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Friday, October 30

Welcome, Witness, and Wonder: Land, Labor, and Legacy

Friday evening grounds our Gathering in relationship with the places, histories, communities, and living Earth that hold our stories. Through welcome, movement, conversation, and storytelling, we begin by cultivating gratitude, wonder, responsibility, and deeper connection.

  • 3:00 PM | Check-In

  • 4:30 PM | Body Prayer in the Field: Begin the weekend outdoors with movement, chants, and songs connecting us with Earth, place, and one another.

  • 5:00 PM | Meet & Greet

  • 5:30 PM | Supper

  • 6:30 PM | Gathering Together: Onsite and virtual participants gather in preparation for our shared opening evening.

  • 7:00–9:00 PM | Land, Labor, and Legacy With Saundi McClain-Kloeckener, Jeff Harrison, SJ, and Suzanne Renard Three St. Louis educators, historians, and storytellers invite us to listen more deeply to the land, labor, histories, and living legacies carried by the places we call home. Together we will explore how memory and relationship can lead toward gratitude, accountability, creative action, and Defiant Love.

  • 9:00 PM | Evening Body Prayer and DreamTime: Close the formal evening with reflection and a question to carry into the night

Saturday, October 31

Morning: Living and Letting Go in Changing Times

Saturday morning explores practices for resilient living: how we speak, imagine, ritualize, communicate, mourn, create, and remain connected during times of change.

  • 7:00 AM | Dawn Wonder, Joy, and Gratitude in Labyrinth

  • 7:30 AM | Breakfast

  • 8:45 AM | Morning Body Prayer in the Hall

  • 9:00 AM | JD Stillwater: Sex and Evolution: A Romance, A Communion

  • 9:45 AM | Ursula Goodenough: Eco-Spirituality

10:30 AM | Creation Spirituality Skill-Building Workshops

Choose among experiential workshops exploring practices for cultivating resilient spiritual community.

Live workshops are expected to include:

  • Ritual Space and Altars for Resilient Community with Lori Crockett

  • Cosmic Resilience for Changing Times with Stephan Martin An experiential exploration of the dynamics of the universe that can help us meet changing times with greater resilience, connection, transformation, and defiant love.

  • Creation Massquerade Ritual Prayer Language and Leadership with Michael Mansfield

Virtual workshops include:

  • Evolutionary Rituals for Resilient Community with Carol Kilby We can re-member our cosmic capacities so to navigate the 6th Extinction with love and courage. With the Dance of Intention, we will explore prayer as embodied intention with the Dance of Intention.

  • Labyrinth: A Dance of Four Powerful Paths with Mary Ann Wamhoff

11:00 AM | Creation Spirituality Skill-Building Virtual Workshops

  • Living Creation Spirituality with Charlie Dorsett reframes Creation Spirituality from a set of beliefs into a set of disciplines: belief only matters when it is enacted. It draws on Fox's Original Blessing, Creation Spirituality, and Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, and it insists this is a buffet, not a checklist. Some disciplines become staples, others get picked up when life calls for them.

  • Calling in the Ancestors with Barbara Flaherty

  • It's Up to Us (Now what?) with Diane Sontum We've all heard the meme, "Become The Change You Want to See in the World," but what does that mean for daily life? In this workshop, Di Sontum shares a vision for a healed world from her book, Return of the Yin, and invites us to live into the vision through our personal practices. 

11:30 AM–1:00 PM | Lunch, Rest, Conversation, and Integration

Saturday Afternoon: Imagining a Future Together

Saturday afternoon turns toward creativity, imagination, youth voices, ecological wisdom, and the movements we can create together.

  • 1:00 PM | Maskmaking or Totemmaking for Creation Massquerade led by Mary Plaster

  • 1:30 PM | Earth Spirit Award Celebration Experience the voices and visions of young ecological filmmakers as selected films are shared and the Earth Spirit Award recipients are celebrated.

  • 1:45 PM | ‍Drumming Circle Led by Diza Velasco

  • 2:00 PM | Cosmology Changed My Life with Nancy Ellen Abrams

  • 2:45 PM | Joining the Dance of Defiant Love with Evolutionary Rituals With Carol Kilby and Stephan Martin

  • 3:30 PM | Break and Treats

  • 3:45–5:30 PM | Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme Keynote, conversation, and Q&A.

  • 5:30 PM | Supper

Saturday Evening

All Beings Cosmic Massquerade

7:00–9:00 PM | Cosmic Massquerade

At the heart of Saturday evening is the All Beings Cosmic Massquerade, a participatory Halloween celebration inviting us to encounter the more-than-human world through ritual, masks, music, movement, dance, song, storytelling, grief, gratitude, and imagination.

Moving through the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, we will give thanks for the beauty of creation, listen to the grief of Earth and its beings, receive wisdom and inspiration from the living world, and turn imagination toward loving and resilient action.

The evening will weave together music, drumming, art, ritual, movement, community voices, and the work created throughout the weekend. We will also remember and honor the lives and teachings of Jane Goodall and Joanna Macy.

Come ready to participate, create, move, listen, remember, and celebrate.

9:00 PM | DreamTime and Evening Conversation Close the celebration with reflection, followed by conversation, cocoa, and cookies.

Sunday, November 1

Integration, Commitment, and Carrying the Work Home

Sunday morning asks a practical question: What happens when we go home?

Through stories, reflection, conversation, and ritual, we will explore how the practices and relationships formed during the Gathering can ripple outward into our communities.

  • 7:00 AM | Morning Altar-Building Walk on the Land Led by Lori Crockett

  • 7:30 AM | Breakfast

  • 8:30 AM | Pack and Prepare for Departure

  • 9:00 AM | Morning Body Prayer

  • 9:15 AM | Wisdom Stories of Defiant, Resilient, Loving Communities: Penny Andrews, Georgiana Lofty, Barbara Booth, and Tricia McMahon share stories from 25 years of living Creation Spirituality beyond their studies at the University of Creation Spirituality. Where did their learning lead, what grew from it, and what have they discovered about sustaining meaningful work in community?

  • 10:00 AM | From Gathering to Action Small-group conversations invite participants to identify practical ideas for nurturing resilient community, building places of refuge and connection, strengthening mutual support, and carrying Defiant Love into their own communities.

  • 10:20–11:30 AM | First Sunday: Rippling In and Rippling Out Our traditional First Sunday gathering becomes the closing celebration and sending ritual for Gathering 2026.

  • 12:00 PM | Departure