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. Rewilding Community member Lisa has been journeying around the Rewilding Wheel for over a year. Read this thoughtful interview that provides insight into the seasonal practices that can lead to a deeper relationship with the Sacred Wild.
Read MoreWe are approaching the threshold of Winter, and these days that come before that elemental edge are known as Advent, a sacred time of the year when rituals attune ourselves to the growing darkness and hope is kindled by the coming of light. Finding nature-based practices that deepen our sense of this season are a challenge to come by. Biomimicry is a powerful way to look to Nature as a wizened and warm teacher, who guides us into a meaningful and rooted way of being both through the holidays and in the seasons to come.
Read MoreI am engaging in a Rewilding Year, a year of prayers and practices to reconnect myself to the natural wisdom cycles of the natural world. With ancient nature symbology as my guide, I locate these associations within a particular bioregion, a landscape that both holds these sacred correspondences and invites one into a deep soul exploration within them. Read on to discover with me what the forest revealed in this Spring time location!
Read MoreEngaging with the natural world becomes an essence of imaginative play. Being within the enchanted edges of the more wilder places is a foundational element to the children’s way of knowing, understanding, and interacting with the natural world that manifests in their ability for creative self-expression and sense of belonging to the world.
Read MoreWhile 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 they fare 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.
Read MoreWilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing accord to their own sorts of order. This is the is-ness of a place; where what one is intended to be, is. In ecology we speak of “wild systems.” when an ecosystem is fully functioning, poet and writer Gary Snyder says that “all the members are present at the assembly.” To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness.
Read MoreThere is an urgent restlessness and a deep seeded remembrance to come home to our true selves, a deep longing for an integration that braids the soul, the soil, and the sacred. This longing, this soul-solicitation-asking initiates the seeking process, as it is inherently true that you cannot cultivate an integrated home-space for your soul unless you first have intentionally gone out and away from all that you know and are comfortable within. Will you go?
Read MoreAre you curious about how I understand rewilding as a spiritual practice and nature as a sacred guide? Are you wondering if a Rewilding Retreat is right for you? Listen in to this illuminating conversation I had with Lacy Clark Ellman, host of the Pilgrim Podcast and pilgrimage guide with A Sacred Journey. I think you will come away with a desire to be rewilded!
Read MoreThis 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.
I began with an embodied, ritualized form of prayer, the Celtic circling prayer.
Read MoreWe are coming into the season of Michaelmas, the ancient festival time of St. Michael who is connected to myths and lore around harvest abundance and more prominently, dragons. St. Michael is an archetypal representation of our inner light and courage that is called forth when scarcity is nigh. This scarcity and its corresponding fear is our dragon, one that we all must meet.
Yes, dragons and the dark woods within which they live, can scar us. But instead of killing the beast in return, can we learn to ride the dragon, and see our scars as sacred?
Read MoreI 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.
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