About Kaudie

My Story

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. –Frederick Buechner

I grew up in the 60s and 70s in a solidly middle-class neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia—the capital of the South. There I attended a Presbyterian church, which hired a woman as associate pastor when I was in high school. Around the same time, black folk started moving into my white suburban neighborhood. At that point, I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to experience both of these things—a female pastor and brown-skinned neighbors—in what was then a fairly conservative Southern city. I remain ever grateful for these gifts, even as I acknowledge the strange mix of privilege, open-mindedness, sexism, and racism in which I lived.

I still attend church—now United Church of Christ—and love my church community. And my spirituality has expanded well beyond my Christian upbringing and subsequent course of graduate study. I try to learn about other spiritual traditions from both reading and listening to friends traveling other paths. I’ve come to believe that whoever or whatever “God” refers to is much, much bigger than what our human minds can grasp and remains largely a mystery. I don’t believe that any one tradition can capture the nature of the sacred, and so we are wise to listen to the teachings of other traditions with humble, respectful ears. In a commodity culture, it is tempting and easy to cherry-pick other spiritualities for our own purposes without appreciating the greater richness and context of other traditions. So we must be intentional about receiving their wisdom with humility rather than co-opting them for narrowly self-serving purposes. No one does this perfectly, including me.

My Work

As a lifelong seeker on a spiritual path, I have found my own deep gladness in the interfaith practice of spiritual direction and coaching. I completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in theology at Yale University—during which time I discovered spiritual direction for myself—and later earned a Diploma in the Art of Spiritual Direction at the Hesychia School (Tucson, AZ), at the time a program in interfaith spiritual direction. Throughout my career, I have been committed to practical theology and spirituality and have had the privilege to serve as both a formal and informal counselor and spiritual friend.

I am also a writer, artist, and editor/writing coach. I’ve always loved to witness and create beauty, and I bring my passion from these other creative vocations into my spiritual direction and coaching, always attentive to how I might help others find beauty in their life.