March 17-19, 2026
Mystical Theology Network 2026 Annual Conference
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Submission deadline: October 31, 2025
Mystical authors often speak of the divine within the spaces of the natural environment that surround them. They find God not only inside the recesses of the private self, but amidst vast exterior landscapes, real or imagined, whether scaling mountains, wandering deserts, or navigating the sea. Nonhuman life both contributes to the ambient landscape and dwells within it alongside human communities.
The landscape of Southern California, first known to indigenous spiritual traditions, gathers all three of these influential formations together: mountain, desert, and ocean. Yet it also reminds us of their shared vulnerability to natural and human devastation, given the recent Los Angeles fires. The particular landscape of the Pacific, facing toward the global South and East, invites reflection on other landscapes past and present—whether Mediterranean, European, Atlantic, or otherwise—that continue to influence and inform modes of contemplative life today.