Spiritual direction/Companionship
What is Spiritual Direction? How Can It Support Leaders?
A potential client wrote to me today. The subject line said, "Can I hire you? " The body of the letter said, "As my spirtual consultant?" We had just been together in a zoom meeting wtih breakouts and he shared his pain, anger and suffering over the state of the world, and his powerlessness in the face of the unending pile-on of our adult lives.
Sound familiar?
He wrote: "Really grateful that we were in a group together-synchronicity! Your words ring very true for me- incredibly difficult times- and we have to experience the suffering, but not dwell in that place interminably."
I responded:
You speak the universal. Be assured you are not alone in this kind of despair and I see you still holding the small, shy hope in your hands that it could be different, “if only” Be assured that the feelings you have are normal and typical of what is felt "at the threshold" or breakthrough.
The path of healing presents itself by accepting this kind of loss, pain and suffering. A whole new world can open up in a tiny chink in the armored world. A light creeps in. Hope. By looking that heaviness in the face and saying , “I see you” “I feel you”, a stabilizing practice emerges. From that place, recovery is possible. As the soul strengthens, it can eventually lead to calm and collected action to save the world.
We save ourselves first.
"Take the hand; Look ahead." Again and again.
It becomes easier, but not easy.
We can return to our practices often, to re-sort the balance of power from suffering to trust.
Being in community with others makes this practice sustainable and the eventual return to it, when we or it falls away, possible.
I am becoming available for monthly or semi-monthly Interfaith Spiritual Companionship/Direction, to be in and explore spiritual strengthening, on a sliding scale basis. I will complete my training this year and am currently under supervision from faculty at The Chaplaincy Institute, in Berkeley CA where I am also an ordained interfaith minister.
Let me know if this practice is something you feel called to explore.
May natural great peace find you.
Grief Recovery
Dealing with Grief and Loss can be the most difficult thing in any life. And it can be the source of so much growth and creativity. Grief Recovery Support helps individuals recover, integrate, and grow through loss, grief, creativity, and connecting to meaning.
Together we practice self-care - meditation, movement, and activating the senses with music, food, and learning. We seek to explore and select various coping and recovery strategies and practices, finding one or more that can support recovery and growth in the moment and over time.
As grief matures and allows for growth, we look to experience greater interior freedom, deeper joy, more grace-filled decisions, a more integrated life, broader or more focused creation, and healthier relationships with self, others, and the world.
Ritual & Ceremony
Rituals and Ceremonies are the contemporary words for the ancient ways of marking a particular event, celebrating an occasion, person, or community, or raising energy for healing and creativity.
From weddings and celebrations of life to birthdays, there is a new way to do rites of passage that speaks to the heart, that can integrate tradition, and forge new ground.
Land engagements and dedications, project initiations, and completions acknowledging transitions, transforming heavy energies into creation, each ritual or ceremony is crafted with you, so this is YOURS.
And the energy of your design ripples out, beyond the waters, and horizon, as far as the heart can feel.