This episode of the FORE podcast features Les Sponsel, Professor Emeritus in the department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii. Sponsel talks about his transdisciplinary research and teaching as one of the pioneers in developing the field of spiritual ecology—a complex, diverse, and dynamic arena at the interfaces of religions and spiritualities on the one hand and, on the other, environments, ecologies, and environmentalisms with intellectual, spiritual, and practical components. Along with numerous journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia articles, monographs, and several edited and co-edited books, he is also the author of the highly acclaimed book, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution (2012).

This video was recorded on June 29, 2024, during the Spiritual Ecology Conference, which was held at St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. This one-day event explored the links between spirituality, ecology, and peacemaking. It was a part of the Faith and Moral Courage project, funded by Fetzer. To find out more about this project, visit here.

Claudia Ford is a professor and chair of the department of Environmental Studies at State University of New York, Potsdam. She is an African American elder and humanist, a scholar who has studied, written about and taught the issues of environmental philosophy from spiritual, ecological, and cultural perspectives. She is devoted to imparting knowledge of how to raise human consciousness to get us through this transitional period of intense environmental and social crises. Her fifty-year career in international development and women’s health spans all continents. She is a midwife, teacher, and visual artist with four postgraduate degrees including her PhD in environmental studies.

In this One On One Interview from Orbis Books, Robert Ellsberg and Diarmuid O’Murchu discuss O’Murchu’s book, Ecological Spirituality. The changes that humans must make to address the complex ecological crises today are unlikely to happen if they do not experience a spiritual revolution. In Ecological Spirituality, Diarmuid O’Murchu invites readers to the revolutionary work of a life-promoting spirituality for this time. He explores how people must move beyond understandings of holiness that emphasize detachment from the world in favor of something beyond. In his welcoming style O’Murchu reintroduces readers to the long history of humanity’s relationship with the creative Spirit of God, including and transcending religious traditions in a growing horizon of faith. As readers rediscover the sacred here on Earth, they are called to connect spirit with Spirit, discerning and living an ecologically-focused spirituality for the well-being of creatures and ecosystems around the planet.

This episode of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology podcast features Will W. Adams, an ecopsychologist, psychotherapist, and meditation teacher who serves as a psychology professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sam Mickey speaks with Adams about the many perspectives that he integrates into his ecopsychological work, including transpersonal psychology, phenomenology, Christian mysticism, and Buddhism. Their discussion touches on many themes, from hope to heartbreak, including the heartbreaking realities of mountaintop removal. All of these compelling ideas and topics are part of his book, A Wild and Sacred Call: Nature–Psyche–Spirit (SUNY Press, 2023).

This lecture, “Ecospirituality: Introduction to Practices of Radical Kinship, Rewilding, and Ecotherapy,” was delivered by Rachel Wheeler, Associate Professor of Spirituality at the University of Portland on September 12, 2023.

This is the third of a special multi-part Living One series: “Earth Restoration and the Evolution of Human Consciousness.” This interview focuses on the topic of Spiritual Ecology.

This engaging conversation with Erin Lothes, author of Inspired Sustainability: Planting Seeds for Action and Senior Manager of the Laudato Si’ Animators program, explores several topics, including: how a sense of wonder and awe can support one’s concrete commitments to integral ecology; connecting a person’s Catholic faith with the environment via ecospirituality; engaging one’s head, heart, and hands to become a better practitioner of environmental sustainability; and to prayerfully discern one’s own personal Laudato Si´ Action Platform goals for the upcoming year.

This week’s episode of Spotlights features the artist and educator, Nicole Dixon. Nicole uses art as an interactive medium, and as a vehicle for self-transformation, community bridge-building, and positive social change. She talks about the ways her work engages with intersections between race, culture, politics, ecology, and spirituality. As she says in the artist statement for Transcendent Iconography, “There is always something unseen: a life force in natural objects—charcoal, paper, feathers, wood in a technological age, an ancient human need for ritual and spiritual purpose in a secular society, a power in those who are most marginalized by institutional oppressions.”

In the second session of the series, “Embracing an Alternative Orthodoxy,” the teaching of Richard Rohr is featured. He shares a Franciscan vision that connects us to all that exists.