Belovedness, Unbinding, and the Thread That Holds Us: A Soulful Conversation with Susannah Crolius

In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habib Boerger is joined by artist, spiritual companion, and grief tender Susannah Crolius for a wide-ranging exploration of spirituality as movement, unbinding, and belovedness.

Susannah shares her spiritual journey—from a childhood shaped by art and nature, through decades of institutional ministry, to leaving the church in search of a more authentic, embodied spiritual life rooted in creativity, wonder, and trust. Together, they reflect on shame and healing, art as a gateway to the sacred, the soul’s thread that runs through our lives, and what it means to live both tethered and free.

The conversation also touches tenderly on near-death experience, grief, trauma, and the practice of remembering our belovedness—even in seasons of darkness, loss, and uncertainty. This episode invites listeners into a spacious, honest exploration of spirituality beyond performance and institution, toward a life grounded in presence, compassion, and returning home to the true self.

Perfect for seekers, soulful misfits, creatives, and anyone longing for a spirituality that feels real, embodied, and alive.

Transcript

Beyond Names: Spirituality for Anyone and Everyone

YouTube Channel: Beyond Names with Dr. Habib Boerger

YouTube handle: @BeyondNamesPodcast

Episode: 33

Host: Dr. Habib Boerger

Conversation Partner: Susannah Crolius

Title: Belovedness, Unbinding, and the Thread That Holds Us: A Soulful Conversation with Susannah Crolius

Description: In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habib Boerger is joined by artist, spiritual companion, and grief tender Susannah Crolius for a wide-ranging exploration of spirituality as movement, unbinding, and belovedness.

Susannah shares her spiritual journey—from a childhood shaped by art and nature, through decades of institutional ministry, to leaving the church in search of a more authentic, embodied spiritual life rooted in creativity, wonder, and trust. Together, they reflect on shame and healing, art as a gateway to the sacred, the soul’s thread that runs through our lives, and what it means to live both tethered and free.

The conversation also touches tenderly on near-death experience, grief, trauma, and the practice of remembering our belovedness—even in seasons of darkness, loss, and uncertainty. This episode invites listeners into a spacious, honest exploration of spirituality beyond performance and institution, toward a life grounded in presence, compassion, and returning home to the true self.

Perfect for seekers, soulful misfits, creatives, and anyone longing for a spirituality that feels real, embodied, and alive.

Transcript:

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Welcome to Beyond Names. I am Dr. Habib. This is a space for spiritual seekers, soulful misfits, for the curious and the committed, for those grounded in a tradition, and for those who are not yet sure what they believe.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Whether you call the Divine God, Yahweh, Allah, Elohim, Hashem, Brahman, Great Spirit, Higher Power, or you're still searching for language that fits, you are welcome here.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Together, we'll explore the intersection of spirituality and daily life, the wisdom of many traditions, and the ways we return to our true selves, to our source, to the light that each of us carry within.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm so glad you're here. Let's begin with introduction of our conversation partner for this episode, Susannah Crolius.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Susannah is an artist, writer, workshop and retreat facilitator, spiritual companion, grief tender, and a certified spiritual literacy facilitator.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Susannah is Artist in Residence and Director of Belonging at Inn Along the Way.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And to learn more about Susannah and her work, please visit http://www.artandsoulwm.org/. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Susannah, welcome, thank you for being here.

Susannah Crolius: Habib, thanks for having me. I feel like there's some sort of circle coming back after a few years of… I worked so intensively with you during the spiritual literacy program, and then it's been a few years, and now it's… it's a wonderful circling back into connection.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes, it's wonderful to reconnect, so thank you so much for saying yes, and if you would please introduce yourselves to our listeners by way of sharing your spiritual story.

Susannah Crolius: I love it when people say, oh, share your spiritual story, as if you can do it, you know, with, like, 3 bullet points.

Susannah Crolius: Last night, I sat down, because I had not reviewed my spiritual story in a while. I sat down last night and, you know, bullet point after bullet… I mean, there's pages! So my spiritual story.

Susannah Crolius: How long do you have?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, honestly, you can take as much time as you want.

Susannah Crolius: Okay, well, I'll touch on some of the bullet points. I didn't grow up religiously or spiritually in any way. I grew up in a family where, there, the arts were, part of our lives.

Susannah Crolius: My mother played the flute, and my father wrote, and my mother painted, and we did community theater. And they were also very much nature lovers, so my mother would garden, that was her passion. We'd go camping.

Susannah Crolius: So, I was thinking last night that even though we didn't grow up with anything called religion or even spirituality, what was clear was that there was a sense of sacredness.

