I have just agreed to co-facilitate a week-long immersion experience in northern Ireland that will combine contemplation with engagement with peace activists in the region (both Catholic and Protestant). There are only a few open positions for what promises to be an amazing, life-changing event. Perhaps you will join me there.

To learn more about this experience, visit: Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism, August 17-24, 2010!

I'm currently in conversation with several folks in the Atlanta area on the topic of creating an ecumenical Christian Center for Spiritual Development. We're in the information gathering phase, and so we'd like some input from folks online.

Please take a moment to respond to this poll. What would you like to see in programming offered by a local center for spiritual development? In answering this poll, please only check those items that are sufficiently interesting to you that you would make a real effort to attend. Thank you for your input.



What kind of programming would you like to see from a Center for Christian Spiritual Development? (Check all that apply)

(polls)

I'm thrilled to announce that my forthcoming book, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism: The Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality, is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

The book won't be published until August 2010 — but why wait? Place your pre-order now by clicking here.



And while I cannot say for sure that this is the final cover design — publishers will often change a book's cover, sometimes at the last minute — I can say that I hope this is what the cover will look like, for I sure do like it. In fact, let me use stronger language than that: I love it. It anchors mysticism in the monastic tradition; it is clearly Christian without being in-your-face religious, and it has just the right touch of both beauty and mystery.

What do you think about the cover design? Please let me know, either by email or by leaving a comment here.

WHAT'S YOUR ALBUM COVER?

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Hey, if any of my old LJ friends are now on Facebook, and want to stay in touch with me, here's how to find me: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=590663568

I'd like to invite everyone to participate in a Mysticism: Theory and History book discussion group through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. The group kicks off this coming Thursday, May 1. The first book we’ll be discussing is Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love.

Just follow this link to learn more about the group and to sign up: http://www.ccel.org/node/4557

The insurance company has asked me to pull together a list of items stolen from our house, along with the cost to replace them. The easiest way for me to estimate the replacement costs was to create an Amazon wish list, which I have done. If you want to be a voyeur and see approximately what we lost, click on the link below. I say "approximately," because a number of the items listed are newer models (after all, most of what we lost were tech gadgets) — but in all instances save one, the newer item actually costs less than what we paid for when we bought the earlier model a few years back. I know our insurers will likely want to just pay us the fair market value of the actual items we owned, which means what their used price is on the open market. But even though it means we'll have out of pocket costs, we'd rather replace our losses with new items. Buying a used DVD from Half.com is one thing: buying a used iPod something else entirely.

So here's the list. I'm not suggesting that any angels who read over this list actually buy something for us (but of course, we won't turn down any presents, either!) :-)

Carl's Burglary Wish List

It has just come to my attention that FaceBook and Six Apart have joined forces to create a new application called "Blog It." With Blog It I can simultaneously post to several different Blog Sites, including Worpress (where my "main" blog lives), as well as LiveJournal and Blogger. So this is an experiment - and if it works, I may be back on LiveJournal more often, as well as hanging out on Blogger more than ever before. It appears to be a nifty little app, so if you have Facebook, check it out.

If you are interested in Christian mysticism, please go to my blog and read this post - and please answer one or more of the questions I list at the end of the post:

http://anamchara.com/2007/11/15/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-christian-mysticism-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

Thank you!