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NOTE:  The Eco-Ministry Certificate program is open to anyone.  You do not need to be a pastor, a Christian, or a spiritual leader and most participants are not. Many are being called into service to the Great Turning, as Thomas Berry and Joanna Macy and many others have called this moment in history.  The program is a container, a "wild seed bed" for those who sense that they are standing on a threshold, ready to embody more authentically the call unique to their own soul and gifts, particular to their own bio-region and human community at this urgently important time of transition.

The The ReWilding the Pastor's Soul program, offered Fall 2021, provides essentially the same Eco-Ministry Certificate experience, but is particularly targeted to pastors and others in positions of spiritual leadership (however you define that for yourself!) When the inner call to a deeper faith, more connected with the natural world, more challenging to the status quo comes for spiritual leaders, it can be challenging finding support and companionship on that journey. As well, many studies show that pastors suffer the highest rates of burn-out, loneliness, and depression amongst all professions. Many in spiritual leadership often get so focused on tending to the needs of others that they neglect the well-being of their own souls. 

For all, Seminary of the Wild is a safe (yet uncomfortable, as every threshold of change promises) container for the changes happening within you and the changes you're being called to bring into the world.

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"For millions of years, before you arrived here, the dream of your individuality was carefully prepared. You were sent to a shape of destiny in which you would be able to express the special gift you bring to the world… It is in the depths of your life that you will discover the invisible necessity that has brought you here. When you begin to decipher this, your gift and giftedness come alive." - John O' Donohue

The Seminary of the Wild Eco-ministry Certificate 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 Eco-Ministry Certificate program offers nature-based tools, practices, teachings, experiences, and support for your inner transformation. You will journey 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.”

During four ten-week modules you will:

Wild Earth 

Participate in Sacred Relationship with Earth

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• This introductory unit begins the 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, and 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 the 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 nine weeks we focus on practical steps for cultivation of wholeness and integrating practices from the year 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 and always rewilding” Christian framework. 

A closer look reveals wild roots threading underground beneath the dominant story of the 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 affirm and encounter 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. 

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 will help us return to our original wholeness, our wildness, and our authentic service.

Richard Rohr reflects on Seminary of the Wild: