Best of the Web: Christian Mysticism of the Future

For a while now, I've been wanting to do a "best of" series where I post links to what I consider to be some of the best web posts/articles that you can find on the internet.

Lately, I've been very busy writing articles, and so my posts here on my blog have taken a bit of a back seat to the rest of my writing. But since I've found time tonight to sit down and actually do something here, I thought it would be a good time to start this "best of" series.

My first pick comes from Carl McColman's delightful mystical Christian blog Anamchara: The Website of Unknowing. The post is entitled "Christian Mysticism of the Future" and its my favorite of all of Carl's posts. (And he's written quite a lot.)

By the way, after you've read this, be sure to check out the rest of his site. His last few blog posts alone are wonderful reading.

Christian Mysticism of the Future

One of my gripes with Phyllis Tickle’s book The Great Emergence is that she provides little or no insight into where she thinks the church is headed during this period of emergence. I think everyone kind of gets it that post-modernity is a hinge time, where we’re after something that no longer works (modernity) and we don’t really know yet what it is we’re before. (as an aside, I figure it’s either going to be a new renaissance that will make the 15th century look like a dress rehearsal, or else it could involve environmental devastation and resultant trauma on a scale never before imagined. And it all really boils down to how effectively we can curb our appetites!).

Okay, well, I can hardly whine about Tickle’s lack of forecasting, if I don’t do a bit of my own. So I’m working on a chapter in my book that will explore my conjectures about the future of Christian mysticism. This is utterly un-scientific: I am only basing my thoughts on what I have seen and read and intuited. So feel free to disagree — but if you do, please post a comment as to why. I’d be curious to hear what other contemplatives sense about where the Holy Spirit is leading us.

But for now, here are the seven characteristics that I (currently) believe will shape the future of Christian mysticism:

Christian mysticism in the future will be increasingly Trinitarian. I believe the success of William Paul Young’s The Shack is at least partially due to its lovely presentation of the trinitarian nature of God. Obviously, the Blessed Trinity has always been central to Christian theology, but I believe its importance will only increase, as a healthy alternative to monism and dualism — both of which have dogged Christian spirituality for too long.

To read the full article, go here.

Full-Body Blast

George Turner’s Old-School Full-Body Program for Gaining 90 Pounds—that’s right, 90!—of Pure Muscle George Turner was in his 60s in this picture! When it comes to old-school bodybuilders, George Turner remains one of my favorites. Probably because of the fact that he was more than just a competitive bodybuilder. He was a gym owner along with being a damn good writer of (damn good) training articles. He was also a bit—how should it be said?—curmudgeonly. But he was without a doubt curmudgeonly in the best possible way. He was, in many ways, similar to Vince Gironda in that regard, just without the disdain for squats. (That’s right, as much as I like Gironda, he wasn’t a fan of the barbell back squat.) Myself, I love back squats. As did Turner. Anyway, that paragraphic preamble is just a way of writing that, as I was thumbing through an old IronMan magazine this morning, looking ...

Programming Made Simple

Simple, Easy-to-Implement Strategies for More Size and Strength If the titles of workout articles are any indication, America doesn’t know how to train. I can’t speak for other countries, since I haven’t lived anywhere else. In the past, I have spent some time in Asia for work, and if my visits there were any indication, then I don’t think the rest of the world trains much better. So I guess there’s that. Now, if you know anything at all about proper training, and if you walked into any gym anywhere in America, you’d probably come to the same conclusion—that Americans simply don’t know how to train—so why am I singling out the titles of English-language workout articles? The reason is simple. Almost every single article I have seen lately—to a friggin’ tee—has almost the exact same title, and it goes something like this: “I did (fill-in-the-blank) for (fill-in-the-number of days...

Train Heavy. Train Often.

If you’re a natural lifter who wants to gain plenty of muscle mass but also the strength to go with it, I think there are three things that are paramount. First, you need to train heavy. Second, you need to train often. And third, you need to remain fresh while doing the first two. If you’re a student of the lifting game, and if something about my above statement seems vaguely familiar, there’s an explanation for that. I basically paraphrased the great Russian strength coach Vladimir M. Zatsiorsky, who, rather famously, said that the key to strength training was “to train as heavy as possible as often as possible while being as fresh as possible.” That quote is well-known for a reason. Following it judiciously will unlock a lot of strength and hypertrophy gains. Of course, there are a couple caveats to that statement. You need to be training with barbel...

C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

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