Not deconstructing religion, Rewilding spirituality
You’ve heard it said that deconstructing the religion of our youth feels like wandering lost in the wilderness. But I say to you, not all who wander are lost. Questions are sacred, and certitude is tenuous at best. When we start to question what we’ve been taught to believe and venture beyond the fenced-in confines of institutionalized religiosity, we might just wander into the thin places of freedom and hope that reside in the inner landscapes of our hearts and the vast interdependent landscapes of our shared Earth.
Ecological rewilding offers a framework for healing the natural world, grounded in the belief that if we cooperate with nature to restore ecosystems, it will thrive in its natural state. A forest, freed from human intervention, returns to an interdependent balance that fosters an extravagant diversity of life.
Similarly, rewilding faith is about letting our natural curiosity and desire for connection run wild. It’s not about deconstructing the institutional structures of religion just to construct a new “civilized” or manicured version of spirituality.
Rewilding calls us to return “the soft animal of our body” to the natural habitats from which religious instruction, cultural expectations, and internalized domestication have removed it.
Rewilding our spiritual lives is a gentle return to our natural longing for the divine—a return that doesn’t demand rigid answers but welcomes a quiet openness. It’s a softening, an invitation to let go of the hard edges of dogma and step back into simple, sensory ways of being, where faith is something we touch, taste, and feel. In this space, creativity is alive and well, and we’re encouraged to explore, to play, to let faith bloom in ways that feel vibrant and alive in our modern world.
Here, curiosity is cherished; questions are the stepping stones that deepen our journey rather than divert it. Rewilding calls us to build connections, to open paths where ideas and practices flow freely, linking us in community and keeping loneliness at bay. And most of all, it reminds us to be flexible, to bend and adapt as we learn and grow. In this way, our faith remains a living, breathing thing—something wild and wonderful, always evolving, always leading us closer to the heart of what matters.
In her observations, Suzanne Simard explains, “What I was observing in the sickness of the forests was that by managing one aspect—one mode of trees interacting—we were actually making the forests sick by removing the plants they needed to thrive after disturbances and through succession. Those plants play crucial roles in ecosystems. I was especially focused on plantations of Douglas fir with paper birch, yet the province was intent on eradicating these birches, aspens, cottonwoods, alders, and fireweed—everything.
They’re just like, ‘Clean them out.’ But, through my research, it became clear that birches were vital in hosting bacteria with antifungal properties that actively fought the pathogens threatening the Douglas firs. When we removed the birches and the consortium of beneficial bacteria, disease spread through these conifers that we so highly revered. We inadvertently harmed ourselves by failing to understand the interconnectedness of the system.” Suzanne Simard, Emergence Magazine
Birch trees don’t need to be suppressed for firs and pines to flourish. Likewise, fallen logs don’t need to be removed in a misguided effort to tidy up the forest floor. These decaying trees provide shelter for insects essential to the ecosystem's balance, with new life emerging from the remnants of ancestor trees.
In both ecological and theological rewilding, a crucial first step is to awaken to the crisis that is unfolding everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. We must question the old frameworks of domestication and domination rooted in narratives of human superiority over nature and a separation between the divine and creation. For eons, both culture and church have trained us to believe that we should and can control our physical and spiritual realms—a belief that has inflicted near-irreparable harm upon ourselves, others, and the earth.
Rewilding our faith uproots the invasive species of harmful dogma and doctrine, allowing diverse understandings and connections to thrive. As we come to recognize the inherent value of all living beings—ourselves, others, and the earth—and understand that our actions have a ripple effect that extends far beyond our individual lives, a vibrant and flourishing faith takes root.
Rewilding is never fully complete; rather, it’s a way of life—a path that taps into the primal essence of the world around us. It reminds us that, despite our efforts to tame and control nature, a whole and fulfilling life requires the nourishment of freedom and interdependence. With this knowledge, we’re invited into a world of awe and wonder that is both humbling and empowering. If we dare to embrace the wildness within and around us, we may discover profound, authentic connections with our ideal self, others, and God.
Rewilding honors the divine presence in our natural world. Rewilding faith is an open-hearted path to deepening our connection with the divine spark within ourselves, others, and the earth.
Just as a forest cannot thrive if it’s reduced to a tightly managed monocrop destined for lumber, our spiritual lives cannot flourish if our hearts, minds, and bodies are domesticated by doctrines and ideologies that limit our freedom and separate us from our true selves, others, and the ground of our being.
Rewilding Advent
Although I now follow the sacred seasons as framed by the Wheel of The Year, I still love the seasons of the Christian calendar in which I was raised. One of my favorite seasons is Advent, the season of waiting and watching for the Incarnation.
Advent is a season of waiting for the In-Breaking of Peace and the Incarnation of Love. It is a season for lighting candles in the darkness because we believe the Light of the world will soon shed the light of eternal love and justice on every dark corner of the world.
But we are not called to wait passively. We are called to partner with the Ultimate. Isn’t that the meaning of the Incarnation? The Divine, whoever They are, chooses to work with and through Creation in the waters of birth and baptism, touching others, breaking bread, foot-washing, and corpse bathing to enact the Message of love and reconciliation.
Are you looking for a community of kindred spirits with whom to journey through the Advent season? A journey that invites us to deepen our spiritual lives and our connection to the earth? If so, I hope you will consider joining me for a four-week online learning community, “Rewilding Advent,” designed to explore the spiritual and ecological themes of Advent and how the framework of ecological rewilding offers us a rich paradigm for rewilding our spirituality. You can learn more about Rewilding Advent on my website, Wildwood Wisdom.