Way Collective Podcast

This is a special episode that is a Good Friday Meditation. You can listen to this while walking the stations of the cross, or strolling your neighborhood or the coast, or while sitting down wherever you are comfortable. Happy Holy Week, and thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 04/01/26, entitled Giving Up, For Good. In this episode, we bring this series Giving Up and Waking Up to a close by reflecting on how this practice of letting go can extend far beyond Lent, and how when we have eyes to see things in our life that are no longer serving us and can detach from them, a deeper connection with our fellow...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 03/25/26, entitled Unveilings of Our Unravelling Egos. In this episode, we reflect on the insights that came from our honest sharing about the ways our egos show up in the world, and how beneath our performance and protection, there is a profound, common longing for belonging in our shared human situation. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 03/18/26, entitled Come As Your Ego. In this episode, our community came dressed as our egos, and we offered as a reflection exercise for conversation about how our egos offer us a way to move through the world, and also invite us into deeper honesty and presence. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 03/11/26, entitled A Presence Beyond the Ego. In this episode, we talk about how the big picture of giving things up during Lent has to do with starting to separate from the ego's control over our identity, and how, when we start to loosen our grasp, we open into a much larger, truer Self. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 03/04/26, entitled Pilgrimage as a Practice. In this episode, Pat and Sheryl Kelly share about their journey through the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, how they experienced their post-retirement pilgrimage in Spain, and invited our community to reflect on the pilgrimages we are each being invited into in the liminal spaces in our...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 02/25/26, entitled On Giving Up and Waking Up. In this episode, we talk about the Lenten theme of connecting practices of letting go with building loving presence, and how, when we are able to learn the prayerful practice of "dispassion," we become untethered from the unconscious stories, desires, and fears that run our lives. Thank...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 02/18/26, entitled Ash Wednesday Thoughts. In this episode, we talk about the ashes of our world, and how taking time to contemplate mortality actually invites us to integrate death into our perspective and come into a more present and loving posture in the world. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 02/11/26, entitled Reading the Bible Like Jesus. In this episode, we talk about how everyone picks and chooses certain parts of their sacred texts to emphasize, and how Jesus read and used his own sacred text, as a call for us each to engage more lovingly with our sacred traditions. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 02/04/26, entitled Protecting Our Neighbors' Belonging. In this episode, Dr. Karen Rice shares about how we can find belonging within activism by using our unique gifts to contribute to the better good, and help protect our neighbors' belonging in times like these. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 01/28/26, entitled On Beginning Again. In this episode, we talk about how we are each learning to treat ourselves and others with patience by getting comfortable with the rhythm of beginning again - and how, in urgent times, slowing down to get a feel for this builds compassion within us and helps us resist the callousness of our ti...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 01/21/26, entitled Peaceful and Present, Together. In this episode, we honor our new partnership between Way Collective and First Congregational Church Santa Barbara, called Kin Commons, by looking at the value of practicing peaceful presence together, and how communities like ours that prioritize love can be a part of healing the w...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 01/14/26, entitled To Be Loved is To Be Changed. In this episode, we explore how faithfulness to our tradition is to let it flow, and how change isn't so much about new year optimization as it is about allowing ourselves to be refined by the ever-widening horizon of Love. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 01/07/26, entitled How Life Transitions Shape Us, with Tracy Johansson. In this episode, Tracy shares from her own personal narrative and experience how the transitions in life are actually invitations to deepen presence and lovingkindness with ourselves and others. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Christmas Eve Candlelight gathering on 12/24/25, entitled Carrying the Light of Love. In this episode, we explored how what is true of Jesus in the Christmas story is also true of all of us -- that we are each born of Love, and invited to carry love into a complex world with unique challenges in our time. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 12/17/25, entitled Joy as Things Set Right (Advent III). In this episode, we explored how Advent joy invites us into a new imagination where our world it set right, and how joy is what catalyzes our work for justice, bringing or inner and outer worlds into harmony. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 12/10/25, entitled Peace in Our Longings (Advent II). In this episode, we explored how the season of Advent is a season of learning to make peace with our longings, and how a making a contemplative spaciousness for our longings for a more just world can fuel our actions rather than our despair. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is a special episode where Tim got to sit down at the beginning of Advent with author, theologian, and historian Diana Butler Bass, entitled A Beautiful Conversation. In this wide ranging episode, Tim and Diana discuss the liturgical calendar and the cycle of sacred stories that compose a larger narrative of love, hospitality, mercy, justice, and gratitude, and how we are invited into a diffe...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 11/19/25, entitled God is Beauty. In this episode, we explored how the metaphysical and the metaphorical registers of our God-talk dissolve into Beauty, and how perhaps it is the most apropos language to use to talk about God on our evolving spiritual journeys. This was the final and summative conversation in our series, Processing...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 11/12/25, entitled When God Disappears as an Object. In this episode, we explored how, in contemplative prayer, God disappears as an other, and reappears as the sacred subjectivity of our very lives, leading us toward a more non-dual way of being and understanding, as we put on the mind of Christ. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 11/05/25, entitled A Life's Adventure Into Kriya Yoga with Lucy O'Brien. In this episode, Lucy O'Brien tells her story of life adventures that helped her break down cultural barriers, and how she found her way to the ancient practice of Kriya Yoga meditation as a way to focus, heal and grow. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 10/22/25, entitled Silence is the Voice of God. In this episode, we explored how process metaphysics encourages a certain contemplative posture of us -- one that invites us to tune in to the silent voice of God, and the graceful flow of our lives drawing us more deeply toward beauty and peace. Thanks for tuning in! 

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 10/15/25, entitled Ancient Wisdom & Science: Consciousness, Connection, & Compassion. In this episode, we explored how the felt sense of awareness is something that flows through all of life, and how neuroscience is expanding our understanding that we are hard-wired for kindness, connection, and compassion. Thanks for tuning...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 10/08/25, entitled Processing God and Science, Metaphysically Speaking. In this episode, we explored how we can speak of God in ways that are consonant with science by exploring a process (event-based) ontology of the cosmos, and what a world of feeling and experiencing entities opens up for us in terms of a speculative cosmology an...

This is the recording from our Dinner & Dialogue gathering on 09/24/25, entitled Process Theology and God's Uncontrolling Love. In this episode, we explored an introduction to process theology's alternative conception of God's power, about what God can and can't do, and how a non coercive God can be a gift for your growing spiritual journey. Thanks for tuning in!