Advertise on podcast: 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.comSubstack: jonestony.substack.comBook: The God of Wild PlacesNovel TrilogyOut now: Son of Helena: Constantine the Great, Book IOut now: In This Sign: Constantine the Great, Book IIPre-order: The Thirteenth Apostle: Constantine the Great, Book IIIMentioned in the episode: Article: Opinion | Don’t forget ― the Boundary Waters are still under threat by Tony JonesBook: The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle Website: thenonesproject.comArticle: Pascal Was Wrong: There (Probably) Is No God-Shaped Hole by Tony JonesBook: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel Connect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 Introduction05:07 Interview Begins08:34 Hunting and Predation16:44 Necessary Collapse21:22 The Spiritual Climate of Today25:01 The Crisis of Authority28:35 Spiritual Containers36:18 Tony's Wild Edge43:13 Wild Invitation44:13 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.=======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.comBook: Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the EarthNewsletter: refugianewsletter.substack.comUpcoming 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 MooreOrganization: blackchurchfoodsecurity.netBook: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization by Bill McKibbenEncyclical Letter Laudato Si' of the Holy Father Francis on Care For Our Common HomeEncyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti of the Holy Father Francis on Fraternity and Social FriendshipConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:30 — Introduction04:18 — Refugia09:28 — Finding My Small Work12:14 — Deciding the Work Based on Context15:03 — Examples of Human Refugia20:51 — From Passivity to Citizenship24:51 — Loving Places That Are Only Yours for a Time30:06 — Choosing to Belong32:29 — Grieving Reality Together34:48 — Mitigation and Adaptation40:32 — A Kalo Farmer in Relationship With the Land43:34 — The Book of Nature & Pantheism Paranoia47:00 — The Wild Edge50:33 — Wild Invitation53:54 — 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.=======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 EarthBook: How Western Christian Got It Wrong (Out now!)Substack: @rwoodley7Personal Website: randywoodley.comEloheh Website: eloheh.orgMentioned in the episode: Documentary: The Year The Earth ChangedConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:35 – Introduction07:10 – Interview Starts08:49 – The Land Who Raised Randy10:43 – Academy Experience12:18 – Eloheh13:25 – Bridging Across the Edges15:44 – Widespread Abandonment of Institutionalized Western Religion19:40 – Replacing the Programs with Relationship24:31 – Co-Sustainers27:41 – Finding New Language31:50 – Becoming Rooted36:08 – Repairing the Separations38:32 – Seeds Are Our Treasure40:04 – The War on Indigenous Lands42:33 – Create Human Rights for the Earth44:15 – Sacred Clowns46:49 – 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.comUpcoming book: Coming Down to Earth: On Being Embraced by the Soul of a PlaceBook: Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of OthersMentioned in the episode: Book: Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall KimmererBook: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall KimmererBook: 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 LoorzConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 Introduction04:24 Interview Begins05:35 Coming Down To Earth08:33 The Wild Loving Back10:47 Saved by the Wholeness of the World13:09 Learning What We Couldn't In Church18:54 Reading as We Write21:09 What Is Emerging For The Christ Tradition?24:45 Theology Worries28:53 Interreligious Dialogue29:57 How The Wild Ones Experience The Holy34:12 That Which Connects36:46 What Do These Words Even Mean?41:41 Darshan43:06 Barbara's Next Invitation45:16 Wild Invitation46:20 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-arentzenBook: The Gospel of Trees by Thomas ArentzenBook: Byzantine Tree Life: Christianity and the Arboreal Imagination by Thomas Arentzen, Virginia Burrus & Glenn Peers Mentioned in the episode: Film: Silent FriendBook: The Overstory by Richard PowersFilm: Disclosure DayIndividual: Margaret WheatleyOrganization: Mystical Theology NetworkOrganization: Dumbarton Oaks GardenBook: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne SimardBook: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter WohllebenWiki: Saint Christina the AstonishingBook: Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods by Julia "Butterfly" HillMark 8:22-25 Jesus Heals a Blind Man at BethsaidaConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 - Introduction05:28 - Interview Begins08:05 - The Pull To Place10:27 - Christianity's Relationship with Trees15:05 - Synchronicity of Emerging Fields17:16 - The Dendrites23:26 - Is Religion Only A Human Enterprise?27:27 - The Worldview of Kin and Neighbor36:47 - Countering Many Fundamentalisms39:20 - Shifting Attention44:08 - Drawn Next to the Birds46:15 - Wild Invitation49:23 - 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]: Hartford International University for Religion & Peace - Faculty: Lisa DahillWebsite: HIU Ecological Programs and InitiativesYale Article (pdf): Rewilding Christian Spirituality: Outdoor Sacraments and the Life of the WorldArticle: An Emerging Eco-Christology Article: On Predation, Eucharist, and the Resurrection Book: Reading From The Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual FormationBook: Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in PerilWebsite: Lisa's Academia PageMentioned in the episode: Holy Wild Episode: Awakening a Forest Sense: Grief, Mystery, and the Reformation of Faith with Michael EllickConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 – Introduction04:10 – 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.orgYoutube: @portraitsinfaithExhibit Info: portraitsinfaith.org/exhibitMentioned in the episode: Portraits In Faith Interview with James Finley: God Is All and All Is LoveRetreat Center: Ghost RanchBook: The Coming of the Cosmic Christ by Matthew FoxBook: The Universal Christ by Richard RohrOrganization: The Center for Action and ContemplationMusical Artist: Netanel Goldberg (Spotify)Book: The Death of the Mythic God by Jim MarionConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 – Introduction04:07 – Interview Begins 07:12 – The Calling Behind Portraits in Faith11:34 – 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 Faith29:05 – 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 KellerPaper: Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change by Glenn AlbrechtConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 Introduction05:21 Interview Begins07:30 The Theological Calling09:47 Ingesting Nature As Transformative Theology12:34 Cold Water Swimming15:53 A Way Other Than Competition17:24 Interpersonal Challenge to Worldview Shift19:15 Sacred Yes and Sacred No20:06 Seminary Experience24:49 Seminary Language27:25 Bridges and Portals31:48 Flow and Feminine34:06 A Space Free of Judgment37:26 A Space Full of Safety39:15 Inherent Discomfort41:12 Routine, Ritual, and Rhythm43:49 All Ages47:15 Solastalgia49:33 The Loss Is Part of The Beauty52:16 Informed Invitation to Intervention56:04 Awakening Is Happening57:57 Wild Invitation59:20 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.comAlbum: WAILS: Songs for GriefFeatured Song: All The PlacesFeatured Song: Sacred Wild OneMentioned in the episode: Movie: Free WillyMovie: Whale RiderColleague: Linda ThaiColleague: Laurence ColeWiki: the Dagaaba peopleColleague: Joanna MacyBook: Is A River Alive? by Robert MacfarlaneColleague: César Rodríguez-GaravitoColleague: Lyla JuneTedX Talk: 3000-year-old solutions to modern problems - Lyla JuneBook: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall KimmererColleague: Francis WellerBook: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis WellerPoem: Sweet Darkness by David WhyteConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 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 Places18:30 – Ancestral Memory 19:54 – An Ecosystem of Action 24:01 – Multi-Species Liberation 30:41 – Song: Sacred Wild One33:53 – 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.orgBook: What The Robin KnowsMentioned in the episode: Book: Last Child in the Woods by Richard LouvBook: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis WellerBook: Guiding Lights by Eric LiuConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction03:59 — Interview Begins05:07 — The Land Who Raised Jon08:08 — An Enclaved Family12:06 — Grandmotherly “Tricks”14:10 — 10 Year Old Jon Meets Tom Brown18:46 — The Naro People22:34 — The Lifetime of Mentoring26:37 — The 5 Needs For Mentorship28:04 — The 10 Stones of Connection36:24 — Needed Reflection37:56 — Deep Bird