Resources - soulspace ® Spiritual Direction

What Stops Me?

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:47:34 +0000

A Question to Carry Lightly

What stops me from being the way I want to be—
from being the way I am?

This post is part of the Maps, Lenses, and Mirrors Series, a collage of conversations, music, voice memos, visual art, and words exploring how to know. Here’s Part One.

The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

Kirsten Harrison — Sun, 03 May 2026 21:16:06 +0000

This reading comes from Barnhart’s book, Second Simplicity.

You’ll want to listen when you have space. I recommend listening three times. First, let it wash over you with no expectations. Second, notice what the body responds to—and how it responds. On your third listen, is there a word or phrase your attention is drawn to? If so, consider carrying it with you consciously.

Where does recognition rise from?

Bruno Barnhart was a Camaldolese monk who has been described by someone who knew him well with these words from J.R.R. Tolkien:

“He was as noble and fair as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer.”‍ ‍

More on the Soulspace Blog

My name is Kirsten. I accompany folks as they attune to the inner experiences of life in spiritual direction, a place of presence and connection, a place to anchor briefly amid the chaos, a spacious place to be seen and known. If you would like to read more about this type of accompaniment, you can visit my offerings page here.

There Was No Contradiction in His Soul

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:12:13 +0000

"Above all I feel that you must resign yourself to taking me as I am..." —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

This post is part of the Maps, Lenses, and Mirrors Series, a collage of conversations, music, voice memos, visual art, and words exploring how to know. Here’s Part One.

Before we go any further, let us tuck this entire series into a vaster context—one concerned with the dynamic interplay between the inner dimensions of the human person and our collective outer unfolding. It is vital that we bookmark this and keep returning. Without this asterisk, we will miss the heart of the matter.

“A proper application of astrological symbolism would seem to lead not to selfishness and egotism, but toward self-knowledge and self-acceptance—not forcing the future or redefining the past but toward comprehending the moment.
To truly read the map of presence, with its peaks and valleys, its wide oceans and gentle streams, would rather imply an inner journey towards the beginning of real consciousness and conscience so that the whole vibrating cosmic web can be acknowledged and, for brief extraordinary instants, almost understood, related to, and maintained.”
—Rob Baker, Parabola, “Maps of Presence”

Video Artifact #2

I see the wheels of my heart turning in this low-quality, high-presence video from May 2025. In this relational space, as we articulate what we have each already recognized, seeds find fertile soil.

It is unity we have tasted, not uniformity. As we go our separate ways, what we take with us is distinct. It is the synthesis of essence and being in Teilhard that I cannot shake, nearly one year later.

Kirsten Harrison on living into who our soul was imprinted to be, drawing on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as a teacher.

This artifact invites a willingness to bear another tension.

Although Teilhard’s ideas may ignite something in us, I am not asking us to swallow them whole. He was writing in a time both similar to and different from our own. His language may draw us, or leave us bristling.

Instead of looking directly at Teilhard, can we look through him?

Perhaps a sojourn with Teilhard will enflesh something already felt, already known, but not yet refracted in just this light.

Invocation: A Song + A Short Meditation

Prelude To A Soul, Sebastian Plano

An unknown heaven, Lee Van Laer

An unknown heaven by Lee van Laer

The search for a path though life

Read on Substack

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Drop

From the vastness of the Ocean, an inherent wholeness unfurls particularly within a drop…

What might have been taken in my attitude during the last thirty years for obstinacy or disrespect is simply the result of my absolute inability to contain my own feeling of wonderment. Everything stems from that basic psychological condition, and I can no more change it than I can change my age or the colour of my eyes.
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in a letter to the church leadership after he was forbidden to circulate the ideas burning within him

First, a little bit of context from his close colleague, Pierre Leroy, SJ, from the foreword to The Divine Milieu…

Père Pierre Teilhard de Chardin lived during a period of doubt and perplexity. He witnessed the modernist crisis, with the sacrifices it entailed; he was driven from his own country by the injustice of political strife and when he reached manhood he was caught up in the terrible war of 1914. A few years later he saw the collapse in the heat of the revolution of social structures to which centuries of history seemed to have given permanence. He was present when forces were let loose which were to lead to a second world war; he was in Pekin when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was his own fate to be misunderstood and condemned to silence, and to suffer torments that at times came near to overwhelming him. Like many others, he might well have retreated into his own solitary existence and abandoned his chosen field of activity, but his reaction was the exact opposite.

Teilhard bore in his being what others might consider contradictions. Though it was not easy, he tuned the instrument of his life to the bass note sounding within him.

Born May 1, 1881, in Sarcenat, France, Teilhard incarnated with a predominantly fixed Earth nature of a Taurus; the cosmos within him would express through Gemini-tinted glass.
An EMT in World War I, where the seeds of his work came into form relationally, amid visceral precarities.
A paleontologist with a wildly expansive intuition for latent futures nesting within the long arc of geological time. A practitioner of science, certain that Love is the organising principle of the Universe.
In his element at a party, ideas came to life in conversation. A serious man who didn’t seem to take himself too seriously.
A celibate Jesuit priest whose becoming was fanned into forest fire flames within the dynamic fecundity of a conscious and particular love, a mutual soul embrace.
Died in New York City on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, in an exile he painstakingly consented to, in fidelity to a deeper yes.

An Artifact of Conscience (An endangered species in 2026)

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
—Wallace Stevens

One might be tempted to lament the futility of a life broken open, poured out.

In linear terms, one would have good reason to do so. Teilhard’s direct efforts did not change the immediate course of history. Teilhard “sang his heart to all dark matter,” and the tune did not resound far and wide in his lifetime. And this stings.

An Image

No consious work is ever wasted.

—Br. Raphael Robin

Teilhard’s Audacity at a Quantum Scale

Was the friction Teilhard encountered sand in the oyster of being?
Was it his willingness to bear that friction?
What is born in the dynamism between the sheer refusal to either let go of or cling to one pole of an irreconcilable tension?

An Impression

The events could have played out in myriad ways—any of which had the potential, given the requisite proportion of forces, to transmute Teilhard’s offering into a pearl.

Is this pearl still suspended in the cosmos—an inexhaustible sacrament for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to understand?

This dawns as feeling within me as Teilhard’s most widely circulated words, in context, take on vivid color and dimensionality…

Things were briefly quiet on the war front, so Teilhard had time to respond to his cousin Marguerite’s letters. I’ve recorded them in a voice memo, so you can behold with more than your physical eyes.

From The Making of a Mind: Letters From A Soldier-Priest...

Receiving the Sacrament

If something in you recognizes Truth…
If a phrase shimmered, if a single word caught your heart’s eye…
Receive the impression consciously.
No need to dissect the bird, simply take it in.

A Benediction

I give thanks for your presence. As you transition to whatever comes next, may the resistance you encounter, within and without, be food for your song. In us, another world is born.

Love, Kirsten

There may be six billion of us, but somehow we are all One.

—Bruno Barnhart

Notes + Resources

There is no introduction to astrology I love more than this post by Frederick Woodruff.

You'll Love These Sun Sign Guides to Creativity by Frederick Woodruff

As a function, each sign of the Zodiac is a clue as to the notes we contribute to the symphony of life, to our unique expression as an Earthling.

Read on Substack

Here’s how Woodruff describes the Taurus function…

Have you ever seen a human ovum under a microscope? Well, that tiny little egg has been carefully protected (and released on a schedule) since the woman who carried it was born. Consider the entire lineage of that egg. All that makes us Earthlings is in that egg. Through stillness and sustainment, the egg attracts what it needs to trigger a creative metamorphosis. And there you have the quintessential Tauri expression. It’s said that the Buddha was a Taurus. He sat still under a tree and became enlightened, but only because he persisted in pondering life’s big questions—in other words, the terms of his life were defined by constant inquiry: What is desire? What is life? What is death? What is beauty? Always, with Taurus, there are the enjoyments, the pleasures, of being embodied—our birthright as Earthlings—but also from the body comes the lineage of the egg: the questions and the concentrated power to endure and manifest via intention and persistence.

Dr. Becca Tarnas with a look at Teilhard’s natal chart: An Archetypal Glimpse into Teilhard’s Evolutionary Vision
My friend Carin shared this Alan Watts quote with me right after I read about the conditions Teilhard was writing in, vivifying my imagination and my appreciation.

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves.”

The Long Arc of Evolution Bends Toward Consciousness…. by Cynthia Bourgeault

A Teilhardian view of our present turmoil

Read on Substack

The Cost of True Love: A Conversation between Cynthia Bourgeault and Ilia Delio on YouTube
“The Lost Words Blessing” by Spell Songs
Look to the sky with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding
Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light
And in the dead of night my darling,
find the gleaming eye of starling
Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

Pierre Leroy, SJ in the foreward to The Divine Milieu

In his own self the integration of life had been achieved; if he loved God, it was through the world, and if he loved the world it was as a function of God, the animator of all things. “The joy and strength of my life,” he wrote a month before his death, “will have lain in the realization that when the two ingredients—God and the world—were brought together they set up an endless mutual reaction, producing a sudden blaze of such instense brilliance that all the depths of the world were lit up for me.”

Jesus’ reply to the disciples’ question, “Why do you tell stories?” in Matthew 13, The Message Bible
Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That’s why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward a welcome awakening. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they’re blue in the face and not get it.

My name is Kirsten. I write, collage, and practice spiritual direction online and in Vashon, WA. Describing what spiritual direction is feels like trying to “catch a cloud and pin it down.”

