Wild Spring | Your Seasonal Rewilding Journey
Recovering ancient, seasonal wisdom to cultivate
psycho-spiritual soul formation and sustenance in our modern lives.
Take a seasonal journey into the mythic forest this Spring, reconnecting to ancient and sacred rhythms that pulse within the calendar of the Earth and within our own human soul.
Wild Spring is a seasonal online offering delivered in the stream of Celtic spirituality, sacred ecology, and nature-based wisdom that aims to foster our inherent literacy to read the wild world as sacred script. When we reconnect to earth-based images of Divine Mystery, and remember that the Holy is here in our midst—burning in the element of fire, present in the dawn chorus, rooted and relational like the forest—our souls are quickened and our spiritual practices integrate into the very ground beneath our feet. If you want to live a life that engages the wild edge, this place of enchantment and mystery, of reconnection and sacred service, this journey is for you!
The seasons uniquely speak to us, still offering up a primeval wisdom with an elemental tongue. We can encounter the wild world as the primary incarnation and learn to read its rhythms as sacred scripture. For billions of years, Earth’s cycles and seasons proclaimed Divine Mystery with the elements as a pen and and the seasons as the paper. The Earth is crying out for us to re-awaken to that which we once knew: that Mystery speaks in the language of roots and shoots, flame and forest, fur and frond. Now more than ever, we are being called to learn to read this wild and holy writing once again, for the sake of our souls and the anima mundi, the soul of the world!
Wild Spring is offered as a virtual course; however, it is more like a retreat experience than an intellectual exercise. And while it’s seasonal in nature, it is perennial in design. You will be able to return again and again to this content, much like a seasonal devotional that will connect you to the spirit of Spring. You will be guided through the vast topography of somatic ecology, specific to the seasonal correspondences within the Rewilding Wheel, a wheel of life that aims to reconnect you to the “spirit of a place,” the sacred ecology of your bioregion.
Earth Centered Spirituality, Nature Spirituality, Creation Spirituality, as well as teachings on panentheism and applied mythology hold additional theoretical frameworks within this offering. You will also be introduced to the sacred practice of Soul Rewilding, the holy work of bringing your Wild Self back into whole relationship with the seasons, the more-than-human world, and the locale in which you live as a way to cultivate flourishing conditions not only for your soul but the flourishing of the wild and wonder-filled world.
Cross the threshold into
sacred wilds of Spring this season.
Course Description
Wild Spring helps you recover the ability to read the ancient script of nature found within the wheel of the year. How does this season of Spring speak to you? What can we learn when we lean in and listen to the conversation between the sacred energies of the cardinal direction East and the element of Fire? How is our soul’s journey activated when we ground our spiritual formation in a place? Through the application of Creation Spirituality, we recover the ability to read the seasons and elements as sacred script.
Wild Spring invites you to the integral the work of recovering a worldview that sees the seasons, and all of the natural world, as part and parcel to the health and flourishing of our human and community health. Rewilding Practices are offered that will awaken dormant spiritual lives, stimulating roots of interconnection between our selves, the Sacred, and the more-than-human world.
Wild Spring offers you five professionally produced modules via the on-line course platform Teachable. You will come away with the felt sense of being out in the wilds of of the woods, the sacred and archetypal bioregion that is in deep conversation with the season of Spring. Each module contains 3-5 segments that will guide you through the quadrated seasonal learning: Spring as Teacher, Fire as Guide, East as Prayer-mat, and Forest as Sacred Landscape.
Wild Spring offers theological and theoretical teachings around Earth Centered Spirituality, Nature Spirituality, Creation Spirituality, Soul Rewilding, applied mythology and panentheism within the Christ tradition as additional frameworks for this work of recovering our heritage of experiencing the world as an enchanted and holy place. You will be provided with reflection questions and personal application prompts to deepen your experience within the course content, offering you creative challenges to help live the teachings. You will have access to a supportive community where you can discuss course content and join in themed conversations on a private platform with others on the journey.
Wild Spring is a self-study, on-demand journey, one to which you can return throughout the whole season of Spring and in years to come. See this as a virtual retreat space where you can tap in to ground into the mysteries of the season and come away renewed and refreshed. You can join this offering and begin working with it at any time; you’ll have access to your material for the lifetime of the Teachable website.
Wild Spring aligns with the content of Waymarkers’ Rewilding Retreat programs, a Whidbey Institute offering that has historically been offered in the legacy forests of a small Pacific Northwest island buttressed by the Salish Sea. Now, no matter where you are, you can rise rooted within this earth-based stream of spirituality!
