Crows found ways to adapt to our concrete forests but we have not yet found ways to make sure we are in balance with the rest of creation.

Spirit and Breath, create an openness that violence has constricted.

Self-compassion was one of the best gifts I gave myself.

The miracle of grace is available to us even when it has been left untended.

Remind me that life is magical and mysterious.

May we remember the belonging that is ours simply because we were born.

Love is reaching through the generations with expectations that I live through challenging times.

Growing connects me to ancestors who had their hands in the dirt because it was keeping them alive.

My inner compass reminds me of the power we’ve been given to create a new future.

Maybe hope is fleeting. It leaves and returns again; there’s beauty in its impermanence.

The wilderness alongside every moment, sprawling in each direction, holds more than the silence that theologians imagine of God.

What once seemed certain is now unpredictable, even dangerous.

There is relief and remorse equally in my heart as the growing season comes to a close.

There are so many spiritual lessons from the natural world and—in a season filled with Ingatherings and Water Communions—this is one for me: oxbow lakes as a beautiful combination of resiliency, strength, and flexibility.

It was my inadvertent letting go that made this wild, interdependent beauty possible. And at that very moment, I knew I didn’t need that sort of control anymore.

I call the tall bush on my back patio “Burning Bush” because in autumn its leaves are a fiery red. All winter long I overlooked three uninhabited nests inside of it. For months and months I could have perceived—but didn’t—what was in plain sight. ...

We could see the main path to the swimming hole ahead, but we had to pick our way through sand spurs to get there. Behind us were rattlesnakes. What did the youth do? They started playing.

Who are the angry birds in my life? What are the sticks I carry in my heart so as not to be hurt again?

May we find unexpected ways to remember where we came from and imagine where we may go next. May we find touchstones of our pasts, and may they become a foundation for the future.

However imperfectly I may be living this life of mine, there’s no one better at it, and there’s no one else who can do it for me.