The Holy Wild with Victoria Loorz

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz reconnects with her old seminary classmate, author Tony Jones, whose book God of Wild Places explores hunting, conservation, and a deeper reckoning with the cycles of life and death that connect us to the living world. After losing his marriage, home, and church career in his forties, Tony found refuge outdoors, where a new spirituality slowly replaced the faith he had once known inside church walls.

Together, they reflect on what our disconnection from land, food, and death has cost us, and widen the conversation to the collapse of institutional Christianity itself. As old sources of spiritual authority lose their hold, Victoria and Tony wonder what might emerge in their place, and how we might find new language, community, and practices for encountering the sacred in relationship with one another and the more-than-human world.

Connect with [guest:

• Website: reverendhunter.com
• Substack: jonestony.substack.com
• Book: The God of Wild Places
• Novel Trilogy
  • Out now: Son of Helena: Constantine the Great, Book I
  • Out now: In This Sign: Constantine the Great, Book II
  • Pre-order: The Thirteenth Apostle: Constantine the Great, Book III

Mentioned in the episode:

• Article: Opinion | Don’t forget ― the Boundary Waters are still under threat by Tony Jones
• Book: The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle 
• Website: thenonesproject.com
• Article: Pascal Was Wrong: There (Probably) Is No God-Shaped Hole by Tony Jones
• Book: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 

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
• 05:07 Interview Begins
• 08:34 Hunting and Predation
• 16:44 Necessary Collapse
• 21:22 The Spiritual Climate of Today
• 25:01 The Crisis of Authority
• 28:35 Spiritual Containers
• 36:18 Tony's Wild Edge
• 43:13 Wild Invitation
• 44:13 Credits

September and the Autumn Equinox have arrived and found us at the Center for Wild Spirituality in a season of both deep contemplation and action. The Crow Cohort of the Seminary Of The Wild is beginning our two year journey together while Victoria finishes the draft of her next book. So we've chosen to re-release a pair of our favorite episodes from our inaugural season.
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In this conversation, Debra Rienstra, PhD, author of Refugia Faith and professor of English at Calvin University, joins Victoria Loorz to explore refugia, a biological term for small pockets of life that survive widespread environmental stress and become sources of regeneration after collapse. Debra invites us to imagine these protected pockets are also in our communities as forms of sanctuary amid increasingly uninhabitable social, spiritual, and ecological conditions. Together, they reflect on how small gatherings rooted in love for the land can counter paralysis in the face of global crisis and rewild our sense of vocation and voice. They explore the spiritual risk of loving places we may not own or keep, while naming how restoration begins through intimate, connected acts of care that allow life to persist and return.

Connect with Debra:

• Website: debrarienstra.com
• Book: Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth
• Newsletter: refugianewsletter.substack.com
• Upcoming Book: Refugia Church (January 2027)

Mentioned in the episode:

• Book: Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a time of Planetary Change by Kathleen Dean Moore
• Organization: blackchurchfoodsecurity.net
• Book: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization by Bill McKibben
• Encyclical Letter Laudato Si' of the Holy Father Francis on Care For Our Common Home
• Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti of the Holy Father Francis on Fraternity and Social Friendship

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:

• 00:30 — Introduction
• 04:18 — Refugia
• 09:28 — Finding My Small Work
• 12:14 — Deciding the Work Based on Context
• 15:03 — Examples of Human Refugia
• 20:51 — From Passivity to Citizenship
• 24:51 — Loving Places That Are Only Yours for a Time
• 30:06 — Choosing to Belong
• 32:29 — Grieving Reality Together
• 34:48 — Mitigation and Adaptation
• 40:32 — A Kalo Farmer in Relationship With the Land
• 43:34 — The Book of Nature & Pantheism Paranoia
• 47:00 — The Wild Edge
• 50:33 — Wild Invitation
• 53:54 — Credits

September and the Autumn Equinox have arrived and found us at the Center for Wild Spirituality in a season of both deep contemplation and action. The Crow Cohort of the Seminary Of The Wild is beginning our two year journey together while Victoria finishes the draft of her next book. So we've chosen to re-release a pair of our favorite episodes from our inaugural season, starting today with our dear friend, Randy Woodley.
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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 (Out now!)
• 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:

• 00:35 – Introduction
• 07:10 – Interview Starts
• 08:49 – The Land Who Raised Randy
• 10:43 – Academy Experience
• 12:18 – Eloheh
• 13:25 – Bridging Across the Edges
• 15:44 – Widespread Abandonment of Institutionalized Western Religion
• 19:40 – Replacing the Programs with Relationship
• 24:31 – Co-Sustainers
• 27:41 – Finding New Language
• 31:50 – Becoming Rooted
• 36:08 – Repairing the Separations
• 38:32 – Seeds Are Our Treasure
• 40:04 – The War on Indigenous Lands
• 42:33 – Create Human Rights for the Earth
• 44:15 – Sacred Clowns
• 46:49 – Sacred Invitation

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with beloved author, priest, and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor about her forthcoming book, Coming Down to Earth, and the shift that happens when religious people stop looking "up and away" for the sacred and begin paying attention to the living world right beneath our feet. During the solitude of the pandemic, Barbara found herself listening more deeply to the 175 acres of land where she lives in rural Georgia, eventually realizing that rather than simply caring for the land, the land had been caring for her all along.

