The Holy Wild with Victoria Loorz

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

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:
Book: On the Mystery Discerning Divinity in Process by Catherine Keller
Paper: Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change by Glenn Albrecht
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

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:
Website: healingattheroots.com
Album: WAILS: Songs for Grief
Featured Song: All The Places
Featured Song: Sacred Wild One
Mentioned in the episode:
Movie: Free Willy
Movie: Whale Rider
Colleague: Linda Thai
Colleague: Laurence Cole
Wiki: the Dagaaba people
Colleague: Joanna Macy
Book: Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Colleague: César Rodríguez-Garavito
Colleague: Lyla June
TedX Talk: 3000-year-old solutions to modern problems - Lyla June
Book: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Colleague: Francis Weller
Book: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
Poem: Sweet Darkness by David Whyte
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:
0:00 – Introduction 
3:44 – Interview Begins 
8:08 – Love For Whales 
10:55 – Grief Medicine 
11:54 – Alexandra's Movements Music 
13:35 – Song: All The Places
18:30 – Ancestral Memory 
19:54 – An Ecosystem of Action 
24:01 – Multi-Species Liberation 
30:41 – Song: Sacred Wild One
33:53 – We Grieve What We Love 
43:05 – Alexandra's Wild Edge 
45:31 – Wild Invitation 
49:44 – Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Jon Young, award-winning wildlife tracker, storyteller, mentor, and author of influential books including What the Robin Knows. Since 1979, Jon has researched a single theme: why do some social groupings of people consistently facilitate deep nature connection, while others do not? Drawing from Indigenous wisdom traditions, mentoring lineages, and his own lifelong relationship with the living world, Jon has spent decades exploring how humans cultivate deep connection with nature, self, and community.

Together, they explore the lost art of mentoring and the ancient discipline of bird language as a doorway back to the connected mind. Jon reflects on the grandmothers and elders who shaped him, his decades of work with Indigenous communities including the Naro people of the Kalahari, and a vision from his annual self-reflection practice — one that carries an urgent message from future generations about what this moment is asking of us.

Connect with Jon:
Website: jonyoung.org
Book: What The Robin Knows
Mentioned in the episode:
Book: Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
Book: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller
Book: Guiding Lights by Eric Liu
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
03:59 — Interview Begins
05:07 — The Land Who Raised Jon
08:08 — An Enclaved Family
12:06 — Grandmotherly “Tricks”
14:10 — 10 Year Old Jon Meets Tom Brown
18:46 — The Naro People
22:34 — The Lifetime of Mentoring
26:37 — The 5 Needs For Mentorship
28:04 — The 10 Stones of Connection
36:24 — Needed Reflection
37:56 — Deep Bird Language
45:58 — Restoring Our Connective Capacity
49:05 — The Message from Future Generations
53:41 — Wandering Invitation
55:49 — Credits

In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Martin Shaw, mythologist, storyteller, wilderness rites-of-passage guide, and author of seventeen books, including his latest New York Times bestseller, Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us. Dr. Shaw is the director of the Westcountry School of Myth and founder of the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University.
Together, they explore the tension between wildness and discipline, myth and religion, exile and return. The conversation wanders through Dartmoor folklore, Orthodox liturgy, the role of beauty and ritual in a disenchanted age, and the deep hunger many people feel for forms of spirituality rooted in mystery, embodiment, and the living world. Martin reflects candidly on what has quietly shifted in him since reconnecting  with the Christian story the spiritual consequences of disconnection from land, and a story that didn’t make the final cut of his book — one that illuminates the challenge of this moment: how to ride the "age of the wolf" with courage and faith.

Connect with Martin:
Website: drmartinshaw.com
Website: schoolofmythopoetics.com
Book: Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us
Book: Scatterlings
Mentioned in the episode:
Book: The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle
Video: Ivan and the Grey Wolf
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
06:03 — Interview Begins
10:56 — Re-exploring The Old Stories
13:47 — Living Fidelity of Place
18:24 — Discipline of the Wild
20:42 — What’s Our Current Story?
24:41 — The Age of the Wolf
28:31 — The Religious Has a Place
31:22 — Eastern Orthodox Expressions
34:06 — How Jesus Changes Love
39:05 — Martin’s Wild Threshold
42:03 — Wild Invitation
43:36 — Credits