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Your Invitation to Join the Conversation

Anyone is welcome to join the online discussion. You can respond in the comment section, based on the readings, or in response to my personal reflections and quotes. Please keep your comments to 500 words or fewer. Please be respectful and kind to those who share.

Don’t feel limited to the reflection questions posted below. They are simply prompts to help you get started. You can share in whatever order or format you like.

I will pull insights and questions from everyone’s reflections and use them to draft our discussion guide for our group gatherings.

My Personal Reflections

Chapter 6: In the Beginning Was the Logos

Below are the quotes that stood out to me from this chapter:

The idea of a divine indwelling at the center of the whole universe, with every unique part in conversation with the others, has many names. What Thich Nhat Hanh names the web of interbeing is aligned with what Robin Wall Kimmerer calls sacred reciprocity. David Whyte calls it the conversational nature of reality, and quantum scientist David Bohm uses the term implicate order. Martin Luther King Jr. called it an inescapable network of mutuality, which he said was “tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” The ancient ancestors of Christianity called it logos.

Logos is about the divine relationship between all things. The system of their connection: conversation.

Christ as radical solidarity, as primal and ongoing relationship, as how life works. Christ as the Conversation between everyone and everything.

Christ as that sacred Conversation that brings all things into being and links all things together.

And I offer another relevant metaphor for our time, yet rooted in a forgotten tradition: Christ as Conversation. Christ as Conversation says to me that the oak tree and that deer in the meadow are not God. And I’m not God. But we both carry the Christ, the Logos, the Tao, the spark of divine love within us. And the conversation between us: that is the manifestation of the sacred, moving forward the evolving kin-dom of grace. The wild Christ.

This chapter felt more theological. The general concept of all things containing a spark of the divine has been a continual refrain. This chapter places Christ as the conversation that connects it all.

This kind of co-creation is how ordinary people are reclaiming the power of democracy in their local community. I have seen this kind of community-rooted effort, which lies outside the confines of institutional agendas, metrics, and hierarchical power structures, reweave our frayed social fabric. I have seen it bridge the divides of race, class, region, sexual orientation, age, gender, and even political affiliation.

I think of those who are willing to work outside the lines drawn by cultural and institutional programming as wildflowers.

They don’t wait for permission.

They don’t wait for funding.

They don’t wait for an invitation.

They humbly follow the wild spirit wherever it leads them.

I am accompanying roughly a dozen such community-strengthening wildflowers. Some are co-laborers in co-created stories where I have the opportunity to participate in person, and others are coaching relationships where I get to drop in and fly back out like a butterfly, gathering as much sweet nectar as I can during my brief visit.

My Field Notes Series captures these unfolding stories, snapshot by snapshot. Today’s article is from Appomattox, Virginia. This development effort is the one I am most immersed in at the moment.

The Appomattox Back Story

This summer, my wonderful, wild-spirited friend Ruth Perry led me into a whole patch of wildflowers when she suggested we work with the theater kids from our local high school to conduct a community listening project in Appomattox, VA, where Ruth and I both live. The drama club was looking to raise funds to purchase new sound equipment, and we were able to pull together a handful of sponsors willing to donate $1,000 toward the project. These 20 free-spirited young social change makers are sure to make this a fun and lively summer!

For those of you who have graduated from our Power Shift Training, you know that youth-led listening is my favorite way of discovering the hopes, dreams, and gifts of a community. It is a process that builds connections and is transformative for youth, who learn to view their community through the lens of strengths and opportunities. It is also meaningful for the adults who have a chance to share their community stories with the next generation.

As I shared last month in the article titled “The Place Our Nation Reunites?” I began following the wild spirit about a year ago in the Appomattox community. It led me to do a series of informal one-on-one conversations with anyone who would have a cup of coffee with me. This opened the opportunity to host several facilitated conversations with various groups. Through these initial conversations, the shared dream that began to emerge was that Appomattox become a place of unity – a place where our nation truly reunites as we live our community’s tagline. Could Appomattox be a place where all experience belonging and where all are valued equally?

One of the divides I heard through these initial conversations was generational. There was a strong desire to bring the community together across all ages. So, partnering with the drama club was a perfect way to create an opportunity for those kinds of conversations.

I have worked with hundreds of youth through the years, and every group is unique. What struck me about this group of youth is how much they love their club. The first day I met them, we heard story after story from the youth about how they found a place of belonging in this club that they had not experienced elsewhere. Cultivating community for others will be much easier for these youth and likely more fruitful with them having already experienced a sense of community themselves.

I chose the image above because of the interconnected nature of my pollinator garden. The fritillary butterfly you see above most likely began as a caterpillar munching on one of the common blue violets that we have been cultivating as ground cover in the pollinator garden. The common blue violet is its host plant. If there is no host plant to feed the caterpillar, then there is no butterfly to pollinate the flowers. That purple coneflower will benefit from the sacrifice of the violet. Similarly, our summer listening project will benefit from the countless hours invested by the drama club leaders, Renee Hounsell and Danielle Hicks, throughout the year. I believe the youth will have an opportunity to strengthen their wings as they discover the beauty of their community.

Gift Mapping Day

This past week, we began mapping the gifts and dreams of roughly 20 high school students who will then be trained to map the gifts of other community members of all ages. As they clustered in groups, sprawled out across the stage, I heard laughter and excitement as they shared their gifts, hopes, and dreams for their community.

When asked what they would do to help youth in the region thrive, the Drama Club members’ top responses were: “Provide more things to do.” The ideas included everything from informal hangout spaces to large community-wide festivals. The strongest theme included promoting the arts.

At our next gathering, we will dive deeper into the underlying motivation for this dream, and we will get more specific about exactly what that might look like. We will start with the gifts and assets we have identified so far.

The second thing we began mapping was the gifts of the youth. The graph below is what we discovered.

At our next gathering, we will explore how the gifts of youth and adults might intersect to help bring community members of all ages together around their shared dreams for the community.

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Prior Youth-led Development Efforts

Every community has gifts; every community has dreams, but how those gifts and dreams come together is what makes this process so exciting. I have helped guide over a dozen youth-led listening projects, and every one of them yielded a very different community-led initiative. Here are just a few examples:

Brookland Park Unsung Heroes Project celebrated the sacrifice of senior adults during the integration of schools in Richmond, Virginia. It leveraged the musical gifts of youth alongside the stories of the seniors and produced a community-wide drama, music video, and oral history collection.

Broadwater Young Heroes Project celebrated the leadership abilities of high school youth who created a variety of community-strengthening activities, most focused on older youth creating enrichment opportunities for younger youth in Chester, Virginia, with the support of Chester United Methodist Church.

Prince Edward County Culture Shift Project is a series of youth-led initiatives that helped youth grow their leadership skills, find their voice, and ultimately change their school culture. This is an ongoing development effort in Farmville, Virginia, being cultivated by our Heart of Virginia network of community cultivators under the leadership of Torrie Patterson.

These are three unique communities with three very different youth-led initiatives. However, all of them produced one common outcome – greater community unity. When communities come together around what they care about and use what they have to achieve those goals, communities are strengthened regardless of the form that effort takes.

It is far too early to know what an intergenerational cross-section of the Appomattox community cares enough about to work toward. Stay Tuned! It promises to be a very fruitful summer!

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity that seeks to strengthen communities from the inside out.

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Other Resources

If you would like to learn more about some of the other development efforts I am following, check out Convergence of Mountain Moving Streams, which contains a snapshot of our network-weaving efforts in Richmond, Virginia. The Ups and Downs of Community Cultivating, which documents the journey of one of my favorite wildflowers, Torrie Patterson. As well as additional stories over in our Mighty Network Newsroom like this one. You can also learn more about some of the wildflowers I am journeying with here.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift. — Mary Oliver

One of the wisest of my more-than-human neighbors is Lumpy the Chestnut Oak. Lumpy sits about a dozen feet off the trail I walk regularly through the forest behind our home. To get to Lumpy, you follow the trail through a beech and hickory stand, over a cedar-studded point, through a ravine, then back toward the creek. There, after about a twenty-minute hike from our home, you will come upon the most unique tree on our property. I nicknamed it Old Lumpy because of the large, round growths that protrude from its trunk. This old chestnut oak is larger and darker in color than the others of its kind and is the only chestnut oak in this portion of the forest, with most preferring the rockier north-facing ridge. Upon seeing this tree, most people feel both awed by its size and repulsed by its distended and unconventional form.

I wrote the following reflection after a particularly powerful conversation I had with Lumpy back in 2019. It is included in the leadership development chapter in my book Power Shift.

The more time I spend alone in my forest, the more the trees seem alive and take on familiar traits. Old Lumpy represents the image I had inherited of what a leader looks like—larger than life, standing tall above all the others, and bearing scars from past battles. With its rock-solid trunk and sprawling branches, it commands respect.

My father was an Old Lumpy kind of leader. He was very thick and tall. He owned a small business with many branches, employing dozens of people. Many of his employees came to him as high school youth and he invested in them, trained them, and mentored many to become co-owners in his small restaurant chain. He was the hardest-working person I have ever known. While he was surrounded by employees and faithful customers, I do not remember my dad having a peer group. Like Old Lumpy, he stood alone.

When my father took his own life in 1997, it was as if a giant tree in the forest had fallen, knocking down everything in its path. The wounds it caused my family are deep, and I doubt any of us will ever fully heal from them.

As I gazed up at Old Lumpy during my sabbatical in 2019, I realized that the strain of being an Old Lumpy-style leader was too much for me to bear. I got a sense that Lumpy had a message for me. In that moment, Old Lumpy felt to me like a kind of Grandmother Willow figure from the Disney Movie, Pocahontas. But at the same time, its huge misshapen branches and unique, nearly black, color gave it an eerie feel—more like the whomping willow of Harry Potter fame. It was both awe-inspiring and a bit terrifying.

While I had admired Lumpy, I had never really lingered here under its branches before my thirty days in the wild. Not only was its appearance a bit ominous, but I had discovered fresh bear claw marks on one side of it. As a result, this part of the trail always felt a bit dangerous to me.

In a similar fashion, I had seldom spent much time thinking about my dad. When memories of him did pop into my mind, I quickly pushed them away because of the tears that always followed. I had long ago accepted that I would never understand why he chose to die. Like Old Lumpy, my dad had a disease. As I sought Old Lumpy’s wisdom that winter day in 2019, I realized that I had spent so much time trying to avoid the pain of my father’s death that I had never considered what I might learn from his life. The words of Henry Nouwen, one of my favorite wise trail guides, challenged me:

I wondered what message Old Lumpy and my father might have for me. My dad had been a man of few words. He showed his love in his big strong arms that would hold me tight in his pillowy belly. He was like a large lumbering teddy bear, his intimidating size masking a large and gentle heart. I longed for his comforting embrace in this season of disillusionment. As I glanced up at old Lumpy, I felt a glimmer of paternal presence, and tears began to flow down my cheeks. Sobbing, the words “I want to see you be brave,” floated into my mind. It was the chorus from “Brave” by Sara Bareilles, one of the songs to which I had listened that day while out hiking.

What would it look like for me to be brave, I wondered? I glanced down at the pen and journal in my lap. Embossed on the cover of this brown leather journal was a bear. A few weeks before my sabbatical, my daughter Kristen had given me this particular journal. She is very intuitive and keenly aware of what others are going through, even when they themselves can’t name it.

Inside the cover of this journal, my daughter had pasted a sheet of kind words others had said about my first book from the Amazon comment section. It was a book I had imagined would be only the beginning of my writing career, but it had sat alone without a companion for a decade.

When I opened the journal that previous Christmas morning and saw all the kind words my daughter had included on the inside cover, I burst into tears right there in front of my whole family. It had been the most powerful rush of emotion that I had felt in years. I had felt alone and silenced for so long, terrified that my winding path held no value to anyone. As I sat there under Old Lumpy, I knew instantly that this wise elder was inviting me to find the courage to write and to share with others my experiences, warts and all.

As I have shared previously, my work as a community cultivator begins with a few core beliefs. Everyone has gifts, and everyone has dreams. If we discover our shared dreams and invest our collective gifts, we can bring those dreams to life. I have witnessed these truths in dozens of communities initially as a grassroots organizer and daily in my role as a coach and trainer.

Discovering your gifts and those of your community members is the easy part. Finding the courage to share your gifts and creating safe spaces for others to find the courage to do the same is often terrifying. I know this firsthand.

Shortly after my tearful encounter with Old Lumpy, I began working on my second book, Power Shift: A Field Guide for Community Cultivators Everywhere. Most of the stories, tools, and reflection pieces in Power Shift were written years before, They had sat in files on my computer collecting dust. I have been using Power Shift as our core curriculum in my trainings and with my coaching clients since 2022, and have been blessed by the way our training participants have shared their own stories in response to mine.

I have been writing on Substack for nearly 6 months. As I shared in my first post, I put off writing here for a very long time. I had a myriad of excuses and shared them in my first post 5 Reasons Not to Write on Substack.

Thankfully, every time I pass Old Lumpy on my forest hikes, he would ask me the same question, “What would it mean for you to be brave?” Eventually, I pushed the submit button just to make Lumpy proud, and I am glad I did. I have met so many wonderful writers here and have reconnected with old friends and made new ones. Turns out, once again, Lumpy’s guidance put me on the right path.

Thank you for allowing me to share my gift with you. I pray that you find the courage to share your true, authentic self and your gifts with others. I would be honored if you would share your Lumpy-inspired stories with me.

I used to look at Old Lumpy in fear, but now I see the beauty and the wisdom in the scars.

What would it mean for you to be brave?

What gift do you possess that you are not currently sharing?

How would you describe the leadership models that you have inherited?

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

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This post is a part of my Field Notes from the Wild series. Here are a few other posts inspired by our more-than-human kin.

Meet George, a Rule-Breaking Non-Conformist with a Message

An Invitation to be a Cow: Following Beauty in the Midst of Devastation

Facing the Dawn: At the Threshold of Two Worlds

I have been coaching religious leaders inside the walls of the church on how to cultivate community outside their walls for over thirty years. As I rapidly approach my 60^th birthday and reflect on these past three decades, I have to admit that it has been far more challenging than I expected.

When I wrote my first book, From the Sanctuary to the Streets, I truly believed it was possible to reimagine the church’s role in the community and for the church to follow the wild spirit out into the community. I believed people in the church truly wanted to love their neighbors and not simply bring them into the fold.

In 2018, I expanded my approach and started working with other institutional groups, including health departments, local governments, schools, and non-profits. I knew if these different sectors worked together, we could help cultivate places of belonging and purpose in every community. Again, a task that has proved more difficult than I expected.

What I did not understand was the hold institutional agendas have on all who have not experienced community in the wild.

George is Still Speaking

Last week, I posted a story of my new friend George the cow. George is a rebel. He left the herd and slipped under the fence to join me in a field of buttercups. George showed me many things, and like an onion (or an ogre) with many layers, my experience with George has been working deeper and deeper into my soul, revealing new levels of meaning.

I have trained thousands of individuals in how to dismantle institutionally constructed barriers to authentic relationships, not to capture community members and drag them back behind an electrified fence, but to cultivate places of belonging and purpose beyond the walls of the institution.

George was the only member of a cow community of thirty members who was curious enough and courageous enough to try something new. That is about the same ratio of human boundary breakers who leave the comfort and security of institutional spaces.

Initially, I found this statistic deeply disturbing. However, there is something beautiful in the small. Had the whole herd come crashing through the fence, I likely would have run away in fear. Had a dozen or so left the pen, I never could have learned all their names and given each of them my full attention. My intimate encounter was meaningful because it was unique and personal.

The same is true of the human boundary busters I have had the privilege of walking with over the past thirty years in deep and meaningful ways. The success stories that I am most inspired by are not stories of institutions that finally got it; they are stories of individual rebels who broke the rules and cultivated community on the community’s terms.

Some left the comfort of their corporate positions to launch their own community-strengthening effort. Others found the courage to do what they knew was right and were prepared to face the consequences. Many of these inside-out change agents found that the results of these unsanctioned efforts convinced those in power to let them color outside the lines.

Celebrating Human Wildflowers

When I chose the name Walking with Wildflowers for my Substack publication, it was because of the double meaning it has for me. I love how wild encounters in the natural world open up pathways of wisdom. I love working with individuals who, like George, follow the wild untamed spirit out of the pens of institutional and cultural conformity into open pastures to meet strangers they otherwise would not have met. To me, these boundary-breakers are wildflowers – rugged and offering beauty in unexpected, uncultivated, and untamed places.

Through my work as a coach, I have been blessed to walk alongside dozens of these innovative, non-conforming, beautiful souls as they left the fence, fearful and uncertain. Some have excelled, and others have struggled. The one thing they all have in common is that once they taste freedom, they are forever liberated.

This fall, I am launching a new monthly podcast series celebrating these human wildflowers. The focus will be on what led these brave souls to escape institutional captivity and what lessons they have learned during their time in the wild. Most importantly, we will explore how they are creating pathways for other non-conformists to find each other and cultivate communities of meaning and purpose beyond institutional walls.

Lessons from Ruth’s Journey Beyond the Fence

This past week, I had a chance to celebrate one such wildflower named Ruth Perry. Ruth felt called to start a podcast at her publication . In her final episode, I had the privilege of interviewing her about her first season, which included 22 inspiring interviews with individuals who were engaged in unconventional forms of ministry. Her insights helped me name who my own publication is for. It is not for the masses; it is for the rebels who, like Ruth, follow the wild spirit into uncharted territory.

There were a few threads in this interview with Ruth that are worth noting.

1. Ruth had a very clear vision for what kinds of conversations she wanted to explore through her podcast.

2. Ruth’s project tapped into her own experience of feeling alone in her spiritual journey, which was leading her beyond the boundaries of her inherited faith tradition.

3. Ruth’s boldness in asking others to join her on the journey led to the success of her first season.

Every wildflower that I have walked with has shared these three qualities: clarity about what they want to create, a calling that is rooted in their lived experience, and courage to ask others to join them.

Are You Walking Through Fences?

If you are a rare soul who seeks to connect beyond artificial societal or institutional boundaries and longs to run free through fields of buttercups alongside other rule-breakers like George the cow, then I am so glad you have found my publication.

I would love to know more about your adventures in the wild.

1. What do you long to create beyond the boundaries of institutional conformity?

2. Is this creative energy rooted in your own lived experience?

3. How can others join you on the journey?

If, like me, you love wildflowers, I hope you will subscribe to my publication.

