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CERTIFIED DEEPTIME LEADERS 2023
The Deeptime Leadership program is a 9-month certification program that cultivates Deeptime Leaders, individuals who have a big-picture perspective that is aligned with the well-being and benefit of their communities, ecosystems, and the entire Earth Community. Through this program they have developed the skills, perspectives, and practices to guide individuals, groups, and organizations into alignment with a larger sense of purpose and contribution. They have also honed their skills through developing and implementing a personal project that expresses their own contribution to a better world in their own unique way. We at the Deeptime Network fully support and recommend these certificate recipients and invite you to be in touch with them about their work and their fields of interest.
For info about the upcoming DEEPTIME LEADERSHIP PROGRAM, click here
To see Deeptime Leaders and their work from our 2022 cohort, click here
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Primary Field of Application: Personal and Group Transformation
Project: My Deeptime project focused on developing a framework for personal transformation for everyday sacredness and ecological living, based on cosmogenesis, Deeptime principles, and the Internal Family Systems psycho-spiritual model. Using a Deeptime meditation/story as an entry point, this work grounds the participants within their inherent place of belonging within the cosmos, then allows them to identify, explore, and ultimately heal cultural assumptions of separation from nature and nature as a “resource.” The ultimate goal is a lived sense of oneness and mutually-enhancing relationship with all of life.
Bio: My bio is a quintessential crooked path, as I’ve searched out the education and experiences I’ve needed to try to make sense of living in this world. My background includes environmental engineering for a major energy corporation; an M.Ed. in sustainability education and related work with public schools, a non-profit education group, and writing curriculum for a university sustainability education program; permaculture design; community work; lots of workshop development and writing along the way; many years of non-dual spirituality and meditation, including group facilitation; Internal Family Systems formal training; lots of time outdoors; and parenting two lovely young people.
Saanichan, BC, Canada
Primary Field of Application: Education, Community Development
Project: My Deeptime emergence has involved exploring, discovering, and experimenting with ways to tell the New Story, with the body and its capacities for being/doing/knowing in the world at the centre of the story – a sort of physical education of the New Story for the ecozoic age. In a series of 2-hour sessions, the project uses story, games, and exercises adapted from the integral yoga practice called Awareness Through the Body to offer participants opportunities to obtain felt, somatic, sensory memories of Deeptime principles and concepts – in essence, to embody the New Story though a guided experience of the ways that bodies depend on creative engagements with nature. I have developed sessions based on 8 of the 10 Powers of the Universe, as described by Brian Swimme. These sessions will be offered as a course through Programs in Earth Literacies.
Bio: Sandy is a running club coach, theorist of the body, and ecozoic futurist, working broadly in the fields of physical and ecological education. With a background in feminist social theory and a PhD in Kinesiology, Sandy’s roles as a running coach and university teacher bring both athletes and academics into contact with their bodies in new and surprising ways. Her work centres on the theory and practice of using body-based pedagogies to begin dismantling the internalized structures of modernity, to open a space for a more intimate and integrated experience of the world. She currently coaches and teaches sessionally at the University of Toronto, and supports the programming efforts at PIEL.
Lune Valley, North Lancashire, UK
Primary Field of Application: Midwifing new ways of being human: in loving reverence, living in balance with the web of life through offering retreats, workshops, group dialogue, learning circles, soul companionship and joy in the gift of life
Project: Women Weaving Water is a shared inquiry into the practice of deep-listening to all the patterns Universe and Life have to teach us. Our inquiry will call for participation, exploration, co-creation, learning and unlearning and deep listening. Our shared and sacred task will be to draw lessons and practices for wise-woman-eldering – from the powers and patterns of Universe, of Earth and from the wisdom of the world’s indigenous traditions, from women’s wisdom, the world’s great spiritual traditions, from the new scientific understandings, and also from my own beloved heritage and tradition of the Gael. And then to embed those lessons in the way we live our own daily lives so we can hold our suffering world with courage, compassion and deep wisdom.
