Jim Hall, Wild Guide

Brief Bio: I am a lifelong lover of science and faith (as a follower of Jesus), and have spent my life weaving those two loves together. Most of my 82 years have been spent as part of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC, an intentionally alternative and ecumenical expression of the Christ tradition. For many years I worked part-time teaching at a hospital associated with a local medical school and part-time at a storefront clinic in the inner city that I helped start – a clinic that offered health care and the ministry of healing to people in an impoverished neighborhood (“the doctor’s office with the chapel upstairs”).

My life changed in 1986 after a trip to show our kids the Great Lakes where I had grown up. I found myself on the shore of Lake Superior remembering my childhood days in the Canadian northland. The Land of Blue and Green. Two years later with a few others I started an Earth Ministry mission group at Dayspring, the church’s silent retreat center on the outskirts of Washington, DC. based on the work of Thomas Berry. After retiring from medical practice, my wife, myself, and another couple built two eco-cottages to live in at Dayspring, along with a solar greenhouse and permaculture garden including fruit trees and berries. There, we lead classes and retreats, much informed for the last 15 years by Soulcraft related training, and by my training and work with Seminary of the Wild. I graduated in the second cohort in 2021 and have continued since as an elder and associate guide.

Tell us a bit about who you are and how you came to this work.

Mirian MacGillis, follower of Thomas Berry and long-time Director of Genesis Farm in New Jersey described my turn from health ministry in an inner-city clinic to earth ministry as “moving on to the larger health care system.” After a decade of much coursework in natural history and horticulture, and a permaculture design course, and another decade of natural building design and construction of our eco-cottage and greenhouse, I began participating in Soulcraft Programs with Animas Valley Institute in 2009, and have since completed 11 programs. In 2015 I completed a yearlong program led by two former Animas Guides – Tending the Knowing Field: A Soul-infused Group Facilitation Training Program, and in 2017 I served as an apprentice guide in that program. Recently I completed a Grief Ritual Leadership Training Program led by Francis Weller. Actually, what most directly led me to Seminary of the Wild in 2020 was the face of an old woman in the upturned roots of an old oak that had fallen years ago. But that’s another story!

Share a bit about the lands who raised you, and how your own connection with the natural world has influenced your path?

My earliest memories are of walking with my parents on a path by the old barn, into the forest, across a bridge over a little stream, and out into an orchard where there was a wreck of an old car. Groton, Massachusetts. We didn’t stay there long, and moved many times before I graduated from high school, but after each of my school years we went for two weeks in summer to a fishing camp on an island in a lake in what was then northern Ontario. Rockwynn, Echo rock, the old mica mine, swimming out to the raft, canoeing around the island in the evening. I cried as we left the first year we went there; I had never been so happy. It brings tears even now.

Why do you believe a practice of spiritual connection with the earth is important for our time?

We live in a world in which we humans are destroying the life-supporting systems of the planet. I believe that the root of our difficulty is that we have been separated from our spiritual connection with the natural world as sacred and as kin. We must return to sacred connection with the living world, to see the world as Thomas Berry says, as, “a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.” Our path of return is (in the words of Bill Plotkin), “mystical affiliation with nature as expression and embodiment of the sacred.”

In your experience, what are some of the barriers or challenges individuals or communities face in developing a deeper connection with nature?

I believe that many of the barriers to developing a deeper connection with nature are the same as those that separated us from nature in the first place – systems of domination that came to be in our religions, our politics, our economics, our whole social order – over expression of the rational mind at the expense of more intuitive, more feminine, more mystical ways of perceiving reality – loss of enduring connection to both place and people, to something we might call “village” – loss of ritual and ceremony – loss of humility.

What practices (big or small) can help heal our disconnection from the natural world?

A contemplative journey into creation, watching the hawk circling over the fields, standing in towering forests, listening to the river’s voice, returning to wild landscapes. Engaging in restoration – the restoration of a landscape by a people and the restoration of a people by a landscape. Gathering on the land for ritual and ceremony, singing to the trees, dancing in the groves.

What are you looking forward to offering as a team member here?

I have been recognized as an elder and a mentor by the team, and so I look forward to continuing to be present in that way. I have enjoyed being part of the planning process for our offerings and want to continue. And to continue to step into small leadership roles when that is appropriate. And always curious as to what mystery will unveil.

Can you share a story of a meaningful encounter with the Holy Wild personally?

It is late afternoon of the last day of our stay at Warp Bay, a backcountry canoe site along the rocky coast of Lake Superior in a Canadian park. It is time for our yearly photo. We have been watching an otter swimming along the shore of the lake. I recall a story of Saint Kevin of Glendalough who used to pray the Psalter standing in the water. One day he dropped it into the water, and an Otter retrieved it and gave it to him. No page was damaged. So, we set the camera carefully on the bow of the canoe, set the timer, wade out into the water with a little version of the New Testament and Psalms in hand, and I read from the 19th Psalm, “the heavens declare the glory of God,” as the camera clicks. Good photo. Mission accomplished.

Sometime around 2 AM Cheryl (my wife) awakens me and says, “Jim, you’ve got to come down to the beach and see this.” I groggily stumble down to the beach, and then I look up. Undulating streams of white light fill more than half the sky -- from the north -- way across the sky towards the south. An amazing display of the Aurora. And then I remember. Those words from Psalm 19. The heavens declare the glory of God. Shivers run down my spine, but not just from the cool night air. I am undone.