This recipe has been tweaked over time, so adjust as necessary. Sometimes it yields more servings than anticipated. Sometimes it needs a bit more of this ingredient or that. It comes from generations who have gone before me, and I've added my own flavor along the way. A Recipe for Resilience…

We live on a fragile island of life, in a universe of possibilities. For many millennia, humans have been on a journey to find answers, answers to questions about naturalism and transcendence, about who we are and why we are, and of course, who else might be out there. Is it really just us?...

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. ...

Surrender is the last thing, often the only thing, available. And so we give ourselves to it. We fear it is our end. Sometimes—with grace or luck—we find it is our liberation.

Humans make maps of stars, choosing some stars, ignoring others, to project our imaginations onto the heavens. These maps shift over time, across cultures. Names change for the same assemblage of bright points: Drinking Gourd, Big Dipper, Plough, Lost Hunters [1], Saptarishi [2]. Humans make...

imagine your / body out- / living your / mind.

Did you notice that in the story of Christmas there are lots of journeys? Mary and Joseph have to go on a journey. The shepherds have to go on a journey. And those angels must have gone on a journey to find the shepherds....

Stories do three things.

It is my only memory of a lesson from Kindergarten Sunday School class. Maybe it’s the only one that counts.

It would be a quieter holiday, no fireworks or loud parades, no speeches, no salutes to any flag, a day of staying home instead of crowding away, a day we celebrate nothing gained in war but what we’re given — how the sun’s warmth is democratic, touching everyone, and the rain is democratic...

"The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. It must lose itself in love. By its very nature, it must seek God, who is love." —Mechthild of Magdeburg, 13th century Germany For twelve years, Daisy has been the...

Our light is the light of the sun, keeper of all we love; our light is the light of the earth, provider of sustenance; our light is the light of all living things, life precious like our own....

In this time of long nights and short days, let us seek the light within … by contemplating, through our mind’s eye, the image of a candle flame. Notice how the soft, quiet, and gentle flame tamely rises from the wick. Yet, just by touching a dry twig, it has the power to become a raging bonfire...

People have always known that fire was special. Long, long ago, before people made matches or candles or even made houses, people knew that fire was special. There was the great fire in the sky, the sun, which made the earth warm and made night into day....

"I remove my shoes because this is hallowed ground," the guide says. "A holy place, not an everyday life place." The guide tells us how we know—or think we know—it was the one and not the other for those people millennia ago. But aren’t the places where we live holy ground? Don’t our very...

When all around us voices are raised in anger, hatred spilling into the streets and sparking more hatred, sometimes the best we can do is to sink our hands into the soil. Let the fights over abstractions ebb away, flow like water into the earth....

Prayer of Thanks for Hoes & Scythes & Spatulas & Toothbrushes & Binoculars & the Myriad Other Tools & Instruments That Fit Our Hands So Gracefully & Allow Us to Work with a Semblance of Deftitude Lovely little inventions, just right for the job at hand—a lawn edger, for example, or an arrow, or...

EARTH, clay from which we are made and to which we will return. Soil, rich and aromatic, crumbling in my fingers, dark under my nails. This, cleansing dirt, the natural filter for aquifers, holds life....

Why is this blank page staring back at me, mocking, like an affliction, and fraught with dread? How can it hold such sway, this simple emptiness? Might it instead be a gift left on my doorstep overnight, waiting to be broken open with the dawn?...