Sarah Holst is a bioregional theologian, artist and Masters of Divinity student living in the Tischer Creek Watershed of Duluth, Minnesota. Sarah is on an ordination journey with the Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an international initiative within the Catholic Church to cultivate a new, gender-inclusive, expansive definition of priesthood. Sarah is among the youngest to be engaging a call with this movement.
Sarah is currently attending United Theological Seminary where she is working on a Masters in Divinity degree with a concentration of Theology and the Arts. Throughout this, Sarah is planting the seeds for “Muddy Water Garden Church: A Different Way to Be Catholic!”, a watershed discipleship community committed to re-imagining Catholic tradition through an ecofeminist lens. Much of Sarah’s EcoFaith Recovery internship will be gathering and creating resources on the path of planting Garden Church.
Sarah grew up in a tiny town in southwestern Nebraska (in the Stinking Water Watershed), attended St. Ambrose University where she triple majored in Art, English, and Theology, and lived and taught on the Crow Indian Reservation right after undergrad. Much of Sarah’s commitment to environmental justice work comes from being adopted into the Crow Clan System and the continuation of what it means to be living into that story.
Sarah has been fortunate to have learned from and lived in many amazing communities who are experimenting with faith, powerful women’s leadership, farming, and re-wilding. Sarah sees The Abundant Table Farm Project’s Farm Church, Wilderness Way Community and Spiritus Christi Church as the parents of Garden Church. Sarah is passionate about doing this work in a humble, historically grounded, contextual way that acknowledges their identity as a settler, intentionally seeks learning from elders, and powerfully claims how the spirit is moving within herself.