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A place for questions, reflections, and emerging conversations at the intersection of spiritual care, grief, serious illness, ceremony, practice, and meaning-making.

Field Notes from A Chaplain...

Field Notes from A Chaplain: The Herbal Chaplain and the birth of Aurelia Grove

When I think about the ways that I have been called to the gates of life and death in this lifetime, I often come back to those acute and powerful encounters with the arbitrary and bewildering nature of death and the complex landscape of grief that surrounds it.

12 hours ago7 min read

Field Notes From A Chaplain: Sacred Thresholds

Recently, a thought occurred to me as I was finishing a visit with someone navigating a serious health challenge. Later that day, I was preparing for a conversation with a couple I am marrying and something clicked. I am drawn to the thresholds of life. From the thresholds of social change and justice work, to the thresholds of weddings and marriage, to the thresholds of illness, trauma, and loss that I have accompanied in hospitals, my life’s work has always been about walki

14 hours ago2 min read

Research and Emerging Conversations

Emerging approaches to spiritual care and spiritual care education are a place of research I’m exploring. This includes research exploring meaning-making, serious illness, end-of-life care, and the role of non-ordinary states in supporting people navigating these thresholds. Another research project explores methods of improving spiritual care education for marginalized groups.

Current projects include collaborations and ongoing inquiry related to palliative care, spiritual care, spiritual care education, plant medicine in end of life care and the ways that we find meaning at the thresholds of life and loss.

Selected Writing

My writing explores the intersections of spiritual care, grief, healthcare, ritual, justice, community, and meaning-making.

Some pieces emerge from hospital rooms and healthcare settings. Others from ritual practice, community organizing, pilgrimage, and questions of how we live together during times of great change.

Together, they reflect an ongoing inquiry into what helps individuals and communities navigate life’s significant thresholds.

You can read more of my current reflections in the “Field Notes” Section of this page above

A Chaplain’s Plea: Give the Gift of Health This Year

San Francisco Chronicle (2020)

A reflection on healthcare, vulnerability, compassion, and collective responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coping with the Loss of a Library Patron: A Call to Medical Libraries

Journal of Hospital Librarianship (2019) Co-author

Explores grief, emotional labor, institutional response, and compassionate practices within healthcare environments.

Land Acknowledgments in NeoPagan Rituals: Perspectives from Ohlone Territory

A Beautiful Resistance / Gods & Radicals (2020) Co-author

Reflections on ritual ethics, Indigenous sovereignty, settler responsibility, and solidarity within spiritual communities.

Reweaving the Web: Pagans, Privilege and Solidarity

Bringing Race to the Table (2015) Contributed Chapter

An exploration of privilege, accountability, anti-racism, and solidarity practices within contemporary spiritual communities.

Power from the Edges: An Exploration of Magical Practices to Support Justice Workers

Queer Magic (2018) Contributed Chapter

Examines ritual, resilience, embodied spiritual practice, and sustaining justice-oriented movement work.

Additional Areas of Writing

• Spiritual care and chaplaincy
• Grief and bereavement

• Ancestral Practices with an emphasis on Celtic Ancestral traditions
• Emerging Spiritual Practices, Cultural Exchange, and Misappropriation
• Ritual, Ceremony, Pilgrimage and contemplative practice
• Community resilience and collective care
• Spirituality and public health
• Queer and Trans spirituality and justice
• Meaning and Purpose in threshold times
• Caregiving, mortality, and end-of-life care

• Working with herbs, plants and earth based practices at the thresholds