Let these words flow as they flow. No need for sense-making. Fall in. 

Remember yourself, dearheart.

Love,

Kirsten

“The Cloud of Unknowing”

A Contemplative Abstract by Chad Glazener.

If you’d like to spend time with this painting but aren’t sure where to begin, this Soulspace blog post is a good guide: Practicing Presence with Abstract Art.

“The Cloud of Unknowing”

20” x 16” 
Acrylic, Pencil, Charcoal
Arches Archival Cold Press Paper (Unframed)

Chad’s painting are available to behold and purchase here.

“Isolde’s Liebestod”

“Ultimately, great music is about the expression of states of the soul, and it has this huge nobility that really concerns the eternal reasons of why we are here on Earth.”

—John O’Donohue

As I opened YouTube to select a version of the Prelude to share, Soraya Verjee had just posted a performance from the opera. It is this I would prefer to highlight.

“Performed by Soraya Verjee at the University of Liverpool, a 21-year-old classical pianist + accompanist, championing underrepresented + female composers.”

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating. To read more and book a free exploratory session, click the button below.

More Bruno Barnhart on the Soulspace Blog

The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

Wisdom: A Knowing in Darkness

Four: A Spacious Audio Meditation by Bruno Barnhart + “Home” by Sara Bareilles

Cynthia Bourgeault wrote boldly, vulnerably, humanly, and those words became a field guide. The book validated my experience, introduced maps so I could find my bearings, sobered me to the responsibility required, contextualized it within Christianity, and illustrated the wonder and coherence of the divine heart of the cosmos.

When I got out of balance and fell, her words were breadcrumbs to eat and follow until I could feel my way back from the inside.

Yesterday, I wrote and recorded this letter about how being formed in this Wisdom lineage has strengthened and softened me.

Dear Cynthia,

During this year’s Lenten season, we received the news that my mother-in-law was dying. I traveled with only one small carry-on and one book: The Good Wine.

What we thought would be a week’s stay at her bedside turned into a five-plus-week assignment. Scott’s mom needed help, and oddly, we were available enough to meet her there. We did not decide once; we just kept saying yes.

Had I been called upon in earlier seasons of my life, I would have delegated this, knowing I could not bear the weight of it. As it happened, there was no shred of resistance. A very particular kind of tears rose and fell as the gravity of each next step dawned. The realization that I would be entering terrain hitherto unreachable.

“I am you, and you are me.”

I was not asked to eat the task whole. The way was made in a series of tiny obediences, carried by help unseen but palpable. The lightness of being never once ebbed.

I can recall only one day when my soul was cast down. This day was a threshold. I was watching the class on the integral and time. My mother-in-law came into the room where I was watching during the Q & A. She encouraged me to continue watching whatever I was watching. There was hesitation on my part, knowing there would be friction.

Though not directly expressed, this long-time Bible study teacher stayed up late into the night dictating her lesson for what turned out to be her final teaching on one of the letters to the Corinthians. I heard her repeating “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,” loudly after midnight several times, and warning of false teachers. In the next room during Bible Study, I heard the women praying for me, concerned I was deceived.

The irony. I could say yes to the task solely because the gospel has penetrated me so deeply at a cellular level, “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing.” Christ in my backbone, the power to consent to the call.

I remember grief and anger, but not at a personal level. The validity of my faith was being evaluated on church attendance and a perception that I had strayed from biblical teachings.

I had a visceral front-row seat to how evil trickles down through systems. Personal pain mixed with power compounds separation and proliferates density. At the end of a long and faithful life, fear and scarcity were edging out the fruits of the Spirit.

But the tide turned the next day. I witnessed the beauty of the ego lifting and lightening. There were ebbs and flows to the end, of course, but the stranglehold loosened.

The image of Mom I choose to carry is of a grateful woman. One who took my hand often and said, “Kirsti, have I told you how much I appreciate you?” I tucked a snapshot into my heart of the graceful acceptance of the many little deaths that preceded her physical death. These are sacred stories I will hold close.

