PODCAST

Confluence Formation

Aram Mitchell

Principles, practices, and prayers for living life to the full. arammitchell.substack.com

society & culture personal journals

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1:29

Day 7 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/08/05

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“Now we know what is trivia and what is real.” (Terry & Renny Russell, On the Loose)From my heart:It might take you a while to discern between the two, beloved. And it won’t come without mistaking one for the other on more than one occasion. And then—even after knowing the difference—mistaking them

1:20

Day 6 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/08/04

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“There is nothing like the perils of the wilderness to breed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy.” (Herman Melville)From my heart:Free. And easy. Sort of genial. Desperado philosophy. I heard a man once call his brother cavalier, and he meant it as an insult, but his brother

1:38

Day 5 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/08/01

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“Hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come.” (Wendell Berry)From my heart:No matter the trials of today. No matter the weariness in the present moment. No matter, even, the regrets you maybe carry from yesterday, yester-year, yester-life. The songs that are to come chatter faintly. And

1:46

Day 4 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/31

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“Use even this sadness to carve out spaces in our souls where still greater repositories of holy affection might be held, unto the end that we might better love, in times of absence and in times of presence alike.” (Every Moment Holy)From my heart:You have a spacious soul, beloved one. Made so by my

1:23

Day 3 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/30

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“Watch, now, how I start the day…” (Mary Oliver)From my heart:I will. I do. There is nothing more that I love than that: To watch you start—and then live—a day. This is the day, they sing, that I have made. Full to the brim with joy and gladness, for those who go looking for such things, for

1:39

Day 2 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/29

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“Thy name is as ointment poured forth.” (Song of Solomon)From my heart:And I am pleased to call you by your name. To give power to you by naming you so. You have the name your parents gave you. It’s the one your siblings and neighbors and students and friends all use. It’s the name that lovers use

1:20

Day 1 | The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/28

Everyday I ask the loving voice of wisdom, which dwells in our hearts and elsewhere in this world: “What would you have me know today?” And then I listen. This is what I heard one day, not long ago…From elsewhere:“Come into the presence of still water.” (Wendell Berry)From my heart:Beloved one, though all around you life travails, be like me. Be the quiet water that you are. Yes: Depend on flow. What pours into you and what pours out. Yes, of course: All is dynamic, even the quietest of still

6:17

The loving voice of wisdom

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/25

In this post: I’ll share a listening practice, and then I’m going to invite you to join me for the next month, for about two-minutes every day, to practice listening with me.The thing we’re listening for is a simple note from the loving voice of wisdom. That voice is part intuition and part divine prompting, and it is always eager to whisper sweet guidance to any and every quiet and attentive heart.At the end of this post I’ll let you know how you can follow along, and even participate.Last week

3:53

I want my attention back

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/14

I thank god that I spent the bulk of my childhood in the 90’s. Me and my best buds riding bikes alongside the White River in the Indianapolis suburbs or adding to our rickety treehouse in the sycamore in my backyard or playing street hockey at the end of the cul-de-sac. And playing a little bit of Nintendo, too, here and there. But never once having to navigate the pings of a dumb phone or the siren call of anti-social media or the desperate screams of so so so many screens.It’s tempting to stand

4:41

I'm a father now, and changing diapers is a holy thing

Confluence Formation ·

2025/07/01

My friend Danielle sent me a book full of prayers and liturgies for all sorts of quotidian occasions. Every Moment Holy, it’s called. Every moment really is, isn’t it?The table of contents is full of titles like: liturgies for daybreak, midday, nightfall; liturgy for the preparation of a meal, for the keeping of bees, for the planting of flowers, for the morning of a yard sale; liturgy for a sick day, for missing someone, for the death of a dream; liturgy upon seeing a beautiful person, upon hearing

5:40

Christmas Eve Lullaby

Confluence Formation ·

2024/12/24

**Shared at the Christmas Eve candlelit service at Edgecomb Community Church**Good singing! Good reading! Good songs! Good story!Don’t you love a good story?And what is it that makes for a good story?What are the elements of a compelling story?High stakes. Surprising characters and character development. Nefarious plot twists and near misses. Journeys full of obstacles. Encounters with implausible messengers. Fate. Purpose. Urgency. And of course, the emergence of new possibilities.Good stories

