Our Collective Ache: Replenishing Depleted Soils of Modern Culture

Kasey Schelling, Co-Founder / Executive Director

I vividly remember the deep pain in my chest, followed by a cascade of tears.

As I bore witness to this young woman's Bat Mitzvah, I couldn't help but feel guilty when my attention shifted from her toward the ache rising inside me.

At that point, the Judaism that lives in my bones had never found its way into my life. As the daughter of an adopted mother, the traditions of my ancestors never made it to our kitchen table or community gatherings. I knew nothing of Shabbat, challah, nigguns (wordless melodies), or Bat Mitzvahs- this being the first I had witnessed as a 30-year-old woman.

Something about the depth of the beauty drove me to feel the same depth of pain that I was unaware of- I realized I was grieving something I had never known. 

As I looked around the room at people from every generation gathered to welcome this young woman into the next phase of her becoming, I felt a profound sense of vitality and stability. The ceremony felt like an ecosystem—elders, parents, children, stories, songs, responsibilities, and belonging woven into a living whole. Like an old-growth forest, each generation seemed to support the next through a root system of ancient and enduring love. 

Conversely, in my upbringing, experiences like this were sparse or nonexistent. In my family, holidays were largely reduced to overeating, exchanging gifts, and watching television. 

Compared to what I experienced at the Bat Mitzvah, these traditions felt like depleted soil.

Furthermore, as I observed friends, neighbors, and families in my community, I realized my family was not alone. Beneath many of our modern lives, I sensed that many people carried the same emptiness coupled with a deep longing.

As I explored these inner longings more deeply, I would begin to recognize that this quality of rootedness is not unique to Judaism. It appears wherever human communities remain in deep relationship with one another and the land they inhabit. Traditional cultures are living expressions of intimacy with land, seasons, animals, weather, birth, death, and community. 

In a globalized and commercialized world, many traditional cultures have been displaced. Into that absence enters what is often “the loudest voice in the room”—artificial intelligence, mass media, consumerism, algorithms, advertising, and systems designed to capture human attention.

If we do not intentionally cultivate culture, something else will cultivate it for us.

Although this modern reality can feel desolate, the Bat Mitzvah ceremony revealed to me that it is not beyond repair. You could say that my heartbreak or internal feeling of “brokenness” as a cultural orphan became a doorway to me, and I’ve often thought, “If traditional cultures were centered in connection with the living world, who is to say that we can’t start over and do it again?”

At The Kiva Center, we take small steps each day to be in apprenticeship to the wild intelligence of nature. Small rituals of giving thanks, of singing to the river, and of grieving over a lizard who lost its life, become fodder to thirsty soil.

What I’ve found is that these small acts add up over time and begin to form the building blocks of a living, breathing, cultural framework. These small building blocks eventually led us to support people transitioning between life stages- creating a deep, loving joy similar to what I experienced at the Bat Mitzvah that day.

I am learning that small steps of reverence, connection, and care lead to cycles of cultural regeneration.

Yes, we have forgotten much. Most of us are many generations removed from the land-based wisdom traditions of our ancestors. And this is no small loss. We lost not only information, but embodied ways of being- ways of relating shaped through centuries of reciprocal relationship with place.

We are like young saplings attempting to root into poor and depleted soil.

So, we are faced with a choice: do we allow this nutrient-deficient soil to become the source of our collapse, or the source of our resilience?

Like weeds pushing through cracks in sidewalks and concrete, I invite us to choose resilience. To allow the living Earth to teach us how to regenerate the depleted soils of the extractive, displaced cultural orphanage of modernity.

If you would like to join The Kiva Center in exploring Cultural Design, Nature Connection, and Rites of Passage, join us for Rooted in Wonder on July 17th-19th, 2026! Learn more and register here: Professional Development | The Kiva Center 

About the Author: Kasey Schelling is The Kiva Center's co-founder and executive director. She is an avid wanderer and explorer of wild places, delighting in the diverse array of landscapes and species. Her love for this planet is so deep, that she grieves the ways in which human lifestyles have deteriorated this intelligent balance of creation. Yet, her hope is abundant. She believes that humans are brilliant, and know deep down how to activate our wild, unique gifts that we each bring to the world. She feels that when this gift is expressed, we fulfill an ecological niche, just as other species do. Through working with youth for the past 12 years, she has seen that when the conditions are right, there is an immense potential for children to channel their inner-genius in service to something greater than themselves. She founded The Kiva Center in 2014 with a vision to create a culture that uplifts one another to embody the gift to the world that we are, living lives full of purpose and love.