In Mom’s final days, I sat vigil in the recliner next to her bed, singing the hymns, blessings, and sacred chants that I was raised on, and have since found to be home. Her last words to me were, “I love your voice.” She enjoyed her last days.

Though I do not remember where it was nestled sequentially, there was another moment, one that I sense was anchored in eternity. 

Here’s how I described it in real time to our Wisdom Circle:

Dear Ones.

You may remember I am caring for my mother-in-law as she is at home on hospice. We have been here two days shy of one month. Over the past 3 days, I have slept a total of 10 hrs in small increments. Mom crossed a threshold into active dying. Scott and I were without trained support for the first 48 hrs of this. As her body began to shut down, the care needs increased in ways we were not prepared for. We moved together harmoniously, with sincerity and a lightness of being. This is the hardest thing I have ever done, and one of the greatest honors of my life, which I only began to awaken to the realization of last evening.

What arises freshly now: in the deep vulnerability of our longest night, the three of us sweat blood in the garden. After clearing our most arduous hurdle, as dawn approached in the depth of her suffering (suffering we felt ill-equipped to meet skillfully in World 48), “I am” kissed her hand tenderly, spoke words of love, gratitude, and the willingness to abide. In the presence of Mercy, I witnessed surprise, tears on cheeks, and the fullness of softening.

Last night, after being mostly non-verbal for 24 hrs, Mom began to speak in words and short phrases intermittently to us and to invisible others, right as skilled care arrived. I was the only family member in the apartment, because we are taking turns resting for a full night at a nearby hotel.

Though instructed by the hospice nurse to sleep while help was nigh, there were several hours of constriction and fear that Mom would feel abandoned, because the private home health aide was unfamiliar and perceptibly frazzled.

I napped for 30 minutes and then checked on her. She said, “Where are my children?”

For the next 2+ hours, I experienced intense, energetically dissonant (this word doesn’t seem sharp enough, electric enough) physical sensations, confusion, and fear, co-present with a tiny sliver of compassion for little i’s. There was a recollection that decisions were made in the atmosphere of collective Métis when an unexpected and mercifully swift possibility of help materialized. Constriction abated gradually, and I slept for three consecutive hours.

I have arrived at the hotel and will be here for at least 20 hrs, come what may. I know that offering these impressions to you all is an obedience, a preparation.

Another message to Circle after my return:

Mom passed away on 3/20. Her hospice home health aide had attended to her earlier that day, a day before she was scheduled to, obedient to the timing she sensed, though she did not utter it. Mom looked regal in her favorite lipstick and blue turban.

My husband fell ill suddenly (and, as it turns out, very briefly), and he left to rest. His brother was also at home resting. A nurse called to tell me that, though it was her night off, her phone would be nearby. I took her up on the invitation to ask for help. Another nurse called to help me discern what to do. He signed off with, “Lean on your caregiver.” We had someone coming sit with Mom while we rested.

I went to sleep at 11:15 pm. At 12:05, there was a knock on my door. It seems Mom was waiting for a moment when we were not in the room to let go of form.

This may have been my first bone-deep taste, in linear time, of conscious labor and intentional suffering. It may sound cold, but I trust you will hear through the coarseness of my words. I did not feel sentimentality about Mom’s passing. It was time. She was ready. There was a poignancy, but I was removed enough not to feel clingy. There was a task. Mom needed care. I was available. It was a series of tiny obediences.

I know the Love & Respect practice is stitched together with a force.

Time and time again, I looked into her eyes, whether in my mind’s eye or with my physical eyes. “And in all that I think, may I be worthy of that.”

“I am you, and you are me.”

About a year ago, I whispered a very specific consent into the Imaginal Realm.

Am I willing to do unto all what I am willing to do unto one, when given the chance?

In this case, and to my surprise, I am.

The most fitting offering I can imagine as I close is gratitude extended with a deep bow, through tears.