Spiritual direction is spacious accompaniment. Together we attune to the deep and the timeless. We hold questions no one else can answer for you and listen deeply to what arises. We open to what you sense and ground intuitions in rhythms and practices that anchor you as you live into what is emerging. We notice what is—obscurity, pain, fear, longing, wonder, delight, hope—and invite it into the home within you where true belonging and wisdom are always, already present.

I am so glad you’re here. These reflections and practices are written by a human artist and spiritual director. They are joyfully and freely given.

If you are nourished here and are presently able to, there is a way to offer appreciation by way of of virtual tip jar on the “Buy Me A Coffee” site. I am not buying coffee, though. Your generosity keeps my home fires burning and makes it possible for me to give my energies to this work.

Another way to support this work at no cost is to share it with a friend, post on social media, link it to your blog or website, or share it in your newsletter. Thank you!

Somewhere Along the Way

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:51:00 +0000

Somewhere along the way, I started taking my small blunders too seriously.

Working in a large, open office space was taxing for me. There was a gift hidden in it, too. I was in proximity to other ways of doing and being—and to an unexpected teaching.

My co-worker’s way of responding to her mistakes took me aback. When the awkwardness of her humanity showed—when she made a mess or missed something obvious—she would exclaim, “Oopsie!” for all to hear.

I confess my initial response was a bit judgy, but it was short-lived. My micro-recoil quickly gave way to amusement. The novelty of her instinctual self-compassion transmitted wisdom.

Maybe it’s ADHD; maybe it’s the naivety/inexperience I’m beginning to understand can be par for the course when one enters the world with a preponderance of Gemini energy. Whatever the reason, “Oopsie!” was not on my menu of possibilities for an adult. Am I alone in this?

At some point over the last handful of years, “Oopsie!” has become a practice of sacred kindness. I say it so reflexively now, I’ve wondered if it’s mechanical—an impulse I should eliminate. Sometimes it comes out several times a day. It seemed worthy of self-observation. Here’s what I see…

Somewhere along the way, I started relating to myself compassionately. And it shows.

As I Relax

A Song by Ari Moshe Wolfe

As I relax and I allow, oh, the way, she opens up
As I relax and I allow, oh, the way, she opens up for me

Oh the seasons and the flow are inside me as I go
Oh the seasons and the flow are inside me as I go my way

Oh my breath, you are my guide as the river takes me home
Oh my breath, you are my guide as the river takes me home to now

As I relax and I allow, oh, the way, she opens up
As I relax and I allow, oh, the way, she opens up for me

Oh the seasons and the flow are inside me as I go
Oh the seasons and the flow are inside me, this I know
always

Oh my breath, you are my guide as the river takes me home
Oh my breath, you are my guide as the river takes me home to now
to here, always now

Notes

According to researchers, amusement is connected to humor and includes elements of unexpectedness, incongruity, and playfulness. It’s typically seen as a brief spike in a person’s level of cheerfulness, lasting only a few seconds. The definition of amusement that aligns with our research is “pleasurable, relaxed excitation.”Amusement differs from happiness in that happiness is a general sense of pleasure, whereas amusement appeals specifically to one’s sense of humor.

There are two themes that clearly help distinguish amusement from other positive emotions, like containment, gratitude, interest, joy, love or pride:
An awareness of incongruity (there’s something unexpected about what causes us to be amused—we weren’t expecting that punch line or that behavior or that timing);
When we feel amusement, we feel playful with those around us.
—Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

The ADHD world is curvilinear. Past, present, and future are never separate and distinct. Everything is now. People with ADHD live in a permanent present and have a hard time learning from the past or looking into the future to see the inescapable consequences of their actions. “Acting without thinking” is the definition of impulsivity, and one of the reasons that individuals with ADHD have trouble learning from experience.
If a person cannot see what is going on in the moment, the feedback loop by which he learns is broken. If a person does not know what is wrong or in what particular way it is wrong, she doesn’t know how to fix it. If people with ADHD don’t know what they’re doing right, they don’t do more of it. They don’t learn from experience.

“How Adults with ADHD Think: Uncomfortable Truths About the ADHD Nervous System”

In me, another world is born.

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:13:50 +0000

A Patient Ferment

into this happy night in secret,
seen of none,
nor saw i aught,
without other light or guide,
save that which in my heart did burn

-st. john of the cross

don’t you write it down
remember this in your head
don’t take a picture
remember this in your heart

-amy ray

Standing in the trauma and, somehow, not sending it back. - Dr. Chris Morris

There’s a song that I’ve wanted
To sing for so long
But the tune is just out of my grasp
I may see for a moment
When the lights reflects gold
But so delicate, slips from my hand

Every word that I sing
Is a cheap imitation
Of things that I don’t understand
Light reflecting on water
The picture gets harder to see
With the eyes of a man I hear
“Come further up, Come further in
The greatest story, none on earth have read”…
(1)

A Koan:

A moth caught be the flame it cannot measure

(2)

In the depth of myself as a centre in the form of a point,
I am conscious of my own organisation.
Immense are the consequences of my transformation!
In me, another world is born. (3)

…So I’ll search for the melody
Offering everything
Till I am called out by name
Cause the chord that was struck
On the strings of my heart
Is still echoing throughout my frame
(1)

Beyond ideas,
Beyond the veil of time
Beyond all color
And bending of the light
Beyond all concepts
And movements of the mind
I will find you

-Audrey Assad
(4)

NOTES

This collage is an arrangement of other artists work to invite contemplation.

(1) One of the most enduring spiritual teachings I have received:

(2) Lyrics from This is Where, 40 Days Album, The Wailin Jennys.

I have been listening to this song for months and singing “by.” That’s what it sounds like, and that is what “makes sense.” But “be,” the correct lyric, disturbs and calls to something deeper.

(3) From the oratorio “The Embracing Universe” by Justin Grounds, from texts by Fred LaHaye, based on the life and work of Teilhard de Chardin. Recorded from isolation across the world in May 2020.

(4) Find You by Audrey Assad

Montana Sky Time, An Audio Reading

Kirsten Harrison — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:00:08 +0000

A Voice Memo Poetry Reading

Listen from the inside, noticing what is stirred in sensation, feeling, and/or cognition.

This Rob Baker poem comes to us from the Spring 1990 issue of Parabola, “Time & Presence.”

To Bear, Encircled and Encircling

Kirsten Harrison — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 18:54:13 +0000

In this season of death, this season of life, I have been consciously working with the relatedness of two postures: TO BEAR and TO RESOUND.

What do these two words stir in you?

I’ve selected an image to offer as a Visio Divina, paired with one line from a Sara Groves song.

As my inner gaze meets the collage this morning, the words singing in my heart surprise me: “O Day of Resurrection.” I recognize them as words chanted in the Liturgy of the Hours.

The image sings to me of the felt sense of bearing whatever comes on the inside with the utmost tenderness—of encircling the whole.

A Visio Divina Practice

Come into rhythm with breath and the space around you.

What is it like to be with the image, as it is. Resistance is not a problem. As the mind wanders, return to the image.

What is it like to bear what comes?

“What if I sat right here and took you in without the fear and loved you whole without the flight and didn’t try to pass this cup?”

-Songwriters Sara Groves & Ellie Holcomb

Musical Accompaniment

If you would like a song to accompany you in the practice, I offer this one.

An Invitation to Notice

At the conclusion of bearing the image, here are some questions to guide you in deep listening:

Are there sensations?
Is there a feeling?
Are there words?
Are there inner contradictions calling to be encircled?

You may want to journal, leave yourself a voice memo, or talk with a loved one about what this was like for you. If you’d like to enter in together in spiritual direction, I would love to hold space for you.

The Liturgy of the Hours I sing with is by the monks at New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA.

Wisdom: A Knowing in Darkness

Kirsten Harrison — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:20:01 +0000

Twilight Radiance/Big Sur, CA

This post is a part of the Maps, Lenses, and Mirrors Series, a collage of conversations, music, voice memos, visual art, and words exploring how to know. Here’s Part One: Visible Contradictions + Knowing How To Know. And Part Two: What Strength It Takes to Bear A Slow Unfolding

A Voice Memo Read-Aloud

Today, we will continue exploring how to know with an audio read‑aloud.

In practice yesterday, I was drawn to a small section on wisdom and mystery from the work of Dr. Chris Morris and Bruno Barnhart, so I hit record on the voice memo app.

Morris writes:

For Barnhart, wisdom is first and foremost a knowing in ‘faith,’ “a knowing in darkness, an affirmative cognition of mystery…and the knowing is consequently obscure as it is certain.

Listen from the inside, noticing what is stirred in sensation, feeling, and/or cognition.

Sources:

Doctoral thesis—the source of the audio excerpt: Chris Morris, The Cross Now Rooted Breaks In Bloom: A study of Bruno Barnhart’s “Wisdom Knowing” and Wholeness in Christian Life.
Blog post—a lovely (and brief) entry point: “A revolution in wisdom vital for our time” (Living Water; first published 2021, reposted as a tribute after Morris died unexpectedly in 2024)
Podcast episode—to listen to Chris in his own voice: “Christ in the Torn Places.”

Silence: Words + Portals

Kirsten Harrison — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 02:33:19 +0000

What a gift it is when another human describes inner experiences with granularity. In this collection, there are words about silence and portals to enter.

A friend found words to describe the vibrancy of silence in this video podcast episode called Making Art From Your Heart Space. I’ve bookmarked the words so you can drop right in. If it stirs something, watch the whole episode. (I love the sign on the bookshelf behind him!)

“Sweet Darkness,” a poem written and read by David Whyte
A poetry film by Charlotte Ager & Katy Wang featuring Wendell Berry reading his poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.”

