Oh Sweet Irrational Worship by Thomas Merton Wind and a bobwhite And the afternoon sun. By ceasing to question the sun I have become light, Bird and wind. My leaves sing. I am earth, earth All these lighted things Grow from my heart. A tall, spare pine Stands like the initial of my first Name … Read more
Excerpted from an article by Skye Thomas, based on Butterfly, by Norie Huddle After a caterpillar buries itself inside its cocoon, it waits to morph into a butterfly. The caterpillar does not simply shrink a bit and sprout wings. Instead, it sort of disintegrates into a puddle of ooze within the cocoon. If we were … Read more
PRAISE SONG by Barbara Crooker from Radiance Praise the light of late November, the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones. Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees; though they are clothed in night, they do not despair. Praise what little there’s left: the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls, shells, the … Read more
Leonids Over Us by Marge Piercy The sky is streaked with them burning hole in black space — like fireworks, someone says all friendly in the dark chill of Newcomb Hollow in November, friends known only by voices. We lie on the cold sand and it embraces us, this beach where locals never go in … Read more
Who is this flower above me?What is the work of this God?I would know myself in all of my parts. — the Flower Prayer, used in the Feri and Reclaiming traditions What is the source of our truest heart’s desires? Where do these hopes and longings within us come from? Why are we sometimes given … Read more
Throughout my whole life, during every moment I have lived, the world has gradually been taking on light and fire for me, until it has come to envelop me in one mass of luminosity, glowing from within… The purple flush of matter fading imperceptibly into the gold of spirit, to be lost finally in the … Read more
The peace of wild things by Wendell Berry When despair grows in meand I wake in the middle of the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. … Read more
Hymn of the Forests (excerpt)by Fiona McLeod (William Sharpe)We are the harps which the winds play,A myriad tones in one vast soundThat the earth hearkens night and day —A ceaseless music swaying roundThe whole wide world, each voiceful treeEchoing the wave-chants of the sea. For even as inland waves that moanBut break not ‘midst the … Read more
Inversnaid— Gerard Manley HopkinsThis darksome burn, horseback brown,His rollrock highroad roaring down,In coop and in comb the fleece of his foamFlutes and low to the lake falls home. A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-frothTurns and twindles over the brothOf a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. Degged with dew, dappled with dew,Are the … Read more
One of my favorite visitors here, Rio, has shared a great story of one of her personal encounters with Nature’s “leaning back.” I hope you’ll be sure to read it in the comments to that day’s post, and again I invite you to share your own stories, perhaps in reply to this post. Blessings, – … Read more