A note for those wondering: ACIM stands for "A Course in Miracles," a spiritual text that's been both beloved and controversial since its publication in the 1970s. If you've never heard of it, don't worry—you'll get plenty out of this post anyway. This post is really about what happens when you stop being afraid of your own spiritual journey, whatever traditions have shaped you.

And for those who might be skeptical because they think it's about divine wish fulfillment, know that in the Course's language, a 'miracle' isn't about getting what you want—it's about a shift in perception from ego consciousness to Christ consciousness. Okay, enjoy!

In case you missed the previous posts in the series…

Intro - ✨ This Time, It’s Not a Comeback — It’s a Reconciliation

Post #1 - 📚 Did You Hear the One Where the Lutheran Pastor Walks Into the Metaphysics Aisle?

Post #2 - 📺 How a PBS Mystic Became My Spiritual Gateway Drug

Post #3 - 💔 When I Drifted

Post #4 - ✨ If Channeling Freaks You Out, Let’s Talk About Paul

Post #5 - 🔥 Is A Course in Miracles Heretical?

Post #6 - 🧩 The Finnish Theologian Who Made Space for My Mystical Side

Post #7 - 💒 Officiating the Marriage of My Two Spiritual Lives

If you're reading this and you've been secretly wondering whether you can love both Jesus and A Course in Miracles, whether you can be a faithful Christian and still find wisdom in Helen Schucman's channeled text, whether you have to choose between the church and the Course—this post is for you.

For years, I carried this question like a stone in my chest. Could I be both? Was I betraying my Christian faith by still valuing what ACIM had taught me? Was I being dishonest with my mystical side by anchoring it in traditional Christianity? Was integration possible, or was I just fooling myself?

The answer, I've discovered, is beautifully both/and.

Something funny happens when you stop choosing between traditions and start letting them illuminate each other. You start seeing both through integrated eyes.

📖 How Christian Tradition Reads Differently Now

I picked up Thomas Merton the other day—something I've done many times over the years. But this time, when I read his line about contemplation being "the direct intuition of the reality of God," I didn't just nod appreciatively. I actually felt what he was talking about.

That's the ACIM influence. For years, Christian mystical language was beautiful but abstract to me. "Union with Christ" sounded lovely in theory, but what did it actually feel like? How do you access "the peace that passes understanding" on a Tuesday morning when your daughter can't find her backpack and you're already running late to school?

ACIM gave me vocabulary for the experiential side of what Christian mystics have always been pointing toward. Like when Finnish Lutheran mystical theologian Tuomo Mannermaa talks about "Christ present in faith," I now have psychological language for what that presence feels like: the quiet knowing that you're held… The inner stillness that doesn't depend on circumstances… The love that's already there before you do anything to earn it.

Martin Luther's mystical language suddenly makes sense. When he talks about Christ and the soul becoming "one flesh," I'm not just tracking the theology with my brain anymore. I can feel the reality he's describing—that sense of your deepest identity being found not in your own thoughts and feelings but in something infinitely larger and more loving.

The "new creation" becomes present tense. The Apostle Paul's promise that "if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation" stops being future eschatology and becomes current reality. ACIM's emphasis on present-moment awakening helps me recognize that the transformation isn't something I'm waiting for—it's something I'm learning to notice.

Prayer becomes conversation, not performance. Christian tradition taught me that prayer was important, but ACIM taught me that prayer could be natural. Not just talking to God but recognizing the ongoing dialogue that's already happening. The difference between prayer as spiritual discipline and prayer as spiritual breathing.

💫 How ACIM Reads Differently Now

But the transformation goes both directions. I can't read A Course in Miracles the same way I used to either—and that's a good thing.

The "Christ" voice gains incarnational weight. When ACIM says, "I am with you always," I don't just hear cosmic consciousness anymore. I hear the voice of someone who walked dusty roads in first-century Palestine, who knew what it felt like to be misunderstood, who experienced both the glory of transfiguration and the agony of abandonment. The Course's Christ isn't just a principle—it's the same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem and whose wounds still bear the marks of love's costly victory over death.

Psychological insights get grounded in Christian anthropology. ACIM talks brilliantly about how the ego works—the way fear creates the illusion of separation, how guilt perpetuates itself, how love dissolves false identity. But now I read those insights through the lens of what Christians have always known about being made in God's image, about the fall, about redemption. It's not just pop psychology with spiritual language; it's sophisticated Christian psychology that happens to use contemporary vocabulary.

"Brothers and sisters" becomes ecclesiology. ACIM constantly talks about recognizing Christ in your "brothers and sisters." But now I understand this isn't just metaphysical niceness. It's what Christians call the body of Christ. The Course's emphasis on relationships as the classroom for spiritual growth connects directly to what the church has always taught about iron sharpening iron, about bearing one another's burdens, about being the hands and feet of Christ for each other.

Forgiveness gets sacramental depth. The Course teaches that forgiveness is "seeing past the ego to the divine light in others." Beautiful. But through Christian eyes, I now see this as participation in God's reconciling work in the world. It's not just changing your perception, it's joining God's mission to restore all things. It has personal implications, not just cosmic ones.

🌊 The Hermeneutical Shift

Here's what's really changed: I'm no longer reading defensively.

For the last few years, whenever I encountered ACIM, part of me was always on guard. Is this compatible with Christianity? Does this contradict orthodox belief? Should I be worried about this? And when I read Christian mystical texts, I was doing the same thing from the other direction: Is this too woo-woo? Will this make me less grounded? Am I being faithful to the tradition?

That internal theological referee has finally taken a seat.

Now I read all of it symphonically—hearing harmonies and counterpoints that enrich both melodies. I'm not trying to make one acceptable to the other anymore. I'm listening for how they illuminate and deepen each other.

Christian tradition becomes less rigid. When you realize that the Spirit has been speaking mystical truth through many voices across many centuries, you stop needing to defend every doctrinal formulation as if your salvation depends on it. Grace is sturdier than our theological sorting systems.

ACIM becomes more grounded. When you read the Course through incarnational eyes, it stops floating in abstract spirituality and gets anchored in the God who entered human history. It's not about escaping the world but about seeing the world through God's eyes.

