New Cohort Begins October, 2020

The Seminary of the Wild Eco-ministry Certification Program ™ is an experiential, nature-based, yearlong offering to help you remember your primary participation in sacred Earth. In the face of profound ecological and social challenges, a New Story is emerging. At the core of that Story is a weaving of an ancient path and a new way of relating to Earth, other species, each other, and the Divine. Thomas Berry calls this path "The Dream of the Earth." This deep and wild course is an animated and inter-connected conversation between all things.

This program is for those individuals who sense that their old ways of believing, being, and doing are inadequate for the tasks ahead.  We invite all who feel their longing to take their unique and vital role in the emergence of this New Story to join the Seminary of the Wild.

This Eco-Ministry Certificate program offers nature-based tools, practices, teachings, experiences, and support for your inner transformation with a band of wild pilgrims and guides as you move toward your wild calling during this period of turbulence leading us into profound transformation that Joanna Macy calls "The Great Turning.”

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During four ten-week modules you will:

Wild Earth 

Participate in Sacred Relationship with Earth

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• This introductory unit begins with trajectory of the program, online resources, reading lists, and group work in cohorts.

• We explore themes of incarnation, and embodiment, a wild communion that helps us deepen our love for Earth as our primary community of belonging.

• Participants will be invited to experience their own wild and indigenous belonging to the whole of the natural world as the primary path to the collective imagination and action required to restore our planet.

• Practices range from dreamwork, contemplative wanders, embodied Earth-based prayers, and ceremony.

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Wild Self

Clarify a Sense of Your Wild Authenticity

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• We explore our own hidden wholeness, the “treasure hidden in the field” of the Self — astonishing capacities, many of which are latent, suppressed, or unconscious.

• With parables as a portal, we offer practices of dreams, deep imagery, shadow work over ten weeks focused on cultivating the four facets of our wholeness, and Self-healing.

• We also explore the domestication of our inner-wildness, the suppression of the feminine, structures of patriarchy and racial inequity.

• Close with Wild Ceremony of intention to live more fully and authentically into our communities as leaders.

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Wild Christ 

Reclaim the Wild Roots of the Christian Story

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• We explore the historical narrative of the Christian church in collusion with both empire and culture, supporting the domestication of our original wildness.

• Non-western framework for understanding the Jesus of Scriptures, exploring Christian mystics through lens of Celtic, indigenous spirituality, and animism.

• Practices offered will help experience the archetypes of the Cosmic and Wild Christ as an invitation to undergo deep ecological metanoia.

• Dreamwork, myth, imaginal journeys, wild liturgy, communion, and ceremony

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Wild Call

Embody Your Authentic Identity as a Unique Gift to the World

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• We explore the summons of the Wild Christ in rewilding our “call” as leaders, and what it means to embody one’s authentic identity as a unique gift to the world.

• Over ten weeks we focus on practical steps for cultivation of wholeness and integrating practices from the week into your life and ministry

• Mentoring and group work will help participants explore practices, projects, one-step actions, and ceremonies for bringing authentic, soul-infused work into our places of worship and communities.

• The yearlong culminates with an in-person intensive and certificate.

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Seminary of the Wild ™ is a unique, psycho-spiritual educational paradigm—the first of its kind— rooted in direct experience. We weave the nature-based practices of wholing and healing work adapted largely from Bill Plotkin and the Animas Valley Institute—practices that have formed us as guides and our approach to human development—within a “rewilded always rewilding” Christian framework.

A closer look reveals wild roots threading underground beneath the dominant story of Christian history of visionary mystics who have charted bold and innovative Earth-based spiritual paths. Reclaiming these wild roots of the Christian story is to both affirm and experience the numinous power once available to be reclaimed and embodied in our times.

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We will journey away from the domesticating and indoctrinating forces of Western society into a deep rediscovery and enchantment of Earth, Self, Christ, and our Call. Seminary of the Wild brings out of the 'storeroom' of the perennial wisdom tradition 'treasures new as well as old', drawing on the wisdom of ancient streams of Christian mysticism and Celtic spirituality as well as contemporary pan-cultural practices integrated from the Animas Valley Institute. 

Through nature-based spiritual practices, such as contemplative wanders, sacred council, facilitated group work, ceremony,  dreamwork, imaginal journeys, embodied movement, writing, and eco-theological reflection and discussion, we will return to our original wholeness, our wildness, and our authentic service.

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Richard Rohr reflects on Seminary of the Wild: