Sacred Belonging

The climate crisis is touching every ecosystem and human culture on earth through rising temperatures, erratic weather, displacement, and political instability. At its heart, it is a crisis of belonging. For centuries, dominant religious traditions have conceived of the divine as distant and nature as a backdrop for the human story but the tragedy of climate change now invites us to reimagine this orientation, to recover from its heartbreak, and to reclaim our place at the edge of hope in communion within a living, kinship-based web of belonging.

Sacred Belonging: offers practical guidance for religious professionals seeking to meet this moment with love, integrity, and embodied connection. Part I builds the theological and relational foundations necessary for earth-based spiritual care, moving from a disenchanted worldview through a recovery of kinship, belonging, grief, and Indigenous reciprocity as the ground from which genuine care grows. Part II turns that foundation into practice, introducing the GATHER model (Greeting, Attuning, Turning Toward, Honoring, Entrusting, and Returning) as a clear, teachable framework for earth-based spiritual care that can be applied to any health care or community context.