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.

April 2004 (Vol. XVII, No. 4)

Friends, let us be blessed in this new Spring season! May Nature teach us the beauty of simplicity and wonder, authentic freedom and Beingness, acceptance and delight in each stage of life, and, the interdependence of our planetary community. May we pause from time to time, breathe in the silence, and let nature's gifts speak to us.

A walk in nature

A walk in nature can help bring about one of the most essential acts a human being can perform: the stilling of the mind. For when the cacophony of disturbances, reactions, and self-talk subsides, like a windswept sea suddenly finding calm, the lens of our lives becomes a still, pure crystalline window for the cosmos to experience itself through... A walk in the natural world, with conscious mindfulness, can help bathe the senses in the implicate ordering of existence. Such a direct and immediate reminder does much to help steer us back to the center of ourselves.

~ by David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle nature Buy on Amazon

The defining cry of creation

Silence ... And in the west, the ever-setting sun consumed itself, surrounded by its circling sisters, rushing with the speed of light toward the point systems and cosmic galaxies had been fleeing from the beginning, toward darkness and the primordial Fiat. And across the cold ocean of space, audible as the music of the spheres, the defining cry of creation comes. Maranatha!

~ Unknown
Unknown nature

Grow in silence like the trees

Grow in silence like the trees find strength in solitude listen to the wind, and living things hear what God speaks in silence.
~ by Jan Sutch Pickard
Jan Sutch Pickard nature Buy on Amazon

Nature's invitation

NATURE is eternally inviting us to simply BE who we were born to be.
~ Anonymous
Anonymous nature

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.

~ Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen nature Buy on Amazon

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.

~ from STRANGERS AND SOJOURNERS by Michael D. O'Brien
Michael D. O'Brien Strangers And Sojourners nature Buy on Amazon

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.
~ by Alice L. Laffey
Alice L. Laffey nature Buy on Amazon

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.
~ from A SACRED PLACE TO DWELL by Henryk Skolimowski
Henryk Skolimowski A Sacred Place To Dwell nature Buy on Amazon

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.
~ Thomas Berry in MAKING PEACE ed. by McConnell and van Gelder
Thomas Berry Making Peace nature Buy on Amazon

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?

~ from LEAP by Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams Leap nature Buy on Amazon

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.

~ by Robert Reese
Robert Reese nature

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.

~ by Zenkei Shibayama
Zenkei Shibayama nature Buy on Amazon

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.

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