An Ending

For almost two years this podcast was a life-giving playground for me to explore the ways God connects with us. Then COVD-19 hit in March 2020. At first I thought I would take a break for a few months and then start recording again. I thought I’d figure out a way to coordinate my kids’ virtual learning, meet with spiritual direction clients, and also record and edit conversations. I could see how relevant the question of how God meets us in our daily lives was in this unprecedented season. I hungered to hear how people were experiencing this time spiritually.

But I could never make it work. I could never figure out how to care for my kids and my clients and myself and also record. What was a months-long hiatus had dragged into nearly a year. And now I can’t imagine recording again. It’s a lot of work. It’s life-giving work, but time-consuming. It’s time for me to release this podcast to make space for other creative work — hopefully writing my next book.

I will keep previous episodes up on this page. Although they were recorded pre-pandemic, there is still much wisdom and inspiration in the conversations. If you’re looking for some spiritual manna, I encourage you to check out the archives.

With love & gratitude,

Lauren

Quarantine As Spiritual Practice

In this surreal time, what might it be like to experience quarantine as a spiritual practice?

I am hesitant to even ask the question, because it feels in some ways dismissive of what is truly hard about this extraordinary time. But I’m also hopeful that asking the question, together, and exploring it, together, might be a way for us to honor what is painful and scary in this season, and to see what it might have to teach us.

I am grateful to share this road with you. If you are nurtured at all by this episode, please share it with others. Also, share with me what it means for you to frame this time as a spiritual practice. Whether you are in quarantine, sheltering at home, or practicing social distancing, are there ways that this season is opening up connection between you and God? You can share in the comments below, by emailing me, or on social media.

We are all in this together.

Playing Games As Spiritual Practice

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Playing games as spiritual practice? Is that a stretch, a reach, or is it a profound field of possibility? I am joined by Kylie Prymus, game store owner and philosopher, to explore this question. His life has been changed by playing games, and he shares both his personal journey with the world of gaming, and illuminates for us the ways a board game can be a ground for growth, relationship development, and spiritual connection.

It is intriguing to me that this episode is airing during Lent. It feels counter-intuitive, a move away from the seriousness of the season. However, often our Lenten practices, in stripping away excess from our lives, create space. Maybe a game with loved ones, a place to connect deeply and to experience your ego being challenged, is exactly what is needed in this season. Or maybe your soul is heavy, and needing a reminder of the infinite ways God can find to connect with us.

Wherever you are in this season, I hope you find sustenance here for the journey.

Honoring Mess As Spiritual Practice

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“Honoring mess” is a surprising phrase for a spiritual practice. So much of life is focused on creating order, structure, and silence, all of which seek to eliminate mess. Dr. Preeta Banerjee, a mystic, change agent, and social companion, shares how her experience with the divine feminine and her role as a mother have invited her into new ways of being.

Preeta and I model the spiritual practice of honoring mess within our conversation, as we laugh about the flexibility recording this episode required. We recorded in December, and my equipment was on its last legs. We hobbled our way through, but it took two separate sessions to get usable audio. Her graceful response, her generosity with her time, and her deep kindness taught me so much about simply allowing life to be as it is, instead of wishing it away.

I hope you enjoy this inspiring, interspiritual dialogue.

Photography As Spiritual Practice

Stephanie Bell

Welcome back to the Life As Spiritual Practice podcast! I am delighted to be finally sharing new episodes again, after an unexpectedly long hiatus. If you’ve been following along, you know that I needed to replace my podcast recording equipment. I was both humbled and astounded by the generosity of response. In just a week I had raised beyond my goal. I cannot tell you what it means to me, to have so many people pouring into this work. THANK YOU! I am deeply grateful, and I’m glad to be back, sharing conversations again!

This week we explore photography as a spiritual practice with spiritual director, photographer, and permaculturist Stephanie Bell. She is a dear friend, and was part of my inspiration to become a spiritual director. I was honored to hear her journey with photography, and to learn about how it moved from being her career to an intimate contemplative practice.

Stephanie and I recorded this conversation in October, but I think this is the perfect time to be releasing it. She offers a sense of light and hope, and makes photography accessible. You will want to get outside and start taking pictures. You’ll want to listen to your photos through her visio divina practice. You may want to incorporate her ideas into your Lenten practices. I hope that this conversation sparks joy and curiosity in your soul.

Enneagram As Spiritual Practice

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The Enneagram seems to be everywhere these days, but what is it and why should we care?

