I’ve been doing a lot of longing lately. Every morning’s headlines shouting something I wish were otherwise, I long for the world to be different than it is. Not for the way things were (which has never been that great). But longing for the shared wellbeing and right relationship of Beloved Community, which points me […]

We’d driven almost 3,000 miles, from the northern Midwest to the southwestern tip of the U.S. and were making our way home last month before I confessed that I hadn’t yet found the right words to describe the extraordinary landscape we were passing through. Expansive wasn’t big enough. Astonishing wasn’t specific enough. Thrilling didn’t do […]

I took a break from presenting this summer to work on a new book. Then, having turned in my manuscript to my publisher, I took a break from writing with daily word-count goals. Going off-line and on the road, I took the advice of a friend and left my hefty journal behind. Get something fresh […]

Two downy woodpeckers visit the deck in the morning. The female fat with eggs sits on the railing. The male flits between feeder and mate, feeder and mate, seed by seed feeding a future not yet nested. It is coded within whether we’re winged or flat-footed, this care across time. How much we humans have […]

Finally, spring has arrived. Even so, I hear many folks growing weary of the political storms blowing about every day. The blustery posturing that hawks fear like a street peddler desperate to make a sale. On many a day, I find it hard to believe in the seasonal rising of hope that typically blooms in […]

Forty to one. That’s the ratio of sap to maple syrup in the long, slow process of creating the amber sweetness my family used to boil and bottle every spring. It’s a ratio that tells you something about the time and determination required to make syrup, but gives no hint of the longer arc of […]