The Holy Wild with Victoria Loorz

Latest Episodes:

Playing Jazz with Inherited Religious Tradition with Father Pete Nunnally Oct 17, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Father Pete Nunnally, Episcopal priest, author of Catching Hope, and founder of Water and Wilderness Church, a Wild Church community along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Pete’s early encounters with the sacred in nature shaped everything, even when he didn’t know it. Water and Wilderness Church is what happened when he finally recognized what he’d been trying to recreate all along.

Pete shares the spiritual wisdom of reading the beach: how the breaks in a sandbar reveal where the fish actually are, and how the disruptions in our own lives might be exactly where new life is gathering.Together, they explore what it means to play jazz with inherited religious traditions and to return in fidelity to the same place, season after season, until a real relationship with the living world becomes possible.

Connect with Father Pete:

Website: petenunnally.com
Book: Catching Hope: The Hidden Spiritual Wisdom of Fishing
Church: Water and Wilderness Church
Substack: fatherpetethewildernesspriest.substack.com
Instagram: @fr_pete_the_wilderness_priest

Mentioned in the episode:

Book: The Body of God by Sallie McFague

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
03:47 Interview Begins
08:26 Moving Outdoors
12:39 Surprise as Indicator of Sacred
14:45 The Potomac
16:34 Not Alone
18:02 Vulnerable to the Seasons and Elements
21:01 Intellecting and Theologizing
22:22 Fidelity to Place
23:54 A Lesson In Co-Regulation
25:46 Francis' Vision of The Body of Christ
27:40 The St. Francis Service
31:06 Fishing, Death, Destruction
37:28 Reading
42:32 Wild Invitation
43:59 Credits

The God of Wild Places with Tony Jones Oct 03, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz reconnects with her old seminary classmate, author Tony Jones, whose book God of Wild Places explores hunting, conservation, and a deeper reckoning with the cycles of life and death that connect us to the living world. After losing his marriage, home, and church career in his forties, Tony found refuge outdoors, where a new spirituality slowly replaced the faith he had once known inside church walls.

Together, they reflect on what our disconnection from land, food, and death has cost us, and widen the conversation to the collapse of institutional Christianity itself. As old sources of spiritual authority lose their hold, Victoria and Tony wonder what might emerge in their place, and how we might find new language, community, and practices for encountering the sacred in relationship with one another and the more-than-human world.

Connect with [guest:

Website: reverendhunter.com
Substack: jonestony.substack.com
Book: The God of Wild Places
Novel Trilogy
- Out now: Son of Helena: Constantine the Great, Book I
- Out now: In This Sign: Constantine the Great, Book II
- Pre-order: The Thirteenth Apostle: Constantine the Great, Book III

Mentioned in the episode:

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
05:07 Interview Begins
08:34 Hunting and Predation
16:44 Necessary Collapse
21:22 The Spiritual Climate of Today
25:01 The Crisis of Authority
28:35 Spiritual Containers
36:18 Tony's Wild Edge
43:13 Wild Invitation
44:13 Credits

REBROADCAST: Refugia Faith, Creating Sanctuary & Finding Home with Debra Rienstra Sep 19, 2026

Show notes

September and the Autumn Equinox have arrived and found us at the Center for Wild Spirituality in a season of both deep contemplation and action. The Crow Cohort of the Seminary Of The Wild is beginning our two year journey together while Victoria finishes the draft of her next book. So we've chosen to re-release a pair of our favorite episodes from our inaugural season.
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In this conversation, Debra Rienstra, PhD, author of Refugia Faith and professor of English at Calvin University, joins Victoria Loorz to explore refugia, a biological term for small pockets of life that survive widespread environmental stress and become sources of regeneration after collapse. Debra invites us to imagine these protected pockets are also in our communities as forms of sanctuary amid increasingly uninhabitable social, spiritual, and ecological conditions. Together, they reflect on how small gatherings rooted in love for the land can counter paralysis in the face of global crisis and rewild our sense of vocation and voice. They explore the spiritual risk of loving places we may not own or keep, while naming how restoration begins through intimate, connected acts of care that allow life to persist and return.

