WCOM Touchstones Program Archive

WCOM Touchstones

About the Show

“Touchstones: Religious Experience” is a show that reflects the variety of religious and spiritual possibilities available to people in the Triangle. As the host of Touchstones, Paul explores personal religious and/or spiritual experience with a wide variety of local and visiting religious practitioners. His own extensive background of study and interaction with the broad range of religious experience will have as much visibility as traditional mainline churches, synagogues and mosques.

The focus is on personal experience with religion and spirituality rather than doctrine or praxis as such. Eventually the shows will attempt to be more topical and exploratory than introductory.

About the Host: Paul Nagy

headshot Paul Nagy

Contact: pnagy@wordtrade.com

Bio: Paul has been an active member of The Theosophical Society in America since 1973, a Unitarian Universalist since 1983, and a member of the North Carolina Society of Ethical Culture since 2000. He is a graduate from The Pacific School of Religion (Master of Divinity), an interdenominational seminary affiliated with The Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, California. He has a ministry in spiritual direction, and is a member of Spiritual Director’s International. He has led countless seminars and some retreats on esoteric religions and on the daily practice of prayer.

In addition, Paul has a degree in cultural anthropology from San Francisco State University and has conducted extensive research among non-christian, meditation groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He visited Turkey and Konya in 1980, during a study fellowship from the Chisholm Institute (Beshara Foundation) and followed the traditional pilgrimage order of visiting the maqams of Sadrerinn Qunavi, Shams-i-Tabriz and Jelaluddin Rumi. Recently he completed a course where the participants were encouraged to experience transformative spiritual discourse (sobhet) by sharing their feeling about selections from Rumi's poetry.

As Managing Editor of Wordtrade.com, (a review of academic books in the sciences and humanities), Paul supervises the business end of the review, while writing now and again reviews for the newsletter. He considers himself a mystic without theistic religion. His style of mysticism is humanistic and theosophical as a philosophical and reasonable approach to the ultimate ineffable realities of life. He has a strong kinship with the Sufism of ibn al-’Arabi, the worldview of the Hindu Yogavashista, and active beauty and simplicity of Trika mysticism. Over the years, Paul has been part of a number of initiatory groups and has spent some time as a yogin, a wiccan, a subudan, as well as a practitioner of Buddhism. He is also an accomplished tarotist, specializing in its occult lore and esoteric dimensions as well as clairvoyant readings.

Today his own spiritual practice tends toward the tantric, especially mahamudra meditation. Considering much of the Tibetan presentation of this style a little too sectarian, he characterizes this spiritual practice as centering prayer, an ecumenical form of contemplative prayer. Recently he has renewed his interest in Kashmir Shaivism or Trika as reflective of the most versatile aspects of the contemplative tradition. The spontaneous attentiveness in simple awareness as divine presence now is the active basis of his spirituality.

Paul’s academic groups include: The Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, the International Society of Neoplatonic Studies, the American Academy of Religion, and the The Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.

About WCOM

WCOM Radio • 201 North Greensboro Street • Carrboro, NC 27510 • (919) 929-9601 • volunteer@communityradio.coop

WCOM is a community radio station with a studio in downtown Carrboro and an antenna at Scroggs Elementary School in Southern Village. WCOM is the first low-power FM community radio station in the area to be set up under a program established by the Federal Communications Commission in 2000 (click here for more on that program). Low-power FM is grassroots radio—an effort to counterbalance the increasing concentration of radio ownership by a few large corporations.

In June 2004, WCOM began broadcasting a test signal—a 30-minute loop in English and Spanish explaining the goals of the station. Since the technology was not yet in place to link the studio to the transmitter, that test signal came from a CD cabinet at the base of the transmitter at Scroggs.

Meanwhile, our intrepid engineering committee toiled away to build the studio and establish the studio-to-transmitter link. Finally, at 11:27 PM on Wednesday, September 29, 2004, they flipped the last switch and we began broadcasting from our beautiful new studio in downtown Carrboro!