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Additionally, we have a Mighty Network community that is free and open to all.

If you are interested in cultivating community beyond the walls of societal and institutional borders, we offer our Power Shift Training series as a learning cohort, a self-guided course, and a guided co-learning journey.

If you are a subscriber and would like to explore whether Power Shift or individual coaching is right for you, we offer a free 45-minute virtual call. Send me a private message, and I will send you a link to schedule a call. You can learn more about my training, coaching, and consulting services at Embrace Communities.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

When my husband, who grew up raising cattle, sees a cow, he sees a nice juicy steak. He literally had a pet cow named Beef Steak. When I see a cow, I have a strange urge to hug it!

I grew up in Central Texas surrounded by cattle ranchers. Several of my friends lived on these ranches, and I always thought they were so lucky to get to hang out with these gentle hoofed creatures. My family lived in town with cats, dogs, and squirrels as our furry companions – a boring substitute in my book.

My First Conversation with a Cow

“Mystical experiences in nature—those moments when you sense your interconnection with all things—are more than just interesting encounters. They are invitations into relationship.” Victoria Loorz

A few weeks ago, I participated in my first wild church experience, hosted by my friend Callie and Dan Walker on their farm in Amelia, Virginia. The solo wander is a central part of most wild church experiences. Before we began our wander, Callie turned off the electric fence as Dan led us through the pasture along freshly mown trails toward a more forested part of their property.

As he opened the first gate, I glanced across the field to the left, and there in the adjacent pasture were his neighbor’s cows - all huddled up against the fence line on this unseasonably cool April afternoon. They were all just standing there staring at us. I resisted the urge to run across the field and hug them, reminding myself that I was a grown woman.

As Dan walked, he invited us to enter the forest as we felt led. At each trail into the forest, I felt no interest. Then we came to a mown path that appeared to loop around and back toward the cows - it called to me. My pace quickened, and when the path ended, I stepped forward, anxious about the amount of poison ivy emerging all around me. I looked for a tree to converse with deeper in the understory, where the tree canopy had choked out the tall grasses, and found a large oak. I tried to strike up a conversation and was about to give it a big hug when I saw a large vine of poison ivy snaking its way up the trunk. I took that as a sign to move on.

I felt an urge to find the field with the cows, which I assumed lay ahead of me. It would require walking through high grass and a lot of poison ivy. I had foolishly worn shorts, so this was a bit of a dangerous venture. I decided the cows were worth it.

When I arrived at the fence, the cows were all still on the other side of the field. I tried to get their attention, but I was too far away. I knew I was running out of time and that the group would be waiting back at the fire circle, so I turned around, feeling a mild level of disappointment and a lot of frustration with myself for not following the initial prompting and running across the field of buttercups toward the big-eyed beasts that were beckoning me.

As I returned to the gathering, I came back into the buttercup-filled field, glanced over at the cows, and saw two of my fellow participants walking away from them. I was jealous that they had met the cud-chewing neighbors and decided that I would go say a quick hello. When I was roughly 20 feet from the herd, all of whom were staring at me, I placed my cushion on the ground and sat down.

I noticed that rather than a fence with two wires holding them in, there was one section with only one wire. I assume this was the area where the farmer entered and exited. I knew the electricity was off, but I assumed the cows did not. I was wrong.

I reached into my bag for my journal, intending to write down a few notes. When I glanced up a few minutes later, a defiant juvenile had slipped under the wire and was cautiously heading toward me. The whole cow community had stopped chewing and was now staring at the young steer and at me. Their big eyes looked stunned to see one of their own so defiantly on the human side of the line.

His curiosity, like mine, had gotten the better of him. We were both breaking the rules. He was outside the fence meant to contain him, and I was out of time. I feared I was disrupting the flow of the event with my last-minute sidetrack, but I could not move. As we both persisted in our disobedience, he drew closer. As he did, I grew more still, seeing that my every move frightened him, and he would jump back, stare back at me, blink, and then reassert himself. His extended family had stopped eating and were all breathlessly leaning toward the fence. I am not sure if they were fearful for his safety or perhaps jealous of his courage.

Conversation Starters

I had decided to use a conversation guide that I adapted from my friend Cheryl Groce-Wright’s Soul College practice to help guide me in my encounters with my non-verbal kin. I had used it in my own forest in conversations with trees, flowers, the wind, and water, but never with a cow. Here are the questions:

1. Who are you? Allow your partner to complete this sentence, “I am one who….” Listen at a soulful level. Ask yourself what the core energy of this other being is?

2. What do you want me to know?

3. What gift do you have for me?

4. What gift can I offer you?

5. How will I remember you?

I asked my new friend, “Who are you?” The tag on his ear told me his humans knew him as #42, but he responded, “I am one who is curious.” I decided to call him Curious George, though my husband has made an argument that his name is “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything,” a reference to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I think I will stick with George.

When I asked him what message he had for me, he invited me to remember the barefoot young girl who never got a chance to run barefoot through fields of buttercups. He encouraged me to let her run free before it’s too late - to leave the rule-following adult behind and follow a wilder spirit, even if it told me to do something foolish like hug a cow.

My Inability to Silence the Internal Timekeeper

While this message resonated deeply with me, the rule-following mature adult was now screaming in my head to get back in line and was shaming me for inconveniencing my fellow human participants by being so late getting back to the circle.

I said a hurried goodbye to George, thanked him for spending time with me, and tried to get him to go back to his family. He refused. He obviously had more to say, and sadly, I did not give him a chance. When he refused to return to the herd, I began to experience a sense of panic. I feared I would somehow cause harm to George. I imagined him escaping or getting hurt. Perhaps his defiance would expedite his journey to market and the inevitable butcher’s knife.

I gave up on trying to return him to the pen. I hurried back to the circle, confessed my sin of having lured him away from the herd. Dan assured me that #42 would be fine and that he would make sure he was returned to his family before they turned the fence back on.

Back in the circle, Dan invited us to tell the rest of the group about our time wandering. I shared a picture of George. I know #42 will likely end up on someone’s dinner plate, but that does not mean he can’t also be my friend and wise teacher while he is on this earth. Though George’s life will likely be a short one, I admire his determination to live by his own rules and seek out new adventures. That is the gift he gave me.

My Commitment to George

The gift I will strive to give George in the future is to cherish what time I have on this earth. To run barefoot through fields of buttercups, to hug cows and trees, to follow butterflies, and to listen to the streams that cross my path with the same level of curiosity as George.

For me to do this, I have to redefine the rules and hold the invitation to commune with the more-than-human world at the same level of importance as my commitments to my human companions. All this requires a much slower pace and intentional time to see my more-than-human kin as fellow earthlings and as neighbors whose companionship enriches life.

Practicing my Commitment to George

I now realize that Dan, Callie, and my peers around that circle would have much preferred that I finish my conversation with George. It is not their expectation that I need to change, but my own inner conformist. The conformist that told me to follow the crowd into the forest, the conformist that made me cut my time with George short, the conformist that is afraid of sharing this encounter and being labeled a crazy woman for talking to cows.

One week after my George experience, I hosted my first book group gathering for Victoria Loorz book, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred. As a part of our in-person experience, I am inviting my guests to do a solo wander on our property. I made a point of telling my guests that we would meet back at the circle in 30 minutes, but that if you are engaged in a conversation, do not feel obligated to return until you feel it has ended.

One of the individuals who participated, a lovely woman named Jess, did what I failed to do the week before. She left her watch and phone behind and listened to the invitation to stay a bit longer. As I was on my own wander, I glanced up and saw Jess meditating at one of my favorite spots in our forest – it filled me with joy. That image is how I will remember George. The same spirit that led Jess to experience communion with my forest is the same spirit that invited me to commune with George. I hope next time, I choose that non-conformist spirit and am able to hit the snooze button on my inner timekeeper.

What I love about Loorz’s book is its invitation to be non-conformists, not simply to get outside the walls of the church, but to explore the boundary lines – real or imagined of our own beliefs. As the Apostle Paul put it in Romans 12:2, to stop conforming to the patterns of the world and be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

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An Invitation to Hug a Cow or a Tree or a Frog…Your Choice

In many ways, I think George sums up the lesson of Veronica Loorz’s book, which invites us to tap into the curiosity of our younger self, break a few rules, run barefoot through a field of buttercups, and hug a cow.

It is not too late to join the book study. We have three options: an online discussion here on Substack, a virtual discussion on Zoom, and an in-person gathering in Appomattox, Virginia. All are open to anyone interested. If you would prefer to participate in the wilderness time but not the book study, we invite you to join us for the second hour of our in-person gathering or to practice on your own and share your experiences. If you want to join the virtual or in-person gatherings, send me a chat message, and I will send you more information.

You are also invited to participate in Callie and Dan’s wild church, which meets on the 4th Sunday of the month at 3:00 pm in Amelia, Virginia. I will even introduce you to George if you decide to join us. Send me a chat message, and I will connect you to that opportunity.

Other Resources:

My post, Reconnecting Land, Spirit and Community is full of resources on this topic. One of my favorites is ’s book Earth and Soul.

This is also the second cow-themed post I have written. If you want more cute cow pictures, check out An Invitation to Be a Cow. If Elk are more your style, check out Stalking Elk in the Moonlight on a Cloudy Night.

If you are interested in finding a wild church near you, I encourage you to visit the Wild Church Network.

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Your Invitation to Join the Conversation

Anyone is welcome to join the online discussion. You can respond in the comment section, based on the readings, or in response to my personal reflections and quotes. Please keep your comments to 500 words or fewer. Please be respectful and kind to those who share.

Don’t feel limited to the reflection questions posted below. They are simply prompts to help you get started. You can share in whatever order or format you like.

I will pull insights and questions from everyone’s reflections and use them to draft our discussion guide for our group gatherings.

My Personal Reflections

Chapter 1: A Communion of Subjects May 10th

What Stood Out to Me:

The Broken Conversation

What stood out to me from this chapter can be summed up in this quote:

“Spirituality and nature are not separate. Attempts to keep them apart break the world.”

This premise is supported by the lead quote from Thomas Berry, which I love,

“The divine communicates to us primarily through the language of the natural world. Not to hear the natural world is not to hear the divine.”

I also appreciate the reference to nature as the “First book of God.”

Defining Those on the Sacred Journey

I have struggled with the label Christian with the current political hijacking of that label, which ascribes a definition that is far from my own beliefs. I feel more comfortable with the label of edge-walking nature mystic as defined by Loorz. She defines a mystic as

“someone who has an experience of union with The One—and The One may be God, it may be Mother Earth, it may be the cosmos.”

Nature mystics are defined as

“those who experience the presence of the sacred through nature.”

Her definition of an edge-walker as those

“wandering along the hemlines of the Christ tradition.”

These edges are a narrow space between religious tradition and “very personal experiences in nature that have revealed a truth of their own.”

I have felt drawn to the writings of mystics throughout my faith journey and believe this Meister Eckhart quote to be true,

“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”

All of them describe moments where they experienced a oneness and interconnectedness with all that is. Loorz states,

“Mystical experiences in nature—those moments when you sense your interconnection with all things—are more than just interesting encounters. They are invitations into relationship.”

The Challenge of Our Time

I agree with Loorz’s statement,

“We are staring at the slow-motion collapse of empire. Standing at the threshold of profound change.”

As well as her naming of the root problem,

“The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.”

My Challenges and Lingering Questions

“There have always been edge walkers: those who didn’t follow along with the status quo, who didn’t swallow the version of religion offered by those on top of the hierarchy as The Only Way.”

Redefining Church

Like Loorz,

“I longed for church to be a place where Mystery is experienced, not explained.”

I also appreciated her spacious definition of the church simply

“as a place of intentional connection with the sacred.”

I am struggling with using the word church to define this type of nature-rooted spirituality, not because I don’t believe it is deeply spiritual, but because of the baggage the word “church” carries both for those inside and those outside the institutional versions of that word.

The New Story

I think this collapse and these root problems are evidence of Thomas Berry’s recognition that we need a new story.

“We are in trouble because we do not have a good story. We are between stories. The old story is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned “the new story”. We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers; we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation, we have shattered the universe.”

Chapter 2: When You Realize Something is Missing May 17th

What Stood Out to Me:

The Need to Examine the Pieces

“Sometimes it takes years of collecting moments of insight before you are ready to dump it all out onto the table to see what you’ve got, find the patterns, make connections, and allow yourself to see what you never noticed before.”

My post Reconnecting Land, Spirit and Community was my attempt to make connections of a multitude of conversations over decades, with Loorz’s book being one of the best weavings of these threads that I have found so far.

“The root prefix trans means “through” or “across,” meaning we are formed as we move through the ways life changes us: from life through death to new life. Transformed, metamorphosed to be more like who we truly are meant to be. Which is another way to say more wild.”

This quote has been true for me. The times of greatest growth for me have come after seasons of tremendous darkness when I have withdrawn into wild places. I wrote about the lessons I learned from the most recent dark season. This journey together is a part of my own search for the new life that I hope will come from the pain.

My Challenges and Lingering Questions:

Wholehearted Living inside Heartless Systems

“Brother David was able to clarify the problem. He said, “You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest? . . . The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.””

This rings so true for me personally, but it feels like we live in a world where this idea of wholeheartedness is absent.

I have a number of friends who are struggling to live wholeheartedly and who appear to be losing faith that it will ever be possible. They are constrained by financial demands and systems that break the spirit of those who strive to live wholeheartedly in the name of efficiency and conformity. Perhaps on the other side of their own dark night, they will emerge transformed in a way that will allow them to resist the broken systems or change them from within.

Continuing to Struggle with this Discussion as an Alternative Church Structure

“The growing number of “nones” (those without church affiliation) find nature a better church than a building and an institution. Nature, according to the researchers, provides for this group a “personal, subjective, non-institutionalized, and unmediated experience with the sacred. . . . When a person hikes in a forest to connect with the sacred, she or he may not feel the need to affiliate with a religious organization because her or his spiritual demands are met.”

I have read dozens of books about the value of spending time in natural spaces and have personally experienced the transforming power of such experiences. I can fully understand this trend and would count myself among those who prefer a wild form of communion. I prefer the word communion over the word church or even worship. All three words are likely too churchy for most “nones.” I am still searching for better language.

What I am sitting with is that I have also had transformative experiences inside church buildings and through scripture, sermons, and in conversations with members of faith communities. I think the two forms can enrich one another. As Loorz states, “There comes a point when you need to withdraw from what has become too familiar in order to see again.”

I think the sacred speaks in multiple languages, or as the Saint John of the Cross quote states, “all things are God.” What I don’t want to do is create a dualistic way of thinking and swap one boxed-up version of the sacred for another. I see this whole conversation as an expansion - a willingness to see “the way” the sacred moves in our lives as being beyond human ability to fully comprehend.

Chapter 3: Into the Mountains to Pray May 24th

What Stood Out to Me:

In this chapter, Loorz illustrates that the wilderness way is embedded throughout Christian scriptures.

A Christian Case for the Wilderness Way

“Jesus didn’t go to the buildings to pray. Jesus went to a mountain—or along the lakeshore, or to the wilderness.”

“The word wilderness is used more than three hundred times in the Bible.”

She provides a multitude of examples of this connection between heroes of the faith and wild places.

Liminal Spaces and Times

“it’s not just that the wilderness invites us into the presence of the sacred; there’s the mysterious reality that the sacred also calls us into the wilderness.”

“The wilderness is the place to go when you are standing at the threshold, like Jesus was, of a calling that asks you to risk everything and embody all you are created to be. In the wilderness—the place that speaks—you find that you are not alone.”

My most profound experiences in the wild have come during some of the most difficult times of my life, when I felt called to separate myself from the human world in order to reorient myself to the sacred and find spiritual clarity.

Responding to an Invitation From the Other

“There is a mysterious union that happens when we enter into a relationship with the wild and practice sacred conversation.”

“The living world is where we can be opened up in receptivity to a divine encounter. There is an invitation here, offered to all of us: in order to listen for the holy, to engage in intimate conversation with the sacred, one goes into the wilderness.”

For me, the conversations that are most profound start with a kind of call to pay attention. Something stands out and feels like it is an invitation more than me forcing or even initiating a conversation.

My Challenges and Lingering Questions:

A Fringe Practice or Common Experience

When I shared my story of George the Cow, I was a bit afraid I would be seen as a tad too far out there for most folks. Instead of hitting the unsubscribe button, several individuals sent me images of cows they encountered, or confessed privately that they have had similar conversations with rebels like George.

When I started hanging out with Mamma Winfree, my charismatic spiritual mother, she was convinced everyone could speak in tongues. She staged multiple interventions trying to prove that even I was capable of doing it. She and the other matriarchs in our community laid hands on me, prayed over me, and honestly, I have never felt more uncomfortable. After several attempts, she gave up on me.

The Methodists among us have the quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, reason, and Christian experience. This helps shape how they think about pathways to the sacred.

Along the same lines, Father David Perkins introduced me to Holmes’ 4 Spiritualities. David said most people gravitate toward one or two of these spiritual pathways.

Chapter 4: Allured into the Wilderness May 31st

What Stood Out to Me:

The Power of a Wild Wander Experience

Loorz’s description of the wander resonated with me. This week I shared a post that grew out of one of my earliest wanders back in 2019, titled Cultivating Courage with the Help of Lumpy Old Chestnut Oak.

My Challenges and Lingering Questions:

Seeing Gifts Through an Ecological Lens

In this chapter, Loorz shares insights from Bill Plotkin’s Nature and the Human Soul.

He says that all of us are “born to occupy a particular place in nature—a place in the Earth community . . . a unique ecological role, a singular way you can serve and nurture the web of life . . . as unique as that of any birch, bear, or beaver pond.”

Making the invisible gifts we all have visible is a huge part of my life’s work. This reframing of giftedness through an ecological lens grabbed my attention. I currently ask those I work with how their gift can help bring about their shared dreams for their community. I am pondering, How would this broader frame change the question and the resulting answer? What if we asked ourselves and others, “How might I share my gift to nurture the web of life?” or “What is your unique ecological role?”

I wonder if the gifts that emerge would be different than those made visible through my current focus on strengthening human communities?

The Larger Ecospiritual Narrative

Loorz goes on to say:

“the inner beloved is an archetype, the part of you who is your guide to soul. I think it is not much different from Thomas Merton’s mystical language of true self, or what Carl Jung named the anima or animus. It is the wild twin that Martin Shaw talks about in his lyrical retelling of the ancient European myth, “The Lindworm” “The part of ourselves that we generally shun or ignore to conform to societal norms.””

