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.

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan magazine. In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.” I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time . In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...

Same But Different

Read On and Learn One of THE Keys for Becoming Strong and Powerful In multiple articles, essays, and training programs that I’ve created, I’ve repeatedly mentioned the concept “same but different.” It’s one of the most important concepts if you plan on getting brutally strong on a lift, any lift. It’s so simple that—like a lot of simple things—its power is often overlooked. But if you want to achieve your physique goals—not just strength and power but hypertrophy, as well—you need to put the principle into practice. A couple things are key for continually increasing your strength. First, you need variety. As I’m fond of saying, or writing about in this case, everything works… for about 8 weeks. Somewhere around that 8 week mark, most lifters need to make some changes. If you’ve been at this training thing for awhile, then you probably should make changes long before even 8 weeks...

Everything Moderate

An Effective Training Approach for Muscle Growth I write a lot about high-frequency training (HFT). I think it’s one of the most effective methods of training. One of the main reasons that I write about it is because I believe it’s underused. At least, it is among modern trainees in most gyms throughout the land. Because it is a really popular way to train among modern lifters, I also write quite a bit about low-frequency programs, but ones that use high-volume and high-intensity. Since it is so popular, I figure I might as well write about good programs that use that methodology. But there is another way to train that can be highly effective for a lot of lifters. It’s not flashy. It’s not “sexy.” And it’s without a doubt nothing new. You might call it the everything moderate approach. Moderate frequency. Moderate volume. Moderate...

C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

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