Hello.

My name is Aaron. I'm a poet, a spiritual director, a writer, and a theologian. I also work at a restaurant to pay the bills.

I have had a long-standing dream to minister to people on the outskirts, people that don't fit into a traditional faith institution because of hurt, calling, or doctrine. The misfits of spirituality are my people.

As I have moved in the waters of Christianity, I have had several occasions that this dream seemed like it was coming to fruition, that the church was investing in me through time, resources, and effort, and that from that investment I could fulfill my heart's longing to help the hurting and encourage the hopeless.

Every one of those opportunities ended in my personal and spiritual hurt.

I've never felt good enough for the church to really care about. Either I wasn't educated enough, wasn't holy enough, wasn't stress-free enough, or something else stood in the way of these dreams that have captured my heart.

Enter The Order of Saint Hildegard.

The Order is a community that is united by "practice which exists to center, celebrate and develop the interfaith cross-vocational spiritual leadership of those marginalized by traditional religious structures" (from their website).

These sound like my kind of people.

The Order offers a community chaplaincy program that takes people on a two-year journey with a cohort to develop vision and skills to act as an interfaith spiritual leader in the communities, vocations, and jobs we are already a part of. The program culminates in an ordination or a certificate of community spiritual leadership. This is a community dedicated to investing in other spiritual leaders for the good of the world.

Many of the people who are chaplains tied to the Order have been hurt and disillusioned by traditional faith institutions. Many are queer, POC, neurodivergent, and/or otherwise marginalized in society.

This is truly a group of people from the margins giving themselves to the others in the margins.

The two-year program itself costs $4000 with $500 as an initial payment. With GoFundMe's fees and the cost of some materials I might need (books mostly), I set the goal at $4500. The cohort starts at the end of September 2025, so I only have about a month to raise at least the $500 for the deposit. After that, I have up to three months to pay the rest in full. All funds raised go directly toward the cost of this program and any materials associated with it.

This is a program that will deepen my work as a spiritual director and open new ways and ideas of how I can spiritually serve the people around me, especially the disinherited, hurt, and those who have suffered religious trauma.

Traditional faith institutions have failed to invest in me and my vision, even when they agreed that I have a calling from God to this work. This is a way I'm asking you, my community, to invest in me and help me become a community chaplain.