Full-text

Backpacking with the Saints

10.1093/oso/9780199927814.001.0001 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Belden C. Lane

Keyword(s):

American Southwest ◽

Spiritual Practice ◽

Spiritual Journey ◽

Human Response ◽

John Muir ◽

Hildegard Of Bingen ◽

Wide Range ◽

Thich Nhat Hanh ◽

In The Wild ◽

John Of The Cross

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with Søren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature. The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love. An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.

Download Full-text

Miigwech and blood memory: gratitude as a multi-lineage spiritual practice

Anglican Theological Review ◽

10.1177/00033286211023898 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 000332862110238

Author(s):

Hillary Raining

Keyword(s):

Native Americans ◽

Indigenous Communities ◽

Entry Point ◽

Spiritual Practice ◽

Future Generations ◽

Modern Times ◽

Do So ◽

Church Communities

In the last few years, scientists have discovered what indigenous communities have known for countless generations: that the emotional and physical lives of our ancestors will fundamentally affect our emotional and physical lives as well. Despite the increasingly evident effect that both trauma and/or gratitude can have on an individual (and by extension their offspring), there has been precious little research done on the effects of gratitude on future generations. This paper will seek to study the effect of gratitude as a deep spiritual practice that changes—not only those who practice it—but also the generations that follow. It will do so through the lenses of generational, psychological, and theological studies using the gratitude worldview and practices of the Ojibwa Native Americans as our entry point into the study of blood memory. It will also offer suggestions for church communities looking to reclaim gratitude as a spiritual practice in modern times drawing from the Church’s institutional “blood memory.”

Download Full-text