September 10-13, 2026
Whidbey Institute
6449 Old Pietila Rd.
Clinton, WA, USA
With Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
“Spiritual ecology is, at its core, achingly simple. It is the recognition of the universal spirit that imbues all living things—a recognition that must be embodied through conscious spiritual engagement with the Earth. It is not about learning something new but remembering something very, very old. Spiritual ecology is as old as humanity itself. Like our common ancestry with all living beings, stemming from the single-cell organisms we evolved from, spiritual ecology was there from the beginning of our human story. It is our beginning.”
—Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
For millennia our mystical and cultural traditions understood that the Earth is animate, alive, and sacred. Everyday life was imbued with a conscious recognition of this divine presence, and the values of interconnectedness, kinship, reciprocity, compassion and reverence that were rooted in this awareness. But we have forgotten how to live this way. Modern life and its numerous destructive and oppressive systems have separated us from the Earth and led us on a path of causing irreparable harm to our own nature and that of the world around us. Yet within each of us a memory of that primordial way of being in relationship with the living world remains. What will it take to renew our reverence for this ancient bond and learn to live again in communion with Earth?
In September 2026, as summer turns to autumn, step into a remembrance of the living Earth with Sufi teacher and Emergence founder and executive editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at the Whidbey Institute, located on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington. Drawing from the main themes in his forthcoming book Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology (Shambhala Publications, June 2026), this retreat will offer a guided framework for awakening the memory of our sacred kinship with Earth, and turning towards an embodied spiritual ecology.
Immersed within Whidbey Island’s fragrant cedars, birdsong, and the salt air of the Pacific Northwest’s Puget Sound, we will explore how spiritual ecology can be integrated into all aspects of life through simple and transformative ways of finding intimacy with the Earth. Practices involving the breath, heart, walking, listening, time, and prayer will engage participants in tending the threads of grief and love that connect us with the Earth. Each practice is a doorway, inviting you from concept to communion, from observer to participant in the sacred web of life, offering an embodied spiritual ecology that moves beyond ideas into lived experience.
This four-day retreat will contemplate the role of engaged spirituality in responding to the challenges of our time, offer practical and metaphysical spaces to remember our place in the more-than-human world, and include lectures, silent and walking meditation practices, and storytelling.