Consulting Services
Re-STORY-ation: Discover the Story and Potential of Your Place
Your place is not just a location; it's a living, breathing entity that’s nested within a dynamic system, ripe for understanding and nurturing. By seeing and harnessing its potential, your community can discover its unique role in a grand narrative, one that only it can authentically embody.
We’ll journey into your rich, storied landscape, shifting focus from being a solitary faith community to an integral part of a greater, interconnected eco-system. It's only through this shift that we can unveil and leverage its distinct patterns and potential, aligning with and contributing to the deeper narrative of the place.
Too often, communities stray from their place-sourced roots, seeking inspiration or guidance from elsewhere and utilizing generic best practices rather than tapping into their own essence. While mimicking others may yield short-term gains, it's not a sustainable solution for true flourishing. Genuine regenerative growth stems from a community's connection to its place, drawing from its inherent potential to evolve and thrive.
Mary and Joel DeJong partner together to come alongside communities in need of regenerative support to explore their place-sourced potential through strata and story work—what is the deep time story of the place upon which you live and work? How can that inform the next evolution of your community and organization? Perhaps your community wants to organize like a living and nature system; maybe you are deeply curious about how to integrate a eco-spiritual lens into your organization; there might be a bit of landscape that is in desperate need of some rewilding! Let’s put our ears to the earth together, listening deeply to the responses to these questions, so a new sacred story can emerge.
Together, let’s honor the essence of your place and its unique story, unlocking its full potential for a vibrant, thriving faith community.
“Tell me a story, a story that will be my story as well as the story of everyone and everything about me, the story that brings us together in a valley community, a story that brings together the human community with every living being in the valley, a story that brings us together under the arc of the great blue sky in the day and the starry heavens at night, a story that will drench us with rain and dry us in the wind, a story told by humans to one another that will also be the story that the wood thrush sings in the thicket, the story that the river recites in its downward journey, the story that Storm King Mountain images forth in the fullness of its grandeur..”
Let’s Transform a Space into a Powerful Place
Based on a combined 30 years of experience co-leading a neighborhood effort to restore and revitalize an urban forested parkland in Seattle's most dense and diverse neighborhood, Mary and Joel have developed an authentic practice of Placemaking and understanding of neighborhood economics. They link Placemaking frameworks, regenerative practices, eco-theology and land ethics with stewardship models, and global environmentalism for long-term regenerativity. Mary and Joel can help people perceive the potential of a place with a posture that honors the past, embraces the present, and sets forward a profound imagination for the future.
“Biodiversity is both a practical necessity and a spiritual underpinning of human existence”
Transform your trip into the journey of a lifetime
Are you tired of taking trips that feel empty and leave you more weary than you were when you left? By journeying with a purpose and practicing a pilgrim's pace, travelers can return home renewed and reconnected to their place within their communities.
Transformative Travel experiences provide critical exposure and experience with practices that awaken the traveler from the state of a self-focused consumer and invite her into holistic community—providing postures that create connections to the natural world, other cultures, and sacred sites. The inherent soul-work that Transformative Travel invites has both immediate and long-lasting effects on personal well-being, and intentionally develops capacities to become more engaged citizens on behalf of humanity and the collective future of the planet.
Mary DeJong has led groups on pilgrimage and transformational travel experiences for nearly 20 years. Through her role as an Inspired Guide, Mary extends her insights and practices to individuals, small groups, and tours to reimagine the art of travel.
Let’s connect to see how we could collaborate to transform your trip into the journey of a lifetime!
“To get to an unknown land by unknown roads, a traveler cannot allow himself to be guided by his old experience. He has to doubt himself and seek the guidance of others. There is no way he can reach the new territory and know it truly unless he abandons familiar roads.”