Both traditions become more themselves, not less. This is the part that surprised me most. Integration didn't water down either tradition. It made them both more robust and alive. I'm not a Christian who dabbles in ACIM, or an ACIM student who happens to be a pastor. I've become something new: a mystical Christian whose mysticism is thoroughly incarnational and whose Christianity is experientially grounded.

🎯 What This Looks Like Practically

Prayer Life: I pray both ways now. Sometimes it's traditional Christian prayer—confession, petition, thanksgiving, guided by the liturgical calendar and rooted in Scripture. Other times it's ACIM-style inner listening—dropping into stillness and letting divine love dissolve whatever fear or judgment I'm carrying. But increasingly, it all feels like one seamless conversation with the same loving presence.

Scripture Reading: I read the Bible both historically and mystically now. I care about context and original meaning (historical-critical method), but I also listen for how the Spirit might be speaking through ancient words into present circumstances (lectio divina meets Course-style inner guidance). Both approaches feel necessary, not competing.

Spiritual Direction: When I'm sitting with someone who's struggling spiritually, I draw from both wells. Sometimes they need to hear about God's unconditional love in traditional Christian language. Sometimes they need ACIM's psychological sophistication about how guilt and fear operate. Often they need both—and I no longer see any tension in offering both.

Community Engagement: I can be fully present in traditional Christian worship while also carrying ACIM's insights about seeing Christ in everyone. I can participate in outward-facing ministry while also holding the Course's teaching that healing the world starts with healing our own perception. Both/and instead of either/or.

🌅 What Integration Actually Feels Like

Integration is profoundly peaceful. For years, I carried this low-level anxiety about my spiritual past. Was I betraying my Christian faith by still valuing what ACIM had taught me? Was I being dishonest with my mystical side by anchoring it in traditional Christianity?

I’m happy to say now that the internal civil war is over.

I wake up in the morning and I don't have to choose which spiritual identity to put on. I don't have to code-switch between traditions or hide parts of myself depending on my audience. I can quote Merton and Helen Schucman in the same breath. I can pray the Lord's Prayer and practice ACIM forgiveness principles with the same heart.

The hunger for transcendence and the need for incarnational grounding aren't competing anymore—they're dancing together.

🎬 The End Credits

As this series comes to a close, I want to say thank you. Thank you for following along on this strange journey of spiritual integration. Thank you for being curious instead of dismissive. Thank you for making space for someone to think out loud about how grace might be bigger than our categories.

If you're in that place now—torn between traditions, carrying spiritual secrets, wondering if you have to choose between depth and orthodoxy—I hope this series has given you permission to stop choosing. The Spirit is vast enough to speak through ancient liturgies and contemporary channeled texts. Christ is big enough to meet you in the cathedral and your living room, in Eucharist and meditation, in confession and affirmation.

You don't have to throw away your past to embrace your present. You don't have to hide your mystical hunger to be faithful to your tradition. You don't have to choose between head and heart, between roots and wings, between mystery and certainty.

The grace of God is already holding all of it—including the parts you're not sure about yet.

Your journey toward wholeness isn't a betrayal of faith. It is faith. Faith that God is bigger than our boxes, that love is more creative than our categories, that the Spirit truly does blow where it wills.

And sometimes, if you're really paying attention, you might just feel that wind at your back, pushing you not away from Christ but deeper into the mystery of what it means to be held, and healed, and made whole.

The series is ending, but the integration continues.

Along the Way,
Jonas

P.S. If this series has resonated with you, I'd love to hear about your own journey of spiritual integration. What traditions are you learning to hold together? What parts of your story are asking to be reconciled rather than rejected? The conversation continues in the comments, and honestly, that's where the best stuff usually happens.

If this series had a theological heart, this might be it. This is where the gap between my current Christian theology and my former life as a spiritual-but-not-religious wanderer finally makes sense. Where mystical longing finds solid ground in the flesh-and-blood reality of Jesus Christ. If you’ve ever felt torn between the freedom of spiritual exploration and the rootedness of Christian tradition—this one's for you.

In case you missed the previous posts in the series…

Intro - ✨ This Time, It’s Not a Comeback — It’s a Reconciliation

Post #1 - 📚 Did You Hear the One Where the Lutheran Pastor Walks Into the Metaphysics Aisle?

Post #2 - 📺 How a PBS Mystic Became My Spiritual Gateway Drug

Post #3 - 💔 When I Drifted

Post #4 - ✨ If Channeling Freaks You Out, Let’s Talk About Paul

Post #5 - 🔥 Is A Course in Miracles Heretical?

🧣 I Didn’t Expect Mysticism to Wear Wool

I first encountered Tuomo Mannermaa in seminary, somewhere between a Lutheran confessions course and a lukewarm coffee in the refectory of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago during my first year. I had been assigned his book Christ Present in Faith, and something about it felt different. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Finnish theologian with a name that sounded like an obscure type of birch bark tea. But then he started talking about real union with Christ—like, actual ontological union—and I leaned in.

His theology blew me away. I already loved Lutheran theology for its honesty, its emphasis on grace as God’s initiating move, and its freedom from spiritual ladder-climbing. But this? This was something more. This wasn’t just "You’re forgiven." This was, "You’ve been mystically united with Christ… Now!" It wasn’t just about where you’ll end up when you die. It was about what’s happening in your very cells in this instant.

And then, as seminary tends to do, I was swept away. Theological speed dating, basically. Just when you’re really starting to connect, you’re moved along to the next systematic thinker. So Mannermaa sat on the shelf.

Until about a month ago, when I took a week off and let myself read whatever I wanted (yes, apparently this is what nerds do with their vacation time). I picked up a book about Mannermaa called Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther by Robert Jenson and Carl Braaten—two theologians I trust. And suddenly, I was back in the deep end.

As I read, I kept thinking: This is speaking the same language as A Course in Miracles, only with more Jesus and fewer metaphysical detours. There was mystical resonance. There was deep Christological grounding. These two parts of my story—parts that I never thought would be joined—were coming together. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to hide or shelve one part of myself to hold the other.