Thank you for trusting the invincibility of your heart, for wagering everything on one level to orient to the highest possible outcome on another, for choosing not to hide your light under a bushel. 

Thank you for writing boldly, vulnerably, humanly.

Your “yeses” prepared the way for mine.

I understand now, from the inside, that “no conscious work is ever wasted.” Here is how the imaginal refrain has taken shape in me:

Every action matters; let go of how and why,

Love,

Kirsten

NOTE: The word obedience is complicated, I know. Here’s what it means to me: “listening from the depths” and responding to what I hear. Something in me knows what to do, and the rest of me yields what is known.

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating.

More on the Soulspace Blog

This is No Passing Fancy

A Letter to Christian Parents: The Only Thing That Matters Tonight is Presence

What Strength It Takes To Bear A Slow Untangling

Episode three (part two) is my favorite because the conversation drops us even deeper into feeling. We explore time, presence, and what helps us stay close to the Now.

If you only have time for one episode, watch this one.

Prefer to listen instead of watching? Find your favorite player here.

Little Connections is a conversation series where two friends explore the spiritual in everyday life. If you’re following similar questions, please join us for upcoming episodes by subscribing.

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating.

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

Little Connections begins: synchronicity, fathers, and becoming ourselves

Montana Sky Time, An Audio Reading

Tapestry of Wisdom: Grief, a curated collection

I'm experimenting with new audio tools, and I've collaged a guided practice. The elements in this post are offered as a whole.

What is it like to hold them together?

Remember yourself, dearheart.

Love,

Kirsten

P.S. Here’s the post where I first shared the original poem that’s featured in this practice.

• Prefer to read the practice? Here's the full transcript.

  You'll Know: A Guided Felt Sense Practice — Transcript

  In this poem, I invite you to open your whole self. Take a walk, or lie under a tree. Do some work in the yard — pulling weeds, folding clothes, emptying the dishwasher. Take out your journal and transcribe the poem.

  First reading

  What if losing one's way from time to time is the way?

  I'm gesturing around a center core, an absence. Initially it's excruciating, unfamiliar. It is a pearl, but not a pearl of substance.

  Hands get it first. They trace the circumference of absence, perceive its vibrancy.

  Absence warms, suffusing each cell of each limb with feeling.

  This elegant force radiates the tenderest of affections, encircling vivid impulses to banish, to cling. Under the influence of absence, impulses morph into an intimate beloved I wish to protect.

  I refuse to close, to crush absence. Yes, it's true: a part of me can't stand an insubstantiality which never fully ebbs.

  As the body decontracts into absence, the sensation is barely bearable. How grand, how exquisite, and then waves roll in. Hello, my old friends: the impulse to possess, the impulse to make meaning, the impulse to tell everyone I know, to interpret this so the good news will spread far and wide.

  Deeper still, blessed absence.

  Hands cup absence, trace its warmth, its depth. I want to guard what I now fear may evaporate, but dare I risk defiling this delicious vapor? Vulnerability surges, then melts into a wish. I wish to remember what the heart sees.

  A gesture, a felt sense, an indescribable image. Has anything ever been more clear? Anything more obscure? One by one, each dial on a golden lock turns. I cannot say exactly how. When the tumblers align, you'll know.

  Now I'd like you to tune in to feeling. And when I say feeling — there may be emotion. Perhaps you notice sadness, or frustration, or confusion. I'd like you to go deeper. The feeling I'm inviting you to exists in the body. It's the implicit wisdom that is not immediately accessible to the thinking mind.

  I've heard this process of listening for a felt sense described as opening to the unclear edge. It takes a willingness to not know at the beginning. So perhaps it starts with a word, a sensation, an image — and it's okay to identify that without attaching to it. Let it be not quite right at the beginning.

  Here's an example: perhaps you notice some sort of resistance, or maybe there's a warmth. Maybe that first word is an association, something this poem reminded you of. So the first invitation is just to vocalize what first arises. Patient trust may be required.

  Second reading

  (Kirsten reads "What if losing one's way from time to time is the way?" a second time — full text above.)

