Three People Who Might Be Exactly Who You've Been Looking For

A few days ago I introduced you to Scott, Cedar, Helena, and Mysti — four of the student practitioners in Cherry Hill Seminary's Spiritual Direction Certification Program who are offering free, supervised companioning this year.

Today I want you to meet three more.

They're in their second year of the Cherry Hill Seminary Spiritual Direction Certification Program, which means they've completed 170–200 hours of formation studying contemplative practice, multi-religious frameworks, justice-rooted practice, ethics, and the sacred art of deep listening. They've done their own inner work. They're receiving monthly supervision. And they're ready.

For April '26 to February '27, each of them is offering free, supervised spiritual companioning to a small number of seekers. Maybe one of them is exactly who you've been looking for.

---

Lisa Lake has over 20 years of experience in counseling, mentoring, 12-step work, and community facilitation. She is an ordained community minister, and as a queer person herself, she brings both professional skill and personal understanding to her work with the LGBTQIA2S+ community, creating safer space for queer and questioning individuals and caring for their allies.

Lisa is also a deeply committed companion for activists and for the spiritual and health care workers, nurses, therapists, chaplains, social workers, who spend their days holding space for everyone else and rarely have anyone holding space for them. Her approach is rooted in compassion and the conviction that your path is yours: she's dedicated to walking with you on it, not directing you down hers.

Openings available for community and spiritual leaders seeking a group spiritual direction experience.

You can find her at spiritlightsorg.wixsite.com/lady-lake-spidir.

---

Tracy Bleakney spent decades as a psychiatric and mental health nurse, in hospitals, then in the community, walking alongside people during some of the most vulnerable and courageous moments of their lives. She later became a certified school nurse, and her Master of Education deepened her understanding of how profoundly people of all ages need safety, presence, and gentle understanding.

She's also a Unitarian Universalist who discovered spiritual direction almost by accident and found it transformed her own spiritual life. She's a single mother and grandmother who knows what it is to push forward when weary, and how love can anchor us through every season. She retired early from nursing due to a physical disability, and that experience of navigating life's unexpected turns with grace runs quietly through everything she offers.

Tracy is a beautiful match for UUs and spiritual independents, for people carrying complicated family systems, and for anyone navigating illness, limitation, or the kind of transition that asks you to reimagine who you are. Her invitation: "Your journey is sacred. You do not need to travel alone."

Find her at tracybleakneyspiritualcare.com.

---

NO VACANCIES Gail Livesay Renfrow grew up curious about God, and discovered that God shows up with many names and in many ways. Her own path took her from the Southern Baptist church, through the United Church of Christ, into Paganism, and eventually into the Unitarian Universalist tradition. Along the way she became a Tarot reader and Reiki practitioner, a teacher and coach, and now a student spiritual director. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and two sons, and when she isn't pondering the big questions, she's playing board games, oil painting, or collaging.

All of that, the breadth of tradition she's moved through, the creative practices she lives inside, the grounded ordinariness of her life, makes her a wonderful companion. Gail describes Spirit Care as something that can be a mirror, a mentor, or a midwife, depending on where you are on your path. Sometimes you need to see your own wisdom reflected back. Sometimes you need a more experienced guide. Sometimes something new needs to be born.

She's a particularly good fit for working professionals whose inner life keeps getting crowded out, for moms who give and give and rarely have an hour of sacred space for themselves, 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 quietly dim.

Find her at spiritcareforyou.org.

---

These three companions, along with Scott, Cedar, Helena, and Mysti, are all available now. You can read everyone's bios, get a feel for who resonates, and book a brief get-to-know-you conversation before you commit to anything. You're welcome to reach out to two or three of them. This is meant to be a good fit for both of you.

👉 Meet Gail, Tracy, Lisa, Scott, Cedar, Helena, Mysti, and book a free exploratory session

Questions? Reach me at abeltaine@uuma.org

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy. — Rev. Amy

How Is Spiritual Direction Like Grape-Nuts?

Grape-Nuts contains neither grapes nor nuts. And spiritual direction is neither particularly spiritual… nor directive.

I know. It sounds like a riddle. Let's unpack it.

