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Amy Frykholm on Journey to the Wild Heart
01:00:17
“You can trust Amy Frykholm as a modern-day amma who knows the terrain of the soul. Reading Journey to the Wild Heart is like going out to the desert for a word. It helps us slow down, let go, unknow in Silence, and embody Love.― — Carmen...
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- [00:06]
A
Welcome to Contemplify, where we seek to kindle the examined life for contemplatives in the world. I'm your host, Paul Swanson. Today I welcome writer and journalist and novelist Amy Frickholm to talk about her latest book, Journey to the Wild Four Invitations to Contemplative Living. Amy is an award winning writer, scholar and journalist whose work insightfully explores American religion and culture. Her debut novel, High Hawk has been long listed for the 2025 Penn Hemingway Award. This is Amy's third time on Contemplify. So you will not be surprised that in Journey to the Wild Heart, Amy weaves together ancient mystics to modern poets and philosophers, inviting readers into deeper knowing through reflection and through practice. I believe her wisdom will illuminate your own path as well. As always, you can visit contemplify.com for the show notes on this episode and learn more about Amy frickholm@amy frickholm.com now join me in raising a glass to my guest today.
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B
Amy.
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A
Amy Frickholm. Good to see you today. This is the third time that we've gathered here on Cadupify. You were my, my second guest.
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B
That's crazy.
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A
Ever. It's like 10 years ago. It's kind of wild.
- [01:46]
B
That is wild. That is wild. And it's an honor, it's an honor to still be invited back after all those years.
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A
Well, I've enjoyed every conversation we've had and I still have high hopes of meeting in person one of these days.
- [01:59]
B
Yeah, no kidding. We're so. We're just down the road from each other. We really shouldn't be that hard.
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A
I know, I know. That's so true. And speaking of down the road, where are we finding you today? So, folks, get a sense of the place and location that you find yourself in.
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B
Well, I'm in Leadville, Colorado, on a kind of goopy spring day. Things melting and things mushing, turning to mud and birds coming in. I'm looking out my window. I look out at the highest peak in Colorado and through an aspen tree where I've hung a bird feeder. And I'm just seeing all kinds of fun birds right now. They're coming back. And really fun birds I haven't seen before at my feeder, like American goldfinch, a pair of American goldfinches, which is really exciting to me. So I'm doing a little bird watching, watching the snow melt. It's soggy. It's kind of muddy. Leadville in the spring.
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A
That sounds like, I mean, I've really only been to Leadville either In the height of winter or in the summer. And so spring feels very mysterious to me, the merging of these two. Wet and soggy and new life.
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B
Muddy. The. Yeah, it's. It takes a certain practice to appreciate mud season in Leadville, and it's not my favorite, and I usually kind of lose my mind in certain ways, but. But it always takes a lot of intention and like, okay, here we go. Watch the mud come.
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A
Yeah, that's great. As we mentioned, you know, you've been on twice before, and the last time, I believe, was either late 2021 or early 2022. And a question that I've liked to ask repeat guests is something that my wife will ask folks, friends she hasn't seen in a while. Just as a fun way of catching up. She'll ask the question of what has become clearer to you since the last time we spoke? Does that have to be better? Doesn't have to be like, an improvement, but just something that's become clearer?
- [04:12]
B
Well, I would have to say that my vocation has become clearer, and even to the extent that early last year, I left my job at the Century at the Christian Century, which is a magazine that I worked for for 17 years, and it was a vocational question that led me to quit, and that I've been exploring this last year. Now, there has been some clarity in that. I'm definitely coming to clarity at this point in my life that I am a novelist, and I have a vocation as a novelist. And so that is something that I've been working toward this last year, that kind of clarity, what it means and how you go about living that way and that sort of thing. And that wasn't clear at all to me in 2021. Not even. It wasn't even a flicker. I mean, there was a flicker because I'd been working on a novel for 20 years, but a vocation to do it that had not appeared yet in clarity.
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A
You've probably read novelist as vocation.
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B
I just read it. Yeah. Last year.
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A
What'd you think?
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B
Well, I loved it. There was so much that I gravitated toward and so much that I came to understand and stuff that I continued to quote all the time. I love this idea that the novelist goes digging through the junk drawers of memory like they're in the garage, and they're gonna build some kind of extraterrestrial or something out of these random parts. That's kind of what it feels like.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So I love that. There was a lot that I loved. I just love Murakami's approach and his commitment to the practice. So he's a real model for me in that way.
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A
That's beautiful. I think reading a book on the mastery of something like it could be it can translate across all fields. I know Gary Snyder would talk about this too. Like, if you watch a master mechanic, you can learn how to meditate. If you watch a master teacher, you can learn how to whatever you're applying your own sense of mastery to. And Murakami certainly, I feel like exudes that in that text. And it's fun to hear you name this vocation as novelist because you have just been added to a list for an award. And I would love to hear have you share that news of what award that is and what your novel is.
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B
Yeah. So I've been working on this novel. It's called High Hawk and it came out last year from the University of Iowa Press. And I started working on it. I started on ash Wednesday of 1997. That's when I wrote the first lines and I hated them. And it took me 25 years to work through all the issues related to that novel and my desire and all those things. And so it was long listed for the PEN Hemingway Award this year, which is an award for debut novelists. So I joined an incredible group of novelists, first time novelists, nine novelists on the long list. And then next, then in a few weeks I'll know if I'm also on the short list. But honestly, the long list is plenty. I feel really good about the long list. I don't need anything more.
