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 start with pilgrimage (again) with a focus on the gatekeeping and resistance that comes after we've said, "Yes, I wanna do this. I wanna take a risk towards transformation!" I share a personal story of my own resistance (do we call it a nightmare or a haunting? Maybe.) against my upcoming pilgrimage to Iona, Scotland. And from this place of personal resistance, we start to name the elemental feelings that we all have that are also harder to accept or manage. These include: overwhelming creativity, deep frustration, anger, and feeling extremely restless/unsettled.

To explore these fiery elements of our humanity, we move to a metaphor that was gifted me in meditation and prayer: God of the Forge. This is an image that overlaps the image of the Sacred Heart, a spiritual inner-forge. The forge gives us space to intentionally work with our fire as well as more stubborn and immovable parts of ourselves, the "iron" that needs to be softened, tempered, and shaped. I hope to travel with this imagery more in the future, so this is just the beginning! But it is a surprising gift from Spirit not to be told to "calm down", but to remain in one's heat, one's passion, one's creativity, maybe even in one's anger and let those human experiences both shape and be shaped into something wholly new. It is a decidedly creative and expansive and compassionate take on intense emotions that I could not have predicted. I hope it opens inner doors for you!

I also share about and weave in my new Summer Soul-stice mini course that is just now launching. This is a beautiful time to welcome the heat and warmth of the sun as well as our own. It's a beautiful time to take the sun's pause and make it our own so that we can look back on the last 6 months and see how we have grown and celebrate that. It's $30 and if you use the coupon code: SHINEON you can receive 20% off. The link to know more about this is below:

https://cobbleworks.teachable.com/p/loveandhopesummersoulstice

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 what I call Porch Rhythms, a metaphor to welcome embodied liminality or how to give yourself space and time when you are in the middle of a transition. Just like a porch is neither in the house or totally outside of it, we have ways we occupy and honor seasonal transformations. For this episode, we look at some of the ordinary "interruptions" we experience, like: holidays, time set aside for vacation or retreat, or milestones such as graduations. I use my family's visit and departure as a personal example of how we embody these normal, yet in-between times in our lives by anticipating them and then letting the goodbye linger after they're done. The routine of getting back to "normal" seems to involve days of joy and sadness, something our souls and humanity want us to feel and process.

If you've ever had to "come down" after vacation, or felt the tears show up days after you parted from someone,

If you've ever found yourself moving slowly and feeling a bit tender around a "basic" birthday or other event,

If you've noticed you're wiped out emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically even after you've had loads of fun and connection with others, I think you'll see yourself in this episode. I hope it offers you encouragement to take buffering time before and after such experiences to let yourself anticipate and integrate everything.

It's this kind of reaching out, in ordinary ways, to others and also to ourselves that feels like one of our spiritual invitations right now. We aren't building cathedrals anymore. We're trying to find ourselves, find each other, and learn how to hold on and connect with space, dignity, and grace.

If you'd like to join my newsletter where we talk about spiritual and human stuff like this all the time, the link is below. You'll receive a free illustrated mini book on reflection and inner listening when you do.

www.jencobbleworks.com/free

If you're looking for inspirational, down-to-earth art, stories, and hands-on tools for inner listening, check out my shop below:

www.etsy.com/shop/CobbleWorks

Get ready for something new! I'll be hosting a mini reflection course on the Summer Solstice very soon. I can't wait to tell you about it.

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 explore sacred circles, our personal communion of saints, a kind of soul-centered found family of people, animals, objects, and stories that not only help to define us, but help to anchor us and connect us with our community and the wider universe. I talk about how my dad and I agreed to be reincarnated as otters if that's an option, how working in the garden and using every day tools like a saw connect us to all of those who worked the soil before us and made the saw we now hold in our hands. In short, we discuss how we are invited to honor the great web of life, in its joy and heartache, by seeing people, beings, and things not as singularities, but members of a kin-dom, a dynamic community creation.

When we name the communal truth of existence, we get to experience anchoring and grounding as well as transformational change. It is a profound antidote to loneliness and invitation to belonging that does not ask us to diminish or erase our own uniqueness, but to respect it and respect the same in others.

