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Full-Text Articles in Practical Theology
The Joy Of Feeling Close To God: The Practice Of Prayer And The Work Of Accompaniment, Douglas E. Christie
The Joy Of Feeling Close To God: The Practice Of Prayer And The Work Of Accompaniment, Douglas E. Christie
Theological Studies Faculty Works
What does it mean to pray in response to the most acute challenges of everyday historical existence? When prayer is conceived of primarily as a personal, deeply interiorized expression of the soul’s longing to communicate with a transcendent God, it can be difficult to imagine what it might mean to incorporate the embodied, communal, historically mediated dimensions of human experience into the broader understanding about what it means to pray. The challenge is to find a way of understanding and articulating how the powerful and supple language of prayer comes to expression in and through the concrete, historically mediated forms …
Practicing Paradise: Contemplative Awareness And Ecological Renewal, Douglas E. Christie
Practicing Paradise: Contemplative Awareness And Ecological Renewal, Douglas E. Christie
Theological Studies Faculty Works
What would it mean for Christians to take seriously the idea that we are called to practice paradise, to inhabit the world as if “everything is in fact paradise”? In the Christian contemplative tradition, one finds recurring attention to the notion that paradise is somehow knowable, graspable, and inhabitable in this present reality, and that this experience of paradise can be incorporated into a meaningful spiritual practice. This essay asks whether, in a moment of deepening ecological degradation, the contemplative practice of paradise might help us learn again how to imagine the world as whole, inhabit it with tenderness and …