Leopold Writing Program

Please join the Leopold Writing Program for our 13th Annual Aldo & Estella Leopold R E S I D E N C Y  L E C T U R E.

RACHEL WHEELER

“Traces in the Sand: Wisdom from the Christian Desert Tradition for a Time of Collapse”

The earliest desert Christians lived in third and fourth century Egypt, fleeing civilizational turmoil to live close to the land where they could deeply experience their truest selves and God. In this talk, Rachel Wheeler introduces us to the wisdom of this tradition for a time of civilizational turmoil and transition requiring that we, too, recognize our truest selves and the source of the sacred. What is it about deserts that make them uniquely evocative of this kind of work? Long considered a potent site of divine encounter in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions, the desert hosts such phenomena as erosion, mirage, and oasis – symbolic invitations from the landscape for understanding how our current moment requires that we engage what’s wearing away, what’s unreal, and what’s truly replenishing in our work with one another and enables us to reweave our relations with the more-than-human. Sharing stories from the Christian desert tradition, Rachel offers appreciation for the wilderness spirituality implicit in its sayings and stories that can continue to shape our lives.

Rachel Wheeler considers herself a heritage keeper of the Christian desert tradition. Deeply formed by its wisdom stories, she brings training in Christian spirituality, ecopsychology, and ecotherapy to her reading and use of these ancient sources. Currently she works as Associate Professor at the University of Portland (Oregon) where she teaches classes in ecospirituality, ecology and religion, and spirituality and the arts. She is author of Desert Daughters, Desert Sons: Rethinking the Christian Desert Tradition, Ecospirituality: An Introduction, and Radical Kinship: A Christian Ecospirituality. As a practicing Christian, she believes part of her heritage-keeping to involve imagining new ways Christianity can repair the damage occasioned in its name through centuries of imperialism, colonialism, and sexism.