Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“You are standing at the gateway of heaven. You are living in the House of God.”

Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age by Richard Beck

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Hunting Magic Eels is a map for burned-out Christians. Beck, himself burned out by years of doubt and Christendom, wrote this book as an antidote to focusing too much on the wrong things. His idea is that we live in a time of a reduced existence: We’ve reduced humans to meat, redwoods to lumber, art to content. “Welcome to the ache,” he writes. We have a chalk outline of what’s missing from our hearts, but we don’t know how to fill it. Why is life […]

For all y’all hippie monks

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

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This book has been on my shelf for years. Since we’ve been home more than a month and I have the spiritual space to sit down with this kind of dense nourishment, I finally took the plunge and fully engaged with Thomas Merton. He’s something of a legend to Christian contemplatives, sort of like the Keith Richards of monks. Wise, somewhat cantankerous, expansive and global in his conception of God, God’s purpose, and destiny of people. A hippie monk. In New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton […]

It’s like The Matrix for Thoughtful Christians

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After burning out at my old job, I’ve recently stepped into a new one that will hopefully allow me to prioritize the things I care about most in life – God, loved ones, and catching up on fun tv. Part of creating Halbs 3.0 has involved reconnecting to things I used to love doing, especially physical exercise and spiritual practices focused on being still and silent. Into the Silent Land  was recommended to me by a colleague, and after reading it I could see why. While […]



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