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A
Yes, as you should. Congratulations again.
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B
Thank you.
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A
What an honor. And I'm excited to read High Hawk. I haven't read it, but I will put it on my own short list of reading here in the near future.
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B
Well, thanks, Paul.
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A
Can you share the premise of that book for those curious who.
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B
Yeah, sure. The elevator speech also took me 20 years to develop is that it's about a priest on a reservation in South Dakota who goes looking for more than he wants to find. So it's about his own struggle with vocation and with the landscape and the people and the history of the Catholic Church in relation to the reservations in South Dakota and then his relationship to that tradition. So it's a little bit of a love story. There's a little bit of a mystery involved, but it's largely a meditation on what we just started talking about, the question of vocation.
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A
Sounds incredible. Thanks for that. That little tee up as a way to begin. You know, I encourage folks to go back and listen to our first conversation on Julian and then our second conversation on St. Mary of Egypt. And today we'll be talking about your book, Journey to the Wild Heart. But there's this through line that I find in your writing is like just, there's a poetic beauty to how you approach structuring a sentence and having beauty be part of the invitation to the. Whatever the topic might be. And as I feel like we both have this kinship for poetry as a way to get you to know you a little bit better. Is there a poem that has recently knocked you out of your socks or rattled your ribs or evoked inspiration?
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B
Gosh, that's a great question. Yeah, there is, actually. So this is a poem by W.S. merwin called Gift. I have to trust what was given to me if I am to trust anything. It led the stars over the shadowless mountain. What does it not remember in its night and silence? What does it not hope knowing itself? No child of time? What did it not begin? What will it not end? I have to hold it up in my hands as my ribs hold up my heart. I have to let it open its wings and fly among the gifts of the unknown. Again in the mountain I have to turn to the morning. I must be led by what was given to me as streams are led by it and braiding flights of birds, the gropings of veins, the learning of plants, the thankful days. Breath by breath I call to it. Nameless one, O invisible, untouchable, free. I am nameless, I am divided. I am invisible. I am untouchable and empty. Nomad, live with me, Be my eyes, my tongue and my hands. My sleep and my rising out of chaos come and be given.
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A
Wow. Thank you for reading that poem.
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B
O nameless one, O invisible, untouchable, free. That's my favorite line.
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A
When a poem like that hits you, how do you work with it or sit with it, or do you just let it wash over you and you just let certain lines ruminate?
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B
Well, I usually find a poem like that because I'm trying to use it to free write from. So in this case, if I remember right, I just. What I do is my practice is I take my book of poems, my bookshelf of poetry, and I close my eyes and I reach up and I grab two or three books of poems and then I pile them on the desk. And then I take the first one and I randomly open it. And then whatever poem I open to, that's the poem I used for free writing. But when I opened it and came to that Poem. I don't think there was. There was much to do besides just sit there and think about this. Unnamable, untouchable, free. That just was a name for God that I hadn't really ever heard. And I loved it.
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A
Untouchable.
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B
And so then I just. I think I might have just sat there and loved it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Because I didn't know what else to do and read it a few times and was like, how come I'd never heard this before? And where did this come from? And that kind of thing.
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A
Yeah, that's really endearing to me because there's. I feel like I have multiple different relationships with poetry. And you are just kind of naming one of the ways of, like, the intersection of your own creative expression. Grabbing a book of poetry. There's like a contemplative practice merging with that for your own writing expression. How do you describe how these two rivers converge in your own writing process?
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B
Well, it's kind of funny because I have a friend that I. She and I have done this together. Sometimes we get together during the week, and we. We just do this, and she'll pick a poem, and she'll open it and read, and I'll pick a poem and I'll open and read, and we won't even. My intention is not to be too selective, just to let the poem come to me if it comes, and that's great. But she has gotten really frustrated with that process because she doesn't really always. We don't always like the poems, you know, that come to us. And it's really interesting because my approach is very much in the realm of just stealing. I just poach my favorite line and then just use it and go. And she wants to, like, really get and understand it and, like, wrestle with it and let it speak to her. And she finds that really frustrating, especially if the poem doesn't really open itself up to that. And I tend to be just like, there's my favorite. Let's go. And so, you know, both work and both have value. This kind of really letting the poem center and take her over, and she really works with it and tries to understand it. And I love that. But it's just so interesting to watch my own natural approach, which is just to take it and run.
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A
Yeah. I think you can learn a lot about somebody and their own experience of how they were trained to read poetry or not. I think of my own educational moments, particularly in high school, of reading poetry. It was just dry, dry, dry. And then having a poem light me up, be like, oh, I can have a different experience with poetry and how we each kind of work that in our own ways. I definitely lean more towards your direction of, like, the intuitive immediacy and, like, how do you take that and carry it forward?
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B
Yeah, yeah. And I can learn a lot from somebody who can be more. I don't want to disparage my own practice, but can be more sort of respectful of the poem itself or actually try to understand what the poem is doing. So I think there's kind of fun both ways. But I do agree that a lot of the ways we read poetry in our society is this kind of desperate need to master it and, like, beat the metaphors into the ground until we understand them. And that has not been my approach, really, in recent years. It's kind of just to let it bounce off of me and let it influence me in that way.
