What 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…
As 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…
“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…
In 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…
“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…
“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…
“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…
I 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…
“… 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…
Pleased 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…