Meet our ChIME Team
ChIME faculty members and staff bring gifts and experience from a broad spectrum of traditions, disciplines, and arts. Highlighted below are our staff, key faculty, and some of the guest facilitators, instructors, and speakers who offer curricular and extracurricular classes and workshops.
Rev. Lisa Steele-Maley
Executive Director/Dean
email: lisa@chimeofmaine.org
As ChIME’s Executive Director and the Dean of the Interfaith Ministry program, Lisa delights in keeping an eye on the big picture, her hands in the details, and her heart open to possibilities.
Lisa has lived and worked in wilderness and cities, with infants and elders, on both coasts and many places in between - always in pursuit of the healthy, sustainable joyful, interconnected lives we are here to live.
Lisa was ordained by ChIME in 2019 and completed ChI’s Spiritual Direction certification program in 2025.
Lisa’s ministry is connection - to self, to one another, to the Earth, and to Spirit.
She shares her personal practice, books, and musings at lisasteelemaley.com
Lisa Steele-Maley
Dana Watt
Academic Coordinator
email: dana@chimeofmaine.org
Ordained by ChIME in 2024, Dana brings creativity and a gift for marrying the mystical with the practical to both her administrative work and facilitation. Her ability to work with both broad strokes and fine details serves her well at ChIME.
A facilitator, mentor, and soulful entrepreneur, Dana creates calm, supportive spaces where people feel safe to explore, question, and grow. Her ministry is remembering—guiding others back to their authentic selves and the wisdom within.
A dedicated contemplative who delves into various mystical paths, Dana has been a student of Universal Sufism for over 16 years. This embodied, mystical path is her spiritual foundation, and one of its core teachings—the sacred dance between inner receptivity and outer expression—is something she draws on in all areas of her life.
She lives with her husband in a camp-turned-cottage in Midcoast Maine, where the woods and water give this introvert with bold extrovert tendencies the grounding she needs to show up fully.
Dana Watt
Rev. Abby Hall Luca
Community Coordinator
email Abby: abby@chimeofmaine.org
Rev. Abby Hall Luca (she/her) is an Ordained Interfaith Chaplain, midwife, writer, and educator whose private practice, The Hearth Chaplain, offers spiritual listening and companioning. Though Abby works with all people, she specializes in chaplaincy and spiritual care through infertility, pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Her background in healthcare and training in issues of moral injury also help her to companion healthcare workers working through burnout and compassion fatigue, and her spacious and affirming approach make her an ideal companion for the "spiritual but not religious" seeker. Abby was ordained in the ChIME class of 2022 and currently crafts classes and retreats for ChIME's Asynchronous Workshop Experience (AWE) option..
Abby Hall Luca
Kelli Wescott McCannell
Business Manager/Social Media
email: kelli@chimeofmaine.org
Kelli has spent her professional life in nonprofits, trying to contribute to an expansive society where folks feel seen and resourced. She believes deeply in servant leadership and the power of community.
Kelli is excited to join the ChIME community and reconnect with her spirituality. She lives in midcoast Maine, has three sons, and loves reading and making art.
Kelli Wescott-McCannell
Rev. Cathy Grigsby, MDiv
Arts Minister; Instructor
Cathy was ordained in 1999 by the Interfaith Theological Seminary in Tucson, Arizona. She has worked with her spiritual teacher, Dr. Beverly Lanzetta, for over 45 years and completed an M. Div. and monastic studies program with Dr. Lanzetta. She has been a member of the Community of a New Monastic Way since 2008. She is also an artist and retired public school art teacher of 29 years. She has performed many life ceremonies including, weddings, memorials and naming ceremonies. In addition, she provides spiritual direction services and was instrumental in founding the Interfaith Ministers of New England.
Cathy Grigsby
Rev. Craig Werth
Music Minister; Faculty Advisor
email: craig@chimeofmaine.org
After years of service in other roles at ChIME, Craig currently serves as ChIME’s Music Minister and as an Academic Advisor. Craig is an interfaith minister (ChIME '17), a clinically-certified chaplain, and former pastor at Nottingham Community Church (UU), NH (2017-2023). He also supports the David Krempels Brain Injury Center as Program Facilitator and Artist-In-Residence.