Language45:58 — Restoring Our Connective Capacity49:05 — The Message from Future Generations53:41 — Wandering Invitation55:49 — Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Martin Shaw, mythologist, storyteller, wilderness rites-of-passage guide, and author of seventeen books, including his latest New York Times bestseller, Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us. Dr. Shaw is the director of the Westcountry School of Myth and founder of the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University. Together, they explore the tension between wildness and discipline, myth and religion, exile and return. The conversation wanders through Dartmoor folklore, Orthodox liturgy, the role of beauty and ritual in a disenchanted age, and the deep hunger many people feel for forms of spirituality rooted in mystery, embodiment, and the living world. Martin reflects candidly on what has quietly shifted in him since reconnecting  with the Christian story the spiritual consequences of disconnection from land, and a story that didn’t make the final cut of his book — one that illuminates the challenge of this moment: how to ride the "age of the wolf" with courage and faith. Connect with Martin: Website: drmartinshaw.comWebsite: schoolofmythopoetics.comBook: Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make UsBook: ScatterlingsMentioned in the episode: Book: The Great Emergence by Phyllis TickleVideo: Ivan and the Grey WolfConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction06:03 — Interview Begins10:56 — Re-exploring The Old Stories13:47 — Living Fidelity of Place18:24 — Discipline of the Wild20:42 — What’s Our Current Story?24:41 — The Age of the Wolf28:31 — The Religious Has a Place31:22 — Eastern Orthodox Expressions34:06 — How Jesus Changes Love39:05 — Martin’s Wild Threshold42:03 — Wild Invitation43:36 — Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Peter Kalmus, astrophysicist-turned-climate scientist, NASA researcher, author, and activist. Peter's radical integrity has taken him from searching for gravitational waves to growing his own food, refusing to fly for twelve years, and chaining himself to doors in acts of civil disobedience. Together, they explore the layers of grief that come with truly loving a planet in crisis and the spiritual disconnection underlying ecological destruction. What does it mean to love the planet not as a cause but as a being? What might it look like to move from the urgency of fixing into the slower, harder work of reconnection? The conversation also wanders into meditation, ego death, the empathy required to grieve a forest, and the strange fertility of not knowing — inviting us to consider that staying in the unknowing may itself be a spiritual practice. This conversation is for anyone sitting with the unknowing of this moment, and wondering if that might, somehow, be exactly where they need to be. Connect with Peter: Website: peterkalmus.netBook: Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution by Peter KalmusSubstack: Climate HumanMentioned in the episode: Movie: Don't Look UpConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction05:16 — Interview Begins09:07 — The Choice To Not Fly12:50 — Integrity Through Life Experiment15:54 — Layers of Integrity Under Systems17:11 — Civil Disobedience22:33 — Unmoored23:52 — The Discipline of Meditation26:09 — Disconnection Belongs In The Cycle28:12 — The Holy Local Tribe30:20 — Aging Into Eldership33:18 — Grounding Practices39:33 — Loving Kindness For Yourself42:57 — Trail Encounter with the Universe45:36 — Encounter with Ego Death48:51 — Expansive Meditation Encounter53:08 — Wild Invitation54:50 — Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Vanessa Wijngaarden, social anthropologist and founder of ANICOM, a European research project exploring intuitive interspecies communication across cultures and contexts. Vanessa reflects on her years living with Maasai communities in East Africa, where immersive fieldwork cracked open a radically relational way of seeing the world, rooted in the cosmology of Osotua, a word meaning "umbilical cord," in which who you are is defined entirely by your relationships.  