  Now, as you begin to have that first sense of what arose, turn again to the body. What do you notice? Does that first image, those sensations, any words that arose — do those still feel like what you're sensing now? Or is there something new? Something else?

  Third reading

  (Kirsten reads the poem a third time — full text above.)

  What does your body know?

  A felt sense is always a present-tense experience. And so today, whatever you've tasted is for today. And when you come back again, when you relisten, what you open to is for that day.

  Listening for a felt sense like this is a skill, something that takes practice. And this practice you are opening to, this relationship with the wisdom of your body, will not just be a set-apart experience you find in silence and stillness, or in movement and solitude. You'll begin to notice that the body releases wisdom in the context of daily life — when you're listening to music and notice your body is lit up; when a song seems to shift something inside of you; when you're lying in bed at night, as I do sometimes, and that feeling of dread arises; when you leave a conversation and feel your body bracing. Here is the opportunity to draw on this practice, this interior movement you are finding familiarity with. As you listen, as you follow these invitations, it's as if we're preparing here for what you will need.

  This work matters. Not only does it increase our capacity to be present; as what's invisible comes above ground, we have a little more access to choice. What has been taking up space in us is now on the outside, and we can respond to it consciously. Our response is simply a noticing. We're not trying to clean ourselves up; we're noticing. And there may be a shift. There may be just the teensiest bit more space inside. And these teensy, tiny shifts add up over time.

  As you transition now back into what's next, I'd like you to take one full minute to savor. One minute of tuning in and savoring our positive experiences, those moments where we feel connected. It seems very small, but one minute can help it stick. It's like we can tuck it into our heart. So let's take a full minute right now.

  (A full minute of silence.)

  Thank you for being here. Thank you for making efforts to connect deeply with your whole self. Bye for now.

• For a free download of the practice

  I'm creating a place to share downloads, some free, some for purchase. You can visit Gumroad to receive an MP3 of this practice as a gift.

  I'm still learning the ins and outs of audio production. Please follow along to get word when new offerings are posted.

“It’s smaller than you think

It’s quiet as a year of listening

It tends to emanate

It’s a horizon stretching past the sight lines and beyond”

—Shannon Lay

Shannon Lay’s album will be released soon. “Horizons” keeps drawing me.

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating. To read more and book a free exploratory session, click the button below.

More on the Soulspace Blog

Something Else: A Spiritual Director on Holding Obscurity & Disorientation

We Are Always, Already Home

Panning for Gold: Holding the Impossible

Little Connections is a conversation series where two friends explore the spiritual in everyday life. In our first episode, we talk about synchronicity, fathers, friendship, and being ourselves through the lens of Kung Fu Panda 3.

What begins with Bernard watching the movie on a flight home, on the anniversary of his father’s death, opens into a conversation about ritual, calling, friendship, and the moments that help us step more fully into who we are.

Together, Bernard and I notice the tiny moments that feel ordinary until a divine breath briefly blows the heart open. We recognize and savor the felt sense of something else in the flow of friendship and conversation.

That is the spirit of Little Connections, and it is close to the heart of Soulspace, too.

In spiritual direction, we co-create an atmosphere of presence, space, witness, with-ness, trusting that wisdom will meet us through the ordinary material of our lives.

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating.

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

What My Soul Already Knows: A Simple Poetry Practice

We Are Always, Already Home

Somewhere Along the Way

An honest chat.

Remember yourself, dearheart!

Love,

Kirsten

“Therefore, dear Unknown Friend, think of your guardian Angel, think of him when you have problems, questions to resolve, tasks to accomplish, plans to formulate, cares and fears to appease! Think of him as a luminous cloud of maternal love above you…”

—Valentin Tomberg

Listen: “One of these things first”

Released by Nick Drake in 1971

“What continues to make the song resonate is how universal its subject matter feels. It’s not about fame, romance, or heartbreak. It’s about identity—about the fragile process of becoming oneself.

