Letter from Rev. Lauren
Dear UU Ministry for Earth CommUUnity,
It is with great joy that I share with you an important leadership update from UU Ministry for Earth. I’m thrilled to relay that I have accepted the invitation to serve as Acting Director of UUMFE in the year ahead.
Over the last few years, I have had the honor of serving on UUMFE’s Board of Directors, first as a Member at Large, then as Vice Chair, and most recently as Chair. My promotion has sparked changes to our Board as well, which you can anticipate learning more about in next month’s newsletter.
UUMFE has long been a source of inspiration for me, and I’m honored to deepen my service to an organization that I believe in. I am ready to focus on the next phase and am eager to help us find momentum. If you’d like to connect with me to share in this endeavor, the door is always open to connect. Email me anytime at laurenlevwood@uumfe.org.
UU Ministry for Earth has had many incarnations and meant many things to many different people over the years. However UUMFE has touched your life, thank you for being part of our story. Know that I am excited to continue planting seeds for UUMFE’s future and for the shared future of the Climate Justice movement within Unitarian Universalism and beyond.
With kindness,
Rev. Lauren Spivey Levwood
About Rev. Lauren
Rev. Lauren Spivey Levwood is a long-time member of the UU Ministry for Earth community. A board member since 2022, she served as Chair of the Board of Directors from 2024 – 2025 before moving into the position of Acting Director in 2025. A religious naturalist and longtime environmentalist, Rev. Lauren is spiritually nourished by experiences of awe and wonder arising in our natural world.
A southern Virginia native, Rev. Lauren serves as Minister of two UU congregations in the beautiful western Virginia mountains: the UU Church of the Shenandoah Valley and the UU’s of the Blue Ridge. Her call to Earth advocacy began in childhood and was energized in her early 20’s while working at Charlottesville’s Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts, through which she met environmentalist and anti-mining activist Larry Gibson, who initiated her by inviting her to witness the first-hand devastation of Mountaintop Removal.
An improvisational dance theater artist, Rev. Lauren draws inspiration from public artists such as Bread and Puppet Theater, Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and Bill McKibben’s Th!rd Act’s Rocking Chair Rebellion. Her modern dance and performance art history includes co-direction of SEED Dance Exchange, choreography and performance with the Zen Monkey Project, and co-direction of the site-specific immersive performance “Time for Tea in Times of War.”
Rev. Lauren’s professional background also includes massage therapy, Zen Shiatsu, Reiki, birth and postpartum doula care, Birthing From Within childbirth mentorship, and trauma-informed somatics. An Authentic Movement practitioner since 1999, her decades-long somatics engagement also includes Body Mind Centering, the Alexander Technique, and Contact Improvisation. Her background in bodywork and spirituality inform a personal creative offering, “Embodied Spiritual Practice” (ESP), that she shares through her community ministry, Soma Spiritus.
Rev. Lauren’s academic portfolio includes a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry, CA (2020), study at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity, NC (2017), two Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Philosophy from James Madison University,VA (2002), study in Alexander Technique at the Alexander Technique Teacher Training Centre, VA (2005), and Certification in Massage Therapy from the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, CO (2008).
Rev. Lauren is grateful to be journeying alongside the UU Ministry for Earth community at this time, and hopes to help this small-but-mighty nonprofit “Meet the Moment” (to borrow a phrase from the UUA’s General Assembly) with hope, resilience, creativity, and joy.