An internationally-touring singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Craig views music as his primary spiritual language.
He is passionate about teaching (improv, songwriting, creative problem solving and more), music (guitar, banjo, ukulele, violin), writing (songs, essays, poetry), kayaking, storytelling, improv theater, photography, and nature.
He shares this challenging, wondrous and wild ride with his wife-and-best-pal, Liz, their therapeutic dogs, Sadie and Brigid, and their son Ben and his family, including granddaughter Ryland.
Craig Werth
Our Guest Facilitators
Angie Arndt, M.S.
Angie graduated from ChIME in 2007, served as dean for several years, and continues as a faculty member. In addition to facilitating a number of ChIME classes, she also facilitates the ChIME Alumni Support Group and offers Spiritual Direction to staff and support to Spiritual Companions. Angie completed the Chi Spiritual Direction Certificate Program and welcomes individuals interested in working one-on-one or in groups. She enjoys performing ceremonies in community and is a guest speaker at Islands Community Church and First Universalist Church in Yarmouth.
Angie Arndt
Greg Grigsby
After a 32-year career as an elementary school counselor, Rev. Grigsby entered ChIME (Chaplaincy Institute of Maine) and was ordained in 2019. He is passionate about Forgiveness as a value and spiritual practice. He brings to ChIME an inspirational curriculum he developed based on “The Book of Forgiving” by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu.
Greg Grigsby
Aram Mitchell
Aram lives with his wife and daughter in a house that is shaded by a great big oak tree. He has a coaching practice that supports people to slow down and get clear on what they want, then take playful and purposeful steps toward living out their vision for a thriving life. He writes and teaches regularly about spiritual formation. And he serves part-time as the pastor of Edgecomb Community Church in Maine.
Aram is also a wilderness guide, taking people to places where encounters with wildness and experiences of formation flow together. He guides in the backcountry, in forests and canyons, along coasts and rivers. And he guides people to the metaphorical confluence of wildness and formation in houses of worship, classrooms, board rooms, and living rooms.
Aram is a Registered Maine Guide and Wilderness First Responder. He has a Master of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Chicago Theological Seminary. And he is a student of ontological coaching with the Academy for Coaching Excellence.
Aram Mitchell
Yvette McDonnell
Yvette (she/her) serves as the Congregational Life Coordinator and Ministerial Intern at Main Line Unitarian Church in Devon, PA. With deep roots in the African American Baptist tradition, she embraces a diversity of spiritual perspectives and ways of knowing. Yvette’s ministry centers on liberation, social justice, and the spirit of Yielubugnra, “the thing that knowledge cannot eat.” This guiding philosophy highlights her belief that the essence and power of life often transcend human categorization. Her theology, grounded in queer spirituality, asserts that there is no separation between the material, secular, and sacred realms and that the supernatural permeates everyday existence.
As a ritualist Yvette honors all aspects of the human experience, from guidance and protection to celebration and mourning. She holds a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Connecticut and a Master’s degree in Social Change, as well as certificates in Multi-Religious and Chaplaincy Studies from the Unitarian Universalist Seminary—Starr King School for the Ministry in California. She has also completed a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education. Outside of her professional life, Yvette enjoys dancing, long walks, arts and crafts, baking, gardening, and creating herbal medicines.
Yvette McDonnell
Circe Moss MacDonald
Circe is an Eco Chaplain, Water Priestess, and Ceremonialist based in Portland, Maine. Ordained as both a Transdenominational Minister (StarHouse, 2002) and Interfaith Chaplain (ChIME, 2019), she founded Ritual Lab: Ceremonies for People and Planet, primarily serving the “SBNR”—spiritual but not religious. She teaches Ceremony & Ritual, Creation Spirituality, and Goddess, God, and Goddex. She is the Spiritual Director at the Portland New Church Center for Sacred Arts, where she holds monthly Cosmic Mass ceremonies and other regular services for the community, and offers for hire weddings, memorials, and rites of passage. In addition, she offers somatic ritual practices for grief work and intuitive counseling.
You can see her clown performances and puppet shows at Mayo Street Arts, combining mythic storytelling with shadow puppetry and song. Circe is grateful to her mentors, and honors the sacredness of water.
