Lover Earth

Earth Day is here, this annual time where we recommit ourselves to this planet, rededicating ourselves as planetary beings to the work of living well upon this planet. Earth Day also coincides with my wedding anniversary, and it isn’t lost on me that there is something resonate between these two observances that causes me to wonder: what if we weren’t proclaiming our commitment to Mother Earth, but rather trumpeting our affection for Lover Earth? 

Sit with this for a moment and reflect on the relational differences you have between your own mother and your most beloved. Personal Internal Family System dynamics aside, there is a sense that with mothers we experience a kind of unrestricted love that will pardon all affronts; whereas with a lover, there is a commitment that bends behaviors towards fidelity, respect, kindness, and support. I’ve certainly worked very hard to be celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary; being side by side with my husband today reflects investment in our interrelationship and in our mutual flourishing that looks different than the love I have for my mother. \What would change in your approach to Earth Day if you came to this day as an anniversary with your Lover Earth? Is there the possibility that we would recommit to our vows, doubling down on words that flame love, remembering that the two shall become one in this mystical union?

Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century German mystic who throbbed with a Celtic worldview, understood the potential of this deep love affair with Lover Earth: “If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.” Passion is different than duty or obligation. A passionate response is unreserved, unabashed, palpable, and heated. Our language for our beloved is infused with love. Desire drives us towards union. This is the kind of passionate unitive consciousness that lived within the Celtic spiritual soulscape, revealing an ecstatic interrelationship that was whispered with the sacred, wild world.

Mythologist Martin Shaw encourages his students to develop a practice of giving twelve secret names to the plants, animals or ‘things’ they encounter in nature and to speak those names out loud. It is evidenced that those that are in deep abiding love for the land they live upon have a hundred names for rain or twenty different names mountains or, at the very least, three different names for the spring time daffodil. In giving something a name, we deepen our relationship with it and create conditions for falling in love for you cannot love that which you do not know; and in finding many names we find ourselves watching, listening, thinking more deeply about that rain drop in the watershed, the mountains, or the spring flower — by engaging through language, we come to know it better—love it better. 

This Earth Day I encourage you to give this 12 Secret Names practice a try. Imagine speaking the names like you would to your beloved, to your Lover Earth, and witness the enlivening force that blooms between you. 

The Rewilding Wheel: Turning Towards Transformation

The Rewilding Wheel is a sacred circuit that seeks to locate the wisdom of universal nature symbols within one’s particular homescape for the purpose of spiritual formation. By locating the psychospiritual patterns found within the natural world to a particular place, the ancient wisdom inherent in the cardinal directions and elements takes on a practical shape and invites a focused seasonal practice. In this way, the Rewilding Wheelis unique as it invites a sacred process of remembering and recovering relationships within various ecosystems throughout your landscape.

I constructed the Rewilding Wheel as a model--as opposed to a theory--with the primary design objective to fashion a sacred bioregional approach to a seasonally-enmeshed spiritual practice. Creating this wheel was, in many ways, similar to stacking many variable wheels one on top of the other, and slowly turning them into alignments that would get at this intention of landing the seemingly ethereal energy in a landscape. This idea of sacred bioregionalism invites us to discern the “spirit of our place" and lean into the deep wisdom that lives within the land.

I sat down with Lisa, a member of the Rewilding Community and a practitioner of the Rewilding Wheel. Lisa is a faithful partner, mother, and owner of her own dog-walking business. I was curious to hear from her how this particular life has fostered soul formation and connection to the Sacred Wild. A women of practiced intention and an already established relationship with nature and animals, Lisa appeared to me to already have her wild connection established. It has been a joy to witness her further tap rooting through this particular life wheel. Read on to hear from her about how the Rewilding Wheel has impacted her life.  

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Interview with Rewildling Community member Lisa and Rewilding Community Guide Mary DeJong

Question: How has the Rewilding Wheel cultivated a more ensouled approach to your life?

Lisa’s Answer: The Rewilding Wheel has helped me to connect with the seasonality of my life in the rhythm of my days, months and years. It is a good metaphorical reminder of the times of rest and incubation that I need to give myself so that I continually grow, evolve and birth new parts of myself, while staying rooted in who I am.

Question: What are some of the practices that you have gained through this life wheel that have inspired your spiritual life?

Lisa’s Answer: I have a deeper connection with the land since joining the Rewilding Community. I now understand the importance of land acknowledgement, and have a relationship with the plants and non-humans in my own garden that feels more interconnected and respectful. I especially like the practice of creating nature mandalas, which invites me to refine my attention and notice more detail in the world around me. I’ve learned from Mary to do simple things that awaken my senses, like making a morning tea from plants in the garden and spending a few minutes each morning breathing in, tasting, and being in conversation with the life around me. I’ve become more aware of the lunar cycle, and find that embodied connection both comforting and stimulating. I’ve also brought the Rewilding wheel into my crafting hobby, and am creating a needle felted/embroidered version of the wheel, which is a fun and rewarding way to engage my creativity with my practices.

Question: In what ways has the Rewilding Community provided you with meaning and connection during our global pandemic?

Lisa’s Answer: The online community has been a source of comfort and relationship, often bringing beautiful images and ideas forward and offering the opportunity to connect with those on a similar journey. I enjoy the monthly online gatherings and find them to be a nourishing ritual. Mary has also introduced me to many teachers of whom I was unaware, poets, philosophers and storytellers who I have begun to listen to and learn from. I’ve included members of my family in my new practices, and know that the experience is deepening our connection with one another and helping to keep us all grounded and kind during hard times.

Question: The Rewilding Wheel unique aspect is its approach to sacred bioregionalism-how we attune to the spirit of our place. Do you have a favorite bioregion that has emerged through your engagement with the wheel? What have you learned through that locatedness?

Lisa’s Answer: My region of deepest connection is the forest. I spend a lot of time in the forest, and had been feeling that I wasn’t fully present there, wasn’t fully appreciating what the forest held. Rewilding practices have increased my awareness. I move differently in the forest, with greater intention and care. The forest holds both darkness and light, and I’m at home in that filtered, dappled light. Trees are also important for me, and I have so much to learn from them. I’m particularly interested in the mycorrhizal network and the interconnection of a forest community, which helps me feel my own interconnection.

Question: Anything else you might want to share?

Lisa’s Answer: I’ve been seeking connection with a largeness beyond me since I was a child. I’ve never found a religious or spiritual  home that felt right to me, except in wilderness. The practices of the Rewilding wheel helps me to connect with that largeness, and helps me to feel a part of a “we” that is expansive and meaningful. We are all stardust, all a part of one another, and this community and set of practices holds that for me.

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing of your Rewilding Wheel journey! If YOU are interested in deepening your relationship to your place—your homescape—join the journey! Learn more about the Rewilding Wheel Community HERE.

Rewilding Wheel altar at a rewilding retreat

Rewilding wheel nature mandala created by lisa at a rewilding retreat

Forest nature mandala at a personal rewilding retreat in the north cascade mountains

The Rewilding Wheel can be practiced at home and doesn’t require any supplies, brick and mortar locations, or human guides. More than ever, as we are needing to stay close to home for the sake of health and wellness for our communities, deepening into the spiritual nature of our local landscapes has value. Within the more-than-human world you can be intimate, close, profoundly present. Join the journey and deepen your relationship with the Sacred Wild!

