Embodying a Spiritual Ecology
A Live Conversation with Stephen Blackmer, Susan Murphy, Bonnie Nadzam, and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
At the heart of today’s ecological and cultural crises is our collective forgetfulness of our primordial bond with Earth. How can we remember our way back into honoring the sacredness of creation and our place within the more-than-human world?
Pre-order Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology (Shambhala Publications, June 2026), a new book by Sufi teacher and Emergence Magazine founder and executive editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, to gain exclusive access to a live online conversation on June 1, 2026, exploring the role of embodied spiritual practice in cultivating interconnectedness, kinship, and reciprocity with the Earth.
Hosted by Emmanuel, the conversation brings together a group of Shambhala authors: Zen roshi Susan Murphy, forest ecologist and former Episcopal priest Stephen Blackmer, and Zen Buddhist priest Bonnie Nadzam. Together, these practitioners from diverse faith traditions will discuss how the principles of spiritual ecology can help inform an ethical framework rooted in compassion for all living beings and offer a foundation for living in reverent relationship with the Earth that resonates across traditions, from Christianity to Sufism, Zen Buddhism, and beyond.
This event is available to those who have pre-ordered Remembering Earth. When registering for the event via Eventbrite, you will be asked to submit your order number.
PRESENTERS
Stephen Blackmer
Stephen Blackmer is a writer, eco-spiritual teacher, and forest guardian based in Canterbury, New Hampshire. Over a working life spanning nearly 50 years, he has been a forest ecologist, policy-maker, lobbyist, coalition-builder, entrepreneur, and advocate for conserving forests at local, regional, and national scales, and for promoting human well-being in harmony with the natural world. He is an Environmental Fellow with the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, a Bullard Fellow at the Harvard Forest, and was awarded the National Conservation Partnership Award.
Susan Murphy
Susan Murphy is a writer, filmmaker, radio producer, and founding teacher of Zen Open Circle in Sydney, Australia. Since receiving dharma transmission in both Diamond Sangha and Pacific Zen lineages, she has been leading regular retreats around Australia and teaching a country-wide sangha that extends internationally online. She is the author of Upside-Down Zen; Minding the Earth, Mending the World; and Red Thread Zen. Her latest book is A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis.
Bonnie Nadzam
Bonnie Nadzam is an American writer and Zen Buddhist priest and chaplain. Her poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in Harper’s, Orion Magazine, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and many other journals and magazines. Her first novel, Lamb, was the recipient of The Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, translated into several languages and made into an award-winning independent film. Her second novel, Lions, was a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award in Fiction. She is also co-author of Love in the Anthropocene with environmental ethicist Dale Jamieson. Her next book is a work of nonfiction, The Magpie Spoke to Me: How Storytelling Shapes Our World (Shambhala, 2026). She is currently Associate Director of Ethics, Culture & Religion with the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard University.
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee is an author, Emmy- and Peabody Award–nominated filmmaker, and a Sufi teacher. He has directed more than twenty documentary films, including Taste of the Land, The Last Ice Age, Aloha Āina, The Nightingale’s Song, Earthrise, Sanctuaries of Silence, and Elemental, among others. His films have been screened at New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and Hot Docs, exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum and London’s Barbican, and featured on PBS POV, National Geographic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Op-Docs. His new book, Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology, is forthcoming from Shambhala in summer 2026. He is the founder, podcast host, and executive editor of Emergence Magazine.