🌀 Mysticism, Union, and the Big Theological Gap

When I was training as a New Thought minister, I often felt like Jesus was the elephant in the room. Mentioning him once or twice was fine, even poetic. But too much Jesus? That was a problem. And yet, the more I read—Rob Bell, Richard Rohr, Thomas Merton, Cynthia Bourgeault, and other expansive and contemplative Christian writers, the more Jesus seemed to be the heartbeat of the whole thing.

It became more and more apparent that Jesus wasn’t just a really nice guy or wise teacher on par with Brené Brown or Steve Jobs. He was the Word made flesh. A cosmic Christ who knew my name.

Eventually, I left New Thought ministry and wandered back through Catholicism before landing in the ELCA. But that meant I had to put all my woo-woo mystical stuff—especially ACIM—on the shelf. Seminary was already a stretch for someone with my spiritual résumé, and I didn’t need to give the candidacy committee another reason to raise their eyebrows.

I immersed myself in Law/Gospel theology. I studied the confessions. I learned to preach grace with grit. And I’m grateful for that season. But I also knew there was a whole chapter (or maybe a whole part) of my spiritual life that had been boxed up and taped shut.

Then I read Braaten and Jenson on Mannermaa.

Suddenly, it was like God lowered a drawbridge, pointed across it, and said, "Alrighty, kid... you’re ready now."

🔄 Theosis Without the Bypass

Mannermaa’s big idea was deceptively simple: faith unites us with Christ in a real, participatory way. Not just intellectually. Not just legally. But mystically, ontologically.

It’s not that we imitate Christ. It’s that we are drawn into him. United with him. Transformed by his life, death, and resurrection. Not just conceptually, but actually.

In New Thought circles, the goal is to think positive thoughts. (Because negative ones are said to manifest everything from flat tires to existential dread. I once accidentally manifested a parking ticket and a spiritual identity crisis in the same afternoon, but that’s neither here nor there.) There’s a time for that, no doubt. But this framework can make it hard to engage the messy, embodied reality of sin, suffering, and the crosses we all bear in life. Pain becomes something to mentally override instead of something to be met with presence, compassion, and grace.

Mannermaa doesn’t bypass. He doesn’t hand you a shortcut around pain. He leads you through it, right through the center, where Jesus meets us in our most human places. Where grace isn’t abstract; it’s enfleshed. It’s not pie-in-the-sky. It’s the center of gravity at the earthiest places.

This is theosis without the spiritual ladder. Not climb-to-God theology, but descend-with-Christ mystery.

🌿 Grounded Mysticism, Lutheran Roots

Reading Union with Christ, something clicked. I realized I didn’t have to choose between abstraction and doctrine. Between mysticism and orthodoxy. I could be a Lutheran pastor with mystery in my bones and Christ at the center—not floating above it all, but walking with people, questions and all, through the mud of it.

Mannermaa helped me name the thing I was already feeling but didn’t have language for: that mystical union is not a side quest… It’s the heart of the gospel. And it’s not about escaping the world. It’s about being joined to the One who has already entered it all and called it beloved.

🔜 Up Next

Next week: I’ll share how I now read A Course in Miracles; not as someone looking for escape, but as a pastor who has found a home in traditional Christianity.

Still Along the Way,
Jonas

P.S. I’d love to hear your thoughts! What bridges have you found between mystical longing and theological grounding? (Paid subscribers get to join the comments and keep the conversation going. That’s where the good stuff happens. If you’d like to go deeper but can’t swing the price of a paid subscription, let me know and I’ll set you up, no questions asked.)

In the last post, we talked about mystical experiences, inner voices, and whether Paul may have had more in common with modern-day “channelers” than we’d like to admit. This week, we’re stepping directly into the theological tension.

Because sooner or later, if you start talking about A Course in Miracles, someone’s going to ask:

“Wait… isn’t that heretical?”

Short answer: Yes.

Also: No.

Welcome to theology.

In case you missed the previous posts in the series…

Intro - ✨ This Time, It’s Not a Comeback — It’s a Reconciliation

Post #1 - 📚 Did You Hear the One Where the Lutheran Pastor Walks Into the Metaphysics Aisle?

Post #2 - 📺 How a PBS Mystic Became My Spiritual Gateway Drug

Post #3 - 💔 When I Drifted

Post #4 - ✨ If Channeling Freaks You Out, Let’s Talk About Paul

🙃 Heresy Is a Moving Target

Here’s the thing about heresy: it depends on where you’re standing.

To many conservative evangelicals, my Lutheran theology of baptismal regeneration would be heretical. To many progressive Christians, belief in any kind of divine revelation might be heretical. To the 16th-century Roman Catholic Church, Luther’s theology was definitely heretical. To the religious gatekeepers of Jesus’ own time, his teachings were downright dangerous. (I mean, they didn’t nail him to a cross because he fit neatly into their doctrinal statements.)

So when we call something heresy, we’re not just describing the content, we’re revealing our frame.

Which brings me to A Course in Miracles.

📘 The Big Blue Problem

If you’re new here: A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is a channeled spiritual text said to be dictated by Jesus to a woman named Helen Schucman, a clinical psychologist at Colombia University in the 1960s.

It’s thick. It’s mystical. It reframes sin, guilt, and even reality itself. And it’s been incredibly influential in New Thought and spiritual-but-not-religious circles.

It is definitely not orthodox Christianity.

But it also isn’t trying to be.

ACIM isn’t interested in creeds, denominations, or institutional belonging. It’s not focused on sin management or atonement theory. It’s doing something else entirely.

Which is why evaluating it on traditional doctrinal terms will always feel a little off.

Because A Course in Miracles isn’t trying to systematize belief. It’s trying to retrain perception. It’s a psychological-spiritual manual for shifting your mind from fear to love, from separation to unity, from ego to grace.

It fuses traditional Christian language with the language of depth psychology. It doesn't obsess over behavior or external metrics of holiness. It cares about thought patterns, perception, and inner orientation.

At its heart, it’s Jesus taking us by the hand and walking us out of the fog of our fear-based illusions and into the sunlight of divine connectedness. With God. With ourselves. With each other.

It’s weird. It’s wordy. It’s slow. But it’s also, for some of us, holy ground disguised as a workbook.