Rising Rooted: How Creation Theology Roots Us in Belonging

California’s fires are flaring and fast. Powerful winds are fanning the fires with force, seeing burning areas twice the size of San Fransisco. Risks of human lives, more than human lives, trees and vegetation, and structures are all at risk as the Kincade Fire alone grows to over 75,000 acres. These fires, and their accompanying rolling electric blackouts, are indiscriminate and they speak with a collective voice: our house—our oikos (Greek for “house”) is on fire.

The Amazon is on Fire. The Congo River Basin, is on Fire. Oceans are warming. In September 2019 the New York Times amongst other news outlets reported the research that the number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent, over the past half-century. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. This is the age of the Anthropocene—the age when Humans activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. This is the age when in many ways, humanity behaves like a voracious fire, rapaciously consuming everything in our path.

How does our faith respond to this crisis? How do our theologies—these are our religious stories we tell ourselves about the nature of God and subsequently ourselves—respond to this ecocide? I’ll tell you what is not helpful—stories that tell us that our home is ultimately in heaven and that we are just passing through this planetary domain. No, we need theologies that are functional in that they tell us the truth of our existence: that we are created from this earth. Let us recall that Adam’s name in Hebrew is adamah, translatable as ground or earth, and that in this creation cosmology he is formed out of humus—a large group of natural organic compounds, found in the soil, formed from the chemical and biological decomposition of plant and animal residues and from the synthetic activity of microorganisms. And we are part of this organic earthen material! We belong to the land, to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us.

We must shift from a consuming people into a communing people, a people who commune and are personally and sacredly connected to our places and our planet. To lean into this kind of worldview, we need a sound and rooted Creation Theology, an understanding of God that is present in our planet, placed here as a liberating and regenerative rising incarnation force for the sake of all of our—human, more-than-human and our planet’s—future.

I want to go to the book of Job for the wisdom it contains regarding how we are to be in relationship with our places and listen intently to the sacred guidance given by the more-than-human world.

Job 12:7-12 The Message (MSG)

“But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

    let the birds tell you what’s going on.

Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.

    Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree

    that God is sovereign, that God holds all things in God’s hand—

Every living soul, yes,

    every breathing creature?

Isn’t this all just common sense,

    as common as the sense of taste?

Do you hear already how a good Creation Theology upsets the Great Chain of Being—this hierarchal social structure that places humanity at the top as the crowning glory? It says that the wild ones—the untamed animals, lands, waters—have been given the gift of speech, that they can be read as sacred script—that they have a subjectivity and personhood that cannot be controlled, coerced, or conquered. They offer an ecological way of living that is interconnected, and interrelational. They hold a mirror to God, reflecting to us how to live in flourishing ecological relationality. We are meant to court this wisdom of the wild, not corner it, capturing it and reducing its life purpose and value to a commodified and objectified thing. For to do that would be to crush the very presence of God.

A Good Creation Theology is a Decolonizing Theology.

For at its core is a liberation for all human and more-than-human life that occurs as a result of getting rid of this hierarchical illusion of separation—that we are separate from one another, from the earth, from the orcas…. for this illusion of separation—this dysfunctional myth— is what has allowed the colonizing hubris to take, to desecrate and oppress.

A good Decolonizing Creation Theology honors, respects, listens to, and affirms the indigenous and native voices and way of living that was generative and symbiotic for millennia. It joins with the Lummi Nation in saying: “What we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves. If any strand of the web is broken, the whole web is affected.”

A Decolonizing Creation Theology centralizes the voices of the voiceless and unheard—specifically the earth and more than human communities—and gives them dignity and sacred value.

“But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

 Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

    let the birds tell you what’s going on.”

What do you think Tahlequah also known as J35 in our resident orca whale population was saying as she carried the remains of her baby on her nose through the waters of the Salish Sea for days during her display of grief during the summer of 2018? Do you think she has something to teach us about the damming of our watersheds? Our over-fishing practices? How to make salmon populations thrive?

What do you think the albatross chicks were telling us with their dead bodies on Midway Island in the northern Pacific Ocean, their bellies filled with plastic? We must retune our ears to those who speak in the tongue of the wild—hearing clearly what they are saying through their silent slide into extermination. I invite you to meditate on this and connect to your own answer.

A Decolonizing Creation Theology aligns oppression of the earth with the oppression of bodies and understands that liberation of marginalized people will occur in tandem with liberation of land. C.S. Lewis rightly said that what we call human power over nature has actually become the power exercised by some people over others, using nature as a tool. Ecological injustice leads to social injustice, and vise versa. When we look to the bodies made invisible by systematic oppression, we see a demonstration of what has been done to the planet. We see the interconnection between empirical power and the deforestation and development of the Amazon and the life-threatening impact on indigenous tribes.

“Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.” Earth teaches us that a Decolonizing Creation Theology is a move toward solidarity with the subjectivity of the natural world. Hear this: humans have been limited in how they understand “personhood” (this is the quality of subjectivity of a being, often tied to liberty and equality) to the degree that we have given personhood only to human beings and to corporations…I’m sorry, but what?!? Corporations are attributed subjectivity, liberty, equality, but a vast population of humans are not let along the self-regulating body of Earth?!? Thank all that is good in the universe that this is changing with the development of Earth Law, a global movements to give personhood back to the planet.

In early July, Bangladesh became the first country to grant all of its rivers the same legal status as humans. From now on, its rivers will be treated as living entities in a court of law. The landmark ruling by the Bangladeshi Supreme Court is meant to protect the world's largest delta from further degradation from pollution, illegal dredging and human intrusion. The Ganges has also been granted this status as well as An Indian court has recognised Himalayan glaciers, lakes and forests as "legal persons.” There are various court cases and decisions happening like the globally.

The idea of environmental personhood turns that paradigm on its head by recognizing that nature has rights and that those rights should be enforced by a court of law. It's a philosophical idea, with indigenous communities leading the charge. This is the worldview shift that Jewish philosopher Martin Buber talks about in his theories of an I/Thou relationship. This is the seeing the other as a sacred Thou, a holy person in all their inherent dignity. And you know, you cannot steward a person…you can only steward an object. That has an inherent power-over position. When we move towards a solidarity posture with Creation we stand up for the land, we stand besides the watersheds, we speak for the Orcas, we see ourselves no longer as separate but AS the wild and wonder-filled body of the more than human Other. Do you see this critical move?

“We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we've lost our connection to ourselves.”

—Andy Goldsworthy

A decolonizing Creation Theology recovers an indigenous worldview within the Hebrew and New Testament scripture that sees land as central, nature as revelatory, and creation as sacred—the Body of God. The world as God’s body is a way of re-mythologizing our sacred stories and elevating them to a planetary and cosmic scale. While it invites the whole cosmos to participate in the divine unfolding and meaning of life, it also gives deep value to the very essence of creation. It allows for a planetary scope down to the particular particle. This model allows for the Sacred to be seen, sourced, and sacramentally present in and through the world and leads us into a knowing that “that we as worldly, wild, creaturely bodily beings are in God’s presence.” The world becomes not only a source of the sacred, but a place that must be profoundly cared for in response to our interanimating connection.

We need God to inhabit this place, for such a creation-centered religious interpretation leads to a deep sense of the sacramentality of all things. We will grow into the kind of people we are meant to be insomuch as we are rooted, connected, re-membered within the whole assembly of creation.

A good creation theology is also common sense theology that understands affirms the science of ecology, opening us up to think about what is a good climate theology—especially poignant this season as we witnessed the first ever global climate strikes this past September 2019. Therefore, I would also suggest that a good Creation Theology is a sound climate theology, one that speaks through the elements demanding attention and action.