"Spirit" often gets treated as something extraordinary. Mystical. Separate from the mess and mundanity of actual life. But the work of spiritual companioning is the opposite: it's the practice of paying close attention to the ordinary. The real. The daily. What do you love? What do you grieve? What sparks something alive in you, and what invites you to act? How are you doing this life… with authenticity, with integrity, with anything resembling sustainability?

And "direction"? There isn't any that you don't bring yourself. Your companion isn't there to tell you what to think or where to go. They're there to hold the torch while you tinker with the inner bits… the hard-to-grab-hold-of parts of your life that don't fit neatly into words yet. You do the tinkering. They hold the light. You find your direction. They check in to be sure you choose where you go, based on your own sacred, loving, wholeness.

Bowl of Cereal CC0

Right now, you can experience spiritual companioning for free.

Students in the Cherry Hill Seminary Spiritual Direction Certification Program are looking for practice partners: people willing to receive free, confidential sessions with a trained, supervised practitioner. These are serious students doing serious work. They're learning to accompany people navigating earth-based, spiritually-independent, and multi-religious spiritual paths. And they need people like you to complete their training.

It costs you nothing. It might offer you more than you expect. 9 Appointments between now and February 2026 over Zoom.

Learn more about how Praxis works → https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/01/embark-on-spiritual-journey-with-free.html 

Meet the students and schedule a informational session → https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2026/03/is-your-care-squad-complete-for.html

Four People Who Might Be Exactly Who You've Been Looking For

Four Three People Who Might Be Exactly Who You've Been Looking For

I want to introduce you to some of my students.

They're in their second year of the Cherry Hill Seminary Spiritual Direction Certification Program, which means they've completed 170–200 hours of formation studying contemplative practice, multi-religious frameworks, justice-rooted practice, ethics, and the sacred art of deep listening. They've done their own inner work. They're receiving monthly supervision. And they're ready.

For April '26 to February '27, each of them is offering free, supervised spiritual companioning to a small number of seekers. Maybe one of them is exactly who you've been looking for.

---

Scott Waterhouse carries this definition of spiritual direction close: "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.

---

FULL, NO LONGER ACCEPTING INQUIRIES: 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."

---

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.

---

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."

---

Cedar, Helena, Mysti

All three of these companions are available now. You can read their full bios and book a get-to-know-you conversation, with two or three of them if you like, before you commit to anything.

👉 Meet Scott, Cedar, Helena, Mysti! and book a free exploratory session

Questions? Reach me at abeltaine@uuma.org

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy. — Rev. Amy

The Reading Before the Reading: Tarot, Presence & the Holy Cup

Drinking the Tea: Card Reading for Spiritual Companioning

In spiritual direction and card-based discernment alike, there's a profound shift when we stop treating the tools, Tarot, oracle, images, even the question itself, as the point, and begin to see them as companions. We move from “reading the leaves” to drinking the tea together.

This movement is not about interpretive authority or even structured layouts, though those have their place. This is about presence. The real magic often happens before the reading begins or without a formal reading at all. The act of sitting together, sipping metaphorical (or literal) tea, is as sacred as the moment of revelation. Maybe more.

In my own Tarot practice, and this extends to any form of contemplative card work, I find that a single card, drawn with attention and held in shared reflection, can be as rich and complete as an entire spread. There’s power in asking: Where do you feel this in your body? What word stands out? Which image unsettles or comforts you? A one-card pull becomes an invitation into lived wisdom, expanding insight.

Seekers often arrive hoping for answers. But what unfolds is a mirror of wisdom they already carry, just waiting for permission to be perceived.

The card helps hold the space, but it is the sipping, far more than the scrying, that builds trust and transformation.

It’s less about divining the future than about making room for the present. Less about providing solutions, and more about lighting gentle fires of self-knowing. What we offer is never a prescription: it’s a hot chocolate for the soul.

Sometimes, the reading happens before the reading. Sometimes, the ritual, the breath, the shuffle, the image, the shared pause, is what reveals the wisdom that’s already waiting. Tarot, like all sacred tools, is not the thing itself, it’s a companion The cards become image-bearing, question-holding, moment-making partner on the spiritual journey.

This post explores three movements that I’ve found especially helpful in using Tarot or oracle cards as part of spiritual direction. I've moved away from divination or prediction, and toward soul witnessing and presence. Each movement is optional. But each, if entered with care, has the power to shift the whole shape of the conversation.