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A
Yeah, yeah. I love that I'm being remind. I'm reminding myself of when I talked to the poet Morris Manning. I don't know if you know his work. And he. Once a year, he lives in Appalachia, he invites all his neighbors over for a cookout. And the only requirement is everyone brings a poem that matters to them. And so you have him, you know, he's been, you know, nominated for all these poetry prizes. And then you have a neighbor who, like, this is not their world. And they'd bring a poem that matters to them. But it's for the collective. It's to be shared. It's to be cherished.
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B
Oh, that's wonderful. I have to tell you a story about that. So last year or a couple years ago, I put out a little collection of poems. It's a really tiny collection. And at some point, the local bookstore here in Leadville invited me to do a poetry reading. And so I thought, okay, well, I mean, that's gonna be kind of weird. It's not really my Persona here in Leadville. And maybe nobody will come. And I don't know. And I was talking this over with some of my friends, and we came up with this idea. We decided what we would do is we put a poem under every chair in the place. And then at different times during the poetry reading, I would just pull a number from a basket. And whoever had that number, they had to pull the poem out from under their chair and read it. And it was incredible because we had so many people who were not poetry oriented and so many people who were there because they, you know, they like me, they're nice to me. They're like my neighbors. You know, they were there because. Not because they cared about poetry, because they cared about me, which was great. But we had such an explosion of love for poetry in that case. And one man who I've known for years pulled the poem out from under his chair, and it was Rilke's poem. I live my life in widening circles. And he said to me, that's my poem. And he'd never heard it. He'd never even heard of Rilke. He didn't know that's not his realm. But as soon as he had that poem in his hands, he was like, that's the one. So it was a kind of a magical experience.
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A
I love that idea. It is, in some ways, democratizing poetry in a way that, you know, lights everyone up in their own way. And what a great idea.
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B
And it's been, you know, kind of a mistake we've made, I feel like, to emphasize the poet over the poem. And the poem can come from anybody at any time. And that's, I think, what we had in that room was that sort of shared experience of the poems taking us over and doing this work for us. And it was really. It was really beautiful. We need more of it. We need more of it.
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A
We need more of it. Yes.
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B
Every local bookstore, if you're listening, host a poetry reading. Even if you don't think you have any poets. Do something. I feel like poetry was feeding us in a way that we really needed.
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A
Yeah. Yes. I think that is needed now more than ever. I think poetry leads us places we're not quite ready to go to. And your practice there with that community. I'm sure no one showed up being like, I'm going to read a poem tonight.
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B
No, they sure didn't.
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A
Well, that's one of the things I love about your work, is that you do have a poetic voice when you're not only writing your poetry, but also when you're writing your works that are inviting us into something different. So today we're here to talk about your book, Journey to the Wild. Four Invitations to Contemplative Living. I thought I would begin, if you don't mind me reading a passage from your book that I. It was this paragraph that kind of got me excited about where you're going to take us. This is on page five of the introduction where you write. Out of this experience come the four invitations that shape this book. This book is written on the premise that entering the wild heart of contemplative living can be as simple and as challenging as developing a particular form of attention. Wherever you are. Anthropologists Edith and Victor Turner, who wrote about religion and liminality, describe pilgrimage as extroverted mysticism and mysticism as introverted pilgrimage. Both involve an acute attention to one's inner life and one's particular circumstances. So with this intention, we will travel together to go inward and to move outward, listening, observing, and allowing the mysterious work of the spirit. And I loved this paragraph because there's so much in there, but it's not crammed. It feels like there's a big invitation here for these four invitations. While acknowledging this is simple and this is challenging, this is inward, and it moves outward. What can you tell me about holding these tensions as a structural foundation of the contemplative life?
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B
So for me, it feels like a coming together. You spoke earlier about two rivers. So it feels like a coming together of a creative river and a contemplative river. So there's a withholding in the contemplative life. You sit back and you let things come, you let them flow in, you let them flow out, but you really just practice making yourself as transparent as possible in a way, for that motion. And then in the creative life, you really cultivate what you need to nourish an outward movement. Right. So I would say that this book is an attempt to bring those two rivers together as a confluence of creative and contemplative practice. And for me, those two are incredibly interrelated. There's just. I really can't separate them out. But for a lot of people, they'll say, well, I have a contemplative practice, but I'm not creative. Or they'll say, I have a creative practice, but I'm not contemplative. And I think this book is an invitation to bring those two forces together into one powerful force. And it involves both going inward and moving outward. It involves both withholding oneself and letting something be as it is in the world, and also involving oneself and allowing yourself to connect with what wants to become. And so they are contradictory impulses, but I think they come together.
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A
Yeah. Yeah, they sure do. And I think you. You help point that out in a way that makes it accessible from wherever one starting point is. And I had never heard this thing by Edith and Victor Turner.
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B
Isn't that interesting?
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A
I think it's so interesting. And, like, what a great thing, because I think introverts often. I'm an introvert, often get like, this natural contemplative, like, label on them. And I've always thought that even as introvert, that's unfair to the Ex. Like watching extroverts operate in the world. And so to say that pilgrimage as extroverted mysticism and mysticism as introverted pilgrimage is so helpful, especially in our time when I think folks are grappling with spirituality and religion. Do both fit? Do both matter? And one thing I love about pilgrimage is I feel like you can't fake pilgrimage. No one else can do it for you. Like, you have to go on your own pilgrimage. And this invites both extroverts and introverts into that. So, one, I'm curious how, when you read this, how's this land for you? Do you identify as introvert or extrovert? And how does this. These exemplars speak to you?