🧠 Where It Diverges (Clearly)

Let’s be honest about the dissonance:

• The Christ of ACIM isn’t quite the Christ of the creeds. In the Course, salvation doesn’t come through blood sacrifice but through inner awakening. Jesus isn’t so much the sinless substitute absorbing divine wrath as he is a luminous older brother extending a hand from the far shore, reminding us the whole ocean was love all along.

• The incarnation, cross, and resurrection are held differently. In ACIM, these aren’t events to be defended with apologetics but symbols meant to awaken us to eternal truth. Less timeline, more inner transformation.

• It redefines sin as a perceptual error, not a moral failing. That’s a big shift.

• It emphasizes waking up from illusion rather than being saved from judgment.

If you're grading this by Nicene standards, it's gonna get flagged. (Maybe even red-flagged, circled, and returned with “See me after class.”)

So yes, there’s plenty here that would make a Lutheran priest (like me) shift a little in their collar, glance longingly at the Book of Concord, and wonder quietly whether they should mention this in spiritual direction... or just nod and smile.

But here’s the twist:

🩵 The Heart of It Sounds Like Grace

For all its doctrinal weirdness, what A Course in Miracles actually says -beneath the metaphysics and occasionally frustrating language - often lands like grace.

It says:

“Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.”

“You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. Nothing else exists and only this is real.”

It doesn’t punish. It doesn’t shame. It doesn’t separate.

In that sense, it echoes what I love most about the gospel. The sense that God has already bridged the gap. That the work is done. That love gets the last word.

You don’t have to agree with its metaphysics to recognize the grace beneath the strangeness.

And if you’ve ever felt crushed by the version of Jesus you were handed, this Jesus might sound like water in a desert.

But make no mistake. A Course in Miracles isn’t spiritual cotton candy. It’s not some floaty affirmation parade where everyone gets a trophy for manifesting. It’s tough. It’s relentless. In its own gentle yet unnervingly precise way, it holds up a mirror to how deeply we’ve bought into the illusion of separation from God, others, and ourselves.

In the Course’s view, our problem isn’t just that we’ve made a few moral missteps. It’s that we’ve wandered into a full-blown authorship crisis. We’ve forgotten that we didn’t create ourselves. We’ve tried to take over the role of God, placing ourselves at the center of meaning, love, and identity. And the kicker? It’s impossible. That role’s already filled. But the attempt at believing in a self-made identity creates a whole ecosystem of fear, control, scarcity, and suffering.

This isn’t a gentle rebuke. It’s Jesus, lovingly but firmly, calling us back from the edge of our ego cliff and saying, “You’ve forgotten who you are. Let’s go home.”

🤷‍♂️ So Is It Heretical?

If by heresy you mean “different from orthodox Christianity,” then yes. No question.

But if by heresy you mean “dangerous, delusional, or spiritually toxic,” then no. At least not in my experience.

I’ve known plenty of heresy that wounds. And I’ve known plenty of orthodoxy that wounds, too. Anything can be weaponized if you're fueled by fear. But I’ve found it much easier to hurt people with Bible verses than with ACIM passages.

That doesn’t make one true and the other false. But it does remind me that just because something doesn't pass a theological stress test doesn't mean it isn’t still breathing the Spirit in some hidden way.

💡 A Lutheran Both/And

Martin Luther once said, “Whatever preaches Christ is the true Word of God.” And then probably said something else five minutes later that would make a synod council do a spit take.

He also said a lot of other things, many of which I would not post on this blog.

But this has stayed with me.

I don’t think A Course in Miracles is divinely infallible. I don’t think it’s scripture. I don’t think it replaces the gospel.

But I do think it’s whispering a lot of the same tune, just in a different register. One I wasn’t listening for. One I didn’t even know I needed.

And I do think it helped me hear Christ again after a long silence.

And that’s not nothing.

In fact, I think that's grace’s signature move: showing up in places we weren’t trained to expect it. It’s how resurrection works. Quiet. Surprising. Unofficial. But somehow, still unmistakably real.

Next up in this series: we’ll shift from the blue book to a Finnish theologian in a wool sweater. Tuomo Mannermaa may not have written mystical poetry, but his work on union with Christ helped me find theological grounding for the mystical hunger that never left. In fact, Mannermaa’s theology of theosis - our real, participatory union with the risen Christ - felt surprisingly at home next to the voice I heard in ACIM. You might say he gave language and legitimacy to the kind of mystical Christianity that ACIM pointed toward, but with deep Lutheran roots. He made space within Lutheranism for my mystical side to breathe.

Still Along the Way,
Jonas

P.S. I’d love to hear from you! What’s your experience with heresy, orthodoxy, or spiritual ideas that others side-eye but feel like grace to you?
(Paid subscribers can jump into the comments and join the fun. The conversation is half the joy.)

P.P.S. You can access the entire Course and workbook online for free as well as additional materials here if you’re interested.

This post picks up where the last one left off: in a space of spiritual drift, where a blue book helped reintroduce me to Jesus. But this week, we’re going to talk about something that might sound even weirder than grace finding its way in through the self-help aisle. We’re going to talk about channeling. Yep. That kind of channeling. And how maybe, just maybe, our very own Apostle Paul was one among many who’ve experienced something like it (long before the word made it onto wellness podcasts and crystal shops).

In case you missed the previous posts in the series…

Intro - ✨ This Time, It’s Not a Comeback — It’s a Reconciliation

Post #1 - 📚 Did You Hear the One Where the Lutheran Pastor Walks Into the Metaphysics Aisle?

Post #2 - 📺 How a PBS Mystic Became My Spiritual Gateway Drug

Post #3 - 💔 When I Drifted

The “Channeling” Problem

Let’s just name the thing: in most mainline Christian circles, “channeling” sets off every heresy alarm. It conjures images of séances, crystal balls, or someone trying to summon divine insight with a pendulum and a Himalayan salt lamp.

And fair enough… There’s plenty of nonsense out there.

But when I first picked up A Course in Miracles (ACIM), I was less concerned about how it came to be and more interested in the Voice it claimed to represent. Still, I felt that lingering unease. Maybe it was my inner skeptic, maybe it was the residue of old catechism lessons. But something in me hesitated: Wait... she said Jesus told her to write this down?