From September to November 2004, we played a specially selected mix of music 24-7. The real excitement started in November, when WCOM's first DJs hit the airwaves. Today our program schedule includes close to 50 locally produced music and talk shows and new programs are still being added. We also carry some of the most incisive news shows on the air, Democracy Now, Counter Spin, and Making Contact

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About Individual Touchstones Broadcasts Archived Here

(Not all shows are recorded or archived.)

Main links below are to MP3 recordings, to download in Windows, right click, select "Save target as..."

Bulleted links are to related websites

Shows with asterisk [*] are judged to be especially germane

Touchstones by Date

*May 6, 2008: Rev. Bruce Milne of Unity Center of Peace Church, Chapel Hill, NC

*April 29, 2008: Conversation with Marie White and Paul Nagy about the 2008 Reader's Studio, The Tarot School annual event for professional development tarot readers.

*April 22. 2008: Conversation with Pastor Kendrick Vinar of Grace Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Grace Church

April 8, 2008: 2 hour show with Claudio's Speak Easy & Touchstones combined

Part 1: Discussion of Preproduction motion picture family feature "Go Fish" to be filmed near Apex with producer, John Demers and director, Jacob Chase.

ClaudioArts.com

tropical moon label

Part 2: Claudio and Jon Paul discuss their religious experience.

April 1, 2008: Triangle Men's Inquiry Meeting and Annual Retreat

Raleigh Meeting & Website

*March 25, 2008: Jim Hynes on Adult Religious Education at St. Thomas More Parish, Chapel Hill NC

St Thomas More Catholic Church 920 Carmichael St, Chapel Hill - (919) 942-6193

March 11, 2008: Ann Loomis: Divine Feminine

www.writestyles.com

March 4, 2008: Catherine Devine: Growing up Catholic

*February 26, 2008: MaryPhyllis Horn on Shamanic Soul Retrieval

Maryphyllis Horn, Shamanic Practitioner, M.Ed, CMHt, CTFT, CP-LRt, Rev., has a spiritual counseling practice in Pittsboro, NC. Her specialties include Soul Retrieval, Shamanic Counseling and Healing, Past-Life Regression, Spiritual Hypnotherapy, Thought Field Therapy and Genonetics. For information phone 919-542-0260, email soulshaman@aol.com or go to her website: www.soulshaman.com

*February 19, 2008: Kala Ambrose on Temple of Stella Maris Mystery School

*February 12, 2008: David J. Halperin on Career as Scholar

*February 5, 2008: Jerry Lazarus on Edgar Cayce and Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE)

January 29, 2008: Naturopathy with Tim & Preeta Kuhlman, N.D.

Myvitaltouch.com

*January 22, 2008: Eckankar with Sharon Ward

Eckankar

January 15, 2008: Unitarian Universalism with Rev. Dick Weston-Jones

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Hillsborough
Community Church of Chapel Hill
Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durham
All Souls Church, Unitarian Universalist: A Racially Diverse Community of Durham
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh (not discussed)

*January 8, 2008: Dream Work 1 with Rev. Tom Lane

See Understand Your Dream.com

*January 1, 2008: Ramana Maharshi's Self-inquiry with John Troy

December 25, 2007: Franciscan Prayers

December 18, 2007: Rumi and Mayan Mystery of 2012 with Philip Young

November 27, 2007: Ministry of Rev. Roger Hayes

see Church of the Holy Spirit Fellowship

November 20, 2007: Tarot Art with Marie White

See The Mary-el Tarot

November 13, 2007: Healing with Mary-Phyllis Horn and

Maryphyllis Horn, Shamanic Practitioner, M.Ed, CMHt, CTFT, CP-LRt, Rev., has a spiritual counseling practice in Pittsboro, NC. Her specialties include Soul Retrieval, Shamanic Counseling and Healing, Past-Life Regression, Spiritual Hypnotherapy, Thought Field Therapy and Genonetics. For information phone 919-542-0260, email soulshaman@aol.com or go to her website: www.soulshaman.com

November 6, 2007: Ghosts with Heather James

October 23, 2007: Rev. Demtries Semien, UNC graduate student and social activist in Prison ministries.