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The Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’Alessio is a Franciscan friar and the Mentor General in the spiritual society of the Companions of Francis and Clare. He is also a Christian bishop and priest, ordained Buddhist lay minister, spiritual director, chaplain, retreat leader, interspiritual pilgrim, and author. He previously served as President and Executive Director of the Psychotherapy & Spirituality Institute, an organization dedicated to integrating the wisdom of psychological care with the spiritual and pastoral traditions of the church.

A graduate of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance—founded by Henri Nouwen and Madeleine L’Engle—Br. Mark now serves as Dean of the Franciscan Circle’s Spiritual Direction and Community-Based Chaplaincy Training Program, sponsored by the Circle’s Institute for Interfaith Understanding and Practice. In this role, he oversees formation programs rooted in contemplative practice, ethical spiritual care, interfaith understanding, and Franciscan values. He is also a faculty member and community leader within the Guild and serves on the faculty of All Faiths Seminary International, training interfaith ministers and spiritual caregivers.

A long-time seeker and practitioner of spiritual wisdom, Br. Mark is ordained within multiple spiritual lineages, both East (Zen Buddhist) and West (Franciscan Christian). He seeks to affirm the Christian Wisdom tradition within a wider interspiritual framework and looks to both science and spirituality—as well as teachers such as Thích Nhat Hanh and St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi—as sources of inspiration, healing, and hope.

Currently residing on Long Island, Bishop Br. Mark recently retired from his work as a crisis counselor and program coordinator at a shelter for men and women experiencing homelessness, as well as from his role as a chaplain at a residential treatment center and school for children with learning and emotional disabilities. After moving to Long Island, he founded the Franciscan Circle, a progressive, interfaith gathering of clergy and lay people committed to journeying in mind and heart with the witness and wisdom of Francis and Clare of Assisi. The Circle is dedicated to developing leaders for thoughtful social action, contemplative practice, and compassionate spiritual care.

As a Franciscan, Br. Mark is committed to serving those who are sidelined, marginalized, and at risk. As a Buddhist, he is mindful that the transformation of the world begins with the transformation of one’s own heart. Embodying both traditions, he seeks to participate in the healing of both self and society through compassion, justice, and understanding. In recognition of his community ministry, the Long Island Coalition for the Homeless honored Br. Mark with its “Unsung Hero” Award.

Br. Mark D’Alessio can be reached at franciscancircle@gmail.com

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this deeply honest conversation, we sit with Kenneth Wortley. His life journey spans decades of ministry, education, marriage, and fatherhood. Ultimately, it leads to liberation.

Ken was born in 1951 into a blue-collar family in Saginaw, Michigan. His early life led him into theology and pastoral ministry. He served churches across Colorado, Oregon, California, and Washington. For years, he faithfully met the expectations of church, marriage, and vocation. Meanwhile, he quietly carried hidden truths.

Later in life, after divorce and a profound inner reckoning, Ken came out as a gay man. He journaled about his experience of grief, faith, and living authentically. Through this process, he began to tell the story that would eventually become The Gospel of Secrets. This memoir has since reached #1 in new LGBTQ+ memoir releases.

Ken currently lives in Brazil with his partner.

You can find his memoir, "The Gospel of Secrets" at Barnes and Noble.

EPISODE NOTE: During the conversation, the work of biblical scholar Dan McClellan was mentioned. Listeners interested in exploring his academic perspective may do so independently. He can be found on many different social media sites and WordPress.

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this conversation, we sit with Kara Huntermoon, whose life and work are deeply committed to the Long Tom Watershed and the human and more-than-human communities of the Southern Willamette Valley. Kara shares how her path unfolded into hyper-local, hands-on ecological and community work, teaching permaculture and ancestral skills, living in intentional community, and organizing with neighbors to respond to climate change and the need for collective survival.

Kara speaks from a lived relationship with land, animals, and community. At the heart of her work are two intertwined practices: Liberation Listening, the internal and interpersonal work to heal the trauma carried by humans who have been isolated from one another and from the Earth. and ecological integration, the ongoing process of helping humans rejoin the living ecological community of their watershed.

This conversation is grounded in humility and gratitude for Indigenous stewardship and traditional ecological knowledge; for ancestors; and for the many teachers, scientists, farmers, permaculturists, midwives, herbalists, and earth-based practitioners, who have modeled what it looks like to love land and community.

Find out more about her work at:

https://karahuntermoon.substack.com/

https://karahuntermoon.com/

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this short year-end episode, we reflect on our first season by revisiting some of our favorite quotes and poems shared by our guests. These words helped shape the spirit of this podcast. We offer them again as a way of closing the year with gratitude.