To the metaphors shared by Loorz I would add Howard Thurman’s Sound of the Genuine (included below in resources) and Henri Nouwen’s Inner Voice of Love. All these mystics use different words, but they all sing the same song – loving our unique selves while recognizing our universal belonging and responsibility to the whole.

I keep coming back to Thomas Berry’s challenge to embrace a new theological story that has the power to change the trajectory of existence from one pointing toward the destruction of the earth to one of thriving wholeness for all earth’s inhabitants.

Chapter 5: Restoring the Great Conversation June 7th

What Stood Out to Me:

This is one of my favorite chapters and includes quotes from many of my favorite wise guides - Thomas Berry, Robert Macfarlane, Francis Weller, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Howard Thurman.

Loves Twin Sister

“Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.” Francis Weller

This quote reminds me of my Lumpy post from earlier this week.

Loving Thurman More

“When I was young, I found more companionship in nature than I did among people. The woods befriended me…I could talk aloud to the oak tree and know that I was understood…There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse. It was a time of watching and waiting for what I did not know—yet I always knew there would come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to speak to me. My response to the sense of Presence always had the quality of personal communion. There was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God.” Howard Thurman

I did not think I could love Howard Thurman any more than I already do. Then I read this. I had always heard he was a mystic, but now I know we both talk to Oak trees; perhaps that shared language is why he speaks so deeply to me.

Belief Verses Attention

“I began to realize that my identity depended not upon any beliefs I had . . . [but] actually depended on how much attention I was paying to things that were other than myself—and that as you deepen this intentionality and this attention, you started to broaden and deepen your own sense of presence.” David Whyte, Galapagos Islands marine scientist

This contrast between “believing the right things” and “paying attention” to what is all around us caught my attention. I believe the universe will show you what you need to know when we pay attention at a soulful level. I am not sure if that is what Whyte is saying, but that is my own experience.

Much of this chapter (Whyte’s quote above, Macfarlane below) reminds me of Mary Oliver’s poem:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

My Challenges and Lingering Questions:

Learning to Tell About It

Loorz writes,

“Mystical conversations defy language. But not naming them leaves them without context, unable to grow into their meaning…Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment,” Macfarlane reminds us, “for language does not just register experience, it produces it.” [Emphasis mine]

I have been journaling daily for several decades. It allows me to “tell about it” if only to the pages of my journal. The practice allows me to register the experience and produce meaning from it. I began this practice while in seminary and was able to share my thoughts with my professor and my classmates, which was both terrifying and edifying. Since I began writing on Substack, I feel like I have released a log jam; I now have a way of sharing beyond my journal. What I lack is any real interaction, like what I received during my seminary years. I am not sure if that kind of conversation is even possible outside that container, but I would like to explore the possibility.

I am not sure that a 30-minute wander with a 10-minute debrief is enough time to fully glean the meaning of an encounter. I am a part of a writers’ group. Every month, we write to a prompt provided by the teacher and then share what we wrote when we reconvene. It is a bit monotonous as she provides no length limit, but the requirement to write outside of class has produced the desired objective – to encourage us write.

I wonder if starting with that kind of voluntary “check-in” with the “prompt” being whatever grabbed your attention, might deepen the sharing and allow for more meaning-making both individually and collectively. Instead of going around the full circle, we could share in triads.

I know my encounter with George worked on me for weeks and continues to unfold layer after layer of meaning. I don’t think it should be required, but perhaps an option, perhaps a check in question like this one, “What did your wander experience tell you since we last met?”

Not everyone likes to write, so perhaps inviting all forms of creative expression to be how we share meaning with one another.

Animating Community

Robin Wall Kimmerer proposes a new “grammar of animacy,” one that takes cues from her Anishinaabe language, where other species are “recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live.”

“In Landmarks, Macfarlane tells a story of how citizens of an island township called Lewis, on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, saved their homeland by restoring intimate conversation with their landscape.

They launched a two-year campaign to inspire residents to restore intimacy with their land through specific storytelling. Restoration through re-storying. They called for the sharing of detailed and loving experiences that people had with particular places, encouraging them to tell stories, recall poems, create paintings and photographs, remember songs, recall lost words, map favorite hidden spots, and recount histories about particular places in their township. The activists hoped to restore intimacy with the moor by encouraging particular conversations that reconnected the people and their place.”

The campaign revived the citizens’ sense of kindred belonging to their place.”

I loved this question, “Tell me about the land who raised you.”

When Chris and I first started camping, I found myself strangely drawn to the many amphitheaters I ran across in state parks. They grab my attention and have been speaking to me for years.

This summer, Ruth and I are working with the Theater Kids in Appomattox. Yesterday, Chance said, “Maybe the kids would do short skits around my Friday night campfire circle.” With my conversations with George, Lumpy, and my prior experiences doing oral storytelling projects in my head, I had a vision.

What kinds of conversations might Harold the turtle, Lumpy the Chestnut Oak, Hisstopher the snake, George the cow, Bob the “oldtimer”, Abby the young nature lover, and the rest of the drama kids, other members of the community, past and present, have together?

All Community is Sacred Community

“We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation… we will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things came into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us. Then, you’ll find you are fully present with yourself. And you’ll begin to tap into a conversation going on all around you that is bigger than you. It’s as big as God.” Thomas Berry

Loorz makes an interesting point.

“When we invest time and attention in connecting with others as sacred, as Thomas Berry said,“we become sacred.” It’s almost as if the connection between, the conversation itself, is how the sacred is manifested.”

My favorite definition of community is a group of people wrapped in mystery. Mystery is the connection, conversation is the vehicle for cultivating connection. No AI program can forecast how people will connect, or force a connection. Perhaps a better definition of community might be, “a group of individuals (human and more than human) stitched together by the sacred, one meaningful conversation at a time, forming a sacred bond of oneness.”

Other Resources:

During our first gathering, I shared a modified version of Soul Collage that I found helpful in my conversations with our non-verbal kin. I wrote about one such conversation in this week’s article titled, Meet George, A Rule-Breaking Non-Conformist with a Message.

One of our book group participants, , wrote a lovely piece along these lines on her Substack this week titled “Delight as Worship.” I encourage you to check it out.

I think Howard Thurman is one of the most skilled at using language that expands. I love his use of the metaphor “The Sound of the Genuine.” Here is an excerpt:

There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself (or himself.)… If you cannot hear the sound of the genuine within you, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching, and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born...

If you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…So the burden of what I have to say to you is, “What is your name—who are you—and can you find a way to hear the sound of the genuine in yourself?”

[The sound of the genuine] is the only true guide you will ever have and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself.

Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.

—Howard Thurman, Spelman College Commencement Address 1980

Valerie Loorz hosted a follow-up conversation this past week. She shared this poem that I thought others might enjoy:

When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky itself,

no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not love.

It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known before.

So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged — I begged to wed every object and creature,

and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”

For then I knew my soul — every soul—
has always held
Him.

(Often credited to Meister Eckhart, but likely Daniel Ladinsky in Love Poems from God)

I have been reading Jim Palmer’s publication . This week’s article is Jesus After Religion. This collection of articles might be of interest to some of you. Bruce and I had a fun exchange along these lines on a note I shared here on Substack earlier this week.

The first time I visited the neglected pollinator garden at Holliday Lake State Park in Appomattox County, Virginia, all I could see was stilt grass, a highly invasive plant. It was late fall, and it had already gone to seed. My advice was to cover it with cardboard and wood chips for a year. It felt beyond redemption.

When I returned in March with a few friends to rake out the dead stilt grass, we filled six very large bags with it. As the dead grasses were removed, we discovered a variety of native plants growing alongside this year’s stilt grass seedlings - bee balm, mountain mint, and purple coneflower.

I did not have the heart to smother the good plants in my effort to eradicate the bad. The park interpreter suggested doing a service day as a part of the park’s Earth Day celebration. I had my doubts about the success of hand-pulling such a large amount of stilt grass, but we decided to try.

This experience of discovering beautiful native wildflowers alongside destructive invasive plants reminded me of my experience here in our new home in Appomattox County, Virginia.

Native Wild Flowers in Human Form

My husband and I moved to Appomattox County in 2020. It was a huge culture shock for me after spending decades in Richmond. The number of confederate flags and Trump signs the size of billboards, in addition to the pandemic and a rejection of face masks, made me feel very isolated, unsafe, and alone. I stumbled upon a group of fellow transplants through activities in nearby Pamplin who made me feel welcome. Though many had lived in the county for decades, they were not native to this place. I assumed that was what made them so welcoming to a transplant like me.

This surface-level exposure to my new community and native residents caused me to make assumptions - assumptions that led me to believe I did not belong here. For the first four years, I avoided going to the town of Appomattox, opting to cultivate relationships in Pamplin and Farmville, where I felt more welcome.

In 2024, a friend, Father John Maher, was guest preaching at an Episcopal Church in Appomattox. I was stunned that there was an Episcopal church in this ultra-conservative part of rural Virginia. His visit was during the absolute darkest days of two years of trials and tribulations that rocked my world. John had been one of the few individuals I had confided in. I was not in a good place emotionally the day of his sermon, but I figured I could hold it together for one hour to support John and thank him for supporting me.

When the Old Testament passage was read from the book of Job, I felt tears rolling down my face. It was the first time in my life that I had felt drawn to this disturbing book of the Bible, but I found it strangely comforting. That day in the pew at St. Anne’s Episcopal church, I felt seen, not by John or the congregation, but by a loving, holy parent. I heard in the depths of my soul the words whispered gently, “You are not alone.”

I pulled myself together and walked into the fellowship hall after the service to greet John. There, on the wall, was a bulletin board with the words “I’d rather be excluded for who I include, than included for who I exclude.” I burst into tears again. This time, tears of gratitude at having found kindred spirits here in a community I believed to be inhospitable.

A lovely woman named Evelyn Ford welcomed me to the church. She kindly ignored the tears and snot running down my face. I blubbered a hello and then shared how meaningful the bulletin board was to me as the parent of a transgender child. She introduced me to Mary White, who had created it. I explained how fearful I had become of the town of Appomattox. I had heard horror stories of how the library board had been summarily dismissed because of a Pride month display. I expressed how heartwarming it was to find people who lived the message on that board and the words of Jesus to love one another.

Evelyn assured me that her church was not the only one in town. She reminded me that the Appomattox United Methodist Church was also open and affirming. I had heard about the heated disaffiliation fight the prior year. The debate that tore Memorial United Methodist Church in two and left those who were LGBTQIA+ affirming without a church building, when the majority of the church chose to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church and take the building with them. The remnant that remained became Appomattox United Methodist Church. Again, it was a story of hostility, and another reason I had steered clear.

But that day, with my tear-stained face and red nose, something prompted me to drive from the Episcopal church directly over to the Methodist church, whose services were about to begin in the rented space in a strip mall. I don’t remember anything from the service, the message, or the music. I had arrived a little late, sat in the back, and waited for some kind of sign from above. Would the message be about Job or some other private message meant just for me? Nope. Would there be a bulletin board that jumped off the wall and gave me hope? Nope. Instead, a woman in front of me had a terrible cough. I kept holding my breath, feeling certain that COVID germs were the only gift I would receive from this church. I was convinced by the end of the service that the whole venture was a waste of time.

After the service, the woman with the hacking cough greeted me and thanked me for visiting. Her kind eyes and genuine welcome made me forget about the risk of contamination. We talked until the last person was ready to leave and lock the door.

The woman’s name was Pam Robinson. She gave me her number, and we met for coffee the following week. We began walking regularly around the town, and I got to see Appomattox through her eyes. Her friendship and those evening strolls helped me feel less alone in my new home community. I gained an appreciation for community members like Pam, who were fighting against the invasive species of hate that had gained a foothold in her hometown, causing so much pain.

Dreams of commUNITY

One of my walks with Pam was on the grounds of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, where the Civil War ended, just a few miles from my home. I met Pam at this historic location to learn more about her hopes and dreams for her community. As we walked this once blood-soaked terrain, we pondered these questions:

• What if Appomattox truly became the place our nation reunited and not just a slogan on a billboard?

• What would it look like for all citizens of Appomattox to feel they belonged here and were valued for the unique gifts they bring?

• What would it look like to tap into a shared love of the natural world as a bridge across the current social divides?

• What would it look like to unearth the strengths of past generations and weave them together to ensure a bright future for generations to come?

As the cars rushed past us, those gazing out the windows would see two middle-aged women on a walk through the fields of wildflowers, but I think the butterflies fluttering about could see the possibility of yet another cultural revolution in the making.

Pam’s dream of community unity was full of question marks, but I was convinced she and I were not alone. She sparked in me a commitment to discover others who shared the dream of greater community unity.

Discovering the Dreams

I have been a community cultivator for close to 30 years. I have found that every community has dreams, and every community member has gifts. When we discover our shared dreams and invest our individual gifts, we can bring those dreams to life. I have developed a process for discovering gifts and dreams based on the principles of Asset-Based Community Development, and I began using this process in Appomattox.

Pam’s dream of community unity led me to facilitate a series of conversations with community members and groups over the next nine months. Like all gift discovery processes, I never know what will emerge. The goal of this initial listening was to discover what a community cared enough about that they would get involved. This is what I call the commUnity dream in my Power Shift training.

Our key organizing question is, “If you could do anything to strengthen Appomattox, what would you do?”

I met one-on-one with community members and facilitated several small group discussions around this question. We identified four themes:

• Strengthening relationships between community members of all ages - promoting civil discourse, civic engagement, and deeper relationships of mutual respect

• Nurturing the physical health and well-being of all community members

• Cultivating opportunities for the next generation to thrive

• Deepening connection to place - the land, history, stories, and culture

Pam and I worked with her church leadership to conduct a large group event at her church. During this event, the greatest energy was around the theme of strengthening relationships, with more than half of those who shared their dreams falling into that category. As the participants each shared their dream, the strongest motivation for action was around healing divisions within the community, around growing understanding that melts away the divisions, cultivating peace among leaders and the community, and a desire to work together to serve in the community.

Discovering the Gifts

The next part of the process is to discover what we have to work with - the gifts of those who are interested in engaging and those of the broader community. One of the questions I always lead with is, “What do you like best about your community?”

I think the response that best sums up what I heard that day is, “It is home.” The vast majority of Pam’s church members are long-time residents of the community. Their commitment to this place is deeply rooted, and the rich cultural knowledge is a tremendous asset. If they were flowers in the pollinator garden, they would be the closest thing to a native species you will find in the community, with many tracing their family’s connection to the area back generations.

This fact blew apart my assumption that all who were native to the community, the been heres, were unwelcoming to transplants like me, the come heres. My self-constructed narrative about rural Virginia inhabitants was rapidly unraveling.

The second gift discovery question I asked was, “What do you like to do in your spare time?” Three themes emerged. The number one answer was “spend time with my grandchildren.” Followed by staying active through outdoor activities like hiking, biking, kayaking, golfing, fishing, gardening, and building things. The third theme that emerged was around civic engagement, such as volunteering through local non-profits and engaging in local civic groups and politics. This line of inquiry captures the gifts of the group that are the building blocks of any shared effort to bring the community together.

As we explored what the group cared most deeply about, two populations of beneficiaries emerged, youth/families and seniors/elderly, with a strong desire that activities be designed to foster intergenerational connections.

After discussing all these hopes, dreams, and gifts, the group arrived at three action items that they were interested in exploring - hosting outdoor activities that celebrate the region’s vast natural spaces, coordinating acts of service in partnership with other values-aligned community groups, and practicing hospitality that invites connection through storytelling, food, and culture.

Through two follow-up conversations, a core team of six community members emerged. We began looking for projects that allowed us to serve together with others in an outdoor setting, on projects that would foster intergenerational connections and that could engage people with a variety of physical ability levels.

I proposed partnering with the State Park to help save the pollinator garden, and they graciously accepted the project as the first effort in their attempt to WEave commUNITY.

Lessons from the Pollinator Garden

As we worked together to remove the invasive plants to save the native ones, I felt a sense of gratitude. It was the same kind of gratitude I experienced the day I met Pam and Evelyn. It was the realization that my new community was full of beautiful humans – those native to the community and those like me who were new. What brought us together is our willingness to cultivate spaces of belonging and purpose for all who call this place home, not just humans but flowers, pollinators, and birds as well. This place is beginning to feel like home for my family and me. I hope our new found family can help foster the feeling of “It is home” for others who are struggling to find their place here.

As we pulled out the stilt grass seedlings one by one, I imagined this invasive plant as the seeds of hate that have been sewn across our county - seeds that have harmed my family, ripped apart faith communities, terrorized communities of color for generations, threatened immigrant families, and caused those with political views that differ from the majority to remain silent.

I believe all people, when invited to build authentic relationships, will reject false narratives about their neighbors when their own experience runs counter to their unfounded assumptions. These harmful “othering” narratives have shaped our community much the way my false narrative about my native neighbors shaped my engagement with my neighbors. This faulty narrative shifted as I entered into meaningful conversations and discovered common values and a shared dream.

As I looked around, I saw a dozen fellow community members who, through both word and deed, are living their commitment to the statement, “We would rather be excluded for who we include than included for who we exclude.” I believe with my whole heart, we are called not only to cultivate a literal pollinator garden but sacred spaces that bloom and spread seeds of love, belonging, and acceptance for all. As those seeds are spread, the invasive seeds of hate, fueled by divisive narratives, will be choked out, and we will become the place our nation reunites.

While many would simply see a bunch of volunteers pulling weeds, I believe the monarch butterflies who visited us in the garden as we worked saw plants and humans working together to cultivate a connection that I pray extends beyond a single event. Our goal in this fledgling venture is simple- to see everyone for the gift they bring, regardless of their race, age, religion, political views, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

It will be a long process of hand-pulling the harmful narratives and cultivating relationships that forge new ones. It feels totally overwhelming at this moment in a political climate where narratives of distrust seem to rule the day. However, seeing the natives thrive in the midst of these harsh conditions gives me hope.

I loved that the event included individuals of all ages, from high school youth to great-grandparents. As I think about our first event I am celebrating these gifts: Sue’s get-it-done attitude, Donna’s gift of digging in the dirt, Amy’s gift of welcome, Pam’s gift of invitation, Brian’s gift of rock hauling, Lilly’s plant knowledge, Abby’s love of living things, Ruth’s outgoing personality, Nakia’s gift of youthful curiosity, Kyrian’s gift of quiet reflection, Chance’s coordination of the activity and Chris’s continual support from behind the scenes. Each gave a gift, but it remains to be seen if the connections forged to land, spirit, and community will grow and deepen.