Which brings us to Paul.

Because if we’re going to side-eye a modern mystical text based on divine dictation, we have to take a hard look at how we got some of our favorite epistles.

Let’s Talk About Paul (Again)

Paul is a complicated guy. Theologically brilliant. Emotionally... let’s say spirited. And deeply, undeniably mystical.

This is the man who was struck blind by a voice from heaven. Who claims to have received the gospel not from any human, but directly from the risen Christ (Galatians 1:12). Who was “caught up to the third heaven” and saw things he wasn’t even allowed to describe (2 Corinthians 12:2–4).

If Paul said he took dictation from Jesus, we’d nod thoughtfully and maybe quote him in a sermon.

If your cousin’s yoga teacher said the same, you’d probably smile politely and change the subject.

See the problem?

So What Is Channeling, Really?

I’m not saying we should treat all mystical writing as equal. But I am saying we need to be honest about our categories. Because what Paul experienced—and what many mystics throughout Christian history have experienced—looks suspiciously like what we now call “channeling.”

A strong inner Voice. A sense of urgency to write. Words that feel like they’re coming through you, not from you.

That doesn’t mean it’s all divine. But it also doesn’t mean it’s all delusion.

Mysticism has always been part of the Christian story. We’ve just learned to be suspicious of it when it shows up outside the footnotes.

Enter Helen Schucman

Helen Schucman, the scribe of ACIM, was a clinical psychologist at Columbia University. She had a Jewish background and a complicated spiritual upbringing that was shaped by a Catholic governess, a Baptist maid, and her mother’s dabbling in various Protestant churches. She was spiritually curious, especially about Christianity, but also deeply conflicted. What followed was a wildly complicated relationship with Jesus.

And yet, over the course of seven years, she wrote down what she described as a sort of inner dictation from a voice that identified itself as Christ. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t promote it. She resisted it every step of the way.

She was, in other words, a very unlikely channel.

And honestly, that’s part of what makes me take her seriously. She wasn’t trying to start a movement. She wasn’t selling miracle water. She was confused, resistant, and oddly faithful to the words she felt compelled to write.

So What Do We Do With That?

I’m not here to argue that ACIM should be canon. It shouldn’t.

But I do think it deserves a place in the broader conversation about how God has always spoken. Not just through the most well-known prophets and preachers of our tradition, but through poets, dreamers, and reluctant mystics.

As a Lutheran pastor, I stand in a tradition that (at its best) understands we are saved by grace, not theological precision. And if grace can use Paul (yes, impulsive, arrogant, visionary Paul) then maybe grace can speak through a skeptical Jewish academic in New York, too. Or through a medieval Rhineland mystic like Meister Eckhart, or his student Johannes Tauler, or any number of those wild pre-Reformation voices who spoke of union with God in ways that made the canon lawyers squirm.

Even if we don’t agree with every word, we can ask: What kind of God is being revealed here? And, in a Christian sense: Is this the kind of God I encounter in Jesus?

Because that’s the real test… Not how the message got here, but what it tells us about the heart of the One who speaks.

From Dictation to Devotion

I once heard someone say that if the gospel is true, it will sound like good news. And for me (though yes, some parts of ACIM made me raise an eyebrow) the message I encountered in its pages, whether it came from Jesus, Helen’s subconscious, or somewhere in between, sounded like really, really good news.

It said: Your identity is not in the guilt you feel. You have never left God. You are still and always held in love.

To this day, I’m not sure where that Voice came from. But I know what it did to me.

It broke the spell of fear. It reframed my image of God. It opened a path back to Christ.

And isn’t that the point?

🔜 Up Next

In the next post, we’ll look at the heart of the Course’s theology and ask the question so many have wondered:

Is A Course in Miracles heretical?

Spoiler: as a priest in the Lutheran tradition, I have thoughts…

Each post in this arc explores a thread in my spiritual story. Sometimes surprising, occasionally side-eyed by the canon police, but always grounded in grace. And while I hope it offers insight into my own weird and winding path, I also hope it speaks to yours. Because chances are, you’ve drifted too. Or you’ve found yourself somewhere unexpected, with a faith that no longer fits, a church that doesn’t feel like home, or a longing you can’t quite name. This one? This one begins where a lot of spiritual journeys do: with grief, disillusionment, and the unsettling feeling that maybe the old answers don’t work anymore.

In case you missed the previous posts in the series…

Intro - ✨ This Time, It’s Not a Comeback — It’s a Reconciliation

Post #1 - 📚 Did You Hear the One Where the Lutheran Pastor Walks Into the Metaphysics Aisle?

Post #2 - 📺 How a PBS Mystic Became My Spiritual Gateway Drug

When Church Felt Like Home (Until It Didn't)

If you’ve ever loved church and then found yourself quietly drifting, this part might sound familiar. It’s not always a dramatic split. Sometimes it’s just life happening… Grief, distance, questions that no longer fit inside the lines. Sometimes, the place that once felt like home begins to feel like someone else’s house. That was me.

I actually enjoyed church as a kid. I was raised Roman Catholic, and I loved the liturgy… The smells, the bells, the order. It provided a refreshing calm against the chaos of my home life. The rhythms and rituals of Mass felt like a kind of sanctuary. I didn’t understand all the theology, but I felt something real in the hush of incense, the flicker of candles, the solemnity of kneeling (and standing… and kneeling again… and standing).

My dad was raised Southern Baptist, Though I don’t recall him ever attending church, he considered himself a Christian. My mom was my tie to Catholicism. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was eight. She also suffered from debilitating anxiety and was on strong medication that made driving hard. The functionality of our car at the time was questionable at best. So we didn’t go to Mass regularly. Maybe every couple of months. I never received First Communion or was confirmed as a child. I do remember going to catechism a couple times and getting yelled at by the nuns. Which, I think, is a rite of passage for every Catholic kid.

