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Join author and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, Victoria Loorz, as she explores the possibilities of restoring beloved community and sacred conversation with All That Is: human and more-than-human.
Stephen: You are listening to a podcast from the Center for Wild Spirituality.
Victoria: Hello, and welcome to the Holy Wild. I am Victoria Loorz, and this is a conversation with human beings who are restoring sacred conversation with all beings. A podcast for the edge walkers, those who walk along the edges between an old story of dominance and separation, and an emerging new story that's also ancient because it's grounded in kindred relationship with earth.
All it takes is humility, and deep listening, and allowing yourself to fall in love again with our holy, and wild earth. So I've been doing some research on what it means to be a leader in these times, in a way that aligns with this worldview of kinship. I do practice many of the new story, so to speak, new story leadership values that seek to dismantle patriarchal and top-down leadership.
In order to make room for collaboration and collective intelligence of the team, and resiliency, and adaptive approaches to complexity, all the things that are really needed right now. And I found several different transformational kinds of leadership theories, including transformational leadership, or there's another one, systems leadership.
There's living systems leadership. There's Margaret Wheatley's, feminine Energy Leadership or relational leadership, and David Whyte’s conversational leadership. And in my research, then, I came upon this institute out of England that literally made me leap out of my seat. It's called Kincentric Leadership, and here's their vision statement.
“Our aim is to lay the foundations for a new paradigm of leadership that's grounded in kincentric ecology, weaving human beings back into the wider web of life, experientially, and practically, so I immediately reached out to the project co-founder Justine Huxley. I'd been aware of her through her work at St. Ethelburgas. Her work has been focused on spiritual ecology, and radical resiliency, and communion with the wild for over 18 years. Justine has a PhD in psychology, and is active in the Sufi community. She joins me for a conversation about leadership that is grounded and centralized in kinship.
[Introduction music plays]
Hello, Justine. Thank you,so much for what you do, and who you are, and for joining us today in one of our inaugural Holy Wild podcasts.
Justine: Hi Victoria. And it's so nice to be here with you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I always so enjoy connecting with you. It's a real pleasure to be here.
Victoria: So Good. And we connected over some of the work you've been doing with Kincentric Leadership, and St. Ethelburgas, and other things that you've been doing. But I remember last time we talked, we touched on this deep yearning to connect our spiritual reality, our earth-based spiritual practices with the rest of what we do, which is what this is all about.
That it's not a particular new way of, you know, a new religion. It is integrating what is foundational into everything that we do, and who we are, and often that is initiated by the holy and the wild themselves, and in particular encounters. I'm wondering if it was something like that for you, or how did this integration really birth within you?
Justine: Oh, such a fantastic question. Thank you. And where my mind goes with it is, it feels like there's two parallel integrations that have happened to me. And the first is how my inner life, my spiritual life, has become woven together with the wild, and with the earth as a, as the living sacred being. And then how my outer life, and my inner life have got woven together.
So how I've lived. The knowledge of that in the outer world. So maybe I can share first about my inner life. I came to the Sufi tradition when I was in my late twenties, and I was brought up by parents who didn't really have outer expression of religion. And, so in some ways that meant I was very unprejudiced.
And when I started having experiences in my teens, and feeling the urge to really become a seeker, and start looking, I was very unprejudiced, and tried everything. Just whatever was in front of me, I would go with it, and try it. And I traveled a lot, and had lots of, you know, experiences as a seeker looking for truth.
And I found the Sufi path in my late twenties, and immediately felt this is where I belong. This is, like a homecoming for me. And I traveled extensively in North Africa, and Turkey, and India, and met these Sufi traditions. Being practiced within a Islamic context, and then came back to the UK and, and stumbled across, a Sufi teacher like down the road, where I'd left.
And the teacher I found was Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, who leads the Golden Sufi lineage, which has a lineage that goes all the way back to the prophet Mohammad–Peace be upon him–but is also sent to the west by an Indian master to be shared with the West, outside of the trappings of Sharia law, and the outer expression of Islam.
And that was a conscious decision on the part of some Sufi masters because they felt the Sufi wisdom was needed in the West, but that many people in the West wouldn't be able to accept and, and either wouldn't need or wouldn't be able to accept the outer container of Islam. So there were a number of these traditions that came to Europe, and America around the same time a couple of centuries ago.