Circe Moss MacDonald
Rev. Patricia Ellen
Patricia was ordained in 1996 by the New Seminary, the first Interfaith Seminary. She is RE-FIRED (Matthew Fox’s alternative to retire) from ChIME, where she served as Abbess working with students at all levels. In addition, she worked for the Center for Grieving Children for 15 years supporting families, schools, camps and businesses during times of grief and loss. Both experiences brought home to her the power of listening and ritual, and the richness of spiritual paths of all kinds. She considers herself a “teach-learner” as she and those who attend her classes share wisdom and creativity. As a clown and originator of the “bubble blessing” at ChIME, she enjoys bringing laughter and lightness to the spiritual journey.
In reFIREment, she practices savoring the moment and serving where “called.”
Patricia Ellen
Hadley Couraud
Hadley lives in the Androscoggin River Watershed, at the edge of rural, in a small town with big community. She is privileged to have found her way into a career that is also a life calling - in river restoration and the ongoing development of equity and justice, in the conservation sector, and in our broader social systems. Hadley graduated from ChIME in 2022, and during that time also completed a separate (Social Justice) Movement Chaplaincy course from the School of Global Citizenry. She goes everywhere with a hand lens, headlamp, and notebook, and if you can find her indoors during her free time, she may be googly eye-ing her friends and colleagues' homes and desks...because we could all use more silly in our lives.
Hadley Couraud
Jake Fahey
Jake (he/him) is an interfaith chaplain and community organizer living in South Portland. Spirituality and justice have underlined his community action since graduating ChiME in 2019. He works as the statewide Program Coordinator for the racial justice nonprofit Community Change Inc and is the Faith-in-Action Coordinator for First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland. He serves on the board of the Maine Council of Churches, leads locally in the Greater Portland chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), and is part of a multiracial team building the infrastructure for a broad based organizing initiative in the state. Outside of his community ministry, Jake spends time communing with Spirit, Nature, Music, and his one year old son (Isaac) and wife (Sarah).
Jake Fahey
Tara Chishti
Tara is a Senior Teacher, Mentor, Retreat Leader, and Ordained Interfaith Minister in the Inayatiyya, an international Universal Sufi Order. With decades of devotion to spiritual service, she brings wisdom, compassion, and guidance to those seeking the path of wholeness.
She has served on the faculty of The Suluk Academy, a contemplative school of Sufi studies dedicated to the awakening of the soul. Throughout her life, Tara has been devoted to serving others by offering classes, guiding individual and group retreats, and working one-on-one with those on healing journeys or walking a path of spiritual unfoldment.
Trained as an Acupuncture Physician, Tara integrates healing traditions that address body, mind, heart, and soul. Her in-person and virtual work support people in becoming their authentic selves, expanding consciousness, and gently healing traumas, wounds, and habitual patterns that obscure inner light and wholeness. With deep dedication to the inner life, she assists seekers in cultivating profound communion with the sacred—releasing what is blocked, buried, or unhealed—so that one’s true soul and essence can be realized.
Tara Chishti
Susannah Crolius, M.Div
Susannah (she/hers) is a found object artist creating altars and story nests, a spiritual companion, grief tender and retreat facilitator. She creates, accompanies, teaches and tends. In her words, “These are the ways I belong to this world and it to me.” You can find Susannah as Artist-in-Residence and Director of Belonging at Inn Along the Way in Damariscotta, Maine. She invites all to top in and say hello!
Susannah Crolius
Jeff Logan
An acupuncturist, an Interfaith street minister, and a Shakespearean actor walk into a bar. How many characters are in this scene? Actually, only one, the Rev. Jeffery Logan (ChIME 2015).
“ChIME trains people for weird kinds of ministries,” Jeff says with characteristic humor. “Because ChIME’s training is not for a settled ministry, it’s a good match for a world that's fluid, too. In ChIME you take the Internal journey first. It tears your heart open, and then you go out into the world with that ripped open heart and see what happens.”
For three years now Rev. Logan has been known as “Pastor Jeff” to hundreds of people who are homeless in Portland. Actually, Jeff says, the streets, the shelters and the soup kitchens are home to this ever-changing community of women and men, and he is their guest.