Bio: Born into a family of eleven children and raised in a loving community in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, my early upbringing was my most profound and inspiring teacher. After that came a few university degrees, and a fascinating apprenticeship in the arts, in government and in mediation until I emerged fully-fledged as a trained and practised facilitator and host of group dialogue processes. Finally and thankfully my spiritual journey converged with my career path to guide me into retreat leadership towards the great work of rediscovering our Earth as sacred in all its dimensions and our human role in its companionship.
Green Vasai, India
Primary Field of Application: Empowerment of Indigenous Girls/Women
Project: I am a story teller by nature and I myself am a story. It is my understanding that the present era is ‘Era of Stories’ – we hear stories of evolution, and in my view, Deeptime Leadership is a story of matter and spirit that is very much part of the unfolding Universe and is informed by storytelling perspectives. I use my Deeptime Leadership experience in my work with Indigenous people: knowing our roots is to know ourself and where we’re going. Through Deeptime Leadership I help others to embrace a bigger story by teaching Spoken English to the indigenous girls/women of India.
Bio: I am a member of the Sisters For Christian Community, and have served as President of the CRI (Conference of Religious India) Vasai unit. I hold a Doctor of Ministry (D. Min) in feminist theology and have taught at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeetha, Pune, and Gyan Deepa Vidyapeetha, a regional theologate in Gujarat. I have served as an intern at the United Nations for UNANIMA, an NGO representing women religious and have worked as a women’s empowerment program coordinator for Streevani (Voice of Women), Ecclesia of Women in Asia (EWA), and Indian Women Theologians Forum (IWTF). I am also a columnist for Global Sisters Report (GSR/NCR) and an editor of the bulletin ‘Birthing a New Vision.’ I am also a trained yoga teacher and conduct my signature program – MADness (Music-Art-Dance) at retreats around India and beyond. I also offer courses on Spoken English and sustainable skills to the indigenous girls/women seeking jobs. Contact: [email protected], WhatsApp: 0017875329664
Crescent, IA, USA
Primary Field of Application: Correspondence and interiority with nature and art as elements of an emergent dialogue
Project: My emergence began with reading, reading, reading, letting my mind move from insight to insight, feeling my way in a direction that was known yet unknown. Early in Module 3, I received an invitation to join an art residency and symposium where I led a workshop. Its invitation for Being with our Possibilities was a perfect support structure for my readings to begin to take form. As I review my documentation, I can see that my work is about Correspondence and Interiority that is deeply personal work that flows into emergent dialogue. It is a process for emerging from the modern mindset and aligning with the universe.
Bio: I began as a college assistant professor using qualitative methods and co-authored The School Principalship: An Organizational Stability Role. As hand-held video cameras emerged I became a video documenter with not-for-profit groups in the environment, women’s organizations and arts education. My personal engagement as an artist emerged through a Certificate of Merit from the Chicago Botanical Garden in Botanical Arts. Website: CorrespondenceWithNature.com
Suhum Eastern Region, Ghana, West Africa
Primary Field of Application: Education, New creative strategies of reconciliation between
human beings and nature
Project: My allurement has arisen from the opportunity I had to learn from the Deeptime Leadership Program. The rich information and wisdom shared through this program have been very inspirational and inspired me to help create behavioral change for moving into an Ecozoic Era. My emergence is to provide the opportunity for young students between 12 to 18 years to understand their responsibilities to the environment and also create an awareness of the Universe story. This is to be implemented through the formation of clubs in the various Basic Schools within my reach. Using a Deeptime mindset I am helping to create new creative strategies to reconcile young students and nature.
Bio: I am a Basic School teacher in Ghana, and I have taught since 2016. I currently live in Suhum Eastern region, Ghana with my wife and two children. In 2014, Jim Grant, Rose, and I visited the Permaculture Institute of Ghana which whetted my appetite for curiosity and knowledge in agriculture. I have collaborated with Jim Grant to work on the best way to produce food and its distribution in my region. Reach out to: [email protected]
New Haven, CT, USA
Primary Field of Application: Eco-spirituality, human and community development, The Great Work
Project: The Cosmogenesis of Ecozoic Elders. The generative relationship of cataclysm to creativity in the emergent universe prompted my allurement to explore the path of Ecozoic Elderhood as a vital and vibrant contributing life-phase within the aging process. Elders trusted for their accumulated Earth-human wisdom and grounding are critically necessary but largely absent in our contemporary society in transition. As we move more deeply into ecological and societal uncertainty, emergent elders of any age can be guided and empowered through Deeptime storytelling and experiencing to bring their presence, their intergenerational and inter-species care, and their life resilience to their communities of belonging.
