about gil
life is a pilgrimage
Gil has walked many paths; professional baseball player, college coach, university president, Episcopal priest, and writer. He is a storyteller, spiritual companion, and an alchemist of the soul.
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books and podcasts
The Bible and the Tarot
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious
This is a personal pilgrimage of discovery, a bridge between the Bible and the narrative of the Tarot. At times my book will read like a novel. At other times it’s a commentary on the Bible and the Tarot, both material manifestations of archetypal ideas. The biblical mythos with its complex characters, actors, symbols, stories, and parables are the backstory of the magnificent creatures of the Tarot’s inner psychic world—a place where Tarot images function as portable stained-glass windows for the Bible’s beguiling story. Together, Bible and Tarot portrait the journey of the universal human narrative with personal application. To understand both and their effect on our lives we must open our imagination. For, to know one’s self depends on a willingness to ask soul-shaking questions about our assumptions.
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious takes a fresh look at being a spiritual companion for those who self-identify as something other than religious—SBNR, Nones, not religious, agnostics, atheists, people who have experienced something unexplainable, and those who have encountered the paranormal (religious or otherwise). This book is for anyone who has left a religious tradition but still long for a spiritual path. It is also for anyone—religious or not—called to be a spiritual companion for the not-religious.
Meditations on Blue Jesus: Listening to the Disabled God
Walking with the Spiritual but Not Religious
Wisdom Walking: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life
Top IndieReader Review 2023
Nominated for the Michael Ramsey Prize
Dinah Stafford is among the oldest living persons with Prader Willi syndrome. She is an artist and a mystic. She’s also a survivor—strong, spiritual, and oh yes, beware, she is stubborn. She has few words but her symbolic art holds profound meaning. Gil tells their family story, tragic, heart-warming, inspiring and funny. Each chapter features one of Dinah’s paintings. Her spirituality is her own, but one shared with all of us. Through Dinah’s art, we’ll experience her relationship with the divine, one not overly influenced or politicized by religion. Dinah sits at the center of her blue sacred circle teaching us her Blue Wisdom. Hers is the re-imagining of a spiritual story, a rebirth into a new normal. This is a story of Dinah and “the Disabled God.”
Wisdom Walking: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life
When Leadership and Spiritual Direction Meet: Stories and Reflections for Congregational Life
Wisdom Walking: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life
Let's go for a walk. A very long walk. A journey down the pilgrim's path. Traipsing through the forest of life. Climbing over the mountains of adversity. Enduring the climate of challenge. Over the course of countless mile and numerous days, we will mine the golden wisdom hidden within our pilgrimage experience.
When Leadership and Spiritual Direction Meet: Stories and Reflections for Congregational Life
When Leadership and Spiritual Direction Meet: Stories and Reflections for Congregational Life
When Leadership and Spiritual Direction Meet: Stories and Reflections for Congregational Life
Modern church leaders need to cultivate innovative and creative leadership skills as they navigate today's post-Christian world and as their congregations look to them for insight and guidance. Gil takes a fresh look at this vital need, drawing on his experience and interweaving them with ancient spiritual practices found within the discipline of spiritual direction.
Podcast: The Therapist and the Alchemist
When Leadership and Spiritual Direction Meet: Stories and Reflections for Congregational Life
When Leadership and Spiritual Direction Meet: Stories and Reflections for Congregational Life
Gil and his son, Dr. Neil Stafford host the podcast The Therapist and the Alchemist. You can find it anywhere you listen in. The conversation covers a wide range of topics from being a Garage Philosopher to spiritualism, grief, innocent suffering, pilgrimage. As well, they interview some interesting people.