Endings and New Beginnings

It has been quite a few months since I gave an official update, on my life and my upcoming book. There are several new developments.

First, the book is available for preorder here, and many other places like here and here. If you can preorder, please do, or even place it in your Amazon wishlist, it all helps the numbers on Amazon. It will be out March 5, 2024. They are also making an audiobook, I am happy to report, and I will post links to that when it is done. For now, they are choosing a reader (not me, I’m afraid).

Second, I have formally resigned my priesthood in The Episcopal Church, pending approval from the Standing Committee. I have many loved colleagues and friends still in the church, and hope to stay involved with all you amazing people on some level, but my own spiritual path has led me away from both the church and Christianity in general. It has been a decision that has come over many years of discernment, one that feels most authentic and honest for me.

I still very much feel a call on my life—to connect with spirit, to support people who are struggling in this mess of a world, and to continue to advocate for and with people experiencing homelessness and poverty. I suspect I will seek some sort of pagan or interfaith ordination body in the next year or two.

I have found a sort of spiritual home in paganism. Alan Wells gives a beautiful summary of what it means to him to be pagan: “Paganism is about developing a connection with the natural world… Developing a sense of the sacred in all things, paying attention to the solar and lunar cycles, paying attention to what is seen (and unseen) and honouring all of this.”

My whole life, I have felt part of the natural world and deeply connected to the land. I grew up in a forest on the Chehalis watershed, following the creeks, sitting under the cedars, and sharing my life with the forest creatures and farm animals alike. I have always had a particular affinity for trees and plants, not just a green thumb in my giant gardens, but a knack for wildcrafting and connecting with the ecology of a place as well. This affinity has always grounded me, deeply and spiritually, in land.

As an adult, I grew to understand that my ancestors are from places all over Europe, other lands, and they were settlers here, on the land I love, displacing Indigenous people who are the stewards of this place. I always felt, keenly, a sense that the land was sad, that the creeks could not run wild anymore and the rivers were dammed and the forests were cut and managed, a sense that the whole lifeway of the place I loved had been disrupted.

When visiting Ireland on sabbatical two years ago, I made a vow to both learn more about my ancestors’ understanding of the land on which they lived and to learn more and commit myself to supporting Indigenous sovereignty back home. I saw, so clearly, how all of the ways that humans have connected to land and places over millions of years had been disrupted by European colonization and drive for profit.

One returning, I have kept those vows. I have spent time learning Irish, studying early Irish stories and later Irish history, and connecting to Irish paganism and the Irish gods. I’ve connected more to my ancestors, including the Irish ones, and understood more about what brought my ancestors across the Atlantic. I have learned more about their folk beliefs and more about the land they must have loved before they were forced to leave.

And I have studied Indigenous philosophy from Indigenous teachers, I have connected more with the tribal communities I have relationship to, and have committed to learning Lushootseed, the Salish language of the Puget Sound. I wanted, at least, to show enough respect to the trees who raised me by calling them by their old, their true names.

For me, this pagan path is about finding right relationship—to my ancestors, to Indigenous people, and to the land itself. I did not imagine how it would upend all of my worldview and cast so much light on a new way forward for my life, as a poor white person on this land, as a thinker, as a spiritual care provider. I plan to launch a Substack soon, where I write short essays and stories about what I have been learning over this time of rest and quiet. I will announce it soon, so look out for it.

Thank you for continuing to follow my work and look for new updates soon!