Henry Schoenfield offers a way into the grounding spiritual practice of sacred chant. The words of this particular chant are simply: “When silence turns to presence, in silence, there is presence.”

Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness, Robert Sardello describes vivid worlds nesting within silence.

Dr. Chris Morris’ crystalline presence is energetically preserved in this audio artifact, “Christ in the Torn Places,” recorded just three months before he died, unexpectedly, in 2024. Here, he speaks about the connection between silence and justice work, participatory wisdom, trauma, and a spacious way to see the work of transformation: the capacity to bear.
Salt of the Earth, a short film by my friend Adam Thom, featuring Thomas Merton in his own voice. Watch for scenes from Adam’s visit to our little island with our beloved friend Ryan, whose earthly vibrancy came to an unexpected end in 2024.

Another way to support this work at no cost is to share it with a friend, post on social media, link it to your blog or website, or share it in your email newsletter. Thank you!

About the Author

This little collection is curated by Kirsten, a spiritual director and collage artist. If you want some company as you attune to what is stirring within you, Kirsten is available to meet for deep listening, online and in-person on Vashon Island.

What Strength It Takes To Bear A Slow Untangling

Kirsten Harrison — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 01:48:01 +0000

Help me be strong, help me be, help me

I wake up with lyrics on my lips from the distant past. Attention gathers at a cellular level, and there is an impulse to press play on a dusty mixtape.

I do not brace against outgrown words. Every cell in my body is grateful.

An image coalesces…

I am a delicate gold necklace, tangled and unintentionally tied into a knot. I keep trying to die to myself, but the context is all wrong. Something, someone, is untangling me with the fiercest tenderness, slowly loosening constriction. In this spaciousness, I am undefended.

What strength it takes to bear slow untangling.

I walk in the shoes of others’ wisdom—lyrics my heart recognizes, but cannot presently find words for. One song at a time, circulation is being restored.

I drink deeply when this tap is turned on. Attention is different here. Truth slips past defenses. I have a front row seat to inner contradictions and to something else. I sing myself home, over and over again—on walks, on short and long drives, in between Zoom calls, while I do the dishes.

Attention crescendos. Light shines on a few words from a new angle.

Words I have sung hundreds of times ripen and fall from the tree, a subtle synaptic restoration. According to the clock, these moments are inconsequential. In every other way, they are voluminous.

If we require a definition, let us call it knowing: a knowing that is personal, experiential, and tending toward union with that which is known.
-Father Bruno Barnhart on Wisdom

Questions to Ponder…

If time is not linear, is who we are presently singing to ourselves in another dimension?

Are we all perpetually singing in the round?

What songs called to you before you understood the resonance?

Are there brief clock moments that seem incredibly spacious? As you tune into your sense of time, is there a felt sense that wishes to come into expression? What do you know?

My name is Kirsten. I practice spiritual direction online and in person on Vashon Island.

I love the way Rob Bell describes the type of space I hold for others, “A spiritual director is trained to ask you the questions—to help you enter into whatever it is more fully, so that you can begin to discern what Spirit is up to in even this. This chaos, this turmoil, this joy. This challenge. This obstacle. This dark night of the soul.”

If you find resonance here, you can read more about my accompaniment offerings here.

Can’t go under it. Can’t go over it. We’ve got to go through it.

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 03:15:44 +0000

Holding the Tension of Opposites

Every single tender shoot of my soul’s emergence has been preceded by a merciful scambling. Tectonic rumbling magnetizes something irreconcilable, and neural circuits are not quite ready to bear it. The tension of opposites comes calling again.

Death is the only choice, but there is more than one way to die.¹

What does holding the tension of unreconcilable opposites generate in the heart?

The heart’s fear of being open is not fanciful: holding powerful tensions over time can be, and often is, a heartbreaking experience, but there are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about — a feeling most of us know, and a fate we would like to avoid. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity — a process that is not without pain — but one that many of us would welcome. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world’s suffering and joy, despair and hope…(Keep reading in the footnotes!²)
Parker A Palmer in A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life

A Transmission, A Motion, A Practice

Dr. James Finley tells two poignant stories in this video that evoke the felt experience of the holding paradox—an extraordinarily familiar neural overload and the faint felt outline of something else.

The whole video is gold; I have bookmarked the stories. The teaching that follows gives words to inner experiences. See if you enter first through a felt sense rather than headfirst.

A Note About Content:

These are not easy stories. They touch primarily on two clinical settings, an impatient alcohol treatment facility and working with a client whose wounded spouse was dehumanizing her. Dr. Finley is exceedingly gentle. It is not easy to find places to where these things are talked about with such care and beauty.

My heart is magnetized to keep returning to the felt sense of these paradoxes, and so I do, over and over. In twenty-minute increments of silence, I climb into dissonance and breathe with it.

In this moment, she is completely vulnerable, and in this vulnerability, she is invincible in the world.
In this moment, she is childlike, and in being childlike, she’s manifesting the essence of maturity.
In this moment, she’s alone unto herself, and in this aloneness, she bears witness to the mystery that we’re all alone together.
In this moment, she knows nothing, and in knowing nothing, she manifests the essence of true wisdom in the world.
In this moment, she is dying, and in her death, someone is being born.

We’re Going On A Bear Hunt

In the heart of this season of paradoxical prayer, words from a children’s story come calling.

Questions for Opening

Tune into the whole of you. Where is bracing’s ground zero?
What is it like to spread bracing out, to let it be shared?
As you breathe, see if something in you wishes to smile upon bracing.
If there’s a loving wind at your back, perhaps a smile will form. If not, you are welcome to carry the wish.
Tune in to the spaces between toes, to earlobes, and to your solar plexus…to the sound of rain, the memory of golden hour light on the trees, the spaces between thoughts.
Is there a single square inch of softness? Where is its epicenter?
What is it like when softening wraps its arms around bracing just to be with it?
What is it like inside, in your real life, the instant gotta go through itdawns?

This version is too cute not to share…

Footnotes:

1 There is no wrong choice. The soul is patient. The Ocean, persistent. If I miss this wave, there will be another. And another. And another.

2 Name anyone who is famous for a personal devotion to truth and justice, love and forgiveness. I cannot think of a person fitting that description who has not spent a lifetime in the tragic gap, torn between the world’s reality and a vision of human possibility. That, in brief, is the story of the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Thich Nhat Hanh, to name a few. Hearts like theirs have been broken open to a largeness that holds the possibility of a better future for us all.

E.F. Schumacher painted the picture well: ‘Through all our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled…Countless mothers and teachers, in fact, do it, but no one can write down a solution. They do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended—the power of love.

Parents often find themselves standing in the tragic gap between their hopes for a child and what is happening in that child’s life. If the parents fail to hold that tension, they will go one way or the other, clinging to an idealized fantasy of who “their baby” is or rejecting this “thorn in their side” with bitter cynicism. Both ways of responding are death-dealing for all concerned. But many parents will testify that by standing in the tragic gap and holding the tension, they not only serve their children well; they themselves become more open, more knowing, more compassionate.

-Parker A. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life

My name is Kirsten. I write, collage, and practice spiritual direction in Vashon, WA. Describing what spiritual direction is feels like trying to “catch a cloud and pin it down.” Here's what's freshly alive in me: Spiritual direction is spacious accompaniment. Together we attune to the deep and the timeless. We hold questions no one else can answer for you and listen deeply to what arises. We open to what you sense and ground intuitions in rhythms and practices that anchor you as you live into what is emerging. We notice what is—obscurity, pain, fear, longing, wonder, delight, hope—and invite it into the home within you where true belonging and wisdom are always, already present.

Visible Contradictions

Kirsten Harrison — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:06:29 +0000

The Maps, Lenses, and Mirrors Series is a collage of conversations, music, voice memos, visual art, and words exploring how to know.

It’s sometimes in the most unusual places that you actually discover the gift of the Beautiful. I always think that contradiction is what makes a person interesting.

—John O’Donohue

Each Soul Is Unique

Years ago, I stumbled upon Eugene Peterson’s words. Peterson spoke in his unique voice and context, but I recognized them as a Truth already alive inside of me…

…each soul is unique: no wisdom can simply be applied without discerning the particulars of this life, this situation.

We have access to endless streams of information. We carry it around in our pockets, summon it with a question; machines fetch, collate, and serve it to us.

Wisdom is so close in every moment — there are sacred texts and traditions and lights left on for us by others. Our bodies bear Wisdom’s imprint and speak its language gesturally. It is visible in nature, alive and flowing in the spaces between us.

There is no singular piece of knowledge, no living teacher that can impart wisdom that will exempt us from discerning the particulars of our unique existence.

No other human has traversed the precise set of circumstances before you now—constellations of nuance, nature, relatedness, potential consequences, and the flesh that will bear those consequences. The process of wrestling that ushers in Truth also grounds what is known in a non-transferable robustness.

There is a deep and pristinely clear "something" in each one of us, regardless of the outer circumstances of our lives, that has the capacity to recognize Wisdom when we meet it, and it is the nature of Wisdom teaching to call this 'something' forth. But until the spark of recognition actually goes off in us, Wisdom remains invisible.

—Cynthia Bourgeault

An Invitation

If there is resonance here for you in this series, or you want to dip in from time to time, consider entering in consciously, with a WISH.

When we earnestly seek, we will find—but not directly or finally. These words from the Gospel of Thomas ring true over and over…

If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things.
Your sovereignty will be your rest.

Video Artifact #1

Earlier this year, a friend asked if we could start recording our conversations. Each time we talk, there is a lingering wish for an artifact. These dialogues make space for something new to emerge, in us and between us. We have pulled snippets from my end of the dialogue to include in this series of posts.

Though these videos have a real-life, non-polished quality, and I don’t get the words just right, something inside says they are worth sharing. For accuracy’s sake, there are notes below to contextualize and clarify.

Watch the video on Kirsten’s Faint Outlines YouTube Channel

Seeing Ourselves Clearly

A granular reflection of our particular blind spots can be hard to find. And when we do find it, what is reflected can be hard to bear. This conversation with Carin is a present-moment excavation of what her question stirred and the context that’s guiding me as I come face-to-face with the generative friction of my inner contradictions.

Context does not change the realities we find ourselves in, but it does change how we orient to those realities.

We do not develop into a full expression of our nature through ease and good fortune. The dynamic aspects of the birth chart—the part of our fate that seems the most harrowing—provide the agitation required to bring the soul into full flowering.

Wholeness is born of the acceptance of the conflict of the human and the Divine in the individual psyche.
—Helen Luke

Developing A Soul

I have heard it said that the soul is a seed. For this seed to take root and flourish into full expression, it must be developed.

Astrology is a vital element in my soul-developing work. Most relevant to this dialogue, as a mirror for seeing and deepening interior fluency, bringing what is unconscious above ground, where new possibilities for conscious choice (sometimes) become perceptible.

A horoscope shows the precise location of planetary bodies at the moment of one’s first breath. This snapshot bears within it the qualities of time and space present as Spirit enters form, teeming with latent possibilities, predilections, and precarities.

This portrait of the sky represents twelve Zodiacal Signs and twelve slices of celestial pie, each corresponding to a domain of life experience.

In the video, I speak of the friction and flow between the planets. An “opposition” is when two planets are 180 degrees away from each other, on opposite sides of the circle; it is a polarity.

In my horoscope, the Sun is in Gemini in the 11th House, and Neptune is in Sagittarius in the 5th House…

Do not let unfamiliar symbols overwhelm!

Notice the dark red lines for a moment. These are oppositions—contradictions that make up part of my nature.

To Be Clear

When I speak about Neptune, what I am really excavating is how the Neptune-Sun polarity operates within me. My words are a bit confusing—the planets themselves do not “like” anything.

If you are an astrologer, you will recognize that Sun-Neptune is one small piece of the overall friction, flow, and dynamism at play. I recognize this, too. I am learning to live my chart from the inside, and do not yet have expert fluency in articulating this.
Though I mistakenly reversed the order of this question, it is potent, nonetheless. Here it is, as it is written…

How do you tell the difference between ‘the invincible certainty of your heart’ and neurotic self-delusion?
-Cynthia Bougeault

The Lyrical Nature of Our Own Belonging

Let us ground this entire conversation in the context of Beauty, by contemplating the poetic wisdom of John O’Donohue…

It’s sometimes in the most unusual places that you actually discover the gift of the Beautiful. I always think that contradiction is what makes a person interesting.
If we decide that contradiction is undesirable and has to be either hammered out or rooted out, or flattened, then it will do immense damage to the mystery of our own inner landscape.
Under the pressure of not contradicting oneself, and not being in contradiction with oneself, one runs the terrible risk of severing and dividing different sacred dimensions of your interiority from each other, and ends up creating a schizoid interiority. In other words, dualism is a consequence of our fear of contradiction. That also means that dualism is the force that most severely damages the seamlessness and lyrical nature of our own belonging.
People feel under pressure to choose one side or the other side of their own contradictory nature. And that choice always means loss, because you lose the side, you lose a part of yourself that is very necessary to your being and to your identity and to your future, indeed.

Why It Matters

I will not presume to understand fully. For now, I’ll leave you with a song, a quote, and an image in words that this inquiry stirs in me…

How we relate to the inner world will be how we relate to the outer. If we can appreciate and have compassion for our parts, even the ones we’ve considered to be enemies, we can do the same for people who resemble them. On the other hand, if we disdain our parts, we’ll do the same with anyone who reminds us of them.
—Dr. Richard Schwartz

Orienting to Soul-Developing Work On Planet Earth In January 2026

This episode of the On Being Podcast echoes in my heart years after its airing. Let’s carry this image together…

I’ve had an image in my mind for the last period of time that the world is a baby in our hands, and the baby is running a fever. And if I were holding a baby, my baby, in my arms, and the baby were running a fever, I would feel two things that don’t always come together that I think we need to bring together. One is such a sense of tenderness and love and open-heartedness, and also a sense of such ferocity and willingness to fight and do whatever I need to do to get this baby well.
—Rabbi Ariel Burger

Songs for Opening

“Ask With Your Body” by Epiphany Today on bandcamp

“May I Be Empty” by Batya Levine on bandcamp

Resources + Notes

This is the class I reference with Dr. Richard Tarnas (Cosmos & Psyche) and Dr. Becca Tarnas. I learned last January (in this video) that the elder Tarnas and Bruno Barnhart were friends, which is delightful to me. I will share Bruno with you in Part Two. (Also, I refer to him as Rick at one point, and I don’t think this is correct!)
Here are some of Thomas Hübl’s words about relating. If this short clip draws you, follow it back to its source. Another excellent starting place is his book Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World.

This On Being episode is a moving introduction to Eugene Peterson.
Eugene emphasized the potency of presence in the discernment process. Here is the full quote from Working The Angles as he spoke from his context as a pastor and a pastor to pastors…

(1) God is always doing something: an active grace is shaping this life into a mature salvation; (2) responding to God is not sheer guesswork: the Christian community has acquired wisdom through the centuries that provides guidance; (3) each soul is unique: no wisdom can simply be applied without discerning the particulars of this life, this situation.

Here’s how one of his students described the potency of this “with-ness”…

Eugene’s faithful presence and insistence to wait with me before God brought about deliverance that only comes when one really moves into the neighborhood of one’s soul and decides to stay, to love and care.
From A Burning in My Bones, Winn Collier’s biography of Eugene Peterson

My conversation partner is Carin Huebner
I have been contemplating this blog post, where Cynthia refers to Gurdjieff’s teachings on developing a soul. Here is the first paragraph…

According to Gurdjieff, the mysterious “X-factor” that enters in the moment of conception is not yet soul but essence. Think of it as the hand of cards you’re dealt at the start of a card game. It comprises a set of unique characteristics including race, gender (and most likely gender orientation), basic body type and other genetic factors, influences emerging from more distant ancestry and bloodline—and yes, that unquantifiable legacy “from the stars”—all combined primarily according to what Teilhard would call “tatonnement” (“trial and error”): evolution’s predilection for trying out any and all possibilities. Cumulatively, all of the above will combine to confer on you what is commonly known as your “nature.”

A Book List

Here’s a link to my storefront on Bookshop.org. Any book you buy from this site supports small, local bookstores and my work, and there are lists with some of my favorites.

The links below will take you to Amazon, which gives me a small commission.

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles

Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones

Thomas Hübl, Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World

Cynthia Bourgeault, Love is Stronger Than Death

John O’Donohue, The Inner Landscape

Dr. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts

About the Author

Re-Member Yourself: A Note From Kirsten + A Poem About Holding Obscurity

Kirsten Harrison — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:00:10 +0000

Returning to Presence

We are here. Here we are.

Sometimes I forget to look up, to breathe consciously, to open to the life on the inside and the outside. I’ve been setting three alarms a day to pause and come back to my wish to act from what is most awake within me.

I look into the eyes of my son’s dog, gaze into my own eyes in the mirror, or imaginatively picture the eyes of a loved one looking at me — someone presently living on Earth or one still alive in my heart (like my friend Ryan, sitting on a log in the photo above).

There is a new poem below. Breathe with it, if you want to.

Listen for a word or phrase that draws your attention. Tuck it into your pocket or transcribe it in a journal. Let it unfold.

May you be warm and well,
Kirsten

Drench Yourself Anew

When obscurity rises, and
you cannot see where to step next,
your gaze turns ever-so-slightly outward.
Oh, how humbling it is to be human!

You tucked a wish
into the time beyond time; now
the entire surface of your
magnetic heart
is covered in paperclips.

You left breadcrumbs methodically,
vowing never to get lost again.
Can you decipher love notes
written in your own hand?

Nothing can fall out of Love.
What you fear is lost
still hovers nearby,
waiting for an opening.

Do not strain toward clarity
in this top-heavy state.
You will be carried...
past delineation, over deliberation,
into the knowing beyond knowing.

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC!
RETURN.
RE-MEMBER YOURSELF.

Let the ancient, the emergent,
permeate your porous frame.
Every moment is teeming with help;
drench yourself anew.

PRESENCE + SPACE | WITNESS + WITH-NESS

My name is Kirsten. Come and journey with me in spacious accompaniment/spiritual direction. It is a place to attune to your inner experiences over time, a place to ask questions and excavate intuitions in the spacious presence of a fellow traveler. I meet clients online and in person on Vashon-Maury Island in WA.

These posts are curated by a human author who is giving her efforts to creating space for others to encounter the home inside of them. Please share this work if you find it compelling—by word of mouth, on your blog, in your newsletter, on social media.

What My Soul Already Knows: A Simple Poetry Practice for a Dark Night of the Soul

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:47:00 +0000

Anchoring Into Deep Knowing

In the thick of a relational conflict years ago, I could not understand what my body was bracing against. Though I had no experience with poetry, I found my way into a surprisingly nourishing practice. Guided by a simple template called a “French Pantoum,” I remembered myself.

Attuning to my inner experience of the conflict helped me access things I already knew but could not reach directly amid the stress and my nervous system’s survival strategies.

It was powerful to name what I knew deep inside. Writing this poem was grounding—a way back to the wisdom that is already, always within me.

