Hedges Grove & Rev Michael Bugbee
About
Hedges Grove Ministry was born from a simple mission, to connect people to a spiritual community that honors earth-based traditions and gives back to the world around it. From that seed grew something deeper. A ministry rooted in connection, healing, and the belief that no one should have to walk their hardest roads alone.
Reverend Michael Bugbee has felt the calling of Great Spirit for as long as he can remember. That calling was forged in fire. Michael spent his childhood in and out of foster care, navigating abuse, disability, and the painful complexity of his own identity. As a teenager, carrying more than any young person should have to carry, he planned to end his life. Feeling unloved, unwanted, and unseen, he saw no way forward.
Instead, Great Spirit had other plans.
In what Michael describes as an out of body experience, he was carried into a white light and held in God's hands. He was told, simply and completely, that he was loved. That experience changed everything. It didn't erase the hard road ahead but it gave him something unshakeable to walk it with.
And walk it he did. Through wheelchair-bound recovery from multiple surgeries related to his neuromuscular condition. Through homelessness at eighteen. Through the devastating loss of his college roommate and former partner to suicide. Through discrimination, through systems that failed him, through every closed door and institutional no.
He walked through all of it and then turned around to hold the door open for others.
At Shippensburg University, where he earned a full scholarship and a Bachelor's in Communication with a minor in Disability Studies, Michael became a guest speaker on disability identity, advocated for students with disabilities, and fought for and won LGBTQ+ housing protections after experiencing discrimination firsthand. His advocacy extended beyond campus, helping neighboring municipalities establish their own protections.
Throughout all of it, his spiritual practice lived quietly in the background. He offered intuitive sessions, held sacred circles, and grew slowly into the minister he was always called to be. He has been invited to contribute to works by respected voices in the spiritual community. He has spoken at colleges, community centers, and town halls on resilience, disability, foster care, and human rights.
Today, as founder of Hedges Grove Ministry, Reverend Bugbee brings all of it; the survival, the seeking, the sacred, the hard-won wisdom... into service for others. Whether in one-on-one spiritual companionship or standing at a podium, his message is the same one he received in that white light all those years ago.
You are loved. You belong here. There is a way through.