And I belong to one of those, they're called Universalist Traditions. And, so I came, full of my youth, and passion and, dying to find what my mission was, and like really in love with the whole inner Sufi experience. Met my teacher and, and had about seven or eight years, or maybe 10 years, a very classical Sufi training where one has to do exactly what the master says.
You know, you have to go through a lot of purification practices, and that's a very unpopular thing to say now. People think that you are surrendering your free will, or there's a risk of abuse there, but in the traditional teacher disciple relationship, the teacher is simply reflecting your higher self back to you.
And you have to learn how to surrender to one's own higher self, and prioritize one's own higher self over one's ego, and baser nature. So I had 10 years of these very classical experiences, which were very dramatic and interesting and full of drama, looking back on it. Around the year 2000, my teacher started talking about the environmental crisis, and saying that people who had spirituality or mysticism in their heart were really needed to help give birth to this new consciousness that was needed.
And that was the consciousness of our interconnectedness with each other, our interdependence with all that is, and this way of relating to the earth as sacred, and alive, and intelligent, and a, and a being that one can listen to, and collaborate with, and learn from. And in some traditions they would fall short of saying that the earth is a divine being.
You know, that can be theologically challenging for some people. But to say that the earth is sacred, and that, our relationship with it is sacred. So then started a different phase of my journey, and I would say that over the 30 years that I've been part of this particular Sufi tradition, I've gone from really being a, having an idea of spiritual life that was a little bit like an aesthetic in a cave, shunning life, and going into the inner world completely different into being, a sacred activist who's absolutely involved in the world because of the tremendous need that, you know, the Earth is in at the moment, absolutely overwhelming, tremendous need, and coming into relationship with the earth as a living being. And that's been a huge, long journey with lots of different stages on it, and lots of different levels of understanding for me.
And fairly recently, last summer I was on a retreat, on a piece of land in the southwest of England. A very beautiful piece of land in Devon that I know quite well because I've been there for a number of different retreats, and processes. So I have a relationship with this land already. And we spent four or five days together meditating, doing a lot of exercises, and spending a lot of time connecting in different ways.
And at the end of that four days, I had an experience, which was very meaningful for me. On the last meditation, on the last morning, I had the experience of the land, this beautiful landscape on the outside being absolutely one with my reality inside. So I could say that the outer and the inner were the same, or I could say that the energy of my Sufi tradition, which, I feel palpably when I go into meditation was absolutely together with the energy of the land. And, so that felt obviously it's not the completion of something because we have a long way to go in this work of like reclaiming that relationship with earth, but it felt like a step on that path.
And I felt, so moved by it, and it felt like, this is what the last 30 years of my life have been about is like reaching for this place where the inner life and the earth are the same thing. They're completely integrated. So I'm telling that story from a Sufi perspective, but I could equally tell it from the perspective of the Earth, and how my relationship with the Earth has come closer to the path. You know, you could look at it from either side. So alongside that, of course, is how you live that in the world, and how you live that knowledge.
And traditionally, I think the spiritual conditioning that I grew up with somewhere, whether I brought it in with me from another place or whether it's to do with the conditioning in the west, was always that, spiritual life was somehow separate, somehow different from material everyday life.
That there's the sacred, and the everyday. And I think the integration of those two things, it's another integration that's really important in our times because the earth has suffered from that separation from us deciding that God is somewhere else, and that earth is this empty resource that we can use, and that our spiritual lives are about reaching for this other thing.
Actually, they're the same thing. And, so bringing the sacred, and the everyday back together again is a really important part of the healing that we're part of. And then of course, it's like how you live it in the world, how you express that through all of your action, and your work, and your social contributions.
So I think it's like three different integrations, but really I think they're all the same thing.
Victoria: Well, and the earth has, and I know you agree with this, but the earth is suffering, but we have suffered from that severance as well. Our own spirituality, our own lives are suffering in ways that we've almost forgotten, if not completely forgotten.
And, so it's like the more you connect with the suffering, and the grief of the earth, and you're able to hear her, you can feel that suffering within yourself, and remember, oh, we really are connected. So even it's through the suffering that we are brought back into relationship.