You ride on the wings of the wind,

You make the winds your messengers.

Psalm 104:3-4

The Sacred is revealed through the elements. As much as Holy Mystery is revealed through wind, so too is this Sacred Presence revealed through Fire. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God, it will flame out like shining from shook foil.” Where have we seen this in scripture? Remember Moses and the Burning bush in Exodus chapter 3? Could this not be the moment when God is saying to us with each forest a’flame: take off your shoes for this is holy ground? Could this not be the moment of transformation when we awaken to our deepest calling? A call to bear witness to the holiness of creation?

Could climate warming be the very fire that is calling us to take off our shoes—our colonizing ego, our Western mind, our capitalist consumption—and recognize and reconnect to the world as holy ground? I ask you to put your imagination to this uptopic task for the sake of a flourishing future for all living beings.

A Good Creation Theology is a Climate Theology.

Climate Theology is a justice-for-all theology. If our faith communities are not talking about, and putting action towards, the Amazon fires and the reality of catastrophic climate warming, then we must come to terms that our faith is complicit with climate change in that it orients around a colonizing worldview, one that is based on the violence caused by an illusion of separation and that abundance is for the few and rich.

The ancient symbol of God as Trinity discloses truths about the essential interconnectedness of both the fragile ecology of the human soul and of the planet we inhabit. The interrelatedness that ecologists find in the biosphere on Earth and the interrelatedness that science discovers at all levels from quantum physics to cosmology are all sustained at every moment by a God who is Persons-in-communion. Humanity along cannot bear the image of the Divine. We can only do so in our own interrelatedness with Other—the more than human world, other-than-us humans, and the cosmic presence of the Sacred.

Black writer and activist Alice Walker, most notably known for her best selling book, The Color Purple, and her impact on womanist theology, understood that the Earth will assuredly undo us if we don’t learn to care for it, revere it, even worship it. Walker warns: “While the Earth is poisoned, everything it supports is poisoned. While the Earth is enslaved, none of us is free….While it is ‘treated like dirt,’ so are we.” We will be image bearers of God insomuch as we are in communion with the Earth and subsequently with one another. When we are persons-in-communion we will live into our essential interrelatedness, spurring us towards climate activism and creation solidarity. A justice-for-all climate theology attunes and demands our attention to a collective response to global deforestation, the EPA’s rollback of clean water protections, the frenetic drive to continue to mine for finite energy sources. And this only scratches the surface, am I right?

“What is good for the world will be good for us.”—Wendell Berry

Climate theology would affirm that is good which conserves and promotes all living creatures (human and more-than-human alike), especially the most vulnerable; that which is bad is everything that prejudices, oppresses, and destroys living creatures. A good climate theology demands a hard gaze at how our collective and personal human actions are complicit with the reality of climate crisis, and challenges us to make lifestyle choices NOW that will honor the future of the sacred earth, the more-than-human world, and provide hope for a flourishing future for ALL life on Earth.

Climate theology then is an earthy spirituality that reunifies the sciences with religion and spirituality affirming the spiritual potential of matter, fundamentally changing how we experience the material and living worlds. This is a theology that speaks with birdsong and whale tears; that speaks with winds and fire; that speaks with twining roots would have us LISTEN to the wisdom within these voices and in response, fall in love with this beautiful home, our oikos, our Earth.

A climate theology would be about the political and civic work of renewing commitments and reconnected communion in such a profound way that we will participate in the heart of the world, by directing our living and sacred earth towards life instead of death.

Hear how German poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke is in conversation with Job, and how this poetic offering affirms a creation theology that is decolonizing in nature and climate responsive, and therein lies our hope:

How surely gravity’s law,


strong as an ocean current,


takes hold of even the smallest thing


and pulls it toward the heart of the world. 

Each thing

—
each stone, blossom, child—


is held in place.


Only we, in our arrogance,


push out beyond what we each belong to


for some empty freedom.


If we surrendered 
to earth’s intelligence


we could rise up rooted, like trees. 

This orientation lifts up a new kind of people, remembering that we are meant to embrace creation in a posture of solidarity, cultivating an ethical responsibility toward “the least of these” on our planet. Let us remember a sense of wonder, kinship and belonging to the world. This remembrance of a vital, sacred connection WITH creation is for our sakes and the sake of the wide and wild earth in whose being we are profoundly and beautifully entangled.

Waymarkers: Categories of Inspiration

As I have more opportunities to teach and accompany others on their soul-formation path, I am often asked what are the areas that have most influenced my work and Waymarkers’ offerings. As I was clearing out my office recently, I came upon a writing project and drawing that aimed to get at three primary categories of inspiration and influence. I created this in October 2015 and it is amazing to see how these categories continue to shape and form my thinking and my work! I am also incredibly happy to see that my thinking, theologies, and theories (in short, my praxis) continue to emerge and evolve!

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I am using the concept of a Venn Diagram as represented by a Celtic Trinity Knot to describe my three primary passions (and ways of seeing the Divine at work in the world), their intersections, and ultimately, what they reveal about myself in relationship to the Sacred. Following are my core thoughts related to each trisection.

Placemaking/Theology of Land

Theologian Walter Brueggeman states that “…land be handled always as a gift not to be presumed upon and land be managed as an arena for justice and freedom.” And, it is true that those historically denied justice and freedom, power, place and voice, could see the arena of a wooded landscape as an absolute threat. Walter Brueggeman’s hermeneutic of Israel, provides understanding that, “Israel experienced the bitterness of landlessness, being totally exposed and helpless, victimized by anything that happened to be threatening. However, also as Israel, we take up a new identity vis-a-vis the land. It is important to be very clear about what the land is, how it addresses us, what it expects of us, and how we shall shape our faith and admit our identity in relation to it.

How do communities work on creating meaningful places that invert political and capitalistic powers on behalf of the other and the future?

Our neighborhoods are never singular communities, but are actually a mesh of myriad overlapping networks. We all belong to many different communities, from the diffuse (i.e. a professional association, or an online message board), to the intimate (i.e. a family, or a group of friends). In consideration of the paramount impact of how a landscape informs an individual and how they connect to the other in their community, there is an emerging theory called “Placemaking” that aims to create a balance of uses in public spaces that serve the many communities at once; in this way a landscape can serve as a therapeutic response to the needs of a neighborhood. A single place can’t do everything at once, so “Placemaking” prompts us to look for convenient and clever ways to make limited space serve multiple functions. De Botton and Armstrong (2013) have suggested that by balancing ones need with those of the people by which one lives, one finds their place, literally and figuratively, within a community of neighbors. By inviting the presence of a place to participate in the lives of communities for a common good, there is an acknowledgment of something profound and beyond human-limitations that is unleashed: God is revealed as intimately involved and present within the neighborhood and neighborwood!

Celtic Christianity

The great Celtic teacher John Scotus Eriugena taught that God speaks to us through two sacred texts, two books if you will. One is the book of scripture…the other is the book of creation, vast as the cosmos. Just as the Sacred speaks to us through the written words of scripture, so to does Spirit speak to us through the wild elements of creation. The natural world—the creatures within it and the elements that form it—then are a living sacred text we can learn to read and interpret.