Jeffrey Logan
Jacquie Robb
Jacquie is an ordained (2012) and board certified (2015) interfaith minister living in midcoast Maine. She is a certified meditation teacher and trained grief support counselor. After retiring as chaplain of a retirement community, she now focuses her time as a hospice volunteer, workshop facilitator, and supply minister at several local churches.
Jacquie Robb
Jan King
Jan is a 2022 ChIME graduate. Since then she has been offering hearth and neighborhood chaplaincy, encountering friends, family and new acquaintances with compassion, calm presence, and deep listening. She has offered a Spiritual Conversation Workshop at OLLI Lifetime Learning institute at USM and at her West End Neighborhood Association in Portland. With Spiritual Care Services of Maine, she facilitated a contemplative lake walk at their 2023 Summit; served as a chaplain in Lewiston the week following the tragic mass shooting; and offered support at the Equality Community Center in Portland following the 2024 US presidential election and for a lunchtime circle of elder LGBTQ+ attendees. Her own spiritual practice is rooted in Universal Sufism, the Twelve Steps and Nature. Her work at ChIME includes co-facilitating the second-year classes on Sufism, serving as a spiritual companion and most recently, joining the ChIME Board of Trustees.
Jan King
Jay Sherwin
Jay is a nationally recognized consultant now pursuing an “encore career” as a Life Review Adviser. In a diverse career as a foundation grantmaker, lawyer and hospital chaplain, Jay says "I've been deeply inspired by people’s stories and grateful for the opportunity to help tell those stories." As a Life Review Adviser, Jay uses the skills he's developed as a listener, facilitator and writer to help his students and clients explore the meaning and purpose of their lives and to craft legacy documents that transmit their values and life lessons to children, grandchildren and future generations. Read more at www.jaysherwin.com.
Jay Sherwin
Dr. Karen Leslie Hernandez
Dr. Hernandez has 20+ years of interfaith peace-building expertise under her belt, both internationally and in the US. As a proud Chicana, she is the only Latina doing this high level and grassroots level of interfaith work in the United States. Karen has a B.A. in Peace and Justice Studies from Wellesley College, an M.A. in Theological Research in Christian-Muslim Understanding from Andover Newton Theological School, an Master of Sacred Theology from Boston University School of Theology, and she earned her Doctor of Ministry from Claremont School of Theology. Currently Karen is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County (CA) and she is working on getting her own organization, The Living Restoratively, Dying Peacefully Project, up and running.
Karen Hernandez
Joanne Arnold
Joanne (ChIME graduate 2013) received her BFA in painting from Maine College of Art 1979 and began resurrecting her vision as an artist after a 27 year hiatus raising her three children. She initiated her practice of rising at first light each and every day, year round, to photograph in and around the Portland Waterfront. This early morning landscape offered her an opportunity to show up to all she encountered, as a pioneer on the frontier of rediscovering her own vision and trying to make sense of a complicated world and her relationship to it. This world includes a population experiencing homelessness, the Recovery Community and the fishermen of the Working Waterfront. She has chronicled her relationship and encounters with these populations on Facebook. This includes her seven year involvement at MaineWorks, a for-profit B-Corp committed to providing dignified employment for those in recovery from substance abuse disorder and the recently incarcerated.
Joanne Arnold
Mary Anne Totten
Mary Anne was ordained as an interfaith minister by ChIME in 2019. Prior to her ordination, she was a board-certified geriatrician and practiced geriatric medicine at Senior Health Primary Care in Manchester, NH. She completed 2 units of Clinical Pastoral Education in 2021. Mary Anne utilizes her chaplaining skills in Concord, NH at Havenwood-Heritage Heights (HHH) which is a Continuing Care Retirement Community. She assists the Spiritual Care Department in workshops on spirituality for the residents at HHH, and prepares Sunday worship services.
Mary Anne is a Spiritual Literacy Facilitator by Spirituality and Practice, Claremont, CA. She also is a Soul Collage Facilitator. Mary Anne has made presentations to national organizations for elder care spirituality. Her passion is Long Term Care (LTC) and advocates for chaplains in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Mary Anne Totten
Valerie Jones
Valerie is an associate clinical professor in the School of Social Work in the College of Health Professions at the University of New England. Throughout her career, she has worked with populations across the lifespan with a particular focus in the areas of aging, grief and loss, children and families. Valerie has been an adjunct faculty member for ChIME for over ten years teaching the areas of ethics and circle leadership.
