Hello and welcome to Jesuitical, a podcast from America Media for saints and sinners.

You can join us each week for honest conversations about the Catholic Church in our world today, sometimes over drinks. I'm Ashla McKinless,

and I'm joined by Zach Davis. Great to be with you, Ashley. And Sebastian Goams. The gang's all here.

Yeah, Zach is still kind of slowly coming back to form, so you guys needed to bring me back to hold

his hand. Yes, training wheels, hand holding. You do it all, Sebastian. Just kidding. I

insisted that I'd be part of this episode. Yes, it's a very special one. It's going to be an interview

only episode, so no signs of the times or faith sharing. But Sebastian, this was actually

someone you've been wanting to talk to for a few years now, if not your entire

adult life. So can you tell us who we are talking to? Absolutely. So we're speaking to Dr. James

Finley, and he goes by Jim. He's a clinical psychologist and a faculty member at the Center for Action

and Contemplation, which is a wonderful group that does

retreats, teaches courses on the contemplative tradition. Yeah, and people might know the name,

Father Richard Roar, the Franciscan, who's based there, right? Founded it. That's right. And Jim and

Richard are actually really close friends, but they've kind of carried on in the English-speaking world

the whole contemplative tradition, like the different mystics who have showed up

throughout the centuries in the Christian tradition. And, you know, so they kind of hold on to

their legacy and reinterpret and teach them to all of us. And Jim is famous for his podcast turning to the mystics,

where he spends several episodes kind of talking about people like John of the Cross

and Teresa of Avala and Thomas Merton and just opening them up for a new generation.

That's right.

And really excited because the three of us are in different stages of the first half of life.

Some of us are almost at the end of the first half of life, Sebastian.

...