04
MEET KRISTOPHER
“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.”
-William Stafford
It’s taken the scalding force of being broken and broken-hearted time and again to discover my own thread of meaning. Each crisis, every ending, all the mistakes - they seem to burn what isn’t real anymore and invite me into a bigger life. As David Whyte says, we are asked to “start close in, to take the first step, the one that we don’t want to take...” My experience has been that if I don’t consciously and courageously choose that step, life forces the issue.
For a decade, I’ve been learning to trust the ache that points to that step; to follow the butterflies of inspiration; and to open my hands and take a shaky walk toward the dark stone of what I don’t want to face. In the course of discovering what I’m here to do, I’ve encountered many incredible teachers, modalities, and wild beings. My formal training includes 12 years of meditation practice in the Insight and Zen traditions (including over 100 days of silent retreat), three years of residential training in contemplative practice and spiritual direction at the Sacred Space Foundation in northern England, an ongoing 5Rhythms embodiment practice, two years somatic-based council and men’s work with Evryman men’s group, ritual grief facilitation, and most recently, two years of intensive dream work and Soulcraft training through the Animas Valley Institute.
For all the time, money and sacrifice I’ve given to my training, what I’ve come to realize is that I’m just learning to be what I’ve always been. Nothing feels particularly new or enlightened or different than it ever has. Rather, through slow and steady commitment, I’ve developed a larger capacity for my nervous system to experience what already is. I’ve learned to hold the tension of the truth and speak, cry, shake, or laugh with honesty. By following, courting, and listening to my dreams, I’ve uncovered clues about my unique meaning and way of belonging to the world, and how I might share that meaning and those gifts with others at this time of cultural crisis. Maybe more than anything else, I’ve simply learned how to listen.
Now, we’re all being asked to listen with as much depth, courage, and sincerity as we can muster. The wild world is in trouble. The social structure is collapsing. Physical, spiritual, and political fires are burning around the world. More than ever, we need inspired, ensouled, courageous humans to step into their own authentic lives, to claim their power, their love and their wholeness and live their own unique lives as we are pushed into the Great Turning.
My work, whether it’s dream work, ensouled coaching, creative mentoring, writing and poetry, podcasting, or community organizing, is about inspiring, assisting, and supporting people to see the true global context of their lives, encounter the meaning implied by the circumstances of that context, and live their deep, soul-level truth into the world.
