Today we’d like to introduce you to McKenzie Wren.
Hi McKenzie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I am a facilitator who works in multiple arenas to support connection and growth. As Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts, I use Earth-based, embodied art, ritual and spiritual practices to support deeper connection to the Divine Mystery, predominantly through a Jewish lens. As Wren Consulting, I work with businesses and nonprofits to support inclusion and belonging. At the heart of everything I do is the belief in the power of relationship, community and connection to nature. I work with individuals and groups of all sizes to create spaces that are nurturing, creative, and brave and which support personal and communal transformation.
When I first did the Voyager series, I was only working as Wren Consulting. I started Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts in 2022 to be able to fully integrate my love of ritual and art and to help people create meaningful rites of passages and mark important moments in time. There is definitely a Venn diagram that connects Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts and Wren Consulting and that is the importance of presencing and creating spaces where people can feel seen and heard. One of my catch phrases is that the community supports the individual and the individual supports the community. Community art making, rituals and celebrating moments throughout the wheel of the year is where community and individuals overlap.
Initiating Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts is in some ways a full cycle experience: In my late 20’s and early 30’s, I participated in and led women’s circles and I was working as a midwife, herbalist and aromatherapist. My tools also included ritual, meditation and other spiritual technologies. I have always identified as a witch as honor to my ancestors: the wise woman, herbalists, midwives, artists and queer folks who have been hunted and oppressed under the patriarchy. I turned from my healing practice to focus on being a mom to two amazing kids and joined my partner in the field of variety entertainer for a few years where I did storytelling, tarot reading, face painting and all kind of other crazy stuff. (My beloved is Reuben Haller, aka Ruby the Clown, a magical performer, musician and artist.) I returned to school when my youngest was two to get a masters of public health. That led me down the path which resulted in opening Wren Consulting. After my kids were grown and flown and I had been facilitating for about 8 years, the itch of change came upon me once again and I felt the call to return to my spiritually-oriented practices.
I envisioned Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts as a portal through which people could connect to themselves, to Spirit and to the Earth using art, ritual and celebration, primarily, though not solely, through a Jewish lens. I have served as a facilitator and officiant at numerous services and rituals over the years and I absolutely love helping people create meaningful experiences. As a facilitator, opening and closing events and experiences has always been one of my gifts and it made sense to bring those gifts to the realm of life passages and marking of moments. I also wanted to use art making to help people access their inner worlds and to just have fun! There has been a resurgence of interest in witchy-related realms of ritual, “hearth-tending” and lifting up women’s ways of knowing as people struggle through late stage capitalism and very uncertain political times and it felt like the time was right to offer up my skills and experiences. Many folks are seeking different ways of being in the world, of connecting to Spirit and to the planet. I absolutely believe that “joy is a form of resistance” and that personal liberation is both necessary and can be fun! This is where my witchy perspective comes in: at her essence, a witch is someone deeply connected to the mysteries and to the Earth and refuses to let others define her.
During Covid, I had gone deep into my art making and I used it it to process the world as well as the unexpected and tragic loss of my mother in 2020, though not to Covid. When time became so slippery during lockdown, I became fascinated with calendars and time and how we mark time. I turned to my own tradition of Judaism and became curious about Hebrew time. Hebrew months are different from the Gregorian calendar and I found it fascinating to explore what truly living in Jewish time would feel like. The first formal art product of Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts was a Hebrew calendar which I released in 2023. I am now creating the 3rd calendar and am excited to see where it will take me. I also began “counting the Omer” during Covid. Counting the Omer takes place for the 49 days between the 2nd night of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, which is the commemoration of receiving Torah at Mt Sinai. Originally an agrarian observance, it has since been interpreted and modified to overlay deep spiritual learning through Kabbalistic teachings. The Kabbalah is the deeply mystical heart of Judaism. In 2020 I counted the 49 days for the first time; in 2022, I made 49 pieces of art to explore the theme of each day; in 2023 I turned the art into a deck of cards with original and expansive prayer language called “Prayers for a Free Soul” and shared them with the world.
