PODCAST · religion
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"
by Shawn Parell and David Keplinger
Welcome to The Guest House, a commonweal meditation on the complexities and creative potential of being human in an era of radical change. In Season Two, cohosts Shawn Parell and David Keplinger are exploring what Emily Dickinson called "Gem Tactics," the practices by which we polish our creative engagement with life.These conversations and contemplative writings are offered freely. Please bless us algorithmically by rating, reviewing, and sharing these episodes with friends. Thank you! shawnparell.substack.com
Episodes
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Narrated Essay: What the Circle Asks
In Bailick Park in Midleton, County Cork, nine immense stainless-steel feathers rise from the earth and curve toward the sky, forming an empty bowl. From a distance, they look almost weightless, like the remains of an immense bird. Up close, they are ribbed steel with riveted joints, casting a…
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Narrated Essay: When to Plant Clover
In summer, each day invited us to expand. We followed the impulse to flower and yield; to stretch out, romp, and move; to say yes to every invitation. But in September, the imagination begins to shift. Mornings and evenings are laden with the scent of change. And as our fidelities grow more...
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Narrated Essay: Pictures For The Future
Registration will close this month for The Tender Harvest, a harvest yoga, meditation, and culinary retreat at world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Join this Sept 20-26, 2026, for a time of deep nourishment, learning, and inspiration. Just 2 rooms still available! A dog’s…
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Narrated Essay: Entering the Estuary
I’ll be teaching yoga & meditation this September 20-26 at Ballymaloe House in Ireland with Erin Doerwald. It’s a profoundly beautiful, nurturing setting for retreat. Join us for rhythms of daily practice, exquisite farm-to-table meals, and cultural exploration. Plus cedar saunas and a cold sea...
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Narrated Essay: The Finch's Song
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.” —D. H. Lawrence The sky is a flawless blue above the high mountain desert of Northern New Mexico. Though the air is thick with dust and pollen, transitional winds sharpen the senses and sweep away winter’s accumulations. White blossoms rise from the...
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Narrated Essay: Deconstructing the Caterpillar
Just as there are darkened seasons in human history—times when the structures sustaining civilization collapse in on themselves and humanity finds itself stiff-fisted, grasping at brittle branches, slipping between worlds—so too is every individual subject to phases of undoing in the…
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Narrated Essay: The Baring Season
Nearing the end of January, I’m only beginning to feel the sinew of this new year. Here in the United States, we’re reckoning with what seems like a sudden surge of authoritarianism—though, as Hemingway reminds us in The Sun Also Rises, collapse happens “two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The...
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The Poet of Dawn is the Poet of Darkness: A Talk with Mary Oliver Biographer Lindsay Whalen
Seven years after Mary Oliver’s death, her work feels even more vital, showing us how to love the world with its myriad faces. In this episode, we have the sincere honor of speaking with biographer Lindsay Whalen, whose forthcoming book from Penguin Press explores the life behind the beloved…
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Narrated Essay: The Secret Title of Every Good Poem
You’re invited next September 20-26, 2026, to The Tender Harvest, a week-long retreat amidst the golden hues and organic bounty of the world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Each day will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated excursions—plus ample time for…
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Listening into Wholeness | Parker Palmer
In conversation with poet Parker Palmer, we trace the quiet art of listening for one’s true vocation, the solace of circles where no one is fixed or saved, and the long, harrowed path toward a wholeness that does not deny its own fractures. Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker and activist who...
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Narrated Essay: These Fleeting Temples We Make Together
You’re invited next September 20-26, 2026, to The Tender Harvest, a week-long retreat amidst the golden hues and organic bounty of the world-class Ballymaloe House in County Cork, Ireland. Each day will feature yoga, meditation, farm-to-table meals, and curated excursions—plus ample time for…
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Awareness That Blesses | Meditation Teacher Nolitha Tsengiwe
In this conversation with Meditation teacher Nolitha Tsengiwe, we explore how silence, presence, and practice can help us meet the joy and impermanence of life. Nolitha Tsengiwe is a Dharma teacher and board member at Dharmagiri Retreat Center in South Africa, which was founded by Kittisaro and...
