In this conversation with Victoria Loorz, Randy Woodley shares stories from his Cherokee lineage, his mother’s deep communion with plants and animals, and his decades of land based ministry at Eloheh Farm. Together they explore why many today stand on the "inside and outside edges" of the Christian story, the collapse of institutional religion, and how Creator often works through seasons of chaos. Woodley describes this era as a time of composting, where old systems break down so more relational and grounded ways of being can emerge. He invites listeners to let go of rigid categories and doctrines and return to what he calls our original human vocation: co-sustaining the community of creation through simple acts of love, reciprocity, and right relationship, where meals become communion, tending becomes prayer, and all beings are kin.

Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley, Ph.D., is a farmer, activist scholar, speaker, teacher, and Indigenous wisdom keeper whose work spans spirituality, justice, culture, racial diversity, regenerative farming, and our relationship with the Earth. 

Connect with Randy: 

• Book: Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth
• Book: How Western Christian Got It Wrong (Forthcoming)
• Substack: @rwoodley7
• Personal Website: randywoodley.com
• Eloheh Website: eloheh.org

Mentioned in the episode:

• Documentary: The Year The Earth Changed

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 06:35 – Interview Starts
• 08:14 – The Land Who Raised Randy
• 10:08 – Academy Experience
• 11:53 – Eloheh
• 12:50 – Bridging Across the Edges
• 15:09 – Widespread Abandonment of Institutionalized Western Religion
• 19:05 – Replacing the Programs with Relationship
• 23:56 – Co-Sustainers
• 27:06 – Finding New Language
• 31:15 – Becoming Rooted
• 35:33 – Repairing the Separations
• 37:57 – Seeds Are Our Treasure
• 39:29 – The War on Indigenous Lands
• 41:58 – Create Human Rights for the Earth
• 43:40 – Sacred Clowns
• 46:14 – Sacred Invitation

Biologist, biosemiotician, philosopher, and author of Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology, Andreas Weber, PhD, joins Victoria Loorz for a heartfelt conversation about reality as a sacred, living process of relationship - the continual desire to give life and what the heart knows as love. Together they explore how trauma causes us to forget our wholeness and how true healing is an act of remembering. Drawing on Sufi mysticism and the writings of Erich Fromm, Weber describes love as “the interest in the aliveness of the other” and names this time of global unraveling as a painful yet essential gift calling us to live in truth. Through stories of rivers, trees, & animals, he reveals how the more-than-human world restores trust, belonging, and courage. Blending science, mysticism, and deep ecology, you're invited you to sit with the living world, listen with an open heart, and remember that you are love, embodied and alive.

Dr Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, and poet and teaches ecophilosophy and ecological aesthetics at the Berlin University of the Arts. He holds degrees in marine biology and cultural studies, earned his PhD in philosophy in with a dissertation titled in English “Nature as Meaning: An Attempt at a Semiotic Theory of the Living” .

Connect with Andreas: 

• Book: Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology by Andreas Weber

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 5:54 — Interview
• 7:03 — Living Through Trauma and Pain
• 10:38 — We Exist Only as Love
• 13:32 — Dissolving at the Shore
• 18:20 — Meeting Victoria’s More-Than-Human Neighbors
• 19:58 — Defining the Sacred
• 22:39 — Love Is the Interest in the Aliveness of the Other
• 24:10 — Two Sides of Gifts
• 27:37 — Our Era of Dying May Be a Gift
• 31:37 — Religios Is Remembering It Has Always Been One
• 35:43 — Resistance as Simply Truth
• 39:27 — Truths About You and Your Heart
• 47:56 — Wandering Invitation

In this episode of The Holy Wild, Scottish author and activist Alastair McIntosh explores the spiritual, historical, and ecological roots of our collective crisis of belonging. Grounded in the history of the Highland Clearances, he offers this chapter of Scotland’s past as a lens for understanding global patterns of displacement, from the enslavement of African peoples to the colonization of Indigenous lands and the refugees of our own time. He reveals how being unsettled from land fractures psyche and soul. Mcintosh invites a path toward compassion through the Scottish wisdom of Caledonian antisyzygy, the capacity to hold opposites. He weaves insights on complicity in capitalism, the moral paradoxes of renewable energy and wild land, and the call to reconcile inner and outer divisions. McIntosh calls for a re-membering of what has been dismembered- to rekindle community, restore reverence for the Earth, and awaken the soul of belonging in our time.

Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish writer, academic, and activist raised on the Isle of Lewis whose work spans spirituality, community, land reform, and ecology. An honorary professor at the University of Glasgow and currently serving as director of the GalGael Trust, he has been instrumental in Scottish campaigns such as the Isle of Eigg community buy-out and the defense of the Isle of Harris against a proposed mega-quarry. His most recognized book, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, stands alongside his most beautiful work, Poacher’s Pilgrimage, a twelve-day walk through the wilds and villages of his home islands of Lewis and Harris.

Connect with Alastair: 

• Website: alastairmcintosh.com
• Book: Soil and Soul
• Book: Riders On The Storm
• Book: Poacher's Pilgrimage
• Book: Rekindling Community

Mentioned in the episode:

• Book: The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
• Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9
• Academic Journal: Theology In Scotland

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 07:59 Interview
• 09:47 The Spirituality of Place
• 10:26 The Land Who Raised Alastair
• 12:59 Community Sense for Sharing
• 14:31 Communitarian Identity
• 17:38 The Unsettling
• 22:27 Mary Anne MacLeod
• 24:44 Antisyzygy
• 29:15 Dissecting the Scottish Wind Farm Conversation
• 33:52 Returning to Local Thinking
• 35:20 The Promise of Being Placed
• 37:47 Connection with Soul
• 39:04 Practical Expression
• 42:58 The Darkest Times Is When the Human Spirit Comes Alive
• 44:59 A Privilege to Live in Difficult Times
• 45:52 The Rubric of Regeneration
• 47:25 Alastair’s Current Work
• 50:35 The Bronze Snake
• 53:02 Palestine and Scotland
• 58:31 Wild Invitation
• 60:42 Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz and pastor-activist Michael Ellick explore the lifelong dance between wilderness, spirit, and faith. Michael shares stories of his mystical childhood in the forests of Washington—his first teacher in wonder and interconnection—and how that early “forest sense” eventually brought him through disillusionment with the church into a deeper, embodied Christianity. Together they reflect on grief, reciprocity, and the call to live as part of creation rather than separate from it. From the undulating forest floor to Holy Saturday’s sacred grief, from ancient language to feminine images of the divine, this dialogue traces a hopeful reformation of faith rooted in relationship, wildness, and love.

Michael Ellick is the Lead Minister at University Congregational United Church of Christ in Seattle. A former community organizer and early leader in the Occupy movement, he works to help faith communities confront racism, colonialism, and disconnection from the natural world. Trained in comparative religion, philosophy, and depth psychology, he integrates insights from Christian, Buddhist, and Indigenous traditions in his ministry and teaching.

Connect with Michael: 

• Website: universityucc.org
• Podcast: Gospel of Direct Experience

Mentioned in the episode:

• Gary Snyder essay on reinhabitation
• Romans 8
• Gospel of Thomas

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 0:00 Introduction
• 7:28 The Land Who Raised Michael
• 9:20 Big Rock
• 10:56 Forest Sense
• 14:25 Coming Out Into the Wild
• 15:50 Language to Speak Of
• 18:24 What It Means to Be of a Place
• 20:25 Swapping Image for the Real Thing
• 22:56 Trained in Reciprocity
• 26:10 There Is an If in Romans 8
• 30:50 Separation Is Part of It
• 34:17 Open to Grief
• 40:19 Trickster Coyote
• 44:45 Shifts from the Inside Edges
• 50:08 The New Story
• 55:53 Wild Invitation
• 59:34 Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz and Dr. Forrest Inslee explore how Christian faith is expanding beyond human-centered concerns into a vision of beloved community that embraces all of creation. Drawing from his work with Circlewood and the Earthkeepers podcast, Forrest shares stories of churches learning to “listen to the land,” embrace ecological discipleship, and practice what he calls co-powerment—partnership rooted in humility and reciprocity. Together, they reflect on how theology, community development, and lived experience can guide us toward a new story: one where spirituality is woven through relationship with soil, water, creatures, and the wider web of life.