When my mom got really sick, we stopped going altogether. And when she died 8 years later, I lost my connection to church. It wasn’t just grief, it was theology. The Christianity I absorbed painted Jesus as a human shield from an angry Father in the sky. That the goal was to be perfect like Jesus (or else!). Yes, technically, God ‘forgave’ me. At least that’s what they said. But He was also always kinda mad at me. Or at least disapproving. And I thought: if this is what God is like, I just don’t know. I never fully went atheist or even non-Christian. I just didn’t know where I fit.

Cue Wayne Dyer, Again

Maybe you’ve had this too. A moment when something on a screen or in a book found you in your in-between space. When traditional faith felt out of reach, but you still needed something. For me, it came in the form of a bald man on PBS with a gentle voice and wild ideas: Wayne Dyer. (If you missed last week’s post, I wrote about the night he unexpectedly pulled me back into the God conversation. You can find it here.)

He spoke a language I hadn’t heard in church: one of inner alignment, a friendly universe, and God’s unconditional love. He wasn’t trying to scare me into salvation. He was inviting me to remember who I really was. And somewhere in the mix of his storytelling and impressive memorization of a plethora of Rumi quotes, he kept mentioning this mysterious text called A Course in Miracles.

When he quoted his friend Marianne Williamson (ACIM’s unofficial evangelist) I leaned in. But it wasn’t until a few years later, after I got married, that I picked up the big blue book itself.

Marriage, Money, and the Blue Book

If you’ve ever been in love while broke and spiritually unmoored, welcome. This season of my life was equal parts romantic comedy and existential drama. The vows were of joy and abundant love. The bank account balance was not. And in the midst of all that, a strange blue book cracked open a new way of seeing faith.

Alex and I met at the golf course where I worked in northern Nevada (yes, my past life was as a club pro). Her family lived nearby, and it was the summer before her freshman year of college. We went on a few dates, and something clicked. But then she flew off to Chicago for college, and I stayed back in Nevada, working and living with my dad. Our relationship could’ve fizzled. I mean, she was off to college in the big city. Here I was, a small-town golf pro barely making enough to buy a hot dog and a beer at the turn. But instead, it deepened.

We kept talking. Emailing (ahhh, the days of emailing each other when texting was too laborious on our Nokia flip phones). We kept flying back and forth, thanks to my friend’s dad and his magical stash of airline miles. Over time, long-distance became a rhythm, and that rhythm led to love.

A big part of our early connection was her gently drawing me back into the Catholic church. She’d nudge me when to kneel, stand, cross myself. I loved it.

When we got engaged, I got confirmed so we could be married in the Catholic Church. I went through adult confirmation, and a couple years later, we tied the knot. I moved to Chicago. And promptly (like a lot of us Catholics apparently do) had a faith crisis of her own.

So while she was done with church, I drifted back to what had always felt safe and expansive. I read authors like Wayne, Marianne, and that blue book I’d been circling for years.

We were broke. It was the fall of 2008. I had moved to Chicago with no money and no job. I was day trading on the side, barely scraping by (long story). And then the market crashed. My trading account was wiped. The only money we had left was from Alex’s student loans. Going into winter, golf courses were laying people off, not hiring. ‘Twas not an ideal scenario.

A couple weeks earlier, I’d picked up A Course in Miracles. While Alex was in class and I was racking up job application rejection emails from Walmart, Culver’s, Wells Fargo, and the U.S. Postal Service, I started reading.

To be honest, this book seemed out there. And for me, this is saying a lot. Because I'm down with most things 'out there.' But to my surprise, when I let my inner cynic take a long coffee break, it didn’t feel crazy. It felt like balm.

Jesus, Reintroduced

I share all this not because I think everyone should read A Course in Miracles, but because it helped me rediscover Jesus in a way that felt less like fear and more like love. If you’ve ever tried to hold together a deep longing for Christ with a deep discomfort with the way Christ has been presented to you, you’re in good company here.

Like I said, the book itself was a bit of a trip. The language was dense. The structure confusing. And the tone—authoritative but loving—took some getting used to. The Jesus in A Course in Miracles didn’t sound like the one from my childhood. There was no emphasis on punishment, no cross-heavy guilt trips. Instead, there was this compassionate, piercing voice that cut through shame and ego with surgical grace.

The more I read, the more I felt like it was translating my spiritual longings into a new dialect. It didn’t erase what came before. It reframed it. It felt like my soul was being rewired. It wasn’t scripture, but it was sacred. Not orthodox, but strangely orthodox-adjacent. It said: You are loved. You were never separate. And in that season, I clung to those words like oxygen.

Up Next

Of course, this raises questions. Who wrote A Course in Miracles? Where did this voice come from? Is this just some new-age fever dream—or something more ancient?

In the next post, I’ll explore what I now call “the channeling problem” and how the Apostle Paul might just be the patron saint of mystics like the scribe of ACIM, Helen Schucman, a psychology professor at Columbia University with a wildly interesting relationship with Jesus.

If you’re in that place now—unmoored, unsure, halfway between the pews and something unnameable—I hope you know you’re not alone. Grace finds other ways in and Jesus is in all of it.

This is the first post in a new series I’m calling ‘Grace Between the Lines’—a journey through the beautifully strange overlap between Lutheran theology, mystical spirituality, and the books and ideas that have shaped me along the way. Whether you’ve been with me since the early days or you’re just arriving at this odd little corner of the internet, I’m so glad you’re here.

Each post in this arc will explore a thread in my spiritual story—sometimes surprising, occasionally side-eyed by the canon police, but always grounded in grace. And this one? This one begins, as many sacred things do, in the back corner of a used bookstore.

A couple of months ago, I wandered into the metaphysics section of our local used bookstore. Nothing fancy. No crystals. No incense. Just a modest table in the back, lined with spiritual gems—the kind of books that don’t usually survive garage sales or TikTok trends.

And there it was—A Course in Miracles. Again.

It had been about five years since I last picked it up. Ever since coming back to Christianity.

Every time I returned to that shop, it was still there. Same copy. Same spot. I’d flip it open, read a few lines, and think, “Seriously? This is just so good.”

I wasn’t planning to revisit it. I wasn’t trying to stir the theological pot (or summon an old identity like a spiritual Ouija board). But it kept nudging me. And when I finally had some time off a couple of weeks ago, I gave in—and went deep.