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B
Gosh, I'm trying to remember when I first encountered that, you know, I was preparing to go on this pilgrimage to find Mary of Egypt. So I was preparing for pilgrimage. But my natural orientation is more toward introversion. It's more toward this idea that you can learn everything you need to know from your own room, from your own self. You can just stay in one place, and you'll learn everything you need to know from that place. And I felt a little guilty, actually, about moving out into the world in the form of pilgrimage, because it was like, well, if you can learn everything you need to know here, then why bother with the expense and the carbon imprint and all of those things from actually going on a pilgrimage. But to see these two related as they relate them, I began to see that I was gonna actually bring my mystical practice practices on the pilgrimage, and I would actually have to bring the pilgrimage back into my mystical practices. And that it wasn't this either or that I had set up in my mind whenever I set up that either or, then guilt is the result. Like, I'm sure I'm doing it wrong, and somebody else must be doing it right. So whenever I set up that binary, the first thing that I do is feel guilty about whichever path I've chosen, and that that isn't super helpful. I think what the Turners are sort of offering us here is to see that. That there's a journey in and there's a journey out, and they kind of end up in the same place.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. I find it so helpful, and it's fun to hear you wrestle how. How that. What that looked like in your own life, and to hear how that either. Or separating the two kind of dropped, and then they're both there, and then you're just journeying with both. And so as you structure this book, Journey into The Wild Heart. There's two parts, there's two sections, there's invitations and then there's sessions. And today I want to focus our conversation on the first section invitations because the sessions are really something for readers to work with and to like, embody and move through. And I think focusing on Section 1 on the invitations will help those listening prepare themselves not only to read the book, but also to move through those sessions. Because I think I love the language you use around this and how applicable it is for whatever your social location or context in life might be that all four of these invitations are ready and waiting for you.
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B
They're for you. They're for you, whoever you are. Yeah. If you don't have a contemplative bone in your body, they're still for you.
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A
Yes.
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B
If you don't have a creative bone in your body, they're still for you.
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A
The well said. And these four invitations, they're kind of held by these words, Discover, behold, bewilder and discern. So I'd love to go through these one by one with you to get a sense of how this framework sets up readers to kind of move through and live into. The first one first invitation is Discover. Tell me, what depth does Discover hold as this first container of invitation?
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B
Well, it can be. So I see Discover as primarily a writing practice. And this isn't just because I am a writer, although I mean, it's not separate from that either. But I'd love for readers to say no, it doesn't matter if I am or I am not a writer. This practice is for me because I think there's something very powerful for any of us who learned to read and write as children, accessing that open hearted part of ourselves, that learning part of ourselves through pen and paper. And so what I've called discover is a process, as I see it, of writing in such a way that you can actually discover what's going on inside of you or around you. And so it can be as simple as. And often for me is as simple as I'm watching these children play at the park and I see these two mothers and I'm looking how one of them is wearing a big heavy coat and the other one is wearing short sleeves. And I wonder about that. And one of them is trying to push two children. So it can just be that simple. It's just a set of observations. I'm just using the pen to absorb what's happening around me or inside of me. It can be the most basic yada, yada. I lost my Pencil. And I've been looking for it all day and I can't find it. And it's under the. And I wonder when the last time I used it. It can just be that simple. Right. That isn't deep. It isn't profound. It's just the stuff of life. But I find that when you engage that as a regular practice, it begins to deepen you. It begins to open up the space inside of you that allows the kinds of discovery that, you know, as I say at the end of that paragraph that you read, allows the actions of the spirit to actually take over your pen and your paper and tell you what needs to be discovered, whether it's inside or outside.
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A
Yeah. There's so much there. Like, this is like, to me, like the concrete nature of mystical practice or being open to it. And I love how you say discover is a prepared. Yes. It reminds me of, like, improv. Like. Yes. And. But you're saying, bring this to your kind of the. To all of your life. Be. Have it. Be a prepared. Yes. To whatever you discover. And your example of, like, what's at your window right now is wonderful to name that.
- [29:07]
B
Yeah. Because you can see how just what I described. It quickened my curiosity. It quickened my interest in the world. It. It opened me up to seeing and naming things that are. And actually there was compassion that accompanied that because I. As my curiosity opened, so did my compassion and my interest in the world. And I think that that's exactly right. It's. And a lot of us are very uncomfortable with just sitting. We feel like we're doing something wrong or somebody else must doing this. But writing gives you at least a practice, a way to sort of just keep moving. Just keep the pen moving. Don't. There's no room for criticism here. You're going to have to invite your critic to step outside. Tell that critic they can come back in at the end or whatever. But it's a humbling practice as well. There's a lot of humility in it because you just. The first things that come out of your mouth are. The first things that come out of your pen are not usually beautiful and crafted and whatever. They're just words.
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A
Yes. I'm always amazed by. It's often when I'm in a space of unknowing or unthinking that, like, something will come out that surprises me and delights me in that space of discovery, and it's not.
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B
Yeah. And you didn't do that.
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A
I didn't do it.