Justine: Yeah, that's very beautifully put.
Victoria: I also thought of a story, when my son, and I were at the last climate conference we went to before the pandemic in 2019 in Aspen. It was supposed to be set up where it was for people who are really awakening to the spiritual reality of this crisis. And then they needed to raise money to bring everybody there.
And then it turned into a regular climate crisis. What are we gonna do? You know, consumerist, usury ways that we needed to change, and whatever. So it was disappointing. But on the very last day, the original organizers called about 50 of us together. And we started talking about these deeper levels, and there was a man there who we had befriended my son, particularly befriended.
He was a Sufi leader, and he worked at the UN. He was like a top official at the UN in New York. And he stood up, and at the end of our little session, he stood up, and prayed, and ended the little session. And he told us afterwards, that's the first time he had done that. His spiritual practices were so important to him, and so integrated, but his work was always integrated, but they had always remained separate, and, so I feel like that's some like that is what this awakening is right now.
Do you sense that as well?
Justine: I really agree, and I feel that's the story that I hear, in different forms from so many different directions, is that there are individuals that have gone through these awakenings. They have this understanding themselves, but like how it comes into the mainstream, how it gets integrated into their organizational culture, and how they're allowed to behave in a, in a work environment.
And it feels like that's such an important story at the moment. And it's like a taboo? It's like people have done the inner work. I made those changes in themselves for like decades, and the younger generation, of course, have come in with huge passion for that, and some of the DNA of the future already in them.
But there's still this taboo, about how we do that in the mainstream, and what we're allowed to say, and what we are. And I feel the, the, I don't wanna say anything to you, violent, like breaking or smashing of that taboo, the dissolving of that taboo feels like such an important conversation at the moment.
Victoria: Yes, and it's not even as if to be a spiritual leader has a certain, you wear a cleric collar or whatever, and you get a job in a particular synagogue or temple. It's all of us as spiritual leaders, and integration. A lot of us will leave the consumer world or the academic world into a vocation, a way of being that is more soul centric, earth connected, but it's not necessary. I think that might be the first wave, but I think it's like as we do that more, more, and more people can integrate this into anything that they're doing.
Justine: It has to be integrated into everything that we are doing, right? It has to filter down into every aspect of human existence that we bring together.
Spirit, and the matter, and we bring together the human and the more than human, and we bring together the inner and the outer, and we bring together the sacred and the everyday. It's all of those different levels of integration.
Victoria: And it's, it's all relationship. It's all relationship. And, so it's like as you have courage to say something loving to somebody new, it takes that same courage to bring that loving lens and practice into all these different layers of your life. And as you like breach that initial fear, it's not so hard. And so I find that a lot of the, the in-person or one-off things that I do with people, it's very, very simple. It's, it's giving each other, it's holding each other as we have courage to step into what we know is real.
Justine: Mm. That's really beautifully put. Yeah, I love that.
Victoria: Well, it seems like that's what you do.
Justine: Yeah. We all have our own languages, and ways of doing it, right. That's the beauty of it. We are tapped into the same piece of work. You know that probably everyone who's listening to this podcast is tapped into as well, and, and what a great piece of work to be, you know, invited into in some way. I feel like anyone who's alive at this point in human history, and who's has an open heart, and is stepping into this space, it's what a privilege to be involved in such a huge evolutionary shift
Of course, with all the challenges, and the fear, and the grief, and all the immense difficulty of the time that we are in, but also the opportunity to participate in something, so enormous. And to give ourselves to that change. You know, it feels like a real privilege, and a incredibly meaningful thing to do with one's life.
Victoria: And it’s holding onto that core piece that then unfolds different expressions.
And, so it's not, so much, it is important the decisions we make with our life, with our vocation, with our lifestyle, the what is important, but it's also the how we approach it. That's a bit of an unlearning as well, an unlearning, a decolonizing, a recognizing that this is part of the old way.
You know, for example, when I started the Seminary of the Wild. Those first few years was like hustle. It was hustle. It was, I was doing it the old way. I was exhausted, and heading myself toward burnout, and then I had to, I'm still in the process of going, wait a minute, there's so much that needs to be done, and there's so many opportunities to connect, but I'm doing it in the old way, so it's like an onion.