Not as a seeker. Not as a spiritual influencer trying to find a brand.

Just as me. A guy who’s now a Lutheran pastor—but who still remembers what it felt like to need a God I could breathe around.

🤫 A Quick Confession

Here’s the thing: I used to live in that world.

Not just the metaphysical bookstore aisle—but the whole worldview.

I once helped launch a New Thought spiritual center. I was steeped in affirmations, energy work, manifestation talk, and spiritual self-help with a metaphysical twist. I didn’t just browse that section—I was an evangelist for it.

And honestly? A lot of it was beautiful. It gave me language for things I’d never had words for. It helped me name my longings. It gave me hope when traditional Christianity had felt too brittle, too punitive, too... small.

But it also came with pressure.

There was an expectation to stay high-vibe, relentlessly positive, and energetically “aligned.” Eventually, it started to feel like I was doing spiritual performance art. Like I had to keep selling the freedom I was quietly losing.

(If I had a dollar for every time I “trusted the Universe” through gritted teeth, I could’ve manifested a shelf-stable kombucha empire—or at least a Himalayan salt lamp with a dimmer switch - I always wanted one of those.)

🧠 The Theological Tension

I don’t resent that chapter of my life.

The hunger that led me there was real: I wanted to experience God, not just study doctrines about God. I wanted mystery, not certainty. I wanted healing, not guilt. I longed for beauty, connection, transcendence.

And to its credit, the metaphysical world made space for all of that.

The language was poetic. The teachings felt empowering. There was a sense of spiritual agency I hadn’t known before.

But over time, it became heavy. Spirituality became another self-improvement project. Grace was replaced with “alignment.” Transformation started to feel like a personal obligation instead of a divine gift.

It became spirituality as hustle. And I was tired.

(Which, ironically, made me feel guilty. Which meant I had more work to do. You see the trap.)

What I didn’t know—what no one told me—is that Christianity has its own deep wells of mystery. That there’s a mystical stream in this ancient tradition, one that doesn’t bypass the cross or try to outshine the pain, but meets us right in it.

✝️ Lutheranism as an Unexpected Resolution

I didn’t find Lutheranism because I was looking for it.

Honestly, I didn’t even know it was an option.

I grew up Catholic, so I knew the beauty of liturgy—the candles, the quiet, the rhythm. But the theology I inherited was often punitive. God was holy, yes—but also mostly angry. Jesus felt less like a shepherd and more like a human shield.

So I walked away. For a long time.

I thought those were my only options: Christianity that punished, or no Christianity at all.

What I didn’t realize is that there was this whole tradition—rooted in the ancient church, alive with liturgy, and drenched in grace—that had been quietly waiting for me.

When I stumbled into the ELCA, it felt like discovering a hidden room in a house I thought I’d already moved out of.

The music was familiar. The calendar, the structure, the prayers—they brought me back. But the theology? That was new. And it floored me.

No spiritual ladder to climb.
No emotional tone I had to maintain.
No pressure to "manifest a better version of myself."

Just a crucified and risen God who meets us in our mess and offers mercy we didn’t earn and can’t lose.

It was mystical without being vague. Grounded without being rigid.
It didn’t erase my longing for transcendence—it baptized it.

♾️ Where the Two Still Meet

When I left New Thought ministry and entered Lutheran seminary, I thought I had to choose:

Either I was a mystical, metaphysical, slightly woo-leaning spiritual wanderer...
Or I was a grounded, confessional, sacrament-loving Lutheran.

But I’ve come to see: those aren’t opposites. They’re two sides of my spiritual story. And they can speak to each other when I stop trying to silence one in favor of the other.

That’s why I still read A Course in Miracles. And Wayne Dyer (my gateway drug to new Thought - I'll share the story of this sometime). And Martha Beck.
Not as scripture. Not as doctrine.
But as voices that once kept the fire going when everything else felt cold.

And now, thanks to theologians like Tuomo Mannermaa—who taught me that union with Christ isn’t just metaphor but mystical reality—I can see how those longings were always pointing toward what the Church already had.

They didn’t call me to ministry. But they affirmed I’d landed in the right tradition.
I just hadn’t seen it yet.

I don’t need A Course in Miracles to be theologically airtight.
I don’t need Lutheranism to resolve every cosmic question.

I just know that, in wildly different ways, both helped me remember I’m not alone—
and that the grace of Jesus isn’t picky about where He shows up.

💬 Closing Thought

Maybe you have a spiritual past you’re not quite sure what to do with.
Maybe it’s full of things you’ve outgrown—or things that still glow quietly in the background.
Maybe you’ve carried some guilt about it. Or some pride. Or both. (Spiritual adolescence: now available in adult sizes!)

Here’s what I’m learning: You don’t have to throw it all away.
You also don’t have to drag it all with you.

The invitation is integration—not erasure.
To ask: What was I longing for then?
And where might that longing still be holy now?

If grace is real—and I believe it is—then it’s been tracking with you this whole time.
Through every shelf. Every sermon. Every detour.

Even the weird stuff.
Especially the weird stuff.

So if you ever find yourself, like I did, standing in the metaphysics aisle of a used bookstore with a copy of A Course in Miracles in your hands—you’re not lost.

You might just be coming full circle.

The path that brought you here wasn’t a mistake.
It was holy ground—even the weird parts.

Your past doesn’t need to be erased.
It’s already been redeemed.

The grace of the Holy Spirit was never waiting for you to get it right—
It was with you the whole way through.

God has already held the tension.
God has already woven the story.
God has already called it beloved.

You don’t have to choose between mystery and mercy.
In Christ, they’ve already chosen you.

P.S. I’d love to hear how your story has twisted, turned, or circled back.
What old spiritual paths are still whispering to you?
What parts of your journey are asking to be reconciled, not rejected?
Feel free to share in the comments—or just reply quietly to say, “Yep. Me too.”

If you’ve been subscribed to this Substack for a while, bless you. You’ve endured a whole saga of “Hey friends, I’m back!” posts, each followed by a couple earnest essays, then… silence. Tumbleweeds. Digital cobwebs. Then rinse, wash, repeat.

