Introducing James Finley

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org.

James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Well, I'm here with James Finley, sitting in his cozy study with Corey from the Center for Action and Contemplation and myself here to launch this podcast series with Jim.

And we're starting with a little introductory chat. It's good to be with you, Jim.

James Finley (0:42)

Thank you. I'm glad we can do this. I'm grateful for it, yeah.

Kirsten Oates (0:45)

And we should let you know up front that this is real life for you at home, that there's gonna be some, there's some construction downstairs and some gardening outside and...

James Finley (0:56)

Yeah, I wipe my sicker head in the door and say hi.

Kirsten Oates (0:58)

Yeah.

James Finley (0:59)

Just like real life.

Kirsten Oates (1:01)

Well, we're excited to be here and get started today. The podcast is about helping us wake up to what is already true and what is always happening that gives our life meaning and direction. Our guide will be James Finley and he will be leading us in a regular practice of meditation on the Christian mystics. How'd that sound, Jim?

I sounded wise because I stole your wording there. That was a direct quote.

Before we get started with the practice sessions where you'll be leading people in a meditation practice, we thought it would be good to introduce you and help people get to know you a little bit. So that's what this time is about. We've got a number of topics to cover, but let's get started with how you came to be in this Christian mystical tradition. What was your starting point?

James Finley (1:55)

Yeah.

I was born in Akron, Ohio, 1943, and I was the oldest of six children.

My father was a violent alcoholic. My mother was a devout Catholic. And I think through her, my faith became a kind of life-saving thing that sustained me. And when I was in the ninth grade, this Catholic high school that I was attending, I was a freshman, an instructor in the religion class talked about monasteries. And I'd never heard of monasteries before. And I saw them, really, were places where people go to experience God's presence.

And their fidelity to surrendering to the presence of God, believing that that fidelity radiates out and touches the whole world in ways that we don't understand, a sense of the mystical body in prayer. And he mentioned Thomas Merton, and I had never heard of Thomas Merton before. So I went to the school library and they had one book by Merton there, a journal that he wrote in the monastery called The Sign of Jonas. And when I read that, it just had a profound effect on me. He just said very beautiful things about God's presence and the nearness of God and so on.

And so for the four years of high school, the violence continued. I kept reading Thomas Merton and I felt called to go to the monastery. And my master plan was that I would enter the monastery and sit at his feet and have him guide me into this experience. And so when I graduated from high school, 1961, I did that. I left my home in Akron and went down to the monastery. It's the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, which is a Trappist monastery, a cloistered Trappist monastery. And I entered and lived there as a member of the community for nearly six years. So I would say during that time I was, I guess, immersed in contemplative Christianity. And for three of those years, Thomas Merton and his role as novice master was my spiritual director. So I had the good fortune of sitting with him. And I really saw him, that he embodied the mystical lineage, the saints of mystics down through the ages, back to the desert fathers and desert mothers, and Jesus spending whole nights in prayer. He was like the living embodiment of that tradition. Which then later on I recognized in Richard Rohr. And that's how Richard Rohr and I became kind of in resonance with each other, at least with me being here right now. And so one of the things that Merton led me in was a study of the Christian mystics. So St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and Meister Eckhart and the Cloud of Unknowing, and the Little Flower, St. Therese's Little Flower, and those texts, those classic texts.

So he taught me how to experience the beauty that was radiating out from the words of these mystic teachers. So then when I left the monastery, returned to my home in Akron, I got married, I started teaching high school religion, the Catholic schools, the Cleveland Diocese. I still felt very much called to continue living this contemplative way of life. So I had a regular meditation practice, and I kept reading these mystics. And then I wrote a book called Merton's Palace of Nowhere, which is on Thomas Merton's insights into ultimate identity beyond the ego, the self hidden with Christ and God before the origins of the universe. And when that book came out, I started getting invitations to lead retreats around the country. And it was on those retreats around the country, on these silent meditation weekend retreats, that Richard Rohr and I ran into each other on the road, kind of on the circuit when we met and talked. And it's been going on ever since. And then when they started the Living School, this Center for Action and Contemplation, invited me to be one of the core teachers with Cynthia Bourgeault.