They move through the wholeness that includes the harshness of the living world, from a brown thrasher taken by a hawk to Darwin's parasitic wasp, resisting a sentimental spirituality in favor of one "saved by the whole-truthness" of what is. Falling in love with a place, Barbara reflects, means entering its suffering as well as its beauty, learning from decomposition and nurse logs and irrepressible new growth what seminary never taught: how to release a rescuing, storybook God and be initiated, instead, more deeply into reality itself.

Connect with Barbara:

• Website: barbarabrowntaylor.com
• Upcoming book: Coming Down to Earth: On Being Embraced by the Soul of a Place
• Book: Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others

Mentioned in the episode:

• Book: Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Book: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Book: When God Was A Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World by Mark I Wallace 
• Podcast: Liturgies, Myth, and the Age of the Wolf with Martin Shaw - The Holy Wild with Victoria Loorz

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
• 04:24 Interview Begins
• 05:35 Coming Down To Earth
• 08:33 The Wild Loving Back
• 10:47 Saved by the Wholeness of the World
• 13:09 Learning What We Couldn't In Church
• 18:54 Reading as We Write
• 21:09 What Is Emerging For The Christ Tradition?
• 24:45 Theology Worries
• 28:53 Interreligious Dialogue
• 29:57 How The Wild Ones Experience The Holy
• 34:12 That Which Connects
• 36:46 What Do These Words Even Mean?
• 41:41 Darshan
• 43:06 Barbara's Next Invitation
• 45:16 Wild Invitation
• 46:20 Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Thomas Arentzen, a Norwegian author and docent in Church History at Lund University, whose work uncovers a forgotten Christian tradition where trees, birds, and the more-than-human world were understood not as the backdrop to human salvation, but as active participants in the sacred life of creation. Thomas specializes in ecological perspectives in (and on) the Christian world, and is the author of the newly released The Gospel of Trees.

Together, they explore the mysterious dendrites, early Christian monks who lived in trees, along with saints praying alongside cypresses, birds singing hymns to God, and ancient visions of all creation joined in a cosmic liturgy. Recovering our kinship with the living world, Thomas shares, is not something new but a return to Christianity's own roots. Faith becomes not something practiced apart from creation, but a way of belonging within a community of life where all beings share in the praise of God.

Connect with Thomas:

• Website: sanktignatios.org/dr-thomas-arentzen
• Book: The Gospel of Trees by Thomas Arentzen
• Book: Byzantine Tree Life: Christianity and the Arboreal Imagination by Thomas Arentzen, Virginia Burrus & Glenn Peers 

Mentioned in the episode:

• Film: Silent Friend
• Book: The Overstory by Richard Powers
• Film: Disclosure Day
• Individual: Margaret Wheatley
• Organization: Mystical Theology Network
• Organization: Dumbarton Oaks Garden
• Book: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard
• Book: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
• Wiki: Saint Christina the Astonishing
• Book: Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods by Julia "Butterfly" Hill
• Mark 8:22-25 Jesus Heals a Blind Man at Bethsaida

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
• 05:28 - Interview Begins
• 08:05 - The Pull To Place
• 10:27 - Christianity's Relationship with Trees
• 15:05 - Synchronicity of Emerging Fields
• 17:16 - The Dendrites
• 23:26 - Is Religion Only A Human Enterprise?
• 27:27 - The Worldview of Kin and Neighbor
• 36:47 - Countering Many Fundamentalisms
• 39:20 - Shifting Attention
• 44:08 - Drawn Next to the Birds
• 46:15 - Wild Invitation
• 49:23 - Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with the Dr. Lisa Dahill, Director of the Center for Transformative Spirituality at Hartford International University.  Lisa is a eco-theologian and internationally recognized Bonhoeffer scholar, whose work explores what becomes possible when the walls between God and world begin to dissolve. After years teaching worship and liturgy within seminary walls, an encounter with fresh bear tracks in the snow transformed not only Lisa's relationship with the living world, but her understanding of Christianity itself.

Together, they explore Bonhoeffer's provocative claim that God and world are not two realities but one. Lisa, author of the forthcoming Jesus in the Earth: Rewilding Christian Spirituality, offers a radical vision of faith, not as escape from the world, but as a way of inhabiting reality more fully.

