Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, I return after almost a 6 week break to explore a spiritual pain point: the idea that the body and the soul are separated and at war with each other. I share some details with my long journey with Hashimoto's and personal spiritual path and notice how I spent many years trying to diminish, dismiss, and tame my body so that it couldn't cause "problems" for me and I could be "good".

I trace this theology/philosophy back to Pluto's concept of the Forms where he posits that the body is a prison for the soul and that the soul is hindered, even tainted by the possible corruption the body can evoke. I also look at how this shows up in some of my Christian roots and how the my Hashimoto's helped me deconstruct from this pattern of oppressing the body to elevate or protect the soul.

Instead, I explore the sense of union and gateway I experience through my body now, its sacred presence and invitation even through illness, conflicting emotions, etc. and talk about my early days with Celtic Spirituality and Ignatian Spirituality helped me stop waging a war between body and soul.

This is a tender, gentle, kind of slowly paced podcast filled with deep personal soul stories, body stories, and inner reflections. I offer it in hope that it helps you frame your own relationship between your humanity and your soul.

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, I open up about some of my journey with chronic illness and a new invitation I'm receiving about how to engage with it. I explore the concept of becoming a friend to oneself by looking at the ancient storytelling concept of following your fear--something that sounds very different from following your heart, but is actually a deep expression of that same thing.

I also explore what it means to become friends with an aspect of yourself that is frightening, intimidating, or just not wanted at all by listening to the wisdom of feral animals...cats in particular.

If there's something you're struggling to come to terms with in your life, or something you feel like you simply must improve on or eliminate, but the very effort of that is draining your love and inner capacity to show up for yourself and the world, I believe you'll find some resonance here (or at least some invitational questions to travel with).

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, I share a real-time example of my own inner listening and reflection practice. So often, I think these practices feel stodgy or dogmatic or ideological, like we have to do them the "right" way or else. In my experience, that's just old traditions and my fear and wounding talking. In every day life doing this practice, the examen truly arrives as a friend with unconditional support and acceptance.

This practice feels alive to me, like it has its own energy and spirit to it. When I say it bounded out the door after me when I was out for a walk and really worn down by heavy emotions, concerns, and worries, I mean it. The practice felt like a mystical wind, a spiritual friend that hustled after me when I stumbled/stormed out the door, came alongside me, and gently started to ask me questions to help me process and cope.

The practice always feels this loving to me, but I sometimes forget that when we are in relationship with Spirit and with our practices, we can receive them as much as we can go to them. It's not just about sitting down and committing to a practice. It's also about being willing to let the practice find you, come to you, and then open up to its invitations when it does.

We don't listen within and reflect to connect to ourselves and Spirit because it makes us "good". We do it because it helps us cope with our inner and outer worlds. We do it because it's a friendship, something that shows up for us as we show up for it. An ongoing spiritual practice is truly a friend in this way. And I'm sharing this real life experience of it in case it helps you notice how Love, how Spirit, how the Divine comes alongside you, how your own practices come to you when they know you need supportive love.

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, we talk about FOMO (fear of missing out) and also jealousy, imposter syndrome, and feeling like we've missed our boat. We explore these by first noticing seeds and sparks within us, those active longings and desires that stir within our being, but sometimes seem really vague. We want to do *something*, we feel an urge to create, to make, to risk...but we aren't sure exactly what that would look like or where to start.

And then we admit that we can sometimes notice other people's work and expressions in life and overlook any resonance and jump right to jealousy or fomo. We notice how quickly we can douse our own inner sparks and seeds and conclude that someone else got to the manifested idea better than we did. Or maybe they simply did it faster. And then we tend to just feel awful.

But what if the point is not to be the first at something, be the best, or be the most innovative..or the *only* one doing something? What if that flies in the face of the beautiful diversity our universe is created (and is creating) with? What if iteration is naturally gorgeous? And what if what we're resonating with outside of ourselves is not a sign of competition, but an invitation for us to join the party so to speak? What if it's resonance, encouragement, and a midwife that helps us birth our own sparks + seeds in the world?

What would it feel like if we noticed something stirring in us, saw someone or something out the world doing something similar and felt encouragement and a sense of belonging from that rather than a sign we were too late with our ideas?