Valerie Jones
Andrea Parker
Andrea is a healer, an intuitive empowerment facilitator, a master teacher, and an experiential business coach on a mission to help people shine their brightest light and have fun doing it.
Andrea Parker
Ari Hilton
Ari is an ordained Interfaith Chaplain, speaker, writer, and Biblical scholar. He has created and taught religious education curriculum (Jewish, Christian, and Interfaith,) and currently teaches LGBTQ+ and addiction issues in multiple settings. Ari holds a Master of Arts in Theology and Ethics from Bangor Theological Seminary where he studied Jewish and Christian history, theology, and practices, completing his thesis "Transgender Spirituality" in 2007. He was ordained by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, completing a Senior Project "Transgender Resilience, Spirituality Through the Lens of Nature" in June 2022. Being an openly transgender/Queer person gives Ari an expansive and radically inclusive approach in all of his work, seeking to always meet people where they are. He is now offering private pastoral care sessions to individuals, specializing in LGBTQ+, Spiritual Work, Addiction, and family systems. Ari lives in the Western Foothills of ME connected to many communities, including his extended family and synagogue in the Bay Area of CA. He loves pie a little too much.
Ari Hilton
Dana Sawyer
Dana is professor emeritus of philosophy and world religions at the Maine College of Art & Design and author of biographies of both Aldous Huxley and Huston Smith. His primary expertise is in Hinduism and Buddhism, but for more than twenty years, his work has focused on comparative mysticism, theories of the “perennial philosophy,” and the value of psychedelic experiences in the study of mysticism. Most recently, he has published an assessment of Aldous Huxley’s theory of psychedelic mysticism for the Centre of Aldous Huxley Studies (2019) and an essay in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology (2021) on four common errors in scholarly critiques of the perennial philosophy, including assessments of how psychedelic studies may help clarify such issues. His most recent book is an analysis of the Transcendental Meditation Movement for Cambridge University Press (2023).
Dana Sawyer
Sarah McEvoy
Sarah is an Ordained Interfaith Chaplain who specializes in the care of elders. Sarah has completed four units of clinical pastoral education and is working toward board certification as a healthcare chaplain. She works on-call at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine, and as the co-convener of the Elder Care Research Network for Transforming Chaplaincy, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois. Transforming chaplaincy is a think tank with a mission to promote research literacy in chaplaincy to improve patient outcomes. Her current research explores the use of music for older adults living with dementia, the development of a spiritual care assessment for older adults who live in a nursing home setting, and staff moral injury when residents chose voluntary stopping of eating and drinking in the nursing home setting. Sarah offers Interprofessional Spiritual Care Generalist Education for allied health professionals that work in nursing homes. Sarah was ordained in the ChIME class of 2022.
Sarah McEvoy
Andy Bachman
Andy is founder of Water Over Rocks and the Center for Midwestern Jewish Communities, a unique entity devoted to the preservation of history, memory and civic responsibility. He is also Senior Consultant to the Jewish Community Legacy Project. From 2018-2022 he was executive director of the Jewish Community Project of Lower Manhattan, a growing, open, pluralistic center for Jewish life in Tribeca. He was Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, New York from 2006-2015 (where he had also served immediately following ordination from 1993-1998) and was executive director of the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University from 1998-2004. He is also the founder of Brooklyn Jews, an innovative social organizing engine for young, unaffiliated Jews and their partners in Brownstone Brooklyn. He is an occasional faculty member for the Bronfman Fellowships and the Jewish Studies Department at CCNY. Andy has written for a number of publications, including Newsweek, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, as well the Forward, the Jewish Week, the LA Jewish Journal and Tablet Magazine. He has served on boards of UJA Federation of New York; Plaza Jewish Community Chapel; New Yorkers Against Gun Violence; and Ark Media.
Andy currently lives in Portland, Maine and is father to three daughters, Audrey, Lois and Minna, and a dog, Bob Capa.
