Building Sacred Infrastructure: How a Modern Monastery Offers Spiritual Sustenance

Laura Holford was exhausted. Her clinical rotations were demanding, but the emotional load and realities of the sterile healthcare environment felt damaging on a deeper level. Drawn by a desire to serve inspired by her Christian faith, Laura started to feel that nursing was being diminished to suffering and speed rather than the spirituality and sense of purpose that had originally motivated her.

She started dreaming. Not of a luxurious vacation or quick break — but of a spiritual reset. Restorative time in the great outdoors, she thought, might do the trick. Looking for something quieter, slower and rooted in nature, Laura signed up for the WWOOF program (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) on the Starcross Monastic Community, a small nonprofit farm tucked into the remote hills of Northern California.

She felt a gentle tug, a curiosity, about the community’s mission and was excited to learn from this small group of monastics. She had no idea that at this pivotal moment in her professional journey, she was embarking on a transformational spiritual evolution.

After arriving, Brother Toby (one of the monastics) pulled Laura into his office to talk. “I expected him to ask deep questions like, ‘What do I want to do with my life’ or ‘What do I believe in,’” Laura recalls. “Instead, he asked me, ‘Are you happy?’ It was the last question I could’ve expected, and it stopped me in my tracks.”

In the garden, harvesting herbs. In the quiet stillness. In the sacredness and warm welcome from a multifaith, intergenerational community, Laura found something she didn’t know she had been seeking: spiritual belonging.

Finding a Safe, Inclusive Spiritual Home

The effects of Laura’s time at the monastery have been gradual and enduring. In an age of deconstruction and disaffiliation, she had been craving belonging without dogma, ritual without rigidity, and connection without conformity.

She returned to nursing school inspired and activated with new language for what she had been grappling with but hadn’t named: spiritual homelessness. A spiritual isolation experienced by those who no longer feel at home in traditional religious institutions, yet still yearn for sacred connection, community, and soul-deep purpose.

Laura’s story is reflected in the broader exodus from organized religion and the search for spiritual homes in non-traditional places. A decade ago, when the institutionally unaffiliated were just 23% of the population, they were already one of the largest groups in the American religious landscape. While that number has continued to grow, many are deeply longing for sacred connections — with Self, with nature and other living beings, and in community with each other. While secular gatherings are trying to fill the gap, there remains a need for multifaith spiritual communities where members can share beliefs drawn from numerous traditions and embrace their evolving spiritual journeys.

“I was in my early twenties the first time I arrived at Starcross,” Laura reflects, “and now, almost 10 years later, I feel the gravity and importance of creating a safe, inclusive, spiritual home, especially as I deconstructed and put back together my Christian faith. [In the last decade], I have witnessed almost all my Christian friends leave the church completely.”

But how can unique spiritual homes — those that are so adept at centering the need for Sacred connection and community, especially in a modern society built around productivity, burnout, and spiritual separation as byproducts of a digitized life — make a broad impact? How can the collective souls of our global community be cared for in lasting ways? Where do our souls find their sacred home?

A Multifaith Monastery in the Modern Era

Starcross Monastery was founded in 1976 by monastics Brother Toby (Tolbert McCarroll), Sister Julie (Julie DeRossi), and Sister Marti (Mary Martha Aggeler, who passed away in 2016). All three dreamt of creating a spiritual sanctuary in nature. Over the past five decades, this fifty-acre farm nestled in the corner of Sonoma Valley has served as a multifaith spiritual home for activists and writers from Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and Paul Monette to countless young people who traveled through the windy hills to their wrought-iron farm gates.

In the last year, Starcross has begun intentionally expanding its reach, offering online spiritual programming designed for people like Laura, who are seeking sacred connection beyond the typical religious spaces. Under the guidance of Mia Martins, the new Assistant Spiritual Director, the monastery now hosts virtual Sunday gatherings, elder circles, film discussions and contemplative dialogues on death and dying.