Susannah Crolius: I wouldn't have used that language at the time, but there was something about, about being connected to a larger web, I think.

Susannah Crolius: And when I was 8, because our family spent so much time near the ocean, I was sure I was going to be a marine biologist. And, sort of, maybe it's a regret, I don't know. I sort of wish maybe I… I had, but now I live by the ocean, and so, I can at least appreciate it.

Susannah Crolius: And I also grew up in a family where authenticity and wholeness...

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: and, were not welcomed, and there was a lot of shame in my family, and I have to say that shame and spiritual… spirituality, my spiritual story, there's a thread there.

Susannah Crolius: I think of William Stafford's poem about the thread. Do you know that poem where he says, I've got it right here, he says:

There's a thread you follow.

It goes among things that change, but it doesn't change.

People wonder what you're pursuing. 

You have to explain about the thread, but it's hard for others to see.

While you hold it, you can't get lost. 

Tragedies happen, people get hurt or die, and you suffer and get old. 

Nothing you can do can stop times unfolding. 

Don't ever let go of the thread.

Susannah Crolius: That’s a William Stafford poem, William Stafford. 

Susannah Crolius: And I think about the thread, I think for a long time, shame was a thread in my spiritual story, and I would really say that my spiritual story has been, an exploration, and a pushing against and a resistance to moving out of shame.

Susannah Crolius: And so this idea of what I call home, what feels safe, what feels true, what feels authentic has been, as I looked back on this list, I really think that that's been the spiritual path, and it's taken many different forms, but I think that this search for, or this hope for, being unbound is what I have, what I've searched for.

Susannah Crolius: So, I…I think I connected spiritually, again, without it being spiritual, or without it being named, when I took a hospice volunteer training, in the 80s in Colorado, where I was living, and it was just as the hospice movement was taking root in this country.

Susannah Crolius: And I can't tell you what it was about death and dying and volunteering to be a part of that movement and being part of dying people, but it stirred something in me deep, like, the deepest story. And maybe it was my first experience of thinking about dying. 

Susannah Crolius: I don't know. I was in my 20s, but I think it was maybe my first encounter with this sense of the life cycle and that question of what do you do with your life.

Susannah Crolius: And then, to explore that, I had… I went… I started to go to, a U… Unitarian Universalist group of people, because I knew, having grown up in the 70s, that I knew what I didn't believe, but I didn't know what I believed.

Susannah Crolius: And didn't want to go to a Christian church but went to a Unitarian Universalist group of people who taught me many things. 

Susannah Crolius: They taught me about the freedom to have language, for what is divine, what is sacred. They taught me about community, what it means to be community. They taught me about, there was a woman minister there, and it was the first time I had ever seen a woman really in a place of power.

Susannah Crolius: And that was quite revealing to me. 

Susannah Crolius: And, continued exploring all the questions through the Unitarian Universalist tradition, and then had a mystical experience of, of… I can only say God, I'll use the word God telling me to go to seminary.

Susannah Crolius: And I mean, I was very new to religious life and institutional life, and I -- me in seminary?

Susannah Crolius: I was supposed to be thinking about going to vet school, veterinary school, but it would be the first time of many times when I have… my soul has spoken, and I've had to pay attention and decide that it would be a leap of faith.

Susannah Crolius: And so I went to Unitarian Universalist Seminary in Berkeley, California. Not at all, I remember just thinking, what the heck am I doing here? And I thought, well, maybe I'll do more as a hospice chaplain, or maybe I'll explore death and dying more. Maybe I will, be a poet.

Susannah Crolius: That's what I hoped the invitation of seminary was, and, you know, being in a Unitarian Universalist seminary is not… is a different experience than, different kinds, other kinds of seminary.

Susannah Crolius: There was a fluidity, a freedom, a sense of, of, encouraging your own sense of critical thinking and, and, forming your own opinions that was challenging for me.

Susannah Crolius: I really have to say it was challenging for me to be given that permission to do that, because it was… because I was…so, still so shame-filled, and just sort of… not clear on… on… that I had a voice.

Susannah Crolius: That I had any voice that I… that I could speak up.

Susannah Crolius: But then I had an experience, in World Religions class, and it was the first day of Christianity, the Christianity and World Religions class, and the instructor, the teacher started the class by playing some Gregorian chant.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: And I started to uncontrollably weep.

Susannah Crolius: I could… I could… in something that was touching me, So, so, so deeply. 

