Michal Tolk — Cries in the Wilderness

Michal Tolk, author of Cries in the Wilderness and convener of the Incarnate course, joins Jacob Kishere on SENSESPACE podcast for a wide-ranging conversation about mystical Christianity, somatic healing, church community, the sacred structure of intimacy, and the relationship between men and women.

Jesus & the Body as Doorway

The conversation opens with Michal’s account of a visceral encounter with Jesus during a somatic experiencing session in early 2024 — an experience so intense she couldn’t eat or sleep for days, and which prompted major life changes: ending a long relationship, going on pilgrimage, and beginning to wear a head covering. Both hosts trace their encounters with Christ to moments of going deeply into the body — through somatic work, plant medicine, or collective trauma — and explore what sensitivity of soul is required for Christ to emerge in one’s own psyche.

Crying Out Before GodDrawing on the title of Michal’s ‘Cries in the Wilderness’, the conversation explores what it means to come into true intimacy with one’s own experience—exploring the polarity between crying as weeping and crying as a prophetic declaration.

Christ and Collective Trauma Healing Jacob describes how the emergence of Christ in his awareness was co-occurrent with his connecting more deeply into the collective trauma field of the holocaust while living in Germany—and specifically after the book ‘Ordinary Men’. These collective shadows past and present could only brought to some resolution through the Christ .

Church, Mysticism & the Middle BandMichal shares her journey of ‘church hopping’ after meeting her husband Daniel Thorson, eventually landing in a mystical church community near Asheville. Jacob shares how while he’s been able to integrate into the Spanish Catholic mass, the idea of church-hopping presents as an extremely uncomfortable proposition. Michal describes how exploring different communities when coming from a place of deep grounding in God can be very ‘low stakes’.

Incarnation, Marriage & the Cosmic BreakdownThe conversation moves into the relationship between men and women, exploring how the breakdown of marriage tracks with a deeper break with God — what Michal names the “cosmic breakdown of the marriage structure.”

Michal talks about how in meeting her partner, they both shared an understanding of marriage as fundamentally important.

This conversation is part of Christianity Beyond Itself a series of dialogues fostering the evolution of Christianity at its intersection with indigenous plant medicine, philosophy and the anthropocene.

Michal Tolk is the author of Cries in the Wilderness. She offers 1-1 work weaving somatic healing, inner inquiry, and spiritual guidance—and also offers this in a Christ-centred container.

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