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Full-Text Articles in Practical Theology
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 …
Place-Making As Contemplative Practice, Douglas E. Christie
Place-Making As Contemplative Practice, Douglas E. Christie
Theological Studies Faculty Works
In an age of chronic and widespread displacement, the work of place-making—the discovery and cultivation of a sense of place—has gained new significance and meaning. In this essay, I propose to consider how place-making can be understood as a form of contemplative practice. Anthropologist Keith Basso describes place-making as a work of “retrospective world-building” that enables a person or community to see a place in all its richness and complexity and hold that place in the imagination. Following the work of photographer Robert Adams, I want to suggest that what makes this work contemplative in character is the integration and …