Connect with Lisa:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: Hartford International University for Religion & Peace - Faculty: Lisa Dahill
• Website: HIU Ecological Programs and Initiatives
• Yale Article (pdf): Rewilding Christian Spirituality: Outdoor Sacraments and the Life of the World
• Article: An Emerging Eco-Christology 
• Article: On Predation, Eucharist, and the Resurrection 
• Book: Reading From The Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation
• Book: Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril
• Website: Lisa's Academia Page

Mentioned in the episode:

• Holy Wild Episode: Awakening a Forest Sense: Grief, Mystery, and the Reformation of Faith with Michael Ellick

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
• 04:10 – Interview Begins 
• 06:21 – The Land Who Raised Lisa 
• 08:23 – The Bear 
• 09:23 – "Suddenly I Am the Bear" 
• 11:27 – Jesus Dissolving 
• 13:47 – Horizontal Transcendence 
• 16:57 – Bonhoeffer 
• 18:13 – There's Only One Reality 
• 23:42 – It's Time for Christianity to Evolve 
• 29:06 – Creating Wild Sanctuary 
• 32:38 – Courage to Be Honest 
• 35:36 – A Change in Leadership 
• 37:51 – Predation 
• 41:24 – Resurrection 
• 47:07 – Programs at HIU 
• 49:36 – Wild Invitation 
• 51:36 – Credits 

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Daniel K. Epstein, photographer, author, and founder of Portraits in Faith, a twenty-six-year project of environmental portraiture and spiritual interviews spanning 500 people across 30 countries. Portraits in Faith is a traveling exhibit, a process of conversation-ing with people very different than you, and a nonprofit committed to sacred listening which leads to a conscious understanding that there is no "other." Daniel has devoted his life to asking people how they encounter mystery, meaning, doubt, love, and the sacred. His work demonstrates how sacred listening itself can become a practice of healing in a polarized world.

Daniel reflects on growing up Jewish in the American South, the personal crisis that cracked open his understanding of faith, and the questions that have guided hundreds of conversations across cultures and traditions. Victoria and Daniel sit with the tension between the particular and the universal, what the wild teaches us about trust and belonging, and why learning to truly see one another may be one of the most vital spiritual practices of our time.

Connect with Daniel:

• Website: portraitsinfaith.org
• Youtube: @portraitsinfaith
• Exhibit Info: portraitsinfaith.org/exhibit

Mentioned in the episode:

• Portraits In Faith Interview with James Finley: God Is All and All Is Love
• Retreat Center: Ghost Ranch
• Book: The Coming of the Cosmic Christ by Matthew Fox
• Book: The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr
• Organization: The Center for Action and Contemplation
• Musical Artist: Netanel Goldberg (Spotify)
• Book: The Death of the Mythic God by Jim Marion

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
• 04:07 – Interview Begins 
• 07:12 – The Calling Behind Portraits in Faith
• 11:34 – The Portraits in Faith Format 
• 16:19 – Going Beyond "The Other" 
• 17:53 – Warmth and Competence 
• 19:15 – The Particular and the Universal 
• 23:57 – Portraits in Faith
• 29:05 – Sacred Listening 
• 34:12 – Dialogue Across Exclusive Truth Claims 
• 40:16 – Beholding the Other with Wisdom 
• 45:09 – What Gives You Hope? 
• 48:13 – Wild Invitation 
• 49:50 – Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Jean Golicz, Ed.D., retreat leader, writer, wild swimmer, and Seminary of the Wild Earth graduate whose doctoral research explores how place shapes our relationship with the holy. Raised in a Celtic family of fishermen and swimmers along the waters of Connecticut, Jean spent a lifetime near water—yet it wasn't until her year in the Seminary of the Wild Earth cohort invited her into relationship with a particular beloved that water became not simply a place to swim, but a teacher, guide, and spiritual practice.

Together, they trace Jean's path from competitive swimmer to cold-water pilgrim, from bridge builder to portal, and from going with the flow to becoming it. Cold water, she discovered, made her porous—permeable to the living world in ways she hadn't expected, and to the costs of transformation: the relationships that can't survive the person you're becoming, and the grace of learning, after a lifetime of rescuing, to simply witness and hold. At its heart, this episode explores what becomes possible when we stop standing beside the flow of life and allow ourselves to become part of it.

Listen to the full conversation for a special discount code for the upcoming September Seminary of the Wild Earth journey. Curious to learn more? Join Victoria for one of the final discernment calls on Wednesday, June 24 at 12pm PT and experience the pulse of the cohort for yourself, or book a 1:1 conversation with a guide here. 

