Dr. Douglas E. Christie, professor emeritus of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University and 2024-25 Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar, will give a visiting scholar lecture on contemplative ecology and lead a discussion on “Contemplative Practice in an Age of Distraction” during a two-day visit to campus on Tuesday, Oct. 1, and Wednesday, Oct. 2.
On Oct. 1, Christie will give a lecture titled “Thinking Like a Mountain: Contemplative Ecology in the Anthropocene” at 4 p.m. in the Beaumier Suites of Raynor Library.
The talk from Christie revolves around the environmental thinker Aldo Leopold, who once asked, “Can we learn to think like a mountain?” That is, can we learn to recenter our thinking, our ethics, our spiritual practice beyond our own narrow concerns and within the living world? In this moment of global climate change, we are returning to this question with a new sense of urgency, asking ourselves what it will mean for us to relinquish control and learn to live with greater regard for the natural world. This lecture will consider what it will mean for us to cultivate an ecocentric, contemplative spiritual practice in the Anthropocene.
The discussion will take place a day later on Wednesday, Oct. 2, from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in Lalumiere 232. Participants will consider how contemplative and mindfulness practice can help us recover our capacity for attention and awareness in a time of chronic distraction. Drawing on ancient Christian and Buddhist teachings about attention, attendees will consider what it might mean to resist the increasingly aggressive “attention economy” and cultivate a contemplative politics and spirituality.
To register for the lecture and/or the discussion, complete this short survey.
Christie is the author of “The Word in The Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism” (Oxford, 1993), “The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Note for a Contemplative Ecology” (Oxford, 2013) and “The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss and the Common Life” (Oxford, 2022). From 2013-15 he served as co-director of the Casa de la Mateada study abroad program in Córdoba, Argentina, a program rooted in the Jesuit vision of education for solidarity.
Email michael.cover@mu.edu or melissa.ganz@marquette.edu with any questions.
Christie’s visit is sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa, the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities, the Marquette Core Curriculum, the University Honors Program and the Departments of English and Theology.