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Narrated Essay: When the Forest Stirs
Adulthood has long been overlooked as a phase in human development. This is, in part, due to its implicit assumption of steadiness. Its shifting hues tend to be less dramatic than those of adolescence and elderhood, its moods less pronounced. Much of the time, we do the work of our lives, showing...
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All We Get To Carry | Poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
In this episode, we talk with poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer about the grief that carries love through unimaginable loss—the death of a child—and of the daily practice of writing and mindful observation that dig the groundwork for self-forgiveness, compassion, and revelation. Rosemerry Wahtola...
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Gem Tactics with Shawn Parell & David Keplinger
Welcome to The Guest House, a commonweal meditation on the complexities and creative potential of being human in an era of radical change. In Season Two, cohosts Shawn Parell and David Keplinger are exploring what Emily Dickinson called "Gem Tactics," the practices by which we polish our creative...
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Narrated Essay: Hold It Up Like a Telescope
Love tenderizes everything. I tell myself this upon waking, when darkness gives way to dew and even the desert becomes supple again. Love tenderizes everything. I repeat it at dusk, as we sit on the portal and the sky swirls above us. I tell myself this when my daughter rests her head on my chest...
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Narrated Essay: In the Realm of the River
The sound of flowing water soothes most nervous systems, but particularly those acclimatized to the desert, and particularly upon waking. I have struggled with sleep disturbances for most of my adult life, so it’s rare for me to experience the weight and metabolic satisfaction of a good night’s...
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Circle of Visions: a Special Conversation with Mark Jensen
A Special Bonus Episode I’m so grateful to share this bonus episode featuring a special conversation I had last year with my dear friend Mark Jensen. It’s a rare and beautiful exchange that touches on healing, grief, and a mystical connection to the Earth—an invitation to listen and remember what...
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Narrated Essay: When the Maple Turns Again
Springtime in North Carolina is gorgeous. It can’t help itself. Perhaps it’s oblivious to—or in radical disagreement with—the brokenness of our times. Either way, the azaleas burst into riotous bloom, the crepe myrtles frill themselves in defiant pinks. In the mornings, birds trade secrets across...
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Narrated Essay: Knitting Undercover
Today is the Vernal Equinox. We’re promised incremental victories of light. But early spring is no darling — not here in the high desert. Here, she can be chafing and mercurial; she can show up in sputtering, immature fits and freezes; in mean winds that would cut down the most tender and...
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Narrated Essay: Endurance
Found amidst the twisted metal and ash of a family’s home in the Pacific Palisades is a pottery shard with a single word inscribed upon it: love. It’s a clay piece no wider than the palm of your hand, a remnant from a serving dish that a daughter made for her mother, who displayed it in the...
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Narrated Essay: Steadfast
STEADFAST (Inspired by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s “Wordlessly”) The way the pericardium holds the heart, the pond holds the murk, and fish, the bowl holds the porridge my child eats its steam rising to hold her face — and morning cups the day, the way day cups the night in a great, persistent...
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Narrated Essay: Anchoring in the Drift
Dear friend, I’m writing today from a quiet harbor in the West Indies where, for the past few years, my family has come to rest during the liminal week between Christmas (or this year's portmanteau, Christmukkah) and New Year’s. In the final days of 2023, in an essay about thresholds and time, I...
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Mud, Mess, and Metamorphosis: a Conversation with Poet James Pearson
In this insightful conversation, I’m joined by poet James Pearson to explore personal growth, vulnerability, and the creative process. The discussion centers on themes of transformation, wholeheartedness, and navigating life’s difficult "winter seasons," a metaphor for the times of struggle,...
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When Death Happens: a Coversation with Caitlin Rhoades
In this deeply moving episode of The Guest House, I sit down with artist and trained therapist Caitlin Rhoades to explore the intricate landscape of grief and death. Through her own experience of compound loss, Caitlin reveals how grief reshapes our lives, teaching us about love, resilience, and...
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Narrated Essay: Attention is Prayer
My grandmother's final gift to me was a rosary of fifty-nine blue stone beads around a silver-cast cross. It arrived in the mail one afternoon with a card that read Dear Shawn, Pray. Love, Gram like a wire sent from her hospice bed in Pennsylvania to my kitchen in New Mexico. What was the lesson…
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We Are The Great Turning: a Conversation with Jess Serrante
Today, climate leader Jess Serrante joins me in a heartfelt and insightful conversation on activism, emotional resilience, mentorship, and redefining hope in turbulent, uncertain times. Serrante recounts her path from activist burnout to Joanna Macy’s “The Work That Reconnects,” a practice built...