Living these Questions

As I shared in my previous article, I prefer the edge spaces- spaces where institutional versions of spiritual traditions meet the wild, organic sacred spaces. I find these kinds of organic, emergent communities, where you discover the path as you walk it, to be life-giving and spiritually rich. Our journey together began with the questions Pam and I pondered as we walked the land where the Civil War ended. There are still many questions yet to be explored. Questions that will open up the path we are to walk together. Here are a few questions we are currently pondering:

Can active, deeply rooted grandparents be the catalyst for a multi-generational effort that transforms the culture of our rural community into one where diversity is celebrated, not simply tolerated?

Could we bring families together to enjoy the beauty of the natural world in a way that reconnects us to the land and each other?

What role will young people play in this emergent community cultivation effort? Could they be the healers and connectors we have been waiting for?

As I sit dreaming of where this development effort could go, I have to remind myself that I am simply a pollinator in someone else’s garden. My job is summed up best in Mary Oliver’s Instructions for Living a Life: “Pay attention, be astonished, tell about it.” This development effort has captured my imagination, and I hope it will do the same for others in our community.

My initial impression of the Appomattox community, like that of the pollinator garden, was false. I am so thankful for Pam, Evelyn, and all the beautiful native wildflowers they have introduced me to. I can’t wait to see what blooms in our garden this summer!

If you live in the Appomattox area and would like to join this community cultivation effort, please let Pam, Evelyn, or me know.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to read more like it, please like, comment, and share with others.

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This post is part of the Field Notes Series. Through this series, I am following several community cultivation efforts, including our Richmond Regional Network and Youth-development in Farmville, Virginia. My goal is to profile one development effort per quarter and provide regular updates on these stories as they unfold.

In addition to writing here on Substack, I am a consultant and trainer in a form of community cultivation called Asset-Based Community Development through Embrace Communities. You can learn more about ABCD Here and our Network of Community Cultivators Here.

Unlike most of the stories I will be profiling, this development effort is in my backyard, making me personally one of the assets to the effort. In the post, Are you a Daffodil, Day Lily, or Goldenrod? I look at the different roles those who are native, transplants, or institutionally rooted play in a community cultivation effort.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, commenting below, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

Roughly 30 minutes after dark, as we were watching a movie on our tiny travel DVD player, whose volume button was stuck on low, a sudden, loud, high-pitched screeching, whistling, woman-screaming type of sound pierced the night. We heard the sound three or four times and then silence.

It sounded like it was in the field just beyond the campground. As I peered out the door, all I could see was the silhouettes of trees lit by the bright yellow moon. Later that night, long after I was asleep, there would be a lunar eclipse; perhaps the creature was preparing for the event and inviting her friends to join her for a watch party.

I had been told that bobcats make sounds resembling a woman screaming. I assumed that was what I heard. We returned to the DVD, eager to see if Indiana Jones would once again save civilization as we know it.

While at the visitor center the next day, I saw a display about the reintroduced elk and learned that they spend the winter months in the park. When I asked the ranger where we might see them, she said they like the field just beyond our campground. I watched several elk videos and recognized the sound as similar to what I had heard the night before. According to the ranger, the elk generally bugle in the fall during rutting season. Perhaps they made an exception in celebration of the worm moon, or perhaps they were welcoming me to their park. Either way, they had my attention. This launched me on a mission. A mission to see the elk.

Stalking Elk

These magnificent creatures went extinct in this region in the 1800’s as a result of colonization. They were reintroduced to Southwest Virginia in 2012. An old mining site had been rehabilitated, and the original 75 individuals had grown to a community of over 250. The park had recently turned an old field into a winter grazing site for the elk.

Chris and I hiked to the site the next evening and found a wonderful brand-new viewing tower that was high enough to see the entire field. That evening, we sat and stared out over the field for over two hours. Our only visitor was a lone deer. I was deeply disappointed but not defeated.

The next day, I learned of another public viewing area at an ATV park recently acquired by Breaks Interstate Park. Just before dusk, my accommodating husband agreed to drive the 30 minutes to the park where we sat and stared for two hours on a hard bench in the cold. No elk. Only a gaggle of teenagers on ATVs sped across the field.

As we left the park, I snapped this picture, convinced that it would be the only elk I got to see on this trip.

As we were driving back to the campground in the dark, I remembered the ranger saying that she most often saw them on her drive home along the newly constructed portion of Highway 460, called the Coalfield Expressway. I scooted up toward the front of the seat, rolled down my window, and began looking for evidence of these stately creatures. I was just about to give up when I saw roughly a dozen blobs just off the side of the highway. We were cruising 60 miles an hour on a major road, so I only caught a quick glimpse of these shadowy figures in the moonlight.

I asked Chris to turn around so I could see if it was really them. He refused. I begged. He refused. I begged some more. He finally gave in and did an exasperated U-Turn in the middle of a 4-lane highway. Thankfully, this road is not heavily traveled.

Chris was going well below the speed limit as an 18-wheeler approached us from the rear, and I screamed, “STOP! I think I see them.” Instead of stopping, Chris sped up to avoid being rear-ended. I squinted and tried as hard as I could to make out their features. Again, all I saw were blobs. It was too dark to know for sure, but it certainly looked like large elk-shaped figures in the field.

I knew better than to ask for a third look. The next day, we drove past the same patch of highway where I saw the blobs. I expected to see another explanation for what I saw, perhaps barrels from the recent construction or large shrubs spaced to look like grazing animals. Instead, we saw an empty field.

I Could Be Wrong

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. – 1 Corinthians 13:12

I chose to believe that what I saw was the elusive elk. All the evidence points to that being the most likely explanation. I will never know with 100% certainty if I saw elk or imagined I saw elk. Nonetheless, I choose to believe that I achieved my mission. However, simply believing it to be true does not make it so. This willingness to admit that I could be wrong does not negate the fact that I believe it.

Our faith journey is a lot like this elk adventure. We listen to those wiser than us, those who have had their own personal sightings. We follow the evidence. We look for spaces where the spirit is known to appear. Yet, no matter how hard we try, we are always looking through a dark glass dimly, as the Apostle Paul writes. Or in my case, the light of the worm moon on a cloudy night. The wise among us recognize that “truth” is open to interpretation.

This embrace of mystery, of uncertainty, of honesty about the dimly lit spiritual world, was not a barrier to early spiritual seekers but the core driver behind the continued pursuit of the sacred mystery.

Like the elk, the Christian faith has been impacted by colonization, and the element of mystery, of unknowability, of uncertainty was slaughtered and branded as “unchristian.”

This faulty narrative of certainty is one of the impurities that has soured the original wine, to recall my metaphor from my previous post. In this colonized version of Christianity, a true believer is not allowed to question or admit interpretive choices have been made in the construction of the narrative memorialized in creeds and statements of faith. These litmus tests for “true” believers create “them and us”, “in or out” binaries. Those who dare to think differently are quickly dismissed as “other” and cast out. This kind of black-and-white narrative is incapable of acknowledging that what it holds as pure truth might not be the full story. It ignores even the Apostle Paul’s statement, “now I know in part.”

The result of this black or white, in or out, right or wrong binary world is the formation of rigid, fundamentalist movements like Christian Nationalism, the Crusades, the KKK, and the Nazi party. All were convinced their narrative was “The Truth” and thus their superiority was absolute.

A Non-Binary Holy Other

Recently, James Talarico upset those who ascribe to this black-and-white faith when he suggested that God was non-binary. I think those who got into an uproar over it do not really understand what the word “non-binary” even means. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, non-binary means “not simply one thing or the other.”

For me, a non-binary label is about more than God’s gender identity, which, for the record, I do not think God is gendered. We apply genders to God because of our limited human language. Limiting the sacred mystery to a male human image diminishes the Holy Other nature, which is far beyond our human ability to comprehend. It turns the sacred into our own image, which is a very small understanding of the divine.

For me, embracing a non-binary lens for the sacred is more about a mindset. It is about the ability to hold multiple possibilities at the same time. It is the ability to stand in the grey, to admit your way may not be everyone’s way of experiencing the sacred mystery. This posture requires maturity and a solid sense of self. It is a refusal to be limited by an outside belief system that judges non-adherents.

Jesus is the way for Christians, but that does not mean that the sacred mystery does not speak to non-Christians in another form. There is also a vast array of ways Christians define and experience Christ.

I know that last paragraph will separate me from many who read this. For those unable to accept that their experience is not everyone’s experience, this feels threatening. Those who believe their interpretation of scripture is the “right” interpretation will likely double down on this certainty. This is especially true for those who were shaped by high-control or fear-based religion.

What if We Choose Humility Over Certainty?

What if we lived in a world where we all admitted, like the Apostle Paul, that we are looking through a glass dimly?

What if we admit that we think we see hard evidence, that we choose to believe that evidence, but still hold space that our way may not be how the spirit is moving in the lives of others?

Imagine, no more holy wars.

No more faith-rooted judgment.

No more othering in the name of Jesus.

No more hiding our own unique experiences that run counter to the party line.

Imagine a world marked more by humility than by certainty.

A world where we could all admit that we honestly don’t know all the answers.

A society where we boldly proclaim, as did the Apostle Paul, “For now, I see in part.”

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Ruth Perry’s interview with Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson, over on Podcast this week, touches on this topic. Here are a few quotes that resonated. However, the whole interview is well worth a listen.

“I think it’s having a little more openness to mystery and that God does work in weird ways. It’s time to let everybody be faithful.”

“I may be wrong. Anytime I talk to somebody and they can’t say “I may be wrong,” I am eternally frustrated….So let’s just acknowledge we’re seeing through a glass darkly.”

“And at the end of the day, I think Jesus wants us just to love one another and to respect each other and to defend each other.”

“Because we’ve held onto the past far too long. We’re way too rigid. And we need to follow where Christ is leading.”

Additionally, Ruth’s podcast with , author of the book ‘Othered: Finding Belonging with the God who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized.’

’s posts titled Dismantling Binaries, Practicing Paradox, and Expanding Faith are all inviting us into a more expansive view of faith.

All around worlds are dying out, new worlds are being born; all around life is dying but life is being born. The fruit ripens on the trees, while the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge! It is the one more thing to try when all else has failed, the upward reach of life. It is the incentive to carry on. —Howard Thurman

As I sipped coffee during my recent visit to Virginia Beach with Jenny Grant, Manager for Faith and Community Engagement at Episcopal Relief & Development, and Stephanie Parker, Coordinator for Church Vitality from the Coastal Virginia District of the United Methodist Church, Jenny said something that struck a chord with me: “The church is not dying, it’s changing.”

Everything Evolves

Years ago, next to our cabin in the woods, my husband and I built a treehouse for our children, who at the time were five, eight, and ten. Sitting in that tree house, high up on the tree-covered ridge, I not only see the forest from a new vantage point I also catch glimpses of the past: a long-abandoned tire swing, a rusty zip line, and parts of my daughter’s secret hideout. The children are all grown now, and this treehouse gives me the pleasure of being suspended in the air and the thrill of being able to see so many things all at the same time.

From my perch, I always feel a bit sad seeing the fallen trees. Some die as a result of disease or old age, but in recent years, it is violent winds that topple many otherwise healthy trees. I hate seeing things go to waste, so I ponder salvaging the lumber and using it for some future good. At one point, I even considered turning the bottom part of the treehouse into a woodshed.

When we built that treehouse, I never imagined it having a purpose other than the one for which we built it. But the rhythms of nature remind us that this world is forever changing. Everything evolves. As climate change intensifies, those species that evolve to meet the challenges will survive, and those that do not will perish. In response to the massive culture shifts we are experiencing, we likewise can either evolve or perish.

Wendy McCaig, Power Shift: A Field Guide for Community Cultivators Everywhere

The excerpt above from Power Shift opens a chapter about the need for the social sector to evolve. In this post, I want to explore how faith communities and people of faith are evolving.

Option 1: Stay the Same

I recently helped facilitate several conversations for a church that’s preparing for a pastoral change. It’s an older church with older members who are among some of the most loving and caring people I know in my small town. When asked what they desire most for their church during this season of change, the general sentiment was this: “We love it the way it is. All we need is younger people to keep it going.” There was no real desire to evolve, and I suspect this church will keep on doing what it has always done. They will keep loving their members and serving their community until the day the last leaves this earth, or until they run out of funding to keep the lights on. It is a common story that those of us who work with faith communities see regularly.

On my first visit to Norfolk last fall, Stephanie took me through what many would define as a “dead” church. I wrote a post titled, Hauntings and Hope on Halloween last year about that experience. That church existed without evolving for decades until the funding ran out, the members died off, and it closed its doors. However, this is not the end of the story. The building is being sold, and a new expression of the mission of the church will emerge. It could take the form of affordable housing, a hub for non-profits, a vocational training facility, or a daycare. These kinds of resurrection stories are happening across the nation. What some see as death, others see as a part of the evolutionary process.

If you are like the dear sweet friends at the church I mentioned above, who love the church just as it is, just as it was in the 1960’s, and who hope it will stay the same forever, I hope I am wrong. I hope by some miracle, the evolutionary process is not necessary for you to reclaim your glory days and that you find younger parishioners to carry your good works forward. The world would suffer a great loss if it were to lose your caring heart.

Option 2: Reform Movements that Create New Wineskins

Nor is new wine put into old wineskins [that have lost their elasticity]; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the [fermenting] wine spills and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, so both are preserved. Matthew 9:17

The desire for a younger demographic voiced by the older members of the church mentioned above has been at the root of many church reform movements within the Christian Tradition aimed at attracting a younger audience.

My call to ministry was forged in the early 90’s through the small group movement. I entered the church revitalization conversation in the late 90’s during the purpose-driven and seeker movements. As a formerly unchurched young adult, I applauded its focus on making church more accessible to unchurched individuals through changes in the music, liturgy, the layout of church buildings, and programs for youth and children. I found my way into the missional church movement during seminary in the early 2000’s through my encounters serving individuals experiencing homelessness in Richmond, Virginia.

I added my own voice to these reform efforts when I published From the Sanctuary to the Streets in 2010. I felt certain books like Robert Lupton’s Toxic Charity, which I wrote about in 2012 in a post titled Is Our Charity Toxic?, would change how the church engages in the community forever. I was wrong.

When I started training pastoral and lay leaders in Asset-Based Community Development in 2012, I thought training and guiding the church was the missing piece. I have trained thousands of pastoral and lay leaders over the past decade, and there is one lesson I have learned: those who are willing to evolve thrive. Those who choose to stay the same do not.

All these movements, along with many of those that came before and after, focus on the wineskins - the structure and containers that carry the inherited Americanized version of the Christian tradition to new populations.

Even my own book and training efforts, while radically shifting how the church thinks about its role in community, fall into this category of reform efforts. Try as I may, it is impossible to evolve at the level of the mind; it must come from a deeper, more soulful place.

Option 3: Deconstruction of Contaminants that Change the Wine

Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically and therefore effectively with the issues of discrimination and injustice based on race, religion, and national origin? Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of the religion, or is it due to a basic weakness in the religion itself? Howard Thurman

There is another movement happening alongside these church revitalization movements. It is not organized with slick marketing and conferences featuring big-name sages on stages who promise a three-step process to success. It is more of an underground movement of those who tried changing wineskins for decades and realized that what needed to change was the wine.

The Good News, which began as a life-giving message of freedom, acceptance, and blessing born out of love, has become so contaminated that it carries the exact opposite meaning for many outside religious institutions. This parallel movement is focused on deconstructing these elements of Americanized faith that have polluted the original message and thus have turned the wine into vinegar for many people.

Some people deconstruct to the point of abandoning all faith; some simply deconstruct the patriarchal lenses and retain the rest. Some are deconstructing through the lens of decolonization and discovering more ancient forms of faith. Some, like Thurman, look at the gospel through a liberation lens, reminding us of Jesus’ marginalized status and how far we have gotten from that truth. While others simply abandon high-control religion and find freedom in a different branch of the Christian tradition or another faith. Some leave institutionalized religion but retain a robust spiritual life. There is no “one way” to deconstruct and no “one way” to move forward after deconstruction.

I think that this deconstruction process is a natural and necessary part of evolution. Like a Caterpillar inside its chrysalis, whose body completely loses all form, deconstruction precedes metamorphosis. However, it is important not to remain in a state of dissolved goo!

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My Own Deconstruction Journey

“The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further.” Richard Rohr

Since I did not grow up in the church, it was relatively easy for me to reject interpretive lenses of high-control religion overlaid on top of the original message, like not allowing women to be pastoral leaders. Early on in this deconstruction process, I lacked the words and agency to go deeper than the surface issues to the root of why the faith had become so toxic in many corners of the tradition. While I was in seminary, many of my fellow students were challenging inherited narratives, which gave me the courage to do the same.

I found myself drawn to Christian writers who were not afraid to ask hard questions and to dig deeper to find life-giving answers. Authors like Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr, and Rob Bell lined my bookshelves. But the brutal treatment of some of these insiders who dared to question the establishment soured me on the whole venture.

For a short time, I tried adding my own voice to the conversation through my blog, View from the Bridge. The most popular post I ever wrote was titled “ Religionless Christianity and featured the early insights of one of the most consistent voices in the deconstruction conversation, . Palmer now writes a publication titled .

During this time, I wrote a fair number of posts probing some of the deeper questions, primarily around how we define church. I was challenged on Twitter (this was pre-X) by a missional church megastar whose definition was far narrower than my own, and found that there did not seem to be much interest in evolving at that time.

For the past decade, I have retreated to the edges of the Christian tradition. I have focused on one core element that all faiths, and even those without a faith tradition, agree on - loving our neighbors. I have largely ignored the evolution of the religious establishment. Instead, I have focused on creating a parallel structure for those who were willing to evolve - a network for community cultivators.

An important shift for me has been my definition of neighbor, which has expanded to include not just our human neighbors but also the natural world. I wrote about this shift in a post titled, Reconnecting Land, Spirit, and Community. My understanding of the different ways the church (broadly defined) manifests in the world beyond the walls of buildings, sacraments, and professional pastoral leaders has also continued to broaden, as has my understanding of the movement of the Spirit.

Most of this shifting has been largely a solo journey. The church as we know it never really felt like a safe place to ask questions or challenge inherited narratives, but more of a place focused on conformity. Conformity that looks nothing like the early church, which was full of rebels who were stirring things up and evolving by leaps and bounds.

