Having been born and raised in the midwest in a staunchly traditional rural German-Catholic community, the words "mystical", "contemplative" and "spiritual" always conjured up visions of ethereal skinny virgins who spent their lives having bizzarre visions and then died young. Since I didn't aspire to any of this depressing crap, I have spent most of my life carefully editing the profound mystical experiences I have experienced to fit into my time and place in the world. In other words, I have spoken and written of my spiritual experiences in Christian/Catholic settings for about 30 years, but I've always skirted around the most meaningful parts and made huge detours around the profound insights I gained from them. Here on Canticle Road, I am finally sharing my spiritual adventures and insights with as much courage and honesty as I can summon. If you have no time or interest in reading my blog posts, watching my videos or participating in my half-ass retreats, I will be happy to sum all my experiences and insights up for you in the words of the English mystic, Julian of Norwich, who wrote, "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well."
Julian lived during the middle ages and was six years old when the the Black Plague came to her town. She was surrounded by suffering for most of her life and endured devastating disease herself, but through it all she adamantly maintained that her spiritual experiences had taught her that everything was going to be just fine in the end. She wrote about her experiences in a book called "Revelations of Divine Love".
Julian of Norwich and I don't have a whole lot in common what with her having most likely been an ethereal, skinny virgin with bizarre visions who died young. However, Julian and I do share a few striking similarities. One is that Julian was unable to to distance herself physically, spiritually or mentally, from the human suffering that surrounded her. I have never been able to do that either. Unfortunately for me, I have always connected on some deep level to other people's pain - their addictions, their anxiety, their depression, their obsessions, their broken relationships, their trauma, their fear, their grief. I am somehow permanantly tuned into to suffering channel in life, and I hate it. I wish I could switch it off, but if there is a way to do that, I have yet to find it.
The second thing Julian and I share is that she experienced powerful spiritual experiences which led her to profoundly comforting and positive insights, and so have I.
The third similarity between us is that that Julian wrote about her experiences and insights in a book called "Revelations of Divine Love". This website is my revelation of the Divine Love I have experienced over the course of my first 63 years on earth. If revealing my experiences and insights helps to reduce the sum total of suffering in the world even by a fraction of one percent, it will be worth the vulnerability and fear that I feel being honest about my mystical experiences.
The one thing I know for sure about Divine Love is that there is no way around it or out of it. Whether you are religious or agnostic, or athiest or none of the above, you live in Divine Love and will continue to live in it into infinity and beyond as Buzz would say. However, and this is big HOWEVER - while you inhabit a human body, with its unique DNA and quirky genes, and inherited wounds, it may be difficult for you experience Divine Love.
My goal with this website is to empower you to experience Divine Love in a way that sets your soul free, no matter what your mind/body is going through at any given moment.
If you don't want to hang around here any longer, please at least give some thought to the idea that no matter what you have experienced in your life, are experiencing now, or will experience in the future, all will be well in the end. And if it isn't, well then it isn't the end.
If you want to stick around, welcome to Canticle Road! I don't carry any guilt or shame here. Feel free to bring your own but I can't guarantee it will last long in this neck of the woods. Best to just set all guilt and shame aside before you begin these adventures. If you want to pick it up again later, it will always be there. Or not.