I’m Nate (he/they). I’m grateful you found me!

I’m a pastor, ritual specialist, spiritual consultant, and lover of creation. I strive to help my White kinfolk decolonize their heart and reconnect with the living land, the sacred sky, their loving ancestors, and the Holy Mystery through the tools in my belt.

Through my own heart flow the streams of sacramental, mystical, and pre-Nicene Christianities, the tantric cosmologies and practices of south Asia, the timeless luminosity of the Quaker faith, and the living presence of my wise and well ancestors of blood and of spirit.

The shifting tides swirling around this historical eye of the needle have revealed a vein of ancient stone at the confluence of the Jordan and the Ganges and the Kalamazoo, a vein of holy memory long forgotten. Thereupon I take my seat. From this vantage point, I point people towards the living water that flows within them, waiting to be tasted.

For the wellsprings of life are bubbling up anew each moment, as Thomas Kelly said, and when the angel is troubling the water, it is no time to sit on the bank and recite past wonders.

I’m a student of Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom lineage, an authorized practitioner of Vedic astrology in the East Indian lineage of Śrī Acyutānanda, and a practitioner-in-training of the Ancestral Lineage Healing modality developed by Dr. Daniel Foor.

Though I was raised Methodist, engagement with other-than-Christian streams has stretched my faith and practice far beyond pot-bound American Protestantism. Still today, my first Teacher still sits enthroned on the lotus of my heart. It all comes together in an unlikely expression of contemplative devotion that gladdens and singles the heart as much as it scandalizes fundamentalists.

After my completing seminary education I worked in mental health services for several years while finding my place afresh in the tradition of my birth. I was ordained a priest in the Independent Catholic movement in 2014. In 2016 I began serving congregations of the United Church of Christ. I have been in local church ministry in UCC contexts since then as my “day job.”

I am proudly queer, more-than-male, and in an ongoing journey of reclaiming the gifts of my queer ancestry, including the word “queer” itself. I enjoy making art, talking to spiders, singing to ponds, chanting in ancient languages, and delighting in the gifts of embodied life on this good earth. I also enjoy JRPGs, storytelling, and all stripes of music.

I steward a household with my covenant beloved, Michael (he/they), and our Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Calvin, in the splendid ancestral land of the Potawatomi and Anishinaabe people in peninsulā amoenissimā—circumspice!

The views I express here do not necessarily represent the views of my congregation or denomination… but they might.