Writings & Publications
“Mary DeJong is the next Wendell Berry; however instead of writing from a farm, her voice is rooted in an urban forest.”
Writings and Publications
Mary's writings are sure to inspire renewed understandings and challenge traditional ways of being in relationship with the natural world. Scroll down to enjoy Mary's writings and wonderings, and be on the look out for new publications and future book projects!
Writing through the lens of the land, Mary is consummately curious about how one becomes of a place, a place so integral to an individual and their community that it becomes imbedded in their collective culture and psyche. Themes of a theology of place, restoration of land and community, environmental justice, creation solidarity vs. creation stewardship, ecofeminist theory, Celtic spirituality and the practice of pilgrimage weave together, words that bind us to this world and to care desperately about it and one another.
“When we begin to recover ways of seeing the Earth as sacred, as recovering the numinous in Nature, of an imminent and wildly-present God — when we being to reconnect to that reality, then our posture shifts from this “I, it” way of relating to an “I, Thou” with a capital T, we see and interact with the Holy in every step we take.”
Coming Soon in Fall 2025
Lunar Leadings is a spiritual practice and framework that offers a full-moon wheel of learning, knowing, and loving through ritual, ceremony, and practice. Spiritual director and ordained minister Marjorie Thompson maintains that within the patterns of “routine, regular, and repeated” practice, transformation is discovered. In her words, I hear an invitation to engage the seasonal rhythms of the natural world, which includes moon cycles, as a sacred source of soul development.
In lunar phases, in the push and pull of tides, in the dormancy and growth spurts of plants—we meet regular repetition, both on macro and micro levels. These are the ecological contexts I pursue for cultivating an embodied, interconnected spirituality that seeks the mystery and magic of the Divine in all of creation.
The ancient mystical phrase, As above, so below, speaks to the sacred mirroring between cosmos and Earth. We might also say, As inside, so outside. When we live disconnected from the natural world, the natural world suffers—and so does our interior life. But when we live in sacred reciprocity with the rhythms of creation, our inner life begins to sing in harmony.
Dear reader, these pages will offer you monthly invitations into spiritual practice and reflection aligned with the full moon. These pages can be returned to perennially; every time the moon is full, you are called into contact with the holy throughout, and the holy within. These practices will guide you into deeper relationship with place. You will be invited into ritual. You will be invited to re-member yourself through Sister Moon, recovering a sacred kinship that requires no walls, no dusty book covers, no stale sacrament.
Within these pages you will find invitations into personal ritual and celebration. There are 12 full moon chapters, teacher offering a short reflection on the full moon’s name and ecological connection. Practices and ways to engage with the lunar themes are contained within each chapter, offering what I like to call a Full Moon Wheel—a year’s worth of lunar wisdom, guidance, and sense of belonging to the ecosystem that surrounds you.
Natural Theology
Response Magazine
A Holy High
The Other Journal
WISDOM OF THE WILD: Biomimicry as Spiritual Practice
Christ & Cascadia
OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE: A Call Reconnect Our Faith to Earth
Christ & Cascadia
The Dawn Chorus’ Prayer
The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology BLOG
Learning from the Dragons Fiery Fury
The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology BLOG
HOMESCAPE SEEK & FIND: Discovering Joy in Our Wild Edges
Godspace
Wild Praise: How the Celtic Imagination Invites Us Into a Feral Worship
Christ & Cascadia
Waymarkers Journal
Consider the Waymarkers Journal a hearth-place, a space where one gathers found nature treasures, sacred sayings, and meaningful memories from transformational journeys that create the heartbeat of a home. The Waymarkers Journal also extends the challenge of living life on behalf of the other and the future, a hope deeply engrained in a theology of hospitality.
Grab a cup of tea, and cozy up with these words that are sure to light up a desire to root deeper into your homescape.
Visit Waymarkers Journal
Trinitarian Imago Dei: How Reimagining Genesis Informs an Integral and Functioning Creation Theology
The Genesis imago Dei tradition has informed an untenable perspective of humanity as sole image bearers of God. Mary DeJong's graduate thesis proposes a new model of the imago Dei that is threefold in nature: an inter-animating relationship between the human, the planet Earth, and the cosmos. The Trinitarian pattern of the Godhead reveals the inherent interrelatedness of all creation and provides the co-responsive framework for a new model of the imago Dei. This requires new ecological models of God that provide a deeper understanding of God’s immanence within the natural world and transcendence throughout a sacred evolutionary cosmology.
A creation-centered spiritual tradition that recasts our understanding of humanity’s role within the imago Dei will affirm our interrelated presence in our particular places, and our role within a sacred cosmogenesis. With this recovered sense of humanity’s profound interconnectedness, the Christian tradition can convert the primary Genesis story into one that creates functional lived expressions, vigorous environmental ethics, and integral connections to the other-than-human world and our planet.
Genesis Reimagined
Here the wisdom and beauty of this story are reimagined by bringing in concepts and features of sacred evolutionary cosmology that affirm humanity’s co-creative communion with all of creation.