ReWilding the Soul: A New Certificate Program in EcoSpirituality
Why reclaiming our connection with the living Earth matters more than ever
The disconnect runs deeper than we are willing to admit.
We speak of “getting into nature” as if we’re visiting a foreign country rather than returning home. We treat the Earth as a backdrop to our lives, something to admire through windows, something we “should” spend more time with, something we keep meaning to appreciate but never quite prioritize.
What if the spiritual hunger so many of us feel isn’t about finding the right practice, teacher, or tradition, but about remembering we are never separate from the sacred world around us?
Introducing the ReWilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate
This March, I’m launching a year-long certificate program that guides participants back into a reverent relationship with the living Earth. Not as concept or metaphor, but as direct, embodied experience.
The Rewilding the Soul EcoSpirituality Certificate invites participants to move from disconnection to deep belonging, from spiritual seeking to grounded earth practice, from personal healing to community engagement, all while honoring the ancient wisdom that we are not separate from nature, but intimately woven into the sacred web of all life.
What Makes EcoSpirituality Different?
While many Pagan and ceremonial magic traditions honor nature and the elements, ecospirituality takes a different approach.
Rather than working primarily with established ritual systems, deity forms, or magical correspondences, this program focuses on direct, embodied relationship with your specific place. The plants outside your door. The birds on your morning walk. The landforms and seasonal cycles of your bioregion.
Participants learn to listen to the land itself and allow spiritual practices to emerge from these living relationships. Ceremonial practitioners, and indeed anybody of any religious tradition, are welcome and may find their existing practices deepened through direct earth connection. This program is not religious by nature, and as such it does not teach formal magical systems or engage in religious ritual structures.
This is about learning from the Earth as teacher.
A Year in Four Seasons
The program unfolds through four seasonal modules, each aligned with nature’s rhythms:
Module 1: Sacred Belonging to Place (March – May, 2026)
As spring returns, we begin by rediscovering our relationship with the land where we actually live, not some idealized wilderness. We experience the specific soil, water, and more-than-human beings of our home place with new eyes and senses.
Reading: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Module 2: Embodying Earth Soul (June – August, 2026)
In summer’s depth, we turn toward the body as Earth, tending the grief and wonder that arise when we truly allow ourselves to feel our belonging to the living world.
Reading: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
Module 3: Wild Earth Spirituality (September – October, 2026)
Through autumn’s harvest, we deepen into sensory practices and attentive listening, developing capacity for genuine communion with the more-than-human world.
Reading: The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
Module 4: Sharing Earth Gifts (November, 2026 – February, 2027)
As the year draws to a close in winter’s integration, we explore how to offer our earth-rooted practice in service to the community and the world.
Reading: Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone
Why This Matters Now
In a time of ecological crisis and widespread spiritual disconnection, we need practices that heal both personal and planetary wounds. The climate emergency isn’t just an environmental problem; it’s a crisis of relationship—a symptom of centuries spent treating the Earth as an object rather than a subject. In other words, seeing the Earth as endless resource rather than as kin.
Ecospirituality offers a path back to sanity. Not through escapism or spiritual bypassing, but through the hard, beautiful work of remembering we belong to something larger than ourselves.
When we develop authentic relationship with the living Earth, everything shifts. Our decisions change. Our priorities realign. We discover we’re not isolated individuals struggling alone, but participants in an ancient conversation between land, water, air, and all beings.
This matters because the Earth needs us awake. Our communities need us grounded. We ourselves need the healing that comes from remembering our place in the sacred web of life. Not above it or below it, but within it.
How We’ll Walk Together
This program meets live on Wednesdays at 12:00pm Eastern / 9:00am Pacific via Zoom for 90 minutes each week. Five sessions per module, with small groups meeting every other week. While sessions are recorded, this certificate requires presence—the work happens in community, in real time, in the spaces between words where genuine transformation occurs.
We take intentional breaks between modules to honor the need for integration and rest.
This isn’t content to consume. It’s a living practice to embody.
An Invitation
If you’ve felt the pull toward an earth-based spiritual practice but haven’t found your way, this program was created for you. If you’re exhausted by spiritual approaches that keep you in your head rather than your body, welcome! If you sense the Earth calling you into a deeper relationship but don’t know how to answer, come walk this path.
As an ordained EcoSpiritual Guide with a Ph.D. in Educational Research, I bring both academic rigor and embodied practice to this work. At New York University, I serve as Professor of Research Methodology and Chaplain, holding space where intellectual inquiry meets spiritual formation. My approach weaves scholarly depth with the wisdom gained from years of contemplative walking, including five journeys aloing the Camino de Santiago.
But my real teacher has been the land itself—Where Insight Meets Earth, Growth Begins.
More information about this year-long certificate program is available on the Cherry Hill Seminary website, where I will be leading this experience.
Thank you for reading Where Insight Meets Earth. If this resonates with you, I’d love for you to share it with someone ready to remember their belonging to the living world.
If you’d like to keep walking with me, subscribe to receive future reflections on pilgrimage, eco-spirituality, and kinship with the more-than-human world.
I love the idea of walking together here, instead of working together, it so fits the point you’re making here.