Movement 1: Choosing a Card to Represent Yourself

Rather than starting with a card, layout, or interpretation, sometimes the most powerful opening is simply: Who do you feel like right now?

If using Tarot, invite the seeker to reflect on what is most alive within them at the moment. How would they describe themselves in terms of what is present for them right now? Perhaps they arrived at this moment with a burning question. Perhaps they have a gentle curiosity about their true self or path. Or perhaps they are grappling with meaning or connection.

Who Am I in this Moment?

To begin, invite the seeker into discernment about who they are in this moment. This is a contemplative act that can be deeply illuminating, sometimes even more so than the reading itself.

Before laying out a single card, we can pause and ask: who am I, right now? What archetype reflects my current soul-place? Am I beginning something, nurturing something, letting something go? Which element is stirring in me, water’s emotion, fire’s longing, earth’s groundedness, or air’s clarity? These questions guide us to choose a card that represents our current self, as a truth-telling

Steps and Insights

Ask if they’d like to choose a card to represent themselves (rather than drawing one at random). This gives them agency and insight.

1. For example, you might focus on the court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King) of the traditional Tarot deck. In this case, invite reflection on:

• What stage of life they feel they are in

Ask them to choose one that feels like it represents who they are in this moment. If using other cards, adjust the below model to fit those cards.

This isn’t about hierarchy or medieval identities. It’s about spiritual season and elemental resonance.

• Are they feeling tender, just beginning something, exploring (Page)?

• Are they in motion, carrying fire or change, pursuing a mission (Knight)?

• Are they sustaining something, consolidating or expanding an already established domain, working with sovereignty, or deepening a skilled role (King)?

• Are they witnessing, reflecting, integrating, aging or saging (Queen)?

2. Which element resonates for them in the moment: Earth (body/practicality), Air (mind/ideas), Water (emotion/connection), or Fire (spirit/inspiration)?

• Do they feel most connected to the clarity of Air, the warmth of Fire, the depth of Water, or the steadiness of Earth? If working with other types of cards, you might be looking at associations from other cultures or traditions. Earth/Air/Fire/Water is not the only system of suits/elements!

You might offer some descriptions of the suits and roles, but often, simply placing the cards in front of them and asking Which one feels like you? opens a profound moment of self-reflection.

The chosen card becomes a spiritual name tag, a gesture of self-recognition. The chosen card becomes an archetypal mirror, inviting the seeker to honor who they are and what energies are most present for them in the moment.

And from there, the reading, if one happens, has already begun.

---

Movement 2: Settling in and Meditative Shuffling

“Would it be all right if I just shuffled for a bit?”
Her voice trembled slightly, but her hands were steady on the cards.
“Yes,” I said, “you don’t have to draw anything unless you want to.”
She breathed. Sat back. Shuffled. It became rhythm as the sounds of cards tapped on the table, the shirring of paper slipping past paper, and then snapping into place, repeated. Ten minutes passed.
She never did draw. But something opened.

Shuffling as Prayer

Sometimes, we never draw a card.

The act of shuffling can be its own practice. I’ve watched seekers sink into the rhythm, not ready to pull and grateful for the silence. The shuffle becomes a centering bell, a way to move from anxious mind into contemplative body.

Settling into the practice can be as rich and revealing as the reading itself. The shuffle is more than just preparation, it is prayer, meditation, and alignment.

When we are on Zoom and I'm the one shuffling the cards, I accompany the shuffling with an invitation for them to enter into meditation. When you are in person and your seeker is open to shuffling you might offer an invitation like:

“Take as long as feels good with the shufflin.? Being with the cards in this way is an important part of the practice."

Encourage the seeker to let their hands move while their heart settles. This is an opportunity for them to feel into the sensations present in their body, the movements in their heart, mind, and soul. You can encourage them to notice shifts and emergences as they dwell with the question or topic.

Steps and Insights

During the time of shuffling you can offer quiet prompts:

• What are you noticing in your body right now?

• Is there a word or image you’re holding as you shuffle?

• What are you hoping the cards might help reflect or hold?

I often say: The reading begins with becoming present to what is.

• Invite them to breathe, feel into their body, and name (silently or aloud) what is true for them in the moment.

• Encourage visualization: what unseen forces are helping bring these cards into alignment with their truth?

• Trust that the process of sinking into presence is already a form of spiritual direction.

In the act of shuffling, breathing, and asking what is true for us right now, something aligns. The cards become almost secondary, their magic is in the way they give form to the insight we’ve already begun to claim.

---

Movement 3: Choosing a Layout

Card work becomes spiritual accompaniment through presence, consent, and shared reflection.

Offering different layouts helps the seeker clarify the scope of their question or the sense of their questing. 

Once you've settled into your self-knowing and drawn (or chosen) a card to reflect who you are, the next question is: what do you need help seeing? This is where the layout comes in, a structure to help you frame your curiosity, receive insight, or open to mystery.

Choice and Honing

Layouts are not maps showing us answers, instead they're invitations into deeper presence. Always, we begin with choice, offering the seeker options. Let the structure serve the question, not the other way around.

Steps and Insights

• Check in: Might a single card suffice today? Is the "Yes/No" layout resonating? Or the "Know Thyself" layout? Or perhaps a modified Celtic cross? Or perhaps no layout?

• Offer Options: Sometimes, a seeker is drawn to a complexly structured layout, like the Tree of Life. It offers a series of placements, splendor, strength, understanding, mercy, each one a prompt, a doorway.

• Get Creative: Would they like to pull a card today from one place that resonates, say, “wisdom” or “foundation”?

• Allow for Spaciousness: Perhaps for the Tree of Life layout it would serve to draw one card per session, letting each sphere speak across a season of spiritual direction?

• Let go: Or is today a day for simplicity, a single card, no layout, just presence?

Whichever layout is chosen, remember, it’s not necessary to “do the full spread.” In fact, this part of the discernment is asking the seeker what they need. 

Offering these options becomes part of the companioning itself. It honors agency and asks for consent. Practicing consent in the logistics of the reading, engenders a practice of consent in the soul-level work of being met and seen.

The deeper shift, always, is from seeking answers to seeking presence. And from presence, comes offering.

In this kind of practice, the cards do not offer a verdict or a prescription. They offer a mirror. A gentle reflection. A story waiting to be explored together. As companions, we are not “reading” for someone. As companions we are making room for what their soul already knows, and may be ready to say aloud. As always, the companion is discerning when and how much observation to offer. We avoid interpretation and offer comfort or invitation. We do not force the experience toward a goal of clarity, but offer company. We offer tissues, snacks, and meaning and connection for the soul, something warm and companionable to let the hidden truths come forward and sit at the table with us.

That’s the tea. Literally and metaphorically.

It’s not just about the cards, or the layout, or the leaves at the bottom of the cup. It’s about what happens when we sit together. When we sip and wonder and listen without fixing.

We don’t just read the tea leaves.

We drink the tea.

Try It: A Mini Practice

Next time you sit with someone (or with yourself) and a deck of cards, try this simplified flow. It contains the three movements, a reading, and a reminder:

1. Who Are You Today?
   Choose a card that feels like it reflects who you are right now. No need to explain. Just name it.

2. Settle & Shuffle.
   Spend 3–5 minutes in quiet. Let your hands shuffle. Feel into the sensations in your body, the movements in your heart, mind, and soul. Notice shifts and emergences as you dwell with the question or topic.

3. Choose Your Framework (or Layout)
   Sense what kind of structure might support you: a layout with multiple cards, a single card in response to a question, or simply silence.

4. Lay Down One (or more) card(s)
   If and when it feels right, draw a single card. Sit with it. Let the card lead you to a word, a memory, a gesture, a story. If you chose a layout, pull a second card and after spending time with that card, spend some time letting the cards talk to each other, and interact with the placement they are in. Repeat to fill the frame and then back up to take in the whole picture.

5. Sip, Don’t Rush.
   Treat this like a conversation with a wise friend, not a quiz with a right answer.

Coda: One Card, One Cup

You don’t need a ten-card Celtic Cross to be a deep companion to someone’s unfolding story. You need presence. A good question. Maybe an image. And a mug.

Whether you're drawing from Tarot, oracle decks, art cards, or simply from your own deep listening, this work is about mirroring someone into remembering themselves.

Sometimes you’ll draw a card.

Sometimes you’ll hold space.

Sometimes you’ll say, “Here. Have some tea.”

And every now and then, you’ll watch someone’s soul peek out, blinking, ready to speak.

