A podcast about spirit and spirituality
There are many ways to interpret the title
Spirit Matters:
to experience it,
to play with it,
and even to wrestle with it.
Spirit Matters podcast encompasses all manner of spirit and spirituality, as well as the creative arts. We cast a broad and deep net — vitally important in this complex, multicultural, multi-dimensional, pluralistic world in which we live.
I’m Tessie Mandeville, your host and co-producer. I’m a minister who is affiliated with both Metropolitan Community Churches and the Unitarian Universalist Association. However Spirit Matters podcasts are non-denominational, and ought to be of value to people of any religion, spiritual path, or none at all.
As a board-certified chaplain, I serve on the Inpatient Palliative Care Team at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, in Bellingham, WA. I’m passionate about serving people with life-limiting illnesses, helping them remember who they were before they became ill, and assisting them as they reckon with how illness impacts their lives now, and the lives of their friends and family.
My wife and I are foster parents for the state of Washington and enjoy working with children and youth who need a safe and loving home. To ensure that I have my own good quality of life, I sing, write, bike, hike, and spend time with family and friends.
I’m Andrew Schoneberg, co-producer and technical director for Spirit Matters. At KMRE, I’m jumping back into radio, after a long pause. Back in the day, I wrote, voiced, and edited many public affairs and arts feature segments for radio shows at public radio stations in Seattle, San Diego, and Santa Cruz CA. I wr>ote, produced, directed, acted in, and edited radio plays for all ages audiences, and wrote over 20 radio plays performed on the air by children. My experience also includes writing for daily news shows and hosting music anthology shows. I’m an all around creative person — musician, singer, classic film and musical theater buff, and more.
Previous Episodes
Today I share a poem from Walt Whitman and talk about the one thing that I believe with all my heart: It is in the interplay between flesh and spirit that we will know our deepest connections. In this podcast I will also explore how religion has separated us from our bodies and instilled deep body shame, along with some ideas on how to eradicate shame from our lives.
Hosted by Tessie Mandeville. Today I share a more personal story about living with chronic pain and illness. I draw on the words and lives of Sufi and Christian mystics as well as Dr. Brene Brown. Through it all I explore what it means to swim in compassion, figuratively and literally.
From host Tessie Mandeville: An interview with my friend Rosalind Reynolds, Playwright-in-Residence at the Sylvia Center for the Arts. We discuss her play Julian the Humble that explores the world of Julian of Norwich, mystic, anchorite, and author of Revelations of Divine Love–the first book in English written by a woman. Julian is well-known for the statement, “All will be well”, which she said during the bubonic plague pandemic in the Middle Ages. How could she say that then, and can we say that now during our own pandemic? Join me as I ask Roz about this.
Host Tessie Mandeville interviews Steffany Raynes. They talk about “Process Art”–creating sacred space, believing our art matters, doing it, then doing it again! Steffany helps us realize that all of us can engage in process art. Steffany understands it as a creative life force that she started calling prayer.
How on earth do we gather up a tangled mess-of-a-year like 2020? The temptation might be to wad it up and toss the whole thing into the dumpster, unexamined. But it would be a mistake to just label this a “bad” year and get rid of it. To find the treasures in a home or a year requires some sorting. Join me (host Tessie Mandeville) as I speak with Carrie Koehnline, well-known clutter coach and psychotherapist, as she offers us practical strategies and creative processes, we can use to clear 2020 clutter.
As the sacred scripture and song remind us, for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. On today’s show we explore the phrase, A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, and what that means during memorial services and funerals, holy days and holidays, while under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hosted by Tessie Mandeville. Sometimes we are surrounded by clouds in literal and metaphorical ways. Just when you think all you can see are dark clouds, your eye catches a little bit of blue in the sky, and you realize it’s an opening in the clouds. You catch your breath and feel a sense of relief that “This too shall pass.”
Hosted by Tessie Mandeville. We share poems, songs, and reflections that make room for understanding our sorrow as holy ground.
A podcast about spirit and spirituality. There are many ways to interpret the title Spirit Matters — to experience it, to play with it, and even to wrestle with it. Tessie Mandeville is host and co-producer. Andrew Schoneberg is co-producer and technical director.
