Once a year, my beloved dog Phineas has a playdate with dozens of other dogs, cats, guinea pigs, bunnies, bearded dragons and donkeys from around the corridor. I’m not sure who enjoys it more, me or him. (OK, it’s probably me.) Prairiewoods’ annual Blessing of the Animals gives me and Phin a chance to meet…
Details“And time, we now know, is actually a persistent illusion? What we understand as past and present and future all exist within some sort of eternal now? What? And we’re each made of billions and billions and billions of atoms, because everything everywhere is made of atoms? And atoms aren’t really things or stuff at…
DetailsWhat are you noticing as we begin the autumn season? What are you seeing, now several weeks after the derecho storm? I am noticing trees and stumps and so much beauty. The forest in my neighborhood has opened up again. As I move along with the trees, the light pours in. The canopy is open…
DetailsAs the Prairiewoods artist-in-residence, I have the privilege of spending time at Prairiewoods in a variety of seasons, meandering through the prairie, visiting Grandmother Oak, slowly turning in circles as I walk the labyrinth. A little over a year ago, I waded into Dry Creek—not dry at all!—and perched on a rock with the water…
Details“Conversation is perhaps our greatest hope not only for healing the rifts in human understanding but also for restoring and reinspiring our relationship with the natural world, which is our first and most profound home. Care of the world is always essential, and care arises from conversation.” —Thomas Dean, Introduction, Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of…
DetailsIn his book To Bless the Space Between Us, John O’ Donohue offers prayerful poems that can only otherwise be known as blessings. “The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable. Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to…
Details“To make a prairie, it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.” —Emily Dickinson When I was a child, I was known for being able to fall asleep anywhere. Once I laid down on a busy sidewalk to snooze while…
DetailsWhen my niece was really little she looked across the table at our Aunt Sherri and said, “I can feel the love coming out of your heart and going into my heart.” I’ve also felt this love from (and for) Aunt Sherri ever since I was little, although I didn’t quite have the words to…
Details“The spiritual function of fierce terrain … is to bring us to the end of ourselves, to the abandonment of language and the relinquishment of ego. A vast expanse of jagged stone, desert sand, and towering thunderheads has a way of challenging all the mental constructs in which we are tempted to take comfort and…
Details“Enlarge the space of your tent. Stretch out your tent cloth unsparingly.” —Isaiah 54:2 Reflection: “Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity … Our efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments, and thus promoting the well-being of individuals…
DetailsI owe my “I am-ness” to the Stranger. That existence undefined and uncontrollable. The next unpredictable. The Stranger. Those ancestors in my blood, those that are not, and those in future unknown. Next in the grocery line and yet unseen around the corner. The Stranger. Those at body birth, continuance of essence, and those at…
Details“… All that is eternal in me Welcomes the wonder of this day, The field of brightness it creates Offering time for each thing To arise and illuminate. I place on the altar of dawn: The quiet loyalty of breath, The tent of thought where I shelter And all beauty drawn to the eye. May…
DetailsPleased to meet you, Little Oak. I see you’re growing at an angle. Growing like you’re reaching. Like you’re stretching yourself. Like a pre-teen searching the sky. I’m rooting for you. Praying for you. Singing songs for you in your sleep. I’ll be thinking of you, dreaming of your future. And you may see me…
DetailsIn last Monday’s blog (https://prairiewoods.org/interior-wilderness/), we offered an exercise to plunge deeper into our interior wilderness in the aftermath of loss. Whatever “storm” we have recently endured, environmental, communal or personal, the loss profoundly affects our sense of self, our identity. Once we have begun exploring our interior wild-scape after a loss, and we begin…
DetailsSo many of us still remember the first moment we heard about September 11, 2001, when extremists hijacked four planes flying above the United States. Two planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Another into the Pentagon, the top military building in Washington D.C. Close to three…
DetailsFred Rogers is often quoted as saying, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” I have never felt the truth of that statement as much as I have in the…
Details“I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!” —Rodgers & Hammerstein So many of us are in various stages of grief. I’ve recently lost several good friends, including Sr. Betty—none to COVID. This grief is compounded by having to distance from loved ones and loved places. So here’s to memories…
DetailsOn Monday, Aug. 10, when the derecho hit Iowa, we were all shocked by the storm itself and the severe damage it caused. (We literally didn’t know what hit us, and once we were able to read the news I actually had to google the term derecho, as I’d never heard that word.) But the…
DetailsWhen some calamity befalls us, such as last month’s derecho that brought devastation to Prairiewoods’ tree canopy, as well as widespread destruction to the greater Cedar Rapids area and indeed the whole bio-region, it is a good time to slow down, to pause and reflect, to root deeply, to breathe into the pain of loss…
Details(Prairiewoods tree that fell on the labyrinth due to the derecho) Often over the years since I first learned Maya Angelou’s poem “When Great Trees Fall” in 1990, it has consoled me during the deaths of many loved ones. These weeks in light of the derecho and hurricane destruction, the wild fires, the Pandemic, the…
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