Sacred Roots has offered a home to explore my spiritual journey of deconstructing and constructing theology. The retreat came at the right time for me to continue learning and practicing tools in the context of a safe and loving community. I am especially grateful to Martha Martinez who has been a wonderful healer in my life and to Yu-shuan for her loving leadership and organizing.

Sacred Roots has not only been a physical home for me but also a spiritual one. Sacred Roots helped me better understand and see what my values could look like in praxis. Sacred Roots showed me what community care looks like, and I am forever grateful.

Sacred Roots offers opportunities for people seeking truth to do it in an emotionally, intellectually, and physically safe space. The invitation to do the deep work of unlearning and relearning in a community with a frame of equity is very powerful and encouraging. Absolutely have nothing but praise to share about the positive impact this work has had on me and the community!

Participating in the summer program marked a formative and liberating experience for me in my spiritual and personal journey that continues to ground me to this day. It was a space where I was reminded to continually re-connect with and honor my own voice and story as an act of resistance. It was a safe space that encouraged me to openly grieve the systemic oppressions that surround BIPOC communities and where I experienced a renewal of hope by witnessing the power of communal healing.

I often think back to the summer I spent at Sacred Roots in 2016. I got my start in immigration advocacy that summer, but more importantly I got to experience a place where justice was realized through collective reflection, repentance, and joy. I am forever grateful to Yu-Shuan and my cohort for teaching me how to hope.

Sacred Roots shifted so many paradigms of faith, justice, and community for me. I continue to reflect on my time here as I pursue liberation and advocate for BIPOC communities. This program will continue to be one of the most impactful experiences of my adult life. In times of deep deconstruction in my life, Sacred Roots gave me ample space to develop new and sustaining spiritual practices, and find new theologies that were healing to my experience as a Black Queer man. I’m forever grateful for the sacred and generous leadership of Yu-Shaun.

The Sacred Roots POC healing retreat was such a powerful experience of being led by wise POC women and reclaiming spiritual practices that are ancestral and embodied. Sacred Roots offers brave and loving space to encounter Spirit that is more mysterious and more beautiful than all the supremacies that try to shackle it.

The Sacred Roots summer program was a catalyst for me to engage more deeply with my own stories at the margin, equipping me with healing practices and sustainable advocacy led by the Spirit. Under the leadership of Yu-Shuan I was able to come as I was, broken and in pain, and yet realize again that me and my community's stories were still part of God's plan for the redeemed. Since then, I have pursued a career where I can utilize my gifts in pursuit of justice for communities.

There have been a few moments in seminary and in life where I sense that prior life experiences have come together in a transformative way that brought those life experiences together and set me on my way forever changed. This course is one of those profound markers in my formation.