Vision
We envision a world where all humans live in an aligned and healthy relationship with Creation. We have an evolving and common global consciousness and practice of a loving & respectful relationship with Creation. By honoring all spiritual traditions, we enliven the interconnected web of life. We model open, and emerging perspectives by focusing on Creation itself and advocate for justice for all forms of life. We reclaim our original blessing.
Mission
Our mission is to build community with people who want to integrate sacred earth and human existence.
Core Values
Creation Spirituality Communities, Inc. (CSC) is a network of communities and individuals that believe in the sacredness of all Creation. We believe that awe is a gift – a response to Creation and the cosmos and the first step toward transformation. We believe in the value of silence and emptying – in the richness of feeling all our emotions and honoring loss. We are radically progressive and traditionally mystical. We come from many spiritual traditions, cultures, races, ages, abilities, genders, and sexual orientations.
Our Story
Creation Spirituality Communities was created in response to a spiritual vision given to its founder, Susan Coppage Evans, at Chartres Cathedral in the summer of 2005. After months of discernment with Matthew Fox and other Creation Spirituality leaders, nine people were invited to serve on the original Creation Spirituality Communities Board of Directors. It was incorporated through the Revised Colorado Corporate Nonprofit Act in 2008.
By 2005, Creation Spirituality had become a movement involving graduates from the University of Creation Spirituality and the various earlier Creation Spirituality programs at other institution plus many who had heard Matt Fox speak or read his books. Creation Spirituality Communities was created to support this groundswell of commitment to embrace the sacredness of creation and provide opportunities for mutual support among the leaders, musicians, activists, artists, counselors, engineers, chaplains, economists, and others within the movement.
The new board began by offering avenues of communication within the movement through a quarterly newsletter, a monthly leaders’ conference, and an online social site. As the University of Creation Spirituality closed, they began to explore ways to continue Creation Spirituality education through a certificate program and later an ordination program.
Every two years, Creation Spirituality Communities brings the wider community together for a 3-4 day gathering to dance, sing, and grow together, proposing new ways to create a spiritual culture in tune with the paradigms of creation. From these gatherings, the board has developed a small group program, Elder Wisdom InnerViews, and CS Immersion Retreats. Creation Spirituality Communities is continually evolving in response to the needs of our community and the visionary capacities of its members.
Leadership
Many people who have studied Creation Spirituality with Matthew Fox have been inspired to become artists, activists, theologians, spiritual companions, workshop leaders, authors, mystics, and ordained leaders. Some of these people come together for mutual inspiration, support, and effectiveness through the leadership of the CSC Board of Directors. Members of our current Board of Directors are listed below.
Rev. Dr. Carolyn Million, MD,
Rev. Dr. Carolyn Million, MD, Board President has been mixing ministry and medicine all of her adult life. She grew up in the Baptist church, but most of her profound early experiences of God were in nature. She pursued ordained ministry through the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where her clinical pastoral education inspired her to study medicine. In 2002, she was Matt Fox’s surgeon, which led her to pursue a DMin in Creation Spirituality. She now has a part time private solo practice in Proctology in San Francisco and lives with her husband and teenage children on Alameda island.
Rev. Mel Bricker
BA, MST, MA, DMin
Emeritus Board Member focused on issues of hunger, spirituality, and healing prayer as a United Methodist minister before moving to California to study with Matthew Fox.
In California, he became Fox’s personal assistant and co-director of the Doctor of Ministry program at the University of Creation Spirituality. He is a founding board member of CSC. Mel does Spiritual Companioning. He connects to nature through his garden and through immersing his hands in clay as he creates ceramic vessels. He lives with his husband, Paul, in Walnut Creek, CA.
Shelley Walters
Board Secretary serves as the Director of Faith Development at Saint John’s UMC in Austin, Texas…
She’s been in ministry for 16 years in a variety of roles, including at Trinity Church of Austin, a CSC community. She helped develop and has led the Creation Spirituality Immersion Retreat, locally in person and as part of the team at the CS virtual gathering in January of 2021. She has been a student of different faith traditions and spiritual practices, including Wesleyan theology, Reiki, and Centering Prayer, since she was a teenager. Shelley earned her Bachelors in Religious Studies at the University of Texas, and a Masters of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Over the years, she has taught youth and adult classes, coordinated worship for conferences, and developed curriculum. She interned with Dr. Marcia McFee, during which she helped coordinate a Creation Spirituality series. Shelley has led local and national workshops in worship design, inter-generational ministry, retreat planning and spiritual practices. Shelley lives in Georgetown, Texas with her husband and enjoys water coloring, getting lost in local bookshops, and finding new labyrinths to walk.
Rev. Jerry Maynard, MCM, CCF
is an Activist-Priest and Spiritual Formator in The Order of Mary Magdalene; a Progressive & Independent Catholic Community based in Houston, TX…
where he has a ministry of protest, praise, and community organizing. Rev. Jerry works on domestic and foreign issues, teaches the spirituality of nonviolence, and is the Founding Pastor of The People’s Church.
