She rubs oil into wounds

The Spirit of God
is a life that bestows life,
root of world-tree
and the wind in its boughs.
Scrubbing out sin,
she rubs oil into wounds.
She is glistening life
alluring all praise,
all-awakening,
all-resurrecting.

I walked through the birches by the river today

I walked through the birches by the river today. Overwhelming! The earth is stripped down to simple designs. The land has become a visual haiku. Sun on the fretwork of twigs. Blood droplets of rose hips clinging to the bushes. The chatter of the creek against trimmings of ice. The skiff of snow. My breath a white cloud like a departing soul... I have always been beguiled by birds. As if there was much they would tell me if they could, but they are only permitted to bear witness with their lives, their song.

We have the potential to become like a tree planted by the stream

We have the potential to become like a tree planted by the stream. Like the tree, we need nurturance — both of water and of sun if we are to blossom. We need nurturance from all the elements; without the soil, the sun, and the air, our food will not grow. We need nurturance from the plants. We all need human nurturance in the form of friendship and love, and we need God's own divine nurturance which empowers us to trust in the Author of creation.

Spirituality in the ecological epoch

Spirituality in the ecological epoch will be based on a sense of deep communion with all beings through empathy, through the power of the heart, through our deepest intuition of the sacred pulse of life and the sacred nature of the cosmos.

To discover the universe is a big step toward knowing ourselves

To discover the universe is a big step toward knowing ourselves. As humans we are born of the Earth, nourished by the Earth, healed by the Earth. The natural world tells us: I will feed you, I will clothe you, I will shelter you, I will heal you. Only do not so devour me or use me that you destroy my capacity to mediate the divine and the human. For I offer you a communication with the divine. In the vastness of the sea, in the snow-covered mountains, in the rivers flowing through the valleys, in the serenity of the landscape, and in the foreboding of the great storms that sweep over the land — I offer you inspiration for your music, your art, your dance. All these benefits the Earth gives to us: individually, communally, and throughout the entire Earth.

The healing grace of wildness

Walking home, I ponder about a love of art and I think about my love of the land back home, about the healing grace of wildness, and how difficult it is to articulate why conservation matters, why wilderness matters to the health of our souls and how a language of the heart becomes suspect. I wonder how it is we have come to this place where art and nature are spoken in terms of what is optional?

This water is talking

My daughter, three years old and fearless, loves nothing more than wading along the shallow shoreline outside our house. Holding hands, we walk barefoot upstream quietly in the water, stepping delicately over stones. Besides the water sounds, there is just immense silence. We stop and listen to the water. She asked me for a story; I did not have one. Listening, she turned in delight and announced, "Daddy, this water is talking." In listening to the river a kind of silence prevails, broken only by the rush of water over rocks. Such a silence is more like faint echoes, each a series of dim reverberations. They continue in you, distant yet familiar.

Silently a flower blooms

Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flow, the whole of
the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower,
the truth of the blossom;
The glory of eternal life is fully shining
here.

My worship is 10,000 crickets in the deep wet hay of the field

Warm sun. My worship is a blue sky and 10,000 crickets in the deep wet hay of the field. My vow is the silence under their song. I admire the woodpecker and the dove in simple mathematics of flight. Together we study practical norms. The plowed and planted field is red as brick in the sun and says: "Now is my turn!" Several of us began to sing.

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