Spirituality Can Protect Our Brains from Despair
Want to learn more? Join Dr. Lisa Miller in Cedar Rapids or virtually on May 5 or 6 for Spirituality in the 21st Century: The Awakened Brain. Learn more here.
Walking the Cosmos: On Creation & Grandeur
Traversing a Franciscan Hiking Route I’m fortunate enough to work for an employer with a structured (and mandatory) sabbatical policy, so over this past month, I’ve been enjoying the blessing of rest. There’s been plenty of reading, a surprisingly fruitful period of writing, and increased time spent with my family, all without the lingering anxiety…
When the Trees Say Nothing
I recently found a collection of nature essays by Thomas Merton called When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature, edited by Kathleen Deignan. The title really caught my attention. How can that be, I asked? The trees talk to me every day. I cannot imagine a world when they say nothing, one where we…
The Wisdom of Many
An essential principle of ecological spirituality is multi-disciplinary wisdom. It is a phrase that sounds academic and not particularly spiritual. Other words we might use for the same idea are interconnection and interdependence. It means that the path to flourishing for people and the planet has been laid by many hands over thousands of years.…
Just Sitting
Just Sitting is related to the full moon, tides, and that idea that the earth is mostly water and so are we. So I thought it’s not hard to believe that the moon would impact our internal energies and water tides too—if we can tune into them. I call it “just sitting” as this is the…
Wild Moments
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.” ―Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire…
Note from Nature
Because of love I kneel down here— To a bird, a seed, a story. To a wildflower, a stream, a vision of The light cracking on sky Because of love I leave myself here— On the far side of the place where I thought I was going— Nearer to something that I cannot name, And…
Sense of Oneness
Two events—Prairiewoods’ Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) eight-week class and a weeklong silent retreat—deepened my sense of oneness. Both experiences helped me slow down and become more aware of everything around me. One example is eating. In the MBSR class, we ate a single raisin in excruciatingly slow fashion, first examining it visually, then feeling…
Peculiar Signs, Prayer, One’s True Purpose, & Peace
The gas grill on the back of a pickup truck in front of me, as our vehicles zoomed 65 miles per hour down the highway, was a stresser. Could I really trust the grill was securely strapped in? Simply having to ask myself the question made it a lane changer. Three days later, while visiting…
How COVID and a Camera Helped Me Find the Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come to the…