Episode 98

full
Published on:

19th Sep 2025

Earth and Soul - Leah Rampy on Reconnecting in the Midst Ecological and Cultural Chaos

https://dangerouswisdom.org/

https://www.leahmoranrampy.com/earth-and-soul-book.html

Amidst accelerating climate devastation and an uncertain future comes a clarion call to renew a deep and personal relationship with Earth.

Facing directly into the devastation of climate chaos and biodiversity loss, Rampy leads her readers on a soul journey into grief and loss to also claim the beauty, joy and possibilities available when we reconnect with Earth. As we follow the author’s compelling personal experiences and engagingly lyrical stories of whales, cedars, sparrows, and more, we see the necessity and urgency of learning from the wisdom of our kin in the natural world.

Writing at the intersection of spirituality, ecology, and story, Leah Rampy illuminates a path to reweaving nature and soul. Under Rampy’s deft guidance, the beauty and genius of this sacred world unfolds before us. Even now when the world as we knew it is ending and a new story lies beyond what we can envision, we may live fully alive and lay stepping stones toward a diverse and vibrant world of oneness and mutual flourishing.

Leah Rampy is an experienced speaker, retreat leader, and writer with a focus on soul and Earth connections. She is on the program staff of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation where she previously served as executive director and is the Senior Spiritual Program Leader for the Center for Spirituality and Nature. In 2019 she founded Church of the Wild Two Rivers which she continues to lead. Prior careers include teaching in public schools and universities, serving in leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies, providing executive coaching and leadership development through a company she founded, and non-profit management. Rampy holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum from Indiana University. She lives with her husband in a co-housing community in Shepherdstown, WV.

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About the Podcast

Dangerous Wisdom
Journey into Mystery
A podcast for wild souls who want to live with open eyes and an enlivened heart. The world needs dangerous wisdom, and our education system functions primarily to keep us away from it—to stop us from taking the journey into the mystery and magic of the world. Because of this, we have achieved a catastrophic level of confusion, anxiety, and ignorance—with boatloads of tame wisdom, false wisdom, and self-help nonsense that only adds to the challenges we face. The path of wisdom—the path of wonder—deals with how things really work, and how we can become skillful and successful. Following it leads beyond concepts to a wonderstanding that can heal us, and empower us to help the world, realize our hidden potential, and experience the profound meaningfulness of life. In this podcast, we turn toward the dangerous stuff, the wild stuff, and confront the need to handle authentic wisdom with skill and grace, making sure the medicine doesn’t become another poison. If you want an inspiring space to explore the big and sometimes scary questions, a space that opens up into insights that can change your life and the world we share, join us. Find out more at https://dangerouswisdom.org/

About your host

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nikos patedakis

“Vain is the word of the philosopher that heals no suffering.” ~ Epicurus

Following in the footsteps of Epicurus, nikos patedakis works with individuals, groups, and organizations, bringing to bear the most powerful and holistic teachings of the wisdom traditions in relation to our most daunting personal and global challenges. nikos works with the unity of Nature and Culture, drawing from the sciences, the arts, and the wisdom traditions.

His educational and consulting practice offers a genuinely holistic approach to creativity and critical thinking, ecoliteracy and true sustainability, achievement and excellence, mindfulness and attention, wellness and stress reduction, burnout prevention and recovery, and more.

This work encompasses the traditional areas of ethics, knowledge, meditation, creativity, beauty, being, and metaphysics, remaining rooted in the ancient Greek orientation of philosophy as a way of life, in which philosophy is seen as therapy for the soul and fundamental to the healthy transformation of self and society. This is the tradition of Western philosophy that influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the approach of world philosophies that have shaped our world.

The philosophical traditions serve as a sacred storehouse of practical wisdom, trainable compassion, and effortless beauty that can help us resolve complex personal and global challenges, uncover our hidden potentials, and realize our highest ideals. Wisdom is what works.