Andy Bachman
Sarah Shepley
Sarah is a full time artist, educator and Interfaith minister. Ordained from the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine in 2011, Sarah has practiced her ministry through officiating weddings, funerals, offering sermons and practicing community ministry in western Maine. In 2016 she founded the Ecuadorian Arts Initiative; a project which serves the creative needs of children In Ecuador through teaching art in orphanages, schools , after school programs and in communities.
In 2020 Sarah completed a 3 year training in Family Constellation Approach . Most recently she has participated in grief ritual training in the mountains of North Carolina as well as trauma and rites of passage work. Since losing her husband in 2020, Sarah has maintained a steady apprenticeship with grief and seeks to bring the fruits of this initiation to people and communities through holding and tending grief, especially through ritual. For more information about Sarah and her work, visit www.sarahshepley.com
Sarah Shepley
Valerie Beebe-Lovelace
Val is the founder and Executive Director of Maine Death with Dignity, a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is providing services, education, and end-of-life advocacy to people who wish to actively explore the meaning of life through embracing the certainty of death.
Through three legislative sessions from 2013 through 2019, Val organized and led Maine’s grassroots effort to successfully pass aid-in-dying legislation. Maine’s Death with Dignity Act went into effect on September 19, 2019. In addition to managing the day-to-day operations and programs of Maine Death with Dignity, she mentors and collaborates with grassroots leaders in other states trying to pass similar legislation.
Val is the mother of three adult children (Aida, Jim, and Travis), and an accomplished artist. She spends her spare time enjoying two amazing grandsons (Emmett and Fletcher) and working on a variety of creative projects.
Val is a 20-year Navy veteran with a background in electronics repair and installation, and she holds an MS degree in Human Relations from Husson University.
Val received ordination in June of 2022 after completing the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine two-year interfaith program. She currently serves as ChIME's board chair.
Val Beebe-Lovelace
Dr. Chris Fuller
Dr. Fuller is the Vice President of Mission Integration at Holy Family University in Philadelphia. Before joining Holy Family in 2025, he was the Vice President of Mission, Sponsorship, and Planning at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine from 2019 to 2025. Dr. Fuller's career also includes fifteen years at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, where he was a professor of Christian theology. He started his over thirty-year career in Catholic higher education as a campus minister at Saint Mary’s College of California. During his career, Dr. Fuller has published scholarship and presented papers in biblical studies, film studies, and mission integration.
Chris Fuller
Susan Howe
Susan is an interfaith minister, ordained through ChIME in 2014. She has been involved in environmental work and preserving wild spaces for most her lifetime. Susan’s primary career has been in clinical social work, facilitation and teaching. As part of a duet (The Light Beams), she enhances her ministry through singing.
Susan Howe
Emily B. Hall,
Director, Rev. Dr. Emily B. Hall, D. Min, BCCi, LAC, grew up on Long Island, attended college at Lebanon Valley College, received her Master of Divinity at Methodist Theological School in Ohio, a Master of Arts at Argosy University, and her D. Min at Drew Theological School. After completion of Gestalt Pastoral Care Training, Four Units of Clinical Pastoral Care at a General Hospital in NY, and 15 years of parish ministry, Dr. Hall began full-time Chaplaincy at one of the 4 state psychiatric Hospitals In New Jersey. Rev. Hall is ordained United Methodist New York Annual Conference and has Dual standing status with the Penn Northeast Conference of the UCC. Dr. Hall provides training, pastoral counseling and is trained in a variety of different techniques of clinical care. Rev. Hall is married and has a toddler who keeps her and her wife very busy. Dr. Hall loves to create Lego MOCS (my own creation) as well as traveling, cycling, and spending time with her family.
Emily Hall
Peter Wohl
A powerful, nature-connected spiritual experience that he had in 1998, inspired Peter to begin leading ecospiritual trips and immersive experiences shortly thereafter. These have ranged from workshops at conferences and recovery retreats around New England to multi-day trips to locations like the North Maine Woods and Acadia National Park. He is a Registered Maine Guide and has spent a large portion of his adult life outdoors.
