Category Religious Naturalism
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 […]
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, […]
Belated Earth Day Love Letter
This is your day, sweet Earth, dear planet swimming gently and powerfully through the sky. My dear ancestor, my cradle, my mother, my home. Today, truly, all I want is to look into your eyes and understand — you, myself, the cosmos. All I want is to stand in the wonder, arms outstretched, open to […]
Orange Bowl
Holly-berry, moist chalk pyracantha beads beckon from a woody stalk; small fingers smash the pulp against an orange-striped bowl, stained from weeks of outdoor kitchen play amidst mud, twigs, tiny muscari hyacinth, honeysuckle nectar gleaned from tens of stolen flowers, camelia stamens and heady scotch-broom sunshine. From the brick-red playhouse tumble brown legs, round thighs, […]
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 […]
luminous immensity 