Since launching Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts, I have been officiating funerals, leading ceremonies for occasions such an 80th birthday party, home blessing, conversion, a brit mitzvah (celebrating the entrance of a 13 year old child into Jewish adulthood) and many other beautiful experiences. I have also co-led high holiday services, led rituals attached to the Jewish wheel of the year like Tu B’Shevat, which is celebrated as the birthday of the trees and Sukkot, which is the fall harvest festival. I frequently lead art making experience and have had the incredible honor of being a teaching artist at many Jewish retreats in the N. Georgia mountains. I offer local workshops with different themes and my favorite concepts are “Art Making in the Time of the Apocalypse” and “Sustaining Hope” which are both just opportunities to tap into our creative birthright to get us through hard times.
I still work as a facilitator and I believe that the need for meaningful dialogue across our differences is possibly even more important than when I launched Wren Consulting 10 years ago! Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts is growing as more people seek to connect to to other people, to Spirit, to the Earth and to themselves in these deeply troubling times.
Though I work in a predominantly Jewish context, I believe the tools of art, mindfulness, ritual, and self-awareness are available to everyone. As I said before, personal liberation doesn’t have to be a miserable struggle. Art making, joy, the gifts of nature are nourishing to the soul. I believe the world needs us whole, nourished and strong and able to bring our full selves to this great turning.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Making a living as a creative with a spiritually-oriented business is hard and it’s slow going. Perhaps in the old days, wise women were supported by the generosity and will of the community. Today the energy is money and, truthfully, it is hard knowing how to monetize spirit work! It’s definitely different than the standard business-to-business work of Wren Consulting! And, living in a capitalist society while doing spiritual liberation work is like swimming upstream blindfolded. All that having been said, Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts is growing and I am thrilled to have been connected to some amazing mentors and resources that are helping to ease the path.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am at my essence a facilitator and everything I do is in service to groups of people coming together. I am known for my ability to create spaces where people feel seen, heard and nourished. Everything I do stems from my belief that we have to be able to connect to each other across our differences and stay in relationships to ourselves, to each other and to this glorious planet that is our home. That’s the root. Art and rituals and the related work of Wren Consulting are the trunk and branches that move that belief into the world.
For my art, I am primarily a collage artist. I took some art classes during my school years but I am basically self taught. Collage is an easy access form of creativity and one that is deeply suited to my love of paper, shapes, maps and washi tape! I am currently working on my 3rd calendar – Women of the Hebrew Bible – and I am leaning more into representational figures and I will say that it is kicking my butt in the best way! I am loving figuring out who these women were, how they want to be represented and then figuring out how to do that. I am essentially making really cool paper dolls like I did when I was 10! Then I dress them in tissue paper and fancy thread and place them on a gorgeous background. It is immensely fun and satisfying.
My approach to art making is one of deep inclusion. Many people got the message that they aren’t creative or that they weren’t good enough to be a “real artist.” Me too. I got those messages. Now I help people access their creative birthright in no judgement zones. Everyone can make art; not just kids and professionals!! Getting a group of adults together over a glass of wine or tea and a whole pile of stuff to cut and paste is the absolute best. Usually after art making, we share our stories and it is amazing to see what people have created and to hear how liberated they feel.
What are your plans for the future?
I would like to lead retreats – my dream is an overseas retreat. I have some “sister witches” and we are planing a retreat for September to test our concept. And then we’ll take it on the road!! I plan to continue holding workshops and working with people to create meaningful rituals. I am continuing to write and create and making space to do both. I look forward to growth for Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts. In the meantime, I am incredibly grateful for the continued work of Wren Consulting and the wonderful clients that I serve, in particular SOJOURN – the Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity for whom I have been an educator and facilitator for the past 7 years..
I would like to play in the Venn diagram of Wren Consulting and Ma’ayan Spiritual Arts and offer art and dialogue spaces; as I said earlier, now more than ever we need to keep talking to each other across all kinds of differences.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.maayanarts.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maayanspiritarts/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063734544013
- Other: https://mckenziewren.substack.com/
Image Credits
All photos taken on my phone by me or people using my phone
