I was planning to write about transformation for Easter. I’ve been working on a series of essays exploring cosmologist Brian Swimme’s eleven powers of the universe, and what we can learn from these great cosmic energies. So far, I’ve done radiance, centration, and transmutation. Easter and this very welcome spring seemed like the perfect time to explore […]
An Easter of memory and anticipation Read More »
Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we love. Terry Tempest Williams I treasure finding beauty everywhere I go. And having it find me. The chocolate lily above is my favorite picture of 2018. I love both the flower itself and the spray of gold light behind it. It also
Songlines 2018: beauty and action Read More »
What can enclose this ample innerness? So soft is this touch, it could soothe any wound. From Ranier Maria Rilke’s Inside the Rose I may belong to one of the smallest groups in history — people who don’t love roses. It’s not that I don’t love the look of many roses, or their subtle variations
Passion and poison: the thorn in the rose Read More »
When I first described my love for the Aboriginal concept of songlines, the paths taken by the First Beings as they sang the world into existence, I said that one of the ideas I love best is that we are tasked with continuing the work in our own lives. As we walk through our days, we
Songlines 2016: landscapes of love and prairies Read More »
When I first saw the picture of the trollius above, I was struck by how ferocious it looked, though the trollius itself didn’t inspire that thought when I took it. It was the only time I’d ever associated the word ‘ominous’ with a flower. I was reminded of it this fall, as I took pictures
Happy Halloween: slightly ominous, very orange Read More »
This is a story about a difficult and fascinating terrain, a beautiful, adaptable flower, and a maddening claim. Bitterroot is far from rare in the western states of the U.S. and Canada. It’s Montana’s state flower and has bequeathed its name to the Bitterroot River and Valley there. Also to the Bitterroot Mountains and the Bitterroot
Living on the ledge: ingenious bitterroot Read More »
For the first Songlines post last spring, I wrote about how much I love creation stories that not only have the world sung into existence, but also have us continually bringing life to life as we relish our own passing presence. What a great joy it is to be given the task of singing of
Songlines 2015: north to Alaska Read More »
There are moments that tilt life, even if we don’t know it at the time. Not the big moments, when our paths take sudden and dramatic turns, like locking eyes with the stranger who will become a great love, or taking your child in your arms for the first time. The quiet ones. Moments that
In my favorite creation story the world is sung into existence. I first came across this wonderful idea as a child, in one of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, ‘The Magician’s Nephew’, where he has his divine embodiment, Aslan the lion, slowly move across a pitch-black and featureless void, singing first the stars into the darkness, then
If places were men, Portland, Oregon would be the guy I met at a farmers market. We both like to hike, and read, and travel. He talks about his feelings. He recycles. It’s all very satisfying, but a bit damp. Moab, Utah would be running away with the cowboy who comes to town occasionally, never