Bio: Frances “Em” Sink is a licensed clinical psychologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister who brought mindfulness practices and the Work That Reconnects to her ecospirituality and justice work before joining the Deeptime Leadership Program. Today Em works primarily as a spiritual director, collaborative retreat facilitator, and eco-justice activist. She can be reached at [email protected]
Herefordshire, England, UK
Primary Field of Application: Personal and Cultural Change
Project: Living the Universe: Inspiration and Community in Tumultuous Times.
Universe longs to live you. As the acorn naturally becomes the oak, so is the potential cosmic human embedded in each of us. In the company of others, learn to become a note in the infinite chord of our magnificent unfolding Universe. Let a felt sense of its power and beauty entice you to become the fullest person you can be and so help create a better world for all.
You will be guided to use movement and experiential practices, audio input, possibility questions, meditations, Universe mantras, dance playlists to bring forth your cosmic human and so learn to give and receive the fierce love which arises from deepest intimacy with Universe. Participate in the dance of energy and matter that brings forth ever new manifestations of Life. Support each other as we navigate the profound losses of these times and dare to birth the new in the cracks and spaces that emerge. www.livingtheuniverse.com launches in Autumn as well as on Insight Timer meditation app.
Bio: I love Universe, its constant, mysterious unfolding and the inner human journey of becoming its intimate creative partner. I love birds, hedgehogs, dancing, wild swimming, nature, deep connection with self and others, play, joy, authenticity, and visioning the better world that I know is possible. A 25 year journey with ME/CFS has gifted me with a profound sense of my body and how she can resonate and flow Universe’s promptings. Contact [email protected] for details/mailing list.
Ithaca, NY, USA
Primary Field of Application: Interfaith work with a focus on ACTivities that can benefit significant segments of our communities
Project: I am the Chairperson of Area Congregations Together (ACT) in Ithaca, a group of about 15 religious organizations, predominantly Christian. My focus was on integrating the wisdom of the Deeptime Journey to our perspectives, to work toward a deeper and more unified system that will be able to move us into the Ecozoic Era.
Bio: After growing up in California, and graduating from Princeton University, I went to Ghana in the US Peace Corps as a math teacher. I became deeply connected to Ghanaian people and culture and also to the Hindu spiritual tradition. Upon returning to the US, I made a radical change in the direction of my life to faith-based community development, spending over 40 years in rural Louisiana and, more recently, 8 years in Ithaca, NY.
Metro Manila, Philippines
Primary Field of Application: Spiritual Formation, Holistic Health and Healing
Project: ‘I am U: Claiming My Primordial Powers’ is an ongoing adventure where I get to discover – cognitively and experientially – each of the powers of the Universe as put together and extensively described by Brian Thomas Swimme. I am gathering scientific facts, insights, stories, and practices that, when woven together, can lead to one’s awakening and deepening of consciousness as a cosmological being. From this will emerge a collection of resources that may serve as a companion to those who would like to explore the cosmological powers themselves.
Bio: Tess Rapadas has served as a campus minister and taught basic Theology courses to college students for more than a decade. She co-authored Pilgrimage to Sacred Spaces: An Introduction to World Religions, a textbook for senior high school students. She facilitates workshops and communal reflection on ecological consciousness and spirituality.
Kerala, India
Primary Field of Application: Liberative interventions in academia and grassroots for bringing about justice, equality, inclusion and liberation
Project: My emergence can be expressed as ‘becoming an interbeing,’ a life-time project that got greater clarity through the Deeptime Leadership course. I envisage developing a ‘cosmic village,’ which would be an inclusive and energizing retreat space that could facilitate realizing the Deeptime vision of inter-dependent and mutually affirming relationships between all beings.
