Community / Contributors
Each of the contributors to the first edition of The Sequoia Grove Journal has taken one of our courses, participated in our gatherings, and/or received direct support in their own ministerial and creative engagement from Sara Jolena Wolcott and the growing community of Sequoia Samanvaya. Prior to this journal, some of them knew one another and some did not. Like the community who is not represented in this Journal, these contributors span age range from their 20s-90s. Represented here are voices from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, India, Scotland, Sweden, the United States of America (California, New Jersey, New York, Maine, Massachusettes, Texas,), and Wales. We are so appreciative of their ongoing creative work in the world.
Anonymous
Courses: She Reveals Herself: Goddess Class
Valériane Bernard is a meditation teacher, having taught in France, Chili, USA, India, Costa Rica, and Switzerland. She is a UN Representative for the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University and is an international speaker about spirituality and its impacts on daily life, the environment and climate change. Courses: Spiritual life Coaching, Apocalypse Wisdom Circles
Dorothy (Diorbhail) Cameron is a Celtic visual artist and art therapist who has been living and working in New York City for several decades. She is the founder of the Achintore School, which has served at-risk populations through engaging with art to restore their dignity.
Sequoia Engagement: Sacred Writing Coaching
Andrew Murray Dunn serves as an initiator, bridge weaver, and thought leader at the intersections of ethical technology, systems change, conscious investing and personal development. He recently has been convening investors who are interested in conscious capital and is a Senior Advisor with JumpScale.
Courses: ReMembering for Life
Lisa Dusenbery is a writer, editor, and fact-checker based in Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Courses: Muttering, Myth, Mess and Magic: A course for Women Writers
Christopher Fici, PhD is an ecotheologian and scholar of religion based in New York City. He currently teaches in the Religious Studies department at Iona College, NY. Christopher's project and passion is participating in the creation of anticipatory communities-communities which develop eco-social practices and ethics, exposing the fault lines of modernity, in regenerative response to the challenges of our climate catastrophe. Christopher is a member of the Sequoia Samanvaya community, where he has taught the ReMembering for Life course and engages in vision and content development for Sequoia's educational curriculum.
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Climate Anticipation and ReEnchantment
Krystina Friedlander is a midwife and herbalist living in Lenape territory in Central New Jersey, serving families in Central Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. She loves homeschooling her daughter and telling her stories about Baba Yaga, obsessively knitting, spinning and weaving, and being out in the woods. Her website is www.barakabirth.com and she’s on Instagram @barakabirth.
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Climate Anticipation and ReEnchanting, Circular Time
Briana Halliwell (she/her), is a young adult who grew up in Quakerism and seeks to defy the boundaries of the Quaker faith by connecting people to the root of the Spirit and helping them to reMember their place in the natural order of life. She has worn many hats in the past (zookeeper, editor, freelance writer) and is now stepping fully into the role of “traveling minister,” whatever that may entail.
Courses: Origin Stories, ReMembering for Life
Dougald Hind has founded organizations including Dark Mountain Project, Spacemakers and is currently running A School Called Home, from his home base in Sweden. He has written things that seem to help people find their bearings in disorienting times. And he has been a visiting teacher at universities, art schools and architecture schools across Europe, as well as giving talks in church halls, community art spaces and the upstairs rooms of pubs.
Courses When Your Ancestors Are The Problem (co-creator), Apocalypse Wisdom Circles
Kristine Hill listens deeply to fire. A member of the Tuscarora nation, Haudenosaunee Confederacy, she is a circle keeper, advisor of restorative practices, storyteller, accountant and coach.
Courses: Circular Time, ReMembering for Life, Origin Stories, Muttering, Myth and Muck
Leonard Joy is a recovering economist who works to enable systems to come into right relationship with Earth. He was an academic at the London School of Economics, and ran extensive research and advisory missions for UN agencies. He is active on the board of the Quaker Institute for the Future and is involved in multiple writing projects. He is also a father, grandfather, and beloved elder in Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting.
Courses: ReMembering for Life
Amy Kietzman is a mother, daughter, wife and Quaker who carries a deep concern for eco-justice and racial-justice. A former associate Clerk of Pacific Yearly Meeting, she lives on Lenape-hoking territory, and belongs to woods where fox play outside of Philadelphia, PA.
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Origin Stories, Climate Anticipation and Enchantments, Circular Time
Zoli Kertesz is a world traveler who embraces learning from new cultures and sharing the beauty of creating art collectively. New to the Handpan, he’s already finding a deep connection with the magical instrument and enjoys creating beautiful soundscapes to soothe the hurting soul. Zoli hopes to bring peace and healing into this broken world through his music and art.
Course: ReMembering for Life
Erin Matariki Carr is born of Ngāi Tūhoe and Ngāti Awa descent, and lives on her homelands in Tāneatua, Aotearoa New Zealand. Erin is a lawyer and community worker, contributing to constitutional transformation in Aotearoa to support the tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty) of Māori people. Erin is currently the co-manager for the New Zealand Alternative (an independent not for profit think tank focused on New Zealand’s place in the world) and the co-lead of RIVER (an international collective focused on revitalising Indigenous values for Earth’s regeneration.
Courses: ReMembering for Life
Isabel Maria Mares is a writer, artist, singer and minister. She graduated from Union Theological Seminary with a focus in Arts and Ministry, currently works for the Jewish Community Center, and is deeply connected to her Romanian heritage.