You keep finding deeper, and deeper ways of unlearning and creating new paths that are more relationship centric. Kincentric.
Justine: Yeah. I love that language of unlearning, and I, I feel like that's in so much of my work at the moment. And it also makes me think about, I would've said when I was working at St. Ethelburgas I was very, we worked with spiritual ecology, and these leadership programs for young adults, and we worked with deep adaptation, and really facing kind of the reality of climate breakdown, and we work with decolonization, and all these themes, and I would've said that, so much of my attention was really on the future, and this desire, this hope to see this different world come about, and to see a, a future that's rooted in the real knowledge of our interdependence with each other.
The real knowledge of that we are part of the living intelligent earth. And I held this vision in my heart, and I felt like holding that vision was really what it was about. You know, it was, I felt like I'd been given this little taste of it also, particularly through, more recently, through the work of Kincentric Leadership, through working with indigenous leaders, and through working with scientists, and like really studying the incredible revolution that's going on in the world of science around plants and animal intelligence, and the different life worlds of all these beings, and I felt like I could see this future.
It was so much more beautiful than anything I'd been led to expect, and so much more multidimensional. And so the idea that we could co-create with a living intelligent divine earth. You know, that filled me with so much fire and hope, and aspiration, and like now I find that I'm as much focused on the past.
It feels really interesting that, you know, I've begun to feel the retrieving, and reclaiming the memory that's in our body, that's in our DNA of like before that separation happened, what did it feel like for our ancestors? Thousands of years ago before this separation between nature and human beings, between heaven and earth.
You know, when spirituality was a, didn't exist as a word, nature didn't exist as a word. Like how can we go back to that memory, and really find it inside ourselves because we are reaching for this future that's different. We are not going back to an indigenous past. We are reaching for something new, and different, but also the memory of it is in our bodies.
Victoria: It's a remembering. I think that's a beautiful emergence phasing. Like it's, first, it's like the reckoning, like the recognizing this is toxic. So there was a phase of that, 20 years ago. You know, really like waking up, breaching the veil, and then the what, the work that you did of like imagining a new future was essential to even be able to take the next step, which is the remembering.
You almost need to, you need to release first, and unlearn enough that then you have access to be able to remember. It's not then. Then I think it's weaving it in. And that's very much on the ground. It's not conceptual.
Justine: Mm. Again, you've put that beautifully. I love the way you described things. It's always great to hear different people tapping into this.
Victoria: Same! I just go, ah, I love the way you're, you're expressing this. I want to interrupt constantly to say yes. Yes. Oh, so good.
And, but that's been happening in you, is that as you're remembering. As you're going into this place of honoring the depth of who you are, which can only really be accessed through that process of grief, and that process that when you reckon it leads automatically to grief if you allow it, and in that emptiness, you can start to reclaim.
[Transition music plays]
Victoria: You mentioned earlier, before we started recording about how some of the, imaginal cells, those butterfly imaginal cells within you are starting to, reshape themselves, and create a vision for you now in the present. Wanna share a little about that or whatever you can share?
Justine: Well, thank you. Thank you for the question.
Yeah, I suppose, I guess I've been involved in this work for quite a while, and it's gone through different stages and different evolutions, but where my attention has been for the last couple of years has been very much on how we can, on a practical level, co-create with a living intelligent world.
And like it feels like drawing on the worldview and the lifeways of indigenous people is tremendously important because they are the original kincentric leaders. They're the ones that really know how to look after the earth as part of the earth. So there's so much that we can learn from those traditional societies.
But science is also beginning to catch up. And I, and I feel that science is such a helpful doorway for some people. You know, who wouldn't necessarily go down more spiritual or indigenous roots, but science is catching up, and telling the same story. And the science of the way artificial intelligence is uncovering the languages of all these animals.
And the, when you watch the Jackdaws roost together in a, in the chestnut tree at the end of the evening, if you are lucky enough to have Jackdaws in your area, and they're all squawking away, and like making this massive racket before they go to sleep. aAnd machine learning has helped scientists to decode that, and they now know that, what we always knew was that those jackdaws are having a really proper chat.