Just as we prayerfully ponder the words of the Bible in Christian practice and as other traditions study their sacred texts, and even as we engage our sacred imagination in the practice of Midrash, so we are invited to listen to the life of creation as an ongoing, living utterance of God. This way of "reading" requires seeing the soil as a sacred story, and realizing that many of the narratives that have been told within the reverential spheres are ones that separate us from the reality of the biosphere.

Influenced by the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament and the mysticsm of John’s Gospel, Celtic spirituality sees creation not simply as a gift, but as a self-giving of God whose image is to be found deep within all living things. Sin may obscure God’s living presence, but never erases it. The divine voice can be heard speaking through all created things.

EcoPsych/EcoTheology

Author and psychologist Bill Plotkin believes that the way towards a collective societal shift towards wholeness and sustainability will be to progress from our current “egocentric societies (materialistic, anthropocentric, competition based, class stratified, violence prone, and unsustainable) to soulcentric ones (imaginative, ecocentric, cooperation based, just, compassionate and sustainable).” Plotkin draws from the collective academy of cultural thought provocateurs ranging from Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell to imagine how to cultivate more mature human individuals to inform an evolution into a more mature human society. He believes that nature has always provided and still provides the best template for human maturation. Plotkin unpacks this further:

“…every human being has a unique and mystical relationship to the wild world, and that the conscious discovery and cultivation of that relationship is at the core of true adulthood. In contemporary society, we think of maturity simply in terms of hard work and practical responsibilities. I believe, in contrast, that true adulthood is rooted in transpersonal experience—in a mystic affiliation with nature, experienced as sacred calling—that is then embodied in soul-infused work and mature responsibilities. This mystical affiliation is the very core of maturity, and it is precisely what mainstream Western society has overlooked—or actively suppressed and expelled.”

Western civilization has buried most traces of the mystical roots of maturity, yet this knowledge has been at the heart of every indigenous tradition known. In this light, we see that our self-imposed exile from an honoring relationship with creation has stunted God’s design for human development, and even a proper revelation of God. Creation is imbued with the wisdom and presence of the Sacred, and to stifle and ignore the inherent value of the created order, stifles the very voice of Wisdom in our lives. Our way into the future requires new cultural forms of the old ways of being in relationship with the earth. As urban-dense living becomes the increasing norm for countries around the world, re-imagining how urban greenspaces provides the opportunity for a relationship with the wild world becomes critical. The health of our psyche, and the planet, depends on it.

Center

The challenge of loving and caring for one another well in the 21st century requires one to recover a primordial sense of the vast mystery of God and apply that energy to paying attention to the earth. Our love of neighbor needs to be extended to the greater community of things on this planet and our neighborhood needs to considerably broaden to include our universe as well. Historically anthropocentric views have concerned Christians with the redemption of this world alone, and have disconnected the very nature of a connected, covenantal God with the diversity of his inherently good creation. Nobel Peace Prize two-time nominee Ervin Lazlo (2011) attests that “seeing ourselves as separate from the world fuels selfish and irresponsible tendencies: we are only responsible for ourselves, and not for ‘foreigners,’ ‘competitors,’ and ‘others’” (p. 117). In bringing the care of the earth into the folds of reconciliation, there is acknowledgement that human-centric modern history has caused great harm to marginal people groups, and environmental injustice to a host of living beings on this planet, as well as a severe disconnect from the goodness with which the earth was designed. By engaging in restorative acts of reconciliation with the planet, there is an openness to the endowed goodness of creation and the intention that it was created to participate in the whole person and health of a community.

In returning to a grand sense of awe before the God of the Universe, God’s relationship is placed with humanity into the context of billions and billions of galaxies. This profound placement of the Great Mystery has immediate effects on how we engage and encounter the other and all living things. “The experience of our connection with each other and the universe would inspire solidarity among people and empathy with all life on earth” (Lazlo, 2011, p. 124). Leonardo Boff would call this the “socio-cosmic,” where mountains, plants, rivers, animals, and the atmosphere become the new citizens who share in the human banquet, while humans share in the cosmic banquet. Only then will there be ecological justice and peace on planet earth. In embracing the world. we shall be embracing God.

Autumn Rewilding Retreat | Reclaim the Skin You are Meant to Be In: How Stories of the Selke Guide Our Becoming

"Myth insists that in each of us a great kingdom presides: filled with forests, remote castles, giants, witches, lovers, the dreams of the earth itself. To hear a story well told was to bear witness to the wily tale of your own life meeting the bigger epic that those before you had walked. Such speech was a way you tasted your ancestors. We don’t have such stories: such stories have us.” ~Martin Shaw

This immersive Rewilding Retreat went deep into the mythopoetic realm of the Westward Autumn Quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel circuit. Within this context a group of courageous women learned together from the archetypes within the Celtic Selkie myth and its potential form and meaning for the woman’s journey towards authentic be-ing and belonging. The retreat took place on the Saratoga Passage, a part of the whale-trail within the Salish Sea. It was the perfect setting for all things salty and sea-worthy to express themselves!

We were present to do this work together: to re-member ourselves within the voices of the earth, to the myths she tells us and the belonging together these stories bring. Ultimately myths help us to unravel who we are and what we need to work out. These are not our untruths, but in many ways, a good myth will hold the most archetypal truths about our existence. Stories help us find our path in life, and other ways of imagining our world and our place within it.

Whatever journey we imagine ourselves to be on, myth and fairy tales can inform our sense of what is possible, and enable us not just to cope with life’s challenges, but to live more intensely, and more richly, in the world. Spiritual growth—soulskin growth—lies at the heart of every archetypal tale—this is about a journey to develop one’s highest potential and in many ways recover a sense of our primary existence. We are often drawn to specific stories or characters, and if we explore the reasons why, deeper truths about our life and our meant-for-ness may emerge as a result.

This was our weekend’s work! Through various iterations of this mythic tale, Black Out Poetry, wild wanderings, sea-side Morning Matins, Council Circles, and even a showing of the Irish indie film, The Secret of Roan Inish, we invited our soul’s to speak of their primary existence and to what waters they would want to return. We wove together desires, prayers, and blessings onto a seaside loom, our collective “soul-skin” that was ceremoniously released to the sea as an offering of gratitude and a metaphoric return to our own skin.

Roughly eight thousand acres at the seashore;

a tension between

human and wilderness.

In this threat I find a relationship full of possibility.

Go beyond the philosophical arrogance

of exclusive emphasis upon reason

to experience interrelatedness and

a new ecological way of life.

God, speak to us by

tree, canyon, and ravens.

The new beginning has come

as a seed.

(Black Out poetry composition by a Rewilding Retreat participant. Shared with permission)

Summer Rewilding Retreat: Scraping the Ground for the Grief Seeds

Willamette Valley, Oregon

The sun was high and hot these summer months. The ground was cracked open revealing crevasses of dry dirt. The traditional rains and cooling cloud cover transmuted into a thick covering of smoke as wild fires smoldered all over the West. And yet, even in these despairing conditions, tendrils of green hope grew into the form and shape of beans, tomatoes and peas; flowers became berries, apples, and plums; herbs returned to offer their healing. I was astonished at the hard and accomplished work these plants exhibited. In spite of the hot and harsh conditions, they were bound and determined to flourish.

This captures the collective energy of this season’s Rewilding Wheel quadrant, which brings together the ancient wisdom residing within the coordinates of the Summer season, the Southern cardinal direction, the element of Earth, and sinks these coordinating energies deep into the bioregion of the farm, the garden, the field. Here, the prayers and practices, and rites and rituals that reconnect us to the sacred rhythms of the earth-bound seasons and celestial phases take on a particular form. Within this soulful practice, one recalibrates the consecrated connection between season and site; natural rhythms and neighborhood residence; the beatific and the bioregion. One begins to explore how this landscape and season speak into their own psychospiritual formation, and how diving deep into the associated mythopoetic realm reveals transformational truths about ones soul.