Beloved, you are whole, holy and worthy,

Rev. Amy

---

For Further Exploration

• Greer, Mary K. Tarot for Your Self - A classic in the world of introspective Tarot work. Encourages personal insight and spiritual growth rather than prediction.
https://www.tarotpassages.com/marykgreer.htm

• Arrien, Angeles. The Tarot Handbook - Integrates cross-cultural archetypes, psychology, and spiritual development with the Tarot.
https://www.angelesarrien.com/tarot.html

• Pollack, Rachel. Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom - One of the deepest dives into the layers of Tarot meaning and spiritual reflection.
https://rachelpollack.com/tarot-books/ 

• Beltaine, Amy. Ethical Tarot Practice: An Evolving Perspective - Explores how tarot can support spiritual direction without slipping into prediction, projection, or appropriation. Offers practical tips and grounded reflection for ethical engagement.
https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-ethics-of-using-tarot-cards.html

• Matthews, Caitlín. Untold Tarot: The Lost Art of Reading Ancient Tarots - Offers insight into historical approaches to tarot as conversation and presence, not just divination. Grounded in Marseille decks and soulful inquiry.
https://caitlin-matthews.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-untold-tarot.html

• Beltaine, Amy. Ethical Spiritual Companioning: A Foundation of Trust and Integrity – A vital exploration of spiritual direction ethics, including consent, boundaries, and integrity. This underpins the compassionate, consent-based approach to card practice shared in Drinking the Tea.
https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/03/ethical-spiritual-companioning.html 

• Beltaine, Amy. The Heart of Spiritual Direction – An introductory guide to spiritual companioning, highlighting deep listening, sacred presence, and the relational space that sets the stage for contemplative practices like card work.
https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-heart-of-spiritual-direction.html

Finding Your Guide: Understanding Spiritual Companioning vs. Pastoral Care, Life Coaching, Counseling, and Mentorship

On our life's journey, we often seek guidance and support. But with so many support options available, it can be confusing to know which path to take. This blog post intends to clarify the distinctions between spiritual companioning, pastoral care, life coaching, counseling, and mentorship, helping you find the right fit for your unique self in this unique moment.

Spiritual Companioning: A Journey Together

Spiritual companions, sometimes called spiritual directors, travel alongside you on your spiritual journey. They provide a safe and confidential space for you to build your relationship with what you hold most meaningful, and to explore your faith, values, and inner life. Unlike therapists or counselors, spiritual companions don't offer advice or solutions. Instead, they ask insightful questions, listen deeply, and help you discern your own path. This process of self-discovery fosters clarity of value and purpose and a deeper connection to your spirituality.

Pastoral Care: Nurturing the Community

Pastoral care, offered by religious leaders, provides spiritual guidance and support within a specific religious tradition. Religious leaders may offer brief counseling, officiate at ceremonies, visit the sick, and provide emotional and spiritual support to members of their congregation. Pastoral care often focuses on applying religious teachings to life's challenges and fostering a sense of community within the faith tradition.

Life Coaching: Navigating Towards Goals

Life coaches focus on helping you navigate towards specific goals in your personal or professional life. They employ various techniques to help you identify your goals, develop action plans, overcome obstacles, and achieve greater fulfillment. Life coaching is a future-oriented approach that emphasizes personal empowerment and accountability.

Counseling: Addressing Mental and Emotional Well-being

Counselors and therapists are licensed mental health professionals trained to diagnose and treat mental health conditions. They use evidence-based therapy techniques to address issues like anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship problems. Counseling provides a safe space to explore your emotions, develop coping mechanisms, and improve your overall well-being.

https://www.instructables.com/Mending-and-Filling-Broken-Ceramic-and-Pottery/

Formator/Teacher/Mentor: Guiding Growth and Development

Formators, teachers, and mentors share their knowledge and experience to guide your development in a specific area. Formators are often found in religious contexts, providing instruction and guidance to those discerning a vocation or deepening their faith. Teachers impart knowledge and skills in a particular subject, while mentors offer personalized guidance and support as you navigate a specific field or life stage.

Choosing the Right Path:

The best path for you depends on your specific needs and goals. Here's a quick breakdown:

• Spiritual Companioning: For making meaning and exploring your spirituality, values, and inner life.
• Pastoral Care: For spiritual guidance within a specific religious tradition.
• Life Coaching: For navigating towards personal or professional goals.
• Counseling: For addressing mental and emotional skills and well-being.
• Formator/Teacher/Mentor: For acquiring knowledge and skills in a specific area.

