Visible Contradictions + Knowing How To Know
It’s sometimes in the most unusual places that you actually discover the gift of the Beautiful. I always think that contradiction is what makes a person interesting. -John O’Donohue
The Maps, Lenses, & Mirrors Series
Years ago, I stumbled upon Eugene Peterson’s words. Peterson spoke in his unique voice and context, but I recognized them as a Truth already alive inside of me…
…each soul is unique: no wisdom can simply be applied without discerning the particulars of this life, this situation.
We have access to endless streams of information. We carry it around in our pockets, summon it with a question; machines fetch, collate, and serve it to us.
Wisdom is so close in every moment — there are sacred texts and traditions and lights left on for us by others. Our bodies bear Wisdom’s imprint and speak its language gesturally. It is visible in nature, alive and flowing in the spaces between us.
There is no singular piece of knowledge, no living teacher that can impart wisdom that will exempt us from discerning the particulars of our unique existence.
No other human has traversed the precise set of circumstances before you now—constellations of nuance, nature, relatedness, potential consequences, and the flesh that will bear those consequences. The process of wrestling that ushers in Truth also grounds what is known in a non-transferable robustness.
The Maps, Lenses, and Mirrors Series is a collage of conversations, music, voice memos, visual art, and words exploring how to know.
There is a deep and pristinely clear "something" in each one of us, regardless of the outer circumstances of our lives, that has the capacity to recognize Wisdom when we meet it, and it is the nature of Wisdom teaching to call this 'something' forth. But until the spark of recognition actually goes off in us, Wisdom remains invisible.
-Cynthia Bourgeault
An Invitation
If there is resonance here for you in this series, or you want to dip in from time to time, consider entering in consciously, with a WISH.
When we earnestly seek, we will find—but not directly or finally. These words from the Gospel of Thomas ring true over and over…
If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things.
Your sovereignty will be your rest.
Video Artifact #1
Earlier this year, a friend asked if we could start recording our conversations. Each time we talk, there is a lingering wish for an artifact. These dialogues make space for something new to emerge, in us and between us. We have pulled snippets from my end of the dialogue to include in this series of posts.
Though these videos have a real-life, non-polished quality, and I don’t get the words just right, something inside says they are worth sharing. For accuracy’s sake, there are notes below to contextualize and clarify.
Watch the video on Kirsten’s Faint Outlines YouTube Channel
Seeing Ourselves Clearly
A granular reflection of our particular blind spots can be hard to find. And when we do find it, what is reflected can be hard to bear. This conversation with Carin is a present-moment excavation of what her question stirred and the context that’s guiding me as I come face-to-face with the generative friction of my inner contradictions.
Context does not change the realities we find ourselves in, but it does change how we orient to those realities.
We do not develop into a full expression of our nature through ease and good fortune. The dynamic aspects of the birth chart—the part of our fate that seems the most harrowing—provide the agitation required to bring the soul into full flowering.
"Wholeness is born of the acceptance of the conflict of the human and the Divine in the individual psyche."
-Helen Luke
Developing A Soul
I have heard it said that the soul is a seed. For this seed to take root and flourish into full expression, it must be developed.5
Astrology is a vital element in my soul-developing work. Most relevant to this dialogue, as a mirror for seeing and deepening interior fluency, bringing what is unconscious above ground, where new possibilities for conscious choice (sometimes) become perceptible.
A horoscope shows the precise location of planetary bodies at the moment of one’s first breath. This snapshot bears within it the qualities of time and space present as Spirit enters form, teeming with latent possibilities, predilections, and precarities.
This portrait of the sky represents twelve Zodiacal Signs and twelve slices of celestial pie, each corresponding to a domain of life experience.
In the video, I speak of the friction and flow between the planets. An “opposition” is when two planets are 180 degrees away from each other, on opposite sides of the circle; it is a polarity.
In my horoscope, the Sun is in Gemini in the 11th House, and Neptune is in Sagittarius in the 5th House…
Do not let unfamiliar symbols overwhelm! Notice the dark red lines for a moment. These are oppositions—contradictions that make up part of my nature.
To Be Clear
When I speak about Neptune, what I am really excavating is how the Neptune-Sun polarity operates within me. My words are a bit confusing—the planets themselves do not “like” anything.
If you are an astrologer, you will recognize that Sun-Neptune is one small piece of the overall friction, flow, and dynamism at play. I recognize this, too. I am learning to live my chart from the inside, and do not yet have expert fluency in articulating this.
Though I mistakenly reversed the order of this question, it is potent, nonetheless. Here it is, as it is written7…
How do you tell the difference between ‘the invincible certainty of your heart’ and neurotic self-delusion?
-Cynthia Bougeault
The Lyrical Nature of Our Own Belonging
Let us ground this entire conversation in the context of Beauty, by contemplating the poetic wisdom of John O’Donohue…
It’s sometimes in the most unusual places that you actually discover the gift of the Beautiful. I always think that contradiction is what makes a person interesting.