I’ve adapted that template as a Scaffold for Obscurity.

Writing a Pantoum for Obscurity

Here’s a practice that may help you slip below rational thinking and pro-con lists into intuition and wisdom. I hope this practice is as grounding for you as it has been for me.

Step-By-Step Instructions:

STANZA 1

Line 1: What it’s like when I’m connected and feeling alive (Try and tune into the good here)

Line 2: The inner experience of the hard thing I’m holding

Line 3: A song lyric that resonates with me

Line 4: Words of wisdom I would say to my younger self, or words of wisdom from a loved one that stick with me

STANZA 2

Line 5: (repeat of line 2 in stanza 1) The inner experience of the hard thing I’m holding

Line 6: (new line): My felt sense of what is hard right now (can be an image or a somatic sensation)

Line 7: (repeat of line 4 in stanza 1) Words of wisdom I would say to my younger self, or words of wisdom from a loved one that stick with me

Line 8: (new line): What I wish to feel or experience

STANZA 3

Line 9: (repeat line 6 of stanza 2) My felt sense of what is hard right now (can be an image or a somatic sensation)

Line 10: (repeat line 3 of the first stanza) A song lyric that resonates with me

Line 11: (repeat line 8 of stanza 2) What I wish to feel or experience

Line 12: (repeat line 1 of the first stanza) What it’s like when I’m connected and feeling alive

Here’s an example:

I see the past, present, and future with a vast spaciousness.
I am so very tired of bracing.
Can I see I’m not my mistakes? Will I learn to let them go?
Life is hard; that doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong.

I am so very tired of bracing.
I can’t seem to get a deep breath.
Life is hard; that doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong.
I want to remember.

I can’t seem to get a deep breath.
Can I see I’m not my mistakes? Will I learn to let them go?
I want to remember.
I see the past, present, and future with a vast spaciousness.

An example of a different pantoum (not quite the same as the format above).

I release the breath I’ve been holding, and my body softens into the moment.
I’m terrified, and I’m not totally sure why.
I see you, and I’m not going anywhere.
There’s a calming and a quickening. I am reminded that the way is made by walking.

I’m terrified, and I’m not totally sure why.
You are safe. You are loved. You are wise.
There’s a calming and a quickening. I am reminded that the way is made by walking.
I start feeling like myself again.

You are safe. You are loved. You are wise.
I see you, and I’m not going anywhere.
I start feeling like myself again.
I release the breath I’ve been holding, and my body softens into the moment.

If you want to share your poem with me, I’d love to read it!
You can listen to this podcast episode to hear more about the French Pantoum as a Scaffold for Lament with Tara Owens (one of my spiritual direction teachers), recorded at the very beginning of the pandemic. Her template is available in the show notes.

Another way to support this work at no cost is to share it with a friend, post on social media, link it to your blog or website, or share it in your email newsletter. Thank you!

PRESENCE + SPACE | WITNESS + WITH-NESS

Something Else: A Spiritual Director on Holding Obscurity & Disorientation

Kirsten Harrison — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 17:56:15 +0000

Breadcrumbs Abound

If you are in the thick of obscurity, holding inner tensions that cannot be resolved, or feeling disconnected from your deepest knowing. If you are disoriented as the sands of time flow through the hourglass at a dizzying pace and there is no rest in sight, please open to this possibility with me: a taste of something else may also be very nearby.

Precisely what?
Precisely how?

No one can say for sure, but breadcrumbs abound…

Resonance & Recognition

Something else may beckon through a felt sense of recognition, a resonance that “makes no sense” or hasn’t before been consciously considered.
💡 An idea
🖼️ An image
🎶 A song
🎬 A movie
📰 A blog post
😴 A dream
Anything, really!
Something else may encircle what has been deemed unworthy, illuminating a possibility just now, just here…in the presence of something else.
Something else may not conform to time as you have previously known it. One literal instant with something else may seem like hours or even days on the inside.
Something else cannot be explained. If you try to pin its wings down, it will evaporate, but something else can be sensed in your presence. Knowing this may save you time and energy.
Something else may be difficult to contain. This is normal. Nervous systems can be strengthened to bear what has not before been bearable…inner experiences that register as “so good” and the ones that seem “so hard.”
Something else cannot be possessed. Savor every last drop. That feeling you are left with is GOLD. You can work with it consciously…
✨Write a poem, paint, or collage…whatever your current art form is, or try a brand-new-to-you medium.
✨Record a voice memo to remind yourself what you know in the presence of something else. Or send a voice memo to a friend.
✨Call to mind someone who is carrying a particularly fresh heartache or traversing a dense forest of uncertainty. Hold them and the feeling of something else together.
✨Take that GOLD with you on errands! How do others appear when you are fresh from something else? Your presence may transmit the glow of something else without saying a word…or maybe saying a word is exactly what you’ll intuit. There are no rules.
✨What else would you add to this list?

Staying Present in the Absence

If you tasted something else, and now there is only absence, I am sorry. Please, please, please do not doubt yourself OR something else. I will make this wager: your encounter with something else was not an illusion.

Part of something else’s elusive, allusive beauty is improvisational genius. A great shape-shifter, something else keeps things fresh. Absence may be as powerful as presence. Both may call forth great art.

With all of this context in mind, there are ways to open to a direct encounter with something else.

Orienting To A Way Of Being: Expectancy Without Expectations

🫧 Sink into a present moment experience with a memory of something else. What does it feel like/taste like/smell like/look like when it arrives? Get really granular!! How do you recognize something else?

🫧 Start the day with a WISH to remember. Spend one conscious moment asking. Open your Notes app/Notion/journal/etc. Tell something else you are opening, and you wish to see/hear/taste/smell/feel/sense/know, and then move on with your day.

🫧 Give yourself to rhythms and practices. There is no singular right way. You might start by giving your full attention to a song that moves you. Breathe with it. Feel it. Sense it. Let it surprise you.

Dear Something Else…

🫧 Honest words like these are beautiful, too…
Please, dear something else. I am lost. I am afraid. It feels like I am going under. Will you remind me of the things I know, but can’t remember?

The Inner Landscape: John O’Donohue on Suffering & Complexity

John O’Donohue is a soul friend over space and time. His words are portals to the immediacy of presence. John died unexpectedly in 2008, but the wisdom he transmitted is alive. I experience it most profoundly in his audiobooks and lectures.

The Inner Landscape is a two-chapter audio lecture John delivered on suffering, produced by Sounds True. I return to it again and again, especially when heartache and pain are most acute. Here is a description from the website:

Our bodies are mere outlines of a vast and complex interior world, a landscape of contradiction and immense mystery. This Celtic view of the human condition predates Christianity yet survives to this day as part of Ireland's unique spiritual tradition. In The Inner Landscape, poet and Catholic scholar John O'Donohue explores the themes of self-exile and hardship and the Celtic way of welcoming paradox and finding precious light in the darkest valleys of our inner terrain.
Instead of fearing the contradictions of the outer world, O'Donohue begins, the Celtic people welcomed them. They developed special blessings for times of suffering in the belief that hardship leads to a special insight or gift of the spirit. When you learn the Celtic "secret of equilibrium" - how to see every difficulty as a threshold of possibility - you renew your life with unending possibilities. Despite our vast technologies, O'Donohue says, our real knowledge is minimal. Only within "the inner landscape" with which we are each blessed can true knowing take place.

It is also available on Audible.

This blog post is drawn from the Soulspace Newsletter. If there’s resonance and you’d like to receive missives like this in your email inbox, please sign up at the bottom of this page.

What Are You Nourishing?

Kirsten Harrison — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 02:09:13 +0000

This summer, I spent four hours every weekend watering trees. This hose wrangling made space for a different kind of attention. There are vivid memories of standing under a plum tree, listening to Rumi.

When I wasn’t sure how to be present to suffering, I sang songs about hope and light that shines in darkness, trusting these vocal vibrations would carry over land and sea to nourish parched hearts. I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a sudden infusion of something new…to be mysteriously carried beyond my capacity.

There is a visual memory…

Water meant to flow into the hose is dripping from the spigot, seeping into the ground underneath it.

This well-irrigated little patch of Earth is incredibly fertile, but has not been cultivated with intention.

I have been watering weeds!

Now that I see this, a new possibility is emerging. Maybe I will work with this “leak” consciously.

The next few days are ripe for glancing at what we notice with the utmost tenderness — noticing where precious energy is nourishing weeds. Is there another possibility?

In this video podcast, Dr. James Finley tells Pete Holmes a story about a nun with anxiety who sought therapy with him to help her stop smoking. She felt so guilty about doing this and went to great lengths to hide it. She wanted to stop, but felt powerless to do so. His response to her is utterly disarming…

“Well, it would be good if you wouldn’t smoke, because it’s not good for your health, but I have another suggestion. Next time you are leaning toward the window, take a very deep drag and blow it out the window as incense to the Divine Mercy that is infinitely in love with you as yousmoke your cigarette, and the smoke will go better.”

“We know that we are compromising our wholeness, and we can’t stop.”

-Dr. James Finley

Finley’s words are precious and totally worth listening to in full. They invite a way to orient to what we notice…

Active waiting isn’t indifference or passivity (e.g., I’ll just keep doing it, I don’t care…), but you wait in a willingness to do it. When the grace is given to you to do it, you’ll do it…and it’s not there yet. And in the fact that it’s not there yet…

I can learn not to do violence to the fragility of my waiting.

