Celebrating Summer’s Abundance: Nurturing Joy

Colleen Mollica M.A.A.T. is a level 1 Kripalu Certified Mindful Outdoor Guide, Interfaith Campus Minister, Teacher, and Recreation Therapist with over 25 years of experience facilitating outdoor leisure and educational activities. Colleen is passionate about protecting the more than human world and nurturing the human spirit. Colleen is open to the wisdom of the earth's spiritual traditions and believes that creation allows us to experience agape or unconditional love. Time in nature awakens us to our purpose, establishes our sense of well-being, and nourishes our transcendent spirit. After teaching social and environmental justice, rooted in Catholic Social Teaching, to middle and high school students and working as an interfaith campus minister at a university, she noticed that the more time people spent away from nature, the less connected they were to each other. Operating from an integrative framework of spirit, mind, and body, Colleen is dedicated to the work of healing our fractured relationship with Mother Earth and, ultimately, one another.

Cary Gaunt, Ph.D. is an ecospirituality scholar, teacher, and guide who offers retreats, workshops, courses, and nature-based spiritual formation programs around the country. Her engaged spirituality informs her vocation as a highly accomplished sustainability and climate responsibility professional with over 35 years’ of experience leading organizations across all sectors to develop and implement watershed management, sustainability, and/or climate action plans. Two great loves comprise the heart of Cary’s life and work. One is a profound connection with the earth formed by her childhood spent exploring the water resources, limestone ledges, fields, and forests of her family farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Her childhood kinship with the natural world was strengthened through her spiritual and academic journeys and a lifetime of listening to the land. Cary’s Ph.D. and post-doctoral research explore the life paths and formative experiences of Christian and Buddhist role models of sustainable living and leading. She weaves their wisdom into the programs she offers, and her undergraduate and graduate teaching. Cary is currently working on two books that highlight the life stories of these extraordinary role models and illuminate the specific eco-spirituality practices that formed them. Her second great love is a deep spirituality comprised of meditation, Centering Prayer and other contemplative practices, Soulcraft™, wilderness rites of passage, and nature-based approaches to inner transformation and discernment. Cary offers programs in all these modalities. She has extensive training through the Animas Valley Institute, the School of Lost Borders, and Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. In May 2021 Cary left her position as the award-winning Director of Campus Sustainability at Keene State College to prioritize her Eco-spirituality work. Cary offers (1) scholarship and teaching on ecological awakening, nature-based leadership, and Eco spiritual role models, (2) myriad programs on eco-spiritual formation and nature-based leadership development, and (3) consulting services to faith-based organizations, churches, and retreat centers seeking to develop holistic responses to the climate crisis, including program design, goal setting and planning, and facility transformations to meet the growing global call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become free of fossil fuels. Cary is currently working with Genesis to help reinvigorate its legacy and commitment to eco-spirituality. She also is a lead teacher and guide with the Center for Nature and Leadership. In everything she does, Cary is committed to supporting organizations and individuals in moving beyond sustainability to restoration and flourishing.