You know, they're talking resources, and like what's happening to the weather, and they're negotiating social hierarchies, and they're figuring out who's gonna sit next to who. And they're swapping information they need, and they're reestablishing bonds, and life. They're having a proper parliament at the end of every night.
And I find it, it's not like if you have that intuitive knowing or you, if you have, your heart is open, you don't need the science to tell you that. But I think it's fantastic that science is revealing. It is so, so helpful that the technology, the science, the indigenous, the spiritual, the inner is all coming together with the same message.
I've been very fixed on that, that combination of knowledges, the spiritual, the indigenous, and the scientific. And embodied experience, like the lived experience through the body, and how all of those can, can come together, and teach us how to not create from the human, but to really plug ourselves into this more than human reality, and co-create with it.
And it feels such, such an important step. You know, I feel like this, what we would call the leap from ecocentric to ki centric, so from understanding that we are part of an interconnected ecosystem. Understanding that we are part of a, a conscious, sentient intelligent family, and that everything is talking to everything else.
That everything has its own intelligence, that everything has its own agency, that the earth itself, or herself, has its own agency, and that we as human beings have to step off this anthropocentric peak that we've created for ourselves back into this circle of life and, and learn how to listen, and learn, learn how to work with rather than imposing on.
That's where I come from, and the, the thing that become has seeming to become much more important for me now, and where I think some of my future work will move is towards the reclaiming of, of faith spiritual practice within spiritual, and religious traditions, and outside it. And this is obviously very, very close to the work that you are doing is that is what you are doing.
Um, I feel like there's a readiness, and I dunno if you experience this too, but I, I think I know, so many individuals who have, you know, whose spirituality is more and more rooted in the earth, but has their tradition followed them? Is it us as individuals reaching for something that feels real, and nourishing, and alive, and what's needed?
And do our institutions, our communities, our organizations come with us on that journey? Or do they get left behind, and it's, so how do we. This is the real question that I'm sitting with. How do we take all of these individuals who are awake to this reality, and who are learning how to orient their day, their meditation, their walks, their celebrations, their festivals, their gratitude, their reverence towards this living earth.
How do we bring that into the heart of human society, into how we do religion, and spirituality as communities into how we organize our strategy as an organization into how we make our climate interventions. It's how do we center that interdependent reality? I, you know, we get stuck with the words, I feel like we need a word.
Victoria: Right. We do. I keep using the same words over, and over. Right. Tired of that word, but yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah. But I think it's, I think that goes with it. Language follows consciousness, and also leads the way. Like when the quantum physicists didn't have words for the verbs at the center of atoms, and they had to meet with indigenous leaders who had more verb based languages.
I think we're at that same place of this integration even, even the words like the word nature implies that, that they're separate, and we need to bring them back into, it's like our consciousness of it needs to be integrated, but they're already together.
Justine: We need to lose a whole bunch of words, and we need to create new ones.
Victoria: Right. Create new ones, and start to which even, even kincentric, even that is starting the path.
You can't go too far, 'cause then the words don't have meaning. But I think that the language, and the practice, and the support as we're, what's a, what's a good verb as we're all, uh, caught up in this massive pushback collectively, like what's happening in the US, and all over the world with more authoritarian pushback.
So we're living in the midst of that with this vision that we are part of what is emerging in the midst of it, it happens that way. It doesn't stop, and then something new begins.
Justine: Yeah. That's, so interesting. I, when you started thinking about words, I was reminded of something that my teacher, Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee used to say is that we are in, we are caught in a spell.
We are caught in the spell of materialism, and greed, and individuality. And that, we need a counter spell. And it's the work of reaching for this alternative future, and reclaiming the integrated nature of our past. This reclaiming, and reaching for, it's like at the moment we don't have, there isn't enough power or spell-like numinous power in the words that we use, and in the picture that we paint for people to overpower that machine of darkness and, and greed that has the whole planet in lockdown. And, so there is this regression going on, and we are all struggling to find this counter spell that would allow us the freedom from that.
And I find that language really helpful. And I think, David Abraham talks about words as being spells, so like the lack of language for what we are reaching for is a part of the lack of this counter spell.