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B
There's an undoing and an unknowing that's a part of that.
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A
Yes. I would love to ask you, how does this invitation to Discover Connect to St. Mary of the Desert, who we talked about last in our last conversation on your book? Wow.
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B
The woman, for me, has been pretty tangible because ever since I encountered the story of Mary of Egypt, I've been writing about the story of Mary of Egypt. So from the very first minute that I heard that story, and I knew that it resonated inside of me, I knew that I had to respond to it in some way, but I really, really, really, really didn't know how. So I had to kind of discover what this story meant in my own life by repeatedly returning to practices of writing. And, well, what if I try like this? And what if I try like that? And so there's a real practical thing that I basically trained myself into a very regular writing practice by trying to figure out what. Why this story called me so completely. And I had to strip away all kinds of layers of expectation and so on as I entered into that sense of discovery. So there's a real practical link for me. But then in terms of. I spent a lot of time writing this book in the sense of writing several versions of it before I left for the trek and then writing the final versions after I returned. And then during, I also was writing every single day. So I would return, you know, however tired or however exhausted I was at the end of my pilgrimage day, I would do everything I could to, however poorly, however, in whatever form of fatigue, record whatever I could remember or hold in my heart whatever had struck me, and just trust that that was enough. And I would just. The practice was just sitting down and getting as much of it done as possible. Not done, that's the wrong word. But as much of it recorded as I could in the form of notes, in the sense that it was coming through me and onto the page.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I tried to take that experience and translate it into my life and then into how it might work for others.
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A
It makes so much sense. You can see the fruits of it in this work. You also mentioned the Yetzer Hara in this chapter. Why is this important? Because it rang true for me.
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B
So I'll just say that I learned about the Yetzer Hara from my practice of. Through the Jewish practice of Musar, which is a Jewish ethical practice. And Rabbi Jamie Arnold at the Evergreen Beth Evergreen in Colorado has been my teacher of this Jewish ethical practice. And basically, what it is, is you take a divine trait and you focus on that trait. For a week. And you choose a certain number of traits over the year, and you continue to practice with those traits. But very important to this practice is this idea of the yetzer hurrah. And the yetzer hurrah is our inner adversary. And everybody has an inner adversary. And they can be really helpful to us because they challenge us. They don't let us get away with anything. They're very challenging. But. But for a writer and for the practice of discovery, most of us have such a strong inner critic that is telling us all the time if this writing is good or bad. And that is absolutely not the point of this writing. And I think it's because many of us were criticized for our writing as children. So we took that criticism very deeply to heart. We weren't exactly encouraged by our elders or our peers because of their yets or hurrahs, not because of something we were doing wrong, but because they'd already internalized that this work of writing is meant for criticism. And so, anyway, so one of the first things that any writer, any discoverer, any person using this practice to discover has to do is tell the inner critic that this isn't the time or the place so that you can really allow that channel to open and really see what's there.
- [34:49]
A
It's like a practice within the practice.
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B
It's a practice within the practice, and nothing stimulates it more than the simple, simple, simple practice of putting a pencil down on a piece of paper or a pen. Nothing stimulates that critic, I think, quite like that.
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A
So true.
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B
So am I right?
- [35:07]
A
You are so right.
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B
Am I right?
- [35:08]
A
Yeah. Sometimes I'll talk to that inner critic and just to personify it in a way, to be like, you are not welcome here. Right now. Right now I'm here about some other work. You can come back later. We'll have some tea.
- [35:22]
B
And really, neurologically, we can't do both things at once. We cannot allow the creativity to take place and. And criticize it. We can't do both. Our brains will not do, not outrun both networks at once. So you really have to get the. The yetzer hurrah out in order to do the work. I. Sometimes I've even made little clay. Little clay figures and kind of embodied it that way and then walked it out and set it on the porch. I mean, it's been. There have been days, you know.
- [35:53]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:54]
B
Bad days.
- [35:55]
A
That's great. The next invitation that you offer in this book is behold. Tell me, how does behold become the next invitation after Discover? And why. Why are they why does behold trail after discover?
- [36:11]
B
That's a great question. I don't know if I know the answer. I think the main answer is just a level of comfort that we might begin to build in the discover practice and a level of curiosity that we can also build in the discover practice that then opens up the behold practice. And the behold practice is really just as simple as it sounds. And for any practitioner of contemplative prayer or centering prayer, it's probably pretty familiar, but it really is just holding a position of observation for an extended period of time, for a longer period than what we're accustomed to. And I think there is something in the discover practice of getting your own story a little bit out of the way and telling it on the page so that you can then set it aside and move into the beholding practice and not dismissing it, but just for the time being saying, all right, that's where you're coming from. Beautiful. And then you just set it aside and you can enter into the space maybe a little more openly. That's probably what my own experience has taught me. But I could also see people reversing them and having to be very fruitful.
- [37:24]
A
Yeah, I can see that too. But this path, this discovered to behold, what it reminded me of is like when I sit down to do a contemplative practice, you know, all my beautiful self thoughts about myself are all there with me and I almost need to let them settle before I can behold. And I'm not trying to slice them off or say they're not somehow a part of my own experience in life. But for me to behold, I have to almost acknowledge, like, I see you, you're here with me. Yes, yes. Thank you. And so I love the way that you just have these kind of hitch.