Susannah Crolius: I had never felt it. It scared me. It scared me. And, I went to my advisor, and I said, what's… something's wrong. I'm moved by Christianity, or I think there's something really wrong. I think. 

Susannah Crolius: And she wisely said, pay attention. Follow this. Here's the number of a spiritual director who's an 80-year-old nun who is, who's just a blast.

Susannah Crolius: And here's the address of the United Church of Christ Church down the street, and I… she said, I invite you to just be open to this.

Susannah Crolius: And I… I… I, I did. And so, you know, long story short, I ended up being ordained in the United Church of Christ, and, going into institutional ministry, parish ministry, after, I graduated,

Susannah Crolius: And… then did my work in the church was as an intentional interim minister, meaning you go into congregations for a shorter period of time, and work with them through any number of challenges, whether it's the death of a pastor, or whether it's clergy sexual misconduct, whether it's grief, whether it's just shifting times.

Susannah Crolius: And I did that for a long, long time.

Susannah Crolius: But it always felt, I have to say, was that my spiritual life? It was my professional life.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: Was it my spiritual life?

Susannah Crolius: Being a pastor, is an incredible gift. You are… you are welcomed into people's lives and their deepest stories. And I wasn't interested in keeping an institution alive.

Susannah Crolius: It really sort of hit me later, 25 years later, that what I was doing was maintaining a tradition and an institution, and that wasn't, in fact, spiritually feeding me. Wasn't spiritually feeding me.

Susannah Crolius: It was…I was doing my… my calling.

Susannah Crolius: I was, faithful to the calling, I was faithful to the ordination vows.

Susannah Crolius: But, you know, 15 years or so ago, I just thought I… I had this moment of standing up at the pulpit in a big church that's supposed to seat 800 people, and there were maybe 60 in the pews, and I remember looking out and just thinking, I just want to be sitting around in a circle sharing stories. 

Susannah Crolius: I don't want to be up here in a robe, pontificating, preaching, preaching as if I had some deeper wisdom, as if I had some knowledge other than my MDiv training, and I thought I could…I… This is… this is… this is…this is not my spiritual life.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: It's a form of it; it's a professional form of it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: But I don't… I can't do this anymore in this way.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: And so I… took a leap of faith.

Susannah Crolius: I got a grant, a $10,000 grant to explore regenerative ministry options.

Susannah Crolius: And I tried to remember when I had felt the most alive, and in the flow and the vibrancy of life, and it was when I was doing art. I was a dancer.

Susannah Crolius: And, had trained, as a ballet dancer, quite seriously, and I remember those were times of the training, were the times when I was most attuned to my body, myself, and something larger than me.

Susannah Crolius: And so I thought, well, what does… where do the arts fit into this? I didn't know. 

Susannah Crolius: I had… I'd stopped dancing by then. And, took this grant, got this grant and decided I was going to explore the relationship between arts and spirituality.

Susannah Crolius: Which seems funny, Habib, right now, because I wasn't practicing the arts.

Susannah Crolius: I was not an artistic practitioner. I was living in the memory of them as a child, and how they made me feel.

Susannah Crolius: And there were some other people who I really appreciated, their explorations with art and spirituality.

Susannah Crolius: Jan Richardson being one of them, who's a painter and a Methodist minister, and then Christine Valters Paintner was just coming into the scene with her Abbey of the Arts and exploring the arts and spirituality.

Susannah Crolius: And I thought I would just take a leap and do that, and so for…

Susannah Crolius: I formed something called Art and Soul.

Susannah Crolius: And it had been, and was until, until I retired it, a complete experiment in how the creative process is, in fact, for me and for other people, this experience as a gateway into the sacred.

Susannah Crolius: And in that time, since I left, church, I began to figure out how I needed to reconnect with my holy stories.

Susannah Crolius: I had lost it after 25 years of being in the ministry.

Susannah Crolius: I couldn't… I couldn't… I wasn't in touch with my body, I wasn't in touch with my…soul, I wasn't in touch with my heart, I had no stories that I could pull up.

Susannah Crolius: It was almost a trauma response, really. 

Susannah Crolius: And I started to collect items, found objects, things that just moved me. I'd walk through an antique store, or flea market, or walk… take a walk in the woods, and I'd say, oh, that acorn is just so beautiful.

Susannah Crolius: And so I began to collect these things, and thought, well, how… what do I… what do I… what do I… what does this mean?

Susannah Crolius: And they were… it was at that time that I sort of re… came to understand the power of metaphor and symbol.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: And these objects began to take on, sort of, metaphorical and symbolic meanings in this time of transition, and and I began to put together found object altars.

