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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Other Resources:

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.

Veronica 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 Veronica 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!

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.

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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.

What distinguishes Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) from other forms of development? In Embrace’s Power Shift Training Series, we name four bedrock principles that are foundational to ABCD.

Asset-based Lenses: The belief that building on assets (not deficits) leads to stronger and more resilient communities.

Bond-building Relationships: The belief that a strong community is marked by relationships of care among community members and that strengthening these peer-to-peer connections strengthens the community as a whole.

Community-driven Action: The belief that the community members themselves know how best to strengthen their community and that they should define and be in control of the development effort, with outside institutions providing support if requested.

Developmental Impact: The belief that strong communities are those that use their own collective power and assets to achieve self-defined goals. In short, a successful ABCD effort grows the capacity of a community to shape its own future.

These principles are shaped by a commitment to four values:

• Value the small

• Include everyone

• Believe in possibility

• Work for equity and justice

These values and principles foster a healthy ABCD approach. These principles and values are drawn from the ABCD Institutes “Values behind ABCD.”

The five capacity building processes named in Power Shift help to cultivate communities that embody these values and principles. These processes are community listening, leadership development, team building, support raising, and storytelling. Below is a visual designed to help capture these various elements.

We refer to this framework as the CommUnity-Powered Framework. Within the broader ABCD network, there are multiple frameworks. However, if you examine them all closely you will find the same elements, just named and visualized differently.

Many of these principles, values, and processes are also found in other adjacent movements that are seeking to strengthen communities from the inside out.

As you look at your own development effort, can you see evidence of these four principles at work?

Is your own community cultivation effort shaped by these values?

Have you developed processes like these to cultivate a stronger resilient community?

If you are new to ABCD and would like to learn more, we encourage you to check out our Power Shift self-guided course. Power Shift Part 1 is a deep dive into these principles and values, and Power Shift Part 2 is an implementation guide to help you cultivate the five capacity-building processes.

The videos below are used in our Power Shift training and illustrate ABCD in action. All are from my personal development efforts in communities across Richmond, Virginia.

The Hillside Court Story as told by Lindsay Gulatte-Lee

The Brookland Park Story as told by as told Laverne Winfree (aka Mamma Winfree) and Yvonne Tunstall (aka Mrs. T)

Griffin Block Club Story: As told by Anita Johnson

Northminster Church Story: As shared by Pastor Williams, church members and Brookland Park residents

Broadwater Story: As shared by community youth and their supporters from Chester UMC

You can find many more stories in our Network Newsroom. Member Spotlights

and at the ABCDI website.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe, hit the like button or add a comment letting me know your thoughts.

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Alone in a dark wood. This is where the journey so often begins: in a bitter, dark, difficult place, where the way ahead (if there is one at all) is unknown, inaccessible. Douglas E. Christie

In my previous post, I reflected on the rising and setting of the sun and what they can teach us. In this post, I want us to remember that between dusk and dawn, there is darkness. This seems particularly important this week as we grieve the darkness that has fallen over our nation after the murders in Minneapolis and the continued terror being perpetuated by federal agents and defended by this administration.

Most of us would not willingly go into the woods alone, at night, without a light, but sometimes that is where we find ourselves spiritually. Rather than avoiding darkness, I want to invite us to view the darkness through new eyes, not as a place devoid of light but as a place where light and darkness coexist and where the darkness amplifies the light in a way that reminds us we are never truly alone.

Back when I was in high school, almost every date with my future husband would end in a cow pasture, sitting on the tailgate of his truck, listening to music, and staring up at the stars. Granted, we complained that our small town had nothing else to offer us, but I now realize just what a gift those hours spent under the dark Central Texas skies were. Perhaps this is why my husband and I love camping so much. We discovered that the experience of awe, shared in silence, weaves an unbreakable soulful connection.

A few weeks ago, as I stared up at the Wolf moon and admired its reflection on the still lake waters, I realized just how little I know about the night sky and was saddened by how little time I spend appreciating its beauty. Where I live, as in many other places, the wolves were hunted to extinction, but the coyotes help me imagine the haunting howls echoing through the cold January nights that likely gave the first moon of the year its name.

