Isaiah 61:3-11 “to give them a garland instead of ashes” The wreaths in our homes at Advent and Christmas are often only decorative—pretty. But there’s an ancient Nordic and Celtic tradition of making wreaths from wagon wheels. When the sun disappeared in winter, these sun-worshipping people had a beautiful way of wooing it, beckoning back […]
Nature/Creation
What The Lover Sees
If you love it enough, anything will talk to you.-George Washington Carver The arborist had come with a crew of workers to lay a great ash to rest. While he was here, I asked him to cut out an old stump that was now in a space where a garden was taking shape. The stump […]
We Came. We Sat. They Sang
After a run of hot days and nights, a cool spell descended. It was early morning, an almost chilly breeze in the air, and Pam and I decided to sit for meditation out on the deck. After the morning reading, we sat in silence—or so we thought. The surrounding trees seemed to teem with birds, […]
Seven Thousand Miracles
Vincent Donovan, a missionary in Africa, wrote of working with the Masai many years ago. He said the people were all sitting very respectfully listening to him as the priest, and he was teaching them about the Seven Sacraments of the Church. He described a sacrament as a physical encounter or event in which you […]
Struck By Awe
A few days ago I walked to the rim of the Grand Canyon and looked over the edge. I felt a twinge in my stomach and my mouth dropped slightly open. My first visit—I don’t know what I was expecting. I had seen countless pictures, but of course no flat image, measured in inches, could […]
The Birthday Willow
May 16, 2023. I kneel beside a small hole in the earth. Today is our daughter Maggy’s fortieth birthday and we have given her, according to her wish, a weeping willow to mark the occasion. Since, in a fit of spring madness, I have just planted over forty trees and bushes around our home, I […]
Spring Fever
Spring, the most yearned-for season, is also the most crazy-making. If you have a back yard or a garden, a kind of obsession can take over. You go to a nursery and imagine this in that little empty corner of the front garden, and that in the bed beside the potting shed. You don’t have […]
The Bible and The Black Hole
There was an old saying, that people of faith should seek to understand their world with “the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.” For the last hundred years it’s been increasingly difficult to interpret the Bible, and now nobody trusts a newspaper. Maybe just as well. The idea that we could […]