JOIN this Rewilding Community!
“May we learn to retune
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.”
“I cannot have a spiritual center without having a geographical one. I cannot live a grounded life without being grounded in a place.”
How do we gather in these times of deconstruction and fear? Is is possible to create sanctuary that connects us more deeply to ourselves, the Sacred, and the more-than-human world while the world seems more and more isolated? How do we nurture spiritual practices and radical communion when we are increasingly distancing ourselves from our human communities? Is it possible to engage the chaos as a threshold towards our resilient transformation?
More than ever we are needing to creatively imagine what it means to be human, and how our nature is deeply rooted in our places. Our bioregional locatedness offers tremendous resources for wellness, wholeness, and healing in these troubling times. The Rewilding Wheel Accompaniment Community offers an imagination for how to include the wild earth in our companionship; practices for how to cultivate sacred relationship with the seasonal and ecological changes; and virtual communion with other humans that provides connection in these insulating times.
Spiritual practices are patterns of “routine, regular, and repeated” practice that when regularly engaged, one will discover transformation and soul-connection. However, throughout a long history within many spiritual and religious traditions, these practices have pursued transcendence or detachment from the earth as a way to fully meet the Sacred, the Great Mystery, or who many understand as God. Eco-theologian Thomas Berry taught that the earth is “a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.” He made up the word “inscendence” to describe a way of belonging to reality that does not aspire to float above it. He invited us, on behalf of the Earth community, to lead soulful lives of connection, reverence, mystery, grace, and wholeness within the natural world. Within the wild edges we can recover grace.
However, the Western world is fundamentally unpracticed at this sort of interconnection with the more-than-human world and seeing creation with sacred reverence. Spiritual practices that continue to maintain a spirit of separation from the earth fundamentally will not do the much needed work of connecting us meaningfully and profoundly to our places. The current reality of our climate and consciousness raising times demands that we re-cover practices that engage us fully with the seasonal reality of a sacred and sentient world. As we experience disorientation as a result of the deconstruction of life-as-we-know-it, literal groundedness will help us feel rooted, giving us strength to resiliently grow and develop the soulful capacity for compassion and courage in our times.
“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
Mary DeJong’s hand drawing of the REwilding Wheel
The Rewilding Wheel was developed to be an integration of critical aspects of the cycles and seasons of nature that would bring one into a deep sense of belonging within one’s particular bio-region. This is a move from an ego-centric posture on the planet to an eco-centric one where one’s whole identity is rooted and interconnected with all of creation
The Rewilding Wheel is a sacred circuit that seeks to locate the wisdom of universal nature symbols within one’s particular homescape for the purpose of spiritual formation. By locating the psychospiritual patterns found within the natural world to a particular place, the ancient wisdom inherent in the cardinal directions and elements takes on a practical shape and invites a focused seasonal practice. In this way, the Rewilding Wheel is unique as it invites a sacred process of remembering and recovering relationships within various ecosystems throughout your landscape.
The intention behind this wheel is to provide one with practices that connect one to their bioregion, what eco-poet Gary Snyder called the “spirit of a place,” to the deep and sacred presence that abides within the wild and wonder-filled natural world. This is a sacred round of practices that engage phenomenology and bioregional connection as holy work.
However, we cannot do this alone! Mary has received many requests to accompany people as they begin their Rewilding Wheel journey and has received feedback that it would be easier to maintain the practice if it was done in community and with accountabilities. This offering is in response to these expressed needs.
“This is a way of remembering where we are, who else is here with us, and why we are meant to be together, to retrieve the meant-for-ness for our collective creation.”
Included in your subscription:
Monthly 60-minute online webinar gatherings led by Mary DeJong
Monthly emails with additional resources and materials (relevant readings, quotes, poetry, articles, and imagery to inspire your practice of intentional sacred attunement to the more-than-human world)
Ongoing membership in a social platform for community connections, conversations, and formation. It is helpful to have an eco-system approach to this work. While we all live within our own niches, having a place where we meet within our shared interconnectedness is key to the inspiration and regeneratively of this ensouled work.
Requires additional purchase of Rewilding Workbook
Subscription price: $10/month
Monthly gatherings may include:
Nature-based prayers & rituals
Expert teaching on a particular seasonal/elemental/psycho-spiritual aspect of the Rewilding Wheel (3-monthly gatherings per Rewilding Wheel quadrant)
Insight into Mary’s own Rewilding Wheel practice
Deep conversation/questions/sharing of your own personal practices and wild explorations
Community connections
Sign up at any time and join in and if this doesn’t serve you and your soul-formation, cancel at any time as well.
nature mandala by hanspeter schranz