When we think about darkness through a spiritual lens, it is generally not from the perspective of beauty, but from pain. While wolves are born with their night vision, we humans must acquire spiritual night vision by being thrust into utter darkness, in what Christian Mystic John of the Cross terms, the dark night of the soul.

My Dark Night of the Soul

All known markers of meaning and direction suddenly disappear, and we find ourselves wandering in an unknown landscape, far from home, deeply uncertain about who we are, where we are, or where we are going. Douglas E. Christie

My own Dark Night began in 2017 with my daughter’s injury in Charlottesville’s counter protest of the Unite the Right Rally, followed by the betrayal of a trusted co-worker, the life-threatening illness of one of my children, the physical challenges of my husband, the emotional struggles of another one of my children, my mother’s triple heart bypass, and a serious financial threat to our family that lasted for nearly two years, along with the 45 day hospitalization of one of my children. One horrific event after another, squeezing out all the light until I could not see.

I found I could not carry on in a business-as-usual fashion, so I took two sabbaticals: 30 days in January of 2019 after the first round of traumatic events subsided a bit, and two months in the summer of 2025, when I simply could not go on. Both experiences were times of deep spiritual wrestling.

A Search for Meaning

God is none other than the One in whom one can understand nothing perfectly…about whom one does not know how to say a word. Marguerite Porete

I spent a lot of time alone in the woods, sitting in silence, listening to the darkness in my soul, and trying to make sense of it all. I discovered a newfound appreciation for the painful stories in scripture that I had previously skipped over. In the book of Job, I recognized my own inner voices echoing Job’s friends’ attempts to make sense of his suffering by claiming it was punishment from a wrathful God. As Judas betrayed Jesus, I found a strange comfort in knowing Jesus knew my pain. At Jesus’ trial, I was reminded that even Jesus was unjustly persecuted at the hands of religious leaders and callous government officials. I went through the painful process of pulling the log out of my own eye, and I am still not sure I can see the world as clear-eyed as I would like through the lingering trauma.

Like most people, I needed the world to make sense, but all too often the faith we have inherited is solar-powered, to borrow Barbara Brown Taylor’s metaphor. Solar-powered spirituality is built on a flimsy premise that the ways of the universe are understandable and that if we try hard enough, we can find a narrative that makes it all make sense. This kind of certainty is what the dark night of the soul takes from you. It is a painful but necessary form of deconstruction that is required if we are to build on a firmer, albeit mysterious, spiritual foundation.

This most recent dark night was not my first. The first was after my father’s suicide in 1997. An act that was absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend; I felt I was stuck in a nightmare. I searched for months for an answer to “why?” My whole worldview, my understanding of who I was and who my family was, and how the world worked all came crashing down. Mental illness is not rational by definition. Yet, my spiritual worldview was. When those two things clashed, something had to give. I found comfort in John of the Cross’s words, “The dark night is God’s best gift to you, intended for your liberation. It is about freeing you from your ideas about God.”

In my most recent dark night, the deconstruction continued, and underneath what was left of my inherited solar-powered faith, I found a much truer foundation upon which to rebuild. I found myself once again invited into a vast mystery as I let go of my need for understanding and simply allowed myself to be held in the darkness.

So much about our current chapter in history makes no sense. Attempts to put all this suffering into some kind of theological framework, making it all part of a divine plan, are a foolish exercise and cause more harm than good. As my friend, Father says, “Shit happens, but so does grace.” These simple words helped me see the gift underneath the grief.

Light Amplified in Darkness

In that deep silence, we can sometimes find ourselves drawn even more deeply into what Thomas Merton called ‘the hidden ground of love. Douglas E. Christie

During my family’s dark season, we were fortunate to have a supportive community of trusted friends, an amazing family therapist, and each other. While all brought light into the darkness, it was my time alone in the natural world that kept me from falling into utter despair. I experienced being held within the vastness of the sacred mystery. Those moments, though fleeting, brought just enough light for me to take one tiny step forward at a time.

My family and friends were the planets and stars, and the sacred mystery was the moon. Sometimes she shines as brightly as a super moon on a clear night, and sometimes she is impossible for me to find. What the dark night teaches me is that even when I cannot see her, she is there. We do not have to understand the darkness to trust in the light.