We frame this spiritual community/found-family through anam cara which means "soul friend" and seek anam cara with the living, the beloved dead, the known and unknown in our life.

I mention two books in this episode and want to give you the links to them:

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille Dungy

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue

As always, I invite you to join me over at my newsletter and receive an illustrated mini book on the examen practice where we also share thoughts, stories, comics, and art on the many ways we seek connection to humanity and the divine. The link to that 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 wrap up our mini series on the ritual practice of inner listening and self-reflection known as the examen. It is not traditional, but I share with you how I was taught to end this practice and how I now teach others to end it, which is to return to the beginning: gratitude. Stopping where we start helps us notice the spiral-like nature of growth and life. When we intentionally end as we began, we acknowledge that we have gone through *something*. We've grown, we've changed, we've experienced events, insights, and transformations. We are not who and where we were. And yet, we are in some ways, the same. To honor this both/and nature of life, growth, and spiritual journeying, we end our practice with the same step we started it with.

This week, we also talk about the "hidden step" of the examen, the thing that was baked in, but not directly named in the rhythm. In my own interpretation of this practice, I name this necessary and expected step which is to take action, to live (as best as we can) in alignment with what we just reflected on. Basically, the very last step of our internal reflection and spiritual listening to the Sacred is to go walk our talk. We do this knowing that we will not get things right on a regular basis, but we also do this with a spirit of striving and community connection. We are not floating heads with ideas to just constantly think about. We are not souls without bodies. We are not theories and no lived experience. We are not islands unconnected to others and the world. It is not even clear if "right" is what the Sacred is inviting us into so much as its deeper relationship with other human beings and creatures on this earth. Because it is all connected and we are social beings alive and embodied in this universe. Therefore, our action is invited and expected everyday lest our contemplation devolves only into theory.

Because the examen ritual is spiral-like and repetitive, we are constantly invited to reflect on our action, let our reflection inform new action, and then reflect again. The recurrent, seasonal aspect of this ritual is one of its greatest gifts invoking forgiveness, compassion, and community.

Here are the links I mentioned for the Step-by-Step Examen Cards in this episode as well as the newsletter with the free illustrated book, comics, and art.

www.etsy.com/shop/CobbleWorks

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, we look at two aspects of what it means to look ahead and set intentions. We consider goal setting and ticking off things from our to-do list as a way to nourish and provision ourselves for what's coming up. But we also consider how this focus on getting things done can suppress our ability and willingness to hear the wild and untamed voice of Spirit calling out to us, and inviting us to adventure something wholly new.

We talk about how scary and vulnerable it can feel to get our hopes up when we risk dreaming big and stepping into the unknown and out of our comfort zone. We talk about how Spirit, in its wild and untamed form, will always ask us to dream and live beyond our fear.

If you're interested in the free, illustrated mini book on the examen that I mention in the podcast, you can find it here:

www.jencobbleworks.com/free

This will also connect you to my newsletter which comes out about twice a month and is filled with community and resources for your spiritual exploration and wondering.

If you're interested in the small group work around the examen, please email me directly at: [email protected]. I'd love to hear if this interests you!

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 my interpretation of what it means to mend and tend to our relationships. We discuss not only the important work of apology and changed behavior, and personal accountability, but new interpretations of what amend-making means. We consider our relationships as gardens where resources get drained from real world experience and every day life, and how amending those relationships might involve resourcing them in new ways. Is there something we can add to our relationships with others or ourselves that got lost along the way?

We also explore the idea of personal boundaries as it relates to the permeability of a cell wall. Can we consider that boundaries change and that they give us shape based on our current needs?

Fundamentally, we also talk about the fact that each of us is an expression of Love. The opportunity to make amends and to enter into repair work with ourselves and others is not about punishing blame and shame. It is an opportunity born from Love to let us reconnect and make whole again. It is a gift. We all fall apart sometimes. We all experience brokenness. And we all get to enter, individually, and collectively, a wonderful opportunity to re-memeber ourselves.

I think you'll find this episode deeply compassionate and nuanced while also being direct. I hope you find it to be a kind of spiritual connective tissue.