- [38:06]
B
To one another, like snow globe. Yeah, snow globe. Sort of the discover practice can sort of let you just let the pieces fall down and then you have some space and then you can open it.
- [38:16]
A
Yes. And then you say whatever you behold, you eventually become beholden to. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I think there's a lot packed into that one sentence. What does it mean to that whatever you behold, you eventually become beholden to?
- [38:33]
B
I think for me it means that in the process that we think of observation or beholding as a neutral sort of practice. Right. I'm not judging, I am not deciding what action I'm going to take or anything like that. I'm just letting the space, I'm just beholding. I'm letting something Come in. But there's a deeper truth there that when we behold, when we begin to see the world as it actually is, we see that the world is love. And so. And we can't. Until we are seeing through and with and in love, we actually can't see what there is to see. And I learned that from a Buddhist teacher from. Well, he's a Christian Buddhist teacher, John Thetamanil.
- [39:25]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [39:26]
B
And he really taught me that you. That until you see the world with love, you're not seeing it at all. And so the beholding practice is actually a practice of love. It might take some time to get there. We might be working with our own judgments or our own whatever so that we can open our. Our hearts to that space. But finally. Yeah. And. And anything you love, you are beholden to. Anything you love begins to demand from you a certain responsibility or a certain re. Response, even if that response is just simply love.
- [39:57]
A
Yeah. This is reminding me of a story of. I don't remember the Zen master's name, but who would bow to every living being that walked by because they knew they would one day be a Buddha. And I feel like Richard Rohr talks about a Christian is someone who sees Christ everywhere. And there's something similar, but that's seen through the eyes of love, of who that person is or what. To be able to see reality through the eyes of love is a completely different orientation.
- [40:32]
B
Exactly. That person is actually just embodied love. That's what that person is. And my seeing is love. And the space between us is love. And the ground they stand on is love. And the being that they are is love. It's all love. So I think that the. But then if we get to the saying of anything that we behold, we become beholden to, then we're emphasizing the practice, the work of understanding that it's love.
- [41:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. There is work involved. And that's what I think is there's work involved. I actually enjoy that because then I. That it's not cheap or easy.
- [41:09]
B
It is not.
- [41:10]
A
But it's available for all.
- [41:13]
B
Yeah, Right.
- [41:14]
A
So we have discover, we have behold. And this brings us to invitation three, bewilderment. How does bewilder become the third invitation?
- [41:24]
B
So I think discover and behold are both practices. One in which you're deeply observing yourself, and the other one you're deeply observing the world. And now you think you know something. So the practice of bewilder comes in because you still don't know anything. And you need. And in order to learn, you have to go beyond what you know, and so that is where. And this was something that of course, became really important to me in the journey to find Mary of Egypt, because I was. I chose bewilderment. And I was constantly bewildered and sometimes baffled and sometimes confused. But more and more, as the journey unfolded, I was simply bewildered as I recognized that the world is so much more than my mind can take in or arrange. And I don't remember exactly when I discovered this amazing thing. I don't remember even who taught me it, but that when Jesus utters the first words in the Gospel of Mark, his first words are metanoiata, which means go beyond your mind, which basically means, to me, get bewildered. Just don't think you've got this thing. You got this thing nailed, because you don't. And I just think that's kind of wonderful that that was Jesus first recorded word, because we. We have interpreted it as repent. That's how we've translated that word. And so all of us are really familiar with that. Oh, right, yeah, it's repent. But the word itself, I'm sure there are good reasons that people translate it as repent into Latin, but they kind of missed the point, in my opinion, in my humble little Greek world opinion, that I don't know anything about anything. I think Jesus was saying something else which was get outside of what you think you know. And that to me is bewilderment.
- [43:29]
A
Go beyond your mind is a wonderful.
- [43:31]
B
Go beyond your mind opening statement.
- [43:35]
A
I also love that you, in this chapter, you talk about, as you're researching Mary of Egypt, that leads to bewilderment, and then you start to separate it into Be wilder. Ment.
- [43:47]
B
Mint?
- [43:48]
A
Yeah, that struck me. Tell me more about that.
- [43:52]
B
Well, to find that place inside of yourself that's willing, there is a part of you, There is a part of all of us that's willing to be bewildered. However hard that is, there is a part of us that is willing to go beyond. And then there are a lot of parts of us that are like, trying to keep that from happening. And I get that, and I'm familiar. But as I looked into the story of Mary of Egypt, I came to understand that she was a wild woman archetype. And what to me that meant is she is the part of me that's willing to go beyond what is already known. And as I follow her into the desert, I'm following that willingness to be transformed through this. Going beyond my mind, going beyond my certainty, going beyond my practice, going beyond my. The way I seem so sure I Know what the world is? That kind of what is. There's, you know, there's something in. Again, in our neurological makeup, the default. They call it the Default network. Right. Where you just see the world the way you see the world, the way you see the world. And every time you see the world, you reflect the same thing back until you can entrench those networks. And we all have them, and we all need them. And they're not bad or sinful or anything like that. It's just that we have to grow spiritually to be transformed in this kind of way that I think Christian practices demands. We have to be willing to go beyond the Default network.
- [45:32]
A
Yes. Yes. I think about that as so much of how we've prepared our way for clinging to things. And I think about Meister Eckhart and just the releasement. And we have these neural pathways that help us in so many ways. And some, like. I always have to chuckle when I'm. When I've reached a dead end of one of those. Like, I've been just doing this for years, and there's no reason why, except for I've been doing it for years.