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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Janet Lynn Roseman, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Integrative Medicine at the Dr. Kiran Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine. She teaches courses in Spirituality and Medicine, Art and Medicine, and Death and Dying for medical school students. She received the first Joseph Moore President's Award for her work in oncology and spirituality from Lesley College and was a David Larsen Fellow in Spirituality and Medicine at the Kluge Center for Scholars at the Library of Congress. Dr. Roseman is also the Founding Director of the Sidney Project in Spirituality and Medicine and Compassionate Care™, a medical education program for physician residents.

Find out more at Llewellyn.com.

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this conversation, we speak with writer and spiritual teacher Patricia Pearce, whose journey from Presbyterian pastor to mystic invites us to rethink the boundaries of faith and spiritual identity. Patricia shares how a profound shift in consciousness opened her to the illusion of separateness and the deeper unity beneath all things. Together, we explore the transformation that led her to leave the institutional church and step into her vocation as a writer and guide on unitive consciousness.

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Patricia Pearce was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. After graduating from college she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Andes of Ecuador, an experience that set her on a path of spiritual exploration and into ordained ministry.

For seventeen years she served as a Presbyterian pastor, but in the early 2000's, following the death of a close friend, she experienced a spiritual awakening which showed her that Reality is an interconnected whole, the essence of which is Love; that separateness and the separate self are illusions in the mind; and that this world is a form of dream.

The insights from her awakening led her beyond the bounds of conventional Christian belief, and in 2010 she left the Church to embark on a vocation of writing, speaking, and teaching about the global shift into unitive consciousness.

She is the author of two books—Beyond Jesus: My Spiritual Odyssey; and No One in I Land: A Parable of Awakening.

Patricia shares her latest writings and podcasts on her WeAwakening Substack. You can learn more about her and her offerings on her website, www.patriciapearce.com.

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this episode, we enter a conversation at the edge of human evolution, where science and spirituality converge.

Our guests, cosmologist Brian Thomas Swimme and scholar Monica DeRaspe-Bolles, co-authors of The Story of the Noosphere, invite us to imagine humanity’s next great unfolding: the birth of a planetary mind.

Together we explore what Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere. Swimme and DeRaspe-Bolles describe this as the time when the universe begins to awaken to itself through us.

Our conversation touches on the nature of convergence: the universe’s movement toward communion rather than collapse; and on allurement, that subtle power of attraction that draws atoms, stars, and people into deeper relationship. We ask what it means to participate consciously in this convergence, and how imagination might guide the emergence of a more unified, compassionate world.

If you’ve ever sensed that your own life is part of a larger unfolding story and that consciousness itself is a cosmic event, this episode is for you.

Find out more about their book and their work:

The Story of the Noosphere Book

Deeptime Network Upcoming class

The Story of the Noosphere Video Series at The Human Energy Project.

Monica DeRaspe-Bolles is a doctoral student at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she researches time-developmental cosmology and the potential emergence of a new structure of human experience that fosters cosmogenetic awakening. She is the co-author of The Story of the Noosphere and the co-writer of its thirty-five companion minifilms, created in collaboration with Brian Thomas Swimme. The Story of the Noosphere video series on Youtube.

Brian Thomas Swimme is Emeritus Professor of Cosmology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He completed his doctoral work in gravitational dynamics at the University of Oregon. Swimme is the host of the Emmy Award–winning PBS special Journey of the Universe, co-written with Mary Evelyn Tucker (www.journeyoftheuniverse.org). His most recent book, Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe, is an early example of autocosmology—a genre blending contemporary science with cosmological phenomenology (starborne.substack.com).

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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Today, we are honored to welcome Angela Manno, an internationally recognized artist whose work bridges the worlds of science, spirituality, and ecology. Angela’s artistic journey has taken her from being commissioned by NASA to commemorate the return of U.S. space flight after the Challenger accident, to being invited by the Vatican to create a program for Laudato Si’ Week, Pope Francis’ landmark call to care for our common home.

Angela Manno is an award-winning artist based in New York City. She is a graduate of Bard College and studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute, Parsons School of Design, and l’Ecole des Arts in France. She trained with master iconographer Vladislav Andrejev in the ancient liturgical art of Byzantine-Russian iconography.

Angela Manno’s art has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions including the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and other museums around the world. Her works reside in many private collections throughout the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia and in distinguished public collections including NASA and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air & Space Museum.

Angela’s exhibition, Conscious Evolution: The World at One, toured internationally, inspiring more than a quarter of a million people, and her current series, Contemporary Icons of Threatened and Endangered Species, brings the ancient practice of iconography into one of the most urgent realities of our time: the biodiversity crisis.

Through her luminous icons, Angela elevates endangered species to their rightful place: the community of being--offering us an invitation to reverence, re-enchantment, and hope.

Preorder her Sacred Biodiversity Cards and Guidebook here.

https://angelamanno.com

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.