In a modern world obsessed with achievement and self-definition, Drake’s perspective feels radical. He’s comfortable admitting uncertainty, acknowledging that he could have been many things and that maybe that’s okay. There’s a humility in that realization—a sense that life is less about finding the one right version of yourself and more about accepting the many that might coexist within you.”

—schill

“Quiet Realizations: The Gentle Genius of Nick Drake’s ‘One of These Things First’”

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating. To read more and book a free exploratory session, click the button below.

More on the Soulspace Blog

A Spacious Audio Meditation: Bruno Barnhart + “Home” by Sara Bareilles

Silence: Words + Portals

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

It’s just me and Nitro at home this week. After I chose the reading, a new song by Sara Bareilles came to mind. I set them side by side.

I first tried to record from inside my closet while dinner was in the oven. Scott texted a video of Jordan’s World Cup team heading to the stadium. I tried again after I ate. It wasn’t right. So I went outside, and Nitro jumped up next to me.

The bird noises are lovely. As I read from Bruno Barnhart’s book, Second Simplicity, there were interruptions. A helicopter in the distance. Two jets. A conversation next door. A car on a gravel driveway.

Each time, I paused, went back, and picked up at the point of interruption. Frustrated, I caught sight of the light blue sky; clouds made their slow rounds. I got the joke immediately.

One of the kids liked Scott’s text. Gratitude encircled every negative emotion, and we huddled together for the home stretch.

This one may not be easy to listen to (especially with headphones). Still, it seems to bridge the chasm between these collage elements in a way I can’t explain. 

As I pour these words into your hands, your thinking mind may rush in to scoop them all up and make them make sense. This is not a problem.

Is there a deeper listening?

With Love,

Kirsten

Sara Bareilles heard Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert share their stories of loss and grief. In time, this song came into being. Hear the story in this episode of All There Is.

My name is Kirsten. In spiritual direction, I accompany folks as they attune to the inner dimensions of life. This way of being together is grounding and spacious. Together, we anchor into presence and a familiar flow of relating. To read more and book a free exploratory session, click the button below.

More Bruno Barnhart on the Soulspace Blog

The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

Wisdom: A Knowing in Darkness

Two: A Meditation by Bruno Barnhart

I cut words from magazines and fashioned them into a poem I have shared before in a visual post. Today, this calls to be spoken.

Love,

Kirsten

First, you will need to cross some dark threshold.

This deftness might 
be regarded as “its own breed of genius.”

Very slowly and then all at once,
You imagine what lies ahead or, perhaps,
behind. Your body feels the twilight, too.

Do not be afraid of fear.

A whole world exists on the underside
showing us something different,
hidden in the dark.

Looking for the color over there, and
here it is, unbound.

So deliciously unpredictable.

Unfathomed know-how, a shrewd intelligence needed to navigate the dark
kicks in at a level of intensity that far outweighs our
better idea for safety.

I can see the emanation of
what’s held here cosmically mirroring itself,
presence and wonder
breaking across your face.

You go from dark to light and back again

If any doubts remained after
cells wondrously bearing both,
they were dispelled forever.

And returning often to the same ground in new light reveals a different story.

Sources:

In addition to a variety of magazines from various eras, these are particular sources within some of those magazines whose words I recognize.

“Lovesick,” By Major Jackson. Sierra, The Magazine of the Sierra Club. Read the poem in full here.

“Tables and Gems,” By Fred Moten. The Atlantic, August 2023 Issue. Read the poem in full here.

“The Owls Are Not What They Seem,” By Rebecca Giggs. The Atlantic, September 2023 Issue.

More on the Soulspace Blog

A Letter to Christian Parents: The Only Thing That Matters Tonight is Presence

Can you still reach your stubborn hope?

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way by Mary Oliver

Silence: Words + Portals

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. To read more about this type of accompaniment, visit my offerings page.

“And every sign of love
Every seed that's growing
Every sweet surrender
To that silent knowing
Will bring you to your knees and
Closer to the reason”

—The Wailin’ Jennys, “You Are Here”

A cosmically ripe moment.