- [45:59]
B
Totally. And that's a good point, too. I mean, you know, so one of. Among the last words of Jesus to Mary Magdalene were like, don't cling. Yeah, don't cling to me. You gotta go beyond this. So, you know, kind of on both ends we have that.
- [46:14]
A
Yes, it's a good. It's a good barbell, even. Ends of. Of mystery and going beyond. And this leads us to the fourth invitation. Discern. Yeah, I just. I'll leave it there. Cause I have a few questions about. But I wanna hear you first, like, how discern. How did this come to be kind of the anchor of this process, but an anchor that doesn't just settle to the bottom and stay there.
- [46:37]
B
Yeah. Well, it did feel a little unfair to readers to leave them with bewilderment because, you know, it's hard to be bewildered. And also you kind of want to be able to do things in the world and act in the world. And a baffled person isn't always able to move forward. So I've been a student of discernment for a very long time. I really. I love practices of discernment. Anytime that my life gets overwhelming, I think, oh, what I need is discernment. I love to read about discernment. I love to hear the stories of other people as they've gone through periods of discernment. And so I wanted to bring that to this book. But I wanted to do it in a way that would be playful and open hearted because I think a lot of the times the way we talk about discernment is, well, then I have to get the answer right. So, okay, so I've done all this work. I've discerned, I've discovered, I've beheld, I've bewildered. But now there's a quiz and I just see if I. If I've got it right. And I don't know what your experience is, but my experience of discernment is that it's a whole lot weirder than that. And you, you kind of make some best guesses and you kind of test those and try them out in your life and you try to stay in dialogue with whatever it is you think is leading you. And then you check back. And so it's a process and it isn't. I think I've always hoped or imagined or daydreamed, and maybe one time in my life, it actually was like a big lightning bolt of understanding and clarity that just exploded the world. And then I knew exactly what to do. But I think most of the time, especially if we're staying close to the spiritual life, we're asking almost every day what. It's something like Carl Jung said, explore the will of God daily. And I love this. Explore the will of God daily is wonderful because it has that word explore in it. It's not find the will of God daily because as if it were something you could just like nail, ooh, today I got it. Check will of God. But it's this idea that there is one. And I'm exploring my way toward it. So what I try to do for this book is create activities or ways of thinking about discernment that had that exploratory quality to them to return to that playful and discovering sort of place that we started with. So it is kind of a circle. So that is kind of what I'm intending by discern. Like, discern is sort of like, okay, now try, now experiment now go forth from what you think you might have learned.
- [49:24]
A
Yes. And I feel like you hit that note of playfulness so well. Of like. And it's like taking playfulness seriously.
- [49:32]
B
Right.
- [49:33]
A
Often we don't take it seriously enough. And I feel like you, you hit that mark with this. So well of it is discernment is about what happens before the leap. And the leap is not uninformed, but it's also not fully formed either. And I think about, there's. I have these things that will come out of my mouth just as I'm going about my day. And one of them is just like, God, what are we up to? Like, I'm participating in something with the divine. I don't always know what it is, but I'm just. It. It helps me be. Reframe of like, what's going on here? What are we up to? So that I feel like I'm in. I'm in on the mystery, but not fully in because I can't be. But almost like a child being like, what's going on? Why are we going in the car right now? It almost feels like that where I have agency, but I also recognize my entire existence relies on the benevolence of.
- [50:30]
B
This God of love and then that willingness to sort of be in conversation. I think I say in the book that there have been times in my life where I've. I really have sought discernment in a very serious way. I've really tried to figure out what. What's God's will for my life. And I feel at times I've just heard God say, I don't know, what do you think? So to sort of recognize it as a collaboration of sorts. Right. Of course, I'm entirely dependent on the benevolence of the universe and of God and that. But at the same time, it wants my participation, that God wants me to be a part of the conversation. And I've never felt that more powerfully than when I'm in an active kind of discernment.
- [51:19]
A
So true. I think we often mistake as, like, we're passive participants.
- [51:23]
B
Right.
- [51:24]
A
We're.
- [51:24]
B
I've thought that for years. Just. Just take me along. Look, I've given my whole life to you. I've given my whole will to you, imagining that I could even do that or knew how to do that. But then I think there's a little. There's something else at work. Our agency and our desires, they matter. I mean, there's nothing more that I learned from the story of Mary of Egypt than that our desires matter and that this whole business about the desires of your heart being something that God has provided for you and has given you and is leading you through. I mean, nothing became more clear to me than that as I looked at the story of Mary of Egypt and how her desires actively led her into God's presence.
- [52:07]
A
Yes. Yeah, that book still sits with me when I think about that. Of the. As you even note in this book too, of the knowing and knowing meeting where, like, desire leads to knowing and then the Knowing bumps up against unknowing, but that's a further invitation to explore. And I feel going, yes, yeah, exactly. And I feel like these books are great companions for one another because Wild Woman just like puts a lot of exemplars on that about what this can look like in. Through the life of Mary of Egypt, but also through your life if you, as you go on this exploration as well. So we've only talked about the first half of the book because these beautiful invitations and the sessions in the second half of the book really drop people in to work with these invitations. If you could anonymously show up and say in someone's book club where they were working through these sessions that we find in Journey to the Wild Heart, what would you hope to overhear that would delight you? Like, aha, this worked. This landed in the way I intended it to.
