I sought out Grandmother Oak today for some grand and motherly advice She showed me her scars and her broken parts And said “See how I still rise?” “I have wept many tears for my fallen friends, and for the creatures that didn’t survive. My tears wet the ground and nourished my roots. Now see…
The best massage of my life came at the hands of a septuagenarian nun. Sister Nancy Hoffman, FSPA, is one of the founders of Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center, a miraculous slice of reclaimed prairie and oak savannah sandwiched between the suburbs and a trailer court on the edge of Hiawatha, Iowa. Established over 25 years…
On a September retreat at Prairiewoods, the trees woke me up. Just outside my second-story guest house window, they were shaking their heads wildly. In the background I could hear the rumble of thunder. It was past midnight, and now it was Mary Oliver’s birthday, September 10. Pieces of her poem “The Journey,” that I…
Amid the stirring of the world today, we offer an inspiring invitation to simple connection. See https://youtu.be/j9rckyEsmAA. May we each engage the opportunity to make this day a beautiful day. —Ann Jackson, PBVM, Prairiewoods spiritual services coordinator
“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the…
“Sarah laughed.” A brief lexicographical survey of biblical figures who were said to have laughed is a short list. Many are familiar with a famous matriarch from Genesis 18, Sarah (Abraham’s wife). When Sarah is told by a messenger of the Lord that she will conceive and bear a child in her old age, she…
You are holy and sacred And utterly unique. There are gifts you were born to give. Songs you were born to sing. Stories you were born to tell. And if you do not give it, The world will simply lose it. It is yours alone to offer, No one can give it for you. And…
Each December, as one year winds down and another is just a glimmer of possibility, I try to encapsulate the outgoing year—and how I experienced it—in a single word or phrase. The year I regained my health by losing weight, went skydiving and took a pilgrimage to Italy with my mother, my word was Joy.…
What is it about this time of year— this season of late fall— that invites rest and reflection? I am given quiet mornings among pines and golden grasses Will I accept the invitation? Will I sit and listen? Will I rest and reflect? I might. I might get swept away with business and to-do lists…
Healing childhood trauma is the vocation of many gifted mental health professionals who I have encountered and collaborated with over the years. Wounds from our childhood stay hidden in our bodies (or not-so-hidden) for the rest of our lives, manifesting as many forms of cancers and blood disorders, headaches, digestive issues, cardio-vascular or neurological dis-ease,…