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Rachel Parsons
Dec 105 min read
What Happens in Spiritual Direction?
What is spiritual direction? What happens in a spiritual direction session? Is spiritual direction tied to a specific religion? How is...
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Rachel Parsons
Mar 195 min read
Nonreligious Thoughts on Hope
Content warning: mental illness, religious upbringing, hopelessness When I was in the thick of my religious upbringing, I remember...
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Caroline Crook
Feb 18, 20216 min read
How to Create Sacred Space
How do you create sacred space? What is a sacred space? Sacred spaces are some of the clearest examples we have of humanity’s active...
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Brayte Singletary
Sep 14, 202014 min read
Spirituality, Meaning, & the Meaning of Spirituality
What even is spirituality? Rachel asks that very question in one of this blog’s first posts, and gives her answer there too. It’s one of...
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Rachel Parsons
Jul 17, 20207 min read
Q&A with a Spiritual Director
Every so often, we at Fratres Dei Spiritual Direction host an "Ask a Spiritual Director Day" on our social media pages. For this month's...
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Rachel Parsons
Jun 10, 20207 min read
A Letter to My Beloved White Friends, by Karla Johnson
Karla Johnson, a member of my spiritual direction training cohort from back in the day, has graciously given us permission to share...
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Caroline Crook
May 1, 20204 min read
BREAKING: Local Woman Still Anxious
One week back in February, I attended an Ignatian Retreat. On Wednesday, the midpoint of the retreat, one of the suggested passages was...
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Rachel Parsons
Mar 4, 20204 min read
3 Tips for Surviving a Faith Crisis
Believing in Magic: Part II In my last post I shared some thoughts on my misotheistic past, the Problem of Evil, and my eventual exodus...
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Rachel Parsons
Jan 23, 20203 min read
Believing in Magic Part 1: Rachel Gets Personal
Amethyst and flowers on the table Is it real or a fable Well I suppose a friend is a friend -Sufjan Stevens I was recently rummaging...
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Saint Gibson
Dec 10, 20193 min read
Nourished in Darkness: Tolerating Advent
Historically, I've chafed against Advent. As much as I love Christmas, It's hard for me to observe a season devoted to light when...
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Rachel Parsons
Dec 2, 20192 min read
Animate Dust: Poems for Embodiment
This month the Fratres Dei team got together to compile poetry of our own creation about our experiences with embodied spirituality. We...
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Caroline Crook
Oct 30, 20196 min read
Meditation Gone Wrong
I thought I'd tell you all about a guided meditation I once tried that quickly became one of my favorites, and also a complete disaster....
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Kara Francisca Resneki
Sep 17, 20193 min read
Sometimes, Things Get Better
Sometimes it takes days, weeks, or months to see you’re beyond your limits. Sometimes it takes just as long to realize you’ve made a...
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Caroline Crook
Jul 24, 20194 min read
The Body in Stillness (and why I'm very bad at it)
It happens every single time. My mom drags me to her weekly Vinyasa Flow, or one of my friends has a coupon for a free class. I lumber my...
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Saint Gibson
May 30, 20195 min read
Ritual, Rosaries, and Prayers Written in Flesh
Hello wonder-workers and spiritual sojourners! It’s Saint, Fratres Dei’s social media manager and sometimes-theologian, back again to...
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Saint Gibson
Apr 1, 20195 min read
Reclaiming Our Attention from the Distortion Machine
Social media is kind of my thing. I met my future spouse through Tumblr, I'm an author who promotes her work on Twitter, and, as some of...
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Rachel Parsons
Feb 25, 20194 min read
Stay Spiritually Curious
Right after I finished seminary, I, like most seminary grads, was in a harried state. I had spent the last couple years routinely facing...
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Rachel Parsons
Jan 28, 20193 min read
Body Scan Meditation and the Sacred
The year was...2016. I was working three part-time jobs: cramming my feet into high heels on the way to hospice chaplain visits and...
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Rachel Parsons
Dec 31, 20183 min read
Be Joyful or Something: Thoughts on New Year's Eve
When I was a good youth group kid, I was rip-roaring ready to convert my friends to Evangelical Protestantism (or "Christianity," as I...
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Rachel Parsons
Nov 27, 20183 min read
Dancing Like Everyone’s Watching; or How to Let Your Body Be a Body
Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing. -Exodus...
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