Victoria: Yeah. And, so our search for those inadequate, but a little better words, and there are experiments with poetry, and with story, and myth, new mythmaking, and replacing our stories, and restoring our places, and all of those words that are beyond words like the experience you had where you felt that oneness that you talked about.
You're wow, I don't have words for this. But the more we struggle to come up with not good enough words instead of the perfect words. 'cause that's part of the old, the old way of things.
Justine: Yeah. And also really inspired by people who, who try to co-create, poetry or writing or language or art or music with the more than human world.
I feel like that's a really exciting area, and maybe we should be asking the earth how she wants to language these things or–
Victoria: Ooh, I love that question. Yeah. So the at, at the core of this practice, I think across traditions, and tell me if this is aligned with your experience, is essentially responding to this, this inner call to avail yourself, to be there, to listen, to see the crows, and to say, oh, I, I want to, I long to connect with them, and to open up that space to listen, and enter into conversation, you know, whatever that might look which will be different for each, it's different for each person in our life.
It's different for each being. And, so as we, the only way you can learn that is not by thinking about it. It's by doing it.
Justine: Yeah, I think that's so that's, so important, and it, it seems to me that it's unplugging ourselves from consensus reality, plugging ourselves into something else. How we do that, like you say, it's very, very individual.
It's like each one of us needs to really find the way of being in the more than human world, and with the earth in a way that's completely authentic for their own nature, their own soul. And there are, so many ways that we could do it. You know, there are so many, so many different practices, so many different ways to connect, so many different ways to reach into that space.
And we all have to experiment, and try everything, and really find what works for us, and then build it into our lives in a really solid way. So it becomes the organizing, the central organizing principle around which everything moves.
And, I was with our kincentric leadership community, recently, I, you probably know Pat McCabe as she was working with our group, and somebody asked a question to do with the consciousness of water, and she suggested to this person, she said, make an offering to water every single day for the next moon cycle for like 30 days.
And see how that changes your relationship with water. And, so we adopted that practice together as a group. And, we had a little WhatsApp group, and everybody did their offerings. People, some people were offering to water, and other people chose other aspects of the natural world to offer to.
I chose because I'd recently moved house, and there's a very beautiful chestnut tree outside my front door, I decided to like offer to this chestnut tree every morning, and I didn't, I don't really know how Pat McCabe does her offering, but I started with like quite, concrete, physical things I'd offer like.
Oats is a indigenous grain for people in the UK. And, so we wouldn't be offering tobacco as probably Pat would, but I tried many different things. So I was offering seeds, and berries, and different, and water and, writing poems, and singing songs, and drawing tree, and, and there was one morning I took a, a bunch of slightly faded flowers from my living room with big white petals, and I took the flowers, and I scattered the white petals in a ring around the trunk of this chestnut tree. This was on about day 10 of the cycle, and I felt this immediate reaction. Like up until then, I, it'd been me doing my thing, and listening, but when I scattered these petals, I felt this response from the tree, I felt oh, I really like that.
And then I had another really interesting experience towards the end of the cycle where I came towards this tree to make my offering. But I have to confess, I was on my mobile phone, and I, so I was only half paying attention, and I was intending to finish the call when I got to the tree.
And I think it was important, and my attention was somewhere else, and I came towards the tree, and I put my hands on the trunk. And as I did that, I suddenly had this flash of like how it is to approach a tree as a divinity, as something that you would worship. Rather than, I'm so used to approaching, yes, maybe with reverence or with love or with kinship, like seeking kinship from a more human being.
But to come with that deeper level of reverence that this is about worship, this is about the divinity within the tree. And I've never had that experience, and I thought, oh, is that a memory, that's a, a memory that's calm in a little flash of like how things used to be. And I found that really interesting.
It changed me. It really changed me. And it came hot off the heels of another memory related experience with another teacher that we worked with called Ann-Cara Gwyn, who's, a Welsh woman who's dug very deeply into the indigenous Welsh traditions. And she led us in a fire ceremony where we tended the fire throughout the night, and we, everyone signed up for a shift.
