We welcome Soul Care partner and spiritual director, Eileen Gebbie to discuss what it means to wander through the wilderness and acquire wisdom. Eileen shares her experience being a Christian gay woman. She talks about how she found comfort in the United Church of Christ and went on to become an ordained minister. She shares why it’s so important to have a personal connection to nature and allow yourself to be a wild-born creature.
Meet Eileen
Eileen Gebbie is a queer, white, anti-racist spiritual director and forest therapy guide in Champaign County, IL. Her professional experience includes teaching at the University of Illinois, serving as staff at a community organizing alliance, being the Executive Director of a Habitat for Humanity affiliate, and serving all that is holy as the first female and first queer senior pastor at two congregations in the United Church of Christ (a non-creedal Christian denomination pushing the boundaries of radical inclusion).
Through Wisdom and Wilderness, she provides spiritual direction (companionship) and forest therapy. She has spent quite some time with people in crisis, people who are being actively oppressed, people who are curious, people who are fearful, people who are being born, and people who are dying. She works with individuals and groups to practice the arts of listening and partnering that take us beyond conversation and observation and into the heart and soul of being part of the planet at this particular time.
- Facebook: @EileenGebbieReverential
- Instagram: @EileenGebbieReverential
- Email: eileen@wisdomandwilderness.net
Resources We Mention
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- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred by Victoria Loorz
- You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh
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