Peter has been in the field of addiction treatment for over twenty-five years. He has a masters degree in counseling psychology and is a licensed alcohol and drug counselor and certified clinical supervisor. Peter served as the Director of Substance Use Services and then subsequently as the Director of Outpatient Mental Health and Substance Use Services, at Crisis and Counseling Centers, in Augusta, ME. For the past decade, he has been at Behavioral Health Resources of Maine (BHRM), serving first as the Outpatient Director and later as the Clinical Director. He recently left this position at BHRM to devote his attention to advancing ecospirituality and ecospiritually based addiction recovery. Peter has been a person in recovery for 29 years.
A Zen Buddhist priest and teacher, Peter is the guiding teacher for the Wild Fox Sangha, an internet-based Zen practice group. Peter believes that above all else, Zen must directly address the very pressing and often existential issues that are facing us in these times. In that vein, he also feels strongly that Zen must be as accessible as possible. He aspires to offer clear, straightforward teachings to help us remain spiritually grounded in these challenging times.
He is the author of Wild Mind, Wild Heart: Discover your true self in nature.
Peter Wohl
Sarah Siegel
Sarah is a Certified Holistic Coach, Level 2 Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner, Interfaith Chaplain, Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, and cofounder/facilitator/ spiritual care provider for Bassé Root Church, a 501c3 focused on stewarding the Missoko Bwiti tradition of Southern Gabon, Africa. Additionally Sarah is a spiritual Care Provider for Yangti Yoga Retreat Center, a Vajrayana Buddhist Center focusing on dark retreat. She specializes in supporting individuals through substance use challenges, complex health conditions, complex trauma and spiritual exploration.
Sarah is also a Recovery Coach, Mindfulness Meditation guide, and faculty member at the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME). Trained in client-centered, trauma-informed Motivational Interviewing, she brings a compassionate and effective approach to her thriving private coaching practice in Portland, Maine. A dedicated Buddhist practitioner and mother of three, Sarah integrates her diverse experience and deep commitment to well-being.
Sarah Siegel
Jody Breton
Jody was ordained by ChIME in 2011 and has supported ChIME students as a Spiritual Companion for over 8 years. Her ministry is centered around bringing as much light and love into the world as possible. Jody has a full practice officiating all life events, is a frequent service leader at the Islands Community Church on Bailey Island, Harpswell, ME, and serves on their Worship Committee. Jody is a Shamanic Practitioner and Teacher and enjoys mentoring those that are seekers and mystics.
Jody Breton
Khenmo Drolma
Abbess of Vajra Dakini Nunnery, Khenmo Konchog Nyima Drolma has studied with the foremost spiritual teachers of our time including H.H. Dalai Lama, H.H. Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche (the head of the Drikung Kagyu Lineage), and Ani Pema Chödrön.
Khenmo began life as a sculptor and Professor of Art at MECA. She left teaching for ordination as a Buddhist nun and has been ordained for 27 years. In 2004, she was installed as a Khenmo (Abbot) in the Tibetan Drikung lineage, becoming the first woman and first westerner in her lineage to officially hold this responsibility. She teaches the Dharma internationally, in person and online.
Full bio can be read here https://vajradakininunnery.org/about/our-teachers/
Khenmo Drolma
Gray Baldwin, MA, MT-BC
Gray is a therapist with thirty years of experience providing therapy to children, adolescents, adults, and older adults. Their training was first in music therapy, earning a bachelors and masters degree in music therapy. They are trained additionally in Progressive Counting and Flash, two techniques used with trauma. Their work centers in humanism, queer theory, anti-oppressive practice, and social justice. They identify as transmasculine nonbinary and queer. Their previous experience includes working with coming out, transitioning, minority stress, identity development, stress, anxiety, acute and chronic pain, and trauma.
Gray's main instruments now are voice and guitar. They studied the saxophone in college but use the guitar, ukulele, percussion instruments, and electronic music technology in their music therapy practice.
Under their name and dead name, their academic scholarship has focused on serving queer folk, anti-oppressive and culturally responsive practices, pain management with music, and incorporating electronic music technology into music therapy sessions.
Gray Baldwin
Ambassador Zeke Crofton-MacDonald
Osihkiyol (Zeke) is the Tribal Ambassador for the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians. Ambassador Zeke is a Wolastoqey person from the Houlton Band of Maliseets in Maine (Metaksonikewiyik) and the Oromocto First Nation (Welamukotuk) in New Brunswick Canada. He serves on the Board of the Wabanaki Alliance and is a Commissioner on the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission.