I have wondered through the years if others were hoping to engage in these important conversations, but I was always too afraid to ask. I had been shut down too many times, or worse, ignored. How many faithful individuals have retreated into realms that were less rigid, where shifting and evolving were more welcomed? I wonder how many feel alone on their evolutionary journey.

Option 4: Going Beyond Deconstruction to Evolution

Recently, something has been gently pulling me back into more spiritually focused conversations. It started during a season of darkness when nothing seemed to make sense anymore. I began writing again and connecting with other evolutionary Christian leaders whose deconstructed faith had evolved into something that looks and sounds a lot more like a message of good news, birthed out of love. ’s recent series titled New Ways for a New World is one such example. Kathy’s view of church as little pockets of love, has always resonated with me.

Victoria Loorz is another evolutionary leader whose writing has resonated deeply with me. In her book Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites us into the Sacred, Loorz acknowledges some of the layers of deconstruction that her journey required, but spends most of the book inviting us to activate our own imaginal cells. Imaginal cells are the cells in the body of that deconstructed caterpillar that carry the blueprint of the butterfly. Like those caterpillars, we already have within us the blueprint we need to grow wings and fly to new heights.

I love Loorz’s definition of church “as a place of intentional connection with the sacred.” She shares her vision for church as “a place where Mystery is experienced, not explained.”

I resonated deeply with Loorz’s role as an “edge walker- wandering along the hemlines of the Christ tradition.” I have existed in this edge space for more than a decade, but never had words for it. The edge space that Loorz invites us to explore is at the intersection of religious tradition and personal experiences of the sacred through reconnection with the natural world. As I shared in my previous post, Reconnecting Land, Spirit and Community, this is where my decade of edge walking has led me.

What I love about edge spaces is that they are where two ecosystems connect. In this case, places where those inside religious traditions and those outside institutionalized religion can experience the sacred and engage in spiritual conversations that can be life-giving and liberating for all, using the shared language of the natural world.

An Invitation to Join Me on an Evolutionary Journey

I don’t know if my deconstruction journey is complete or if there are still layers of narratives that need to be removed and examined more closely. What I do know is that I am feeling called to move beyond a state of goo, which basically describes my 50’s, into something with wings as I rapidly approach 60 years of age.

As I shared in my previous post, I am hosting a book group using Veronica Loorz, Church of the Wild. I am excited to finally have others to travel with, at least for a season.

This book study is for everyone: those who have been faithful churchgoers for decades, those who have walked away, those who never felt called to participate in organized religion, and those who do not expect to ever do so. Loorz states that her book is for “the wild ones who have heard the whispering call from Earth and Spirit to restore the great conversation.”

Transforming the Treehouse

My first treehouse experience, I had a sense that something in my life’s work was going through a metamorphosis. I didn’t know whether I was experiencing a midlife crisis, burnout, or some kind of spiritual awakening. What I did know was that I couldn’t keep doing what I’d been doing the same way I had been doing it. I sensed I was becoming something different, someone with a higher view, someone who served a purpose far beyond what I had originally imagined. It has taken me the intervening years to understand fully the metamorphosis that began in that treehouse, and I believe we are seeing a similar metamorphosis in our collective consciousness today. Wendy McCaig – Power Shift

My treehouse did not evolve into a woodshed. Instead, I named it The Eagle’s Nest. It is the place I go (literally or metaphorically) when I need a higher view, a fresh perspective, or when I know I need to make a change—to evolve.

Evolving is hard and painstakingly slow, and we must tend to our own hearts if we want to endure. Retreating to The Eagle’s Nest from time to time is the best thing I can do for myself. The forest has picked me up time and again when I felt as if I wanted to quit. The fresh perspectives it gives me are essential to the hard work of cultivating community in a new and ever-evolving way.

So I invite you to climb into your literal or metaphorical treehouse (ideally in a natural setting where evolution is most visible) and ponder this question:

Whether you join us for the book study or you navigate your evolution alone or with others, I hope you have found this post helpful. As we move through the study, I will be sharing more insights from the book and our journey together.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

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Other Resources

If you want to learn more about how people within the Christian faith have navigated their deconstruction journey, I recommend podcast. Specifically, the interview with Kathy Escobar, and if you want to learn more about my journey, you can find my interview here. However, all the interviews are wonderful.

If you are interested in how churches are evolving, I encourage you to check this story titled Christ and St. Luke’s Restores My Faith in Faith Communities. You can find additional stories here and here.

You can learn more about my training, coaching, and consulting services at Embrace Communities. If you are a subscriber and would like a free 45-minute coaching session, send me a private message, and I will send you a link to schedule a call.

I am thankful others are interested in reading Victoria Loorz’s book Church of the Wild together which I mentioned in my previous post, Reconnecting Land, Spirit and Community. Here are a few details to help us get started.

Facilitated Group Discussions:

I am planning on hosting two groups - In Person and Virtual

In Person:

DATES:

• May 3rd 3:00-5:00 pm

• June 7th 3:00-5:00 pm

• July 12th 3:00-5:00 pm

LOCATION: My House, Appomattox VA

Virtual:

DATES:

• May 3rd 6:30 - 8:00 pm

• June 7th 6:30-8:00 pm

• July 12th 6:30-8:00 pm

LOCATION: Zoom

Reading Schedule:

May 10th - Chapter 1

May 17th - Chapter 2

May 24th - Chapter 3

May 31st - Chapter 4

June 7th - Chapter 5 and Group Discussion of Chapters 1-5

June 14th - Chapter 6

June 21st - Chapter 7

June 28th - Chapter 8

July 5th - Chapter 9

July 12th - Group Discussion Chapters 6-9 and Celebration

Format:

On Mondays, I will post a few quotes from the chapter and discussion questions along with a link to a discussion guide on Facebook and on Substack.

I will invite you to share your reflections on the Discussion Guide Thread, which will be hosted on Substack.

When we gather, I will pull insights, questions, and other shared information from the discussion guide responses as a guide for our group discussion.

This process of reading, reflecting, and then digging deeper into what stands out or challenges us makes for a much richer group discussion, so I hope you all will take the time to share your reflections on the discussion guide weekly.

NOTE: In order to comment on Substack, you have to create an account. It is super easy and totally free to do so.

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If you would like to join the book study, please do the following:

1. Let me know if you will be joining virtually, in person, or some combination.

2. Send me a private message with your email address if I do not have it already. I will be emailing further details about the group discussions.

3. Set up an account on Substack if you do not have one.

4. Subscribe to my publication if you are not already a subscriber. I will notify you when the discussion guide has been updated.

5. Feel free to invite others you think might resonate with this discussion.

6. I know some of you have read the book previously. Let me know if you are willing to be a co-facilitator and, if so, which group you would be willing to co-facilitate.

7. Order or download the ebook version and get a jump on the reading!

Additional Resources:

As I shared in my previous post, this is one of many books I have read on this topic. I also know many of you have been on this journey awhile and have other resources that may be helpful. I will also be using a Google Doc to capture our favorite supplemental resources for those who want to deepen their learning, and will email that document to the group before our first conversation.

Quotes from the Endorsements and Prologue:

“This book is a luminous love song to the body of the earth, a sober celebration of interconnection, an elegant entreaty and a bold proposal for a new way, the renewal of the ancient way, a way of healing and holiness and prophetic enkindling. This book is a prayer. Intelligently shaped and beautifully written.”

“This book is dedicated to the wild ones who have heard the whispering call from Earth and Spirit to restore the great conversation.”

“Once upon a time, all humans knew their lives, their food, their survival, their sense of meaning and kinship with God or the gods was connected with all their relations: the hawks and soil and ferns and mosquitoes…The time has come to lift that veil of fog and return to intimate relationship with the living world. More and more of us are taking our place, once again, as full participants in the web of life, which we remember is held together by love. There are no magic words to incant, no spiritual laws to memorize, no ruby-slippered heels to click three times. You don’t need to read a hundred new ecotheology books or leave the church or become an animist or pantheist. (But you can if you want to.) You simply need to learn how to listen.”

The future can exist only when we understand the universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. The Earth is a single community that lives or dies together. - Thomas Berry

Arriving at the Intersection of Land and Spirit

Something is shifting for me both in the way I think about the sacred and how I think about community. It has not been a sudden shift, but something that has been evolving for decades. What began as a seed, planted by my Celtic Christianity class in seminary, has taken root and has been growing silently and secretly for decades.

It was watered by the wisdom of Joanna Macy, Thomas Berry, Matthew Fox, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Patty Krawec, Leah Rampy, and many others. Sustaining life on planet Earth is the crisis they are all trying to address from their respective fields and faith traditions. Surprisingly, they all arrived at the same root cause for this crisis - a growing disconnection between humans and the rest of the natural world. This disconnection is also at the root of what ails humans – from physical health to mental health.

The only lasting solution to this problem, as Leah Rampy puts it, “is to reestablish our soul connections to the Earth so that kinship may flourish into the future.” Every one of the climate activists, indigenous leaders, and eco-theologians I have read has ended up at the same solution – reconnecting Spirit/soul with land/earth.

Thus far, my journey to this intersection of Earth and soul has been largely a solo journey, but I am hoping this post will help me connect with others who have been silently and secretly finding their way to the same intersection, but who are longing to find others who have arrived here.

A New Way of Seeing our Community

When I read Joanna Macy’s book Active Hope, what surprised me was how much of what Macy calls “the work that reconnects” sounded like Asset-based Community Development, but simply with a larger lens. Instead of “human thriving” being the end goal, which is what we largely think of in ABCD circles, Macy centered the earth. She was proposing a shift from anthropocentrism, which means human-centered, to ecocentrism, which means nature-centered, with humans being just one element among many. This image captures it well[1]:

The deep connection that is needed to reconnect soul and earth comes only through direct experience of oneness with the sacredness of all life. We will not think our way, invent our way, or work our way out of this mess. Seeing the earth as a living whole and humans as one species among many, not as dictators but as family members, requires a new way of seeing.

An Old Way of Experiencing the Sacred

Throughout the ages, mystics have sought to understand this communion in sacred oneness through direct experience of the Holy. - Leah Rampy

While many of the voices calling us back to this idea of the sacred earth community have emerged from indigenous cultures, this understanding is not foreign to the Christian tradition. The mystics of all faiths were simply eco-theologians long before that term was coined. They managed to maintain this connection, which was largely erased by Western versions of Christianity.

Eco-theologian Thomas Berry claims, “The divine communicates to us primarily through the language of the natural world. Not to hear the natural world is not to hear the divine.” This is not what I hear in most churches. However, this practice of listening to the natural world was the core of what I learned during my Celtic spirituality course in seminary. It is the practice that has most deeply shaped my own spiritual journey. You see it in the life of Jesus and all mystics who came before and after across all faith traditions.

Community Cultivating at the Intersection of Land and Spirit

This intersection of land and spirit sprouted in my community cultivation work through John McKnight, founder of the asset-based community development movement, whom I interviewed in 2023. I asked John, “What were your key learnings related to your inquiry into the role of culture across the globe?” He said, “The central importance of Spirit and land to the work.” In a follow-up email, I asked him to elaborate, and here is his response:

In most traditional societies, a common understanding of their local culture begins by recognizing how culture started. These societies tend to believe that the starting point is the context within which they live. That context has two elements. The first is recognition that they are in a place that was created by a spiritual force that pervades the community at this time. The second is that the spirit created the land for us to occupy and enjoy.

It seems to me that in general most reform efforts, including ABCD, do not explicitly identify either the Spirit or the land as the primary assets from which communities emerge. Traditional societies usually find it impossible to even think about community without first explicitly identifying and celebrating the Spirit and the land. Therefore, what we call assets excludes the most important resources.

I think discussions of these two assets can enlighten our reform and ABCD work.

Decolonizing From all Directions

While I agree with John that ABCD generally does not acknowledge the role of Spirit and land, it does teach us to embrace new perspectives, especially those rooted in ancient practices that lead to deeper connections.

After my interview with John McKnight, I hosted a series of conversations about this topic with community cultivators from across the globe. Indigenous ABCD Practitioner, Karri-Lynn Paul, shared that one of her mentors defined decolonization this way: “If our kids are closer to the land, then we are decolonizing.”

I realized that what I loved most about the natural world is how it helped me dismantle contemporary cultural norms. The trees that I encounter in the forest, the insights I gain from simply paying attention, ground me in what is real.

For those deeply steeped in Western culture and contemporary Christianity, rediscovering this source of community and connection at the intersection of land and Spirit requires deconstructing much of what we have been taught by society and by religion. There are many working to decolonize the Christian faith and others doing the same work around how we function in community and as societies, but few who see them as inextricably linked.

Anyone Else at This Intersection?

I never really fit in with the pastoral crowd because I don’t feel called to work inside the religious establishment. I never fit into the non-profit sector with its outcome measures that often cause us to focus on symptoms and ignore the root of the problem. I don’t feel at home in climate activist circles because I agree with Macy that the path forward is a shift in consciousness, not a well-crafted campaign. What I have learned from these wise guides is that the root is spiritual and must be addressed at the soul level.

It is far bigger than those inside the religious structures can address alone, though I know many who are following in the footsteps of Berry and Fox and are awaking this sleeping giant. We need a convergence of streams – climate activists, theologians, and community organizers working together to reweave the connection of earth, soul, and community.

Thomas Berry, Joanna Macy, John McKnight, and others all arrived at this same intersection after spending a lifetime in their fields – Berry as a Christian Theologian, Macy as a Buddhist climate activist, and McKnight as a Christian community organizer and researcher.

Attempting to Weave Land, Spirit and Community

Since that interview with John, I have been attempting to weave threads from wise guides, like those named above, into my community cultivation work. Last spring, I partnered with Suzanne Bonefas from the Association for Regenerative Culture to explore the intersection of ABCD and permaculture through a co-sponsored training.

During my sabbatical last summer, I read multiple books about this intersection, including ’s marvelous book Earth and Soul: Reconnecting Amid Climate Crisis.

Last year, Embrace awarded Corey Turnpenny, a Wild Church Pastor, a CommUnity Cultivator grant to conduct a listening project with Wild Church Pastors across the globe. The passion and energy of these leaders fueled my interest in the wild church movement.

Over the Christmas break last year, I read Victoria Loorz’s book Church of the Wild and found that she had brilliantly woven all these threads together with more skill than I ever could. Loorz spoke to my spiritual roots as a pastor, my passion for the natural world, and my life’s work of cultivating communities of belonging and purpose outside the walls of the inherited church.

Loorz’s book had been on my reading list for years, but I had assumed that it was a very church-focused book, all about how to save the church from its steep decline, with nature as a kind of gimmick. I suppose I am a bit jaded after spending over a decade in church growth circles. I came to realize decades ago that as long as the church focuses on its own survival and ignores the health and well-being of the community beyond its walls, it is not worth investing my energy in. So, the book remained on the shelf until multiple people encouraged me to crack it open. Once I did, I could not put it down. It is not that the ideas were new to me; it was that Loorz had woven her own story and the wisdom of those who came before her in a way that was very accessible, concise, and relatable.

For this reason, I felt that Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites us into the Wild would make an ideal book study for others who have arrived at this intersection and who would like conversation partners as they discern what it means for them personally or perhaps for their community.

I plan to launch the book study on May 3rd. More details here.

We will combine asynchronous reading and responding here on Substack for 9 weeks, working our way through the 9 chapters with three facilitated conversations - once at the beginning, once midway, and then at the conclusion of the book. I will be hosting both in-person and a virtual group.

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

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Other Resources

If you are interested in Spiritual Ecology but this book is not really speaking to you, you might want to check out at . She hosts monthly Spiritual Ecology-focused book studies.

has a Substack publication called . I encourage you to subscribe if this is a topic of interest to you.

I have a few other Eco-spirituality-leaning posts here. I would recommend An Invitation to be a Cow , Standing in the Darkness and Facing the Dawn.

[1] (Bilheimer, 2023)

Both the Breaks, referred to as the Grand Canyon of the South, and the Cumberland Gap, were formed by rivers that slowly eroded a path through the Appalachian Mountains. The force and continual flow of water literally cut a path through solid rock.

What surprised me during our hikes was that those mountain-moving rivers began as small natural springs bubbling up from underground high in the mountains. As we hiked down, the tiny streams converged and eventually joined the river at the base of the mountain. The mountain itself was feeding the river.

Mountainous Inequity-perpetuating Systems

As a grassroots community cultivator, I often feel that mountainous, inequity-perpetuating systems are undermining our work. We often feel small and powerless as we watch our communities bear the brunt of failed policies and long-term economic exploitation that we have little or no control over. I think these mountain springs, streams, and rivers have a message for us.

Jody Kretzmann, the co-founder of the ABCD Institute, remarked, “ABCD is necessary but not sufficient.” What I have seen is that asset-based community-driven efforts, while powerful at the grassroots level, are insufficient to bring about systems change. My friend and fellow ABCD Institute Steward, , has convinced me that these larger challenges require the convergence of a multitude of movements with shared values engaged over long periods of time.

While asset-based, community-driven efforts always start at the neighborhood or community level and aim to grow the power of community members, many of the adjacent movements that I am watching bubble up are coming from within the mountains of institutional structures themselves. Systems like healthcare, education, government, religion, and the economic system.

Institutions are made up of people, many of whom are longing for new ways of being in relationship with communities. These innovative individuals within these institutional structures, particularly those who are on the frontlines standing in the gap between the institutions and the community, are finding each other and creating alternative, more life-giving structures.

One of my goals during my travels is to bring these various streams together, which is something we are doing through our Richmond, Virginia, regional meet-ups. While the long-term goal of shifting systems may not happen in my lifetime, the immediate outcome of my travels has been that those who participate in these conversations no longer feel small and powerless. As past social movements have demonstrated, together we can move mountains!

What’s Springing Up in Richmond, Virginia?

Last fall, I began a bi-monthly convening of pioneering leaders from Richmond, who, through their institutional roles, have tapped into springs of hope by applying the principles of asset-based community development. All these leaders were shaped by various adjacent movements that are emerging from within their respective systems of government, healthcare, ministry, and education.

These four pioneering institutional leaders have formed the core team of our emerging Richmond Community Cultivator Network:

1. Stephanie Toney – founder and Visionary of CHW Strength and the CHW Strength Foundation. Stephanie has formed a rapidly growing worker-owned cooperative for Community Health Workers across the region and beyond. The Community Health Worker movement has been gaining energy as an economically sustainable, culturally responsive, equitable alternative to the traditional healthcare system.