ReMembering for Life, Origin Stories, She Reveals Herself, Muttering, Myth, Mess and Magic: A course for Women Writers, Circular Time
Emily Rose Michaud is an interdisciplinary artist and educator working at the crossroads of community organization, ecology and civic participation. Her work highlights the social importance of marginal landscapes, engages with land as a living entity, and maintains a practice in ephemeral media. Her body of work encompasses land-based art, installation, drawing, writing, performance, and intervention. Michaud holds a BFA from Concordia University (Montréal) and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Ottawa. She lives in Gatineau, Québec.
Sequoia Engagement: Spiritual Life Coaching
Michal Ann Morrison is an entrepreneur and a writer. She has worked in archaeological and historical research in Greece, Turkey, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, and the Caribbean, and completed her graduate work in Biblical and Theological Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. She is on the board of The Keep Families Giving Foundation and currently lives with her husband in Austin, Texas.
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Circular Time
Rev. Rhetta Morgan is an interfaith minister, ADL facilitator and founder Ecclesia Spirit, an Interfaith Spiritual Community. She is also a poet, musician and guest speaker on the subjects of racial healing through a spiritual lens, as well as, fortifying ourselves through spiritual practices. Rev Rhetta resides in Doylestown, PA.
Courses: Muttering, Myth, Mess, and Magic: a course for Women Writers
Anna Mudd works at Harvard Divinity School. She is the mother of Robin. She has curated publications of zines, comix, and other illustrated words in both print and digital format for social justice, youth led initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Origin Stories, She Reveals Herself, Muttering, Myth, Mess and Magic: A course for Women Writers, Circular Time
GG Neroda is a writer of prayers, a rosary maker, an integral coach, and a budding Toltec healer. She is currently focused on communing with the divine to excavate the prayers of feminine deities. Her practices include devotional prayer, divination, Ashtanga, Zen, and Toltec healing. Her primary teachers include Lynda Caessara, Sara Jolena Wolcott, Vance Selvoer, and Sergio Magaña. She can be reached at ggneroda@gmail.com.
Courses: Spiritual Life Coaching; Muttering, Myth and Muck: Divine Feminine Rises
Lis O'Kelly ~ I live in an often black & white, neuro-diverse world, splashed with colour and enlivened by kids, grandkids, creative projects, home & garden-making, foraging, learning and connecting. At the heart of it all is art. Art is my hearth.
Courses: ReMembering for Life
Ramasubramanian, is an expert in sustainable livelihoods. He has worked with local communities throughout south India, co-founded the Safe Food Network, and is one of the senior advisors for the World Bank and the Tamil Nadu Government, shaping policies and practices and future institutions towards sustainable living for all beings.
Courses: ReMembering for Life
Anna Smedeby is European, born in Sweden, based in Belgium, a war-torn territory which has been fought over for millennia. Her belief in peace and democracy has led her to work in international organisations for many years, as a trainer, facilitator, HR strategist and change agent. She is a choir leader and climate activist, drawn to art like a moth to the light, and until two months ago had no literary ambitions whatsoever.
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Origin Stories, When Your Ancestors are the Problem
Anayza Stewart is a practitioner of the healing arts. She shares in the world as an intuitive healer, channel, facilitator of somatic ritual, and teacher of deepening intuition. Advocating for the remembrance of our Whole, Divine, LovingNature. She is passionate about supporting others to feel liberated and connected to their inner SoulSelf. Website: www.anayza.com
Courses: Apocalypse Wisdom Circles
Gayano Shaw: daughter, mother, grandmother, apprentice to grief and love, remembering and villagemindedness, scholar of the orphan wisdom school, living at home in the hills of west wales amidst family, sometimes friends and more as needed...
Courses: ReMembering for Life, Circular Time, When Your Ancestors are the Problem
Robert Walker is an initiated elder in the Dagara tradition as taught in this country by the teacher Malidoma Some from Burkina Faso in west Africa. He is a founding member of the East Coast Village, a community that offers events and rituals in the Dagara tradition.
Courses: When Your Ancestors are the Problem, Origin Stories, Muttering, Myth and Muck, Spiritual Life Coaching
Martha Williams is a dancer, choreographer, actress and storyteller. She co-runs the Culture Shift Agency and produces the Culture Shift podcast.
Courses: Origin Stories
David Zung, is a painter and expert in visual media. His filmmaking has taken him to Nepal and other parts of the world. He has taught at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Film and Television Department since 2005 and The Graduate Department of Design for Stage and Film since 2013.
Courses: Spiritual Life Coaching, She Reveals Herself; Muttering, Myth and Muck
We give thanks and appreciations to the ongoing contributions of the great Sequoia Trees, whose presence is with us even when we are not, and whose contributions to our collective well-being and our community of human-earth Living Life can never be fully measured or understood; it can only be appreciated. We also give appreciation to contribution of the many rivers, oceans, deer, seeds, fires, mountains, spirit guides, winds, foodways, and, of course, our ancestors, who are an integral part to our community and without whom this work would not be possible. And to the Gracious One, who is Just, and Merciful, and who can never be accurately named.
One of Sara Jolena’s students, Shanta Marie Buttercup, with her son Bodhi, during a Summer Solstice in the Sequoias pilgrimage. Photo by Sara Jolena Wolcott, 2018