With seriousness and silliness, we let roses, soup, and cookies lead the way on this new outlook. And we visit with the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his lovely, but infuriating essay of Self Reliance as friend and foil for our discernment.

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, I share about a conversation with a friend where we wondered whether we can trust our wants. Are they just appetites we need to regard with caution? Are they the beginning of something glorious? Are they selfish? What if we were told our wants were sinful or futile and pointless? How do we embody our wants and desires and enter into relationship with them before passing judgment on whether they're trustworthy? (Especially if we have past experiences that have "proven" that our wants only lead to trouble.)

Weirdly, I'm getting some breathing space and insight around these questions from a scene in the movie, Talledega Nights. I'm not saying it's a bastion of wisdom, but I honestly hear some living wisdom when the movie asks whether it's true that if "you're not first, you're last".

Since Imbolc is approaching (the time we mark that we're about 75% of the way through winter), we have another (more beautiful?) invitation from the earth and Celtic Spirituality to notice the earth thawing and seeds rumbling within. It feels like we are right on time to be asking if we can trust these rumblings.

I mention an online gathering where we will be doing an Imbolc Examen. You can sign up for the newsletter here to learn more about it or email me directly at [email protected]

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, I give you a snapshot of how I approach the new year and how it doesn't yet involve a word of the year, resolutions, goals, or even a clear vision. After years of an inner listening and reflection practice, I've learned that the winter-ness of January supersedes the cultural push of a fresh start. All this talk of new year, new you, doesn't resonate with me in this season. The cultural approach to the new year is full of initiating and instigating energy which is the opposite of the seasonal invitation of winter which is liminal, in-between, hibernating, resting, dreaming, and preparing.

I share what this looks like in real life and some of what I've learned from my not-yet-completed annual reflection practice (the examen). I hope this offers you permission and encouragement to listen within to your own seasonal needs and try to align your day to day life with what you have the energy and capacity for.

This doesn't mean you're behind! It means you're living in your own integrity and honoring your own humanity...which is a really beautiful and powerful thing to do.

If you'd like to learn more about the examen practice I focus on and receive the illustrated annual reflection journal for 2023 (which looks ahead to 2024), please join my newsletter.

The link is here:

www.jencobbleworks.com/free

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, we talk about the winter solstice and its invitation to be still and to notice the restlessness within us, the stillness of what persists in our life that we wish would be over or would hurry up.

And from this dual approach to stillness, we're invited into a deeper stillness within, a kind of sacred sanctuary we hold in our beings as well as a feeling of being held in the womb of Spirit.

The winter light is lean and delicate. It is just over the horizon rather than overpoweringly overhead. In this image of winter light, we are invited to consider the Light of the World with similar vulnerability. Jesus is enfleshed, embodied, and incarnated as a babe: vulnerable, tender, dependent, and needing care, compassion, nourishment, and love.

What would it be like if we turned to our inner light as well as our most vulnerable parts of ourselves and treated them the same way we would treat a babe? What would we grow up to be if we met our innermost tender parts, the parts that STILL haven't grown up or healed, the parts we often get frustrated and harsh with, with ongoing love and compassion? What if the image of the Light of the World being vulnerable and fragile is just as sacred and powerful as the Light of the World being mighty? How would this seeing the Light in this new, thin winter light offer us an opportunity of greater self-love and love of others?

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, we look at the sacred invitation of letting our imagination run away with us. When we are focused on goals and outcomes, we can see imagination as something that distracts us. We can even suggest that imagination wrongly tempts us! But many spiritual practices are rooted in imagination and letting ourselves be led by it.

When we dream and explore from the back of imagination, we stretch our ability to hold difference and diverse possibility within ourselves. We make room for what at first glance feels impossible or unfathomable. When we consider ourselves seed carriers, light bearers, and sacred vessels, we can then manifest, birth, express, and share these wild, new hopes within us in service to our shared humanity and community.

In other words: imagination helps us cultivate possibilities within that become possibilities of peace and inclusion for the world we share.

The modern world is different than the ancient world as it approaches imagination. There is an animus within our ability to create and wonder that the ancient world recognized that sometimes gets squashed by forces of productivity and ideology now.