“How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? [We] need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.”

— Rumi

My attempt with this practice is to bring into focused awareness practices that bind me to my bioregion, that sutures the sacred into the soil, and that reconnects me to the spirit of my place. A critical question has emerged through this effort, one that I have been bringing to each landscape. This question formed after a powerful moment that I shared with a Deg Hit’an Dine elder in my neighborhood woods. It was a moment that called into question all that I had been taught about the posture of stewardship, and earth-tending; the difference between managing the land and minding its spirit. In a moment I realized that my custodial care of this particular urban forest was another iteration of colonization. As much as land is intersectional, my Rewilding Year has demanded I do the work to confront the intersectionality of bodies and how they are colonized by the dominant power—earth bodies, animal bodies, human bodies. The question that has led this sacred round is this: how may I be about the work of decolonizing my bioregion, and more specifically, my homescape so that I may have access to the “Spirit of my Place?”

It’s the difference between managing the land and minding its spirit. It’s coming to terms that custodial care is another iteration of colonization.

In response to the Rewilding Wheel coordinates, and in need of wisdom to guide my question, my husband Joel and I headed south for my personal Summer Rewilding Retreat to Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley to spend time with Reverend Randy and Edith Woodley at their community-restoration and teaching farm, aptly named Eloheh Farm (“eloheh” is a Cherokee word meaning harmony, balance, well-being and abundance). Utilizing and teaching principles found within permaculture, biomimicry and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (TIK), Eloheh Farm is a model for a flourishing and abundant future as it displays the wholeness that occurs when cooperation with and permission from the more-than-human world are in alignment. Randy Woodley, PhD, is a Keetoowah Cherokee (legal descendent) teacher, poet, activist, former pastor, missiologist and historian. He and Edith’s work in the ongoing discussions concerning new church movements, racial and ethnic diversity, peace, social justice, interreligious dialogue and mission made me eager to bring my question and have him help me with my thinking and Joel was excited about the opportunity to interview him for his Emerging Future podcast (you can listen to this deep and vulnerable conversation here). We came with the expectation of being transformed by this place and its people.

The hospitality of this land and its people knew no bounds. We stayed on site in a rustic bunk house with windows that opened up to the star-soaked wind that whistled through the dying branches of neighboring Filbert farms. These money-driven monoculture plantations stood in direct contrast to the thriving bounty at Eloheh Farm. Randy, who understands his role with this land as a “co-sustainer” (note: not a steward, an important difference that comes into play in response to my question), led us on a tour around this 3.26 acre water-wise and regenerative landscape that not only feeds his family year round and provides produce for local markets, heritage and indigenous seeds for the Woodley’s Eloheh Seed company, but also provides a niche micro-habitat for a host of more-than-human species who now make their home in this incredible web of life. Within this web were a myriad of stone fruit trees; a well-visited pollinator garden; herbs and medicine plants including heritage and ceremonial use tobacco and tulasi; tomatoes, cucumber, and 800 year old squash strains. The list goes on! A walk through Eloheh Farm was like walking through the fabled Garden of Eden with the Wise Gardener who knew not only the names of every living being, but their essence and critical role within an ecosystem.

Our mornings together would begin seated in a circle with bottomless coffee cups. Within this unhurried space, stories were told—stories of violent racism, stories of grace, stories of healing, and stories of grief. Here we were invited to cross over from the White Western worldview into the indigenous mind, a conversion that Randy takes up very seriously, and which informs his work as a Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture and Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at George Fox University. He was very clear about this intentional effort. This isn’t appropriation, shared Randy. “This is what the world needs. Don’t take our stories or our prayers (without permission) but do take up our world view! It’s what the world and our future needs!” This circle became my fertile ground, the earth in which I planted this elder’s wisdom, hoping the storied seeds would take root, stabilizing and nourishing my rewilding journey. With a freshly poured cup of coffee in hand, Randy asked me why I had come. What prompted me to this place? I shared with him my stewardship story of Cheasty Greenspace and the moment when I began to feel that there was more to these woods than just matter and the resource-minded posture of stewarding. And while I knew that the forest was numinous, a place of inspirited presence, I needed to know if and how I had access to this depth. He listened. He waited. And he responded:

“Did you ever ask permission?”

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“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

— Aldo Leopold

Permission. I took Randy’s return question with me as I worked on transplanting dozens of peppers in the greenhouse. Permission. With each pepper lifted out of a now-too-small container and placed with organic compost into a much bigger planter the question took root. Permission. Did I ever ask permission from the land to steward it? Permission. The roots began to work through the too-dry soil of dominance. Had I ever asked permission from the spirit of a place to access it? Permission. Root tips worked against the hard lodged foundation of Whiteness and cracked foundation of colonization. Had I ever asked permission from the Duwamish tribe to restore this land? Permission. This question was both about the place and its original people. And the inherent answer required a profound shift in posture of power to one of vulnerability: stewardship doesn’t require permission as it assumes an entitled practice of resource dominance; co-sustaining or solidarity is the posture granted after asking permission from the entity by whom you want to stand beside.

To be vulnerable is to fashion yourself after the posture of the Holy—we are most like God when we are susceptible to the forming influence of the essence of others. And we see this throughout ecosystems and flourishing communities! We thrive when we are in inter-relationship and interdependence with others, sharing our very nature that is inherently mutually enhancing. This is the active work of encounter others and allowing others to encounter you. This is moving from being the beholder, to being beholden. Can we move into this vulnerable space? Can we assume the vulnerable posture of asking permission of a place and its original people to be there and be there deeply and well? For in that vulnerability lies the key to our belonging.

This is the marrow of this year’s journey. I cannot belong to a place because I believe I have the right to, the entitled access to all its resources, the power to move in and through it. I may get to belong to a place after I have asked permission and been granted access to the wisdom that lives in its blood and bones.

My reinhabitation, my rewilding into the whole of life requires the reintroduction of permission, and from that place, abundant renewal and regeneration will take place within my soul and the soil of my belonging. This is the work of rewilding, of land liberation, which works within the inner nature as well. It is a sacred act; an apology, a reconciliation. And it begins with the posture of permission followed by a perpetual posture of gratitude, the combination between the two being that which will heal our grief from our separation from the land.

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Field and Farm Rewilding Practices

“We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou.’ ”

— Thomas Berry

Within the 140 pages of the Waymarkers Rewilding Workbook, you will find many invitations to prayers, practices, rites and rituals that will assist in your tuning into the natural world. This sacred setting is no less than our soul's resonance with the natural rhythms and seasonal movements found within the natural world. I find that as every new quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel begins, I am more than ready to learn and lean into the lessons contained within the corresponding bioregion. This Summer I delighted in all things Earth, Farm, and Growing. It truly felt like the heated and heavy passions that push forth the emergence of life were energies that surrounded me. My own work through Waymarkers was in full swing this summer, requiring presence, tending the generating heat of working metal on metal. Another story for another time would identify how this season was the work of the journey through the underworld, Joseph Campbell’s mythopoetic understanding that to truly become, one must meet and mount the dragons that thwart our heroic return to our True Self. In many ways, I was living deep in the earth in this season, subsisting on the nourishment that, ironically, the descent below demands. This has been the potent time of seeing the Upper World’s plants and trees from their underside—looking upwards into the fascia of their root systems, learning from this perspective and how this working network supports and sustains life.