5 Principles of The People’s Church (TPC):
1. Creation is our primary teacher and source of wisdom, therefore, our worship, practices, & way of life are each influenced by the wisdom of creation compelling us to honor and defend creation.
2. Each human being is born into Original Blessing, therefore, each human is initiated into the fourfold calling of Seer, Seeker, Sage, & Prophet.
3. The Divine and our understanding of the Divine is fluid, sometimes elusive, but always experiential.
4. Revelation is a collective reality ever-unfolding, not an individual pursuit achieved through isolated experiences.
5. Our bodies connect us with the Divine and remind us of our dependence upon Creation, our mother, therefore, we are compelled to go into the world as Sacred Activists to liberate bodies from oppression as an act of reverence to the Divine who breathed life into us.
Rev. Jerry is also Founder of Campaign Nonviolence-Houston a local chapter of Campaign Nonviolence; a national long-term movement for creating a culture of peace through nonviolence.
Roxanne Schueller
Before Brookmont, Roxanne served as the Cantor and spiritual leader of a Jewish chavurah that was expressly established to celebrate interfaith families. Roxanne is a sought-after teacher in the Washington area for guiding Jewish children through their Bar and Bat Mitzvah services and Torah studies.
Roxanne graduated her mindfulness meditation teacher training with the 2014-2015 cohort of Mindful Schools. She completed a year long study with Leah Lamb in the School for Sacred Storytelling and has studied community singing with Heather Houston these past two years, completing the Song Leader Training in June of 2022. Roxanne is currently enrolled in the certificate program of Creation Spirituality Communities.
Giving the soul expression through the creative arts and helping others come home to the natural world, are her devotional, joyful paths of service.
Charlie Dorsett
I believe that spirituality should be practiced and have developed my own practice and faith that I have shared on my Wisdom’s Cry podcast and website. I am currently in the CS certificate program because I long to connect with and contribute to the movement and practice that means so much to me.
Robyn Hubbard
Robyn Hubbard, DMin. (Wisdom University, 2006) is a psychotherapist, Certified Bereavement Care Counselor, spiritual companion, and dreamwork guide supporting people compassionately through their growth and evolution, experiences of grief and loss, life transitions, illness and end of life.
She integrates somatic and ancient wisdom practices into her work with individuals as well as facilitation with groups, retreats, and community rituals using her integrated process of the Four Paths of Soulful Living and Grieving. She has over twenty years of experience and passion working with a diverse age-range identifying resource and resilience while living soulfully with the challenges of living and dying.
Mary Ann Wamhoff, M.A. Ed., M.A. TESL
Mary Ann grew up a Roman Catholic in St. Louis, MO. In the early ‘90s, Mary Ann’s spiritual director had studied Creation Spirituality and taught Art as Meditation.
While living in Santa Fe, NM, she and her husband embraced a liberal Episcopal faith community for which Mary Ann spearheaded and helped build a 48-foot Chartres-style labyrinth. It was also in Santa Fe that she decided to train as a labyrinth facilitator, and this is presently her work in the world. She is introducing her new central Virginian community to labyrinths. Mary Ann embraces labyrinth activism and loves to present workshops about the labyrinth.
While she has never stopped studying (most recently, Creation Spirituality, Deep Time, and mystics), it was during the pandemic that Mary Ann finally had time to really delve into the Sacred Feminine, study with Matthew online, and participate in the Creation Spirituality Interfaith Worship Experience. She developed a CS way to walk the labyrinth and has taught this.
Today, Mary Ann and her husband are retired, but she seems busier than ever!
Dr. Deidre Combs
is a management consultant, trainer and executive coach. She has worked with a myriad of corporate, government and NGO clients…
over the past twenty-seven years and is the author of three books on cross-cultural approaches to resolving conflict and overcoming challenges: The Way of Conflict, Worst Enemy, Best Teacher and Thriving Through Tough Times. Since 2007, Combs has provided intensive leadership development training to thousands of rising international business, NGO and educational leaders as part of sponsored US government and private fellowships. Combs has served as a professor at the University of Creation Spirituality, Naropa University, Columbia University and Montana State University providing leadership, conflict resolution and intercultural competency courses. Deidre received her Doctorate of Ministry from UCS in 2002 and lives with her husband in Bozeman, Montana.
Rev. Nathan DeMay
Board Treasurer is an ordained Interfaith Interspiritual minister and graduate of OneSpirit Seminary in New York City. He is also a certified Church…
He is also a certified Church Executive and a certified End of Life Doula for companion animals and holds a BS in International Business from Illinois State University.
Nathan offers ministerial services to anyone needing them in the metro Atlanta area.
He also leads in-person, online, and on-demand groups working with mystic poetry. Nathan believes the mystic poets of the world’s traditions have timeless wisdom that can deeply feed our souls.
Penny Andrews
is a retired chaplain , permaculturist and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects.
She graduated from UCS in 2001 and is a spiritual companion, workshop leader and presenter in Unitarian congregations. She is also active with the DeepTime Network as meditation mentor and learner. Penny and Gail Ransom are regular moderators of the webinar, Creation in Crisis, a CSC sponsored offering.