Remember, these categories aren't always mutually exclusive. You might benefit from a combination of approaches at different points in your life.

https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-protect/tree-plant-care/how-to-plant-trees/

Finding Help and Resources:

• Spiritual companions: Many religious communities offer spiritual direction programs. You can also search online directories of spiritual directors.
• Pastoral care: Contact your local religious leader or place of worship.
• Life coaches: Look for certified life coaches through reputable organizations.
• Counselors: Search online directories of licensed therapists or counselors in your area.
• Formators/Teachers/Mentors: Look for programs or individuals within your field of interest.

The Takeaway:

By understanding the distinctions between these approaches, you can make an informed decision about the guidance you seek. Whether you're seeking meaning and purpose, navigating life's challenges, or pursuing personal growth, there's a path that can support you on your journey.

• If you feel called to explore the meaning and direction of your spirituality with a credentialed companion, visit https://shorturl.at/pr0ue or http://UUSDN.org to find a spiritual companion.

• If you are thinking of professional changes for the new year... consider the 2-year Spiritual Direction Certification program through Cherry Hill Seminary. There are still a few openings for our March 2026 cohort. This program trains spiritual companions for earth-based, Pagan, UU and multi-religious communities.
  If you've been considering a career transition into spiritual care, or want to add spiritual companioning to your existing ministry or helping profession, I'm holding discovery calls.
  The program is trauma-aware, justice-oriented, consent-based, and designed for working adults. 6 spots remaining, applications close February 15.
  Schedule a conversation: https://SpiritualTendingWithAmy.as.me/SpiDirInquiry
  Program details: https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/01/cherry-hill-spiritual-direction.html

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy,

Rev. Amy

Deep Listening: While You WAIT

Words shape the sacred space of spiritual direction, but so does silence. In a previous post, W.A.I.T.: Why Am I Talking, I explored how intentional restraint helps companions create spaciousness for Spirit. This post is the other side of that practice: what happens while you wait.

If W.A.I.T. teaches us when and why to speak, Deep Listening teaches us how and to what we attend.

Listening Beneath the Words

Deep listening is more than hearing. It is a contemplative posture, receiving another’s story with heart, body, and spirit. It invites us to notice tone, rhythm, silence, gesture, and what stirs within ourselves as we listen.

In Buddhist mindfulness, this is “listening with beginner’s mind.”
In the Christian contemplative tradition, Benedict calls it “listening with the ear of the heart.”
Indigenous and Pagan wisdom remind us to listen to wind, water, stone, and silence as teachers.
In Quaker practice, we “listen beneath the words” for the movement of Spirit.

Each path points toward the same truth: listening itself can be prayer.

Drawing by Hawthorne Post

Listening With Your Whole Self

When you are fully present, your body participates in the listening. Breath slows. Muscles soften. Attention widens.

Before speaking,  or even forming a question, pause to notice:

• What sensations arise as your explorer speaks?

• What emotions ripple through you?

• What happens in your breath and belly as silence deepens?

Your body’s wisdom helps you discern whether a response serves the seeker or your own comfort. This is deep listening in action: grounded, embodied awareness that keeps your voice aligned with sacred purpose.

The Threefold Attention

As you listen, you are attending on three levels:

1. To the Explorer: their words, emotions, and unfolding meaning.

2. To Yourself: your interior reactions, intuitions, and resonances.

3. To the Holy: the subtle movement of Spirit within and between you both.

Holding awareness of all three creates a living triangle of presence. None are ignored; all are received with reverence.

Practice: Listening Beneath the Words

During your next session, experiment with this contemplative practice:

1. Take three deep breaths before your explorer begins to speak.

2. As they share, silently repeat, “I am listening.”

3. Attend to your body as well as their words.

4. When you notice silence, let it expand instead of filling it.

5. Afterward, reflect:

   • What did I hear from my explorer?

   • What did I hear from within?

   • What did I hear from Spirit?

Listening this way is active, though it may appear still. It builds the inner spaciousness that W.A.I.T. protects. Together, these two practices, W.A.I.T. and Deep Listening, create a rhythm of speaking and silence, giving and receiving, that allows the sacred to emerge naturally.

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy.

— Rev. Amy

---

See Also These Posts

• W.A.I.T.: Why Am I Talking – Explores common pitfalls in spiritual direction and how to cultivate presence instead. https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/05/wait-common-pitfalls-in-spiritual.html

• Communication Theory in Spiritual Direction – A deeper dive into the psychological and spiritual foundations of listening and presence.
    https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2024/01/communication-theory-in-spiritual.html

• The Heart of Spiritual Direction – Introduces the foundations of spiritual direction, highlighting presence, sacred listening, and the call to honor seekers as whole and holy. https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-heart-of-spiritual-direction.html

• I-Thou: Pronouns and Invitation in Spiritual Companioning – Offers reflection on relational language and its impact in spiritual direction. https://abeltaine.blogspot.com/2025/05/i-thou-pronouns-and-invitation-in.html

---

For Further Exploration

• Oliveros, Pauline – Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice – A contemplative and creative approach to awareness through sound, silence, and presence.
https://deeplistening.rpi.edu

• Palmer, Parker – Let Your Life Speak – Explores how deep listening to self and Spirit reveals authentic vocation.
https://couragerenewal.org/let-your-life-speak

• Palmer, Parker – A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life – On creating “circles of trust” where deep listening, silence, and inner wisdom can emerge.
https://couragerenewal.org/a-hidden-wholeness

• May, Gerald G. – Care of Mind, Care of Spirit – A classic text on the director’s inner stance: silence, presence, and discernment.

• Barry, William A. & Connolly, William J. – The Practice of Spiritual Direction – Explores how silence and the director’s interior response open the way for divine encounter.

• Harrow, Judy – Spiritual Mentoring: A Pagan Guide – Grounded wisdom on compassionate language and presence within Pagan and earth-based traditions.

This Heart of Sacred Tending series is ©2025 Amy Beltaine, all rights reserved. You may freely reprint any blog post, website, or print resource. Simply include the following attribution, and if you print online, make the link at the end live: 

Article ©2025 Amy Beltaine, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. This article and hundreds of others, along with other free resources, are available at http://www.AmyBeltaine.info

 Where Do You Go for Soul Counsel?

Quick question: where do you go when your heart needs guidance, not your career or your relationships, but your actual soul? When the work of justice feels too heavy to carry alone?

Most of us have this figured out for everything else. Therapists for our minds. Doctors for our bodies. Financial advisors for our money. Personal trainers for our fitness goals. But when our spirits need tending? When we're wrestling with questions that keep us awake under the moon's light?

• Am I living my purpose?
• How do I stay rooted when the world feels chaotic?
• When my values conflict with tactics, how do I discern right action?
• What does the Sacred ask of me in this moment?

We're often left fumbling in the dark.

Sunset, Sandpiper Beach, Oregon, Photo by Hawthorne Post

The Three Wells of Wisdom

Spiritual companioning creates space to draw from all three wells of wisdom:

• Moon wisdom - the celestial knowledge of sacred teachings, ancient practices, and institutional wisdom that has guided seekers for millennia.
• Forest wisdom - the interconnected knowing that emerges from community, relationship, and our recognition that we don't walk this path alone.
• Bone wisdom - the deep inner knowing that lives in your body, your intuition, the truth that no institution can give you because it's already planted in your bones.

This is where justice makers come when activism burns them out but the calling remains. Where earth tenders seek discernment about their next right action. Where League of Women Voters organizers and  ministers and Pagans and all kinds of spiritual care providers learn to trust the deeper knowing that emerges when all three sources of wisdom are honored.

Because when you're connected to your source of meaning, really connected, you have strength and resources for the long work ahead that you simply can't access any other way.

Sacred Questions Need Sacred Space

Spirit tending isn't therapy, though it can be healing. It isn't advice-giving, though clarity often emerges. It isn't religious instruction, though it honors the sacred however you understand it.

It's companion work for the deep questions. The ones that matter most. The ones that shape how you show up in a world that desperately needs your gifts.

When the headlines break your heart daily, where do you go to tend that grief and find strength to continue? When you feel called to something but aren't sure what, who walks alongside you in the discernment? When your spiritual practice feels stale or your activism feels hollow, where do you go to reconnect with the fire that first lit your path?

Sacred questions need sacred space. And sacred space is what the work of spiritual direction provides.