I experienced a deeper sense of connection while experiencing less of a sense of knowing. As my mind let go of its need for understanding, my heart connection grew deeper. I no longer have any interest in theological debates or analysis of different faith traditions. I am far more interested in how one’s spirituality holds up in the darkness.

I relate to these quotes from :

“At this stage of my life, this sounds like a fifth Gospel, in which the good news is that dark and light, faith and doubt, divine absence and presence, do not exist at opposite poles. Instead, they exist with and within each other, like distinct waves that roll out of the same ocean and roll back into it again.

Learning to walk in the dark has allowed me to take back my faith, removing it from the glare of the full solar tradition to recover by the light of the moon.”

Listening to the Night Sky

As I ponder the night sky and Taylor’s words, I am reminded that before GPS, there were star charts that helped people navigate. I am also reminded that ancient cultures looked up at those points of light and saw constellations, naming them and giving them stories. These stories or myths helped our ancestors navigate life. They looked into the darkness searching for meaning, and the night lights, visible only in darkness, guided them.

I am no astronomer and have only limited knowledge of how the moon and the stars impact life here on earth and how those night skies have shaped human consciousness. All I know is that the night sky, more than any other more-than-human messenger, reminds me of just how small I am. It invites me to see myself simply as one speck within an unfathomable cosmic whole. The smallness of my individual self is humbling and vulnerable, but the vastness of the universe in which we are all a part is awe-inspiring and beyond our full comprehension.

Our Collective Light

The night sky is most breathtaking in places of total darkness when the light of the stars and the moon pierce the dark. As darkness descends over our nation, the light is also growing brighter. We are witnessing the rising tide of moral outrage surge through our collective consciousness, finding expression this week in marches in Minneapolis and beyond. As I shared in my previous post, something is shifting: People are growing in courage, finding their voice, and making bold moves to try to engage the world in a way that shapes what is dawning. The darkness often has that effect; it amplifies the light.

Some, like Christie and Taylor, are using their words to bring light; others, like my friend , are organizing locally. Some, like my colleague are working to connect various movements, with millions raising awareness through their physical presence at marches and protests, and sadly, some, with their very lives. Learning to walk in the darkness is not just for our personal journey, but for the collective work we are called to in such a time as this.

If you found this post helpful, please share your thoughts in the comments below and share it with others you think might appreciate it.

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What lessons have you learned from the night sky?

Have you experienced your own “dark night of the soul”? If so, what wisdom would you share with others who find themselves alone in a dark wood?

Where are you finding light for your path in this season of life?

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.

Subscribe now

Recommended Readings

There are so many wise guides around us carrying lanterns for those of us who feel like we are lost in the dark woods. Here are a few others you might want to check out.

’s post, Metabolizing Greif

’s post, Hope: The scientific definition

’s book, Learning to Walk in the Dark

Center for Action and Contemplation’s Oneing Publication, A Living Tradition, specifically the chapter by Douglas E. Christie’s titled Resting in Darkness.

“The contemplative tradition is a living tradition. Each generation is called to renew it – not by making it up from scratch, but by entering a deep and honest conversation with it, allowing it to speak into the longings and wounds of the present moment, and letting those contemporary questions reshape how the tradition lives.” Rachel Wheeler, Desert Magic

This was the greeting card I received this morning from the universe as she announced, “A new day is dawning!” During the cold, harsh winter days, the sunrises seem to be so much more brilliant, or perhaps it is simply that I am awake to see them.

“In an age of ecological crisis, systemic injustice, and deep loneliness, we need a spirituality that engages the world, not escapes it.” Rachel Wheeler, Desert Magic

As a society and a species, it feels like we are experiencing a very long, harsh winter, and it has made my morning postcards all the more meaningful to me.

We are Standing at a Threshold

I have heard many refer to this time we live in as a liminal space – the threshold between two worlds.

Here at the threshold of a new year, I feel like something is shifting. People are growing in courage, finding their voice, and making bold moves to try to engage the world in a way that shapes what is dawning. Many are tired of having their buttons pushed by media puppet masters who keep us so distracted and divided that we don’t realize we have the power to define what is on the other side of that threshold.

