Learn to integrate the voices of Nature into your Spiritual Direction practice.
EcoSpiritual Direction Certificate Program
2024-2026
Nature as Co-Guide in Spiritual Companioning
“You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.”
-Thich nat Hanh
Program Description
Do you feel called to a vocation of Holy Listening....one that includes the sacred voices of Earth?
Traditional spiritual direction offers a companioning relationship, listening to the Sacred through the joys, questions, and griefs of life, while connecting more deeply with Divine Reality. Eco-spiritual direction expands that practice of holy listening to include of wisdom of the natural world.
In a world defined by disconnection and fragmentation, where our relationship with the land, climate, waters has been strained, there is an urgent need for reconnection and re-membering ourselves back into intimate relationship with the web of life. This is a re-emerging, urgent worldview shift that honors the vital role of nature in human transformation and helps to provide a spiritual foundation for ecological justice.
Eco-spiritual direction draws on an ancient and holistic understanding of what it means to be guided by Spirit — fully in collaboration with the living world.
Who is it for?
Discernment Sessions
This two-year, transformative Eco-Spiritual Direction certification program is created in partnership with Stillpoint and the Center for Wild Spirituality. The program guides you into your deep longing for sacred, reciprocal relationship with Earth, so that you may guide others in turn.
Eco-spiritual Direction is a practice rooted in your personal, relational dance with the wild that recognizes the intrinsic bond between the human soul and the natural world. It is a holistic and macrocosmic approach where the living Earth is recognized as a mirror and a guide, and the soul's journey expands to include deep love, reverence, and a sense of belonging within the interconnected web of life.
In the Eco-Spiritual Direction program, you'll find certain values that set this training apart:
Embracing Nature's Wisdom: In Eco-Spiritual Direction, you learn how to listen deeply to the voices of the more-than-human world in following your own spiritual path and in guiding others. Nature becomes your teacher, revealing profound wisdom and interconnectedness.
Deep Ecology as Your Guide: Eco-Spiritual Direction celebrates the sacredness of our living planet in a time of great trial and disruption. It goes beyond personal reflection, addressing the spiritual roots of ecological challenges and understanding personal transformation as an integral part of the collective call to heal and protect Earth’s sacredness.
Nurturing Ecological Consciousness: Learning how to truly listen to the voices of the wild offers a new and wild perspective on your spiritual journey—one that intertwines with the ecological realities of our world. This worldview fosters ecological consciousness and reverence and opens the soul to much-needed wisdom about how to be in relationship with the more-than-human world in our time.
If you're curious or discerning participation in The Seminary of the Wild Earth Eco-Spiritual Direction certificate-come meet others hearing a similar call. The best way to get a sense of the immersive and relational experience is through presence.These calls are heartfelt conversations with Victoria, Elizabeth guides, graduates, & prospective participants like yourself.
Sign up for a free discernment session HERE.
A Wild Partnership
The EcoSpiritual Direction certification program is created in partnership with Stillpoint and the Center for Wild Spirituality. Elizabeth Rechter, a seasoned spiritual director, leader and former director of Stillpoint and Victoria Loorz, author of Church of the Wild and director of the Center for Wild Spirituality co-created the curriculum to orient the process of holy listening, core to the practice of spiritual direction, to include listening for and with the holy wild.
Victoria and Elizabeth have introduced EcoSpiritual Direction to spiritual director-graduates of Stillpoint over the past few years. But they realized that so much more is needed to confidently engage with people in their spiritual journeys as EcoSpiritual Directors,
The curriculum for the program is a deep dive into eco-spirituality, on a personal level for the first year, walking through the Seminary of the Wild Earth experience. In the second year, then, a thorough training in the art of spiritual direction, integrated at every step with the more-than-human others.