Ok, Curious Hearts. It’s time.

We can’t just talk about practice. We can’t only read about it, study, or think about it.

Thinking is great, but it has never brought me the same deep peace that practice does.

Because I know how hard it can be to just sit down and do it, these practice episodes are here to keep us all honest.

Today’s practice is one of the most simple - but difficult - practices I know. And that’s sitting still.

We live in a world that favors movement, activity, and is always expecting us to produce something. Stillness doesn’t make money, and we literally have nothing to show for it.

Practicing stillness is radical, and essential, in a world on fire.

In this episode, I’ll talk about some of the things that get in the way, why stillness is important, and there’s a 10 minute guided practice that starts about the 6:00 minute mark.

So don’t just do something: Sit there!

00:00 Introduction and Purpose

00:59 The Importance of Stillness

04:01 Preparing for Stillness

06:30 Guided Stillness Practice

15:33 Reflections on Stillness

18:41 Challenges and Overcoming Resistance

23:27 Benefits of Stillness

26:46 Practical Applications

28:37 Conclusion and Encouragement

Welcome back, Curious Hearts.

Renee Blanchard is so smart, wise, and funny. If you knew her from Church Alley Coffee, the deeply soulful little shop she ran for over a decade in New Orleans, you know she’s a natural hostess. But you might not know about her incredibly deep spiritual life.

She’s navigating a brave transition right now — after going back to school in her 40s, she’s closed her business, is working in a whole new field. Her spiritual connection has been at the heart of all of it.

Together, we talk about:

💫 Growing up as a south Louisiana Catholic-- including TV Church 🌱 Nature as sacred, and environmentalism as a path of spiritual service 🔥 What it means to take courageous action for your values (including the time Renee climbed a smokestack and got arrested under the Patriot Act!) 🌀 Spiritual principles like uncertainty, optimism, grace, and paradox 🧘‍♀️ Daily practices like prayer, presence, and letting go that help us stay grounded even when we don’t know what’s next

This conversation is rich, honest, and full of heart. And hilarious. It’s about how we keep walking forward when we can’t see the whole path—and how we do it with faith, curiosity, and compassion.

📸 Follow Renee on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetjosephinest/ 🥗 Connect with Renee about nutrition: https://www.churchalley.store/blog 🎧 Listen to Making Good, her podcast: https://churchalleycoffeebar.podbean.com/

We’ve been sold the myth that time moves in a straight line—that if we just keep going, we’ll eventually “get there.” But anyone who’s done real healing work, grieved deeply, practiced anything with devotion, or simply paid attention knows that’s not how it works.

I’m excited to share this episode — its the first of the spiritual principles. It’s foundational, because it’s underneath everything we do: time. Our existence is not a straight line forward, it’s cyclical. I share how this shows up in nature, in our own lives, and in spiritual traditions across the world. You'll hear a story about grief and Mardi Gras, some thoughts on real time vs. invented time, and why returning to a moment isn’t a failure—it’s a deepening.

May this episode help you notice what season you're in, and remind you that there's no such thing as being behind.

00:00 Introduction & Welcome

00:43 Foundational Spiritual Principle: Time

02:04 Understanding Cyclical Time

04:15 Real Time vs. Invented Time

09:23 Mardi Gras: A Cyclical Experience

15:38 The Spiritual Significance of Time

26:22 Practical Applications and Reflections

40:58 Conclusion and Blessings

Practice is the non-negotiable anchor and safety net to help us survive this world on fire.

In this episode I share a little of my own history of practice, what elements make up a spiritual practice, and why it is such an essential lifeline.

Have any insights that come up during the episode? Let me know — comment below, or send me a message.

 I am really excited to share with you my first interview episode today with Becca Rich. Becca and I have known each other for many years, and have watched each other grow personally and spiritually along the way. Her wisdom is truly beyond her years.

She works as a holistic time coach and she really helps people to understand the way that our external understanding of time really gets in the way of what is the most important to us. What is our soul's calling?

So I was really expecting in a lot of ways our conversation to talk about time. I think that our relation to time—and time being cyclical rather than some linear notion like that, having those side by side, almost like a spiral, right? Moving forward, like a sine curve—is one of the core spiritual principles, right?

I think having a relationship with time that is cyclical rather than singular, rather than linear, is really profound in how we can experience the world. So I was really expecting that to be what naturally came out of my conversation with Becca—and I am so glad I was wrong.

We had this really beautiful sweeping conversation about the paradox between having a really deep connection to our personal spiritual world and how that allows us to then participate in the material world. Like, disconnecting from the material world is required for us to have a deep spiritual experience. And once we have that deep spiritual grounding, then we can reenter—reengage—with the material world in a more meaningful, less stressful way.

So anyway—I love Becca. I loved this conversation. I hope that you do too.

If you are interested in working with Becca, I highly recommend it—if you have your own challenges around time and/or if you want to support other people in navigating their time. I have done Becca's holistic time management training and I love to use it with my clients, helping them to understand that sometimes our relationship to time really is based on scarcity—and it doesn't have to be that way.

I hope that you enjoy this conversation. And afterwards, I hope that you have a really wholehearted day.

Enjoy!

Welcome Curious Hearts! This is the inaugural episode of "Curious Hearts: Making Meaning in a World on Fire". I created this podcast out of a deep curiosity I have about non-traditional spiritual journeys, and the everyday spiritual practices that help us get through the day. In this episode, I share a little about my intentions for the podcast, and my own spiritual life. Have Questions? Want to suggest a future guest? (Maybe you?) Shoot me an email at [email protected].

The audio companion of the story of Annie & Peter Goetzen.