Zeke Crofton-MacDonald
Rev. Steve Kanji Ruhl, M.Div.
Steve Kanji grew up in the working-class region of the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania and is the first person in his family’s seven generations of indentured servants, farmers, soldiers, and factory workers to graduate from college. He now lives in the affluent region around Amherst, Massachusetts. He received his BA in Religious Studies, with high honors, from the Schreyer Honors College of Penn State University, where he did intensive study of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam as well as Buddhism, and also pursued research in Taoism, Goddess spirituality, and Native American spirituality. He received his Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. An innovative Zen Buddhist minister ordained in the Zen Peacemaker Order, he now teaches independently through his Touch the Earth cyber-sangha, and is a spiritual life adviser at Deerfield Academy, a Buddhist adviser at Yale University, and a faculty member of the Shogaku Zen Institute. He has been a workshop facilitator or guest teacher at the Harvard Center for World Religions, Yale Divinity School, the Omega Center, and elsewhere. In addition to the forthcoming book The Whole Earth is Medicine, he is the author of Appalachian Zen and Enlightened Contemporaries and two books of poems. www.stevekanjiruhl.com
Kanji Ruhl
James Coomey
Info coming soon.
James Coomey
Hilary North-Ellasante
Hilary (they/them) is the founder and lead consultant at Water's Edge Consulting LLC, located on unceded Wabanaki land in Portland, Maine. Water's Edge supports anti-oppressive change work in nonprofit and educational communities through consulting, facilitation, coaching, and training.
Hilary is committed to liberatory practices that center relational values and open up pathways for healing and transformation. Their background and expertise represent an alchemy of both lived and formal learning experiences, all of which have involved developing skills and strengths to survive mainstream systems as a biracial descendant of formerly-enslaved African American and Irish settler ancestors. Hilary lives at the ever-shifting intersections of parenting, partnering, and learning to thrive as a queer, nonbinary, transracially adopted person committed to getting free.
Hilary North-Ellasante
Rev. Joel Grossman
Joel was ordained an Interfaith Minister by the Chaplaincy Institute, Berkeley CA, in 2000. He is a founding member of ChIME. Joel has been a spiritually-oriented psychotherapist since the late '70s, being an associate with Holistic Family Practice, Newbury MA, (one of the first holistic medical clinics in New England) from 1980 to 1992. Since being ordained, he has worked as a hospice chaplain since 2004, presently as Director of Spiritual Services with Constellation Hospice, in MA, NH, and ME. He is the co-host of Lifting Your Spirit, a monthly podcast on YouTube and SoundCloud.
Joel Grossman
Diana Fried, M.Ac., M.A., Lic. Ac., Dipl. Ac.
Diane is a dedicated practitioner of emotional and trauma healing. In 2005, she co-founded Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) to provide community acupuncture healing in disaster-stricken and underserved areas. Her work has taken her to locations such as the U.S., Haiti, Nepal, Mongolia, Ecuador, and Mexico. Diana is trained in Five Element acupuncture, and brings that to groups worldwide as a powerful modality to heal relationships. A graduate of Upaya Zen Center, she is also trained in Council practice through Upaya and the Center for Council. She sees this group process as a powerful complement to acupuncture and an amazing process on its own for facilitating energetic transformation for both individuals and the group as a whole.
Diane Fried
Christopher M. Leighton Chris is the founding director of the Institute for Islamic, Christian, Jewish Studies in Baltimore, Maryland, where he worked for thirty-three years. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has also served as an adjunct professor at St. Mary’s Seminary and University and Johns Hopkins University.
Chris Leighton
Shirley Hager
Shirley is the lead author of The Gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relations and she co-organized the Gatherings on which the book is based. She is a retired associate extension professor with the University of Maine, and also a Circles of Trust© facilitator with the National Center for Courage & Renewal. Currently, she serves with the Friends (Quaker) Committee on Maine Public Policy and chairs its Committee on Tribal-State Relations. She lives in Chesterville, Maine.
Shirley Hager