Whatever this week holds, let us remember…

“When you go inwards with gentleness, even though the journey may be precarious, you will still in no way be going into isolation. Rather, you will be coming into deeper kinship with everything that is. The mystery of the unity of the world and of the Universe, and of the Earth is that the closer you journey to your own source, the more you come into rhythm and harmony with everything that is actually there.” - John O’Donohue

With you and for you,
Kirsten

Primal Fear & Primal Trust

This quote crossed my path recently and has been relevant and timely in several conversations. I will share it, in case it sparks something in you, too…

“In a talk hosted in 1972, ‘Primal Fear and Primal Trust,’ Gebser considers this inquiry of origin (‘Where do I come from?,’ ‘Who am I?,’ and ‘Whither do I go?’) as a singularly important set of questions concerning the integral human being.
So long as we do not find an answer to those questions, primal fear reigns. From it springs, to the degree that we become aware of those questions, the diverse creaturely, psychic, and intellectual anxieties. It is also, in the last analysis, the trigger for aggression and depression... which can lead to the destruction of others or of oneself. Only (s)he who finds an answer to these questions awakens primal trust and thus is freed from primal fear.
What is most incomprehensible is that in this case, he will have overcome the primal fear forever and is therefore not threatened by any relapse into it."
Seeing Through the World - Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness by Jeremy Johnson (this is an Amazon link)

This post is drawn from a recent Soulspace Newsletter. If you enjoyed it and wish to sign up to receive these missives by email, you can sign up below.

My loves, drink these words.

Kirsten Harrison — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 22:03:45 +0000

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.”

-Fred Rogers

Let us prepare for the unthinkable, speak of the unmentionable...

How does a mother ready her children for an unspeakable horror?

Though it was nearly impossible to bear, words flowed, and with them…

Grave recognition.
Exquisite tenderness.
Guttural anguish.
Poignant gratitude.
Tears.

I cannot protect them. But, this…this, I can do. This I will do…

With all that I am and all that I have, I will deposit love into a time-release capsule. I will top off each glass with the living water of presence. 1

There will be an icon-making party.

Every guest gets a paintbrush to dip into their life force — its colors and flavors, fragrances and melodies, textures and dreams.

We’ll spread out photos on every surface to recall still-living artifacts of memory. We will laugh so hard that we cry. I will wheeze and slap my knee, just like my dad.

We’ll talk about finding our way, making it through what we thought would be the death of us, and how we wouldn’t give any of it back if we could. We will lament how quickly time passes, whisper regrets, and dare to speak of what our hearts really want. We will pass out tissues and swallow lumps in our throats. There will be reverent witness and lots of hugs.

At the end of the night, I will stand firm on shaky legs and say what I must.

I will look into their eyes and take my time getting the words out. My voice will crack, but they will see that I really believe this will work.

Maybe, just maybe, they can believe it, too.

My loves, drink these words.
Bind them around your neck.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.

LETTER #1 | For Homesickness & Hunger

It’s a collage, cause that’s how I roll.

The ache of not knowing if
you’ll ever be home again is overtaking you.
A sob is rising that you cannot dare
let slip through your lips.

It’s true, you cannot come home now,
but for a moment,
let home come to you.

There’s a new welcome mat at the front door
that says: “So happy you’re here.”
What it is like as you reach for the door and
sense the warmth of
every good thing that has ever been home to you
right there on the other side?

Set any lingering heartache
still connected to home down
right here, next to the keys.
There is no risk of losing what you
aren’t ready to let go of.

Here, on the underside of time,
minutes melt into
whatever depth of time you need to
come alive again.

LISTEN.

There is a song in the air. “On The Nature of Daylight” is always my go to.

Richter makes an audacious choice.
He tunes these players
to the key of respite
instead of rescue.

There’s a moment near the end where
the tiniest violin pierces the darkness, and
I catch a glimpse of hope.

There is sweat on hope’s brow as he
bears a weight that
no one is sure
won’t crush him,
but when he looks my way,
there is still a twinkle in his eye.

The sensation of
TOTAL CELLULAR UNITY
flows through me.

Your turn! Which song did you put in the queue?

There is time to clean up
and privacy to take care of
what should never have to be public.
The shower is clean, the toilet paper restocked. I
just pulled the towels out of the dryer.
Take all the time you need.

There’s a t-shirt in the closet from a show
that changed your life.
What was the name of the band again?
If you close your eyes, can you go back there?

The Band Joseph at The Moore Theatre

When you are ready for company,
summon your people one by one.
Stretch out your arms and
feel them reach for you.
Hug for at least one minute.
Breathe together.
There will be an instant between
the anticipation and the softening.

Tune into this moment.

Come look out the window.

Tell me...
What is the furthest thing you see.
What is the closest?

You may now request your favorite meal! The sky’s the limit, so don’t be shy.

I’ll go first, so you know I really mean it.
Here’s what’s being served in
my memory’s kitchen today...

-Brown butter mashed potatoes
-Roasted, carmelized brussel sprouts with rosemary, sprinkled with toasted pepitas and parmesan cheese
-A sparkling raspberry mocktail like Mallory made at Thanksgiving last year, crafted with love and attention - they look as delicious as they taste
-Sam's banana pudding ice cream with hot fudge

Since there are no limits, I’ll have a double-double, animal-style, too.
What’s on your menu?

Tell me every mouthwatering detail.

There will be a moment when you realize you cannot stay here. A moment when the ache for home rises.

No other human can take away the reality of your hunger, this ache, or the vibrancy of your aliveness. That will not stop them from trying.

All of this is yours to carry in the secret place.

Hold on, my loves.

Mom

Strong Winds Pose No Threat, A Dimensionally-Layered Practice

Kirsten Harrison — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 20:31:20 +0000

Seemingly vulnerable to demolitions accidental and intentional, never weary of bringing together what has been separate, trustworthy in ways you know, but will never be able to explain...

A Serving Suggestion

I have been playing the song below, “Mercy,” on a Bluetooth speaker or TV while gazing at the collage, and listening to the audio reading of the poem on my computer or phone. The layering of the three together adds dimensionality to all three.

Links to “Mercy” on Spotify and YouTube:

Poem + Audio Reading by Kirsten

Is there anything new on the road oft traveled?

Vibrant beauty that once
took away breath
is a backdrop now; you search for
novel sacraments.

Today, though, the sun shines through
effervescent raindrops
on spun silk.

Recognition is lightning
in every cell.
You see for the first time
what you have always known.

This mystery will bear your weight.

The Ocean is In Us, Too: A Spacious Dialogue About Living, Creating, and Becoming

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 21:57:48 +0000

Unscripted, intuitive, and soul-deep.

There’s a certain kind of magic that happens when we drop into the flow of relating, present to the “unclear edge” of what is sensed, but needs space to find verbal expression.

This conversation with Carin Huebner has been singing in me for weeks.

Though we draw water from different streams and use different words to speak of our experiences, what flows between us springs from a common Source. The flow between is what sings most vividly.

We are becoming together.

Our dialogue recalls to memory John O’Donohue’s words. He says good conversations are like “food and drink for the soul,” and asks…

When was the last time you had a great conversation?

…A conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew.
…A conversation in which you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you’d thought you’d lost.
…A conversation that brought the two of you onto a different plane.
…A conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterward.”

In this conversation, we explore...

Practice, Presence & How Showing Up Matters

What if showing up—especially when nothing feels profound—is the work? We talk about how moments of synchronicity redirect us toward trust, even when clarity is missing, and how spiritual practice plugs us into more than we understand.

The Greenhouse & The Art of Letting Go

Carin walks us through a tangled morning in the greenhouse, where romaine grew wildly and needed to be pulled to save the peppers. What do we do when abundance threatens what is essential? Tender noticings related to sacrifice, grief, and being reminded of what we already know logically, but cannot access.

Chaos, Quantum Connection & Finding a Still Center

Thomas Keating once wrote, “Chaos is our home.” What if silence and stillness aren’t the absence of chaos, but ways to move through it? Carin recalls a children’s book that continually guides her — stillness, like the surface of a pond, makes it possible to see and to sense our connection with the wider field of consciousness.

Leaving Home, Remembering Self, and Quietly Returning

A tender excavation of what it’s like when our nervous systems protect us from doing what we wish to do. Inhabiting our “us-ness” and the possibility of self-witnessing in real time. Can we bless ourselves as we leave and welcome ourselves home when it’s time?

Artifacts of Presence & Creativity as Collective Flow

If we are each a drop of the ocean, the ocean is in us, too. We talk about artmaking, bottling up aliveness, and constellations of creation: you never know who your light will beckon. Maybe even you.

A Note of Clarification from Kirsten:

Early in the video, I use the word obedience, and some of you may be understandably disturbed by this choice. Once a word with negative connotations for me, Cynthia Bourgeault reversed the direction of energy in it with this clarification in her book Eye of the Heart…

We now turn to the question of obedience. To our modern ears, the term seems to suggest knuckling under to an external authority, but the Latin word - ob audire - actually means “to listen deeply’” or ‘”to listen from the depths,” “with the ear of the heart” as St. Benedict puts it. And yes, that listening is, in itself, also a doing, a submission to what the heart has heard.

Who or what are we “obeying”? That which is lower in us bows to that which is higher. Maurice Nicoll deepened my appreciation for the virtue with a new twist in his book The New Man…

The power that man may gain over himself, in the sense of making all that is in him, all his different desires, different momentary wills, different thoughts, moods, etc., obey “something” in him, owing to the fact that this “something” in him is of such a nature that it deprives all these different things of any power to affect him. The Greek words for faith, pistis, is from the verb “patho,” which means to persuade or make, to obey.
What in a man will make all sides of himself obey him? What persuasion in his mind will bring him into a position where everything in him will yield its power to him?

So, if you can bear the dissonance, please hold space for the reclamation of the word “obedience” as a movement toward sovereignty and wisdom that arises from what is deepest and truest within you.

About Creative Sessions

Creative Sessions is an ongoing conversation between two artists and seekers—Carin Huebner and Kirsten Harrison—exploring the sacred, strange, and often contradictory terrain of being human and making art in this moment.

Maybe you’ll find resonance with these words and images; perhaps you are holding similar questions. Maybe the words, images, and questions you carry are different. It is our wish to offer spacious openings for deep listening.

Kirsten Harrison holds deep space for the sacred within daily life as a spiritual director, collage artist, and writer. Her offerings of spacious accompaniment and generous soul hospitality have a unique flavor that is shaped, in part, by neurodivergence, dancing with uncertainty, and a wish to continually soften into healing and becoming in service to the whole.

Carin Huebner lives at the intersection of existential curiosity and practical creativity as an artist, creative coach, and founder of SPACEBUG—a creative wisdom studio that supports artists and weirdos in rewilding their practice.

Show Notes

Be Still, Life by Ohara Hale

“Starting from the premise that everything is alive—a feeling that is deep and immediate for many children—Be Still, Life draws the reader into a still place where everything is moving. Thought-provoking in its depiction of the relationship between stillness and motion, this is certain to engage children, slowing them down through sheer fascination and delight.”

“The Beauty of Chaos”

“We try so hard to put order into our lives and into the cosmos. There is none. Instead, there are lots of comings and goings, ups and downs. In fact, everything at the subatomic level is chaos. Moments of perfect order coalesce, only to dissolve again into the thrilling immensity of infinite possibilities. Love is all because it is nowhere, not in one place, but every place. Every form is teeming with life and with various forms of consciousness or no consciousness, like bees swarming or in a hive or ants on an ant hill.
Life on every level is busy, yet it's doing nothing, remaining for a moment, and then quickly passing away, only to be back in another form and another kind of community, and another chaos. Chaos is our home. It is always becoming, ending, and starting anew.”
— Thomas Keating in Reflections on the Unknowable

The Kaos Trailer
Rick Levine on the Nodes and Quantum Astrology (video is bookmarked at the wave/particle section)
Gurdjieff Movements: Precision does matter in the Movements, and the emphasis is not on competence. There is a stunning distillation of this Wisdom Practice here.
Dr. Shannon Michael Pater, Notice the Journey, “Dysregulation as Prophetic Voice” Blog Post and Foundations of Trauma-Supporting Care Essays
Cynthia Bourgeault:
“The Roots of Hope Run Deep,” Science and Nonduality Video Podcast Episode
“I Am Not a Space that God Does Not Occupy,” A Blog Series
Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm
Chani
Moonbeaming episode with Sarah Faith Gottesdiener
Zach Bush on Nature, AI, and our Collective Spiritual Awakening
The Karate Kid Scene
“You Always Get What You Want,” Alan Watts

If there is resonance here, please join us by subscribing on YouTube.

Panning for Gold: Wake Up, Remember

Kirsten Harrison — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 04:12:45 +0000

This is a story about pain and love. I find it nourishing and important to speak directly to the weight of our collective moment and to share lived experiences of holding it, particularly.

A Note About Content: This post weaves stories together from the experiences of an EMT and touches on themes of trauma and suicide. Please take care, and take your time. If you can’t read about hard things right now, that is understandable. Save it or skip it.

Let’s ease into the story with a two-minute video about panning for gold

“See the darkness, know it’s real…light a candle anyway.” - Sarah Bessey

We got a family tattoo while all of the kids were home this year.

Each of us has endured at least one season of very low firelight when our spark was nearly extinguished. Each of us has taken turns holding the light. Because we know encountering darkness is a part of being human, we engraved a reminder of the ever-present reality of light on our skin.

“It is the light in the lantern which shows you the path, not the lantern.”

-A Yogi Tea Quote

Speaking about hope is no simple thing, especially in this moment of great collective uncertainty. How does one use words to describe what can only be truly known from the inside?

Because any spiritual perspective I offer these folks I parent will be anemic if it doesn’t speak to their realities honestly, I’ve gone back to the drawing board over and over— learning and excavating, following what I sensed, but could not yet say spaciously.

More vitally, though, I’ve had to cultivate the inner stability to be WITH them.

Micro-Dosing Human Tragedy

Until I saw what it is like for my son Ryan to face the unimaginable in his role as an EMT, I did not understand the gravity of suffering our first responders bear witness to as they enter into the worst moments of our lives. It is the call they carry1 on our behalf.

Severe injuries are not the heaviest weight. It is the steady micro-dosing of human tragedy that wearies the soul.

“We begin to understand God as the presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.”

- Dr. James Finley

When I first heard these honest, poetic words, a knot within me loosened. This is the first description of God I have found robust enough to truly take comfort in, and it is one I boldly whisper to the hearts of folks that I love.

As I share Dr. Finley’s words with Ryan — words that have been helping me reconcile a loving God with the reality of suffering — I see something shift; he is taken aback, and then still for what seems like a full minute. He picks up his phone and reads from an EMT Reddit thread.

Another EMT pours out words to fellow stretcher-bearers that his family and friends cannot witness. After responding to a horrific domestic violence call, he knows without a doubt…THERE IS NO GOD.

Because bearing the weight of tragedy alone drains the color out of Ryan’s life, we hold it together.

Being Present to the Rocks and Sand of Suffering

Without violating HIPAA, Ryan recounts residue he is presently carrying but has not yet felt.

Seemingly innocuous instances not felt in the moment are released on a drip once Ryan clocks out. He is cursed at, spat on, bitten, and occasionally even hit on. Early in his career, he was “sucker punched” in the face by the partner of a patient he was actively caring for. Any one of these dehumanizing assaults would be shocking to many of us, but they are not at all unusual to a first responder.
As he revives a nearly lifeless body on the street with Narcan and gets the now stable patient into the ambulance, Ryan hears cries for help. Another soul has overdosed one block over and won’t make it until the next ambulance arrives. Regulations prohibit what he knows he must do. “He will die if you don’t do something…and it will be on you!” is seared into a first responder’s memory. This is not the first time a hurting human has yelled these words in Ryan’s direction, and it will not be the last. He makes an impossible split-second decision. The resuscitated patient will be safe with his partner. He listens to the inner voice, throws a starfish backinto the ocean.
Ryan climbs through wires and debris to reach a second-story apartment. A sick woman has delayed care as long as she possibly can because she is a caregiver for a non-ambulatory spouse with dementia. They do not have a backup plan; no one is coming to save them from this chronic emergency.
On his way home from work, an angry driver flips Ryan off when he doesn’t immediately accelerate as the light turns green. This is the most isolating moment of the day.

A Fresh Reminder of Human Vulnerability

The advanced life support calls are heavy, too.

Ryan and six other first responders are dispatched for CPR. The patient’s family looks on expectantly while the team moves in harmony. Each one gives attention to the part they are playing and to the flow between them. As they silently recognize further efforts will not be life-saving, they seamlessly shift focus to dignity for the deceased and compassionate care for this family.

In the moment between this recognition and the life-altering news being delivered, Ryan sees smiling eyes, life, and breath in family photos on the wall — someone’s brother or mom. A child who will never grow up. A dad whose young kids may not remember him.

Ryan anticipates the medic’s next move and gets a blanket from the rig. He gathers trash and moves furniture back into place. From one moment to the literal next, life as this family knows it will never be the same.

The ride home is silent. At the station, they stay in motion, quietly cleaning and restocking supplies for the next call. The air is thick with a fresh reminder of just how fragile life is. Someone asks, “What’s for dinner?”

Glimmers of Gold

As we sift through the rocks and sand of suffering, glimmers of gold catch Ryan’s heart’s eye. Pain is not the only story. It may not even be the truest story. Because we know that negative experiences stick to us like Velcro and positive ones slip off like Teflon, we savor the heck out of gold.

An unhoused couple knocks on the window of the ambulance. The husband is in pain and needs care. He is not dying, but unattended, he will get very ill, lose a finger or a hand. They kindly decline emergency transport, saying they will walk to the hospital. It is 2:00 AM in below-freezing temperatures. Ryan watches them walk away without spite or complaint. They do not spend energy bracing against “what is” and have no expectation of him in that moment. As they set out on the two-mile trek, everything in him screams, “You have to do something!” Ryan phones his supervisor to ask if he can give them a ride, and his request is met with compassion. Front-door service to the hospital is offered and accepted. Ryan buckles each of them in and carefully lifts everything they own into the aid car like the precious parcels they are.
Later, as Ryan “posts up” in a parking lot in between calls, he sees a man lying on the ground. He walks over to ask if he’s okay. “Yes,” comes a reply. “I am just resting.” Another man sees this anomalous decency from a bench across the street and calls to Ryan, “Thank you for checking on him. My wife died of an overdose. I’ve overdosed twenty-two times, but I have been clean for two years now.”
Ryan picks up the phone when a co-worker reaches out to share an experience of a call so devastating that it is barely bearable. Ryan knows what this is like. He knows the sensation of circling back through each moment of the call to see if there’s anything he could have done differently…to feel shock and anger…to feel alone in his pain. This may not sound like gold quite yet, but let me thread this needle for you. It is a very particular type of witness that is needed in these searing moments of moral injury. Ryan has everything he needs to hold space for his colleague tonight. He has lived through similar circumstances, gleaned wisdom from veteran EMTs and paramedics, and has enough distance from this situation to see clearly. Ryan validates this EMT’s disorientation and clearly states his grounded orientation — he will continue to be available anytime, anywhere. He speaks truth with compassion and deep seriousness. This felt experience of holding the light for another EMT is like taking a deep swig of gold.

