THE HEART OF STILL WATERS
A place to breathe, listen, and be restored.
Still Waters creates quiet, grounded environments where spiritual formation becomes something lived—not simply taught.
Through spiritual direction, communal discernment, retreats, equine-assisted practices, leadership formation, and the rhythms of a working farm, people are invited into deeper attentiveness to God's presence.
The ministry is rooted in Wesleyan theology and the conviction that people are created as image-bearers, formed through apprenticeship to Jesus and through life in community.
FOUNDER
The Heart Behind Still Waters
Kelli Summers Sorg is the founder of Still Waters at Hawthorne Valley Farm and a PhD candidate in Intercultural Studies. Her work is deeply shaped by the land she stewards and the horses she trains through natural horsemanship. At the heart of her approach is a conviction that God can be encountered through creation, rhythm, relationship, and attentive presence—and that the land itself can become a place of healing and formation.
At Hawthorne Valley Farm, Kelli cultivates an environment where people are invited to slow down, breathe deeply, and listen again. Through equine-assisted spiritual direction, she draws on the principles of natural horsemanship—softness, attunement, trust, and partnership—to create opportunities for embodied spiritual awareness. Whether gathered in a group spiritual direction circle, walking quietly along the fenceline, or working with a horse in the round pen, participants are invited to notice the ways God may be moving within and around them.
Kelli’s doctoral research explores communal discernment, image-bearing, and apprenticeship in the Triune life of God, themes that directly inform the vision and practices of Still Waters. Her background in executive leadership and spiritual formation allows her to bring together theology, agrarian imagination, and the relational wisdom of natural horsemanship.
