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In this deeply honest conversation, we sit with Kenneth Wortley. His life journey spans decades of ministry, education, marriage, and fatherhood. Ultimately, it leads to liberation.

Ken was born in 1951 into a blue-collar family in Saginaw, Michigan. His early life led him into theology and pastoral ministry. He served churches across Colorado, Oregon, California, and Washington. For years, he faithfully met the expectations of church, marriage, and vocation. Meanwhile, he quietly carried hidden truths.

Later in life, after divorce and a profound inner reckoning, Ken came out as a gay man. He journaled about his experience of grief, faith, and living authentically. Through this process, he began to tell the story that would eventually become The Gospel of Secrets. This memoir has since reached #1 in new LGBTQ+ memoir releases.

Ken currently lives in Brazil with his partner.

You can find his memoir, "The Gospel of Secrets" at Barnes and Noble.

EPISODE NOTE: During the conversation, the work of biblical scholar Dan McClellan was mentioned. Listeners interested in exploring his academic perspective may do so independently. He can be found on many different social media sites and WordPress.

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this personal conversation, co-host LaNell Haydon steps from behind the mic to share her own spiritual journey from a questioning child in a working-class home to a world traveler, writer, and advocate for the sacred life within all beings.

LaNell reflects on how her early encounters with animal suffering and cultural conditioning opened her to a lifelong search for truth and oneness. Her stories of traveling across continents, from Europe, South America, to Africa, reveal how each encounter with the human and more-than-human world became a mirror for divine consciousness.

Through animals, she discovered what she calls “the divine inseparable from matter itself,” a revelation that transformed activism into reverence. Together with co-host Bernice Marie-Daly, LaNell explores what it means to awaken to the sacred in all of creation, to see through the eyes of every creature, and to remember that caring for the Earth and one another is not a task, but a way of being.

This episode is an intimate reflection on divine consciousness, service, and the living wholeness that connects us all. When we truly see, we see God everywhere.

*NOTE OF CORRECTION: In this episode, LaNell refers to a Bull that she knew on a farmed animal sanctuary, named Justice. Justice was a steer. The distinction being he was raised for the meat production industry, not for breeding.

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LaNell Haydon is a contemplative, spiritual and fiction writer, and a co-host of this podcast, From Stardust to Us, whose work explores inner transformation and collective healing. Her journey has taken her from the creative literary world in Los Angeles to animal sanctuaries in South Africa and Peru.

In the mid-1980s, with little more than a shoestring budget and a prayer, LaNell set out to see the world, arriving in Leningrad during the Soviet era before making her way through Europe. In 1989, she witnessed history as the Berlin Wall fell and traveled onward into the Eastern Bloc, absorbing cultures and perspectives that deepened her understanding of our shared humanity.

Travel soon became a form of service for her, volunteering at animal sanctuaries in Colorado, South America, and Africa. LaNell worked hands-on with rescued animals and came to recognize the unique intelligence and spirit within all beings. Later journeys to Kenya, India, and Scotland added to her understanding of the sacred.

In recent years, LaNell experienced a profound sense of oneness that revealed the divine as inseparable from matter itself. Through her forthcoming novel, her YouTube channel, and her blog, she reflects on our divine entanglement with all life. For LaNell, caring for animals, the Earth, and one another is a spiritual act of reverence for divine creation.

www.lanellhaydon.com

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.

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In this conversation, we sit with Kara Huntermoon, whose life and work are deeply committed to the Long Tom Watershed and the human and more-than-human communities of the Southern Willamette Valley. Kara shares how her path unfolded into hyper-local, hands-on ecological and community work, teaching permaculture and ancestral skills, living in intentional community, and organizing with neighbors to respond to climate change and the need for collective survival.

Kara speaks from a lived relationship with land, animals, and community. At the heart of her work are two intertwined practices: Liberation Listening, the internal and interpersonal work to heal the trauma carried by humans who have been isolated from one another and from the Earth. and ecological integration, the ongoing process of helping humans rejoin the living ecological community of their watershed.

This conversation is grounded in humility and gratitude for Indigenous stewardship and traditional ecological knowledge; for ancestors; and for the many teachers, scientists, farmers, permaculturists, midwives, herbalists, and earth-based practitioners, who have modeled what it looks like to love land and community.

Find out more about her work at:

https://karahuntermoon.substack.com/

https://karahuntermoon.com/

With thanks and gratitude to all of our listeners. If you would like to get in touch, we can be reached at fromstardusttous@gmail.com.