In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habib sits with interfaith minister and author Liza Rankow, whose book Soul Medicine for a Fractured World explores the healing that emerges from our deepest fractures.

Together they reflect on:

• Illness as a spiritual teacher
• Woundedness and wholeness as two sides of the same coin
• The Japanese art of Kintsugi as a metaphor for the soul
• Suffering as a “discipline of the Spirit” (in the lineage of Howard Thurman)
• The choice to open—or close—in the face of pain
• How personal healing becomes medicine for the world

From Crohn’s disease and near-death experiences to mystical union, surrender, and the return to our inner child, this episode is an honest exploration of how hardship can clear away the veils that keep us from Love.

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To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

What does it mean to remain faithful while navigating injustice, distraction, social pressure, and the constant pull of the ego?

In this powerful episode of Beyond Names, Dr. Habib Boerger sits down with returning guest Abdul-Karim Pinckney — musical artist, former imam, and spiritual teacher — to explore the deeper meaning behind his single “Living in These Lands.”

Together, they reflect on:

• Maintaining orientation toward the Divine amid cultural chaos
• The tension between spirituality and religion
• Mercy, accountability, and radical self-honesty
• Social media, performance, and distraction
• Political polarization and remembering our shared humanity
• Presence vs. ego
• Why sincerity matters more than appearance

Abdul-Karim speaks candidly about lived experience, spiritual grounding, and the daily choice to “face God” — even when the world feels unstable.

This conversation is both contemplative and practical, inviting listeners to examine their own hearts while remembering that hardship need not close us — it can deepen us.

If you’ve ever wondered how to stay rooted in faith while living fully in today’s world, this episode is for you.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

Dr. Habib sits down with Zen teacher, author, and spiritual director Busshō Lahn for a deeply timely conversation about awakening, truth, and what it means to live from love in a world marked by suffering.

Raised within the Catholic tradition and later drawn into Zen practice, Busshō shares how a single spiritual seed can grow into a life of “multiple belongings.” Together, he and Dr. Habib explore the mystical heart shared across traditions — a place where differences soften and love becomes the center.

But this conversation moves beyond personal spirituality into urgent territory. As communities grapple with violence, fear, and collective grief, Busshō invites us into a challenging yet transformative question: Where is the war inside of me?

Rather than meeting fire with fire, he suggests that authentic spiritual practice calls us toward radical honesty — the courage to name our anger, face our wounds, and recognize even the shadow within ourselves. From that clarity emerges a love strong enough to say both yes to humanity and no to harm.

Listeners will discover:

• Why the goal of spiritual practice is to leave “nothing between you and love”
• How contemplation prepares us for compassionate action
• The hidden miracle within ordinary life
• What it means to awaken during times of societal upheaval
• How truth-telling becomes a path to freedom

This episode is an invitation — not to escape the world — but to meet it with a wiser, braver, more spacious heart.

If you’ve ever wondered how inner transformation can shape outer change, this conversation is for you.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habib Boerger is joined by artist, spiritual companion, and grief tender Susannah Crolius for a wide-ranging exploration of spirituality as movement, unbinding, and belovedness.

Susannah shares her spiritual journey—from a childhood shaped by art and nature, through decades of institutional ministry, to leaving the church in search of a more authentic, embodied spiritual life rooted in creativity, wonder, and trust. Together, they reflect on shame and healing, art as a gateway to the sacred, the soul’s thread that runs through our lives, and what it means to live both tethered and free.

The conversation also touches tenderly on near-death experience, grief, trauma, and the practice of remembering our belovedness—even in seasons of darkness, loss, and uncertainty. This episode invites listeners into a spacious, honest exploration of spirituality beyond performance and institution, toward a life grounded in presence, compassion, and returning home to the true self.

Perfect for seekers, soulful misfits, creatives, and anyone longing for a spirituality that feels real, embodied, and alive.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

In this powerful and deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habib Boerger is joined by Rev. Dr. Tomeka Jacobs, theologian, former chaplain, and author of Ecocosmological Spirituality of Southern Queer Black Women: Remembering and Reconnecting Identity. Together, they explore spirituality beyond rigid categories—toward embodiment, wholeness, justice, and belonging.