I wake before dawn with three words on my tongue.

Though I have barely dipped my toe into the celestial arts, I remember. Mercury and the Sun kiss today, in a veil-thin liminal moment.

What if I take even the subtlest of synchronicities seriously?

I aim to write this trio of words down while they are still fresh, but time swings open. Three hours later, my pen comes to a rest.

A summons.

A voice from without calls to something within. Doubts and fears are stilled by a presence my heart recognizes—a presence that knows me intimately and is not at all troubled by my humanity. There is a summons.

It’s time. The way has already been made. You know what it feels like.

This is not yours. This is a love letter. A collective art project. A group mosaic that you cannot see the whole of. A kaleidoscope. You are the steward. The glue.

Along the way, there will be losses, and you will bear them. This will not be easy, but a felt sense of ease will be your guide.

Do not be afraid; I am. I am here. I have always been with you.

Now go. Breathe. Slow down. Have fun. Gather your supplies. Make lists. LOVE; it will not be lost.

A field guide.

On the heels of an experience I have no context for, at a moment I am unsure where guidance might be found, I open Audible.

Like Goldilocks, I try out two options. A classic by Father Richard Rohr? Something in me says no. Ooh, a book by Ken Wilber—it’s free on Audible Plus. Ten minutes in, I know this isn’t it. Both good options, but not for me, not now.

The author’s name rings a bell very quietly.

I am curious and hesitant. I press play on the free Audible sample and hear the first language of my heart for the first time in time.

This one is “just right.”

A sacrament.

This is no passing fancy.

I eat this book while I fold clothes, chop carrots, and simmer soup. I drink it on the treadmill and in the car, my arm out the window in cold salt air.

Though fluency is miles away, something in me already knows this by heart. I transcribe entire chapters by hand. Wisdom flows from ear to arm, from pen to page—at last visible to my eyes.

When thoughts run out ahead of feeling and sensing, the dog insists on going outside. Or my AirPods need charging. I behold the crescent moon in a midnight blue sky. Snow crunches under my feet.

For a moment, I can see.

I’m Kirsten. If you’d like some company as you listen, come and journey with me in spacious accompaniment/spiritual direction—a place to attune to your inner experience over time, and to hold questions or intuitions you don’t want to carry alone.

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

What My Soul Already Knows: A Simple Poetry Practice

We Are Always, Already Home

Moving Through a Dark Night of the Soul

We meet in Presence, unbound by maps and clocks. Here, on the underside of time, minutes melt into the precise depth needed for aliveness to rekindle.

I am always, already here. It is always, already NOW. And still, I forget. I forget.

In the presence of this honesty, good and bad meld together until I can no longer tell them apart. In the presence of this honesty, I remember that I am, and we are.

I open to the possibility of renewed attention. A warm wind stirs sensation awake in every cell. A feeling I recognize dawns freshly in my heart as I meet an old friend for the first time. A knowing gathers without strain.

Gratitude surges as I realize the only word my lips remember is the only key that unlocks this door. Silently, in a whisper, or in full voice, I say YES.

Here’s an audio reading of a poem about recognition…

More on the Soulspace Blog

• Sunrise/Sunset: A Practice for Awakening a Weary Soul

• What if losing one’s way from time to time is the way?

• What Are You Nourishing?

• We Are Here: Artifacts of Presence

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. To read more about this type of accompaniment, visit my offerings page.

I came across Norman MacCaig’s poem in Anam Cara by John O’Donohue, and I will never look at my nightstand quite the same way again.

This poem suggests the dual rhythm of emptiness and plenitude at the heart of the life of the soul. Nothingness is the sister of possibility. It makes urgent space for that which is new, surprising, and unexpected. When you feel nothingness and emptiness gnawing at your life, there is no need to despair. This is a call from your soul, awakening your life to new possibilities.