Connect with Debra:

Website: debrarienstra.com
Book: Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth
Newsletter: refugianewsletter.substack.com
Upcoming Book: Refugia Church (January 2027)

Mentioned in the episode:

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:30 — Introduction
04:18 — Refugia
09:28 — Finding My Small Work
12:14 — Deciding the Work Based on Context
15:03 — Examples of Human Refugia
20:51 — From Passivity to Citizenship
24:51 — Loving Places That Are Only Yours for a Time
30:06 — Choosing to Belong
32:29 — Grieving Reality Together
34:48 — Mitigation and Adaptation
40:32 — A Kalo Farmer in Relationship With the Land
43:34 — The Book of Nature & Pantheism Paranoia
47:00 — The Wild Edge
50:33 — Wild Invitation
53:54 — Credits

REBROADCAST: Indigenous Wisdom For the Edges of Western Spirituality with Randy Woodley Sep 05, 2026

Show notes

September and the Autumn Equinox have arrived and found us at the Center for Wild Spirituality in a season of both deep contemplation and action. The Crow Cohort of the Seminary Of The Wild is beginning our two year journey together while Victoria finishes the draft of her next book. So we've chosen to re-release a pair of our favorite episodes from our inaugural season, starting today with our dear friend, Randy Woodley.
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In this conversation with Victoria Loorz, Randy Woodley shares stories from his Cherokee lineage, his mother’s deep communion with plants and animals, and his decades of land based ministry at Eloheh Farm. Together they explore why many today stand on the "inside and outside edges" of the Christian story, the collapse of institutional religion, and how Creator often works through seasons of chaos. Woodley describes this era as a time of composting, where old systems break down so more relational and grounded ways of being can emerge. He invites listeners to let go of rigid categories and doctrines and return to what he calls our original human vocation: co-sustaining the community of creation through simple acts of love, reciprocity, and right relationship, where meals become communion, tending becomes prayer, and all beings are kin.

Rev. Dr. Randy Woodley, Ph.D., is a farmer, activist scholar, speaker, teacher, and Indigenous wisdom keeper whose work spans spirituality, justice, culture, racial diversity, regenerative farming, and our relationship with the Earth.

Connect with Randy:

Book: Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth
Book: How Western Christian Got It Wrong (Out now!)
Substack: @rwoodley7
Personal Website: randywoodley.com
Eloheh Website: eloheh.org

Mentioned in the episode:

Documentary: The Year The Earth Changed

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:35 – Introduction
07:10 – Interview Starts
08:49 – The Land Who Raised Randy
10:43 – Academy Experience
12:18 – Eloheh
13:25 – Bridging Across the Edges
15:44 – Widespread Abandonment of Institutionalized Western Religion
19:40 – Replacing the Programs with Relationship
24:31 – Co-Sustainers
27:41 – Finding New Language
31:50 – Becoming Rooted
36:08 – Repairing the Separations
38:32 – Seeds Are Our Treasure
40:04 – The War on Indigenous Lands
42:33 – Create Human Rights for the Earth
44:15 – Sacred Clowns
46:49 – Sacred Invitation

Coming Down to Earth with Barbara Brown Taylor Aug 22, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with beloved author, priest, and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor about her forthcoming book, Coming Down to Earth, and the shift that happens when religious people stop looking "up and away" for the sacred and begin paying attention to the living world right beneath our feet. During the solitude of the pandemic, Barbara found herself listening more deeply to the 175 acres of land where she lives in rural Georgia, eventually realizing that rather than simply caring for the land, the land had been caring for her all along.

They move through the wholeness that includes the harshness of the living world, from a brown thrasher taken by a hawk to Darwin's parasitic wasp, resisting a sentimental spirituality in favor of one "saved by the whole-truthness" of what is. Falling in love with a place, Barbara reflects, means entering its suffering as well as its beauty, learning from decomposition and nurse logs and irrepressible new growth what seminary never taught: how to release a rescuing, storybook God and be initiated, instead, more deeply into reality itself.

Connect with Barbara:

Website: barbarabrowntaylor.com
Upcoming book: Coming Down to Earth: On Being Embraced by the Soul of a Place
Book: Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others

Mentioned in the episode:

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
04:24 Interview Begins
05:35 Coming Down To Earth
08:33 The Wild Loving Back
10:47 Saved by the Wholeness of the World
13:09 Learning What We Couldn't In Church
18:54 Reading as We Write
21:09 What Is Emerging For The Christ Tradition?
24:45 Theology Worries
28:53 Interreligious Dialogue
29:57 How The Wild Ones Experience The Holy
34:12 That Which Connects
36:46 What Do These Words Even Mean?
41:41 Darshan
43:06 Barbara's Next Invitation
45:16 Wild Invitation
46:20 Credits

The Gospel of Trees with Dr. Thomas Arentzen Aug 08, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Thomas Arentzen, a Norwegian author and docent in Church History at Lund University, whose work uncovers a forgotten Christian tradition where trees, birds, and the more-than-human world were understood not as the backdrop to human salvation, but as active participants in the sacred life of creation. Thomas specializes in ecological perspectives in (and on) the Christian world, and is the author of the newly released The Gospel of Trees.