Susannah Crolius: And a lot of them in old clock cases.

Susannah Crolius: And they… they were places, you know, an altar is a place where things are laid down. Released and made…recognized as holy.

Susannah Crolius: And I, so these objects, these objects that had had stories long before me were re-storied through my art-making of altars to help me find my own deepest stories.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm…

Susannah Crolius: And and I eventually left denominational identity.

Susannah Crolius: After I left church as institution, I left denominational identity, and spent, really, the last 13 years doing art and soul, as a virtual and in-person community in fluid ways of exploring spirituality and creativity.

Susannah Crolius: So, just to bring you up to the present, you know, I think of the spiritual life as movement, ebb and flow, ebb and flow.

Susannah Crolius: It is the realization that we are always in movement, we are always engaged in the movement of what is happening within us and around us. 

Susannah Crolius: And two years ago, my 24-year relationship ended, and, and I was in a position of sort of saying, what? Now what?

Susannah Crolius: And so, just to bring you up to present…I am, I decided, I didn't decide. My soul, this was one of these other sort of intuitive things, I wanted to be by the ocean. I needed to be by the ocean.

Susannah Crolius: And so I moved to Midcoast Maine 9 months ago.

Susannah Crolius: And … being a full-time artist now, and spiritual director, and grief tender, and doing it, I… part of my work is as artist in residence at Inn Along the Way, which is a way to revision how we grow older together, independently, interdependently.

Susannah Crolius: But I've… so that's all to say I've embarked on this new chapter 9 months ago. I mean, I moved here in April, and I'm still figuring out this new movement of my life. 

Susannah Crolius: What does it… what…spiritually, what does… what does it mean? I really came here, I moved to Maine, dedicated myself to be an artist, because that's what my soul encouraged me to do.

Susannah Crolius: It said, this is what you need to do, this is how you… this is how you'll live your most vibrant life in light of, in light of, in light of the fact that I was getting older.

Susannah Crolius: And so I'm still figuring it out. I'm still figuring out spiritually what this move has been about.

Susannah Crolius: I do know that I came in search of wonder and delight.

Susannah Crolius: And that is now my spiritual practice. I look for wonder and delight and, Yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

Susannah Crolius: It's everywhere, even in these hard times, even in these hard times.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: Wonder and delight are not only practices, but they're truths. They're spiritual truths.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well thank you so much for sharing all of that. There's many different ways this conversation could go, but I'm interested in this question that you posed around… You didn't ask it specifically, but you did in reference to the… your religious life, your professional life in organized religion, if… I'm not sure that's completely the correct language, but then you asked, you know, is this… how is this what I'm doing professionally in response to my calling feeding me spiritually.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And you came to the decision that it wasn't, really, if I understood you correctly. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So I'm curious… When you… you mentioned the ebb and flow, have you honed down to what you define spirituality as at this point in your life. Can you say that, for me, spirituality is…?

Susannah Crolius: Yes, yep.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: I think spirituality is the living practice of paradox between being fluent, open, fluid, fluent, and tethered. And I use those words intentionally.

Susannah Crolius: How do we open and open and open and trust? And how do we choose what we… we'll tether our energy and time, and love to and with.

Susannah Crolius: If I had to choose one word to describe spirituality. I would use belovedness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Beautiful.

Susannah Crolius: The search for understanding myself and others as beloved, and then the claiming of that, and the permission-giving to be that.

Susannah Crolius: So, Yeah, I'm going to… I would throw out the words beloved, fluent, and tethered to encompass for me what spirituality is about.

Susannah Crolius: And I also… I also would add that I think that there's, I think spirituality in the words of ebb and flow, have to do with also understanding that, we're caught in movement all the time.

Susannah Crolius: And how do we practice not being knocked off our feet.

Susannah Crolius: How do we… I won't even use the word embrace, because that feels impossible a lot, but, how do we live in the understanding that we are always, within ourselves, in relationship to one another, to the universe, we're always in movement?

Susannah Crolius: And what is the thing that abides in the midst of the movement? And that's… I would say that that's… I use the word the soul. 

Susannah Crolius: The soul is the inner part of us that is like the thread that William Stafford spoke about, the thing… the thing that sort of is, the thing that calls me back into, aliveness, and possibility.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: When you sit with in the present day, your belovedness...

Susannah Crolius: Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Do you… Do you feel like you've got it in your bones -- in the marrow, or do you feel like…?

Susannah Crolius: Yes! 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes!

Susannah Crolius: Yes! Yes! That's… that's… so when you talk about spiritual journey, like, I didn't… what I didn't talk about was sort of the way that I unbound myself from shame. 

