Voices of the Gathering

Throughout Defiant Love, participants will encounter teachers, thinkers, artists, ritual leaders, elders, and community practitioners exploring what resilient spiritual community can look like in our time.

Rather than gathering around a single keynote, the weekend brings many voices into conversation through short presentations, dialogue, experiential workshops, ritual, storytelling, and shared reflection.

Matthew Fox & Brian Swimme

Matthew Fox and Brian Swimme will join the Gathering virtually for a Saturday afternoon dialogue exploring the ecological, spiritual, and cultural imagination needed to nurture resilient and defiant communities.

Their conversation will invite us to consider how our understanding of the living universe can shape the voices, communities, and movements we create in response to the challenges of our time.

J. D. Stillwater

Science educator and Creation Spirituality teacher J. D. Stillwater will help open Saturday morning with a virtual keynote dialogue as the Gathering explores new and ancient ways of understanding resilience, relationship, and our place within the larger Earth community.

Ursula Goodenough

Biologist and author Ursula Goodenough will offer a Saturday morning virtual keynote dialogue, bringing the perspectives of science, meaning, and our relationship with the natural world into the Gathering's exploration of resilient community.

Nancy Ellen Abrams

Author and cultural philosopher Nancy Ellen Abrams will join us Saturday afternoon for a virtual presentation and conversation, contributing another voice to the Gathering's exploration of imagination, cosmology, and our shared future.

Saundi McClain-Kloeckener & Jeff Harrison, SJ

Friday evening begins by grounding Defiant Love in our relationship with land and water.

Saundi McClain-Kloeckener and Jeff Harrison, SJ, along with additional participants, will help guide an exploration of land memory, colonization, ecological degradation, and the stories carried by the places where we live.

This opening experience asks us not only to witness these histories, but also to consider how deeper relationship with land and water can lead toward gratitude, responsibility, and action.

Carol Kilby & Stephan Martin

Carol Kilby and Stephan Martin will help lead a Saturday afternoon ritual offering centered on Becoming the Change, preparing participants for the transformation, creativity, and communal ritual of Saturday evening.

Elder Wisdom: Twenty-Five Years of Creation Spirituality in Practice

On Sunday morning, Penny Andrews, Georgiana Lofty, Barbara Booth, and Tricia McMahon, members of the University of Creation Spirituality DMin class of 2001, will share stories from twenty-five years of carrying Creation Spirituality into their lives and communities.

Their conversation will explore what happened after graduation, where their work led them, what they have learned, and what their experience might offer those carrying Creation Spirituality into the future.

Cosmic Masquerade

At the heart of Saturday evening is the Cosmic Masquerade, a participatory Halloween celebration inviting us to encounter the more-than-human world through ritual, masks, music, movement, storytelling, grief, gratitude, and imagination. Animals and other beings become teachers and companions as we listen to the wounds of the Earth, receive the wisdom of the living world, and explore how creativity can become a form of resilient, loving action. The Masquerade is designed as a communal experience of transformation, carrying the Gathering from reflection into embodied hope, celebration, and renewed commitment.

And Throughout the Weekend...

Many additional facilitators and community members will lead ritual, movement, storytelling, artmaking, workshops, youth engagement, contemplative practice, and communal reflection.

The Gathering is intentionally participatory. Our presenters are not simply coming to speak to an audience. They are helping create a weekend in which everyone is invited to learn, imagine, practice, celebrate, mourn, and participate in the work of nurturing resilient community.

Additional presenters, workshop leaders, and session details will be announced as the Gathering program is finalized.