Dialogue 1: Everything is Possible

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this first dialogue session Jim and Kirsten focus on the maxims of Brother Lawrence. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about James Finley, visit his faculty profile ⁠here⁠. The transcript for this episode can be found here. The book we will be using this season can be found here. ⁠⁠ Connect with us: Have a question you'd like Jim or Kirsten to answer about this season? Email us: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Send us a voicemail: ⁠cac.org/voicemail⁠ We'll be accepting questions for our Listener Questions episode until November 7th, 2025. This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at ⁠https://cac.org/support-cac/podcasts/⁠ Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.0	To learn more, visit cac.org.
0:08.3	Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.
0:11.2	And I'm Kirsten Oates.
0:13.2	Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:27.2	Welcome, everyone, to Season 12 of Turning to the Mystics,
0:30.7	where we're turning to the Christian mystic brother Lawrence and his book, Practice of the Presence.
0:34.4	And I'm here with Jim to discuss his first session.
0:38.3	Welcome, Jim. Yes, good.
0:39.3	I look forward to our dialogue today.
0:42.3	I loved the first session.
0:44.3	You only covered a small amount of text because it's just so deep.
0:48.3	The teaching, beautiful.
0:50.3	And I wanted to start with something that you actually said towards the end of the session.
0:54.9	And you said that Brother Lawrence just hits this one note.
0:58.7	You said it's like he plays a violin with one string on it.
1:02.6	But the string he's playing is the whole orchestra.
1:06.2	So I wondered if you could help us understand that one note a little better.
1:10.4	Yes.
1:11.4	He's so distilled, and he's very distilled in the sense of presence.
1:18.2	Because if we stop and think about it, the infinite presence of God is boundaryless,
1:24.9	and it's the presence of God that's infinite.
	...

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