Rev. Sharon Seyfarth Garner is a spiritual director, retreat leader, author, and United Methodist Pastor who finds great joy in helping fellow seekers slow down, listen deeply, and nurture spiritual vitality in everyday life. She is the Founding Director of Belly of the Whale Spiritual Direction & Retreat Ministries and has more than three decades of experience creating spaces for contemplative prayer, sacred silence, creative exploration, and spiritual renewal.

Sharon is the award-winning author of three books that invite readers to embrace the beautiful messiness of life while discovering ways to pray creatively and love extravagantly: Praying with Mandalas: A Colorful, Contemplative Practice; Mandalas, Candles & Prayer: A Simply Centered Advent; and her newest release, Praying with Jonah: Practices for Imperfect Pilgrims (Upper Room Books, 2026).

She has led retreats and workshops at Genesis and in a wide variety of settings, including on the Camino de Santiago in Spain, with Spiritual Directors International, at the Wild Goose Festival and Weird Church Camp, at a school in Liberia, and in a women’s prison in Cleveland. In addition to her M.Div., Sharon holds graduate certificates in Spiritual Direction (Ignatian Spirituality Institute, John Carroll University), Diversity Management (Cleveland State University), and Ecumenical Studies (World Council of Churches).

Perhaps more importantly, however, Sharon enjoys savoring this wild and wonderful gift of life by getting dirt from the garden under her fingernails, soaking in sacred silence, taking long walks, singing loudly (and often making up the words as I go), and seeking the world’s best wood-fired pizza (recommendations welcome!).