Every organization has an origin story. Ours doesn't begin with a business plan or a strategy session — it begins on the rim of a canyon in Peru, watching condors.
Colca Canyon, 2002
In 2002, I traveled to Peru and found myself at Colca Canyon — one of the deepest canyons in the world, and home to some of the last great populations of Andean condors. I spent a day there simply watching them. These enormous birds, wingspans wider than I am tall, riding the thermal currents in long, unhurried circles, rising and falling without ever seeming to work for it.
I didn't know it at the time, but that day planted something. There was a stillness in it — a sense of being very small in front of something very old. The Andes have a way of doing that to you. The land carries weight. History. Continuity.
It was around that same period, in that same region, that I first encountered San Pedro — Huachuma — not as an abstract concept, but as a living practice, held by people for whom it wasn't new or exotic. It was simply part of how things were done, the way it had been for a very long time.
Twenty-Plus Years of Quiet Work
What followed wasn't a straight line, and it wasn't fast. Over the years since that trip, I began cultivating San Pedro cactus myself. Learned how slow it grows, how patient you have to be, what it actually takes to care for these plants properly — not as a hobby, but as a relationship.
I spent years learning about the tradition itself, as respectfully as someone in my position can. Mostly, I spent a lot of time with the plants. Watching them. Tending them. Understanding them on their own absurdly slow timeline.
This church isn't a sudden idea. It's the result of twenty-plus years of unglamorous, repetitive, occasionally boring cultivation — both of cacti and of understanding — that gradually clarified into something I felt called to formalize and share.
Why Formalize At All?
A reasonable question: if this has been a personal practice for so long, why turn it into a church — with all the paperwork that implies?
A few reasons.
**First, accountability.** Operating as a registered religious nonprofit means operating in the open — with bylaws, a board, a conflict of interest policy, and reporting obligations to the state and the IRS. It means there's structure around how decisions get made and how the organization is run. That structure exists to protect the integrity of the practice and the people who participate in it.
**Second, legitimacy.** Formalizing as a religious organization is, in part, a statement: this is not a casual or commercial enterprise. This is real religious practice, not a side hustle with incense. It deserves to be treated — legally and culturally — the way sincere religious practices are treated.
**Third, stewardship.** Huachuma has been carried forward for thousands of years by people who understood themselves as caretakers of something larger than themselves. That's the tradition we're trying to honor — not just practice it, but hold it carefully, pass it on intact, and make sure it isn't diminished by how we handle it. Forming a church is, in part, an act of stewardship. A way of saying: we take this seriously enough to build something that can outlast any one of us.
The Land
There's a longer vision behind all of this that doesn't fit neatly into a paragraph about nonprofit paperwork, but it belongs here.
We're building toward a home in California — a physical sanctuary where the community can gather with permanence rather than improvisation. Beyond that, we hold a vision for a retreat space in Peru, where Huachuma has been honored for millennia and where the land itself carries the tradition in ways that can't be replicated anywhere else. And further still, a presence in Spain — a place where this lineage can take root in Europe.
None of that happens quickly. None of it happens without the kind of organizational foundation we've been building. And none of it happens without a community of people who believe in it enough to support it — with their presence, their membership, and their generosity.
We're at the beginning of that arc. But we know where we're going.
What This Means Going Forward
We're still early, and there's a lot of work ahead. But the foundation is real — it's been built deliberately, over a long time, by someone who's been sitting with this plant and this tradition since a day on the edge of a canyon, watching birds that didn't seem to be in any hurry either.
If you've read this far, thank you for taking the time to understand where this comes from. If that resonates, we'd love to hear from you.
Reach out @: ministry@sagradosanpedrochurch.org