Susannah Crolius: And shame is no longer a part of my language or my feeling, and....

Susannah Crolius: It was only when I was really able to wrestle with when I really… I had to get rid of it.

Susannah Crolius: I had to find a way to not have it paralyze me, and that… that was a long process. 

Susannah Crolius: Part of it… part of leaving church was that, you know, it's a… it's an environment where you're always feeling like you're not doing enough, and you're always… it sort of…

Susannah Crolius: And so when I left church, that sort of began to help me come back to myself in small ways. 

Susannah Crolius: And then the practice of art, which is a lot of failure, and a lot of trying, and a lot of experimenting, and to just say, what… I just wonder what's going to emerge, instead of saying, oh, it has to be this way. 

Susannah Crolius: So, so I am so happy. 

Susannah Crolius: It makes me very, it makes me teary and happy to say when… when you use the word beloved, when I… when you ask about my belovedness, I can feel it, and I can know it, and -- and, what do I say?

Susannah Crolius: I can feel it, and I can know it. And I can live from it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm…

Susannah Crolius: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, so we Sufis would say, alhamdulillah, which means praise… praise be.

Susannah Crolius: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: Yes, a thousand times.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm so… I'm so happy to hear it, and see it, and witness it, and you are transmitting it.

Susannah Crolius: Oh, good! Well, good.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You are transmitting that knowledge and the delight that you are experiencing in your belovedness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: What a beautiful gift to share.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: I think of all the ways that we as humans bind ourselves -- from childhood, from culture, from religion, from…

Susannah Crolius: We're so bound, and I think that, I really think that the spiritual work is…is… is… a lot of it is about unbinding and stepping into trust.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In my tradition, we say that our innate disposition, you know, our natural disposition is… is purity, is… is pure light, that who we are in our essence is pure light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so, when you talk about knowing your belovedness in this movement, from shame, and the pervasiveness of the experience of shame, for this… and this yearning for unbounded freedom and settling into this place of knowing your belovedness -- to me, that sounds like an awareness in your growth of return to your true self.

Susannah Crolius: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: And I start… we started… I started by the circle of us reconnecting, but again, I mean, I think that if we think movement… a circle is a movement, it's sort of an ongoing movement, and I do think that, that… You know those old childhood stories which were such a part of my… life.

Susannah Crolius: They are… they've been integrated now, and it's all part of that circle, and I think…to be able to just… I'll just say that to be able to know my belovedness is… I can die happy.

Susannah Crolius: I can, you know, just… that's what I… that's what I had sought and wandered and sought so much for. And here it is. Here it is. 

Susannah Crolius: So… and not every day, it's not like I'm in bliss every day. But it is just this con… you know, the word I use is ease.

Susannah Crolius: I am at ease. I trust myself, I trust… my God, I trust.... 

Susannah Crolius: I always thought the word faith and trust were interchangeable for me. Faith… just faith and trust. Trust in what? Trust in whom? Trust in… 

Susannah Crolius: And, there is a cycle of being, and a movement of being that is just Is part of, of, of…the human experience, and if I can just be in that fluidity of that.

Susannah Crolius: And I… and I include death in that. 

Susannah Crolius: I think I shared with you, I'll tell you a story about, being invited into that into the idea of death as part of that movement, that happened recently. 

Susannah Crolius: I, I got, of all things, West Nile Virus. Now, normally, people who get West Nile Virus they don't even know it, or they just have some flu-like symptoms. 

Susannah Crolius: Well, my body, experienced it, in a ... in a very violent way, and, I, I almost died 2 months ago. I almost died. I was, in the hospital for a long time. 

Susannah Crolius: I… my body was paralyzed. I, my organs were shutting down, and, and…when the doctors said they were quite sure I was not going to make it through this, because they didn't know what it was initially -- they thought it might have been a tick-borne illness, but when that didn't happen, they didn't know what it was, and so, I've had to really wrestle with what it means now to live in that circle, that movement that definitely includes death, definitely includes death, as part of it all. 

Susannah Crolius: And, and what is lost, I'm still… still… my body is still recovering. I don't have a lot of leg strength.

Susannah Crolius: I had to learn to walk again.

Susannah Crolius: I lost use of my right hand, which is my art hand, but it's all coming back now. 

Susannah Crolius: It's coming back, but to understand that it isn't all bliss, that this, this grief and sorrow mix in. It's all mixed in to this thing called the spiritual life and the human life

Susannah Crolius: And I find… that I can feel more at ease in the recognition that death and loss and grief are all part of it.

