There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
—Linda Hogan
Cofounders of the Wild Church Network, Victoria Loorz and Valerie Luna Serrels are passionate about helping people reconnect to the sacred wildness of the earth and recognize how it connects us to the story:
The wisdom we need for this time of great unraveling will be gained as we remember that we are not separate from nature. The voices we need to listen most closely to at this time are the voices that the dominant culture has overlooked, dismissed, ignored, or silenced. The voices of Indigenous peoples who have never forgotten our place in the web of belonging. The voices of women, of communities of color, of those from the queer community who have suffered the impact of a dominant culture of supremacy for generations. Voices from the Southern Hemisphere, from religions outside our comfort zone whose perspectives are essential to even see our own blindness. The voices of the trees, the storms, the cicadas, the rivers, and the tiny viruses whose interconnected suffering and resiliency is essential in this time of dramatic change. The wisdom we need at this pivotal time in our history will be found there, outside the edges of the dominant culture. And by listening, we mean practicing kinship, intentionally entering into relationship, through respectful and authentic conversation and presence.
This kinship is at the core of wild church. Kinship is recognizing that our beloved community includes the whole, alive, interconnected world…. It is falling in love again with the world, considering the well-being of all the sacred others in our decisions. It is taking on the suffering of our beloveds and engaging in their healing. It is an embodiment of a Hebrew concept known as tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world”—the whole world.
As we learn the language of leaves and the banter of berries and then share these little moments of poetic wisdom with one another, we are re-storying our place. We are creating new stories that can guide us into a new and yet ancient way of being human…. Re-storying our relationship with Earth as sacred kin provides a spiritual and emotional foundation of belonging we need to support all the layers of work ahead of us. [1]
Earth has her own rituals, expressed in stories of glaciers, seasons, spring blossoms, anthills, wildfires, and birdsongs. As we listen with affection to the stories the land tells, we are compelled to integrate their stories into our stories. To remain alive, our old narratives need to be connected with new meaning particular to our geographies and context. A beloved myth or story from a sacred text or scripture carries deep wisdom that comes alive when it is reoriented to our own time and place. [2]
References:
[1] Victoria Loorz and Valerie Luna Serrels, Field Guide to Church of the Wild (Broadleaf, 2025), 8–9. Used with permission.
[2] Loorz and Serrels, Field Guide, 67.
Image credit and inspiration: Priscilla Du Preez, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. With our energy and effort, we treat the stories of others as sacred and worthy of our time and attention, like our own.
Story from Our Community:
I’m currently experiencing “a dark night of the soul.” I was recently diagnosed with ADHD/ADD, and I am processing what this means for my life. I’m grateful to Fr. Richard and CAC staff for the wealth of wisdom and teaching I’ve gained through CAC podcasts and the Daily Meditations. It’s helped me—and I’m sure others who are neurodiverse—because we’re reminded that we’re all walking the path together. CAC’s teachers and message have also encouraged me to turn to the divine wisdom that I carry within myself.
—Shona C.
