Is Your Care Squad Complete?
Think about the team of people you turn to when things get hard. A doctor or nurse practitioner for your body. A therapist to help you heal old wounds or navigate the tangles of work and family. Maybe a rabbi, minister, imam, or elder when you need guidance on your spiritual path.
But who do you call when the question isn't about your body or your childhood or your tradition, when it's about meaning? About purpose? About ethics and what you actually believe? Who helps you uncover what you already know is inside you about the sacred, about truth, about why you get up in the morning and what direction to move in next?
That's what a Spiritual Companion is for.
And right now, you can experience spiritual direction for free, by working with students in the Cherry Hill Seminary Spiritual Direction Certification Program.
These are trained, supervised practitioners who work with people navigating earth-based, Pagan, multi-religious, and non-traditional spiritual paths. They're serious about this work. And they need practice partners, people like you, to complete their training.
[Learn more about how Praxis works →]
Meet the students!
Lisa Lake has over 20 years of experience in counseling, mentoring, 12-step work, and community facilitation — and she brings all of that into her spirit tending with warmth, grit, and deep commitment. She is ordained through Sacred Well Congregation and has dedicated much of her work to the LGBTQIA2S+ community, running groups that provide safer space for queer and questioning individuals and care for their allies.Lisa also has a particular gift for walking alongside spiritual and health workers: nurses, therapists, chaplains, social workers, people who spend their days holding space for others and rarely have anyone holding space for them. She is passionate about justice and particularly wants to support activists: people doing justice work who need a witness for the spiritual dimensions of that calling, the grief it carries, and the way it reshapes your sense of the sacred over time. Her philosophy is direct: "I am dedicated to walking with you on your spiritual path, not forcing you down mine."
Her home is Portland, Oregon (home base of Spirit Lights, the organization she founded), and is proud to offer a welcoming space for veterans and military families as well. You can find her at https://spiritlightsorg.wixsite.com/lady-lake-spidir .
Tracy Bleakney spent decades as a psychiatric and mental health nurse, first in hospital settings, then in the community, walking with people during some of the most vulnerable and courageous moments of their lives. She later became a certified school nurse, learning early in her career how profoundly young hearts need safety, presence, and gentle understanding.She is a Unitarian Universalist who discovered spiritual direction almost by accident and found it transformed her own spiritual life. She's also a single mother and grandmother who understands the grind of a full life: "how we push forward even when weary, and how love can anchor us." She retired early from nursing due to a physical disability, and that experience of navigating life's unexpected turns with grace has deepened her capacity to companion others through their own.
Tracy is a beautiful match for UUs and spiritual independents, people who value theological openness, atheists, agnostics, and humanists, and those who want a companion who won't flinch at complexity. She's also a tender companion for people navigating complicated family systems, the particular loneliness of caretaking, and the spiritual questions that arrive with illness, limitation, or major life transition. Her invitation is simple: "Your journey is sacred, and you do not need to travel alone." tracybleakneyspiritualcare.com
Gail Livesay Renfrow brings a beautiful framing to this work: spiritual companioning, she says, can be a mirror, a mentor, or a midwife... depending on where you are on your path. Sometimes you need someone to reflect your own wisdom back to you. Sometimes you need a more experienced guide. Sometimes you need someone to help you birth something new.Gail is a wonderful companion for working professionals: people whose spiritual lives often get crowded out by the sheer fullness of their days. For moms who give so much and often struggle to find a single hour of sacred space for their own inner lives. And for anyone who has a spiritual practice they love but wants to tend it more intentionally, to fan the flames, as she puts it, rather than let it remain something they do alone.
Her practice, Spirit Care for You, is rooted in interfaith spiritual companionship that honors the divine spark in everyone. Find her at spiritcareforyou.org.
Scott Waterhouse carries this definition of Spiritual Companioning: "Accompanying another on their spiritual journey; witnessing, sharing, and collaboratively exploring another heart's relationship with The Sacred: with respect, integrity, and love."
What I want you to know about Scott is that he understands systems that grind people down, and the particular kind of spiritual injury that comes from navigating the justice system, whether you're incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, a family member watching someone you love disappear into that world, or a professional trying to do good inside a broken structure. He brings respect, integrity, and a witnessing presence to people the wider spiritual care world often overlooks.
Cedar Monroe offers something rare: a space that truly holds all of it: your ancestry, your relationship with the land where you live, the sacred connections you carry from wherever you've come from, and the divine in whatever form (or formlessness) it takes for you.Cedar is a particularly good match for religious professionals (ministers, chaplains, spiritual leaders) who are quietly losing their spiritual home because their identity as LGBTQ+ people isn't welcome or safe where they serve. Cedar is also a beautiful companion for immigrants and refugees navigating the profound spiritual dislocation of building a life in a new place while your soul still knows another landscape. Cedar's commitment is simple and deep: "I respect all spiritual paths, including those that are non-religious or undefined." https://www.cedarmonroe.com/spiritual-care/
Helena Domenic describes herself as an Artistic Mystic, and I think that tells you a lot. She understands that the sacred shows up in creative work, that art-making is a form of prayer, and that the creative process itself can be a site of profound spiritual inquiry.Helena is a wonderful companion for artists, writers, makers, and anyone whose relationship with the sacred runs through image, story, craft, or beauty. She's also gifted with people who are navigating the spiritual questions of later life, finding meaning in aging, discovering who you are after the roles of career and able-bodied 'doing' have shifted, sitting with what it means to have a legacy and a remaining season. Her companioning is described as gentle guidance, not direction from above, but presence alongside. helenadomenic@gmail.com, www.helenadomenic.com
Mysti Downing calls herself a spiritual co-voyager, which is beautifully right. Her practice is rooted at the intersection of nature-based spirituality, theosophical wisdom, and the mysteries of consciousness, and she holds the door wide open for people who approach these questions from multiple angles: quantum physics, Jungian depth psychology, Pagan tradition, or plain old awe.Mysti is a good fit for working professionals navigating a season of change: people who have studied, led, achieved, and now find themselves at the edge of something they can't think their way through, whether that change is externally imposed or internally unfolding. She's also a natural match for people living in red states, where your spiritual life may feel invisible or unsafe in the surrounding culture. She won't tell you where to go. She'll help you hear your own inner authority more clearly. Her work, she says, is "less about being led and more about exploration, navigation and interpreting the compass." https://mothmystica.com/spirit/
Questions? Reach me at abeltaine@uuma.org
Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy. — Rev. Amy
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