The Felt Sense of Gold

The felt sense of gold is hauntingly sweet, heart-wrenchingly full of life. I want to bottle it up and spray the scent of gold all over the planet with reckless abandon.

What a wonder it is that one can drink this gold even when not cognizant of its existence in the moment. One can tune in to the aliveness it arouses at the core of one’s being.

If each of us is a drop in the same vast ocean, could there also be a fleck of gold within that becomes perceptible only in the flow of resonance between us?

Given how hard life is 6, it makes sense that we fall asleep to this oneness. The life Ryan experiences while listening to Tool has stirred recognition. In “Pneuma,” they plead with us to wake up and remember.

“Through mechanical love, we all suffer. Conscious love heals us.”

- Maurice Nicoll in The New Man

When Suffering Hits Close to Home

I picked up burritos for dinner last winter when Ryan and I were at home together. At the kitchen table, we dropped into a conversation that neither of us will ever forget.

Earlier in the week, Ryan was dispatched to the home of a young mother. It is not uncommon for EMTs to care for folks whose acts of desperation didnot bring an end to their suffering.

As his patient’s despair rose to an unbearable level, the only relief she could imagine was to no longer exist. She tried to end her life while her baby was sleeping in the next room. On the way to the hospital, excruciating physical pain was eclipsed by the emotional agony and shame of a choice made in the darkest moment.

That night in the ambulance, Ryan held back tears that were forming in his throat and behind his eyes. This was not his emergency. He provided medical care, compassionate witness, and words of comfort.

As he describes his felt experience of this call to me, we drop into tender territory. I ask Ryan if he remembers.

Seventeen years earlier, after enduring more toxic stress than my body could bear, I was on the threshold of letting go. I didn’t know how to metabolize the pain.

Ryan does remember.

He reaches for my hand and says, “Thank you for staying alive for me.”

He embraces me with strength and compassion, and then speaks words that pierce my heart. “I have been staying alive for you.”

Ryan can bear witness to suffering because he knows suffering from the inside. With tears in our eyes, we time-travel…

No one tells my seven-year-old son what is happening, but he can feel it. He sits outside my bedroom and stares at the door. As waves of darkness are taking me down, Ryan is alone to make sense of a terrifying experience.

Ryan is 25 now. In this moment at the kitchen table, I see him. The presence and witness I could not provide on those days he needed me is accessible now. I cannot take his pain away, but my heart stays open while he tells me about it.

“Love brings together what needs to be brought together.”

-Kabir Helminski in Living Presence

Hold These Polarities with Max

Ryan and I intuitively hold all of this together by turning on our favorite Tiny Desk concert. We close our eyes and sink into “On the Nature of Daylight.” We feel the pain no words can touch, co-present with gold. Instead of writing it off as “all good,” we breathe with it.

You never have to wonder if Max Richter is telling you the whole truth.

Richter makes an audacious choice. He tunes these players to the key of respite instead of rescue. There is a moment near the end when a tiny violin pierces the darkness; it cuts right through the impulse to let go of hope once and for all.

In the presence of this honesty, good and bad meld together until they are no longer distinguishable.

In the presence of this honesty, color returns to Ryan’s body as sensation from heart to fingertips and space in lungs that could barely recall what a deep breath feels like. Pain is purged as salt on cheeks.

In the presence of this honesty, I remember that I am and we are.

To every first responder who is reading this, thank you for your service. In the most isolating moments, may you be reminded that your efforts matter and that your flourishing matters, too. And may the rest of us remember how vital it is for us to lean in with gratitude and care.

A Blessing

May glimmers of gold catch your heart’s eye as you are present to rocks and sand, and may there be a witness to hold it with you.

And if there is no witness, if gold is imperceptible, may a fresh wind blow through these stories to recall to your senses the gold which is always, already within you, and may you keep the eyes of your heart peeled in the waiting.

Keep going, friends.

Love,
Kirsten

A Panning for Gold Playlist

Because music is so foundational to our experiences of holding pain, Ryan and I created a playlist to share. These songs are internally congruent with these stories and played a role in shaping the words you are reading.

Resources and Notes

“The Call We Carry: Confronting PTSD in the Fire Service” is a documentary film directed by firefighter paramedic Cody Shea and is free to watch on YouTube.

“In a profession that few ever see, and even fewer understand, a crisis is brewing amongst today’s first responders. Over 37% meet clinical diagnosis for PTSD, and most go untreated and even unrecognized. In a culture where showing vulnerability means showing weakness, this ground-breaking documentary attempts to break down these barriers and smash the stigma of mental health in the fire service.
Follow the journeys of 4 Tacoma Firefighters as they share their stories of pain, sacrifice, and resiliency in the midst of an unprecedented call volume increase. The film provides an intimate glimpse into lives of those who put it all on the line everyday, in an effort to prove once and for all that NO ONE FIGHTS ALONE…”

Dr. James Finley has known great suffering from the inside, too. In the video below, he shares what has shaped his healing words. After severe and ongoing childhood trauma, Finley became a Trappist Monk. He then went on to become a therapist, spiritual director, and teacher. The quote above is from the “Sink into the Taproot of Your Heart” episode of the Turning to the Mystics Podcast. You can read the transcript here. It was recorded near the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, just a week after his beloved wife Maureen died.

“Take in the Good,” a blog post by Dr. Rick Hanson

This Ted Talk has been meaningful and instructive to Ryan, “The Effects of The Suck it Up Culture: An EMT on PTSD.” Anthony, thank you for speaking these vulnerable truths out loud, for educating those of us who have EMTs and paramedics in our lives, for normalizing what has been stigmatized, and for accompanying those who feel alone in their pain.

The 1-Minute Challenge for “Taking in the Good” with Dr. Rick Hanson, a short guided practice with a bite-sized neuroscience lesson.

One of my favorite scenes comes to mind anytime I share these words…the “Bathtub Talk” from Garden State with Natalie Portman and Zach Braff.

Ryan introduced me to Tool. Their music tells the truth about pain and speaks of this deeper reality that we are all woven into. What is it like inside when you give your full attention to this genius polyrhythmic drumming by Danny Carey?

Resources - soulspace ® Spiritual Direction

What Stops Me?

A Question to Carry Lightly

What stops me from being the way I want to be—from being the way I am?

More on the Soulspace Blog

The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

More on the Soulspace Blog

There Was No Contradiction in His Soul

"Above all I feel that you must resign yourself to taking me as I am..." —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Video Artifact #2

Invocation: A Song + A Short Meditation

Prelude To A Soul, Sebastian Plano

An unknown heaven, Lee Van Laer

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Drop

From the vastness of the Ocean, an inherent wholeness unfurls particularly within a drop…

First, a little bit of context from his close colleague, Pierre Leroy, SJ, from the foreword to The Divine Milieu…

Teilhard bore in his being what others might consider contradictions. Though it was not easy, he tuned the instrument of his life to the bass note sounding within him.

An Artifact of Conscience (An endangered species in 2026)

After the final no there comes a yesAnd on that yes the future world depends.No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

An Image

No consious work is ever wasted.

Teilhard’s Audacity at a Quantum Scale

An Impression

Receiving the Sacrament

There may be six billion of us, but somehow we are all One.

Notes + Resources

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

Somewhere Along the Way

As I Relax

A Song by Ari Moshe Wolfe

Notes

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

In me, another world is born.

A moth caught be the flame it cannot measure

Montana Sky Time, An Audio Reading

A Voice Memo Poetry Reading

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

To Bear, Encircled and Encircling

A Visio Divina Practice

Musical Accompaniment

An Invitation to Notice

Wisdom: A Knowing in Darkness

A Voice Memo Read-Aloud

Sources:

Related Blog Posts:

Silence: Words + Portals

About the Author

Read More on the Soulspace Blog:

What Strength It Takes To Bear A Slow Untangling

Help me be strong, help me be, help me

An image coalesces…

If we require a definition, let us call it knowing: a knowing that is personal, experiential, and tending toward union with that which is known.

Questions to Ponder…

Read More on the Soulspace Blog:

Moving Through a Dark Night of the Soul: A Spiritual Director Holds Space for Obscurity

We Are Here

Practicing Presence with Abstract Art

Please Tell Me What To Do: The Gift of Not Receiving What I Thought I Wanted in Spiritual Direction

Can’t go under it. Can’t go over it. We’ve got to go through it.

Holding the Tension of Opposites

What does holding the tension of unreconcilable opposites generate in the heart?

A Transmission, A Motion, A Practice

We’re Going On A Bear Hunt

Questions for Opening

This version is too cute not to share…

Footnotes:

Read More on the Soulspace Blog:

Moving Through a Dark Night of the Soul: A Spiritual Director Holds Space for Obscurity

We Are Here

Practicing Presence with Abstract Art

Visible Contradictions

Each Soul Is Unique

An Invitation

If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty will be your rest.

Video Artifact #1

Seeing Ourselves Clearly

Wholeness is born of the acceptance of the conflict of the human and the Divine in the individual psyche.

Developing A Soul

To Be Clear

How do you tell the difference between ‘the invincible certainty of your heart’ and neurotic self-delusion?

What stops me from being the way I want to be—
from being the way I am?

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.

If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things.
Your sovereignty will be your rest.

My loves, drink these words.
Bind them around your neck.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.

Is there anything new on the road oft traveled?

Vibrant beauty that once
took away breath
is a backdrop now; you search for
novel sacraments.

Today, though, the sun shines through
effervescent raindrops
on spun silk.

Recognition is lightning
in every cell.
You see for the first time
what you have always known.

This mystery will bear your weight.