Jailbreak the Sacred

This week it's a pleasure to welcome my friend Bryan Nashed to the show. Bryan is a spooky boi, tarotist, and podcaster, coming to us from the wild and wooly world of Seventh Day Adventism. Bryan co-hosts the Badventist podcast with Anthony Rodriguez, which, aside from winning this week's portmanteau award, serves as a space for those who grew up Adventist to work on jailbreaking their own sacred sto...

Today's chat features a lovely conversation with Arthur Lipp-Bonewits. Arthur is an all-purpose diviner, astrologer, occultist, and ecumenical medium based in New York City where he is studying psychology, gender, and sexuality. Today we're sitting down to talk growing up neopagan and the confluence of religious, spiritual, and magical practice at the margins.

M...

Today on the show it’s my privilege to welcome my friend and clergy colleague, the Rev. Dr. Sarah Kye Price. Mother Sarah and I met during the trial-by-fire known as Clinical Pastoral Education back in 2015, and she was recently ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church.

In addition to living out her priestly vocation as the priest affiliate at Grace & ...

A little late on the release due to ECLIPSE MANIA, but here we are. It's a privilege to welcome my good friend Andrew Lamont to the show. Andrew is a fiber artist, magician, and astrologer based out of Rhode Island, and today we're sitting down to talk about the process of jailbreaking Catholicism, embodiment and desire, and the importance of ritual work in developing connection to community across t...

Today on the show it’s my privilege to welcome my good friend Jo Gleason! Jo is an astrologer, former ballet dancer, and writer based out of Oklahoma City. She currently serves as the vice president of the Association for Young Astrologers.

This free-form conversation tracks Jo's story through her GOOD CHRISTIAN KID upbringing. We talk about disarming the fear o...

Today on the show, I’m sitting down with my friend Flan Park. Flan and I have been in each others orbits for several years now, having connected with one another via Gay Christian Twitter.

Flan is a children’s librarian living and working in Philadelphia. Their work focuses on bringing whole person, whole family literacy and learning support work to underserved ...

Today on the show I’ve got the privilege of welcoming my friend Sam Block, with whom I became acquainted through Spooky Twitter, only to find out that he lives in my hometown, the forested wilds of Northern Virginia.

Sam wears many hats; in addition to being a software developer, talen...

This week, I sat down with Drew Levanti, a new friend I connected with at the Northwest Astrology Conference in Seattle. Drew is a student of anthropology and of Hellenistic astrology (with some forays into archetypical models of symbolism). Our conversation wends its way through his experience growing up around a heavy-duty New Age community, his work as a student of anthropology, and the role of ethics in shaping our creative eng...

We're on a weird release schedule these days due to circumstances beyond my control, but I'm glad to be back!

This time around, it’s my pleasure to welcome to the show my friend West Ardere! West is an astrologer and former evangelical based out of Seattle, Washington. Our lovely conversation today circles the drain on ritualized prayer, folk catholica, ancestor...

Today we welcome my good friend Eve Ettinger to talk about surviving a Quiverfull cult, the justice of rage, the power of critique, and the process of engaging with the sacred through narrative constellations when circumstance and safety have required you to leave it all behind.

Eve is an essayist, tarot reader, and commentator on fundamentalist and homeschool cultures in the United States. Her writing has been featured in the Wash...

On this week's solo show, I share some thoughts on cultivating the sacredness of the everyday, following a thread that I've been hanging on to since my conversation with Dayna. "All religion is spiritual, all spirituality is religious." What does that mean for the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd?

More importantly for our task here, what does that mean for the process of liberating our sacred stories?

Passages are from Thomas Moor...

I was #blessed to have this incredible conversation with my friend and colleague, Dayna Lynn Nuckolls. Dayna is a Chicago-based western sidereal astrologer and spiritual practitioner. Our conversation wends its way through Dayna's experience growing up black and Christian and we talk about the spiritual power that erupts from initiatory experiences, a jailbroken Christianity, sidereal astrology, and assembling cohesive narratives f...

This week features a wonderful conversation with my friend and clergy colleague, the Rev. Kimberly Gibson-Pierce, about the spiritual uniqueness of Appalachia and the revolutionary undercurrent behind such stereotyped phenomena as snake-handling and poison-drinking in certain pockets of Pentecostalism. Rev. Kim is a commissioned minister in the Disciples of Christ denomination and a scholar of Appalachian history. This discussion b...

For this week's episode, I sat down to speak with my colleague and friend Robert Bailey, a professional astrologer based in Canberra, Australia, to talk religious upbringing, learning medieval astrology to impress a girl, the precarious work of discerning new ways forward after life-altering junctures, and finding one's way back to the religious tradition of youth after taking a long detour. This epi...

I drove down through the wilds of the Virginia panhandle to sit down with my friend Andrew (Andy) Ford, a quasi-lapsed Episcopalian, Zen practitioner, musician, playwright, and existential bon vivant. Andy shares about his life growing up as a Good Christian Boy and his process of coming out, sitting down, and shutting up, embracing the Dark Night of the Soul, and learning how to escape the samsara cycle of spiritual pursuit.

Andy'...

In this pre-episode of Jailbreak the Sacred, Nate describes the whole point of the show and explains what "jailbreaking the sacred" is all about.

Every Tuesday, listen in as I sit down to talk with leaders, thinkers, practitioners, and activists about the intersection of mainstream religion and alternative spirituality. These are people like me who have experience growing up religious that they are n...