Together, they explore the mysterious dendrites, early Christian monks who lived in trees, along with saints praying alongside cypresses, birds singing hymns to God, and ancient visions of all creation joined in a cosmic liturgy. Recovering our kinship with the living world, Thomas shares, is not something new but a return to Christianity's own roots. Faith becomes not something practiced apart from creation, but a way of belonging within a community of life where all beings share in the praise of God.

Connect with Thomas:

Mentioned in the episode:

Film: Silent Friend
Book: The Overstory by Richard Powers
Film: Disclosure Day
Individual: Margaret Wheatley
Organization: Mystical Theology Network
Organization: Dumbarton Oaks Garden
Book: Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard
Book: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Wiki: Saint Christina the Astonishing
Book: Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods by Julia "Butterfly" Hill
Mark 8:22-25 Jesus Heals a Blind Man at Bethsaida

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction
05:28 - Interview Begins
08:05 - The Pull To Place
10:27 - Christianity's Relationship with Trees
15:05 - Synchronicity of Emerging Fields
17:16 - The Dendrites
23:26 - Is Religion Only A Human Enterprise?
27:27 - The Worldview of Kin and Neighbor
36:47 - Countering Many Fundamentalisms
39:20 - Shifting Attention
44:08 - Drawn Next to the Birds
46:15 - Wild Invitation
49:23 - Credits

Jesus Dissolving into the Earth: Rewilding Christianity with Dr. Lisa Dahill Jul 25, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with the Dr. Lisa Dahill, Director of the Center for Transformative Spirituality at Hartford International University. Lisa is a eco-theologian and internationally recognized Bonhoeffer scholar, whose work explores what becomes possible when the walls between God and world begin to dissolve. After years teaching worship and liturgy within seminary walls, an encounter with fresh bear tracks in the snow transformed not only Lisa's relationship with the living world, but her understanding of Christianity itself.

Together, they explore Bonhoeffer's provocative claim that God and world are not two realities but one. Lisa, author of the forthcoming Jesus in the Earth: Rewilding Christian Spirituality, offers a radical vision of faith, not as escape from the world, but as a way of inhabiting reality more fully.

Connect with Lisa:

Email: ldahill@hartfordinternational.edu
Website: Hartford International University for Religion & Peace - Faculty: Lisa Dahill
Website: HIU Ecological Programs and Initiatives
Yale Article (pdf): Rewilding Christian Spirituality: Outdoor Sacraments and the Life of the World
Article: An Emerging Eco-Christology
Article: On Predation, Eucharist, and the Resurrection
Book: Reading From The Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation
Book: Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril
Website: Lisa's Academia Page

Mentioned in the episode:

Holy Wild Episode: Awakening a Forest Sense: Grief, Mystery, and the Reformation of Faith with Michael Ellick

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction
04:10 – Interview Begins
06:21 – The Land Who Raised Lisa
08:23 – The Bear
09:23 – "Suddenly I Am the Bear"
11:27 – Jesus Dissolving
13:47 – Horizontal Transcendence
16:57 – Bonhoeffer
18:13 – There's Only One Reality
23:42 – It's Time for Christianity to Evolve
29:06 – Creating Wild Sanctuary
32:38 – Courage to Be Honest
35:36 – A Change in Leadership
37:51 – Predation
41:24 – Resurrection
47:07 – Programs at HIU
49:36 – Wild Invitation
51:36 – Credits

Sacred Listening and the Art of Seeing the Other with Daniel Epstein Jul 11, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Daniel K. Epstein, photographer, author, and founder of Portraits in Faith, a twenty-six-year project of environmental portraiture and spiritual interviews spanning 500 people across 30 countries. Portraits in Faith is a traveling exhibit, a process of conversation-ing with people very different than you, and a nonprofit committed to sacred listening which leads to a conscious understanding that there is no "other." Daniel has devoted his life to asking people how they encounter mystery, meaning, doubt, love, and the sacred. His work demonstrates how sacred listening itself can become a practice of healing in a polarized world.

Daniel reflects on growing up Jewish in the American South, the personal crisis that cracked open his understanding of faith, and the questions that have guided hundreds of conversations across cultures and traditions. Victoria and Daniel sit with the tension between the particular and the universal, what the wild teaches us about trust and belonging, and why learning to truly see one another may be one of the most vital spiritual practices of our time.

