In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Ilia Delio continues her conversation with neurotheologian Shaleen Kendrick on the practical meaning of Christogenesis, wholeness, and adaptive evolution. Shaleen reflects on what she calls “evolutionary mismatch,” the gap between our rapidly changing world and the neurobiological capacities we need to meet it with wisdom, compassion, and creativity.

Together, Ilia and Shaleen explore how spirituality can become a lived practice of integration: not simply what we believe about God, but who we are and what we do each day. Drawing on neuroscience, process theology, epigenetics, and the image of living systems, Shaleen invites us to imagine people less as machines to be optimized and more as plants to be cultivated toward wholeness.

Later in the episode, the conversation turns to Christianity in transition, the need for new systems, and the possibility of “wholeness-making” as a guiding concern for families, institutions, and the planet. Shaleen also shares the metaphor of jazz as a way to understand harmony, difference, and the creative work of becoming whole in real time.

ABOUT SHALEEN KENDRICK

Rev. Dr. Shaleen Kendrick, ThD, is an emerging neurotheologian who developed the Neuro-Relational Integration™ (NRI) model—demonstrating how conscious integration across Mind–Body–Spirit neural systems can facilitate rapid adaptive evolution in how we think, act, and relate to ourselves, others, and the challenges of our time. NRI integrates neuroscience with liberation theology to show that through daily wholeness-making practices we can expand our human capacity and create new abilities that nurture not just individual flourishing but transform the systems we live in. She serves companies, practitioners, and faith communities, translating evolutionary spirituality into embodied practice—because the world needs humans who can evolve as quickly as our challenges emerge. This is Human Evolution in Practice.

Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.

We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.

Support the show

A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!

Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.

Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.

In this episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Ilia Delio speaks with neurotheologian Shaleen Kendrick about neuroscience, contemplative practice, and the biology of spiritual experience. Shaleen shares her journey from conservative evangelical ministry through deconstruction, suffering, and contemplative prayer into the emerging field of neurotheology.

Together, Ilia and Shaleen explore how religious experience is not separate from the body but mediated through it. They consider how God-language, belief, prayer, trauma, neuroplasticity, and contemplative practice all shape the brain and body—and how changing our images of God can change the very neural pathways through which we experience reality.

Later in the episode, they discuss the resistance many theologians have to locating spiritual experience in neurobiology, the promise and complexity of psychedelics and healing, and the growing scientific evidence that spirituality is an innate human capacity. Rather than reducing God to biology, this conversation asks what becomes possible when we understand the body as the living temple of divine encounter.

ABOUT SHALEEN KENDRICK

Rev. Dr. Shaleen Kendrick, ThD, is an emerging neurotheologian who developed the Neuro-Relational Integration™ (NRI) model—demonstrating how conscious integration across Mind–Body–Spirit neural systems can facilitate rapid adaptive evolution in how we think, act, and relate to ourselves, others, and the challenges of our time. NRI integrates neuroscience with liberation theology to show that through daily wholeness-making practices we can expand our human capacity and create new abilities that nurture not just individual flourishing but transform the systems we live in. She serves companies, practitioners, and faith communities, translating evolutionary spirituality into embodied practice—because the world needs humans who can evolve as quickly as our challenges emerge. This is Human Evolution in Practice.

Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.

We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.

Support the show

A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!

Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.

Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.

In this 100th episode of Hunger for Wholeness, Sr. Ilia Delio continues her conversation with Nicholas Hedlund, PhD exploring what it means to seek coherence in a world shaped by fragmentation and acceleration.

Beginning with Teilhard de Chardin’s sense that the future is not simply ahead of us but mysteriously within the present, Ilia and Nick reflect on evolution as an unfinished process of becoming—one that calls for “unity in diversity,” not a monolithic consensus. Nick develops his concept of alethic resonance: truth as an attunement to reality that is participatory and transformative, not merely a set of propositions we “possess.” If reality is relational and dynamic, then truth is not something we control but something we learn to hear, honor, and live.

ABOUT NICHOLAS HEDLUND

“Humanity is not suffering from a crisis of information but a crisis of integration.”

Nicholas Hedlund, Ph.D., is a philosopher, metatheorist, and contemplative practitioner whose work explores the intersection of spirituality, science, and worldview transformation. He is the director of Eudaimonia Institute and director of research at the Institute for Applied Metatheory, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice.

Nicholas developed visionary realism, an integrative philosophical framework drawing from critical realism, integral theory, and complexity science to illuminate deeper structures of reality and help navigate the global metacrisis. He earned his Ph.D. from University College London, where he studied under Roy Bhaskar and Arthur Petersen, and he was also an exchange scholar at Yale University.

He is the author and editor of Metatheory for the Twenty-First Century and Big Picture Perspectives on Planetary Flourishing, and his work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Zygon and Environmental Science & Policy. He is currently completing two new books further developing visionary realism and its implications for civilizational transformation.

Alongside his scholarly work, Nicholas is an APPA-certified philosophical counselor and a spiritual director-in-training, supporting individuals in exploring meaning, inner transformation, and spiritual experience. A long-time contemplative practitioner and musician, he is deeply interested in the resonance between sound, consciousness, and human evolution.

Nicholas teaches in the Integral Noetic Sciences Department at the California Institute for Human Science, offering courses in integral philosophy, consciousness studies, and the global metacrisis. Learn more about his studies and work on his website. His PhD thesis, Visionary Realism And The Emergence Of A Eudaimonistic Society, is also available online.

Join us for the Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference, November 9–11 in Villanova, Pennsylvania, with a virtual option available. In a time of deep political, social, ecological, and spiritual division, this gathering explores how love can become a compass for transformation. Learn more and register at christogenesis.org/conference.

We are currently in the midst of our summer fundraiser, From Fear to Hope: Change and the Perpetual Growth of Life. As the Center marks its tenth anniversary, your support sustains our conferences, webinars, publications, and emerging global learning platform. Please consider making a generous contribution at christogenesis.org/donate.

Support the show

A huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show!

Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org.

Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for episode releases and other updates.