Caring about the world shouldn’t burn you out.
The Bombyx Fellows Program is a place to reclaim your spiritual life on your own terms.
The Bombyx Fellows Program
If you:
sense that "trying harder" isn't getting you anywhere
wish your days had room for something besides the grind
feel disconnected from land or ancestors in ways you can't quite name
are curious about spirituality, but not looking to join a religion
Are seeking community that’s more about curiosity than correctness
…this might be the program for you.
Two evenings a month, the Bombyx Fellows gather over dinner. The evening opens with a round of check-ins, then moves into a workshop or reflective activity. The curriculum moves through three themes across the year - Ritual, Vocation, and Community - each one an opening to define for yourself what makes a life meaningful, purposeful, and connected.
Who it’s for
No age requirement. No particular field. If you've spent years working in education, health care, social work, organizing, ministry, or caregiving, you'll recognize a lot of stories in the room — but working in those fields is not required. The requirement is more like this: you care about the state of things, you're tired in the specific way that comes from caring, and you have a nagging sense that doing more of the same, but faster, isn’t helping anyone.
We're not spiritually literate as a culture, and most of us are working from an idea of "faith" that's been shrunk to a yes-no question about belief. The Bombyx Fellows program starts with your actual life: how you’ve experienced the profound, how you pay attention, how you negotiate your own limits, and how (and why) you show up to what you think matters most. We emphasize practice - in whatever way makes sense for your life, your ideas, and your longings.
The three terms
We organize our workshops and conversations around three conceptual trimesters:
Ritual
Carrying the weight of the world flattens out the ordinary texture of a day; meals become fuel, mornings become just the start of the grind. Ritual brings life back to reality. It isn't exotic or complicated. It's the practice of reclaiming ordinary time as meaningful, so your attention isn't spent entirely on what's broken. Awe, beauty, and gratitude are our birthrights - not exclusive benefits reserved to die-hard zealots.
Vocation
People who care tend to fuse their sense of worth to whether the work is working. Even, or especially, the well-intended are poisoned by a capitalist valuation of a self. In Vocation, we create the antidote: not by caring less, but by learning to measure a life by more than its outputs, and by treating your own attention and energy as finite and worth stewarding, not spending down to nothing.
Community
Most of us have socially deskilled. Community suffers as a result: we’re better at consuming it than contributing to it. This part explores how to build community for ourselves and the people we already live and work with, rather than on finding “your people” who will never let you down. It's also when the cohort starts shaping the year-end event, where Fellows offer something of what they've built this year back out to others.
How it works
Two evenings a month, dinner included, running September through May.
Each evening opens with a check-in round, then moves into a workshop or reflective activity.
A closing ceremony marks the end of the year.
Fellows get free admission to Florence Congregational Church’s ongoing spirituality workshops and some Bombyx programming throughout the year.
This is a "you get out what you put in" program. There is some light reading, mostly in the early months, as the cohort builds a shared vocabulary for experience across their varied paths.
There are opportunities to be matched with vetted resources, experiences, and guides based on your particular discoveries and interests.
Program Director
Rev. Dr. Marisa Egerstrom is the pastor of Florence Congregational Church. Her passion is making connection with the sacred possible and practical for people who don't identify as religious. She developed this program in 2022 after years working with young adults in programs like the Episcopal Service Corps, Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and AmeriCorps. She's a trained spiritual director through Still Harbor (Boston) and created the Protest Chaplains during the Occupy movement, which sparked the now-widespread "movement chaplaincy" approach to interfaith spiritual care in protest. She earned her seminary degree at Harvard Divinity School, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 2017, and completed her PhD in American Studies in 2021, examining religious abuses at Guantanamo Bay as part of her doctoral work on the use of military torture as a means of extending unchecked American executive power.
Cost & coordinates
$150/month for the nine months of the program. The program has been subsidized by grants, particularly from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, and gifts from supporters. We are looking for additional funders, in-kind donations, and other ways of further reducing the program cost to participants.
We generally meet on Monday nights at Bombyx/Florence Church. Exact schedule for 2026-27 TBA.
Please note: There are no credits, certificates, diplomas, or credentials of any kind offered through this program. It is not a clinical intervention; it won’t get rid of your trauma. While we hope it adds to the richness and resilience of your life and being, it’s not strictly a “wellness” offering in that individualistic sense. Nor is it group therapy. Think of this more like a leadership development program, a guided wilderness expedition, or a coaching intensive, but centered around spirituality, embodiment, and connection.
Thinking this might be great for someone you know? Send them a link!
To Apply
Visit the application form here. Most of the questions ask for short reflective responses, so give yourself some time.
Not sure if this is for you? Visit the application anyway - the reflection questions might be a good gut check for whether this is the right season for you to begin your quest.
Questions?
Email Marisa at pastor@fccnorthampton.org.
Want to talk to a previous Fellow to see if the program might be a good fit for you? Email and ask to be put in touch!