Together they explore what it might mean if animals, land, and the more than human world have something urgent and necessary to say to us right now, and whether we still have the capacity to hear them. Vanessa's research brings together indigenous knowledge holders, professional animal communicators, and hard scientists to ask whether other beings might be participants in knowledge making rather than objects of study. The answers emerging are surprising, humbling, and full of hope — and why recovering our ancient capacity to truly listen across species may be one of the most profound spiritual and scientific invitations of our time. Connect with Vanessa: Vanessa's Website: vanessawijngaarden.comANICOM's Website: anicom.uliege.beFilm: Maasai Speak Back (Trailer)Article (osotua): Wijngaarden, V. & Paul Nkoitoi Ole Murero. 2023. Osotua and decolonizing the academe: Implications of a Maasai concept. In: Curriculum Perspectives 43(Suppl 1): 33-46. Special Issue: Narrowing the Gap Beyond Tokenism: Transdisciplinary Search for Innovative Approaches in the Integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Epistemologies in Higher Education. DOI : 10.1007/s41297-023-00190-2. Abstract and full textArticle: Wijngaarden, Vanessa In print. Secularization and decolonization of the academe: In conversation with African faiths and knowledges. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Decolonising Knowledge in Africa.Article (lion and cat): Wijngaarden, Vanessa 2023. Interviewing animals through animal communicators: Potentials of intuitive interspecies communication for multispecies methods. In: Society and Animals 32 (5/6): 519-539. DOI: 10.1163/15685306-bja10122. Full textMentioned in the episode: Wiki: Maasai MaraBook: The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald WalschConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 00:00 — Introduction03:58 — Interview Begins05:39 — The Land Who Raised Vanessa08:30 — Osotua11:19 — Building Trust in Relationship16:56 — Humpback Whale Encounter17:52 — Wallaby Encounter18:26 — Fasting During Deer Encounter20:23 — Normalizing Relationship21:13 — Research in Animal Communication25:17 — Starting with the Experiential26:31 — Unseparating Professional and Personal31:05 — ANICOM34:44 — Lion Says36:09 — The Theme of the Alive World38:38 — Intuitive Interspecies Communication or IIC39:23 — Conversation with a House Cat43:08 — Restoration of Trust and Earth Power51:01 — Victoria Falls Tourists54:12 — Wonder in the Mountains55:24 — Elephant Encounter57:24 — Changing the Ethics of Relational Research61:39 — Reciprocity of Approach66:03 — Next Threshold68:51 — Real and True71:49 — Wild Invitation74:38 — Credits

On our first episode of the Holy Wild, Victoria speaks with producer Stephen about the vision for the podcast. Victoria shares her answers to the questions we intend to ask every guest, including "tell me about the land that raised you?" and "what's a recent experience you've had with the holy and wild?" They also introduce elements of the podcast like the invitation to you at the end of each episode, as well as the Sacred Conversation segment to feature your stories and encounters. Mentioned in the episode: Book: Church of the Wild by Victoria LoorzBook: Field Guide to Church of the Wild by Victoria LoorzBook: Anam Cara by John O'DonohueNIH Paper: Depression and Vitamin D- A Peculiar Relationship Scripture: John 1 - On LOGOSScripture: Matthew 18:20 - Where Two Or More Are GatheredArticle: CAC Meditation: God in All Things (Richard Rohr on Panentheism)Video: "Wild Geese"- written and read Mary OliverConnect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spiritualityTimestamps: 0:00  Intro                  3:43  The Land Who Raised You10:06 Being-In-The-Longing As Belonging11:06 The Unknown As Spiritual Practice Markers12:54 Our Tragic and Voluntary Severance14:56 We've Tamed Ourselves15:57 In Kinship With The Mosquito17:28 Hosting LOGOS Conversations20:36 Why Podcast Now?20:55 "God Is Not A Tree"?24:07 The Conversation Of Creation25:08 The Trap Of Duality25:53 Restoring Human Cooperation27:01 Conversation Beyond Words28:48 Victoria's Conversation With Sister Stream32:56 Obstacles Are The Music35:21 A Closing Thought On Practical Wandering38:05 Thresholds40:50 Introduction To Invitation44:40 Invitation46:44 Sacred Conversation: Stephen and Prairie Falcon49:30 Credits

From the Center For Wild Spirituality, The Holy Wild, hosted by Victoria Loorz. Connect with the Center: Website: wildspirituality.earthVictoria's Website: victorialoorz.comEmail: [email protected]: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspiritualityInstagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality