Get Curious about COP26

COP26 is happening Oct. 31–Nov. 12, 2021! COP stands for Conference of the Parties. The Parties include the 196 countries and the EU who signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty in 1994. That treaty established an international, environmental agreement to combat “dangerous human interference with the climate system,” committing to…

Kinship & Stories

“Can love, in its unaccountable weirdness, hope to overcome a culture of individualism built on denying all our millions of kinships and dependencies? That is our central drama now. It’s the future’s one inescapable story, and we are the characters who will steer that conflict to its denouement.” —Richard Powers, “A Little More than Kin”…

Nothin’ but Net

St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556 C.E.), famous for his “Spiritual Exercises,” was the Roman Catholic counter-Reformation founder of the religious order known as the Jesuits. He knew well the vagaries of the human heart. He recognized patterns of spiritual fluctuation ranging from periods of “consolation” to “desolation.” Experiences of consolation, marked by inner peace and…

The Time has Come

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground … A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now. —Wangari Maathai, Nobel Lecture, Oslo, Dec. 10, 2004…

Balance

Sept. 22 is the beginning of autumn. It is the equinox, one of two times a year when day and night are equal length. I’ve found this moment of astronomical balance to be a wonderful time for inward reflection and to ground myself in preparation for winter and all of the longer, darker nights ahead.…

Commemorations

Tuesday thunder and lightning and our world is another place no day will ever be the same no blood Untouched they know this storm in otherwheres israel ireland palestine but God has blessed America we sing and God has blessed America to learn that no one is exempt the world is one all fear is…

Praying with the Oaks

I never tire of kneeling before the oaks that flank the altar in the chapel, centering myself with the one to the east first, then pivoting south. In their presence it seems more possible to pray, to feel the spirit skittering through me like the squirrel leaping from branch to branch, like the sun climbing…