- [53:21]
B
It would be that energy in the group that, aha. Oh. Oh, my goodness. I didn't see that before. Oh, I hadn't realized. Whatever. So it would be that a kind of surprise and delight that would emerge out of the practice as maybe new ways of thinking are developed or neural pathways or something. It would be something like that where people would come to some kind of self discovery or vocational discovery or some deeper love that they hadn't realized was a part of. Of their journey that they now need to connect to. Something like that that would be my most thrilling was to have that spirit, because for me, so much of my own, working through these different invitations and creating them and making them a part of my practice has been to just be so surprised by the world and so delighted by the work that the spirit is doing in the world. And it's just always thinking I've reached my understanding of it and then always being moved beyond it. And that is really a delightful experience for me.
- [54:35]
A
Yeah.
- [54:37]
B
That I want to share.
- [54:38]
A
You name it so well. And I think that experience is waiting for folks who want to pick up this and have this be a bit of a template and a guide to move through.
- [54:48]
B
And I do want to say about that that it's a really small little book. And the purpose, one of the hopes or dreams I had for this book is that you could take it anywhere. So if you were heading off to walk the Camino, you might grab it and take it along with you and use it as a workbook along the way. Or if you were going on a retreat, you might grab it. Or if you just wanted a Lenten practice, you know, and just it's designed in such a way that you could use it at home, but you could also take it with you on a. On an extroverted mysticism adventure of some kind. And it would work in an introverted mysticism kind of way. So that. That's my hope, is that it's just portable like that. What I would really delight me, Paul, would be if I saw people had a copy of it and it was just, like, all marked up and there was pencil everywhere and things were circled and scribbled in the margins, and it just had become like a beloved object. That would really also delight me.
- [55:49]
A
Yes. And I think it is that, and I think you know it. One things I do love about the size of the book, there's so much in there that's so much to work with. But I'm a person who, wherever I go, I have a book with me because you just don't know how life is going to unfold. You also, you might have an hour, you're waiting for somebody, or like, you know, I got two little ones and picking them up from places. And so to have this book with you, like, that is accessible enough to, like, work into the daily rhythms of life.
- [56:19]
B
Right. You could practice as you go.
- [56:20]
A
That's right. You could be in the Camino de Santiago, or you could be at gymnastics waiting for your kiddo to be done.
- [56:27]
B
Because anywhere you go, you can do. One of the practices in the book is I call the five senses, where you just. Wherever you are, you use your five senses to observe what's going on around you. You know, that's a practice where you can do that at the park. You can do that at the roller skating rink or the tennis courts or wherever, you know, on an airplane. And it works just as well if you're at the Camino and you're trying to get yourself oriented to your pilgrimage.
- [56:55]
A
Yes. Yes. Well, Amy, it's. I'm so delighted to talk to you and that you have your novel out, High Hawk, which I hope folks will pick out and. And check it out. And then also Journey to the Wild Heart for invitations to contemplative living. You're prolific. I'm amazed what you're putting out into the world in short order. It's a gift for all of us readers out here. And as you may remember, I always like to close by asking the guest if you had a pair our conversation with a drink, what would be your drink of choice and why?
- [57:31]
B
Yeah, I remember what my wild woman drink was. I do not remember. I think I was so blown away by the question when you asked me about Julian, I don't remember my answer. I probably just tried to, like, suppress it. But the one that comes to mind is kind of similar to the one that I had for Wild Woman. But here I'm looking for. I think it's a ginger lime spritzer. So you just get some. We've been getting this amazing ginger syrup that is like the most intense thing you've ever had. And just a little bit of that and a squeeze of lime and some seltzer water and you're good to go for invitations to Contemplative Living.
- [58:14]
A
I like was because of our conversation last time that I started making my own ginger syrup, because I love ginger tea is something I drink every morning.
- [58:23]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [58:24]
A
I was like, oh, I could try my hand at making my own ginger syrup. So I have you to thank for bringing that into my life.
- [58:31]
B
But I did that one with pomegranate, right? I think it was pomegranate and ginger.
- [58:35]
A
Yes.
- [58:35]
B
Was that it?
- [58:36]
A
Yep, it was pomegranate, ginger, sparkling water. And then you said maybe a little gin. If the moment calls for it.
- [58:43]
B
We're just letting the pomegranate go and just the ginger and the lime and Paul's ginger syrup and a little lime, and you're good.
- [58:51]
A
Amy, this has been a joy. Thank you so much for your work in the world and your presence in the world. Thank you for listening to this episode of Contemplify. May it stir conversation with kindred spirits and strangers alike and provide a nourishing morsel of thought for your week. Slip over to contemplify.com to find the show notes for this episode. While you're there, sign up for the monthly Contemplify non required reading list and the weekly contemplative practice Lo fi and hushed. If you're enjoying Contemplify, rate and review it on your podcast player. The president of the Internet slipped me a note just the other day on a napkin that said, this will help spread the contemplative cheer. The theme song of Contemplify is called Langside by Charles Enns and Darren Hoveus. Fellas, grateful as always, and I am looking forward to bringing you more musings and conversations with contemplatives in the world here in the near future. Until then, be well.