What You’ll Learn
How to move through the Wheel of the Year as a spiritual practice
What Rewilding is and how it can improve our soul’s vitality and create a meaningful emplacement
How the mindfulness practice of Inter-Being can transform your spiritual formation
Sacred attributes of the elements, and how the element of Fire is connected to Spring
How the cardinal direction East cultivates a profound sense of hospitality
Seasonal qualities of Spring and how they apply to our own seasonal life
How to re-story your soul formation through a mythological worldview
Rewilding practices to reconnect your spiritual life to the ground beneath your feet
Cultivate threshold awareness as a way to attune to presence of the Sacred Wild
How Divine Mystery speak through nature as symbol and archetype, specifically the Forest
Somatic Ecology as a way of mapping our inner-world based on elements throughout nature
Earth, Nature, and Creation Spiritualities as streams through which to cultivate interconnection
The Curriculum
Module One: Spring As Teacher
Segments include: Rewilding Wheel of the Year; Spring as Season; Spring: An Invitation into Inter-BeingModule Two: East as Prayer Mat
Segments include: Sacred Directions; Caim Prayer: Calling in the Directions; Wisdom Within the East; Thresholds & Statio; Rewilding PracticeModule Three: Fire as Guide
Segments include: Elemental Remembering; Fire as Guide; Rewilding PracticeModule Four: Forest—Landscapes of the Sacred
Segments include: Landscapes of the Sacred; The Sacred Bioregion of the Forest; Rewilding PracticeModule Five: The Mythological Journey
Segments include: The Post-Heroic Round | Contexts of Transformation; The Maiden in the Woods; Restorying Your Life | Fox Woman Dreaming
About Your Guide
Mary DeJong is a spiritual ecologist, ecotheologian, wild soul guide, urban naturalist, and practitioner and guide of place-based pilgrimage. She specializes in the spiritual companionship of "rewilding" and has instructed other spiritual directors and companions through Spiritual Directors International. Mary facilitates retreats and pilgrimages in the Pacific Northwest and in Iona, Scotland that strengthen the unique and mystical interconnection of participants, the sacred, and the natural world. She has studied and practiced within the Celtic Christian spiritual tradition, her own maternal line heritage, for over twenty years, and is influenced by the lives of Celtic saints, and the lands that guided them.
She holds a post-Heroic Journey framework that calls us to emerge as poets and prophets, instead of hero’s, an applied mythological worldview that is connected to her training in the emerging field of ecopyschology. Mary's theoretical and praxis focus within deep ecology, ecotheology, ecopsychology and specialization in Thomas Berry's Universe Story delves into why place matters, the sacramentality of creation, and how together this informs the development of our ecological self. Mary terms this work “sacred eco-awakening” and sees this as a critical and holy endeavor as it allows us to come to grievous terms of our human history and to posture ourselves once again side-by-side with the whole of creation.
“I appreciate Mary’s passion for life and ecology and the beautiful world we share.”
“Mary’s guidance is in tune with seasonal, political, and ecological realities, calling me to listen, engage, and respond in transformative and meaningful ways. ”
“I appreciate Mary’s enthusiasm for her [teaching], and the emphasis on the natural world as such an important teacher of spirituality. I appreciate the practices she offers and the richness of the material she has provided as additional resources.”
“Trees are sanctuaries.
Whoever knows how
to speak to them,
to listen to them,
can learn the truth.
They do not preach
learning and precepts,
they preach undeterred
by particulars,
the ancient law of life.”
― Hermann Hesse
Who is this for?
Spiritual seekers who want to connect their path to Earth wisdom
Environmental activists who want to strengthen the sacramentality of their work
Healers who desire earth-based modalities of connection
Mystics who yearn for new experiences of Divine Mystery within their bioregional context
Artists and creatives who want to explore the inspiration of the elements
Teachers and guides in need of Earth-based spiritual guidance
Curious individuals who want to deepen into practices that will connect them to their lineage
and land-locatedness
Register for
Wild Spring | Your Seasonal Sacred Rewilding Journey
Your investment in this soulful journey is $125.00.
Purchased and delivered through Teachable.com | Wild Spring is non-fundable based on the nature of this on-line course.
“Working with Mary gives me tools to build and sustain rituals that connect me intimately with the seasonal rhythms of my own backyard. The pauses Mary reminds us to take, and the learning that comes from the esources she shares, bring me both peace and a sense of adventurous curiosity. My mind and all of my senses are engaged. I appreciate the community she is building and inviting us all to join!”
Curious about the other Wild Seasons offerings?
Learn more about and continue through the sacred seasons of the year below!
Save $100 with the Wild Seasons Bundle - Includes all four seasonal courses