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Original Love: a Conversation with Zen Master Henry Shukman
It was a honor to sit down with Henry Shukman—Zen master, poet, and author—to explore dimensions of meditation, mindfulness practice, and awakening. Our conversation centers around Henry’s profound insights into the nature of "original love," a concept he discusses in his latest book. Together…
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Narrated Essay: Unordinary for Autumn
It’s a bright morning in early autumn, and a few hundred of us are seated on wooden pews in a historic auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art. A murmurous sound fills the hall as friends greet each other beneath a painted mural of St. Francis — patron saint of ecology and animals, those who…
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Moving the Line: a Conversation with Jonathan Foust
In this rich conversation, I welcome meditation teacher Jonathan Foust to explore his remarkable 50-year journey of practice and teaching. Enjoy this deep dive at the intersection of meditation, mindfulness, and the evolving path of spiritual awakening. Jonathan offers listeners an inside look at…
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Narrated Essay: The Meeting of the Waters
A few days ago, if asked, I would have said I lacked the spaciousness and sanity to write this month. I know it would have been an excuse born of scarcity and fatigue — but summer is flaring into autumn, and time can seem like a horse bolting for the barn in the back half of the year. In a recent...
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Narrated Essay: At the Far Fringe of Summer
“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again,” wrote Georgia O’Keeffe to fellow painter Russell Vernon Hunter from her desert hermitage in 1932. I am writing to you today from a cottage along the rugged coast of New England. This is the kind of salt-cured day I often…
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Breaking Out of the Binary: a Conversation with Hawah Kasat
Join me on our upcoming Iceland yoga and meditation retreat! Akureyri, North Iceland | October 4-11, 2025 The city of Akureyri was voted the #1 destination in Europe by Lonely Planet. Located on the longest fjord in the country, its mild climate and proximity to the Arctic Circle make it a bucket...
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Narrated Essay: When I Dream of Singing Wells
It’s the middle of the night, and somehow I have returned to the mountains and plains of Northern Kenya. In a language I can understand only while dreaming, I have been invited to skim mud from the surface of a freshly dug singing well with a carved wooden cup. Voices rise above the trumpeting of...
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Reclaiming the Sensuous: a Conversation with Rachel Rossitto
In this episode, I am thrilled to introduce Rachel Rossitto, a dedicated practitioner of Earth-based feminine wisdom, women's holistic health, womb healing, and much more. For more than 15 years, Rachel has immersed herself in diverse spiritual and healing practices. Today, she offers courses,...
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Narrated Essay: If The Word Was Celebrate
A young monk arrives at an old monastery. Among his daily tasks, he is assigned to replicate sacred church canons by hand. He soon observes that each replica is copied from a preceding replica and asks the abbot: “Father, is this not problematic? One mistake could perpetuate through every...
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Bridging Neurobiology and Spirituality for Therapeutic Healing: a Conversation with Psychotherapist Kasey Crown
My guest today is Kasey Hendricks Crown. Kasey is a transpersonal psychotherapist. She's a clinical supervisor, a consultant, a wellness educator, and an activist who challenges traditional mental health paradigms and advocates for a balanced integration of scientific and spiritual perspectives,...
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Narrated Essay: Uncoiled
Spirals began appearing in the Boyne Valley. First, in a dream when I was rounding cobblestoned streets searching for a place I vaguely remembered. Then, indelibly, among the neolithic moons carved into the mother stones at Newgrange in County Meath, where an invisible hand was believed to…
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The Luminous Self: a Conversation with Tracee Stanley
Tracee Stanley is the author of the bestselling books Radiant Rest: Yoga Nidra for Deep Relaxation and Awakened Clarity and The Luminous Self: Sacred Yogic Practices & Rituals to Remember Who You Are - by Shambhala Publications. She is the founder of Empowered Life Circle, a sacred community and...