Susannah Crolius: It's not separate, that it's… it's… it's all part of this… this flow.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And it's all part of what moves us forward.

Susannah Crolius: Say more about that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well… You talked about the movement being the constant.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And it's -- whether we're looking at the heart as a physical organ in the process of pumping, you know, blood is pumped through our system through the process of constriction and expansion.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And all of life is this movement of constriction and expansion.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And when we are in the flow of the universal energy of constriction and expansion, then we are joined in our state of inner being and our state of interconnectedness and we flow without resistance.

Susannah Crolius: Mmm. With ease.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: With ease. With ease. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And we're human, we have emotions, we have sensations, and sometimes we resist. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But it is that constriction and expansion that creates the movement that keeps us moving on our journeys.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: We return to our true selves through the process of constriction and expansion.

Susannah Crolius: Do you think we need to be aware of that, or open to that, or does it happen no matter what?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: My inclination is to say it's both.

Susannah Crolius: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: When I think about spirituality and I think about the spiritual journey, I think that there's a process… that part of that process is a passive receiving.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You know, that part of life in general is a universal mercy, even when we're not aware of it. Right.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And part of that is our conscious intention, our conscious participation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I think that both, both are at play in our journeys.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Would you like to say…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, you shared before we started recording, you know, that you had a near-death experience as part of your journey with West, with West Nile.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I did.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Would you feel okay about with telling us a little bit about that? 

Susannah Crolius: Sure.

Susannah Crolius: Sure.

Susannah Crolius: It was so… it's… it's, yeah.

Susannah Crolius: I had collapsed, because my kidneys were shutting down, and my fever was very high, and I was alone in my studio here in Maine, and in that time, it was many hours before somebody found me, but I heard horse, horses' hooves coming towards me.

Susannah Crolius: And horses have always been a powerful animal for me. I think in the last 13 years, as I've sort of opened up my… opened up into my belovedness, the horse keeps reappearing, both metaphorically and actually.

Susannah Crolius: And so in this experience, as I was… I heard horse hooves galloping towards me.

Susannah Crolius: And I knew right away what it was. I knew right away what those hooves meant.

Susannah Crolius: And, I was sitting on a fence in a field, and I remember thinking I guess I better say goodbye, I guess I better start saying goodbye. 

Susannah Crolius: So I started to do this whole litany of goodbye to friends. I can remember just saying one at a time, just sort of saying goodbye, thank you for, you know, it just… and the horse got closer and closer, and then it stopped at the fence, and it was sort of snorting, and saying… are you going to… I mean, it wasn't saying, but I knew I had to get on it.

Susannah Crolius: And I knew I was dying. I mean, I just… I don't know how to tell that. You know, that I just knew that… I remember just thinking my time has come.

Susannah Crolius: I didn't really think I'd die this way on the floor in my apartment… in my studio, but… okay, I guess the time has come, and I was very at peace with it.

Susannah Crolius: It was not scary, it wasn't… it was just this sort of matter-of-fact sense, like, oh, oh, this is… this is how it's going to end.

Susannah Crolius: This is how this part of my energy, my life is going to end.

Susannah Crolius: And I don't know, I did not get on the horse, clearly, I did not. I don't remember, I just remember this… doing this litany of goodbyes and really unbinding. I really think I can feel it in my body, how just saying, well, good… goodbye, Teresa, goodbye, Linda, goodbye, Shivani.

Susannah Crolius: Goodbye, Victoria. Sort of, you know, all their love and their care for me just sort of… it felt like they just sort of rushed around and sort of hovered around me. 

Susannah Crolius: So, anyway, it was a very important experience, and I don't have any answers about it, and I don't and seeking about it, and I've been thinking about what it means to me spiritually now.

Susannah Crolius: I've worked a lot around death and dying in my professional career, and what does it mean to have been confronted with the reality of, of death, in this way?

Susannah Crolius: I don't know. I don't know yet. I'm still working… I mean, it was very recent, and so I'm still writing about it, and making art about it, and reflecting on it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: A couple things that come up for me is horses have also had a very special place in my life.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: When I was a child in a home that was, home environment that was very challenging, the, to be at the stable, with the horse was my safe place.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And there was… there was this horse, and…God put an angelic presence in that horse.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: That horse was for me an angel.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: I believe it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And then I also share… There was a point in my life where I had… one of the doctors that I was seeing at the time was telling me, you know, your organs are barely functioning.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You know, another practitioner, actually a medical doctor, but also a spiritual healer, said, yeah, your life cord is separating.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And every night I was dreaming, on some… in some degree, about dying.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I was, having trouble with, falling.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And in the dreams… I… it was like this process of getting to the point of accepting the fall.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And… and so there was a dream where I was on the side of a cliff, and I fell.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I just got to the place of being at peace with it, you know? And just being, like, accepting I'm falling, and… and… and that's okay.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And then I was caught by angels.