—John O’Donohue

PRESENTS

I give you an emptiness,
I give you a plenitude.
Unwrap them carefully.
—one's as fragile as the other—
and when you thank me
I'll pretend not to notice the doubt in your voice
when you say they're just what you wanted.

Put them on the table by your bed.
When you wake in the morning
they'll have gone through the door of sleep
into your head. Wherever you go
they'll go with you and
wherever you are you'll wonder,
smiling about the fullness
you can't add to and the emptiness
that you can fill.

More Audio Reading on the Soulspace Blog

• The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

• Montana Sky Time, An Audio Reading

• What if losing one’s way from time to time is the way?

• Please Come Home, a poem by Jane Hooper

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.

This voice memo read-aloud comes from Bruno Barnhart’s book, Second Simplicity. There are four numbered meditations; this week, “Two” is calling.

What catches your heart’s eye?

Notes

• The quote at the beginning of this reading is footnoted: Yang-shan Hui-chi, in Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, pg. 55.

• To receive Bruno more deeply, here’s a taste in the living memory of one of his students.

• I got a used copy from ThriftBooks. It looks like they have one more in stock at the moment of this writing.

More Bruno Barnhart on the Soulspace Blog

• The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

• In me, another world is born.

• Wisdom: A Knowing in Darkness

• What Strength It Takes To Bear A Slow Untangling

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.

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

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.

Notes

The question above comes from Lillian Firestone’s book The Forgotten Language of Children.

More on the Soulspace Blog

• Being with others when they are in pain

• What Does It Mean to Go Slow?

• Core State Meditation: Holy/Hurt Podcast

• The Dynamism of Becoming: Notes from Real Life

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

• Sunrise/Sunset: A Practice for Awakening a Weary Soul

• Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way by Mary Oliver

• Teachers + Thresholds

• When In Doubt, A Lectio Divina Podcast

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.

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

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.

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

• 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.

A Quick Word From Kirsten…

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 this article nourished you, here are two small ways to help keep the work going:

Share this post with a friend (or link to it in your newsletter/blog)

Leave a tip via Buy Me A Coffee

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

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

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

• We Are Here: Artifacts of Presence

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:

1. 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);

2. 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”

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

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

• Something Else: A Spiritual Director on Holding Obscurity & Disorientation

• Life is Hard: A Spiritual Director on Holding Complexities + Contradictions

• Dysregulation as Prophetic Voice

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

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

A Voice Memo Poetry Reading

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

This poem by Rob Baker comes to us from the Spring 1990 issue of Parabola, titled “Time & Presence.” It was published so long ago, and Parabola is no longer active. You can find some print issues on used book sites. I found this one at a used bookstore.

Baker cuts right through the haze of everything that obscures what matters. In a single line, he gifts words for a very particular grief. The poem calls all of me back to the Now.

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

• We Are Here

• Making Everything I’ve Received Flow Again

• Glimmering Landscape Time: Spacious Spiritual Practices for Disorienting Times

My name is Kirsten. I hold space in spiritual direction and accompany others by collaging wisdom here on Soulspace, and on Substack at Faint Outlines. Presently, there is an overlap between these spaces as I sense into what each project wishes to be. If there’s a draw, please follow along in the format that works best for you.

Please feel free to share this post with a friend or include it in your newsletter/blog.

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 Father 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.”

More on the Soulspace Blog

• The Maximum: Kirsten reads a meditation by Father Bruno Barnhart

• Visible Contradictions

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

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.

Pick one to go down today, and come back when you’re ready for more.

Portals:

• Chad Glazener found words to describe the vibrancy of silence in this video podcast episode: 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 “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.

A Quick Word From Kirsten…

These reflections and practices are written by a human artist and spiritual director. They are joyfully and freely given.

If this article nourished you, here are two small ways to help keep the work going:

• Share this post with a friend (or link to it in your newsletter/blog)

• Leave a tip via Buy Me A Coffee

Read More on the Soulspace Blog

The Maximum: An Audio Meditation

We Are Always, Already Home

Moving Through a Dark Night of the Soul