Freya Secrest
Freya is a spiritual mentor, priest, administrator, and adult educator. Her interest in spirituality along with a sense of adventure, drew her to travel in Europe during her college years, where shevisited the Findhorn Foundation community in northern Scotland. At Findhorn, her love for gardens led to a deep connection to a sense of the “God Within” and the inner soul world of nature. Returning to the US in 1973, she was a founding member of the Lorian Association, helping to establish the organization and its early programs in the US and Canada. From 1976 to 1984 she worked closely with Dorothy Maclean, traveling and teaching across the US and Canada on themes of collaboration with the intelligences of nature and the Sacredness of all life. The birth of her children in 1984 and 1986 further focused her spiritual path as an embodied and ongoing practice of spirited living.
In 2002 Freya moved to the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Jeremy Berg to join David and Julia Spangler and others to expand Lorian’s educational work. Since then, she has served as Lorian’s Board President, helped to develop its faculty and educational programming, and worked as Lorian’s Administrator and Executive Director. She currently serves as its Community CommonsCoordinator.
“My collaborative work with nature continues through my joy in gardening and in moments when I open to share the beauty and spaciousness of a sunset with the life of the land around me. My understanding of the subtle realms of life continues to grow as I deepen in appreciation and caring for the roots of life and the love that sources all the manifest world. Whether the Sacred presents as a stone, a bird, a neighbor, or a crafted object, my “cutting edge” is to learn to better notice, listen to, and partner with the Light in all life around me.”
Freya is the author of “Showing Up: Practices for a Spirited Life.”