I’ve rebooted this space more times than I can count. Each time, it felt like yanking the pull cord on an old lawn mower. It would cough to life, sputter hopefully, and die again.

This isn’t because I don’t love writing (I do!) or because I don’t have anything to say (I have too much!). It’s because the ground beneath me has been shifting in major ways for the past several years and I haven’t known how to write from the middle of the landslide.

🫶 A Week Off. A Deep Breath. A Return.

This past week, I took some time off. Not a vacation. I didn’t go anywhere. We were supposed to go camping, but our trip got canceled. (Which I’m totally fine with… No tent stakes or sleeping on the ground. I count that as a win.)

So it turned into just a quiet, unstructured week at home. During the day, my wife, Alex, was upstairs in her office doing her thing. My daughter, Rory, was at school. And me? I was just... being… for the first time in a long while.

There were no appointments, no sermons to write, no pastoral emergencies. Just time. And in that space, something surprising emerged. Not a new idea, but an old thread I thought I’d lost.

It began when I picked up the work of Finnish Lutheran theologian Tuomo Mannermaa a few weeks ago (whose name, let’s be honest, sounds less like a theologian and more like a guy you’d meet in a sauna) whose work opened a door into something I didn’t know Lutheranism had: mysticism.

Mannermaa showed me that Luther wasn’t just a 16th-century protester with a hammer, some nails, and 95 grievances. He pointed to a Luther who spoke of union with Christ, not just as metaphor, but as reality. Not just a verdict from a sky deity on high (“forgiven!”), but a mystical participation in the divine life, here and now.

For someone like me, a guy who had spent years in the non-traditional spiritual world, swimming in the deep end of mysticism and metaphysics, Mannermaa became a bridge. A way for all those pieces of me to meet in one place.

😬 Yes, That One...

That bridge led me, perhaps inevitably, back to A Course in Miracles.

Now, if you're a Lutheran or any thoughtful Christian, just mentioning ACIM might cause your inner catechism teacher to clutch their pearls. I get it. It’s "channeled." It’s associated with Marianne Williamson (whom I genuinely admire, even if she occasionally says things that make me wish the internet had a gentle "Are you sure?" button). On the surface, it reads like a metaphysical fever dream.

But when I picked it up again—not as a spiritual seeker, but as a Lutheran pastor steeped in Word, sacrament, and grace—I didn’t find conflict. I found resonance. Familiarity. Echoes of what Mannermaa, the mystics, Luther, and even the Apostle Paul were getting at all along.

And it wasn’t the first time it had met me in a tender place.

ACIM had been a companion during a couple of difficult, disorienting seasons of my life when traditional forms of faith felt hollow or inaccessible. It gave me language for mercy when I couldn’t find it in the church. It helped me stay in relationship with God when I wasn’t sure what I believed about God anymore.

It kept the candle flickering until I was ready to find the sanctuary again.

I’m not saying ACIM is Scripture. I’m not suggesting it’s perfect or that it should replace the New Testament. I don’t hold it as canon.
But I’m also not afraid of it anymore.

🫵 New Thought, Old Ache

Before I found my way into the Lutheran tradition, I spent years in the New Thought movement. I even moved across the country to help launch a spiritual center. It was exciting, earnest, and filled with good intentions.

But over time, the message shifted. Not because the tradition was inherently flawed, but because I was still working out my own stuff. My ego got involved. My longing for security dressed itself up in spiritual language. I was trying to manifest my way out of my story instead of letting grace meet me in it.

Eventually, the performative edge of it all became too much. I stepped away, not in bitterness, but in exhaustion. And underneath that exhaustion, there was still a longing.

A longing for something older. Deeper. Truer.

⚓ A Home with Candles and Grace

I found myself drawn to the ancient rhythms of Christian liturgy. First through the beauty of Catholic mystics, and eventually, through the surprisingly grace-saturated theology of the ELCA.

The first time I visited a Lutheran church, I felt like I’d stumbled into a hidden room in the house of faith. It had everything I loved about liturgical Christianity but without the shame. It felt like coming home to the symbol system of my Roman Catholic childhood, but with the volume turned down on fear and up on mercy.

And as a girl-dad, the ELCA’s ordination of women mattered deeply. Even if my daughter never steps into a pulpit, I want her to know it’s not off-limits to her. That the voice of God might sound like her own someday.

🔇 When the Words Went Quiet

When I started seminary, I deleted my old blog that had over 70,000 subscribers and 1,000+ posts. It felt like a clean break. A fresh start. But it also left me without a familiar place to return to.

That’s when I launched this Substack. I was in-between worlds; not quite New Thought anymore, not yet fully Christian. I was scattered. Dis-integrated. Trying to write my way into wholeness.

So if this space has felt like a moving target, it’s because that’s exactly what I’ve been.

🤝 This Isn’t a Comeback. It’s a Reconciliation.

This past week gave me the stillness to see it clearly: I don’t need to erase my past to be faithful to my present. The mystic in me and the pastor in me are not at odds. They’re companions.

This space, Along the Way, is now a home for theological honesty, mystical resonance, and spiritual integration.

Here’s what I’ll be writing about:

• Lutheran theology with a mystical spine

• A Course in Miracles (and other unconventional texts) through a grace-saturated, gospel-informed lens

• Pastoral life in a spiritually pluralistic world

• Affirmative prayer reimagined through Lutheran proclamation

• Weird books, real grace, and the God who meets us in both

Yes, I’ll lean into the woo (I live in Santa Cruz, for crying out loud!).
But I pray I won’t lose my theological footing.
I’m not interested in floating away. I’m interested in digging deeper.

I trust that God’s grace is sturdier than our theological sorting systems.

So… welcome (again). Whether you’ve followed my writing for years or just stumbled in from the wilderness, I’m glad you’re here.

This space is for the curious, the disillusioned, the reconciled, and the still-reconciling.

More soon.
This time, from a place of peace, joy, and clarity.

Here’s to sacred tension, luminous mystery, and the God who holds it all.

Still Along the Way,
Jonas

💬 P.S. – I’d love to hear from you.

Did anything in this post strike a chord? Or raise a question?
Drop a comment below or just say hey. It’s always a gift to know who’s here.