Dr. Forrest Inslee is a teacher, ethnographer, and spiritual guide whose work bridges culture, ecology, and faith. He is Associate Director of Circlewood, where he helps cultivate communities of ecological consciousness, and also serves as a Guide with Seminary of the Wild Earth. Forrest hosts the Earthkeepers podcast, drawing on decades of experience as a professor, social entrepreneur, and cross-cultural practitioner. His life and work reflect a deep commitment to reimagining Christian faith as a practice of belonging within the whole community of creation.

Connect with Forrest:

• Circlewood Website: circlewood.online
• Earth Keepers Podcast: earthkeepers.online
• Ecological Disciple Program: ecodisciple.com

Mentioned in the episode:

• A Rocha USA Website: arocha.us
• Book: Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice by David W Swanson
• Book: Engaging the Powers by Walter Wink
• Book: The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle
• Book: Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World by John A Powell

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 06:06 – Community Development Beyond Human-only Needs
• 12:35 – Stories From The Inside Edges
• 17:24 – Creation Care Is Part of Our Heritage
• 19:28 – Redefining Cosmos
• 22:48 – Listening To A Triangle of Land
• 30:03 – Co-Powerment
• 32:12 – The Transition is Holy and Messy
• 36:26 – The Circlewood Vision
• 42:04 – Collaborating Without Othering
• 43:46 – Broadening The Vision
• 45:10 – Integrating Vocation
• 47:56 – Forrest’s “Landscaping” Experience
• 51:43 – Coyote
• 59:44 – Sacred Invitation
• 61:34 – Harold and Honeybees
• 64:29 – Credits

In this episode of The Holy Wild, Victoria Loorz and Dr. Sheri Kling explore how personal trauma, dreamwork, and encounters with the natural world can become gateways into deeper wholeness and divine relationship. Sheri weaves process theology and Jungian psychology into lived stories of synchronicity, butterflies, and sacred encounters that remind us we are co-creators in an unfolding cosmos of meaning. What emerges is an invitation to trust the flow of becoming, where even separation is part of the holy dance that leads us back into connection with Earth, Spirit, and one another.

Dr. Sheri D. Kling, Ph.D., serves as the Director of Process & Faith (a multifaith network for relational spirituality under the Center for Process Studies) and is also the interim minister of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bradenton, Florida. She earned her doctorate in Religion: Process Studies from Claremont School of Theology and brings together theology, depth psychology, mystical wisdom traditions, relational worldviews, and the intersections of spirituality and science to help individuals find meaning, belonging, and transformation. A theologian, teacher, songwriter, and spiritual mentor, Kling is a faculty member at the Haden Institute and Claremont School of Theology (adjunct), and authored A Process Spirituality: Christian and Transreligious Resources for Transformation; she also offers courses, concerts, retreats, and dynamic “Music & Message” presentations.

Connect with Sheri:

• Organization Website: Process and Faith
• Book: A Process Spirituality: A Christian and Transreligious Resources for Transformation
• Book: Finding Home: Rural Reflections on the Journey to Wholeness
• Process Pop-Up Video with Victoria Loorz

Mentioned in the episode:

• Wiki: Alfred North Whitehead
• Book: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
• Book: Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• Book: Natural Spirituality: A Handbook for Jungian Inner Work in Spiritual Community by Joyce Rockwood Hudson
• Book: Radical Nature: The Soul of Matter by Christian de Quincey
• Book: The Archetypal Process: Self and Divine and Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman
  David Griffin
• Book: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung
• Book: Possessing The Secret Of Joy by Alice Walker

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 07:04 Sheri's Background, Looking For Belonging
• 09:11 A Love Of Horses
• 09:53 Suburban Nature And The Golf Course
• 11:41 The North Georgia Mountains
• 12:55 Finding Comfort In Nature From Trauma
• 13:55 Finding The Divine Feminine
• 14:31 Finding Home
• 15:46 Emerging From Emotional Numbness
• 17:46 Connecting With Jungian Work
• 18:53 Deep Relationship With Place
• 21:27 Introduction To Process Theology
• 28:13 Connecting Inner Wholeness With Universal Wholeness
• 31:44 Whitehead + Jung
• 33:55 Dream Work And Syncronicity
• 42:12 Transformational Practices Of Wholeness
• 47:00 Sin And Separation As Necessary
• 51:49 The Butterfly Pushing Out
• 55:47 Invitation And A Story With A Chimpanzee

In this episode of The Holy Wild, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Craig Chalquist as they explore how to live through collapse with open hearts, grounding in love and relationship with Earth. They speak of healing false separations between spirit and matter, human and nature, psyche and place, and how imagination, story, and synchronicity can guide us into deeper belonging. Craig shares how dreams, fiction, and encounters with the more-than-human world invite us into sacred conversation rather than despair. Together they remind us that even in times of unraveling, new stories are already emerging and calling us to co-create them.

Craig Chalquist, Ph.D., Ph.D. is program director of Consciousness, Psychology, and Transformation at National University and a former associate provost and several other administrative and leadership roles. His background includes public presentations, group counseling, depth psychology, mythology, ecopsychology, terrapsychology, and philosophy and wisdom studies. He presents, publishes, and teaches at the intersection of psyche, story, nature, reenchantment, and imagination. He has published more than twenty books, including the hopeful Lamplighter Trilogy. His motto is: “Converse with everything!”

Connect with Craig:

• Website: Chalquist.com
• Books: The Lamplighter Trilogy
  • Soulmapper
  • Heartlander
  • Lamplighter
• Book: Storied Lives

Mentioned in the episode:

• Article: Tolkien on the Secondary World
• Video: Jungian Synchronicity: Meaningful Patterns In Life
• Romans 8
• Albert Camus Quote: “It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.” 
• Book: The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
• Craig's Mentors:
  • Joanna Macy: joannamacy.net
  • Lionel Corbett: psycheandthesacred.org
  • James Stark: regenerativedesign.org/instructors/james-stark
• Book: The Fourth Turning Is Here by Neil Howe
• Book: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
• Book: Belonging Without Othering by John A Powell
• Film: The Wild Robot
• Film: Flow
• Film: The Truman Show
• Article: Val Plumwood Prey to a Crocodile
• Book: The Cloud of Unknowing by Anonymous
• Nadia Bolz Weber nadiabolzweber.com

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:31 Intro
• 05:31 Doing Spiritual Work In This Time
• 09:07 Fiction's Place In The Wisdom Path
• 12:11 A Sign Of Real Interconnection From A Teardrop Shaped Leaf
• 14:50 Healing The False Separations
• 18:10 Stage Settings Collapse
• 20:53 The Place Of Resistance
• 23:37 The Cycle Of The Human Story
• 27:13 Relationshiping Is Aliveness
• 29:37 Mythic Hero vs Savior
• 31:18 The Storied Life Needs Hope
• 34:56 New Stories Can't Be Stopped
• 36:56 The Wild Balance Of Nature Goes Beyond Good And Evil
• 43:02 Sacrifice Runs Deep
• 45:10 Drawn Toward Reality Laboratories
• 49:15 The Search For Certainty
• 51:59 Religion As Reconnection Is Necessary

In memory of Joanna Macy, we offer this recording from a Seminary of the Wild gathering where she spoke with radiant clarity about living through collapse with courage and love. She outlines four ancient ways of seeing the world—battlefield, trap, lover, and self—and invites us into the radical intimacy of belonging to a living Earth as lover and self. With humor and grace, she tells a story from Cosmicomics by Italian author Italo Calvino, in which the universe begins not with a bang, but with a generous offer to make pasta.

Discover Joanna's work at:

• joannamacy.net
• Work That Reconnects Network: workthatreconnects.org
• Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino 

Considering and discerning a call to be part of this new movement of ecospiritual direction? Apply today for the next cohort of the Seminary of the Wild Earth. The application deadline is August 15, 2025.