2. Katie Gooch – director of the Pace Center on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. Pace has implemented some of the most impressive student-led ABCD that I am aware of. Katie has completely reimagined campus ministry through a community-building lens and leveraged her vast network of ecumenical congregational support in innovative ways. Katie is tapping into a movement of shifting ministry from pastoral leadership to community-driven care and has been wildly successful with over 1,000 students per semester participating in the roughly 20 student-led activities per month at The Pace Center.

3. Matt Slaats – Matt coordinates the Virginia Solidarity Economy Network and has launched a worker-owned cooperative incubator and ecosystem-building network to support worker-owned cooperatives across the State of Virginia, called Common Shares. Matt also works for the Richmond city government and helped bring participatory budgeting to the city. Through this effort, Matt and his team have developed extensive connections with community leaders across the city. Matt has been shaped by a variety of movements focused on strengthening democracy and creating economic equity.

4. Wendy Lively – director of programs at Communities in Schools in Chesterfield County. Wendy was the first to bring an ABCD effort into high schools in the region. While CIS is a more traditional non-profit, the culture of collaboration and innovation is baked into its culture. The movement toward greater community engagement in public education has been gaining momentum for decades, with particular focus on helping students move into college and career.

As a facilitator with 20+ years of experience working at the micro-community level, my desire was to figure out how ABCD could be used as a tool for systems change.

Could these four springs combine in a way that promotes grassroots-level community-driven action across the region?

Could that shift slowly shift the larger systems, such as healthcare, education, and economic systems?

What other values-aligned groups are in this region working toward these same objectives?

Our collective task over the past few months began simply with listening to one another. Our most recent conversation was an invitation to lean into the intersections in our work. Below is a quick summary of where we see the potential for convergence.

Two Emerging Streams of Convergence

Worker-owned care cooperatives as a method for promoting community health.

Community health is a very broad term. For Stephanie and her network of Community Health Workers, it is not an exclusionary term limited to those who have graduated from her CHW certificate program, but one that can hold the diverse ways in which individuals work with the community to strengthen it, both as community members and as paid professionals. Matt’s expertise with worker-owned cooperatives and his network of worker-owned cooperatives, combined with Stephanie’s growing network, is a promising stream of activity that could, in time, undercut the exploitative and inaccessible ways in which community-based care is currently delivered.

Vocational mentoring for youth and young adults by experienced professionals.

Two approaches emerged from this conversation.

The first is a low-barrier mentoring approach developed by The Pace Center. Students are paired with mentors from local congregations in the field they are interested in learning more about. Mentors are invited to meet with students twice a semester to answer students’ questions about their career path. If the mentors and mentees choose to keep the relationship going beyond those two meetings, they are welcome to, but there is no obligation to do so. As we talked, this question emerged:

Could both Pace’s ABCD adaptation to a school setting and their mentoring methodology help Communities in Schools in their efforts to support high school students as they prepare for college and career?

The second intersection is related to helping non-college-bound students find viable career pathways. The Community Health Worker field is not based on the level of degrees one has earned but on the level of cultural competency, commitment, compassion, and capacity that one brings to the community. You will find a wide range of educational backgrounds, from GED holders to those with advanced degrees within the CHW field. CHW Strength offers a certificate program that is accessible to high school students of all means.

How might CHW Strength partner with CIS to expose students to careers in public health?

What struck me about these emerging streams of collaboration is that they both open pathways for economic advancement, especially non-traditional paths that are not dependent on large corporations, high-dollar grant funding, or financially out-of-reach degree paths that economically handicap recent graduates.

It is still too soon to know if this fledgling stream will move mountains, but my experience in cultivating this convergence in Richmond gives me hope.

Cultivating these kinds of collaborative intersectional networks takes a lot of time and intentionality. This work is often not funded through traditional means, which is honestly a good thing since traditional funding often perverts the process. I am blessed that Embrace currently has the resources to fund my efforts to cultivate the connections, and that the partners named above see the value of investing their own time in this process.

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How You Can Join In

Pray: If you are a person of prayer, pray for all the springs of hope that are emerging across the globe. Pray for the joining of forces and the emergence of mountain-moving, system-shifting, equity-producing rivers. Pray specifically for Stephanie, Katie, Wendy L, Matt, and me as we figure out how to combine our energies in a way that creates communities of hope and economic opportunities that are regenerative.

Join: If you are a community cultivator who is looking to connect with others in the Richmond Region, send me a private message or leave a comment below with the community you are in and a brief overview of the kind of community work you are doing. I will be happy to invite you to our next meet-up scheduled for April 30th.

Give: I have linked to all the organizations in this article. If you are passionate about the work of these partners, please donate to them so they can continue the good work they are doing. If you would like to support the work of bringing such groups together, please consider donating to Embrace through a direct donation here or by becoming a paid subscriber to this publication. I am donating 100% of the proceeds directly to Embrace.

Volunteer: If you live in the Richmond area, both Pace and CIS work with volunteers. Reach out to them and let them know what gifts you would like to share with their students.

Connect: My travels are taking me up and down the East Coast and from Texas to Canada. If you know of other groups that are doing values-aligned work, either using ABCD or ABCD adjacent approaches, please let me know. I will attempt to visit during my upcoming travels.

While my focus is at the ground level in communities along the eastern part of the United States, Stephanie is also on the road visiting communities. I am also partnering with Heather Keam in Canada, and across the United States, as well as fellow stewards at the ABCD Institute who are working across the globe.

Through her work at Next Systems, April is making these invisible underground movements more visible and is helping to connect them, as she did when she introduced me to Matt Slaats, who has become an important contributor to our efforts to nurture convergence in Richmond, Virginia. If you are interested in this movement mapping element of this effort, let me know, and I will be happy to introduce you to April.

My Travel Plans

This post is a part of our Field Notes Series. As I write up my learnings from each community, we will be adding them to our map and linking to past stories for those who would like to follow their progress. Green communities are those that I have visited and have captured stories here on Substack and anticipate follow over the next year. Yellow communities are those with active ABCD efforts that I have not yet visited but am actively coaching others in, and orange communities are those with potential stories that we are following and hope to visit by the end of the year.

1. Richmond Region – Next Meet Up April 30^th

February 18^th Meet Up – This Post

April 30th - Next Meet Up

2. Texas – Returning January 2027

February 7th Meet Up – Story Coming Soon

January 2027 - Next Meet Up

3. Farmville Region- Ongoing Engagement

January Meet Up – The Ups and Downs of Community Development

March 24th - Next Meet Up

4. Hampton Roads Region - Next Meet up March 31^st, 2026

March 31st - Next Meet Up

5. Appomattox Region – Launching March 2026

March 15th - Story Coming Soon

6. Toronto, Canada – Visiting July 2026

7. Pennsylvania – Visiting Summer and fall 2026

8. New York – Visiting Fall 2026

If you live in one of these communities and would like to connect next time I am in your area, please let me know!

If you enjoyed this snapshot of our efforts to connect regionally, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

This week, I received a beautiful gift from Ruth Perry over at - the interview linked above.

My spiritual worldview has expanded exponentially since I began this journey as a young adult. While it started inside the church walls, my journey was fueled by a vision of a world beyond walls - where we are all one big beautiful community.

This interview covers a lot of ground. Starting with my unchurched upbringing to my first experiences of the Christian tradition, I share with Ruth how I found my way from accounting to ministry inside the walls of the church. That journey led me to seminary, where I was introduced to the missional church and contemplative movements. It was at the intersection of these streams that I found the Asset-Based Community Development approach.

ABCD provided me with a methodology for holding together the missional vision and contemplative practices in a way that cultivates rich, vibrant communities. The process nurtures contemplative activists who listen deeply for where the spirit is moving and then join in. This faith-informed approach to cultivating community moves us beyond walls of separation and across bridges of division.

I encourage you to check out the full post along with the transcript here. I also highly recommend you subscribe to publication and watch the previous interviews. They are all excellent, but if you have to choose one, I would recommend the interview with .

If you enjoyed this interview, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

The following story, taken from my book Power Shift: A Field Guide for Community Cultivators Everywhere, came to mind.

In late February 2016, the most powerful tornado in the recorded history of this area tore a path through small communities and a portion of the Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest near my rural woodland home. It killed one person and injured seven others. It destroyed the hardwood forests in its path in a matter of minutes and uprooted giant oaks and hickories that had taken more than a century to grow.

It was in this part of the state forest that I felt called to begin a thirty-day sabbatical journey in January of 2019. That first cool January evening as I arrived in that storm-ravaged part of the forest, I felt as barren and as violated by the events leading up to my sabbatical as did this once peaceful forest.

I do not know why I felt led to this place on the first day of my soulful journey. I had been here many times in the preceding years, each time hoping to see signs of new life, but instead being confronted by death and decay. Each time I came here, I placed quartz rocks brought to the soil’s surface by the uprooted trees onto what remained of the tree trunks as a kind of marker honoring the loss of nature’s gifts. This forest is now a vast graveyard of tree trunks covered with white gravestones—a place of grieving for what might have been. It has become my altar of lament.

That first evening of my sabbatical, I had climbed up onto one of those stumps. As the sun receded, it lit up the sky, and something unexpected happened. The sun’s beautifully brilliant colors in stark contrast to the mangled roots of one of those old wise trees created an image of eerie beauty. It took my breath away, and I heard these words whispered on the wind, “Stay close to beauty, and she will lead you home.”

The words invited me to look beyond the obvious and very real destruction in front of me, and in that brief moment, my soul breathed a sigh of relief. I felt at peace for the first time in a long while. As the final ray of light turned to darkness and I ambled through the silent graveyard toward my own uncertain future, the words “Stay close to beauty“ continued to resound in my mind.

The idea of staying close to beauty is closely aligned with practicing gratitude, with thankfulness, and with experiences that evoke awe. Sunsets, oceans, and mountains have such a profound impact on humankind. They remind us that we are connected to something much bigger than self. Psychologists, therapists, and pastors alike have written a multitude of books on the benefits of practices that cultivate this kind of soulful connection. Some, like Johann Hari, point to a loss of connection with nature as contributing to our current mental health crisis.

Others, like Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, offer a more holistic assessment of nature’s impact on all aspects of human thriving.

In a society obsessed with reminding us of all the things that are broken, this practice of noticing and cherishing nature’s beauty is a form of resistance, reminding us that some things in life don’t have to be earned or fixed: they just have to be noticed. Even in the midst of the worst situations, we can be surprised by beauty if we cultivate the practice of paying attention and allowing ourselves to be astonished. Grace-filled moments remind us that at its core, life is good even when it feels unbearably bad. We simply have to be open to seeing it.

In all my personal times of heartache, if I sat in the pain, not dismissing it but asking it to teach me its truths, I have found some shred of promise or hope that helped me take a step forward. Those messages of hope were most often revealed through unexpected encounters with natural beauty.

By beauty, I am referring here to those moments in which you have a sense of awe that opens the door to a sense of deep connection or oneness. Perhaps a more helpful way of describing it would be attraction or connection. That sunset moment amid the uprooted trees, I felt deeply attracted to and connected with this part of the forest, the wounded part. The contrast of mangled gray roots and the magnificent colors that filled the sky, touched me and produced in me a sense of peace. I realized that despite the devastation left behind by winds, real or metaphorical, the worst of the storm was over and I had survived. That glimmer of hope was enough to keep me moving forward.

Grace-filled beauty and the types of insights that these encounters illicit are a type of hope pollinator, and if we listen to it, we will bloom and bear fruit somewhere down the road. Hope is the spark we need to fuel our dreams. Without hope in a brighter future, we become stuck and cannot find our way out of difficult seasons. I know this reality all too well.

Sometimes our encounters with beauty, like the one above, make such a profound impression on us that they stick in our minds. At other times, the encounters are much more subtle, and it is only in hindsight that we understand them. Simply writing down what we see, drawing a picture, or snapping a photo in those moments can serve as a reminder. Imagine the universe as an invisible Hansel or Gretel leaving breadcrumbs in the form of encounters with beauty for you to find. Journey through life with a journal, pencil, and camera in hand, ready to capture those glimpses of grace.

That one hour of standing and staring, of noticing and being astonished, of reflecting and listening, was the first of 30 days of following beauty in a very intentional way. That sabbatical experience in 2019 led me to sell my house in Richmond and move to the middle of nowhere, Virginia, with a desire to spend more time standing and staring.

My favorite line in the poem is “And stare as long as sheep or cows.” My closest neighbors here in my rural home are cows; I suspect they outnumber the humans by a significant margin. I see them grazing in the field down in the valley when I am hiking in my forest. I see them in fields all along the country road when I am driving.

The other day I even saw them walking en masse down the road! I pulled my car right up to them. They stared at me. I stared at them and smiled. I do believe they smiled back. I swear they whispered, “Thanks for stopping to stare with us.”

Do you have a story of a time when you stood and stared?

What message did you receive?

How did that encounter shape you and your actions?

If you found this post helpful, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

I have never been a big fan of cut flowers. When they die, and I have to toss them out, it makes me sad. Years ago, I made the switch to live flowers for gifts and asked my family to do the same for me. I purchased the daffodils in the photo above for my daughter’s graduation many years ago. When they died back, I planted them next to a tree on our land in Appomattox.

In 2019, when the bulldozers came to prepare our land for the construction of the house, they pushed over the tree and scraped off all the topsoil to build the foundation for our house. I found my daffodil bulbs tangled in the root ball of the tree weeks later. I put them in a pot, and when the house was completed, I planted them in the flowerbed closest to the front door.

Over the years, I have added other varieties of daffodils, some pink tulips, and some purple hyacinths, which now form a beautiful parade of color throughout spring. I love the color of the tulips and the smell of the hyacinth. However, if I had to pick my favorite, it would be this common yellow daffodil because year after year, it is the first patch of color proclaiming spring is on the way.

I also love how these bulbs survive being transplanted. This year, my dog dug them up and kicked them all over the flower bed. I reburied them, and here they are, blooming as if they had never been disturbed.

I know at this point my Master Naturalist friends are shaking their heads and wondering, “Does she not know that those are NOT natives?” I actually had never paid any attention to the community of origin for my flowers until I became a Master Naturalist in 2020. The more I learn about the importance of a species’ origins, the more parallels I see to my work cultivating human communities.

For most of my adult life, I have been a daffodil. I have been transplanted, uprooted, and ripped out when I thought I was done moving and abandoned in a heap of mess. I got used to being the “new family” - a neighbor, but never a native.

Native, Cultivated, Naturalized, and Invasive Plant Species Defined

For those of you who are new to the whole categorization of plant species, here are a few helpful definitions.

Native Plants: species that occur naturally in an ecosystem without human intervention. They have evolved, adapted, and co-evolved with local wildlife, soil, and climate conditions over thousands of years. They are essential to the functioning of an ecosystem, providing food for native insects, wildlife, and performing specific functions needed for the whole ecosystem to function.

Cultivated Plants: Those grown and cared for by humans. Often bred for their aesthetic qualities rather than their ecosystem benefits. Since they did not co-evolve with native insects and wildlife, they are less beneficial to the ecosystem.

Naturalized Plants: non-native species that have established self-sustaining populations in the wild without human assistance. Naturalized species coexist with native species and cause no ecological harm. They have existed in the wild long enough that they perform many of the functions of a native species.

Invasive Plants: non-native, aggressive species that spread rapidly and damage native ecosystems.

So, what universal lessons can we draw from the natural world to help us cultivate healthy human communities? Let’s take them one by one.

Centering the Natives

I love butterflies, so when I wanted to plant a pollinator garden, I quickly discovered the importance of host plants. Many pollinators are specialists; their caterpillars can only eat specific plants. For example, Monarchs need milkweed, Spicebush Swallowtails need Spicebush or Sassafras. If you don’t have host plants, you will not have butterflies. These host plants are those that co-evolved with the native pollinators.

The vast majority of my front yard is made up of pollinator beds. Those pollinator beds are home to many varieties of native plants. Some were purchased from native plant nurseries, some were gifts from fellow Master Naturalists, some were dug up from other parts of our land and transplanted, and a few were grown from seeds I harvested from public roadsides or were gifted. However, the species that have thrived the most are those that simply volunteered. Like magic, they just appeared as though the universe knew I needed help. The most prolific of these volunteers is the Goldenrod.

Whether you are planting a pollinator garden or cultivating a human community, your most precious community members are your natives. These longtime residents who are deeply rooted in a place are in it for the long haul and have built relationships of trust that have endured over time. The natives understand the history, culture, and stories that are key to unlocking the community’s future chapter.

Any good cultivation effort should be majority natives, no matter if you are planting a pollinator garden or cultivating a stronger community.

Who are the “natives” in your community?

What gifts do they provide to your community?

What do we do with the Cultivated Species?

I understand that natives are more beneficial than my cultivated daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths. But these cultivated species pose no threat to my natives and actually complement them nicely, and make up less than 10% of my plant community population.

The gift they give my pollinator garden is that they bring me great pleasure, remind me that winter is drawing to a close, and for that reason, they have been allowed to remain as heralds for spring. These cultivated flowers animate my yard and offer gifts my natives simply do not provide, like blooming in the snow in February.

When you are cultivating a human community, having these resilient transplants in the mix often adds new perspectives. Those who come from outside the community have different experiences. As long as they don’t try to take over and make the community into a version of what they left behind, they can greatly complement the work of the natives. But they should never constitute the majority of your literal or metaphorical garden.

Who are the transplanted cultivated members of your community?

Do they complement what is already in place and honor the story they have entered?

How does a Non-native Become Naturalized?

When my husband and I built our forever home here in Appomattox, Virginia, it felt a bit like coming back to our roots. We are both small-town souls who have dreamed of living on this land since we purchased it in 2005. I will never be a native Goldenrod or a Virginia Blue Bell, but I do hope one day to be accepted as a Purple Coneflower.

Purple Coneflowers are my favorite naturalized wildflower, and our native butterflies adore them. Naturalized plants are those that have been a part of the ecosystem long enough to co-evolve and begin to function much the way native species do. They are also the host plant for several varieties of native butterflies.

While co-evolving over time is one contributor to the naturalization process, another is the similarity of the naturalized species to native species. We have native coneflowers, so the Purple Coneflower is a cousin, making it more adaptive to our ecosystem.

