The Bald Boys of Colorado

I find it fascinating that two of the living spiritual teachers whose work I find most compelling, are both bald-headed men who live in Colorado. Not only that, but they’re fans of each other. So here’s a picture of Fr. Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber in dialogue. Wilber is a Buddhist-American philosopher, and even though Grateful Bear thinks he’s arrogant as hell (which he is), I think his integral map of the relationship between consciousness and evolution is the most intuitive and optimistic single theory of “everything” that is out there. Meanwhile, Fr. Keating is one of the founders, and today the principle moving force behind, the Centering Prayer movement, which is essentially an effort to bring the riches of the Christian contemplative tradition (from the Desert Mothers and Fathers, through The Cloud of Unknowing, up to the 20th century mysticism of Thomas Merton) to a form that is accessible to the average person today. And if Centering Prayer reminds people of Buddhist meditation… well, that’s the point. But unlike some rightwing Catholics who denounce Centering Prayer as “new age,” it’s deeply grounded in Christian tradition going back some 1600 years or more.

The Bald Boys of Colorado: a Christian contemplative and a Buddhist philosopher, who happen to be fans of each other. This is the (hairless) face of the future.