Susannah Crolius: Hmm… Hmm.

Susannah Crolius: What did that… do you remember what that, what that felt like, or do you remember what was going through your what was that experience like to be caught by angels? 

Susannah Crolius: And how has that impacted you in your own sense of spirituality?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, there… there was, like, a dual… a dual reality.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: There was a part of me that was very much at peace with letting go of life on Earth.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And there was a part of me that woke up from that and said, oh, I woke up from that.

Susannah Crolius: Kind of like damn, now what?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Exactly.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: My soul has been returned to this body.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, now what? 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so, for me, that moment was a moment of -- Am I ready to meet my Lord?

Susannah Crolius: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I felt that I was not.

Susannah Crolius: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I, I have had many struggles as part of my spiritual journey with, you know, old traumas and… and…dysfunctional patterns and responses to those traumas. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Chronic health stuff, and…and sometimes I respond to my health challenges with grace, and…and peace, and sometimes I respond to them with a lack of grace, and a lack of peace.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I thought, I… when I meet my Lord, I don't want… I want to have let go of every barrier.

Susannah Crolius: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I want to have let go of the places of anger, and resistance, and resentment and… I want to be… I want to be a heart of only love.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so that motivated me to do some things that I hadn't done.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In terms of my spiritual journey. It motivated me to study with a teacher that I've been thinking about studying with and hadn't yet. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It motivated me to do a 40-day retreat. It motivated me to go on pilgrimage.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And… and I somehow thought that I wasn't going to live through all of that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And yet, at the end… 

Susannah Crolius: Here you are.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And yes, here I am. And at the end of that, after the pilgrimage, it was like waking up from that dream and saying, yes, I'm still here. Here I am.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so it's been for… it's been a, it's been a movement of constriction and expansion and a movement of spiritual motivation and spiritual lack of motivation.

Susannah Crolius: I think the two go hand in hand. I don't think there's… I don't think you can have one without the other.

Susannah Crolius: Let me ask you, Where…Where are you in your sense of belovedness?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Oh…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm going to tell you true.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I've kind of been going through a dark night of the soul lately.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, I mean, there have been points in my life where I have certainty in my belovedness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And…and it's a… it's a journey. It's not a…. It is a process. It is not a matter of arrival, and and one of the things that I've been dealing with lately is realizing that there is both a part of me that has that certainty of my belovedness, there is a part of me that knows God's responsiveness and God's love -- and there's a part of me that is still carrying… very early childhood trauma and releasing misconceptions about God, and struggling with misconceptions about God from trauma at a very young age.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And… And I will say that I have… come a tremendous amount -- Yeah, I've come a long ways.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And yet ... where I am now is saying, okay, how do I in this moment, tend to those places of woundedness, where I have experienced so much healing and so much transformation, and clearly there is yet more healing and yet more transformation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So where I am in sort of my belovedness now is grappling, for lack of a better word, with figuring out that to be beloved, today, means to bring together swaddling my toddler and giving that little… 2-year-old… 3-year-old, so traumatized, love and care. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And bringing that together with the adult. The… the man, the adult man and accepting what it is to be an adult.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Accepting what it is to have free will as an adult.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Accepting that how I use my free will has consequences.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I can use my free will to do things that feed my heart and are ultimately in service of my soul.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Or I can use my free will in ways that cause rust over my heart and are not in service to my soul.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so bringing together that sort of adult responsibility and adult accountability with this part of me that has not grown up, this part of me that's very, very wounded, but in a way that's loving.

Susannah Crolius: Thank you.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: Those old stories really tether us.

Susannah Crolius: I think of the word tether again, and I think of tethering, as you talked about it, in a generative way. You know, what will I give my heart and my love and my energy and my soul to?

Susannah Crolius: And commit to that.

Susannah Crolius: And the tethering of the old stories that just don't go away.

Susannah Crolius: They just… they don't go away. They might shift, or they might…they might shift, or they might not be forefront at some point, but again, ebb and flow, ebb and flow, they always come back, and I… and I think that... 

Susannah Crolius: What do I want to say? That.... I wonder, in William Stafford's poem about the thread and the, the, the…pulling of the old… the stories of… the old stories are a thread that are always pulled to our lives, and yet I wonder if it's God on the other end, sort of pulling, you know, pulling them through us.

