your retreat team

Tom Rockwell is the Founding Director of Science and Spirit Studio. He also serves as the Chief Creative Officer at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s museum of science, art, and human perception. Tom has overseen exhibits and media departments, led the development of new gallery spaces and exhibitions, and spearheaded collaborations with museums all over the globe. His interests include exhibiting the human sciences, mathematics, and fundamental physical phenomena, as well as exploring the relationship between science, art, and religion. Prior to coming to San Francisco, Tom founded and ran Painted Universe, Inc. where projects included exhibitions such as It’s a Nano World, The Enchanted Museum: Exploring the Science of Art, and illustrations for The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.

Lauren Van Ham, MA. Spiritual growth, art, and Earth's teachings infuse Lauren’s focus in eco-ministry and sacred activism. An ordained interfaith minister, for 9 years, she served as a hospital chaplain, then served with a consulting firm where she custom-designed employee engagement programs for companies committed to sustainability and culture change.  For more than a decade, Lauren was Dean at The Chaplaincy Institute.  A spiritual director and guest faculty for several schools, Lauren is also a guest writer for “Progressing Spirit,” and co-author of A Joyful Path (Year 3), an interfaith Earth-centered, spiritual formation curriculum for ages 9-13.  Lauren serves as Earth Restoration Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative, a global grassroots interfaith organization.  Much of her present work focuses on reverence and regeneration amidst collapse and unraveling.  She holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and Naropa University.  

Penny Andrews has her D.Min from University of Creation Spirituality. She is a retired chaplain, coherence guide with Deeptime Network, a Work that Reconnects facilitator, and outgoing vice president of Creation Spirituality Communities where she teaches Cosmogenesis, guides Kosmic Vespers, and, virtually and locally in Wisconsin, is a Spiritual Companion with a Deeptime and Creation Spirituality perspective. Most recently, she has been exploring ways to create Resonant Fields with Meg Wheatley in her Life is Still Calling offering.

Kyra Auerbach, MA, MBA is a facilitator, content developer and social innovator in the movement, music, and museum fields. She holds Masters degrees in Somatic Psychology and Education (CIIS) and in Sustainable Enterprise (GreenMBA, Dominican), and has a 30-year background in yoga, massage, authentic movement, dance and contact improv, permaculture, and elemental healing. She is the founder of GaiaWise (2009), an umbrella for initiatives serving regenerative personal and professional development, and has served on many boards, including Aushadi Foundation, Maitri House Northwest and Sustainable Means. She currently works primarily with Tom Rockwell at Science and Spirit Studio. 

M Frances Sink, “Em”, is a spiritual director, clinical psychologist, and retired Unitarian Universalist minister. In deep time cosmology she has found the alignment of Soul and science that offer pathways into meaningful presence and purpose in our evolving planetary lives. She is grateful to Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim for her first introduction to the works of Brian Thomas Swimme, Thomas Berry, and Teilhard de Chardin at Yale Divinity School and to the Deeptime Network whose programs nurtured her embodiment of cosmic sensibilities.

Rev. Mary Lou Masko. As an Eco-Chaplain, Lou’s path is to be a walker-between-the-worlds of spirituality, climate change and engineering. This means becoming a catalyst for change, building communities, and discovering innovative ways to challenge old paradigms – and it all begins with deep listening and creating safe spaces to allow full expression of all voices. After 35 years with a day job as a civil engineer, she continues to lean into her calling as an Eco-Chaplain. She believes we live in a time of planetary polycrisis – we humans are out of sync with each other and the more-than-human-world, forgetting that nature is not “out there”; it lives within us. Lou’s current ministry includes supporting the Chaplaincy Institute as Chair of the Board of Directors and volunteering with CPA-NA (Climate Psychology Alliance), where she leads their disaster committee and organized their first climate disaster training series.

Mary Ellen Hill, MA, began exploring the new cosmology with Brian Swimme at The Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality in Oakland, CA in 1987, and has continued ever since. Brian, Miriam MacGillis and Thomas Berry activated her imagination to create, “We Are The Stars That Sing”. This evocative and engaging storytelling performance is an educational and magical blending of cosmology and indigenous creation myths. She has performed this at a wide variety of venues for many years. She continues to be active in exploring these concepts as a free-lance teacher and storyteller. Her deepest desire is to activate her students' imaginations, ages 3-103, and provide a creative space for them to develop their unique gifts. 

Sarbmeet Kanwal, PhD, is a professor of physics at Brookdale Community College where he has been recognized for his teaching innovations. He received a PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics from the California Institute of Technology. Sarbmeet is also an instructor for Deeptime Network, an organization with a mission of orienting humanity to our evolving interconnected universe. He is a practicing Sikh who believes that Sikhism provides a pragmatic approach to cultivating spirituality based on a life of service and contemplation. Sarbmeet founded an interfaith youth leadership program called MOSAIC for which he was awarded the Earl Thomas Teasley Humanitarian Award. Sarbmeet is a sought-after speaker on topics that range from science to spirituality, and the author of two TEDx talks: Chaos to Cosmos and Science Reimagined: Harmony through Awe. 

Therese and Jeff Grumley live in Colorado, close to one of their four adult children, and delight in the lives of their 9 grandchildren. Both are practicing mental health counselors whose work is shaped by a deep sense of connection - to people, to story, and to the evolving universe. Their journey into the New Cosmology began with Brian Swimme at the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality in 1987–88, an encounter that inspired them to see their lives and work as part of the great unfolding of the cosmos. Since then, Jeff has extended this vision into education, working with school districts across the U.S. through his book A Connected School. For 25 years, he also partnered with Inuit elders in the Canadian Arctic, learning from their wisdom traditions to implement restorative practices in local schools and correctional facilities throughout the North.

Together, Therese and Jeff appreciate the story of an interconnected universe—rooted in family, committed to healing, and awed by wondering.