Meeting the Trees

I value the trees in my yard as friends. We go through the seasons together. Trees give me joy, strength, hope.   Meeting Face to face, or so it feels, we meet, (two sides of a window, the blossoming tree and I) we breathe, we deeply breathe, together, the same soft-bright sky, above us both,…

Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration Take Action to Honor George Floyd & Dismantle White Privilege

Prairiewoods’ mission, to welcome and provide sacred space for people of all faiths and cultures and to nurture relationships with the Source of All Being, Earth, self and others, includes everyone. Further, our Franciscan heritage calls us to reverence the Divine Presence within all creation, including each member of the Earth Community. It is because…

The Tao of Presencing

Ahhhh! Breath-taking! Breath-giving! “We breathe in. We breathe out. We breathe in. We breathe out.” We’re meditating with this image today, a bit of visio divina, with a touch of soulful jazz. What do we see? What is the image revealing? What is emerging in the interpretive space between us and the observable “other?” What…

Love & Say It with Your Life

“Love and say it with your life.” —Augustine of Hippo A recent Saturday afternoon found me driving along gravel roads in rural Benton County, hungry for sites other than the four walls I’ve been staring at for weeks during this spring of self-isolation. I was listening to a podcast called Snap Judgement, and an episode…

Forests & Fairy Godmothers

I just finished reading a truly heart-awakening book called To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroger, a botanist and medical biochemist from Ireland who was orphaned as a young girl and then raised by her wise Celtic community of relatives…