A couple of years ago I had two special people in two separate conversations suggest the book Braiding Sweetgrass to me. Sister Nancy suggested it one day when we were talking about books and then not long after that my friend Sara happened to be at Prairiewoods with that very book in her hand. She’d…
Last week, when the rain came, I found myself awash in its energy while also dry-of-foot. I walked through the gardens and trails at Prairiewoods and found the message I needed in that moment. Donning my waterproof boots, straw hat and little blue umbrella, I held presence with the rushing stream, the dripping canopy, and…
Near Stonehenge, the recent discovery of subterranean Neolithic shafts forming a two-kilometer wide ring up to ten meters across and five meters deep around the “super henge” at Durrington Walls has caused quite an archeological stir. The structures have been carbon dated to about 2500 B.C.E. Research on Stonehenge itself has been the focus of…
I am familiar with the practice of pilgrimage, having been a pilgrim to the Holy Land and to Rome and Assisi. Pilgrimage is a journey to a holy place, that requires an interior journey as much as an outer one. The Celtic practice of peregrinatio is similar in that it also calls me to sacred…
As we continue to reflect on the peaceful world that our hearts know is possible, people across the global are realizing that we need to be more conscious about our thoughts, statements, behaviors, biases, prejudices, judgments of self and others. This short TEDxGenova talk, “Own Your Behaviors, Master Your Communication, Determine Your Success,” presented by…
A Blessing Prayer in Difficult Times by John O’Donohue May you know tender shelter and healing blessing when you are called to stand in the place of pain. May the places of darkness within you be surprised by light. May you be granted the wisdom to avoid false resistance and when suffering knocks on the…
A few years ago, our associate director, Laura Weber, wandered out to the garden here at Prairiewoods and took a photograph of the compost pile. Thus began one of the all-time great ongoing arguments (alright, more a good-natured verbal sparring than an actual argument). Laura saw the image as deeply beautiful, indicative of the work…
“It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale.” ― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek I love this quote…
“While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” —St. Francis of Assisi We are living in a strange time of immediacy. There used to be a time when Amazon primarily evoked an image of a rainforest in South America, and it took effort and…
While we are all hanging out in this sacred cocoon of “PanDeepening,” it seems like we are trembling on the brink of something totally new, something profoundly alluring and terrifying at the same time. Perhaps it is a new “We” that is bigger, more inclusive, more complex and more dynamic than we ever imagined. How might…