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy,
Rev. Amy

Companioning soul-weary change-makers becoming rooted, aligned, and alive again.

Praxis and Embodied Experience: Learning by Living in Spiritual Tending

Living What We Learn in Spiritual Tending

Spiritual direction is not just something we think about—it’s something we live with our bodies, breath, and being. Both Ignatian spirituality and many Pagan traditions share this: a conviction that experience is sacred text.

Praxis refers to the integration of theory and experience. The Collins Dictionary defines it as “practice, as distinguished from theory; application or use, as of knowledge or skills.” In religious and educational settings, it means that we learn not just by thinking or reading, but by doing—by living—and then reflecting on that lived experience.

Praxis is a feedback loop: we live, reflect, adapt, and then live again with deeper wisdom. Spiritual companions don’t just talk about sacred presence—they practice it, noticing how it moves through their lives and those they accompany. Praxis is how spiritual companions grow.

In spiritual direction, this looks like noticing what arises in a session, praying or journaling about it, shifting how we hold space, and returning again—more aware, more grounded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way:

“The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life,—life passed through the fire of thought.”

I’d substitute “minister” for “preacher” here.

Note on language: I use the word minister here to mean someone called to sacred service or care. Spiritual Companioning is a ministry, whether or not one is ordained. If another word fits better in your tradition, use that!

CC0

Embodied Prayer: Moving from Performance to Presence

Our bodies are not incidental to our spiritual lives. They are the ground of spiritual life. Body prayer—whether through breath, movement, stillness, or dance, is one way to engage the Sacred through lived experience, rather than performance.

This might be as simple as bowing with gratitude each morning, walking slowly in silence, or using breath to center before a session.

Betsy Beckman, in Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction, writes:

“Whether we like it or not, we all have bodies. Our bodies carry emotions, memories, wounds, joys, and celebrations…

Nevertheless, as spiritual directors, we might ask the question, ‘Why do we dance?’

…To dance is to open ourselves to a deep wisdom that is beyond us, holding us, binding us together in intricate, energetic beauty.”

In this, Betsy echoes ancient traditions and modern somatic theology. The dance of life is not a metaphor, it’s a practice. A praxis.

Performance isn’t necessarily “bad”; in fact, sometimes we do need to “fake it 'til we make it” in many parts of our lives, and there are contexts where it is absolutely called for. However, the intention in SD work is presence.

The Korean dance troupe from Keimyung University perform the Drum Dance

Mysticism and Embodied Experience

So often, when thinking of mystical experience, people think of the solitary practitioner experiencing solitary one-ness with the divine. Mystical experience can be deeply individual, but it’s just as often communal, embodied, and even ecstatic. In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich invites us to remember the power of communitas:

“The self-loss that participants sought in ecstatic ritual was not through physical merger with another person but through a kind of spiritual merger with the group.”

“To dance is to say yes to the sensual nature of life, infused with the movement of the ever-creative Spirit.”

This form of mysticism is rooted in movement, music, ritual, and shared presence—not in escaping the body or intellect, but inhabiting both more deeply.

Mysticism, in this sense, isn’t only a mountaintop moment—it’s dancing with others at ritual, singing in circle, weeping with a seeker. It’s sacred communitas. For spiritual companions, this collective joy is not a distraction from the sacred—it is one of its forms.

 For spiritual companions, mysticism isn’t just an experience to admire in others, it’s a praxis we’re invited into ourselves.

Try It:

• Reflect on a time when you “learned by doing” in your spiritual life. What did that teach you about God/Sacred/Spirit/self?
• Try a simple body prayer: Stand or sit. Breathe deeply. Let your hands rise as you inhale and lower as you exhale. What arises as you move? What shifts in your awareness?
• Recall a time when you were part of a ritual, service, or gathering that felt mystical or alive with spirit. What was happening in your body? What connected you to the others?
• Consider a body prayer that includes some Robin Wall-Kimmerer readings/quotes (she write rhapsodically about sacred strawberries) and then eating a strawberry. 
• Or attend a Tea Ceremony.

Consider: Where might your own practice of spiritual direction need more embodiment, more experience, or more reflection?

As always, this work begins with the body, with presence, and with the courage to let experience teach us. Praxis isn’t something we arrive at—it’s something we live, moment by moment, in sacred relationship.

Beloved, you are whole, holy, and worthy.

Rev. Amy