And we would rock up, and look after the fire for an hour, and then pass to the next person. We did it all through the night. And Ann-Cara didn't make much drama about the ritual. She said that fire connects you with your ancestors, and, so sit with the fire, and contemplate your ancestors, and see what happens.
So I did that, and towards the end of my shift, I had this feeling emerge in my heart of this time. This was where my interest in memory came from, of this time before the separation happened. And it's one, can't put it into words, but there was this deeply dark, wild embedded feeling where there was no such thing as nature.
There was no such thing as spirituality. It was this place. And I think these, there are so many traditions, like we can find them in ourselves, but they're also these practices that we can reclaim, and like, this fire ceremony was something that Ann-Cara has dug from her own tradition, and Pat's offering every day for a moon cycle.
You know, that's coming from her tradition, but is also ubiquitous in many other traditions. And so I think this partly it's about how we look what's real for us, and really give ourselves permission to express, and to relate in the way that feels most natural to us. Maybe how we did as children before we got conditioned by this reality.
And then there's the business of digging into the traditions of our land. Either, the traditions of, my land is the British Isles. Or the traditions that we belong to, and I belong to a Christian country, but a Sufi tradition. So I could be digging into both of those, and looking at what is there, there that I, that feels right for me, that I can reclaim, and reinvent, and reinstate, and maybe share with other people, and begin to turn into to, again, to come from this individual to this more collective community.
Victoria: That is it. Oh, I, I almost feel my head swirling. When you get that space, in meditation, I can always tell it's, so tapped into what really is emerging for right now, and what is different from what was emerging, five years ago.
Justine: Exactly. Yeah. I, I feel like there's a real pace to this work, it feel like.
You know, I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference a couple of weeks ago in, in the uk, which is a, a big gathering of agro ecologists and, it's such a great conference. It's, so alive, and like there's, oh, it's such a wonderful atmosphere. It's like three, and a half thousand people involved.
Huge. And, and the feeling of these, this is coming of age, not the inner way of relating to earth as like a living, sacred, intelligent being, but these outer practices of like how we then farm, how we look after land, how we restore biodiversity, how we do these outer practical tasks that are, so much needed.
It's picking up pace. I felt like this, this was, so niche 10 years ago, and now it feels like we're surfing a wave, and like people are so open, and they're so ready alongside everything that you named about this contraction, and this pulling back, and it's like these two realities side by side, so different.
But like if you are rooted in that reality of reaching for this different, new, but ancient thing. It's like there's a real coming together of people, and a real deepening of that work. And I feel, I, so feel it everywhere we go. So it's what can we do with the power of that movement? And to name it, it's important.
Victoria: It's both trusting our own. It's also learning like from indigenous peoples, from Pat McCabe's, from the ancient Celtic traditions from ancient Sufi traditions, even ancient Christian traditions like that are within the monastic, there's reasons they went out into the wilderness. And, so there are those places and, and to adapt those ceremonies for us now with some knowledge of its importance.
It's not doing this thing 'cause we were told to do the thing.
Justine: Yeah. And of course it's such, such a sensitive piece of work because we can't appropriate from traditions that aren't ours. But we can dig into our own, and then we can look at, we put all of that learning together with what's authentic.
You know, what comes from within for me, and then we reinvent something that draws on those things, but is real, and alive. So I think there's so many different ways to do it, right?
Victoria: Drawing in the, the tree, drawing in the crows, and the rain, and the droughts, and all of the other beings and elements are part of that co-creation.
And to, it's almost like silly to think that it, that we could do that without them.
Justine: Yeah. Thank you, so much. That's such an important point. Yeah, that reminds me on the last few days that I was offering to my chestnut tree. I had this idea come out of nowhere, and like after a while I realized, obviously it was the relationship with the tree that had caused it.
But I thought, oh, what about prayer trees? Like, an old Celtic tradition. It's, I'm sure it's the same somewhere. Yeah. You hang these little strips of cloth on a tree in a kind sacred place as prayers. And I thought, oh, wouldn't it be amazing to bring that tradition back. And this, I dunno how many prayer trees there are in the British Isles, but we could certainly stand another couple of thousand of them being around.
And what if they were in public parks and every cemetery had one or every, every mosque or if every hill you climbed had a sacred tree on it.
