Originally broadcast at 2:00 p.m. ET Monday, July 4, 2022.

Victoria Loorz, MDiv, is a "wild church pastor," an "eco-spiritual director," and co-founder of several transformation-focused organizations centering on the integration of nature and spirituality. She feels most alive when collaborating with Mystery and kindred spirits to create opportunities for people to re-member themselves back into intimate, sacred relationship with the rest of the living world. After twenty years as a pastor of indoor churches, she launched the first Church of the Wild, in Ojai CA, and began to meet others with the same sense of call to leave building and expand the Beloved Community beyond our own species. She then co-founded the ecumenical Wild Church Network. Victoria is co-founder and director of Seminary of the Wild, which is focused on a deep-dive yearlong Eco-Ministry Certificate program for all those who feel called by Earth and Spirit to "restore the great conversation (Thomas Berry).” She now calls Bellingham, Washington her home, a beautiful land along the Salish Sea on territory tended and loved for generations by the Coast Salish peoples, in particular the Nooksack and Lummi nations. Victoria's young adult children, Alec and Olivia, are wise, creative, tender souls, dedicated to creating a more inclusive, compassionate, and just world.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.