Bio: I am a feminist theologian, researcher, writer and trainer on issues related to gender, sexuality, spirituality and ecology. I am passionate about the wild, the prophetic and the mystical that push the boundaries defined by the human mind and cultural conditioning, and I am committed to what gives and sustains life of all humans and the earth. Contact: [email protected]
Quezon City, Philippines
Primary Field of Application: Spirituality, Natural Building
Project: In the Leadership Program I deepened my understanding of life as part of an unfolding Universe. My emergence focuses on practice and mentoring in both spiritual and practical aspects of sustainable living. These engagements are done through accompanying students and lay leaders in daily life and retreat-workshops on ecological spirituality, permaculture, natural building, as well as in witnessing an ecological lifestyle in daily life, and hopefully in the establishment of an eco-village.
Bio: Cons has a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture, and M.A. in Culture and Spirituality at Holy Names University, Oakland, CA. At present he is engaged in the formation of future religious leaders within the Catholic tradition. He has undergone training in permaculture, natural building, and in Laudato Si. He is also a facilitator on ecological spirituality retreats for religious and clergy and with similar cooperative movements.
Manila, Philippines
Primary Field of Application: Spirituality
Project: Cosmic and Ecological Spirituality in formation for religious sisters through the application of the Deeptime principles in response to Laudato Si. The sharing of the Universe Story, contemplation of nature, Earth care, care for soul through arts, Earth-based liturgies, journal writing, creation spirituality, and the powers of the universe will be part of a religious formation program for an embodied learning and encounter with the Divine in all creation.
Bio: Tess Figueroa is a member of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, an international Catholic religious congregation. She has worked with the formation and accompaniment of religious sisters from Asia, Africa and Latin America. She was a missionary to Kenya, Africa for three years. An accountant by profession and exposed to the reality of poverty, she questioned the capitalist economic system’s profit orientation. The devastation caused by floods in her country led to her ecological conversion. The writings of Thomas Berry made her realize the cultural pathology brought about by anthropocentrism. Science has now informed her faith and she desires to reinhabit her faith through a process of co-learning with her sisters.
Eatontown, NJ, USA
Primary Field of Application: Emergence and guidance through the creative process
Project: ‘Wholing Through Creative Emergence’ is the process by which cosmogenesis can be a source of guidance to take action steps required to keep the channel open and the expressions flowing through my interiority into the noosphere, touching the subjectivity of other beings. This requires a commitment to: deep inner listening as essential to the creative process, not knowing how something will turn out or whom it may touch, letting go into the freedom of untrod ‘pathless’ paths, which allows new connections to emerge and complexify on their own, moving through and as a particular emergence as far as it will go, and trusting that the body will always tell us when the magic occurs, when to stop, and when it’s time to share.
Bio: Kendra Kehde is a scholar, poet, and visual artist with degrees in English literature and feminist post-structuralist theory from Vassar College and Brown University. Her work explores the intersection of consciousness, embodiment, and creative emergence through both traditional and experimental uses of form, cross-pollinating poetry with the discourses of science, history, philosophy, and music, as well as visual expressions that emphasize iridescence, texture, and dynamic use of color.
Plymouth, IN, USA
Primary Field of Application: The Arts, Education, Spirituality, Integral Ecology, Wellbeing
Project: My project is an educational methodology geared towards unlearning and deconditioning. ‘Decreating Self in a Time of Decay’ is a seven-part process currently being applied to a permaculture and regenerative design certification course, a college humanities course, strategic planning geared towards the Laudato Si Action Platform, and personal wellbeing.
Bio: I am an existential communication theorist and practitioner living and working in rural Indiana. I currently direct an art-eco-spirituality center known as MoonTree Studios (moontreestudios.org) and am an adjunct instructor for Marian University’s Ancilla College (marian.edu/ancilla).
Big Island, Hawaii, USA
Primary Field of Application: Eco-spirituality
Project: Happy Heart Sanctuary – an eco-spiritual ‘village’ demonstrating a new way of Be-ing located on the Big Island, Hawaii. This space with stillness and reverence guides us on the journey of reconnection to earth and our sacred divinity within.
Bio: Mea Ananda is a Consecrated Priestess, Sacred Activist, Visionary and Steward of the Earth. She guides humans, through deep connection to Earth and cosmos, to be free of old story and with joy and magic craft their own vibrant new journey. Her voice can be found on her website www.meaananda.com, [email protected].
