Just Horizons Alliance (JHA), which is now CMAC’s umbrella organization, contains many parts. While CMAC anchors the research side of JHA, another branch, Wildhouse Publishing, is currently the main promoter of “expansive spirituality” within JHA (while Wildheart Evolution, which will also focus on spirituality, is currently still developing).
What is Wildhouse and how does it connect to the broader mission of JHA? Wildhouse Publishing is an indie press that exists to provide resources to people who are on spiritual quests but are not quite within the bounds of established religious or spiritual traditions.
It does this through a few different imprints: Wildhouse Publications features spiritual nonfiction and mediation books. Wildhouse Fiction publishes fictional books that share a similar spiritual outlook. Wildhouse Poetry does the same for poetry books, including for the winner and runner-up of a poetry contest judged by Jane Hirschfield. And WHP Crossings will engage with readers who are on the fringes of Christian spirituality.
While CMAC conducts research that connects with large-scale human challenges around the connection between mind and culture, Wildhouse strives to offer spiritual resources for people encountering the same challenges. While society needs rigorous, multidisciplinary research to face the complex issues confronting us, individuals need spiritual resilience to deal with this same complicated context. This is especially true for people in categories such as “spiritual-but-not-religious,” who cannot simply turn to existing traditions for spiritual resources.
Sometimes, JHA’s effort to bring together the mind and the heart in addressing current and future challenges will involve collaboration. The Book of Uncommon Rituals is a good example of this. This project is rooted in a CMAC research project on rituals among nonreligious people, co-led by Wesley Wildman and Richard Sosis. But, with the collaboration of Wildhouse Publishing, Ritual for the Non-Religious also has a practical outcome in a tangible resource that can address the gaps in rituals for this population.
At the same time, Wildhouse is publishing a broader array of resources for a similar demographic of people on the margins of traditional religion and spirituality. Check out the current catalog of books published by Wildhouse here.