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Narrated Essay: Hatchling Season
Hatchling season has arrived along the coast of Florida. With climate change, one can never be certain. Rising sea levels make tides ever higher and rising temperatures heat the sand on which this ancient ritual depends. I was disturbed to read recently that overheating can both kill nesting...
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The Hills Are Alive: a Conversation with Josh Schrei
Joshua Michael Schrei is the founder of The Emerald, a podcast that combines evocative narrative, soul-stirring music, and interviews with award-winning authors and luminaries to explore the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, and imagination. Throughout a lifetime of…
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Friendship in the Drift of the World: a Conversation with Jessica Lazar
Jess is a polymath who lives and works in Washington, DC. She is one of those rare people who is deeply knowledgeable and articulate and able to synthesize a broad range of subjects. I truly love and admire how conversations can go from politics to literature, to history, psychology, to science…
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Narrated Essay: One of Those March Days
Wind marks the transition between seasons in Northern New Mexico. Dry wind — the kind that agitates the senses — and mud that coats paws and suctions around walking boots. Emblematic of its military-inspired moniker, March can seem like a landscape across which one must trudge from territory to...
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Narrated Essay: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Never in my life have I met anyone who felt music so intensely as my father. He could not help listening to it; when he heard music that pleased him he became excited and there was a contraction in his throat; he sobbed and shed tears. The feelings aroused in him were unreasoning emotion and...
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The Power of Silence in a World of Noise: a Conversation with Author Leigh Marz
Foundations of Mindfulness Meditationis now available as a six-week audio course! Build a seated practice. With guided meditations, insightful talks, and a detailed course guidebook, you'll have everything you need to establish the foundations of a mindfulness practice at your own pace. My guest...
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Narrated Essay: Midlove
Brene Brown wrapped the term “midlove” around herself like a blanket in her forties. The famous shame researcher rebranded this psychological classic in an essay called “The Midlife Unraveling,” in which she described the nearly universal longing for alignment that accompanies waves of…
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January is for Creative Recovery: a Conversation with Creative Amplifier Brooke Estin
FREE for The Guest House subscribers - Brooke’s digital class, Unlocking Creativity for Wellness. Brooke is a certified brand strategist. She's a TED speaker. She's an artist, a designer, and host of the podcast The Art of Lost and Found. She also founded the internationally sought-after design...
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Narrated Essay: To Author Our Way Home
Of the many invitations for mindful self-improvement that landed in my inbox at the turn of the year, one piqued my interest — a daily sensory incantation from . The instructions are simple: set a timer for five minutes and record, without interruption and preferably with pen and paper, “close,...
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Narrated Essay: So This Is The Sound Of You
To the New Year With what stillness at last you appear in the valley your first sunlight reaching down to touch the tips of a few high leaves that do not stir as though they had not noticed and did not know you at all then the voice of a dove calls from far away in itself to the hush of the…
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Narrated Essay: Whichever Path Love's Caravan Takes
Dear one — Your message arrived this morning as we were dragging the tree to the curb and packing suitcases in the trunk. Now at 35,000 feet, as is often the case when I am among the clouds, I find myself reflecting on your words. What you meant about feeling heavy-hearted and adrift, I…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Welcome to The Guest House, a commonweal meditation on the complexities and creative potential of being human in an era of radical change. In Season Two, cohosts Shawn Parell and David Keplinger are exploring what Emily Dickinson called "Gem Tactics," the practices by which we polish our creative engagement with life.These conversations and contemplative writings are offered freely. Please bless us algorithmically by rating, reviewing, and sharing these episodes with friends. Thank you!
shawnparell.substack.com
HOSTED BY
Shawn Parell and David Keplinger
CATEGORIES
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The Guest House: "Gem Tactics" currently has 60 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Guest House: "Gem Tactics" about?
Welcome to The Guest House, a commonweal meditation on the complexities and creative potential of being human in an era of radical change. In Season Two, cohosts Shawn Parell and David Keplinger are exploring what Emily Dickinson called "Gem Tactics," the practices by which we polish our creative...
How often does The Guest House: "Gem Tactics" release new episodes?
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics" has 60 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts The Guest House: "Gem Tactics"?
The Guest House: "Gem Tactics" is created and hosted by Shawn Parell and David Keplinger.
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