Following are a few of the personal practices I engaged to deepen the earthen mood in me, and cultivate a daily awareness of how this particular landscape expresses the Holy and becomes a sacred messenger as well. This is the work of recovering the sense of the world as a “thou.” Coming to my homescape with the posture of asking permission transformed this season for me and how I entered into relationship with the element of Earth. The culture of consent is raising even with how we engage the more than human world!

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Farmers Markets

Any and every where we went this summer, I would make an intentional effort to visit the local farmers market, sampling the bounty of that particular place and paying attention to how the sacred is revealed through this particularity. More and more cities and townships are supporting local agriculture through sponsoring and hosting these mini markets that offering seasonally fresh (and often organic!) produce. Shopping for our fresh fruits and veggies in a way that support our local farms and husbandry vocations is important to healthy people and a healthy place. This intention also brought into focus current issues related to protecting the rights and lives of our migrant neighbors and workers whose very sustenance depends upon the work offered at these farms. This summer has been a time of activism and advocacy related to immigrant detention centers and resisting those in power who would believe that fences of separation are better than fostering solidarity. While there is much delight in this season of working (and eating!) alongside your land, the disciplined practice is to increase an empathetic response through awareness and action for those lives that are directly connected to the fields and farms in our lives.

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Visting Farms

Throughout the summer we visited farms. We went out to the fertile fields that provide the land in which our foods grow and flowers which feed so many others. It was a time to reconnect to our food sources. This was especially important for my children who are being raised in an urban context. We visited the vast fields and farmlands throughout the Willamette Valley; lavender farms in Sequim, WA; Butchart Gardens in Victoria; and the amazing biodynamic Jubilee Farm in Carnation, WA. Spending sacred time in what used to be the Benedictine Nunnery herb garden on the Holy Island of Iona was another powerful way to reconnect to how women have always been inherently connected to the work of growing things for wholistic health and wellness. We talked about the health of the earth, the integrity of soil, the medicine offered by herbs, the concentric circle of harm caused by herbicides and pesticides, bumblebees and why we need them. We participated in growing, working, listening, learning, eating, sipping, and being alongside of the earth this season. When we begin to rewild our lives, we begin the work of recognizing and reestablishing elements and features of whole and interconnected relationships. The work of rewilding this summer brought us back into communion with the eucharist-like qualities of creation. Life offers itself to be consumed by the other as a gift for life to continue to emerge.

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Foraging & Harvesting

We learned about what our local land grows for food and how it can be used for medicine, and its fibers to fashion utility and clothing. Long walks along the wild edges of fields revealed the abundance of berries. Our own urban homescape offered up lavender, apples, plums, herbs, eggs, and a finally-berrying elderberry bush from which our daily tincture of elderberry syrup is taken. We learned from the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) peoples how to harvest cedar bark for weaving of baskets and making of rope. We almost daily engaged with Hildegard of Bingen’s understanding of veriditas—the greening power of God. It is truly within the working of the soil that we see how suffused the ground is with the Sacred; that through this element we see that the possibility of all life emerges from the dirt, the most holy of humus (see Genesis 2:9, 19). God draws near to the earth and then animates it from within—that is veriditas.

Listening in Place as Practice & Poetry-A Workshop with David Whyte

On Saturday, March 3 I had the opportunity to do a workshop with the cultural luminary, David Whyte through The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology's Alumni Lecture Series. Following are some of the thoughts and themes that came through our sharing, interaction, and play.

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When we listen deeply to the places that create our homescapes, our bioregions, we learn the stories of the land and create an imagination for how to mutually belong within these places. This practice of listening becomes a ritual in that it connects us to the great belonging within the community of creation, and also invites the Spirit to break in afresh, posturing us forward toward possibilities of a flourishing future. These are acts of remembrance and re-membering, practices that remind us of our interrelationship with the more-than-human world and bring us back into membership within this assembly. 

The practice of listening in place will ultimately draw forth sorrow and lament, especially when one begins to attune to the silence of the beings (biodiversity) that are no longer there. How do we respond when the natural world no longer functions with resilience, when the bird’s song is still and the forests no longer refresh after the fires?

Where is the habitat of hope when the ice melts, the seas rise, and the forests burn? Can we find it in the silence? Will the still small voice call from within the wilderness, calling us to lean deeper into the silence and there find our true belonging?  

Ecotheologian and ethicist Larry Rasmussen says it this way,

“We are not so much at home on earth, as we are home as earth.”

The integrity of the natural world renders our most basic and fundamental task: to live in such ways that ensure a flourishing and regenerative life for all of the created world and for all future generations within it. So how we live in our particular places does matter as we are meant to be in deep relationship with the whole assembly of creation. David Whyte's poetry guided us into an imagination for this relationship, a kind of dialogue with the natural world and the particularity of place that transforms one's soul. He spoke of this growing sense of interrelationship as a journey, a pilgrimage that would ultimately lead one to and through the most fundamental questions of life. 

For me, my practice of of listening to my place has brought me to and through a question and process of acknowledging how my understanding of stewardship was based on superiority. My decades long urban forest restoration work hit a false floor; for me to continue to learn from this land, I had to engage in not just restoration, but personal deconstruction. And so I began the work of learning how my Whiteness granted me the privilege of choice to move to the Rainier Valley, and allowed my access to systems to change land policy. I had to confront the reality that white supremacy allowed me to be a steward of this land. And that even the theological idea of stewardship was one based on hierarchy, dominion, and power. I learned about how the oppression of the earth and the oppression of people are two sides of the same coin—you will not have liberation of one without the liberation of the other. My practice led me into important times of learning from tribal elders, who taught me that the land speaks. They showed me how they listen to the land. I began to realize that my understanding of stewardship had actually caused me to become deaf to the sacred soils of my particular place. 

Stewarding this forest would only allow so much access to the spirit of this place. I had to begin the work, the practice of perceiving and participating within my bioregion. Bioregionalism is what environmental activist and poet Gary Snyder calls the “Spirit of Place.” To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which is a whole. I began to reconstruct my understanding of Cheasty through a whole perspective, leaning into the wisdom and teaching inherent in the land. It is this process of listening into a place, or perception and participation of a place, that will reveal sacred stories and ultimately encourage a move towards solidarity and a deep sense of belonging within our bioregion. Bioregional awareness teaches us in specific ways.

Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place and it must be grounded in information and experience. Learning about the forest through the lens of sacred and storied ecology has not only taught me about the land, it has taught me how to be human and a member of an ecological community.

The lessons of the forest are those humanity need most right now. 

Within this practice of knowing, we can find our habitat of hope. A habitat of hope acknowledges the suffering that Western stewardship has wielded that has resulted in the silencing and extinction of species, and it invites a new way of seeing, a new way of being that is in solidarity with the natural world. It is Aldo Leopold’s think like a mountain. I’ve found it as I’ve begun to think like a forest. It is looking at the landscape through the lenses of foundational power, intersectional engagement, and revelatory awareness so to bring us into a profound sense of home and belonging as the earth.

 Through this workshop, David and I attempted to bring these lessons to the participants. We brought in elements from my homescape, lowland urban forest plants that were honorably harvested for workshop attendees to co-create nature mandalas, an activity that encourages a way of meeting and knowing the natural world that invites communion and revelatory understanding. The 13th century Japanese Buddhist priest, write, poet, and philosopher Dōgen once said,

“When you find your place where you are, practice occurs.” 