I think the same is true for people. I was born and raised in a small southern town. No matter how hard I tried, I never felt fully at home in the suburbs of Houston or Richmond, and my time in an urban setting was even more of a stretch for me. I do not regret those experiences; they made me who I am. I have met so many amazing people along the way who taught me things I never would have learned in my hometown. But I was raised in a rural community, and there is something about your place of origin that shapes you, no matter how long you live in other cultures.

If you are a transplant to a place, do you intend for it to be your forever home?

If so, how similar is the culture to that in which you were raised?

If you have to be an invasive species, be a Ditch Lily, not a Honeysuckle vine.

I was deeply saddened when I became a Master Naturalist and learned about these categories of species and discovered that many of the plants that I had planted in my yard were not only non-native cultivated flowers, like these daffodils, but some were actually considered invasive, including the periwinkles that I brought from our Richmond house. These got weed-wacked to death at our new home, the year I was hiking on the Blue Ridge Parkway and saw a forest overrun with them.

Periwinkle is tame in comparison to my greatest nemesis, Japanese Honeysuckle! This highly invasive vine is choking my saplings to death, covering our blackberries in densely woven blankets, and invading the forest floor. It is the bane of my existence, but it has grown so quickly that it is beyond my ability to control using non-chemical means. I just can’t bring myself to spray my forest with poison, so year after year, it gains ground.

When my plant App (I use Picture This or Seek) returns the label “invasive plant,” my heart skips a beat, and I feel panic rise as these enemies continue to find their way to my property and into my pollinator gardens and forest.

Last year, we met with an invasive species specialist from the Forestry Department, and she encouraged us not to panic but to focus on those species that are doing the greatest harm and to work in smaller sections of our land rather than getting overwhelmed by the expansiveness of the invasion. She assured us that not all invasives on the list deserved the same level of vigilance.

There is one invasive species that I am having a really hard time labeling as my enemy - the common orange daylilies that many call Ditch Lilies. I found them growing along our creek, assumed they were native, and planted them all over my yard. I was mortified when they came up on the “invasives” list.

My ditch lilies pleaded their case and so far, were granted a stay of execution. They are the only plants I have found that will grow in the heavy clay soil in the sections of our yard where the bulldozer removed all the topsoil, especially the sections where the trees were removed, and there is unrelenting summer sun. So, at least for now, we have a working relationship; they help rebuild the soil, reduce erosion, add a bit of color, and I let them live.

I know that many say pollinators don’t like them, but you need to tell that to our native swallowtails and hummingbirds that feed on them throughout their blooming season.

When I think about invasives in my community cultivation efforts, I think about institutionally-driven efforts that are taking over systems of care that rightfully belong to the community. In my Power Shift curriculum, I tell the story of a group of small business owners who were working together to give the commercial corridor a facelift. The effort was growing pride, helping the businesses learn to work together, and garnering tremendous support from the nearby neighbors and churches, resulting in a growing customer base.

Someone at City Hall heard about it, decided it would be a good photo op for the Mayor to hire painters to paint the buildings FOR the business owners. This decision was made without ever talking to the business owners. They did not consult us about the color scheme, something we had spent months co-creating with a local artist. They did not hire local painters, something that our team was committed to doing for those areas where volunteers were unable to do. They did not allow us to have any say in the process at all, opting instead to work with the owners of the buildings, most of whom were out of state. As a fellow business owner, it was an incredibly frustrating experience of institutional takeover that I have seen repeated many times in different forms.

Some institutions, like the story above, function like Japanese Honeysuckle. They bring in their programs and services in mass, climb all over the natives, and often choke them out by absorbing all the resources that would otherwise be available to the local community. Once these service providers are entrenched, they are nearly impossible to eradicate, and they weaken the local associational life that they replace, often creating systems of dependence.

Other institutions are like Periwinkle, less aggressive, attractive, but born out of the ideas of outsiders looking in. These are programs that secure outside funding, do something nice for a few years based on their own vision, and with their own staff from outside the community. When the funding runs out, or they encounter an obstacle, they are gone, never getting below the surface issues, eroding community trust in institutions, and having no lasting impact.

The last category of institutions is more like the Ditch Lily. They do what the natives can’t do. They till the soil, stand in the gap while natives take hold in other areas. The good ones know when they enter that their job is to work their way out of a job – slowly stepping back as the natives gain ground.

I know many of you are going to shake your head in disbelief and are yelling into your computer, “Orange Day Lilies are SUPER hard to remove!” I understand that. That is why institutional solutions should always be engaged as a last resort. They can become entrenched, forgetting that their job is to support the work of the local community.

In my personal community cultivation efforts, I have two roles. In my own backyard in the Heart of Virginia, I function as a Common Yellow Daffodil that one day hopes to be a Purple Coneflower. In my role as a coach/trainer in other communities, I am a Day Lily. Success for me is when I am no longer needed. My only role is to support those who call the place home as best I can. If it becomes about one of my partnering institutional organizations or me, we run the risk of doing great harm.

If you work for an institution and are working to strengthen communities you do not live in, be a Ditch Lily, not Japanese Honeysuckle.

If you are cultivating community as an outside institutional representative, do you recognize the danger of becoming an invasive species?

What decisions can you make in your institution that will support the natives and not take over their functions?

Are you prepared to step back by helping local community members step forward?

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Your Feedback is Greatly Appreciated

As I shared, I have been publishing on Substack for six weeks. During this time, I have published highly personal posts, I have published posts that are deeply spiritual, one that was somewhat political, some that are more intellectual, some that blend personal and professional, stories from my community cultivator experiences, and those that are more educational, like this one.

It would mean a lot to me if you would share what type of content you find most helpful. Most of my posts have gotten roughly the same level of clicks, but not much feedback.

As I shared in my first post, I began writing because stories build connections, and I believe connections can change the world. That is my hope for this publication, but without feedback, it is hard to know if I am achieving this goal. Knowing what kinds of stories resonate will help me deepen connection through my writing. So help me out, share your thoughts with me.

Additional Resources

For those interested in cultivating human communities: If you are seeking to strengthen your community, I encourage you to check out our free resources over at the ABCD Community Cultivator Network. It is a free network for those seeking to strengthen communities from the Inside Out using an Asset-Based Community-Driven Development approach. If you are a community cultivator interested in learning more about training and coaching opportunities, you can send me a private message, and I will be happy to book a time to meet with you.

For those interested in cultivating plant communities: I encourage you to check out the free resources over at the Permaculture Crossing. I also follow .

For those interested in the intersection of human and more-than-human communities: I recommend checking out and her publication . I also love her book Earth and Soul.

If you want to connect with other nature lovers in your area, I highly recommend you check out your local Master Naturalist program or get involved through a nearby State Park, most of which offer interpretive programming, hikes, and volunteer opportunities.

If you found this post helpful, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section, and sharing this post with others. All materials on my site are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

In the comment section, you will find responses from those engaging through both my personal Facebook page and those joining the conversation directly through Substack. You can use whichever platform you prefer. All comments will eventually find their way to this page so that we have a record of our full conversation. I will draw our discussion questions from those threads in the comments that seemed to resonate most deeply for those engaged in this conversation.

Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically and therefore effectively with the issues of discrimination and injustice based on race, religion, and national origin? Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of the religion, or is it due to a basic weakness in the religion itself?

To those who need profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity often has been sterile and of little avail.

The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague. Too often, the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak. - Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

As I shared, Howard Thurman is one of my favorite theologians, and this book has been on my list of books to read for decades. While written between 1935 - 1949, I got chills reading the words above in our current context.

Thurman wrote this book expressly for “those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall,” and it speaks as profoundly today as it did to civil rights leaders of the 1960’s.

Through this article, which I will update weekly, I invite you to add your comments to the ongoing conversation on this timeless book. A similar conversation is happening on my Facebook page. I hope to bring the readers from both sites together for a conversation sometime in March, once we have worked our way through the whole book through these virtual discussions.

I know many of my pastorally trained friends and activists are very familiar with this book. I hope you all will dust off your copy and come to the text with fresh eyes, allowing it to speak into the longings and wounds of the present moment, and letting those contemporary questions reshape how the tradition lives.

If you don’t have time to read the full text, I will strive to pull those quotes that will give you a taste of the wisdom we find in Thurman’s pages. Feel free to comment on what is shared, adding your own stories and wisdom to our collective journey.

Insights from the Foreword, Preface, and Chapter 1

“The basic fact is that Christianity, as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker, appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

1. What stood out to you from the Forward and Preface?

2. In the Forward, we are reminded to pay attention to the culture gap between the context of the 1930’s and 1940’s when Thurman was writing and our present reality. What shifts in culture should we hold as we move through the text?

3. What stood out to you from Chapter 1?

4. “Jesus, a poor non-Roman Jew, knew intimately what it meant to be “a member of a minority group in the midst of a larger dominant and controlling group...[in a time when] patriotic emotions were aroused to the highest pitch and then still more inflamed by the identification of national politics with a national religion.”

   How does this historical context shape how we read the biblical accounts of that time?

5. Thurman points to Jesus’ focus on the inner life as an alternative to the political options of resistance or non-resistance.

   “He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them… Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual…He recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny.”

   How does this focus on the inner life inform our current reality? How does it inform our actions in the face of injustice?

Chapter 2: Fear

“The fear that segregation inspires among the weak in turn breeds fear among the strong and the dominant. This fear insulates the conscience against a sense of wrongdoing in carrying out a policy of segregation. For it counsels that if there were no segregation, there would be no protection against invasion of the home, the church, the school.”

“In this world, the socially disadvantaged man is constantly given a negative answer to the most important personal questions upon which mental health depends: “Who am I? What am I?”

“In the absence of all hope, ambition dies, and the very self is weakened, corroded.”

In Chapter 2, of Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman examines the impact of fear, both on the oppressed and the oppressor.

What stood out to you?

What did you find most challenging?

What did you find most helpful and why?

Chapter 3: Deception

“It is a simple fact of psychology that if a man calls a lie the truth, he tampers dangerously with his value judgments.”

“The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie, and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not.”

In Chapter 3, of Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman examines the impact of deception on both the oppressed and the oppressor.

I invite you to share in the comments below.

What stood out to you?

What was most challenging?

What was most helpful and why?

Chapter 4: Hate

“Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit. It is blind and nondiscriminating.

But once hatred is released, it cannot be confined to the offenders alone.

Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater.

There is a conspiracy of silence about hatred, its function and its meaning…Hatred becomes for you a source of validation for your personality. A strange, new cunning possesses the mind, and every opportunity for taking advantage, for defeating the enemy, is revealed in clear perspective.

Thus hatred becomes a device by which an individual seeks to protect himself against moral disintegration…It is not difficult to see how hatred, operating in this fashion, provides for the weak a basis for moral justification.

Jesus rejected hatred. It was not because he lacked the vitality or the strength. It was not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial.”

In the fourth chapter of Howard Thurman’s book, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” Thurman examines the impact of hate on both the oppressor and the oppressed.

This chapter hit a bit differently, given the bombing of Iran this week. It is amazing to me how timeless Thurman’s wisdom is.

What stood out to you from Thurman’s reflection on hate?

How are Thurman’s words relevant to us today?

Chapter 5: Love

“In a memorable story Jesus defined the neighbor by telling of the Good Samaritan. With sure artistry and great power he depicted what happens when a man responds directly to human need across the barriers of class, race, and condition. Every man is potentially every other man’s neighbor. Neighborliness is nonspatial; it is qualitative. A man must love his neighbor directly, clearly, permitting no barriers between.”

In Chapter 5, of Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman provides a path forward that destroys the three hounds of hell: fear, deception, and hate. In this chapter on the power of love, Thurman provides us with a clear path forward for those who take the Gospel message of Jesus seriously.

When we began this journey together, we were dealing with the three hounds of hell here in our own nation, being visited upon our own communities. Our nation is now spreading fear, deception, and hate across the globe.

I had no idea how applicable Thurman’s words, which were written in the context of the Jim Crow era here in the USA and during World War II, would be to us today. His words have both domestic and global implications. While the similarities between his time and ours are profound, in our time, at both the global and domestic levels, our nation is the perpetrator of violence and not the defender of innocence.

In this chapter, Thurman speaks to the “cult of emperor worship,” which was alive in Jesus’ time and, sadly, our own.

Thurman provides us with a difficult but clear path forward drawn from Jesus’ life and message as a citizen under Roman rule and festering hatred. “The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value.”

His harsh words about Western Christianity that became entangled with the Roman Empire run throughout the text. “It is in this connection that American Christianity has betrayed the religion of Jesus almost beyond redemption.”

What stands out to you from Chapter 5?

Is Western Christianity, which is now being used as a tool for empire-building, beyond redemption?

How might Thurman’s words guide us in our troubled times?

This is the final chapter of the book. I will be reading and reflecting on all the comments over the next few weeks and hope to gather whoever is interested in discussing the book virtually in late March.

I know not everyone was able to read along, but I think the Substack discussion guide and comments below should be enough to allow anyone who is interested in coming together to contribute to the conversation.

The discussion guide focuses on the central thesis of Thurman’s work: that the religion of Jesus provides a specific manual for survival and resistance for the oppressed and disenfranchised.

Key Themes:

• The Context of Jesus: Thurman emphasizes that Jesus was a poor Jew living under the Roman Empire—a member of a minority group with no legal standing. This shared experience of “disinheritance” makes his message uniquely applicable to the oppressed.

• The Three Hounds of Hell: Three psychological states that Thurman argues plague the disinherited:

  • Fear: The constant, objective danger faced by the oppressed that can paralyze the spirit.

  • Deception: The temptation for the oppressed to use lying as a survival mechanism against the oppressor, which eventually compromises their own integrity.

  • Hate: The natural reaction to injustice that, while providing a sense of power, ultimately destroys the individual from the within.

• The Inward Life: Thurman’s focus on the “inward center” argues that before external social change can happen, an internal transformation must occur where the individual recognizes their inherent worth as a child of God, independent of their social status.

• Love as the Ultimate Solution: The text explores Thurman’s radical interpretation of “loving your enemy,” which is presented not as a passive acceptance of abuse, but as a disciplined spiritual practice that denies the oppressor the power to dictate the victim’s emotional state.

Summary of Comments and Discussion

Reflect a deep engagement with how these mid-century concepts apply to modern social justice and personal spirituality.

Common threads in the comments include:

• Resonance with Current Events: Many noted that Thurman’s analysis of “fear” and “deception” feels incredibly relevant to contemporary political and racial tensions.

• Non-resistance vs. Resistance: There is a significant discussion regarding Thurman’s alternative to the binary of “violent resistance” or “passive non-resistance.” Including how the “inner life” acts as a third way that preserves dignity without resorting to the tactics of the oppressor.

• Psychological Surgery: Several readers reflected on the quote regarding “a profound piece of surgery” that must take place in the psyche. Sharing the difficulty of unlearning the “inferiority complex” imposed by systemic racism.

• Practical Application: Readers asked how to practically implement Thurman’s teachings in modern activism, specifically how to maintain “love” without it being misconstrued as weakness or a lack of accountability for the oppressor.

Key Findings Summary

Historical Context - Positions Jesus as a direct peer to the modern oppressed.

Psychological Barriers - Identify fear, Deception, and Hate as the primary spiritual threats.

The “Third Way” - Proposes an internal spiritual groundedness as the foundation for social resistance.

Community Impact - Comments highlight the book’s role in sustaining the moral courage of activists.

The book has served as both a historical reflection and a contemporary tool for groups looking to navigate the intersection of faith and social justice.

Questions for Deeper Reflection:

1. How can we help Jesus followers (both those with privilege and those who are oppressed) see Jesus as he was, a member of an oppressed group? How does this historical reality change the way we live our faith?

2. How can we, as either activists or pastoral leaders, help overcome the three hounds of hell - Fear, Deception and Hate by cultivating the third way of internal groundedness as a form of social resistance? Is that enough in our current context?

3. What do you wish Thurman had addressed in the book? What are you curious to learn more about? What lingering questions do you have?

Facilitated Conversation Outline

Introductions: Name, location, role in your community

Check In: Why was it important for you to be here today?

Group Reflection:

1. What was one key takeaway for you from the book?

2. What lingering questions would you like to explore as a group?

3. What from the book and today’s discussion do you find most helpful in your own work?

4. Deeper Reflection Questions from Above (if we have time)

Next Faithful Step:

1. What suggestions would you have regarding future book studies? I am thinking of offering one per quarter.

2. Next Book: Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites us into the Sacred

   Offering 3 facilitated conversations along with weekly reflection

   Going to try using only Substack for reflections

   What topics or books would you most like to explore with others?

Check Out: What is one gift you received from this experience as a whole?

As I rang the doorbell, I wondered if the person who opened it would be a safe person or someone who could harm my family. I had not spoken to Bonnie since we graduated from college in 1988, other than her kind and compassionate phone call last year when my son was ill, we had no contact.

While we ran in the same group in college, we were friends but not BFFs. But I had promised to visit her the next time I was in Texas, and something deep inside me told me she, more than most of my Texas friends, could understand the journey my family had been on over the past decade.

I knew Bonnie was a faithful churchgoer, but more importantly, I knew she was also the mother of a transgender child living in an ultra-conservative rural community in Texas. I knew nothing of her political leanings. I feared hearing some twisted justification reconciling support for those who would harm her child and mine, backed by a dangerous and faulty theological foundation built on the hideous belief that “loving the sinner and hating the sin” would somehow bring comfort to those whose identity was labeled sinful. I had asked around to see if those I knew who were kindred spirits had any idea of her political and religious leanings. They all assumed she was in the majority - a religious conservative and firmly Republican.

She opened the door and embraced me, and the 40-year gap closed. We spent the next 30 minutes dancing around the theological and political elephants, and I breathed a sigh of relief when she said, “We left our old church when we realized their understanding of God’s love did not extend to our son.”

She then shared that, like me, she was an independent voter and voted based on the person and not the party. Adding that she could never support any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who did not align with her beliefs and values. Now feeling fully safe, Bonnie and I spent the next several hours together sharing the 40 years of life we had missed out on.

I find the level of fear I feel in my home state deeply disturbing. I never dreamed political and theological divisions would feel so sharp and defining. What is so interesting to me is that only two of the five independents that I know in rural Texas, none of whom support the current administration, feel safe enough to speak their truth. Most remain silent for fear of economic or social harm. I feel the same fear as I anticipate publishing this post.

It made me wonder about other women in the deep red communities and those sitting in ultra conservative churches: How many stay out of fear, obligation, or denial? How many are true supporters of the current administration’s policies on immigration? How many buy the lie that those in the queer community are somehow the cause of moral collapse in our nation and a threat to traditional family values everywhere?