Mentioned in the episode:

• Book: On the Mystery Discerning Divinity in Process by Catherine Keller
• Paper: Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change by Glenn Albrecht

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
• 05:21 Interview Begins
• 07:30 The Theological Calling
• 09:47 Ingesting Nature As Transformative Theology
• 12:34 Cold Water Swimming
• 15:53 A Way Other Than Competition
• 17:24 Interpersonal Challenge to Worldview Shift
• 19:15 Sacred Yes and Sacred No
• 20:06 Seminary Experience
• 24:49 Seminary Language
• 27:25 Bridges and Portals
• 31:48 Flow and Feminine
• 34:06 A Space Free of Judgment
• 37:26 A Space Full of Safety
• 39:15 Inherent Discomfort
• 41:12 Routine, Ritual, and Rhythm
• 43:49 All Ages
• 47:15 Solastalgia
• 49:33 The Loss Is Part of The Beauty
• 52:16 Informed Invitation to Intervention
• 56:04 Awakening Is Happening
• 57:57 Wild Invitation
• 59:20 Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Alexandra "ahlay" Blakely, singer-songwriter, communal grief tender, and community organizer, and the creator of WAILS: Songs for Grief, an album recorded with 200 voices entirely dedicated to grief, inspired by whales and Francis Weller's five gates of grief. Drawing from the lineages of movement song, Dagara grief ritual, and a lifelong relationship with whales, Alexandra has spent years developing her practice at the intersection of collective mourning, ancestral remembrance, and the emerging movement for the rights of nature.

Together, they explore what it means to grieve what we love as an act of reverence — and what it takes to carry that grief without being destroyed by it. Alexandra reflects on the land and water that raised her, the dreams that called her home after eleven years in Mexico, and a vision of multi-species liberation rooted in the belief that humans belong to this earth — and have a role within it urgently worth reclaiming.

Audio note: Alexandra's world was very alive during this recording. You will hear sounds of planes, cars, and dogs.

Content Warning: Discussion of suicidal ideation starting at 28:01 to 28:29. Please listen with kind care for yourself.

Connect with Alexandra:

• Website: healingattheroots.com
• Album: WAILS: Songs for Grief
• Featured Song: All The Places
• Featured Song: Sacred Wild One

Mentioned in the episode:

• Movie: Free Willy
• Movie: Whale Rider
• Colleague: Linda Thai
• Colleague: Laurence Cole
• Wiki: the Dagaaba people
• Colleague: Joanna Macy
• Book: Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
• Colleague: César Rodríguez-Garavito
• Colleague: Lyla June
• TedX Talk: 3000-year-old solutions to modern problems - Lyla June
• Book: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Colleague: Francis Weller
• Book: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
• Poem: Sweet Darkness by David Whyte

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 
• 3:44 – Interview Begins 
• 8:08 – Love For Whales 
• 10:55 – Grief Medicine 
• 11:54 – Alexandra's Movements Music 
• 13:35 – Song: All The Places
• 18:30 – Ancestral Memory 
• 19:54 – An Ecosystem of Action 
• 24:01 – Multi-Species Liberation 
• 30:41 – Song: Sacred Wild One
• 33:53 – We Grieve What We Love 
• 43:05 – Alexandra's Wild Edge 
• 45:31 – Wild Invitation 
• 49:44 – Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Jon Young, award-winning wildlife tracker, storyteller, mentor, and author of influential books including What the Robin Knows. Since 1979, Jon has researched a single theme: why do some social groupings of people consistently facilitate deep nature connection, while others do not? Drawing from Indigenous wisdom traditions, mentoring lineages, and his own lifelong relationship with the living world, Jon has spent decades exploring how humans cultivate deep connection with nature, self, and community.

Together, they explore the lost art of mentoring and the ancient discipline of bird language as a doorway back to the connected mind. Jon reflects on the grandmothers and elders who shaped him, his decades of work with Indigenous communities including the Naro people of the Kalahari, and a vision from his annual self-reflection practice — one that carries an urgent message from future generations about what this moment is asking of us.

Connect with Jon:

• Website: jonyoung.org
• Book: What The Robin Knows

Mentioned in the episode:

• Book: Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
• Book: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
• Book: Guiding Lights by Eric Liu

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
• 03:59 — Interview Begins
• 05:07 — The Land Who Raised Jon
• 08:08 — An Enclaved Family
• 12:06 — Grandmotherly “Tricks”
• 14:10 — 10 Year Old Jon Meets Tom Brown
• 18:46 — The Naro People
• 22:34 — The Lifetime of Mentoring
• 26:37 — The 5 Needs For Mentorship
• 28:04 — The 10 Stones of Connection
• 36:24 — Needed Reflection
• 37:56 — Deep Bird Language
• 45:58 — Restoring Our Connective Capacity
• 49:05 — The Message from Future Generations
• 53:41 — Wandering Invitation
• 55:49 — Credits