
Sensing the Spirit
A Whole Body Experience of Pilgrimage with the Senses
COURSE DESCRIPTION
What does it mean to pray with our whole bodies? What does Pentecost teach us about what it means to be a people of prayer and pilgrimage? Join us for a look at using the five senses to pray, inspired by a recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This class can be used as a contemplative practice during the season of Pentecost or be adaptive to make your summer travels a holy moment of pilgrimage as we lean into our Incarnational theology and encounter God through embodied prayer.
Starts Tuesday, May 30th, 2023
FREE
COURSE INSTRUCTOR
Kristen Ostendorf

Kristen Ostendorf is a candidate for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. She recently graduated from the General Theological Seminary with a Master’s of Divinity degree. She has worked as an educator, primarily as a high school history teacher, for about 15 years, and a newspaper reporter and copy editor before that. Born in St. Louis, Kristen came to the East Coast to follow her career in journalism after she graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with dual degrees in journalism and sociology. She earned her master’s degree in social studies education from Rutgers University in 2004 and has taught in a variety of environments. Most recently, she taught American and global history at a Quaker school in the Philadelphia area, where she is raising her two children.
Kristen currently serves at St. Christopher’s Church, Gladwyne, where she works with children and families, outreach, and creation care efforts. She also works with The Clare Project, which serves those who are unhoused and facing addiction in Philadelphia, as a mendicant street outreach pastoral care provider. Kristen has been active in a variety of ministries, including healing prayers, lay Eucharistic ministry and helping coordinate online prayer services during the pandemic. In addition, she has engaged in anti-racism work, facilitating workshops for the diocese, her church, educators and the wider community on the topic of white privilege.
She spends her downtime with her kids, her fiance, or walking, reading, running, and hiking. Kristen looks for ways to lean into silence in the busyness of life.