The mandala, which is ancient Sanskrit for “circle,” is a symbolic circular design that portrays balance, symmetry, and wholeness. Mandalas are found in almost every culture, and can serve as a sacred reminder of the path we seek to walk. My nature mandalas, which I co-create monthly, are a continuing practice of learning the land—connecting to the plant and tree life that make up my homescape, learning from them of the medicine and food they offer, leaning into their seasonal stories, remembering our interrelatedness and meant-for-ness. This is a practice of forming what theologian Steven Bouma-Prediger calls an ecological perception of place. That is, a practice to get to know your ecology by becoming familiar over time with as many components of your ecology as you can. In other words, this is a practice of learning to listen and attune to storied and sacred land.

 And so this workshop was one that brought us through the terrain of our imagination, a journey that led us to participate with the sacredness that is within the wild world that exists all around us. It was a time of inviting a profound shift in how we understand ourselves in relationship with the environment that values it for its inherent integrity and particular revelatory qualities.

I am deeply grateful to The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology for inviting me into this opportunity to share of my experience and learning, and to David for his willingness to share space with me in this context. May we all be inspired to engage this deep work of practicing listening in place! 

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Are you curious about co-creating nature mandalas as a spiritual practice? Read more about this way of learning with the land here! 

Rewilding as an Act of Remembering

Author, mary dejong, heading west from the mainland across the salish sea on the autumn equinox

When we lose our sense of belonging to the world, our lives can feel empty and meaningless. This hollow feeling is a result of a disconnection from the nature to which we have forgotten we belong. Too many stories and cosmologies have distanced humanity from the very earth from which they were created. Mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie states, “…when we lose our relationship with the land and the other creatures around us, then in the deepest sense, we lose ourselves.” Consequently, when we recover our relationship with the land, when our soul-life is nurtured by it, we find our interrelated belonging. A deep sense of responsibility and solidarity is awakened and becomes our primary posture on the planet.

How do we get to this place? The answer resides in ancient categories of thought and perception. This is the stuff of rites and rituals. This is about growing to the edge of life as we know it and discovering that there is a world beyond that wild hedgerow that is drawing us into its feathers, fronds, and fur.

Getting up and moving to the parameters of our life, to the absolute edges, is where we re-engage our senses and re-awaken our souls to our sacred meant-for-ness.

The archetypal framework for this kind of journey is meaningfully conveyed through the ancient practice of pilgrimage, which an embodied quest for the soul, a deep seeking after the self. The rewilding of our inner-soulscapes is a pilgrimage journey of finding ourselves back into a whole relationship with the wilderness. It is a re-framing of a story that told us the cultivated garden is where we should grow, instead of the wild yonder beyond the gate. What is out there in the hinterlands? What story of interrelatedness has been waiting for us beyond the tales that told us to stay put? 

I see rewilding as a process of remembering: remembering that we carry wildness within; remembering that we are related to other plants and animals who inhabit Earth with us; remembering that we are on a common journey upon our common home with the whole of creation.

Rewilding eschews the forward-facing imagination of the frontier, where rugged individualism and plundering dominance are trumpeted. This is a return to the wild, a reconnection to the worshipping assembly of the wild world with whom we belong. Wildness depends on an internal balance for security, its own ecological harmony dependent upon its codependent synergy. We cannot live balanced, whole, and integrated lives if humanity continues to view itself above and over the natural world, attributing value insomuch as it is a resource to support and advance humanity. 

Rewilding wheel retreat weekend on lummi island, wa

While I have loved well my garden and all the growth that has occurred through the process of cultivation and design, I have found in recent years a deep and demanding need to leave the order of the garden, to see it as a threshold inviting me beyond to the forested fringes or the wisdom found within wild waters. I have desired prayers and practices, rites and rituals that would remind my bones that I am related and dependent upon beaver, bluff, and bird, and how their faring becomes a litmus for my own wholeness and wellness. This kind of wholeness, which balances on an ecosystem approach, can only be gained by a journey that takes one deep into the woods, through fields, tracing watersheds to the sea, and climbing up to the high climes of the mountains.

This is a deep dive into the wilderness where storied landscapes offer up wizened myths spoken in the ancient tongue of creation, but which can only be opened with a clever claw, heard with a moth-en'd ear , and spoken with a raven's craw-craw.

And so I responded to the call of the wild and began a journey this past Autumn Equinox that would lead through lands and legends, reminding me of how numinous nature is, that each wave upon the water's surface was a sacred script, writ large with the wisdom of the One who created the assembly of belonging. I began a journey that would take me around my bioregion, reconnecting me to the revelation that rests inherently within these landscapes and watersheds, reminding me of the great community of life of which I am a part.  

The Rewilding Wheel was developed to be an integration of critical aspects of the cycles and seasons of nature that would bring one into a deep sense of belonging within their particular bio-regions. This is a move from an ego-centric posture on the planet to an eco-centric one where one’s whole identity is rooted and interconnected with the lands upon which one lives.

westward facing Labyrinth on Lummi island. Just beyond the LABYRINTH and the fringe forest is the salish sea.

The Rewilding Wheel is a sacred circuit that seeks to locate the wisdom of universal nature symbols within one’s particular homescape and spiritual formation.

By locating the psychospiritual patterns found within the natural world to a particular place, the ancient wisdom inherent in the cardinal directions and elements takes on a practical shape and invites a focused seasonal practice. In this way, the Rewilding Wheel is unique as it invites a sacred process of remembering and recovering relationships within various ecosystems throughout one's local landscapes. 

The Rewilding Wheel becomes then a way to begin the practice of rewilding our inner soul-scapes through the intentional relationship with the wild landscapes of our bioregion and seeking sacred wisdom through the rhythmic patterns that exist in the seasons, elements and cardinal directions.  This becomes a life-orientation journey, a circular path through which the sacred can speak within the various associations of nature symbology and archetypal human development within our very own locatedness.

Rewilding & Journeying with Nature: A Conversation with Pilgrim Podcast

I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with friend and fellow-guide, Lacy Clark Ellman, host of Pilgrim Podcast about our shared appreciation for seeing life through a pilgrim's lens and how the natural world avails itself to us as a sacred guide as we make our journey. In our conversation I share my thoughts around rewilding as a spiritual practice and a process of remembering our meant for interconnectedness with all of creation. If you are curious about the Rewilding Retreats I facilitate, I invite you to take a seat! Pour yourself a cup of tea and listen in for an hour. There is a sacred voice on the ancient side of remembrance that awaits you and is calling you forward toward the wild edges of your life!

>>LISTEN HERE!<<

Rewilding Prayer: How Caim Invites Protection for All of Creation

Rewilding Prayer Caim

This week my youngest son started pre-school. And while his mornings will be spent within woodland walls and upon forest floors at a nature preschool, both he and and I were experiencing a deep anxiety around this fundamental shift in our daily rhythm together. I awoke early on his first day of school for a time of meditation and prayer practice on our behalf and for personal preparation.

My spiritual practices come from the Celtic tradition. The Scottish Highlands are in my blood through my maternal line and I grew up with a father who worshipped in the many steepled sanctuary of the mountains. Seeing the natural world as sacred, a fundamental feature of Celtic spirituality, is written into my DNA; it is a cellular response for me to see the numinous within nature. So on this particular threshold morning, I began with an embodied, ritualized form of prayer, the Celtic circling prayer.