I feel we are slowly moving beyond political polarization and faith-rooted silos and toward some kind of realignment that allows for nuance and cultivates respectful civil discourse. Or perhaps, we are simply finding kindred spirits who dream of this new reality.

Learning to Appreciate the Clouds

What I love about sunrises is that they are far more beautiful when there are clouds in the sky, adding color, texture, shape, and a unique image with every passing day.

I know some would like there to be perfect clarity about what is emerging on the other side of the doorway, but there is beauty in the unknown. It means we have a chance to shape it, to watch it come into view, to experience the brilliant color or sudden illumination.

I hope that what is dawning is broad enough and generous enough to hold all of what each of us brings from our own lived experience without negating the experiences of others. I hope we can move from simply tolerating difference to genuinely celebrating it.

Every day, we get a guarantee from the Universe that no matter what is going on in our messed-up human communities, the light will pierce the darkness as a new day is born. This fills me with hope. Hope is the catalyst that gives us the power to lean into new possibilities.

Gathering the Gifts of the Old World

The words in our opening quote remind us that we are not “making it up from scratch” but allowing ancient truths “to speak into the longings and wounds of the present moment.”

The title of this post is drawn from a book by Margaret Edds titled We Face the Dawn. It tells the story of Virginia civil rights lawyers Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson, who led the charge to desegregate schools. The mantra “we face the dawn” has both a literal meaning and a spiritual one for me. Their story speaks to the longing and wounds of our present moment.

Connecting through Story

This is where we will begin our journey together, facing the dawn with a willingness to cross the threshold even when we don’t have clarity, and seeking guidance from those who came before us.

As I shared in my previous post, “Stories build connections and connections change the world.” I would love for you to share your own thoughts from the threshold in the comments.

What are the vibrant colors of a cloudy sunrise whispering to you?

Do you feel the same shifting away from polarizing narratives and a more gracious future?

What wisdom from the setting sun is important for us to carry into the dawning day?

What is giving you hope in this challenging season?

Recommended Readings

I encourage you to check out kathy escobar’s series New Ways for a New World. Her latest post, Expanding Faith, was particularly relevant to the discussion above.

“We can hold on to the things that bring life and freedom in this season and sunset some things that just don’t serve us anymore.

We can give ourselves freedom to own our beliefs and non-beliefs without defending them and give others the same gift.”

I also recommend the publication Oneing, specifically, the A Living Tradition edition. The quotes for this post were drawn from the article titled Desert Magic by Rachel Wheeler.

If you enjoyed this article, I hope you will become a subscriber. All content is free, but if you choose a paid option (which Substack requires me to offer), 100% of the proceeds are going directly to Embrace Communities to support our network of community cultivators.

You can learn more about our network and the work of our network members at the ABCD Community Cultivator Mighty Network site.

I first began writing in 2003 for the 70 members of my community-based women’s ministry Quest. Through those early writings, I discovered that my own questions, struggles, hopes, and dreams were shared by others. In our collective stories, we found support, connection, and the courage to make our dreams a reality. What started as a newsletter became a blog, and then in 2010, I published my first book, From the Sanctuary to the Street. In 2020, I wrote my second book, Power Shift: A Field Guide for Community Cultivators Everywhere, which is used as the curriculum for our Power Shift training program.

I’m no stranger to writing, so why is publishing my first post on Substack proving to be so difficult?

It is not that I don’t have content I would like to share – I have eight years of articles collecting dust in my journals, on my computer, and in the dark corners of my mind. It is not that I can’t figure out the technology or that I have been too busy, though those excuses have been what I have been telling myself.

The truth is that there are two equally powerful voices in my head. One sounds a lot like my friend , the other sounds exactly opposite; we will call that voice Judas. This morning, Jill and Judas had a discussion in my head that went something like this:

You can do this!, said Jill.

No one cares what you have to say!, responded Judas

That negative voice of Judas has been lurking in the corners of my mind for a long time. So I tried to recall how I defeated him in the past.

When I was working on my first book over a decade ago, I was introduced to . When I reached out to her for advice as an author, she not only encouraged me, but she also invited me to stay at her home in Colorado and took me on a tour of The Refuge, her beautiful community. Her words of encouragement silenced Judas.