I wonder if those who choose to use the LGBTQIA+ community as a scapegoat understand the power of a mama bear when you come for her cub?

Bonnie and I were both raised in rural southern culture. We were taught it was unladylike to talk about politics and that we should leave theological discussions to the menfolk. I think the current push toward the strong male head of household in conservative Christian circles, teaching women that they must submit to their husbands, is banking on this indoctrination to keep rural southern women in their place. They have poked the wrong bear, and they have no idea how strong we can be when we find each other.

I wonder if that is why this interview with Texas State Representative James Talarico was censored? One of my independent-minded Texas friends sent me a YouTube video of this interview via Facebook Chat. I wonder how many others received this link subversively? My favorite line in this interview is, “There is nothing Christian about Christian Nationalism.”

If you are a fiercely independent rural southern woman and refuse to hide under a rock while the current administration plots to harm those we love using our faith as a weapon, making us accomplices in our own families’ and nations’ destruction, I just want you to know, you are not alone! If you feel unsafe, I get it. If you want to connect with others who are trying to be brave while still being scared, shoot me a private message. I also invite you all to pray for fiercely independent individuals everywhere, no matter how they vote. Pray we all vote with a commitment to our values and not based on the expectations of others.

I chose the name Walking with Wildflowers for this publication because of my desire to unite wild-spirited people who are willing to take risks of blooming where they are planted, even if that place feels like rocky or toxic soil, and even if they have to do so incognito.

Rural independent women are some of the wildest of flowers I know. Our Mamas didn’t raise no fools, and a country girl will not only survive, but can thrive in all kinds of cultural and environmental conditions.

When I think of the southern independent women in my home state of Texas, I think of the bluebonnets. They are one of the most beautiful sights in my Central Texas birthplace, but they are also one of the toughest.

If you are a metaphorical bluebonnet, I am praying for you and can’t wait to see you bloom!

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As I shared in my post, Facing the Dawn, there is beauty in the setting sun – the past chapters of our unfolding stories. Many wise sages have profoundly shaped our collective story and continue to do so. Through the Wise Guides series of posts, I will be sharing the writings of these sages. Few have impacted our nation more than author, theologian, and Christian mystic Howard Thurman.

As Dr. Martin Luther King’s mentor, Thurman had a profound impact on the Civil Rights movement. His meeting with Gandhi strengthened his commitment to non-violence, with some calling him the “moral anchor” of the Civil Rights Movement.

In a time of great social upheaval and increasing levels of injustice and discrimination, I can think of no one better to help guide us across the threshold into the dawning new day.

Come Alive

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Howard Thurman

Ever since I was introduced to Thurman while in seminary, my deepest desire has been “to see people come alive,” which is what makes me come alive. What I love about this quote is that it does not start with the perceived needs of the world, but with a deeper sense of calling and purpose. This deeper motivation is often absent from secular humanist views of community building and social movements, but is core to Thurman’s work.

As a coach and mentor, I get to journey alongside social innovators as they discover and bring their own dreams for their community to life. It is always awe-inspiring to watch. I launched the Walking with Wildflowers publication to try to capture these coming-alive stories – like this one from Farmville, Virginia. These tales of ordinary citizens using their gifts to bring their community dreams to life illustrate the life-giving energy that Thurman names as the Sound of the Genuine.

Sound of the Genuine

“There is in every person something that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in herself (or himself.)… If you cannot hear the sound of the genuine within you, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching, and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born…

If you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…So the burden of what I have to say to you is, “What is your name—who are you—and can you find a way to hear the sound of the genuine in yourself?”

[The sound of the genuine] is the only true guide you will ever have and if you don’t have that you don’t have a thing. Cultivate the discipline of listening to the sound of the genuine in yourself.

Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music.”

The excerpt above, taken from Thurman’s 1980 commencement address at Spelman College, is the opening section of my book Power Shift: A Field Guide for Community Cultivators Everywhere, which is the core curriculum for my training of community cultivators. I believe this metaphor of listening for the Sound of the Genuine describes the goal of community cultivation as a spiritual practice, grounding us in the sacred mystery of genuine community. Thurman, though pastorally trained, used language in a way that makes the spiritual nature of the work accessible to all – spiritual leaders and secular ones alike, a skill few of us have mastered.

The Inward Journey

“Patiently, we seek to detach ourselves and take a long look in two dimensions - one at our lives free of our burden; the other, at our lives underneath our load. It is then that we give wings to our longings.”

“Saddle your dreams before you ride them.” It is the nature of dreams to run riot, never to wish to contain themselves within limitations that are fixed…Our dreams are our thing. They become other when we let them lose their character. Our dreams must be saddled by the hard facts of our world before we ride them off among the stars.”

“Sometimes the Voice is muted, telling of hopes unrealized and dreams that will not rest until they incarnate themselves in us - all the while we pull back, but they will not let us go.”

“We must find our place in the areas of the new vitalities, the place where the old is breaking up and the new is being born.”

“There is a loneliness of those who walk with God until the path takes them out beyond all creeds and all faiths and they know the wholeness of communion and the bliss of finally being understood.”

“We live our way deeply in the present, only to discover that we are invaded by the Eternal.”

This past summer, during my sabbatical, which followed a very dark season in my life, it was Howard Thurman’s book, The Inward Journey, that was my faithful daily companion. It offered just enough light to my path to guide me out of the darkness and toward my own dreams that would not let me go. Thurman’s words led me to a path beyond all creeds and faiths, which ultimately guided me home to the genuine within. I could write a whole series of posts on the wisdom that I found in this little, unassuming book, which spoke exactly what I needed to hear when I most needed it. His wisdom is timeless, and his mystical leanings are alluring with layers of meaning.

Jesus and the Disinherited

“Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion and national origin? Is this impotency due to a betrayal of the genius of the religion, or is it due to a basic weakness in the religion itself?”

“To those who need profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity, Christianity often has been sterile and of little avail.”

“The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague. Too often, the price exacted by society for security and respectability is that the Christian movement in its formal expression must be on the side of the strong against the weak.”

“The basic fact is that Christianity, as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker, appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men.” Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

As powerful and impactful as these writings have been in my life and my work, I suspect that it will be Thurman’s seminal work, Jesus and the Disinherited, that will impact my work and that of the community cultivators who read it with me most profoundly in the work that lies ahead. It is described as “a profound quest for a liberating theology.” This book has been on my list of books to read for decades, but has felt far more urgent a read given the challenges facing our nation today.

An Invitation to Join in the Journey

I am inviting others to go on a journey with me through Jesus and the Disinherited, and would love to have you all join me. If there is enough interest here on Substack, I will set up a discussion group to allow us to share insights and reflections and move through the book.

I will also host a virtual discussion group for Howard Thurman enthusiasts in March for those who are interested. While the discussion will begin with a focus on Jesus and the Disinherited, I would love to explore how his other works have shaped the work of spiritual and social innovators across the globe. Participation is open to all subscribers (free and paid), and there is no fee to participate. Let me know if you are interested in the comments below.

If you would like to join the online discussion, I have created a Discussion Guide. I will be posting weekly reflection questions, and hope those of you who are interested in this discussion will add your insights, stories, and questions as we move through the text. If you are joining us a bit late, no problem, just jump in either at chapter 1 or wherever you feel led to add your voice to the discussion.

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What is your favorite Howard Thurman quote, book or resource?

What wise guides of the past are you gleening wisdom from for the future?

What sage advice would you pass along to those who are seeking to come alive?

If you found this post helpful, I hope you will consider subscribing, sharing your thoughts in the comment section and sharing this post with others. All materials are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities, a public charity.

Recommended Resources

Howard Thurman Digital Archives at Emery University, specifically his teachings on Jesus and the Disinherited

Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story on PBS

Published Works by Howard Thurman

The Dawn: How Youth Helped Change School Culture

On February 24th, 2024, a dozen students from Prince Edward High School gave voice to seventy of their peers through a Black History Program.

This program grew out of a nine-month-long youth-led community listening project designed to discover and amplify the gifts and strengths of Prince Edward High School students in Farmville, Virginia.

When students were asked what they would do to help strengthen their community, the top student response was to address low motivation and student apathy.

When we asked students what they would do to improve motivation, the top response was “change school culture” by helping students feel heard, understood, and valued.

Through listening, two key gifts emerged: The gift of story and culture, and the creative gifts of the students. Prince Edward County has an incredible history of youth-led activism. In 1951,16-year-old Barbara Johns inspired a student walkout, which ultimately contributed to the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education United States Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation of schools illegal.

In 2024, the students of Prince Edward High used this powerful legacy and their own performing arts, storytelling, and musical gifts to make their voices heard. They did this through a community-wide Black History program performed from the very stage where Barbara Johns inspired change over 70 years prior. They titled the program, For the Next Generation, knowing that, like Johns, they would likely not reap the benefits of their efforts. You can learn more about this program here.

The response to this bold statement was mixed. Students, parents, and teachers applauded the courage and honesty of the students who brought their experiences to light, while some school board members, community leaders, and school administrators questioned the validity of these experiences.

Afterward, the students who led the effort were invited to speak at the Prince Edward County school board, the Prince Edward Democratic Committee meeting, and had numerous conversations with adults in positions of power who wanted to help them. They witnessed the beginning of a massive culture shift when the School Superintendent resigned in September of 2024. This led to a new High School Principal, who brought a fresh vision that welcomed student voices and celebrated community engagement.

Where We Are Today

Recently, Torrie and I had the privilege of meeting the new principal, Mrs. Tibbs. When I asked her what her dream for Prince Edward High School was, she stated, “I want Prince Edward High School to be a place where all students and teachers want to be.” She went on to share a number of changes she had instituted, including positive office referrals, school dances, and spirit days. Mrs. Tibbs shared her heartfelt hope that all students would be proud to be Prince Edward Eagles.

As impressive as all these culture-shifting initiatives are, I think the one that impressed me most was when she said, “It is easy for us to say no to new ideas. I want to be the kind of leader who starts with yes.” She backed up this sentiment by granting Torrie an opportunity to work more closely with the school, something Torrie had been dreaming of for years.

The initial team of youth who helped usher in these culture shifts graduated last May. During the Black History Program, their repeated mantra was “Do you hear us?” I would say the response from the new administration is a resounding YES!

Navigating Darkness

While we can look back now and see that the work of the first cohort of youth had a profound impact, there was a period of time when we were uncertain what would come of these efforts. During that hazy season, Torrie decided to try something different with her second cohort. She shifted from a school-based project to a community-based project, focusing on her recently renovated facility called The Lighthouse.

While the effort of getting this facility renovated tapped into the passion, imagination, and creative gifts of the first cohort of youth, the second cohort had no such co-creative ownership, and the group eventually disbanded.

There were several challenges, with the most significant being that this cohort consisted almost entirely of rising ninth graders. I had warned Torrie that this age group may lack the maturity needed for this kind of youth-led effort, and sadly, that was the case. I don’t think Torrie will ever put herself in a room full of 9th-grade girls ever again! Additionally, Prince Edward is a very rural county, and transportation was also a factor. However, I do not think the failure of this group to succeed is entirely related to the students’ lack of maturity or accessibility; I think Torrie would agree that much of it was related to her own feelings of burnout.

As the second cohort of youth leaders unraveled, so did Torrie. She wisely realized that the demands of trying to fight systemic challenges affecting youth were adversely impacting her mental, emotional, and spiritual health. She had reached the end of her rope and needed a lifeline if she hoped to survive or have any hope of one day thriving in her calling to work with the youth of her community.

In the fall of 2025, she did something incredibly courageous – she took a temporary leave of absence. As I shared in a recent post, I have personally reached the same level of burnout that Torrie reached twice in my life and was able to take a sabbatical both times, and both profoundly shaped my life. I believe the same will be true for Torrie.

Coming Back to Life

As we sat in Mrs. Tibbs’ office a few weeks ago and Torrie shared her desire to work with the students at Prince Edward High, I saw glimmers of her old spark return. Sometimes we have to go through a period of darkness before the dawn illuminates our path.

This past week, my own spark was reignited when Brittney Davis, one of the key student leaders from the For the Next Generation program, who is now a freshman at Longwood University, shared her vision for continuing to work with Prince Edward High School. Brittney and a team of students from Longwood want to support the dream of more vocational and enrichment opportunities that emerged during the 2023 listening project. They wish to develop a community-engaged vocational development collaborative in partnership with the Prince Edward High School, SEED Innovation Hub, and community partners like Torrie and myself. Brittany is a remarkable young woman, and I can’t wait to see where her part of this story leads.

On Dec. 21^st, 2025, we celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Every day from that point on is just a little longer, with a little more daylight than the day before. I feel like Torrie and I are both experiencing coming into the light day by day, and I am thankful you all have joined us on our journey by allowing us to share our story.

We tend to focus on those things in our community cultivation efforts that work, but for every successful effort, there are multiple dead ends. I hope you will take the gift of courage from the youth of Prince Edward High School, perseverance from Torrie, and hope for the emerging possibilities shining in Brittney’s smile.

POSTSCRIPT: Less than an hour after I shared this post, Torrie texted me to say that one of the young ladies in her second cohort had caught the vision and was using the lighthouse to expand her hair-braiding business. Just when we had given up hope, the seed Torrie had planted took root. That is the fun part of doing youth-driven development, you just never know what will happen. Brittany now has the first micro enterprise budding in the lighthouse that she helped renovate and bring to life. I just love it when what appears to be a dead end turns into a doorway.

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Have you seen an ABCD effort lead to systems change like the shift in school culture named above? What community gift was used?

Have you seen an ABCD fail to bear fruit as Torrie and I have? What might be composted for future growth?

Have you ever hit the point of burnout? How did you navigate it?

Are you at the end of your rope now and in need of time to reflect and process in order to find enough light to move forward? How might we pray for you?

Recommended Readings

Embrace Communities, Unsung Heroes Project. This project is another example of youth using the history of school desegregation to bring about positive change.

’s post, Nurturing Equity

Margaret Edds book We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow

If you found this post helpful, I hope you will consider subscribing and sharing with others. All materials are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities.

Connecting with Community Cultivators

For over 20 years, I have been planting seeds. Seeds in the form of training and coaching in Asset-Based Community Development, sprinkled with faith and watered with care.

Some seeds I have been able to personally tend and watch grow through my years as a grassroots organizer and through my local coaching relationships, but other seeds were scattered across the globe through my virtual training offerings.

Through my travels, I want to see what sprouted. I also hope to see the landscape from a higher view, one that erases labels and tears down the silos that are keeping us from combining our efforts or at least keeping us from celebrating our combined presence. I will be checking in on those I have personally trained while also learning about other social movements up and down the East Coast, but with the heaviest concentration of stops being in my home state of Virginia.

While this journey is rooted in my work as a community cultivator, there is another, more personal motivation for this journey.

Connecting with More-Than-Human Guides

During my sabbatical, I spent a lot of time in nature, learning from her, being awed by her, and finding healing through her. These spiritually rich encounters came from my time with the dolphins who greeted me every morning on the beach at First Landing State Park, the eagle that tolerated my intrusion as it was taking its morning bath on the edge of Lake Moomaw, and the multitude of flowers and trees that brought beauty to every trail along the way. Sea or mountain, a tug of war in my soul for which should be placed in the #1 spot of my favorite Virginia stops on my sabbatical journey. I love them both!

Then there was the Canadian Rockies, the glacier-fed lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and snow-capped summits. Was my time in Banff and Jasper National Parks a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or will my upcoming travels lead me back? What might the ice fields whisper to us about the rising tide waters in Norfolk, Virginia?

Many would look at the snapshots from my summer exploits and think I was on an extended vacation, but in reality, it was a time of deep healing, a reflection on one of the darkest seasons of my life, and a time of metamorphosis. The healers were found in the form of dolphins, eagles, landscapes, water, and most of all, silence. Silence and stillness, allowing the waters of my soul to finally stop churning, and for clarity to emerge.

One question that arose was, Can I mix my work life with this deep commitment to be fully present to the natural world and its continued healing presence and guidance? How do these broader, more-than-human neighbors speak to and inform our community cultivation efforts? This is what I am attempting to discover during my travels.

I am inviting Wendy the community cultivator, Wendy the naturalist, Wendy the contemplative, Wendy the writer, Wendy the mother, Wendy the pastor, teacher, coach, and regional network weaver to become an integrated whole. Rather than silos, can I just be Wendy and see through multiple lenses all at once?

My travel companion on this journey is the most introverted man on the planet – my husband, Chris. He will be the counterweight to my social butterfly tendencies. My Substack subscribers, monthly writer’s group, and personal copy editor and daughter Kristen, are my accountability partners to the task of story collecting. The stillness and silence needed to write with any depth will grow out of my contemplative nature and my forest home in rural Virginia. However, the most important ingredient will be the beauty, awe, and wonder found in the untamed wild spaces where we will lay our heads at night as we travel in a 10x7 foot travel trailer named Roady.

Yes, it would be easier to get a hotel room and travel like “normal” people. But then I would miss the council of the creatures who will greet me when I rise before the sun, the songbirds who will serenade me, and the furry woodland creatures who will cautiously share their year-round homes with me, the stranger, or perhaps intruder of their peaceful existence.

Has my sabbatical journey really ended, or can I find a way to live the best parts as a way of life?

I launched Walking with Wildflowers as a place to capture what I learn along the way. I hope you will subscribe, add your own stories, and become a part of my journey. As I shared in my first post, Stories build connections and connections change the world.

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I am hoping I can bring my whole, genuine self to this space, and I want to invite you to do the same. It is the only way to build real, transformative connections.

If you have had an opportunity to travel, how has it shaped you?

Do you have any travel suggestions as we prepare for our next trip?

What is your favorite way to travel or your favorite places to visit?

Other Resources

’s Publication , and this post What Do Martin Luther King Jr., bell hooks, and Rumi Have in Common?

“I believe that any journey taken with intention can become a pilgrimages of love, clarity, and depth.

Travel can be transformative because it pulls us out of autopilot.”

’s Publication , and her Spiritual Ecology Book Club.

Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive

If you want a sneak peak of the kinds of stories that I am following, this past fall I did a few test flights to Cape Charles , Norfolk, and Appomattox and captured some insight over on our ABCD Community Cultivator site.

If you found this post helpful, I hope you will consider subscribing. All materials are free, and 100% of any paid subscriptions are donated directly to Embrace Communities.