“It’s the combination of nature, community, poetry, and personal spirituality,” says Mia. “[The monastery] is a special place, and you don’t get a lot of opportunities to be in a place like this. Even when people visit for short periods, they can return to the practices they formed here to their daily lives.”

What makes Starcross unique is not just the monastics who spend their time tending to the farm. While their wisdom and spiritual intention are unquestionably infused throughout the grounds, it’s the multifaith, holistic, unhurried format that makes this unique spiritual home.

For most of Starcross’s history, the spiritual community remained limited to those who could physically stay on the premises. The monastics did their best to stay in touch with visitors, but there was no formal programming to continue offering the sacred connection and spiritual community they had been so moved by.

Under Mia’s direction, Starcross has recently explored creative ways to serve and expand its spiritual community both in person and across the country. To meet their community’s different spiritual needs, they’ve launched virtual programs such as their Wandering with Death meeting, Elder Circles, and Cinema Club. They have also begun offering participants their Sunday meetings in a hybrid format.

A typical Sunday service includes reflective teaching from Brother Toby or Sister Julie, a moment of stillness, poetry, and an open floor for community sharing. Now, around 12-15 people log in weekly from across the U.S. One of them is Trish Richards, a 72-year-old in California’s Central Valley.

Trish has followed Starcross and its impact since the early 1990s and has been deeply moved by their commitment to supporting children during the AIDS epidemic. She always longed to visit the farm but never found the opportunity. The virtual interaction has helped her feel a part of this community she has supported for over three decades.

“It’s wonderful to be able to be a part of the services, and it’s very much helping me with my later-in-life spirituality,” she says. Trish now attends the virtual Sunday gatherings without fail.

Born into a Catholic household, she drifted away from her faith over the last few decades. The multifaith nature of Sunday services, approaching spirituality from the Sacred core that spans any tradition and is, by its very nature, communal, has been revitalizing for Trish.

“That’s my worldview: everyone is part of the universal soul, or however you want to put it,” Trish shares. “And there are many paths to finding that. This is what I love about Starcross. They bring many different spiritual [practices].”

Even reactions to small services — like the monastery’s recent hybrid Ash Wednesday ceremony, attended by three in-person and 20 virtual participants — create a ripple effect of gratitude. Participants feel spiritually “seen,” no matter where they are physically. And it speaks to the ability to leverage our digital world in service of a fundamental desire to access Sacred community.

“[We hope] the people who consider themselves part of our community will expand to those who can live here and those who can join virtually,” Brother Toby says. “That people across the nation will get some comfort from knowing that this sense of integrity, community, and good work is being done here and that they can be in spiritual solidarity with us even if they’re not in physical solidarity with us.”

A Spiritual Infrastructure for the Future

When asked about her vision for Starcross, Mia touches on the importance of these intergenerational spaces for building sustainability and community. “I’m one of those young people saying there does need to be a place for spiritual respite,” she shares.

“Preventing burnout in communities is so important,” says Mia. “If we want to do activist work sustainably, there must be periods of rest and rejuvenation. You need to have a community of people supporting you because no one will save the world as an individual. Providing a place for people to rest, reconnect with nature, and root into a spiritual community sustains these activist movements or social justice work.”

Because beyond the act of resting lies something deeper — an invitation to connect to the Sacred. Periods of pause prevent burnout by encouraging spiritual nurturing and connection.

Over time, Laura kept returning to Starcross. Sometimes in person, sometimes online. What drew her back was not doctrine or specific theology, but rather the monastery’s spiritual spaciousness. And the understanding that cultivating spiritual community is a sacred act. One that transcends and sustains her through hospital life and daily trials.

By offering a sacred refuge for spiritually-unaffiliated seekers — by reimagining monastic community through multifaith, contemplative and digitally-connected practices that nurture belonging, healing, and sustainable spiritual life in modern times — we can create a spiritual infrastructure for the future.

Could spiritual belonging and connectivity be the answer to our isolated, fast-paced, productivity-driven age? Might we heal the global soul, one sacred community at a time?

By Anu Gorukanti, MD