Victoria: It’s integrating this. It's in everything, all of it's holy and sacred land.
Oh, Justine, I, there's, so many more things I'd love to ask you, and I think we'll probably have to set up a second conversation 'cause I think there's deepening layers of all of this and, but wow, I am so grateful.
I feel that inner flame alivening as I hear you talk, and it, it helps us to know that these experiences, these little moments with the trees, and the crows, and the deer are not like one time encounters. They’re invitations into relationship for the co-creation of what is becoming.
I'm so grateful for you, and the work that you're doing, and the work that you're going to be doing, and pray so many blessings on everything you touch.
Justine: Mm-hmm. Well, likewise, Victoria. I think what you're doing is that is, super important, and super inspiring, and I love the way you've articulated, you know, your own perspective on this work.
So thank you, so much for the conversation, and I, I wish, I dunno who will be listening to this, this podcast, but all the people who you are working with, I wish them many blessings on their own journey to reclaim, and reinstate, and reinvent this way of being for the world.
Victoria: Yes. Well, well received. I hope from all of them. Is there a way people can follow you in the work that you're doing?
Justine: Yep, kincentricleadership.org is the main website. You can also look at Emergence magazine. That's, a big inspiration behind our work, and the Golden Sufi Center website, and St. Ethelburgas Center for Reconciliation and Peace.
Victoria: Thank you, so much. Much love to you Justine.
Justine: Thank you, Victoria. Thank you.
[Soft sounds of birdsong and a trickling stream fade in]
Victoria: Encounters with the holy wild happen when we're open to them. When we approach the natural world with reverence, and an open heart. Each week, I offer an invitation to wander in the wildish places of your home, and to do so with reverence. To enter into sacred conversation with the holy and the wild yourself.
For this week, I invite you to try this practice that Justine talked about, where Pat McCabe offered the Board of Kincentric Leadership Institute to go out for 30 days, and make offerings to particular places or particular beings that is close to their homes.
So every day, this is the invitation. Go out to that place, and offer your attention. Offer a poem. Offer some seeds or water or whatever seems right to that particular being or place. And listen. Have a deep intention of listening, opening up your heart to this other. Offer gratitude and appreciation, and see what surprises you.
Corrine: Hello. My name is Corrine London, and I live in the San Francisco Bay area, and one of the most profound encounters I had was being outside in my backyard. And doing a shamanic prayer for myself, my life. And I saw a shadow of a bird flying over me, and it was so big that it must have been a Turkey vulture, and it came down in a spiral form.
I looked up, and it was maybe six feet, 10 feet above me, and the wing of a golden eagle was flying down right above my head. Then the bird landed in the redwood tree behind my house, and I was so struck by the size of it 'cause the shadow was bigger than my body in my backyard. And I watched this golden eagle through my binoculars for the next year.
And, he was outside holding space for me in a lot of my shamanic work, and it felt like a message from great mystery, from the spirits, from my allies, my ancestors, for the work that I was doing. And he was a very big support for me to show me that my prayers matter, and the work matters, and that the work is seen, and it is felt.
And he became an ally, and a sacred witness. And it was a privilege, and a big piece of gratitude still fills my heart. And there's a whole lot of love that I have for that moment. And that year it was remarkable. I am grateful.
[Outro music begins]
Stephen: Have you experienced an encounter with a tree or a wild being, or a particular place that felt sacred? Maybe it's an everyday occurrence or something more mystical. Did it occur to you that you may have been entangled in a holy conversation? If you have such a story, please record a voice memo on your phone in a quiet space with the microphone about six inches from your face while speaking softly.
If you're comfortable, share your name, and where on earth you're speaking from. Please keep it no longer than five minutes, and email the voice memo as an attachment to hello@wildspirituality.earth, putting sacred conversation in the subject line. We'd love to share your voice, and your story in sacred conversation.
This has been another episode of the Holy Wild. For more information about the movement to restore sacred relationship with Earth, visit wildspirituality.earth, and please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who is hearing the call of the Holy Wild.
Music by Alec, Slater, and Sandy from inside the silo at the farm, produced by Stephen Henning at Highline Sounds. And hosted by Victoria Loorz.