You would think that once you overcome the fear of writing publicly, that would be it – the fear would die. But my Judas is zombie-like. He keeps coming back with every new project, and the longer the time between projects, the stronger he grows!

I lost touch with Kathy for many years, but was elated to discover that she is now sharing here on Substack. In a recent post, she shared her Top 5 lists of 2025 and asked her readers to share theirs. She had sparked my creative energies in the past. Why not give it a try?

Judas was quick to respond to Kathy’s invitation, rattling off 5 excellent reasons NOT to write, with Jill countering every point.

Judas’ Top 5 reasons NOT to write on Substack.

1. You don’t have time for this.

Jill: You don’t have the time NOT to write. You’re pushing 60, get on with it!

2. You’re not talented enough.

Jill: Talent is not everything. You have heart. If people see your heart, they will give you grace. Besides, how will you ever improve if you don’t try?

3. No one cares what you have to say.

Jill: Many will not care, but some will.

4. You’re not strong enough to take criticism.

Jill: This might be true. However, in the past, the amount of positive feedback has far outweighed the negative. You are tougher than you give yourself credit for.

5. People will take your words and twist them to hurt you or worse, your family. Don’t be so selfish! Don’t risk it!

Jill: Yes, it could happen. There are no guarantees.

Final score Jill 4, Judas 1. Oh, how I wish it were that easy! A simple pros and cons list, and voila, like magic, I overcome all my doubts and fears.

I gave Judas his Top 5 list. Now let’s hear from Jill.

Jill’s Top 5 reasons TO write on Substack:

1. It could be fun.

2. Writing helps you make sense of a senseless time. That is enough.

3. Something you write might be what someone else needs to hear.

4. Writing is a way to build connections and encourage other writers.

5. If you push the publish button enough, you might kill Judas once and for all!

Jill makes a pretty strong argument! Perhaps I should take the advice of others who have found the courage to do hard things. The bravest people I know are those in recovery. Something they have taught me is to take life one day at a time. What if I added, just for today?

Just for today, I can overcome my fears and publish on Substack. I know, I know, all the authorities on this kind of writing will say, I have to commit to 3 posts a week. But Jill says, one is better than none.

OK, now the hard part: pushing the publish button for the first time!

If you identify with this inner dialog, or if your inner voices are standing in the way of you doing what you set out to do in this new year, please share in the comments.

If you want to echo the voice of Jill and share a few words of encouragement, please leave your comments below. All Judas types…go haunt someone else, please.

If you really want to encourage me, please subscribe to my newsletter or follow me on Substack.

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I began writing because stories build connections, and I believe connections can change the world. That is my hope for this publication. All my content is free. All I ask is that if a post was meaningful to you, that you share a few words or hit the like button or restack for others to discover.

Please visit the About page to learn more about the types of content I will be sharing. Thanks for reading. I hope you will join me on this new adventure.

UPDATE: Six Weeks Later

Well, I have been pushing the publish button weekly for six weeks and here are the top five things that surprised me so far.

1. I have enjoyed connecting directly with other writers and friends, especially those I had lost touch with over the years.

2. I have discovered writers who are new to me and enjoy learning about a broader range of topics at a deeper level than I did before I joined Substack.

3. I am a bit disappointed that posts with hundreds of views get so little interaction in the form of likes and comments. I am not sure if that is a commentary on my posts or on the nature of the relationship that is still forming with readers.

4. I am still struggling to figure out how to make my own feed more of the kinds of posts I want to read and less sales pitches on how to grow Substack into a money-making machine, which is not my goal.

5. I am proud of myself for sticking with it for six weeks. I feel like I deserve a chip or badge for posting new content every week for six weeks. For me, that is a huge achievement, and I am finding that Judas is getting quieter and quieter every time someone hits the like button on my post or leaves a comment. Many thanks to those who have done so over the past six weeks.

I am glad I listened to Jill’s positive words of encouragement over Juda’s fear-laden words of doubt. I am still in the honeymoon phase of my Substack relationship, but so far, I am glad I gave it a try.

Help keep Judas locked in the closet, share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Any advice for the next six weeks?

Which of the posts have you enjoyed most?

What kinds of posts would you most enjoy going forward?

I love people who are bold enough to tell the truth, especially when the truth will mean rocking the boat.  Robert Lupton is a bold truth teller in his book “Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It." 

Below are just a few excerpts from Lupton’s book that capture the heart of what he sees as the problem with our current approaches to poverty alleviation:

When we do for those in need what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them.

For all our efforts to eliminate poverty—our entitlements, our programs, our charities—we have succeeded only in creating a permanent underclass, dismantling their family structures, and eroding their ethic of work. And our poor continue to become poorer.

And religiously motivated charity is often the most irresponsible. Our free food and clothing distribution encourages ever-growing handout lines, diminishing the dignity of the poor while increasing their dependency.

Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people.

Why do we miss this crucial aspect in evaluating our charitable work? Because,as compassionate people, we have been evaluating our charity by the rewards we receive through service, rather than the benefits received by the served. We have failed to adequately calculate the effects of our service on the lives of those reduced to objects of our pity and patronage.

We respond with immediacy to desperate circumstances but often are unable to shift from crisis relief to the more complex work of long-term development.  When relief does not transition to development in a timely way, compassion becomes toxic.

Most work done by volunteers could be better done by locals in less time and with better results.

As a country, we understand that welfare creates unhealthy dependency, that it erodes the work ethic, that it cannot elevate people out of poverty.

Again and again we are finding that when it comes to global needs in organizational development and human development, the granting of money creates dependence and conflict, not independence and respect.

Wherever there was sustained one-way giving, unwholesome dynamics and pathologies festered under the cover of kindheartedness.

Doing “for” rather than doing “with” those in need is the norm. Add to it the combination of patronizing pity and unintended superiority, and charity becomes toxic.

The challenge for those of us in service work is to redirect traditional methods of charity into systems of genuine exchange.

Mercy without justice degenerates into dependency and entitlement, preserving the power of the giver over the recipient. Justice without mercy is cold and impersonal, more concerned about rights than relationships. Relationships built on need are seldom healthy.

When a church makes decisions about serving others, are the ones being served the urban poor or the church?

Someone needs to raise the question, Is the church enabling missionaries to minister, or are the missionaries serving the needs of the church?

Top-down charity seldom works.  

Lupton gives these suggestions to those seeking to empower people and not create dependence:

• Don’t subsidize poverty.

• Reinforce productive work.

• Create producers, not beggars.

• Invest in self-sufficiency.  

Lupton acknowledges that, "The hard part is rethinking the entrenched giveaway mentality and restructuring an established one-way charity system."  He suggests churches and non-profits ask these questions:

• Are recipients assuming greater levels of control over their own lives or do they show up, year after year, with their hands out?

• Is leadership emerging among the served?

• Are their aspirations on the rise?

• Is there a positive trajectory?  

Irregardless of your political leanings, Lupton's approach should appeal to individuals on both sides of the aisle.

I am not sure how I feel about this book and its message with 14 years of hindsight. Is this a post worth revisiting?

Are these insights from Toxic Charity still helpful to us today?

Have you applied any of these insights to your own work? If so, what did you learn?

If you were to revisit this post today, what would you change, add, call into question or affirm?

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.

This post is part of our Throwback Thursday Series (#TBT) and was originally posted on June, 2010. It was the top post of all time over on my View from the Bridge blog at wendymccaig.com with over 6000 views.

A friend of mine shared concern over the fact that her children, who are in their forties, love Christ and live by Christian principles but have little interest in being a part of the institutional church. I read this quote over at Emerging Mummy, which speaks to why some Christians have left the church.

“As we all know, this is the world 2.0, meaning that it is interactive and we are the people formerly known as the audience, viewing our individual voices and stories as equal and valuable.  Also, as Bill Kinnon said, we are also the people formerly known as the congregation:

"We are The People formerly known as The Congregation. We have not stopped loving the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nor do we avoid "the assembling of the saints." We just don't assemble under your supposed leadership. We meet in coffee shops, around dinner tables, in the parks and on the streets. We connect virtually across space and time - engaged in generative conversations - teaching and being taught.