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 04:53 Joanna Macy begins—gratitude, interdependence, and uncertainty
• 11:31 Choosing how to rebuild: worldview as a tool
• 12:42 World as battlefield
• 16:38 World as trap
• 20:33 World as lover and world as self—belonging to a living world
• 24:17 The Cosmicomics story: love, pasta, and the birth of the universe
• 31:30 Transition from lover to self—nonduality and the ecological self
• 33:00 Thich Nhat Hanh on evolutionary belonging
• 35:00 Letting the Earth act through us—John Seed’s rainforest story
• 38:30 Question session on deepening into intimacy
• 45:41 Weekly wandering invitation: “What can I do for you?”
• 47:38 Closing invitation and credits

What does it mean to listen with the Holy Wild? In this episode, Victoria Loorz is joined by Elizabeth Rechter and Deb Metzger—two seasoned spiritual companions and guides in the Eco-Spiritual Direction program from Seminary of the Wild Earth. Together they reflect on the sacred practice of holy listening in partnership with the more-than-human world, sharing stories of reciprocity, grief, and transformation that emerge from deep relationship with Earth. The conversation is both an invitation and a reminder: the wild trusts us, and in return, we are called to trust the holy within and all around us.

Considering and discerning a call to be part of this new movement of ecospiritual direction? Apply today for the next cohort of the Seminary of the Wild Earth. The application deadline is August 15, 2025.

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 08:58 What Is Spiritual Direction, Elizabeth?
• 12:40 What Is Spiritual Direction, Deb?
• 13:55 Including the rest of the alive world
• 18:23 The Wild Approach
• 20:05 Holding Space
• 21:58 Reciprocity
• 23:48 Stories of the Spirit Directed Wild
• 27:03 Memory meeting us in the Wild
• 31:30 The Wild Share Her Pain Too
• 34:36 A Deconstruction The Culture That Has Incarcerated Us
• 37:30 The Non-Judging Wild
• 40:56 The Wild Trusts You
• 41:43 You May Feed The Birds By Hand
• 43:13 The Wind Speaks Of Suffering
• 47:03 Meaning In and From Relationship
• 49:18 The Playful Wild
• 51:59 Invitation
• 53:23 Valarie and a circle of Blue Violets
• 55:59 Outro

In this episode of The Holy Wild, Victoria Loorz speaks with Sean Ó Gaoithín, the lead gardener at Glenveagh National Park, Irish forest-tender and a third-level Hedge Druid, about his journey of ecological restoration, ancestral reconnection, and spiritual practice. They share how sacred relationship with land is remembered through language, biodiversity, and embodied gestures like Gaia Touch. Together, they explore insights on rewilding efforts in Donegal, the ancient Celtic festivals, declaring peace with nature through prayerful movement, and how despair and hope can both be holy as we return to sacred kinship with Earth.

Connect with Sean:

• Article: Native Woodlands of County Donegal Book Launch
• Instagram: @ogaoithin

Mentioned in the episode:

• Book: Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Organization: Botanic Garden Conservation International
• Video: What is GAIA TOUCH? Interview with Marko Pogacnik
• Video: Gaia Touch 1: Body Exercises by Marko Pogacnik
• Organization: Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids
• Article: Rudolph Steiner's anthroposophy

Connect with the Center:

• Website: wildspirituality.earth
• Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
• Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 08:38 The Seeded Wild Forest
• 11:45 Donegal
• 13:01 Indigenous Language As A Doorway
• 16:12 "Ecology Is My Religion"
• 17:46 Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI)
• 20:09 A Gardener Hopes For Eden
• 25:01 Hope and Despair are both Holy
• 26:06 Invasive Species
• 28:45 Gaia Touch Earth Yoga
• 31:34 Transmitters and Receivers
• 34:43 The Fairies of Particular Places
• 40:48 Declaring Peace
• 43:51 Weeds Are Part of Biodiversity
• 47:44 Generational Shift
• 50:49 Sean's Druid Journey
• 54:41 Order of Bards Ovates and Druids
• 57:36 Celtic Annual Cycle
• 60:54 The 7 Directions
• 66:37 Being Drawn Home
• 71:16 Sacred Invitation
• 73:32 Ethan and Cherry Tree
• 76:43 Outro