One of my favorite books by Joyce Rupp is Prayer Seeds: A Gathering of Blessings, Reflections, and Poems for Spiritual Growth. In the prayer “The Container of Your Heart,” we’re invited to hold our hands in the shape of a small bowl and let that symbolize the container of our heart. We begin the prayer…
Music brings resilience and strength. A story, an invocation or a verse shared in song travels beyond reaches of rational thought to make its home in the soul’s memory. In his 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait, Martin Luther King Jr. said that song was the soul of the Civil Rights Movement. Hope and determination…
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” —Joseph Campbell These summer mornings I love waking up during the pre-dawn moments before the “robin concertmaster” sounds the first pitch of the morning symphony waking up a sleeping world. She announces…
“If we reach common ground, and can understand what everybody’s going through, we can really affect change. And make sure that everyone is treated equally and has the same freedom.” —Colin Kaepernick One day, as I walked the land at Prairiewoods, I saw the tree photographed above. Note how it stands in a place of…
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…
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…