Susannah Crolius: You know, that, that, and, and, and, Yeah, where does the… who's holding the thread that is pulling us… pulling us and our… our stories, whether they're generative or filled with shame or trauma, and where do they go?

Susannah Crolius: Do they go… are they pulled into the hand of God, into the heart of God?

Susannah Crolius: That's a metaphor and an image that I could really work with. You talked about being the adult who sort of picks up the toddler, and… and comforts.

Susannah Crolius: Not just comforts, but tends, in the best sense of the way, tend… tend… not just there, there, but I… I see you, I hear you, that this is really scary and painful and awful. And… and the image of being held.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. 

Susannah Crolius: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, you know… the… the adult Habib -- It's very interesting.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: There's a part of me that remembers the child of love, and light, and just exuberant joy.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You know, like… like… light that just explodes out. Like, part of me remembers that child. Right. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And the adult Habib also has done enough -- that's not the right language -- has received again and again and again, knowledge of God's proximity, knowledge of God's responsiveness.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I mean, I feel God's responsiveness I don't know how many times a day. I mean… Right?

Susannah Crolius: Yes, yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So… the adult Habib needs to hold a little traumatized toddler with the knowledge of the belovedness because the real care, the real care is what returns us to truth.

Susannah Crolius: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You know, and that little toddler that was traumatized is operating in falsehood.

Susannah Crolius: Yes. Yes.

Susannah Crolius: I call them the old stories, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So part of caring for the toddler is giving the toddler love, and part of caring for the toddler is holding the pole of truth of God is loving. God is merciful. God has always held you in hands of mercy and love.

Susannah Crolius: We just forget. It's so… it's so funny how we… we… we forget, 5 minutes, or an hour or a week, we forget. And so maybe spirituality is a… is the practice of remembering that.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes.

Susannah Crolius: Of remembering that we are always held.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And I believe that we were made to return home and that what we experience is for the purpose of returning us home.

Susannah Crolius: Being at home, returning back to home in… in closer proximity to God?

Susannah Crolius: Is that what you mean by...?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You could use metaphorical language to say, in the arms of God.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But I would, you know, in… in Sufism, you know, we have these ontological categories, these realms of reality. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: There's a… And in the…at one end of the spectrum, we have the world, the material world that we live in.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But as you move to, you know, the realm of the unseen, to the most subtle realm, this realm is the realm of oneness. It's the realm of unity. It's the realm of no separation.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And we, human beings -- I said this in the conversation the other day -- We carry both the multiplicity of the earth and the oneness of the highest heaven.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And we were made to return to that oneness.

Susannah Crolius: It's a lot to carry, both those things.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It is! It is a lot to carry.

Susannah Crolius: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It absolutely is.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And some very unique human beings are able to arrive at that spiritual station of the unity, and return to being in the world carrying that station of unity.

Susannah Crolius: Do you think some people arrive?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Absolutely.

Susannah Crolius: Oh, okay.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Absolutely.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, and… And some people just have little tastes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And those tastes keep us going.

Susannah Crolius: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: Yeah.

Susannah Crolius: Hmm.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, it's been a wonderful conversation. Any final words of wisdom?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I… in my mind, I thought we were going to talk about the intersection of spirituality and creativity, and… and that was only a small part of this conversation.

Susannah Crolius: Have me back again, and we can talk about that. But, you know, I mean, isn't spirituality… we've talked about movement and spirituality, and isn't creativity just the movement of the spirit, in us, whether it's painting, or making altars, or cooking, or gardening.

Susannah Crolius: It's… it's, again, I think of creativity, and art as… as… as movement of the spirit, movement of the soul. So, there you have it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: In 20 words or less. 

Susannah Crolius: Yes. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, thank you so much, Susannah, for the great conversation.

Susannah Crolius: Thank you for having me. It's, it's, Yeah, I feel full, I feel, delighted and wonderful.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you to all listeners for joining us on Beyond Names. Before we go briefly, if you would just pause for one breath and reflect for a moment on what stays with you from this conversation with Susannah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May something you heard today help you reconnect with the light in your own heart.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May it help you grow in compassion, clarity, and courage.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May you find your way again and again back home to yourself, back home to the divine, however you name it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: If today's conversation spoke to you, please like, share, and comment on this episode, and please follow or subscribe to Beyond Names. To make an appointment with me, please visit https://www.habibboerger.com/. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Until next time, may you be light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May you consciously participate in growing your light, and may you share your light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Peace be with you.