5:02

More on how to pray

Confluence Formation ·

2024/09/06

These days I have been praying more than I have in years. I have mostly been doing this in private, with a candle and some sacred objects, a few words and some silence each morning. Everyday, along with asking for divine help, I invoke the presence and companionship of seven archetypal figures which, to me, represent qualities of my own being. These archetypes are qualities of being that are already true. But what’s beautiful about this prayer practice is this: The archetypes that I invoke each have

5:41

Instinct and imitation

Confluence Formation ·

2024/05/21

This is a meditation that I wrote for another thing, which I will tell you more about later, but meanwhile I want to share it with you here…In the poem that she called Wild Geese, Mary Oliver tells us directly: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body // love what it loves.”Lest we forget, we are animal every bit as much as our mammalian kin. Our tenderness and our ferocity are both animal qualities. We express and convey ourselves through the soft squish of our animal bodies and in our

4:26

Yes, and...

Confluence Formation ·

2024/05/03

In my last reflection I wrote about the practice of having the audacity to suck at something. Here are two things that I have had the audacity to suck at lately:* Improv comedy* Fly fishingAnd it isn’t even that you have to be terrible at the thing, really, to get the full benefit of the practice. It just has to be something that you are not already excellent at, that you are a little bit intimidated by, and that you are willing to try nevertheless.Both improv and fly fishing are things that had

3:54

The audacity to bloom

Confluence Formation ·

2024/04/25

I have been combing the internet for sources of insight at the confluence of wildness and spirituality. The internet is not the most relevant place to search for such things. The most relevant places to search are wild places and wild spirits, your very own and those belonging to others. But there is no shortage of wild wisdom out there—even among the ones and zeros—for those who have eyes to see. Along with everything else it is, the internet is an archive of story, conversation, perspective,

5:06

Trail liturgy

Confluence Formation ·

2024/04/09

After Easter this year I flew from Boston to a conference center in a little corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are called the Blue Ridge Mountains because the trees on the mountainside emit hydrocarbons that—when seen from a distance—huddle over the mountains in a haze of blue. When you are in the mountains, and not just beholding their hazy edges from afar, things are more vivid. Up close each tree communes with well-defined and tangible edges.In the mountains, among the vivid trees, each

5:35

Stepping around the mound

Confluence Formation ·

2024/03/22

A sunrise like today’s makes me think about that sentiment that appears through the pen of the prophet who wrote: “His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning.”Sometimes I procrastinate a long while from doing a thing that I want to do, and then I wake up one day and I’m like, “Ahhh *deep sigh* new mercies.” And I just go ahead and do the thing.I like to sit every morning at my desk and peek out the window askance at the sunrise, and write. But I don’t always do it. Because: Plenty

3:33

UPDATE: Spiritual Formation in the Wild

Confluence Formation ·

2024/03/22

As a wilderness guide, the ability to pivot from your itinerary when the weather, terrain, group, circumstance, or who-knows-what requires it—that’s one of your most vital capacities. The same goes for any practitioner of wild spirituality.It’s interesting though, because it’s seldom crystal clear whether the pivot is entirely necessary. It’s always some combination of managing risk and expectations, and about moving through with the confidence that you can alter course without needing to compromise

6:11

Rhythms of Renewal

Confluence Formation ·

2024/03/07

“We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators, but for thunder and mud.” — Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental JourneyPerhaps you’ve heard: Loving on nature is good for us. A little biophilia goes a long way toward making us feel better. In 2017 The Nature Fix, by Florence Williams, landed on bookshelves. In it Williams explores a host of efforts to study the biophilia hypothesis, which posits that throughout human evolution “peaceful or nurturing elements

5:54

Spiritual Formation in the Wild

Confluence Formation ·

2024/03/05

Wilderness therefore is for everyone—the hardy hikers as well as the vast majority who have never known what it means to carry a pack… Wilderness is more than camping or hiking; it is a symbol of a way of life that can nourish the spirit.– Sigurd Olson, Living Wilderness (1968)Life is wild. I am wild. Wilderness is powerful. Wilderness is dangerous. Wilderness is in me. Wilderness confronts me. Wilderness calls me. Wilderness points me home.Each of those sentences is a thesis for one section of the

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