Rev. Lauren Spivey Levwood, Acting Director of UU Ministry for Earth, 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 \u2013 2025 before moving into the position of Acting Director in 2025.\u00a0A religious naturalist and\u00a0longtime\u00a0environmentalist, Rev. Lauren is spiritually nourished by experiences of awe and wonder arising in our natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A southern Virginia native, Rev. Lauren serves\u00a0as Minister of two UU congregations in the beautiful western Virginia mountains: the UU Church of the Shenandoah Valley and the UU\u2019s of the Blue Ridge. Her call to Earth advocacy began in childhood and was energized in her early 20\u2019s while working at Charlottesville\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s Th!rd Act\u2019s 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 \u201cTime for Tea in Times of War.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rev. Lauren\u2019s 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.\u00a0Her background in bodywork and spirituality inform a personal creative offering, \u201cEmbodied\u00a0Spiritual Practice\u201d (ESP), that she shares through her community ministry, Soma Spiritus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rev. Lauren\u2019s academic portfolio includes a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry, CA (2020), study at Wake Forest University\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cMeet the Moment\u201d (to borrow a phrase from the UUA\u2019s General Assembly) with hope, resilience, creativity, and joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rev. Lauren Spivey Levwood, Acting Director of UU Ministry for Earth, 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 \u2013 2025 before moving into the position of Acting Director in 2025.\u00a0A religious naturalist and\u00a0longtime\u00a0environmentalist, Rev. Lauren […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12278","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12280,"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12278\/revisions\/12280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uumfe.org\/uumfe-wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}