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Circling prayers, also known as Caim prayers (from the Irish gaelic meaning ‘protection’), are used to create a ring of safety around one's self and their beloveds. It is a way to pray within the physical dimension as it requires the body to actively participate in the supplications of the heart. When one participates with and prays a Caim, the invocation begins with an arm extended outwards, pointer finger set towards the ground tracing the shape of a circle. This intentional act creates a sacred sphere, a space within which the pray-er invokes the protection of the divine. When I pray a Caim, I extend these boundaries beyond my personal reach to include my whole house, my neighborhood, the community in which I live, and the world at large. I encircle a space much larger than myself as a way to include the vast and diverse community of life of which we are fundamentally a part.

By extending the Caim protection beyond my person to include the plants, trees, birds, and other wild-life, I am doing something different than invoking a defense against that which is forbidden, dangerous, or out of control; instead, I am inviting that wild world in, bringing the more-than-human community of life into revered relationship and attunement. I am inviting a way of seeing the wild as wonderous, and in the most ancient of meanings, seeing myself within its ward. Encircling prayers that cast the boundaries beyond our domesticated borders initiate a way of moving through the day that is expectant of mystery and magic as the whole of creation is considered to be within the Caim circle. In this way, Caim becomes an eco-centric way of praying.

And so I prayed a Caim the morning of my son's first day of school, which would be situated on the wild edges of an urban parkland. I chose a prayer befitting the day, knowing where my son would be. This prayer of blessing is one of the earliest known Caim prayers that is attributed to St. Columba, founder of the Iona Abbey:

"Bless to me the sky that is above me, Bless to me the ground that is beneath me, Bless to me the friends--furry, feathered, or fronded--who are around me, Bless to me the love of the Three Deep within me and encircling me and the greater community of life. Amen."

(emphasis my own personal eco-centric addition)

I said these words as I circled, intentionally creating an expectation for the sacred wild to be within our midst this day.

Here is where this day's prayer practice became quite extraordinary. We are fortunate to be able to walk to this sweet outdoor school, but every step away from home towards this new experience was causing my son anxiety and tears. Our route leads us through a wondrous three city-block sidewalk that has mature chestnut and maple trees planted on either side of the path that creates a wooded passage; we have since named it the Tree Tunnel. While walking along this way, a squirrel appeared before us on the sidewalk. While that is not uncommon, we did expect the normal behavior of it scampering up a tree as we drew closer. However, this squirrel did not. Instead, it carefully and slowly approached myself and Cannon who was seated in his stroller. With a steady gaze directed at Cannon, the squirrel continued straight up to him and gently put his paw upon my son's foot. The silence that surrounded these two beings was sacred, a holy moment marked by their communion. This is interbeing, what Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh talks about as that recognition of the connectedness of all life, a way of being that must be reclaimed and protected now more than ever. This is Caim.

After a full minute's pause, the squirrel scampered away, and Cannon turned to me with a rapturous face, exclaiming his empowered readiness to go on to school where the squirrel would be to watch over him, protecting him until my return.

Every day thereafter this week, that squirrel has been awaiting Cannon in the Tree Tunnel and the same ritual ensues. Squirrel appears before Cannon and as we slow to a stop, it approaches him and places his paw upon his leg. Cannon quietly receives this blessing from the wild, a lesson he is too young to have yet unlearned. He inherently knows that nature is not something from which we need protection against, but a relationship in which to be cherished and engaged, a relationship that is within our sacred circle.

Rewilding Practice

Find a place outside where you can practice in the embodied form of the Caim. Back yards, front gardens, public parks, and even sidewalks will do!

Center yourself by taking several deep breaths, tuning in to the sounds of the natural world all around you. You will likely hear human-made sounds too. Don't ignore the anthrophony. Instead, receive these sounds as an invitation to include them in your Caim too.

When you feel ready, position your body facing north. Breath deeply and feel the air within and around you. Stretch out your arm in front of you with your pointer finger extended and pointed to draw a metaphorical, expansive circle that includes the natural world. Slowly turn your body in a clock-wise rotation--going from the cardinal direction north, to east, to south, to west and back again to facing north while saying this simple encircling prayer, adapted to include the greater community of things with whom we live:

• North, “Circle us Spirit, Keep protection near, And danger afar.”
• East, “Circle us Spirit, Keep light near, And darkness afar.”
• South, “Circle us Spirit, Keep peace within, Keep evil out.”
• West, “Circle us Spirit, Keep hope within, Keep doubt without.”
• Back at the North can finish your prayers with: May you be a bright flame before us, May you be a guiding star above us, May you be a smooth path below us, And a loving Guide behind us, Today, tonight, and forever.

Amen.

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Guidance & Wisdom from the Sacred Wild

GuidanceSacredWild

I feel like I've been walking towards today for years. It was four years ago that my work with Waymarkers was put in the vault as I left to pursue my Masters in Theology & Culture with a focus in eco-theology from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

This journey took me through some of the most wildest of woods where I was taught again and again of the revelatory quality of the natural world, and that the woods are indeed the wisest of teachers. I reflect on themes experienced in these last years during the commencement speech I was asked to give during my graduation ceremony.  You can listen to that here.

Today feels like an emergence from the woods. In many ways I feel like there are open vistas of hope and opportunity before me, inner-landscapes that demanded the requisite journey through the woods. Today I offer my work of Waymarkers anew, infused with the theory, theology, and practice gained in the last four year. Waymarkers is a sacred guidance venture that provides support and frameworks for cultivating connection and communion to and through the natural world.

Waymarkers' hope is to guide others toward a holistic and harmonious inter-connected life with the more-than-human world through restorative rewilding rituals and pilgrimage practices that recover a way of seeing the sacred in the soil, the stars, and, even in our neighborhood streets.

With Celtic spirituality and sacred ecology providing the framework, Waymarkers offers guidance and support for those who are ready to respond to the call to wander into the sacred wild, seeking wisdom from our interrelated web of life. Without this kind of spiritual formation, there can be no authentic ecological consciousness, because there can be no true sense of the interdependence of all things. We must see the natural world as a sacred Thou, no longer an objectified It. Cultural historian Thomas Berry eloquently insists that "the world is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects." To participate in this communion is sacramental, and the elements are all around us, awaiting our participation in our backyards, neighborhoods, our cities and parks, and the hinterlands beyond.

We are placed with a purpose. To not know this is to be without waymarkers, to be displaced.  Waymarkers will journey with you to a way of belonging, to a renewed sense of solid, sacred rooting in the land where you live.

Let's journey together and discover the wisdom that is rooted in the woods, and wind our way to a place of belonging!

Emergence

This is merely a note to awaken you to what is emerging here at Waymarkers. I graduated with my Masters in Theology & Culture from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and a specialization in Thomas Berry's Universe Story from Yale University this past June. In these past years, my studies, research, and writing have all reached towards Waymarkers in some way, shape, or fashion, wondering about how my learnings would integrate into my work that shows up in the world wide web through Waymarkers.  These summer months have seen this wonderings become more clarified, and these emergences will begin to show themselves through a new website and offerings, expanded writing themes beyond that of pilgrimage, and engagement with theories around ecotheology, sacred ecology, and a reverence for creation as the dwelling place for the divine. I hope this is enough to pique your interest and that you will feel invited to journey along with me upon paths that will take us deeper into the wilds where Creator can be heard speaking through all created things.