The Enneagram is a tool of awareness that fosters growth. It’s a way to grow in compassion for ourselves, to hold the parts of ourselves we try to deny or hide with gentleness. The Enneagram creates a space of connection and understanding for others, as well as ourselves. This centuries-old system combines psychology, spirituality, and somatics into one typing system that provides a roadmap to an integrated life - bringing together mind, body and heart in the pursuit of wholeness.

The Enneagram can also be an intimidating, overwhelming system. It can feel overly complex, and it can be frustrating to figure out your own type. In this conversation, mental health therapist and Ennegram teacher Chichi Agorom makes the system accessible, shares her own journey from skeptic to teacher, and beautifully captures the graces she has experienced from engaging with this ancient tool. Whether you’ve never head of the Enneagram or have been studying it for years, you’ll find food for your soul.

Brewing As Spiritual Practice

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How can a hobby that seems frivolous become an avenue of rich connection with the divine? Pastor BJ Woodworth shares his experience with home-brewing, and how it moved from hobby to spiritual practice, in this week’s conversation.

BJ is married to Katrina and the father of Kyra, Elena, Alex and Zach. He is the founding pastor of the Open Door a 15-year-old, PCUSA missionally contemplative church community in the East End of Pittsburgh. He is a spiritual director, church planting coach and retreat leader. He is an avid homebrewer and loves the mystery and stillness of brewing and fermentation as well as the tasty goodness it creates.

BJ shows us how fermentation is a metaphor for the spiritual life: both take patience and creativity, trust and simply showing up. His wisdom will make you curious about the hobbies in your life that might hold possibilities for transformation and connection.

Re-Telling Your Story As Spiritual Practice

This week I am joined by Dr. Diane Millis for a conversation about the power of telling more life-giving stories. As Diane says, the nature of our lives is narrative. We are inherent story-tellers, but all of us have stories that we live in that don’t serve us well. Diane shares her own experience of learning to tell more expansive stories, how that has shaped her knowledge of the holy, and offers tools to explore and expand the narratives we live within.

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For three decades, Diane has had the privilege of serving as a midwife for others as they give voice to the vast array of stories inside of them. She has taught and advised undergraduate and graduate students; consulted and coached in a wide array of sectors; facilitated retreats and led workshops; produced the video series, “Lives Explored;” and ministered as a spiritual director. Through this, Diane observes, listens, and inquires as participants learn how to tell their most life-giving stories.

I hope you enjoy this conversation, as Diane teaches us to see how our brokenness is an invitation to greater truth, beauty, and goodness in our lives.

Singing As Spiritual Practice

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Welcome to the second season of Life As Spiritual Practice! I am delighted to be back with new conversations about experiencing ordinary life as a way to connect with the divine.

This first conversation is a special one for me: it’s with my mom, Lou Ann Horstman. Lou Ann’s story is a primary inspiration for this podcast. Her journey with singing, from the barriers she overcame to embrace it fully to the depth of spiritual connection she experiences through it, is incredible. You will want to sing more after you hear this. You’ll also want to think about what practices might already exist in your life: what connection points you might already be experiencing, that you just haven’t had permission to name yet. I hope you enjoy and are inspired.

We’ll be airing episodes every other week for Season 2, so I’ll be back in two weeks with a new conversation. Thanks for listening!

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SHOW NOTES

The Institute for Applied Meditation on the Heart

Threshold Choir

On the neuroscience of singing

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Learning to Fall by Philip Simmons

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Although House of St. Michael the Archangel is no longer an organization, I have inherited our publications and CDs. You can contact Lauren if you are interested in purchasing CDs. They are $10, and all proceeds will go to Caroline Becker, the widow of Tim Becker, the founder of the House.

Motherhood As Spiritual Practice

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Welcome to the last episode of our first season! If you are reading and listening along in real time, then you know that my first book, This Life That Is Ours: Motherhood As Spiritual Practice, comes out in April 2019. After this episode I am pivoting to market the book for the next few months. And what better way to mark the transition than through a conversation about motherhood as spiritual practice with one of my writing heroes?

Barbara Mahany is the most beautiful, honest, inviting, and holy writer on motherhood that I have encountered. She is the author of three books, including Motherprayer. I was delighted to be joined by her for a conversation about, as she describes it, the holiest curriculum she has encountered, a school where she learns every days how to live out the commandment to love as you would be loved. We explore what we have both learned through the holy curriculum of motherhood, and how writing about our lives as moms has helped us to hear the still, small voice within the chaos.

