In this episode, Riley interviews Christopher on his journaling practice. Christopher keeps seven different journals, including a Morning Pages journal inspired by Julia Cameron, a templated journal inspired by Michael Hyatt, a Five Minute Journal, a feelings journal, a food journal, a reading journal, and even a garbage journal. Each one of these serves a unique contemplative purpose for Christopher. Riley asks Christopher probing questions about journaling, some of which were submitted in advance by listeners like you. While the usual context for journaling in LDS circles is for the purpose of family history, Christopher and Riley explore journaling for the purpose of getting to know oneself.

On February 16, 1832, Joseph Smith, Jr. and Sidney Rigdon were studying John 5, and while they “meditated upon these things, the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about” (D&C 76:19). This vision and the way of understanding Heaven it revealed, and which we now refer to as “the three degrees of glory,” was the result of Joseph and Sidney’s experience of Lectio Divina (Divine Reading) of John 5. In this episode Riley and Christopher approach John 5 and Doctrine and Covenants 76 from a present-moment perspective and use them as guides for ascent out of the…

Following US Independence Day with all of its pomp and circumstance, Christopher and Riley raise the question of whether America is a Christian nation. They recount America’s history of subjugation, displacement, and slavery; episodes in US history that do not embody the Christian ideals expressed in its Declaration of Independence and in its Constitution vis-à-vis the stories of Americans that have struggled against power for those Christian ideals. They then walk listeners through a contemplative exercise of juxtaposing Cristian and American ideals in a Venn diagram to discover any overlapping ideals, as a way of answering the question of whether American is a Christian nation.

In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss the contemplative practice of fasting. Beginning with the usual notion of fasting as abstaining from food and drink, they expand it to include abstaining from any appetite with the potential to be taken to excess or to become an unhealthy coping mechanism or even an addiction for lack of communion with God. Riley and Christopher describe indulgence in excess as a way we try to fill the emptiness in us resulting from a lack of communion with God, with food, sex, or the compulsive consumption of products or media, and draw upon examples and teachings from the Buddha, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans,…

In this episode, Riley and Christopher tackle the question of the actionability of Christian contemplation, given the fact that it is often misunderstood as mere navel gazing. In the spirit of the saying of the great Sufi, Algazel, who wrote that, “Knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity,” Christopher and Riley make a case for the conjunction of contemplation and action as each side of this seeming pair of opposites is incomplete without the other.

Christopher and guest co-host Shiloh Logan talk about the idea of divine unconditional love. There is some religious controversy over what God's "unconditional love" means. It has come to mean many things to many people, and there is no congruent doctrine from LDS Church leaders concerning the phrase. For as many statements come against unconditional love, there are more things said in favor of it from LDS General authorities and church leaders. But what are we to do about this? Is God unconditionally loving? Is there a way to contextualize and reconcile the words of the LDS church leaders who speak against "unconditional love" with those who speak about it…

Christopher talks with guest co-host Shiloh Logan about the final Beatitude on persecution. The Beatitudes are understood as a story that starts with the poverty of spirit (i.e., the emptying) and concludes with a blessing upon the persecuted. But what is persecution? Emerson recognized, in at least one sense, the difficulty in identifying real persecution when he pleaded, “Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” Mere or proactive disagreement is not persecution. Yet, even beyond the discussion of external persecution, how often do we persecute ourselves? How often does our false self persecute our true self? Could it be…

In this episode, Riley and Christopher explore the unseen world—the realm of all that which we cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, but which is real—including unseen metaphysical realities and epistemological or socially constructed ones. Some of the most significant realities that form part of a fully human experience, from love—an unseen but metaphysical reality—to marriage—an epistemological but every-much-as-real one, are part of the unseen world. While science only deals with what can be quantified, the unseen world gives life its greatest quality. As Hamlet said to Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, . . . , than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

In this episode Christopher and Riley discuss the Stoic and Christian spiritual exercise of memento mori (remember you must die). Contrary to the macabre idea of an anxious dwelling upon death, memento mori can be a useful tool to help us live fuller lives of integrity, gratitude, and joy. We hope this message brings you a sense of peace and equanimity, and helps you appreciate the beauty of a purposeful life.

In this episode, Riley and Christopher explore the promise to peacemakers in the Beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God (Matthew 5:9), with guest, Lindsey Ohlin, co-founder of Latter-day Peace Studies. Lindsey shares her transition from politics to peace, how she was able to find her “true self” as a daughter of God, and what that realization has meant to her. Lindsey, Christopher, and Riley discuss what it means to “see God” in themselves and in their fellow human beings. They revisit the importance of righteousness, understood as “right relationship,” whereby “great things [are] brought to pass" by “small and simple things” we…