We live amongst our neighbors, in their homes and they in ours. We laugh and cry and really live - without the need to have you teach us how. - by reading your ridiculous books or listening to your supercilious CDs or podcasts."

My friend attended my first book signing, which turned into a spiritual experience when each of my Richmond friends shared a portion of their testimony.  She commented that in that experience, she saw a new and very different kind of Christian Community.  She stated “What you are doing reminded me of Bonhoeffer’s vision of a Religionless Christianity.” 

She went on to say that she felt what many Christians were seeking was an intimate place where they could discover themselves, share their lives with others, and find Christ in and through one another. This concept of finding Christ outside the church walls and in ordinary people is a very strong thread in my book From the Sanctuary to the Streets, and I also found this same thread in a book I read titled Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God by .  Palmer writes;

“In my disillusionment with institutional church, I contemplated chucking Christianity but I discovered that these were two separate and not nearly equal things.  Sometimes it is not a professor or a preacher leading you to divine truth but the commonplace people God sticks right in front of your face.

Isn’t it people God indwells, not buildings?  When two or three believers are together encouraging one another in their journey with God, isn’t Christ present in their community whether the geographical location is First Baptist, St. Peter’s, or Starbucks?  Maybe my greatest need isn’t another sermon about Christian living, morality, and do’s and don’ts.  If the life of Christ is configured within me, isn’t spiritual growth a matter of grasping the reality of that and being transformed through my intimate, personal, individual relationship with Jesus?

And if the risen Christ lives inside all believers, doesn’t it stand to reason that significant relationships with one another are another dimension of experiencing Christ’s nourishing and renewing presence? Perhaps God never intended people to relate to him through services, programs, and meetings.  Maybe “church” had devolved into a man-made bureaucracy seeking to control and manage God. Despite all the denominational distinctions I’ve come across along the way, for the life of me, I cannot find any other litmus test Jesus insisted upon to authenticate his followers except love.”

I think many believers, myself included, feel much the way Palmer does.  Some of us have experienced Christ more powerfully outside the church walls than by sitting in the church pews.  For Palmer, it is through encounters with individuals in his community, and for me, it has been through relationships that have formed through my work at Embrace. My friend asked me what advice I had for helping her children connect to “the church.” 

I think that depends on how you define “church.” What if we created spaces where ordinary people are encouraged to see Christ in one another and in the ordinary stuff of life?  What if, through these ordinary encounters, we helped people see God and grow in faith? 

Are we willing to let go of curriculum, sermons, and bible studies and instead look deep within our own souls and hear Christ’s spirit that dwells within each of us?  Are we willing to see such spaces and encounters as a new expression of Christ’s church? Are there individuals who have been rooted in the Christian faith who are willing to open up their homes, create such spaces, and point to God in the ordinary? Are we willing to trust the Holy Spirit to guide and lead us in our encounters?

I am not proposing that we do not need the institutional church, nor am I suggesting that there is no need for theological foundations and training.  The institutional church is the spiritual home for millions of Americans, and I also know that I would never have found faith in Christ without the institutional church. I am also a seminary graduate who believes that solid theology is essential for healthy spirituality. 

However, our society hungers for a level of intimacy that is currently missing, both in society and in many institutional churches, and we have so busied those with a call to ministry with "church activities" that there are few who are willing to be guides to those outside the church on their spiritual journey.

If it is intimacy that the 2.0 generation is seeking, are we willing to release theologically grounded Christians out into the world to guide them on their quest?  Or will we allow them to wander in the wilderness like sheep without shepherds?

My prayer is that those who have not found a home in the institutional church, or who, like myself, have been called out of the institutional church, will create these kinds of spaces: spaces where we experience intimacy with one another and through each other’s experience of Christ. Intimacy will not be found through the internet or social media, but it is present when two or three of us gather and learn to love one another deeply and authentically. That is the true church, no matter what you want to call it.

So, should I do a 2.0 version of this post?

Is this a topic that is relevant to our culture today?

I know a lot has changed in my own spiritual journey since I penned this 15 years ago. Would others be interested in where these early questions led me?

Let me know if this one should go into the trash bin, if it is fine the way it is, or if you would like me to do a follow-up post.