Connect with Daniel:

Website: portraitsinfaith.org
Youtube: @portraitsinfaith
Exhibit Info: portraitsinfaith.org/exhibit

Mentioned in the episode:

Portraits In Faith Interview with James Finley: God Is All and All Is Love
Retreat Center: Ghost Ranch
Book: The Coming of the Cosmic Christ by Matthew Fox
Book: The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr
Organization: The Center for Action and Contemplation
Musical Artist: Netanel Goldberg (Spotify)
Book: The Death of the Mythic God by Jim Marion

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction
04:07 – Interview Begins
07:12 – The Calling Behind Portraits in Faith
11:34 – The Portraits in Faith Format
16:19 – Going Beyond "The Other"
17:53 – Warmth and Competence
19:15 – The Particular and the Universal
23:57 – Portraits in Faith
29:05 – Sacred Listening
34:12 – Dialogue Across Exclusive Truth Claims
40:16 – Beholding the Other with Wisdom
45:09 – What Gives You Hope?
48:13 – Wild Invitation
49:50 – Credits

Wild Water, Holy Porosity, and Becoming the Flow with Dr. Jean Golicz Jun 20, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Jean Golicz, Ed.D., retreat leader, writer, wild swimmer, and Seminary of the Wild Earth graduate whose doctoral research explores how place shapes our relationship with the holy. Raised in a Celtic family of fishermen and swimmers along the waters of Connecticut, Jean spent a lifetime near water—yet it wasn't until her year in the Seminary of the Wild Earth cohort invited her into relationship with a particular beloved that water became not simply a place to swim, but a teacher, guide, and spiritual practice.

Together, they trace Jean's path from competitive swimmer to cold-water pilgrim, from bridge builder to portal, and from going with the flow to becoming it. Cold water, she discovered, made her porous—permeable to the living world in ways she hadn't expected, and to the costs of transformation: the relationships that can't survive the person you're becoming, and the grace of learning, after a lifetime of rescuing, to simply witness and hold. At its heart, this episode explores what becomes possible when we stop standing beside the flow of life and allow ourselves to become part of it.

Listen to the full conversation for a special discount code for the upcoming September Seminary of the Wild Earth journey. Curious to learn more? Join Victoria for one of the final discernment calls on Wednesday, June 24 at 12pm PT and experience the pulse of the cohort for yourself, or book a 1:1 conversation with a guide here.

Mentioned in the episode:

Connect with the Center:

Website: wildspirituality.earth
Victoria's Website: victorialoorz.com
Email: hello@wildspirituality.earth
Linktree: linktr.ee/ctrforwildspirituality
Instagram: @center_for_wild_spirituality

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
05:21 Interview Begins
07:30 The Theological Calling
09:47 Ingesting Nature As Transformative Theology
12:34 Cold Water Swimming
15:53 A Way Other Than Competition
17:24 Interpersonal Challenge to Worldview Shift
19:15 Sacred Yes and Sacred No
20:06 Seminary Experience
24:49 Seminary Language
27:25 Bridges and Portals
31:48 Flow and Feminine
34:06 A Space Free of Judgment
37:26 A Space Full of Safety
39:15 Inherent Discomfort
41:12 Routine, Ritual, and Rhythm
43:49 All Ages
47:15 Solastalgia
49:33 The Loss Is Part of The Beauty
52:16 Informed Invitation to Intervention
56:04 Awakening Is Happening
57:57 Wild Invitation
59:20 Credits

Grief, Song, and Multi-Species Liberation with Alexandra "ahlay" Blakely Jun 06, 2026

Show notes

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Alexandra "ahlay" Blakely, singer-songwriter, communal grief tender, and community organizer, and the creator of WAILS: Songs for Grief, an album recorded with 200 voices entirely dedicated to grief, inspired by whales and Francis Weller's five gates of grief. Drawing from the lineages of movement song, Dagara grief ritual, and a lifelong relationship with whales, Alexandra has spent years developing her practice at the intersection of collective mourning, ancestral remembrance, and the emerging movement for the rights of nature.

Together, they explore what it means to grieve what we love as an act of reverence — and what it takes to carry that grief without being destroyed by it. Alexandra reflects on the land and water that raised her, the dreams that called her home after eleven years in Mexico, and a vision of multi-species liberation rooted in the belief that humans belong to this earth — and have a role within it urgently worth reclaiming.

Audio note: Alexandra's world was very alive during this recording. You will hear sounds of planes, cars, and dogs.

Content Warning: Discussion of suicidal ideation starting at 28:01 to 28:29. Please listen with kind care for yourself.

Connect with Alexandra: