Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). My book is out now, Talking to Trees: A Journey into Soul. It chronicles my exploration of the soulful terrain on the far side of conventional religion, where talking to trees, communing with the dead, and summoning our spirit guides is the new normal. To give you a taste of the book, I am sharing with you the chapter from which the book draws its title. Talking to trees, it would seem, is no different...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). Six years ago, when I retired from my ministry and left the church, I began chronicling my exploration of the soulful terrain on the far side of conventional religion. It was an extraordinary landscape and my experiences there began fulfilling many of the unforgotten longings of my heart. I felt like I was coming home. To capture that journey, believing others might be encouraged in their exploration to hear...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). As we ponder and discern where Life is calling us, it is useful, and sometimes inspirational, to see how someone else has heard the call. Sandy Wiggins established himself as a business executive in the real estate world. It was creative work and it was lucrative and it provided opportunities to use property development as a way to serve the planet. But it's not where Sandy was destined to stay. As he ...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). We might have thought just a little more would make us happy. More money, more time, more things. But that's the problem. Like a cat chasing its tail, 'more' will never give us what we seek. As meditation teacher Billy Wynne explains, 'more' is an illusory concept. Only in accepting the emptiness of all things will we receive what we desire--the extravagant fulness of this present moment ... and then of the ...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). The archetypal feminine can be many things--fierce, wily, nurturing, creative, and deeply rooted in the natural world. But Alanna Kaivalya regards two qualities in particular, intuition and emotion, at risk of being lost in the modern age, where women are expected to be strong and independent, like men. "The Satisfied Woman," she says, reclaims her feminine power in order to uniquely gift the world. Li...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). It's not about working a dream, about unpacking its symbols and wresting from it its cryptic meaning. It's about allowing the dream to work you, which is a very different thing. Mary Marsden is a nature-based soul guide, a personal mentor, and a dream worker. She helps dreamers to reenter the world of their dreams and experience the sensually soulful dreamscape that has been created by Mystery uniquely for t...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). One thing that keeps people from exploring their spiritual path is fear of the dark. Not just darkness itself, but what darkness hides--ghosts, demons, spirits. The mere thought of such entities drives nascent seekers away before they even get started. But it needn't be that way. Jan Thompson, Jane Fleming, and Wade Prpich are spiritual guides who know the dark side, but who choose the light. In fact, ...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). We don't tend to think of the corporate world as 'soulful.' But some companies realize that paying attention to social and environmental values, and not just to the bottom line, is good for the workers, good for the world, and, as it turns out, good for business as well. Sona Khosla is Chief Impact Officer for Benevity, a tech company that brings working people and worthy causes together. The "impact" ...

Click here to send me a text message (include your contact info if you want a reply). How do we rekindle our love for the Earth? According to naturalist and eco-philosopher Lyanda Haupt, the smallest step does it. Her book, Rooted, is a compendium of such steps, from wandering barefoot in the woods to welcoming the mystery of animal "presence." The starting point is simply our curiosity and our willingness to take a step, no matter how small, in the direction of the natural world. Lyand...

Click here to send me a text message ... To be alone in the world is a terrible thing, unless of course it is by choice. Especially for men, the heart may long for deep connection while all our social posturing creates the opposite--distance. When men discover deep friendship with other men it is a gift to be savoured and, in this instance, shared. Don McLeod, Barry Foster and I have met together for almost twenty-five years, dubbing ourselves, preposterously, The League of Extraordinar...

Click here to send me a text message ... Stories arrive on our TV screen daily, unbidden. We are momentarily entertained or diverted but rarely are we changed. The old stories, however, passed down from generation to generation, were meant to instruct us, to identify us with a tribe, and to change us. Natalie Pepin, a Metis artist and cultural educator, and Tad Hargrave, a European-Canadian marketer and cultural explorer, both experienced the dearth of life-changing stories in our modern cu...

Click here to send me a text message ... Whatever Soul is, it's not tame. That's why we seek Soul in the wild places, where something locked away can be released and we can remember who we are and why we're here. That's also why we need an experienced guide to take us there, someone who knows the wild places of the human heart. Michelle Rigling is such a guide. Her Cavewoman Way group programs and one-on-one counselling invite the Wild Woman to appear in the lives of those seeking a soulful a...

Click here to send me a text message ... Positive karma makes the world a better place and lightens our load in both this life and the next. Negative karma harms the world and burdens us with destructive habits. Becoming conscious of the bad habits we accumulate is the first step toward making better choices, finding joy and liberation for ourselves, and becoming a positive force in the world. My guest Mordy Levine, the co-author of The Beginner's Guide to Karma, breaks it all down for us. R...

Click here to send me a text message ... Here's a seasonal offering of word and song that will warm your heart, whether it's Christmas you celebrate, the Winter Solstice, Festivus, or any of the many other culturally rich wintertime observances. As we turn inward at this time of year, we also turn back, longing for the comforts of a home that is lost to us now. For those of us with Celtic or Western European roots, Peia's music is deeply evocative of those ancestral roots long buried beneath ...

Click here to send me a text message ... With every new war and with every new natural catastrophe, we are being driven to consider new ways of being human on this planet. This search is not new, but perhaps it's never been so critical. Celtic spiritual teacher John Philip Newell has collected nine prophetic voices in his latest book, The Great Search, to help awaken within us the realization that not only is the Earth sacred, so is the human soul. It's as inspiring a message as it is timely....

Click here to send me a text message ... How many of us emerged from the last US presidential shaking our heads and saying,"There's gotta be a better way." There is, and there has always been. The Way of Council is the time-honoured method of gathering soulfully that doesn't leave the heart at the door. Psychotherapist and soul guide Peter Scanlan teaches this way, and he shares it with us in this rich conversation. Resources Peter's website: http://www.peterscanlan.com The Animas Valley In...

Click here to send me a text message ... Does religion have a role in "The Great Turning," where humanity is rediscovering what it means to be creatures of the earth? Or are its own wounds and divisions too deep to allow it to see beyond its protective walls? Sarah Arthurs is both an earth activist and a religious peacemaker. Her answer, depending on the day, may be: Yes; Not yet; or No. But hope says: Soon. Links to Sarah's World Green Exodus (the home of the Urban Earthlings Club): https:/...

Click here to send me a text message ... The Indigenous culture that European colonizers encountered here in the New World, and then so brutally suppressed, is the very repository of wisdom we now need. Elizabeth Buller Page knows this personally. Deep into a midlife descent, Liz turned to her family's Indigenous roots to discover not only the healing she sought but the path she'd lost. Resources The book on Cree history and culture that Liz can't be without: The Plains Cree: An Ethnographi...

Click here to send me a text message ... Out here, on the far side of conventional religion, no path is more compelling than the one that leads us to know our natural place within the larger earth community. And there may be no better modern guide than Bill Plotkin, the author of four books on the subject and the founder of the Animas Valley Institute. The way is called "soul initiation," which is devastating to the ego but life-giving to the soul. And it just might help save the planet. Two...

Click here to send me a text message ... We dwell within a realm of spacious possibility; and it dwells within us. The mystic experiences this firsthand. So does any seeker alert to the subtle movements of the heart. Cynthia Bourgeault knows the territory well. She's lived it, and she's written about it. But, being human, she's also continuing to learn about it, sometimes by trial and error. Fortunately, our spiritual education is not completed in this lifetime. Resources Cynthia's Websites...