For this episode of Latter-day Contemplation Riley welcomes back Phil McLemore to discuss the power habits and rituals. Habits can be positive or negative and ultimately become the structural backbone of our lives. As we learn to use them in productive ways we are led to lives of inner and outer transformation. However, habits have the potential to become an unconscious, soul and agency destroying cancer that compounds the problems of the “natural man”. Bringing conscious awareness to the individual and accumulated habits which form our routines can help us replace entropic, destructive processes with what Christ called “living water”. They offer specific ideas and guidance based on the book Atomic Habits and their own life experience which can help us break these unhealthy cycles and begin the process of rebirth into a new life.
In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss one of their favorite religious texts, an excerpt from the Mahabharata, called the Bhagavad Gita. This seminal Hindu work introduces the various forms of Yoga as an allegorical discourse between the warrior prince, Arjuna, and the reincarnated God, Krishna. Contrary to the Western understanding of Yoga, this has less to do with stretching muscles and more to do with stretching the soul. Christopher and Riley share some favorite commonplaces from their reading and offer their interpretations as a starting point for those wanting to explore the beauty and great value of “the Gita.” ...
In this episode Riley and Christopher welcome Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, “a licensed therapist who specializes in working with LDS couples on sexuality and relationship issues,” for a wide-ranging discussion of the Divine Feminine from an archetypal spiritual perspective. The discussion covers, among other things, the attributes of the Divine Feminine, their symbolic implications, the integration of the Divine Feminine, and its manifestation and significance in relationships. ...
In this episode, Christopher and Riley welcome back Jana Spangler to discuss stages of faith development as touched on in Episode 20: Navigating a Faith Crisis. For decades, theologians and philosophers like James Fowler, Brian McLaren, and Ken Wilbur have attempted to classify and put a name to the stages of the human faith journey. Jana, Riley, and Christopher discuss the value of these models in helping listeners to understand where they are on the faith development continuum so that they might take solace in knowing their oftentimes isolating faith struggles are a normal aspect of growth and discovery. Christopher, Riley, and Jana take the listener step by step through one of the models of faith development in the context of the atonement and the Perennial tradition, and encourage listeners, as Joseph Smith did, to “stretch”, “search”, “contemplate”, “expand”, and “commune with God”. ...