Dr. Jacobs shares her spiritual journey from Baptist–Pentecostal roots to an expansive understanding of the Divine as All Life—a sacred, interconnected reality that transcends gender, doctrine, and religious boundaries. Drawing from chaplaincy, womanist and feminist theology, mysticism, ecology, and lived experience as a Southern queer Black woman, she reflects on deconstructing oppressive theology, reclaiming ancestral wisdom, and remembering the sacred goodness of the self.

This episode touches on:

• The difference between religion and spirituality
• Decolonizing the spirit and reclaiming embodied faith
• Queerness, race, gender, and divine belonging
• Mysticism, unitive love, and compassionate justice
• Spiritual practices rooted in nature, stillness, and everyday life
• Activism as love, presence, and communal liberation

This is a conversation for spiritual seekers, soulful misfits, and anyone who has ever asked: Does God love me as I am? Is my embodiment enough? Is there more?

Whether you call the Divine God, All Life, Mystery, Love, or are still searching for language, you are welcome here.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

In this deeply moving and contemplative conversation, Dr. Habīb Boerger is joined by Hossam Ibn Yusuf, musician, Sufi practitioner, and spiritual seeker whose life has been shaped by sound, nature, and surrender.

Hossam shares his remarkable spiritual journey—from a childhood influenced by Christian and Sufi lineages, to formative years at Dar al-Islam in New Mexico, through loss, resistance, music, and finally a lived embrace of Islam as a verb rather than an identity. Along the way, we explore grief as an opening, faith as direct experience, and the ways the heart softens when it is ready to receive.

Together, Dr. Habīb and Hossam reflect on:

• Sonic theology and the spiritual power of sound
• Qur’anic recitation and dhikr as vibrational medicine
• Nature as the Qur’an al-Takwīnī — the unwritten revelation
• Music, silence, and remembrance as pathways to healing
• Surrender not as dogma, but as lived reality

This episode is especially resonant for those drawn to contemplative spirituality, interspiritual wisdom, and anyone curious about how sound and remembrance awaken the heart beyond belief.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

In this deeply moving episode of Beyond Names, Dr. Habib Boerger is joined by Abdullah Pat Aylward—board chair of the Shadhiliyya Sufi Communities and founding leader of the Sufi Center Minnesota—for a wide-ranging and heartfelt conversation about spiritual seeking, transformation, and embodied love.

Pat shares his remarkable spiritual journey, beginning with a Catholic childhood and early yearning for meaning, through decades of study and practice across traditions including Vedanta, Hinduism, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, mystical Christianity, and ultimately Sufism. Along the way, he reflects on the teachers and saints who shaped him—Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, Dr. Usharbudh Arya, Dr. Ibrahim Jaffe, and Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal—and the ways presence, not concepts, became his true guide.

At the heart of this episode is Pat’s honest account of “breaking the tomb”: a profound period of personal collapse that stripped away identity, image, and certainty, and opened him to a deeper integration of love, humility, and compassion. From this breaking emerged a seamlessness between inner spiritual life and outer engagement in the world—work, relationships, leadership, and service.

Together, Dr. Habib and Pat explore:

• What it means to love ourselves without needing to fix or perfect ourselves
• How spiritual practice becomes real in everyday life
• The deep unity of spirituality and social justice
• Why compassion, inclusion, and joy are not ideals, but lived realities
• How suffering can become a doorway into freedom and belonging

This episode is an invitation to rest in the truth that there is only one heart, one life, and one love—expressing itself through us all.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.

In this deeply moving conversation, Dr. Habīb Boerger is joined by spiritual healer and artist Michele Hamida Rabinowitz for a rich exploration of spirituality lived through the body, creativity, and presence.

Michele shares her life story as a series of sacred doorways—birth trauma, dance, motherhood, bodywork, loss, healing, movement, and art—each one drawing her closer to God and to her true self. From myofascial release and spiritual healing to expressive movement and intuitive painting, Michele reflects on how the body remembers, how creativity heals, and how art becomes a spiritual practice of unveiling.

Together, Dr. Habīb and Michele explore embodiment as a path to the Divine, the role of joy and curiosity in spiritual life, the courage to say “yes” to transformation, and what it means to become “everything but nothing.” This episode invites listeners to consider how creativity—whether through art, movement, prayer, or simple presence—can dissolve the masks we wear and return us to the light within.

A tender, expansive dialogue for anyone longing to integrate spirituality with the lived realities of body, emotion, creativity, and everyday life.

Support the show

To make an appointment with Dr. Habib, visit https://www.habibboerger.com/.