This conversation was pure gift for me, and I hope it will be for you, too. Thank you for sharing the road with me on this first season of Life As Spiritual Practice!

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Fatherhood As Spiritual Practice

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How can we move from seeing our children as "in the way" of our spiritual practices, and instead see them as the way itself? Gavriel Strauss shares from his own experience as a father of two, and provides simple, practical ways to open up to the spiritual potential of fatherhood.

Gavriel is the founder of Evolving Judaism and Path of Tikkün, two organizations committed to the development of universal Jewish spiritual practice as a means of personal and collective transformation. Gavriel is also a Spiritual Counselor and Transformation Coach who supports people in healing the barriers to accessing and actualizing a more whole, healed and integrated life.

I was fascinated by our conversation. Gavriel and I connected several years ago, just months before his first child was born. I was curious to explore with him themes that I’ve pondered so deeply from a female, Christian perspective. There is much overlap in our experience, and I also learned a lot from Gavriel and the way he frames parenting as a healing process.

Whether you are a father yourself, or want to understand the fathers in your life better, I hope you will find our conversation enlightening.

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Midlife As Spiritual Practice

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L. Roger Owens wanted to approach midlife with intention. He crafted a spiritual experiment for himself: if he went for 40 walks in nature the year after his 40th birthday, how might that shape his experience of midlife? He poured the spiritual wisdom he gleaned from this intentional and open approach to midlife into his newest book, Threshold of Discovery: A Field Guide to Spirituality in Midlife.

In our conversation, we explore how Roger was able to experience entering into midlife as a spiritual practice. I am intrigued by this idea of an entire season of life becoming a spiritual practice. I hope the conversation will inspire you, whatever season of life you are in, to play with the question of how this phase of life might be an invitation into deeper relationship with God.

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Art As Spiritual Practice

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This week we explore Art As Spiritual Practice with Katherine Josten. Katherine is an artist and the founder and Executive Director of the Global Art Project for Peace. She challenges us all to see ourselves as creative beings. Art, she believes, is not for experts and not for the “naturally creative.” Art is the response that wells up in each of us as we listen for what is ours to make.

She shares stories of deep listening in her life and work, and the surprising places that listening has led her. She inspires all of us to listen deeply to our own lives, to hear what work might be ours alone to do.

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Permaculture As Spiritual Practice

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“When you’re in better relationship with with people, with food, and with earth, you are naturally in better relationship with God,” says John Creasy. John is both co-pastor of an urban church, and executive director of a permaculture farm in the middle of Pittsburgh. He shares with us about the principles of permaculture, and how this practice of caring for the earth can provide connection points to the holy. He offers medicine for our weary souls that don’t know how to handle the onslaught of news about climate change.

Whether you have your own permaculture plot in your yard, or you’ve never heard of permaculture before, there is something here for you.

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Dreaming As Spiritual Practice

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I am joined this week by Dr. Kristen Hobby to explore dreaming as a spiritual practice. Kristen is an Australian spiritual director currently based in Singapore. She holds a PhD in early childhood spirituality, and her book, Nurturing A Gentle Heart, provides parents with resources and wisdom for caring for the hearts of their young children. She is also the former chair of Spiritual Directors International’s Coordinating Council.

While Kristen is fantastically accomplished, she is also grounded, engaging, and wise. We have a conversation that is full of joy and laughter as she shares about how paying attention to her dreams became a significant spiritual practice in her own life, and then she practices on me, teaching me how to treat my dreams both more seriously and more playfully. I hope her gentle, pragmatic approach equips you, as well, on your spiritual journey.

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Beauty As Spiritual Practice

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In our first “regular” episode, I am joined by Rita G. Patel for a conversation about beauty as a spiritual practice. Rita is an artist, pattern designer, and creativity consultant. She is the founder of Experiments in Beautiful Thinking, an approach that guides people and organizations from appreciation of beauty to incorporating into the ways they solve problems and engage the world.

In our conversation, Rita shares with us her personal experience with beauty, why it became such a significant part of her life, and how we can engage this practice more deeply ourselves. I hope you’ll be as inspired by our conversation as I am!

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Listening As Spiritual Practice

Welcome to our inaugural episode! My dear friend, Yael Allen, leads me in a discussion of listening as spiritual practice. Yael is one of the best listeners I know, and I was grateful for the way she gently led me through vulnerable spaces.

I hope our conversation will help you get to know me, and maybe inspire you to explore how you can integrate deep listening into your own life.

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