“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…
Acknowledging that most if not all of us have experiences of deeply entrenched racism in our personal lives, in our family story, is a first, fierce step toward spiritually, practically and creatively practicing nonviolence. In attempting to embody nonviolence in her own life, Minnijean Brown-Tricky began by tracing her personal narrative of nonviolence and “the…
Picture this: Last winter, my husband and I spent days decorating our house to look like a grand ballroom in the heart of New Orleans. We cooked a four-course dinner, complete with jambalaya, shrimp with remoulade sauce and beignets. We got in Mardi Gras costumes and donned our masks and beads. And then our eight…
Three years ago, Sister Helen Prejean, a tireless advocate for abolishing the death penalty, came to speak at Coe College and stayed with us at Prairiewoods. It was an honor to both meet and spend time with Sister Helen, whom I have admired for years. Today, following the execution of Daniel Lee by the federal…
I’d like to begin by stating the obvious. Chipmunks are adorable. It is impossible not to fall in immediate love with each one of them. However, my dearest love is a feisty three-inch tall beauty with long dark eyelashes, who lives in a hollowing piece of wood. (My house is next to hers, and I…
“St. John’s Wort is one of the so-called St. John’s herbs—which also include yarrow, mugwort, fennel, and elder; they would be picked on St. John’s birthday and hung over doors and windows to keep evil spirits away.” —Caz Hildebrand, Herbarium (2016) If ever there was a time when we needed help in keeping evil spirits…
Many Iowans relish and quote the lines, “Is this heaven?” “No, it’s Iowa!” from the iconic movie Field of Dreams. The film is a baseball lover’s paradise in which an Iowa farmer hears a voice that inspires him to plow under his corn crop and build a baseball field. Who would do that? Despite the economic…
One of my favorite flowers is the rose. Go figure! As a child, I used to really, I mean really, dislike my name. Why would my parents name their oldest child after a flower of all things? I was teased relentlessly at times, called every other flower but my name, Rose. People expected me to…
We long for a peaceful and just world. Shortly after the catastrophic event of 9/11, a beautiful poem of Judyth Hill’s circulated. All were invited to “Wage peace with your breath / breathe in fireman and rubble / breathe out whole buildings / and flocks of redwing black birds …” Challenging the violence then, Hill’s…
Last week on our PanDeepening blog, I talked about the Kindness Rocks project that is filling our world with color and kindness. You’ve likely seen cute rocks that people are painting and leaving in the community for strangers to find as an act of generosity and kindness. Now I’d like to invite you to paint…