This week's episode focuses on these questions: How can we cultivate a tangible peace outside of if we cannot make room to dream about it within us? And how can we tolerate and love the humanity of others if own compassion within is not stretched by a creativity beyond our fears within?

Link to my shop in case you are still doing some holiday shopping is here:

www.etsy.com/shop/CobbleWorks

and the link to my newsletter is here:

www.jencobbleworks.com/free

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every few weeks, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

In this week's episode, I share a way I've been trying to stay connected to love ones who aren't around as much anymore. We talk about all the little things our days hold, all the ways we connect with each other, ourselves, and the Sacred: small conversations, reports on nothing in particular, song lyrics that are stuck in our head. On the surface, none of this is important or has meaning, but beneath and between this ordinary sharing, is a fully formed life, a sacred self and ground where we grow and reach out to others.

The examen is nothing more than a time to listen to these little conversations. It is a vessel that holds the tiny things that seem so inconsequential, but together form our heart, soul, and sense of self, even our belonging in the world.

Welcome to Everything Speaks if You Listen with Jen CobbleWorks where we befriend our humanity and the Sacred through story, soul questions, and every day life.

I'm Jen Cobble Willhoite, a contemplative storyteller, spiritual tool designer, and life-long soul seeker. My path is formed and framed by questions more than answers. I'm more comfortable wondering and wandering about things spiritual than I am in ideology, religion, or dogma.

My soul language and connection with Spirit is primarily grounded in Celtic Spirituality, science, nature, seasonal cycles, myth, folklore, and stories of all kinds. I do have roots in progressive Christianity that I sometimes speak from. My tap root, though, is ordinary life. I believe enlightenment is rhythmic, unfolding, and found in our everyday experiences and selves. I also offer tools and courses on my modern interpretation of the examen: a daily ritual of looking back, looking within, and looking ahead to cultivate a rapport with your inner wisdom and the Sacred as you understand it.

Every week, I share an episode from my own spiritual explorations, offering invitations for you to explore these themes on your own. Thanks for journeying with me!

I am excited to welcome my friend and Iona soul guide, Mary DeJong, on today's podcast. Today, we will be talking about how Story connects us to the earth, ourselves, and each other as an expression and vehicle of the sacred. She will gift us with telling the Inuit story of Fox Woman Dreaming, a beautiful, but challenging story about belonging to self and each other.

*Show note: Fox Woman Dreaming contains an expletive within its story. This is important for the tone of what is being shared.

Mary is a spiritual ecologist, ecotheologian, wild soul guide, urban naturalist, and practitioner and guide of place-based pilgrimage. She specializes in the spiritual companionship of "rewilding" and instructs spiritual directors and companions through Spiritual Directors International and One Spirit Learning Alliance.

Mary facilitates retreats and pilgrimages in the Pacific Northwest and in Iona, Scotland that strengthen the unique and mystical interconnection of participants, the sacred, and the natural world. She has studied and practiced within the Celtic Christian spiritual tradition, her own maternal line heritage, for over twenty years, and is influenced by the lives of Celtic saints, and the lands that guided them.

She holds a post-Heroic Journey framework that calls us to emerge as poets and prophets, instead of heros, an applied mythological worldview that is connected to her training within mythology and the emerging field of ecopyschology. Mary's theoretical and praxis focus within deep ecology, eco-spirituality, ecotheology, ecopsychology and specialization in Thomas Berry's Universe Story delves into why place matters, the sacramentality of creation, and how together this informs the development of our ecological self. Mary terms this work “sacred eco-awakening” and sees this as a critical and holy endeavor as it allows us to come to grievous terms of our human history and to posture ourselves once again side-by-side with the whole of creation.

Find out more about Mary's work here:

Waymarkers Iona Pilgrimage: https://www.waymarkers.net/iona-pilgrimage

Rewilding Retreats (day retreats and April 2024 weekend long in the Cascade Mountains:

https://www.waymarkers.net/rewildingretreats

https://www.waymarkers.net/cascade-mountains-rewilding-retreat

Wild Seasons: https://www.waymarkers.net/wild-seasons

You can also find Mary on Instagram @waymarkers