If we decide that contradiction is undesirable and has to be either hammered out or rooted out, or flattened, then it will do immense damage to the mystery of our own inner landscape.
Under the pressure of not contradicting oneself, and not being in contradiction with oneself, one runs the terrible risk of severing and dividing different sacred dimensions of your interiority from each other, and ends up creating a schizoid interiority. In other words, dualism is a consequence of our fear of contradiction. That also means that dualism is the force that most severely damages the seamlessness and lyrical nature of our own belonging.
People feel under pressure to choose one side or the other side of their own contradictory nature. And that choice always means loss, because you lose the side, you lose a part of yourself that is very necessary to your being and to your identity and to your future, indeed.
Why It Matters
I will not presume to understand fully. For now, I’ll leave you with a song, a quote, and an image in words that this inquiry stirs in me…
How we relate to the inner world will be how we relate to the outer. If we can appreciate and have compassion for our parts, even the ones we’ve considered to be enemies, we can do the same for people who resemble them. On the other hand, if we disdain our parts, we’ll do the same with anyone who reminds us of them.
-Dr. Richard Schwartz
Orienting to Soul-Developing Work On Planet Earth In January 2026
This episode of the On Being Podcast echoes in my heart years after its airing. Let’s carry this image together…
I’ve had an image in my mind for the last period of time that the world is a baby in our hands, and the baby is running a fever. And if I were holding a baby, my baby, in my arms, and the baby were running a fever, I would feel two things that don’t always come together that I think we need to bring together. One is such a sense of tenderness and love and open-heartedness, and also a sense of such ferocity and willingness to fight and do whatever I need to do to get this baby well.
-Rabbi Ariel Burger
Songs for Opening
“Ask With Your Body” by Epiphany Today on bandcamp
“May I Be Empty” by Batya Levine on bandcamp
Resources + Notes
This is the class I reference with Dr. Richard Tarnas (Cosmos & Psyche) and Dr. Becca Tarnas. I learned last January (in this video) that the elder Tarnas and Bruno Barnhart were friends, which is delightful to me. I will share Bruno with you in Part Two. (Also, I refer to him as Rick at one point, and I don’t think this is correct!)
Here are some of Thomas Hübl’s words about relating. If this short clip draws you, follow it back to its source. Another excellent starting place is his book Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World.
This On Being episode is a moving introduction to Eugene Peterson.
Eugene emphasized the potency of presence in the discernment process. Here is the full quote from Working The Angles as he spoke from his context as a pastor and a pastor to pastors…
(1) God is always doing something: an active grace is shaping this life into a mature salvation; (2) responding to God is not sheer guesswork: the Christian community has acquired wisdom through the centuries that provides guidance; (3) each soul is unique: no wisdom can simply be applied without discerning the particulars of this life, this situation.
Here’s how one of his students described the potency of this “with-ness”…
Eugene’s faithful presence and insistence to wait with me before God brought about deliverance that only comes when one really moves into the neighborhood of one’s soul and decides to stay, to love and care.
From A Burning in My Bones, Winn Collier’s biography of Eugene Peterson
My conversation partner is Carin Huebner
I have been contemplating this blog post, where Cynthia refers to Gurdjieff’s teachings on developing a soul. Here is the first paragraph…
According to Gurdjieff, the mysterious “X-factor” that enters in the moment of conception is not yet soul but essence. Think of it as the hand of cards you’re dealt at the start of a card game. It comprises a set of unique characteristics including race, gender (and most likely gender orientation), basic body type and other genetic factors, influences emerging from more distant ancestry and bloodline—and yes, that unquantifiable legacy “from the stars”—all combined primarily according to what Teilhard would call “tatonnement” (“trial and error”): evolution’s predilection for trying out any and all possibilities. Cumulatively, all of the above will combine to confer on you what is commonly known as your “nature.”
A Book List
Here’s a link to my storefront on Bookshop.org. Any book you buy from this site supports small, local bookstores and my work, and there are lists with some of my favorites.
The links below will take you to Amazon, which gives me a small commission.
Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles
Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones
Thomas Hübl, Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World
Cynthia Bourgeault, Love is Stronger Than Death
John O’Donohue, The Inner Landscape
Dr. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts
About the Author
My name is Kirsten. I write, collage, and practice spiritual direction in Vashon, WA. Describing what spiritual direction is feels like trying to “catch a cloud and pin it down.” Here's what's freshly alive in me: Spiritual direction is spacious accompaniment. Together we attune to the deep and the timeless. We hold questions no one else can answer for you and listen deeply to what arises. We open to what you sense and ground intuitions in rhythms and practices that anchor you as you live into what is emerging. We notice what is—obscurity, pain, fear, longing, wonder, delight, hope—and invite it into the home within you where true belonging and wisdom are always, already present.
Read More on the Soulspace Blog:
Moving Through a Dark Night of the Soul: A Spiritual Director Holds Space for Obscurity
Can You Still Reach Your Stubborn Hope?
Listening for Wisdom Artfully