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 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!

www.jencobbleworks.com

IG @cobbleworks

www.etsy.com/shop/CobbleWorks

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 sink into the practice and the belly of our being in Step 3 of the examen ritual. We talk about listening beneath the surface of our day and our being by letting moments of deep connection and disconnection find us, and then asking ourselves and Spirit what wisdom and insight might want to be shared through these lenses.

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 continue our exploration of the examen practice, a daily ritual of self-reflection and inner listening rooted in our everyday experience. This is a pragmatic spiritual practice I've relied on for over 10 years. It helps me make decisions that align with my true self, it helps me listen to my own inner wisdom and differentiate it from my inner critic or "old tapes". It helps me befriend myself as I am while also helping me grow. This is a practice that goes beyond self-love and a growth mindset because it also asks us to welcome the Sacred into our daily conversation ritual. It doesn't require you to be religious or to even have a super developed sense of who or what the Sacred even is. It just leaves space for something that lives within us and is also bigger than us to speak to and through our lives. As we practice the examen over time, we get to know the voice of the Sacred for ourselves and come into our own unique relationship with it (which may or may not look like anyone else's relationship).

The second step of the examen practice is about looking back on your day and noticing what happened and how you felt about it. I share that when you do this, you dignify your experiences and feelings as well as understand more clearly how vast your days are. A lot happens to you in a day. A lot happens around you in a day. A lot happens within you in a day. This step asks you to give attention and respect to these facts. In doing so, you may discover parts of yourself that have been left behind or forgotten about and so, your reflection becomes not just remembering what happened and how you felt, but a kind of re-membering, a re-joining and reintegration of yourself.

Lots to share and discuss! Can't wait to hear your thoughts on what it means to look back to find yourself and your path.

If you'd like to learn more about my work and my approach to this daily ritual of soul listening, you can download a free, illustrated mini book when you join my newsletter. Just visit: jencobbleworks.com/free

...or follow me on Instagram where the conversation is ongoing daily.

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 explore step 1 of the examen more deeply and broadly. We look at gratitude and how it is more expansive than a list of what is good in our lives. It is actually a form of mutual seeing, where we begin to notice the unique ways Spirit reaches out to us and the unique ways we are enlivened by the world.

Additionally, gratitude helps us get to know ourselves. We tell the truth about who we are and what matters to us when we name things we cherish and hold dear in our lives.

I share with you a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins and talk about how he, like me (and maybe you too?) at one time thought that it was a good idea to sacrifice what he loves in order to be more spiritual. He changed his mind about that and I did too. It altered my spiritual path and let me grow to know myself and Spirit with more trust when I stopped this notion of false sacrifice and let myself truly embrace what brought me alive.

This is one of my favorite podcasts so far! I truly hope this new way of looking at gratitude, as a way where we can let ourselves enter into relationship more easily and let ourselves see and be seen (by ourselves and Spirit) opens doors within you and around you. It was rather revolutionary for me, personally.

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 how much I need affirmations and words of assurance, especially when I feel a sense of hopelessness and despair. But the fact is, I can't receive the gift of affirmations until I actually feel my hopelessness and despair and listen to what wisdom it might be offering me. Affirmation isn't helpful if it bypasses our human experience in the name of spirituality or goodness.

Yet, we aren't meant to live in nothing but sadness and overwhelm. So, how does a person feel their pain and suffering, and move with it or past it honestly?

In my experience, two words help me honor what hurts in life while leaving a foot in the door for hope and possibility. They are: "I wonder...". When I use these words, I get to admit my true feelings while gently interrogating and questioning whether these feelings tell the whole story of reality.

Join me as I share how wonder creates space for the Sacred to meet us where we are, letting the work of affirmation take root when the time is right.

This is a shorter podcast because I want to invite you into your own pragmatic, spiritual practice of wonder. In the closing minutes, I read through a series of 10-13 I Wonder statements from my I Wonder Card Deck with pauses in between for you to notice what resonates with your own soul and humanity.

I find that these "wonder" statements can be provocative and even challenging, but they always open a wider horizon beyond my fear. I hope they serve you with the same compassion.

If you'd like to see the I Wonder Deck or learn more about it, you can check it out here: www.etsy.com/shop/CobbleWorks

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!