you’re probably wondering how i got here: an intro post
Yep, that’s me: Drone piloting on my land in Costa Rica
[record scratch]
[freeze frame]
You’re probably wondering how I got here.
In March 2020, I was a 2L at the top of my class at Emory Law, preparing for a career as a property law professor. Then what happened was, we had this global pandemic (maybe you’ve heard of it?) and I saw firsthand how everything I was learning in law school–about the laws, systems, and institutions that keep the modern world running–is all made-up bullshit designed to uphold an oppressive capitalist hierarchy that’s been rotten to the core from the very beginning. Everyone is miserable, and we live this way not because we have to, but because we don’t have the political willpower to change it. And I thought, “You know, somebody should probably do something about that.”
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
—Alice Walker
Law school taught me what was broken, and I ended up in divinity school to learn how to fix it. The decision to pursue my Master of Divinity (MDiv) started as, well, a joke. In the fall of my 3L year, I made an offhand comment during an episode of The Haunting of Hill House that a career as funeral director seemed like something I’d enjoy, minus all the dead bodies. My husband JP took my remark and ran with it: “Maybe,” he joked, “you should go to divinity school and become a chaplain.”
As soon as he said it, I knew it was true. I’d never considered that option before–I was still busy trying to find a job in the legal industry–but in that moment, it felt like all the past and future versions of Emily lined up together and shouted “YES.” I’m not an impulsive person, but in a split second I made a huge life decision that I’ve never once second-guessed. It freaked me out more than a little at the time; my spiritual beliefs are non-theistic and mostly Buddhist, so I had no idea what to do with this feeling that my Christian friends describe as “a call from God.”
Double rainbows over my land in Costa Rica—a common occurence!
I started Emory’s JD/MDiv dual degree program in Spring 2021, adding 2+ years of education to what otherwise would have been my final semester of law school. Since then, I’ve been training as a chaplain, studying spiritual counseling, causing trouble as one of only three non-Christians in my seminary class, and, oh yeah, building an eco-spiritual retreat center in the Costa Rican rainforest.
The retreat center idea came at about the same time as the divinity school idea, and in much the same way: A sudden moment of inspiration so strong that I immediately knew I had to do it, that it’s what I’m supposed to do. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
In March 2021, JP and I founded our company, Bad Weather Traveler, in Costa Rica. In June of that year, Bad Weather purchased “Lot 13,” a 13-acre rainforest in the Southern Pacific region of Costa Rica that will soon be the home of our new retreat center.
The build site on Lot 13, my land in Costa Rica
And that brings us to now. We’re working with our architects, Vince Studio, to design and build two villas that will (hopefully) be ready for guests in Summer 2023. Currently, I’m finishing up the MDiv half of my dual degree; interning as an “innovation chaplain” at The Hatchery, Emory’s center for innovation; training as an Internal Family Systems therapist; and getting to know our land and the ancient rainforest that lives there.
What’s next? JP and I will move to Costa Rica in Fall 2023, at which point my full-time job will be growing a one-of-a-kind retreat center that helps people encounter the divine (whatever that means to them) through meaningful experiences in nature. I want guests to leave our land more whole & healed than they were when they arrived, and to carry that feeling back with them into the “real world.” I hope these experiences at the individual level will ignite the spark the world needs to transform our broken systems into a society that benefits everyone. My ambitious goal is to trigger a long-overdue spiritual revolution, an epic metamorphosis of the spirit in which humanity relates to the Earth and to each other.
So if you’re up for helping to save the world, I invite you to join our nascent revolution and follow along as I blog about it here. At the very least, it’s guaranteed to be a wild adventure.
Pura vida,
-Chaplain Emily
The sun rises on Lot 13