Wallingford, PA, USA
Primary Field of Application: Adult Spiritual Development, Organizational Development
Project: Evolving Adult Spirituality (how people continue to develop and transform throughout adulthood) is a major focus of my work. For my project, I conducted a Spirituality Survey of participants of the Deeptime Leadership Program to help me understand the spirituality of folks who are attracted to a program based on an evolving Universe. I am also applying evolutionary perspectives to my organizational consulting work, viewing organizations as living-systems that continue to develop and transform.
Bio: Wini Wolff is an organizational consultant, group facilitator and personal coach, with an MBA in International Economic Development and an MA in Theology. Her organizational work focuses on mission-based small businesses and nonprofits, while her group and personal work addresses spiritual development and social justice issues. [email protected], www.winiwolffconsulting.com
Cairo, Egypt
Primary Field of Application: Organizational Development and Education
Project: As a Montessori teacher, I help children explore the relationship between the Universe, animal behavior, and ethics in order to have peace in our world. By showing how animals express the dynamics of life and the universe, children can see the diversity of living beings and how they can interact with each other in peaceful co-existence. Learning from animals in the Montessori tradition can provide a model for how children can be in the world with others who are different in a harmonious way.
Bio: I am a Montessori teacher in Egypt and have taught children in Cairo for eleven years. I planned to be a law professor but then discovered that the future of our planet begins with children. Montessori Cosmic Education is a crucially important curriculum for raising children with a Cosmic and Earth consciousness and I plan to publish Cosmic Education materials for my country.
Boulder, CO, USA
Primary Field of Application: Embodied leadership at the intersections of performance art, film, education, mindful living and personal and collective healing and transformation
Project: ‘Cosmogenesis: The Story of Us’ is a multimedia, full-dome screen and stage play to be performed at the University of Colorado Boulder Fiske’s Planetarium in 2025. Cosmogenesis tells the story of a 19-year-old dance student who learns the 13.8 billion-year story of the universe and it transforms how she sees the world, herself, and her place in it. Cosmogenesis was selected to be performed at the University of Colorado’s New Play Festival in the Spring of 2023.
Bio: Independent Playwright/Screenwriter, small business owner and psychotherapist. Chosen for her visionary script and artistic excellence in bringing the arts and sciences into one unifying story, Rebecca Sophia has a lifetime of dedicated creative work at the intersection of education, performance art and science. As a response to a “crisis of meaning” in young people due to racism, climate change and a loss of a sense of belonging, along with Cosmogenesis, Strong created a 15- part, non-formal science curriculum and a one-woman show teaching the 13.8-billion-year scientific story as a message of hope and inspiration. Nominated for the McArthur Fellowship, Rebecca Sophia is a TEDx speaker and has worked in collaboration with Ithaca College, University of Minneapolis Minnesota, the WILD Foundation, University of Colorado Boulder’s Environmental Center and University of Colorado Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium sharing the message of Cosmogenesis. www.strongsolutionsboulder.com and www.cosmogenesisfilm.com
Pagadian City, Philippines
Primary Field of Application: Education, Ecology
Project: EARTHome is an ecological sanctuary that provides a venue for people to have an experience of communing with nature through forest bathing, nature walks, visio divina and other creation centered spiritual practices. It is a place for spiritual renewal where the sense of the sacred is deepened with every encounter with creation in silent contemplation and encounter with the whole of creation that surrounds the place. It also aims to make stronger interconnections with other agencies and private individuals in the task of caring for our Common Home, our One and Only Home….our EARTHome.
Bio: Sr. Marjorie is a missionary sister belonging to the Guardian Angel Sisters. She is presently based in Zamboanga del Sur where she founded the non-profit Balaang Bungtod Eco-Sanctuary that envisions to be part of Laudato Si’s urgent call to care and protect our common home, Mother Earth. Through forest conservation and empowerment of the Subanen indigenous peoples we are finding sustainable ways of livelihood for the local community and building the Catholic community in the Diocese of Pagadian. She currently gives seminar workshops and facilitates recollections and retreats focusing on eco-feminine spirituality integrating Deeptime Principles.
FB: Sacred Hill Eco-Sanctuary
[email protected]