Category Presence
Shell Rock Lake
The yellowjackets congregate around singing some bright, fevered chorale of ins and outs, ups, overs, and aways, streaming their hoarse longing through the skyscraper trees. This barren, swept, human-carved spot is danced over and tended by these beings bringing their wild, pressing choir to this echoing, cathedral space. The trees of this place, mostly cedars […]
Landing
Waiting for the landing, for a soft fall to the spongy earth, Waiting for the lift of dank air, Waiting to drop down into my stomach and toes and the planet’s fire, Waiting for this spinning and clenching to come to rest on the shoulders . of ancient, living rock. It’s been months of […]
The Earth That We Knew Is Gone
I have been waiting for the grief to come, and today, reading Bill McKibben’s eaarth, my grief was set loose when I read his summary of the de facto changes that have beset our lovely jewel planet. After chronicling the reasons our dear Gaia cannot recover in any recognizable way from the devastation that has already taken place, […]
Release of the Peace Lily
Today, planting a peace lily turned into an unexpected ritual of forgiveness and blessing. Several years ago, my husband took a small peace lily to work, planted in a professional-looking gray plastic pot. He enjoyed and nurtured the plant to the point of flourishing and then, over time, collapse. It was severely root bound, many leaves […]
As a bird in the redwoods
As the day closes, turns dim in the forest, my soul wells up into a chitter of praise. I offer a song of the magnificence of life, of this day, of this blessed moment — this elongated blink between day and night. Let me hold on, hold out for the great sun that brightened and […]
Water
It came to me this morning casually pouring a glass of water: here is depth, here in my hand, liquid stardust, billions of years old, the elixir of life on earth and I can drink it. Millions of molecules have traveled billions of places and come to me, come through me, from that deep, dark past bearing […]
King’s Canyon
She said to go depth, find my place in the deep of things, travel down, down to the canyon bottom, feel those granite walls, majestic, decorated in scraps of life, and the smaller sky, swimming among the clouds, covering me in my hidden abode. There in that secret place, find the windy arms to hold […]
Presence in the Wild
How to love and defend the earth? I recently spent two weeks exploring my connection with wilderness in Kings Canyon National Park in the Sierra mountains. My companions? Thomas Berry and The Great Work, natural history guide books, land/earth, air/wind, water/river/creek, and a multitude of beings who surrounded me with their integrity, purpose, and presence. Before […]
Mystic Dance of Mortality
My journey away from theism hasn’t entirely landed in the atheism camp; as I said in my last post, I seem to live in the borderlands between religion and atheism, with connections to both. But what brings me to this vast wilderness out of the comfy Christianity I used to know? Mortality. Here’s the old […]
The Examen
As part of a Sacred Journey class I am taking at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, I am doing a daily Examen practice modeled after the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. There are many versions floating around. Here is the one I use from my class: 1. Presence – Begin by recognizing the […]
luminous immensity 