Winter’s Edge: The Grandeur of the Soul

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Welcome to Winter’s Edge and to Part One of a seven-episode series on how to care for your soul during the long dark of winter.

In this opening teaching, I explore “the grandeur of the soul”—the first of seven soul-care themes drawn from Francis Weller’s newest book, In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty. Together, we look at why winter is the perfect season to tend the inner life, how the night sky has served for centuries as a metaphor for our own vastness, and what it means to remember that our soul is far more expansive than the small identity we navigate the world with.

I share three star-filled memories—from childhood nights on a Lake Powell houseboat, to psychedelic desert trips during my drug years, to a profound sober night in Monument Valley, and finally a recent pilgrimage to Idaho’s Dark Sky Reserve with my father’s ashes. These stories ground the teaching: when we look into the night sky, we are glimpsing the immensity of our own soul.

Drawing from John O’Donohue, I also teach why genuine soul work cannot be approached with neon intensity or psychological force. The soul is shy, sacred, and secretive. It requires candlelight, softness, shadow, and hospitality—not striving or spiritual hunting.

You’ll learn:

• Why winter is the natural season for soul work

• How the night sky serves as an ancient mirror for the soul’s vastness

• How modern life shrinks us into the “boat of self,” and how to reclaim our larger identity

• Why the soul prefers subtlety, spaciousness, darkness, and quiet welcome

• How awakening the soul invites destiny and meaning to meet us in new ways

• A writing practice from Francis Weller to help you experience your own grandeur

I close by reading my personal writing from Idaho’s Dark Sky Reserve and offering an invitation into Winter Wise Circle, my signature 6-week soulful listening and writing community for early 2026.

Let’s begin.

SUMMARY

On a warm December day at Huntington State Beach, Alexander records on the move—midday sun, boardwalk traffic, and the Pacific as soundscape. He frames this moment as Winter’s Edge: a time when nights lengthen, light recedes, and the invitation is to create spaciousness for everything that visits us in December as the solstice approaches.

From there, the episode turns to the theme of “the grandeur of the soul.” Alexander recalls the first big star-filled skies of his life: childhood summers at Lake Powell in the 1980s, sleeping on the roof of a houseboat with his family and their neighbors, staring into a vivid Milky Way long before heavy tourism and light pollution. He briefly revisits his drug years in the Utah desert, when psychedelics and night skies intertwined, and then moves to a pivotal sober memory: camping alone on Navajo land near Monument Valley in 2017, when the vast, silent night sky helped him understand what it meant to surrender to a stillness larger than himself.

The most recent chapter unfolds in central Idaho’s Dark Sky Reserve, where he camped near Redfish Lake on a grief pilgrimage with his father’s ashes. On the second night, the stars seemed even clearer, and he experienced the sky as a kind of living presence—something he couldn’t look away from, and looking itself felt like an act of devotion.

Alexander then shifts into some grounding definitions of “soul”—the principle of life, the emotional seat of our being, our animating principle, high-mindedness, courage, the essential element of something, the moving spirit behind our actions, even the deeply felt emotion in music and performance. He notes John O’Donohue’s reversal: not that the soul lives in the body, but that the body lives in the soul.

Drawing on O’Donohue’s teaching from The Sacred Secret World of the Soul, Alexander emphasizes that the soul is shy, sacred, and secret. It does not respond well to aggressive, neon-bright spiritual “hunting.” Instead, it prefers candlelight, shadow, and hospitality to the dark. He lights an actual candle on air, inviting listeners into a small ritual of befriending the dark as the solstice approaches.

With Francis Weller’s book In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty in hand, Alexander explores the Renaissance image of the night sky as a metaphor for the soul’s grandeur. Just as the stars are vast and unfathomable, so too is our inner life. Weller suggests that we’ve forgotten this inheritance and reduced ourselves to a small “boat of self,” marooned in our own interiority. Soul, by contrast, moves us into intimate connection with an animated world, an “erotic desire for this sensuous life.”

Weller offers a writing assignment—to lie under the stars and imagine the sky as a reflection of one’s own vastness. Alexander reads his own 15-minute response, written under Idaho’s dark sky and woven with the presence of his father, ash, earth, grief, and the sense of touching eternity.

The episode closes with an invitation to Winter Wise Circle 2026: a 6-week, small-group Wise Circle beginning Tuesday, January 6 and ending Tuesday, February 10. Alexander describes it as what might happen if group therapy, a soul-nourishing listening circle, and a writer’s retreat moved into a cozy cabin full of cashmere blankets. He names the common struggles on the spiritual path—feeling emotionally alone, stuck in overthinking or creative paralysis, neglecting one’s own needs, and longing for a meaningful structure—and offers Wise Circle as a field-guided container for weekly practice, writing, meditation, and deep listening. An early bird discount is available, and details live on his website.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The Night Sky as Teacher
  Star-filled memories from Lake Powell, Utah deserts, Monument Valley, and Idaho’s Dark Sky Reserve become living metaphors for vastness, surrender, grief, and awe.

• Many Faces of “Soul”
  Soul is explored as life-force, emotional ground, animating principle, high-mindedness, courage, essential element, and the felt depth in art and music.

• The Soul is Shy, Not Neon
  Drawing on John O’Donohue, Alexander emphasizes that the soul doesn’t respond to aggressive seeking or “neon” psychological clarity—it prefers softness, candlelight, and a slower, more reverent approach.

• Grandeur Beyond the “Boat of Self”
  Francis Weller’s metaphor of the night sky invites us to see our own soul as vast and mysterious, far beyond the cramped identity of individual selfhood.

• A Writing Practice as Soul Work
  Lying under the stars and writing from that place becomes a concrete way to encounter one’s own largeness, grief, and multitudes.

• Let the Soul Find You
  Rather than chasing spiritual experiences, Alexander suggests relaxing the hunt, creating space, and allowing the soul’s wisdom to approach in its own timing.

• Invitation into Winter Wise Circle
  The episode ends with a clear, heartfelt invitation to Winter Wise Circle—a 6-week small group designed for humans who want structure, companionship, and gentle guidance as they tend to their inner life in the winter season.