Founder of Deep Calls to Deep: Certified Forest Therapy Guide
Civic ritual is the art of shaping moments that help communities remember who they are and imagine who they might become. I learned this practice not in a single classroom, but across decades of leading people through life’s most tender thresholds—weddings, funerals, baptisms, vigils, community blessings, and Sunday gatherings at High Places Community Church, where I’ve served for more than 30 years. Those years taught me how story, scripture, poetry, and shared silence can open a room, soften fear, and invite deeper imagination. That same sensibility now animates my work with Oak Ridge Periodic Tables, and guides my relationships with newer national partners like the National Issues Forums and the New Pluralists and many others who are busy intersecting where civic life, art, and spiritual presence meet in meaningful ways.
Civic ritual, at its best, becomes a living space where people encounter belonging, healing, and possibility. It happens best locally, but can be found in national networks and spaces of shared collective belonging—even when the specific work we do might differ.
Today, this thread carries through every part of my work—whether guiding forest-based contemplative practices through Deep Calls to Deep, tending the relational ecosystems of Oak Ridge, or equipping leaders in resiliency networks to hold steady in uncertain times.
