Article s About This Journey Of Life
From Beavers to Deep Ecology
I can’t imagine a better real life drama of the battle between those who dismiss beavers as good-for-nothing rats with wide tails and those who understand the ecological benefits and offer hospitality and protection to them, than the one that lives right in my neighborhood. It’s a battle every bit as enthralling as some of…
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Re-imagining the Lowly Spider
It saddens and sometimes angers me that spiders generate such fear and sense of repulsion. And so it’s heartening to know that there are people who love spiders, who are fascinated by them. I wouldn’t claim to be particularly comfortable around spiders, but I wish them no harm. In fact, when I know my husband…
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Sense of Place ~ Today my Home Floats
It is two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the spring semester of 1971. I am sitting in the back row of a basement classroom. The room is hot and airless; my black beans and rice squat heavily in my stomach; it’s the drowsing hour. We are beginning part two of a three hour senior level…
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The Dance of the Caterpillars ~ In a Time Before Texting
This is a publication announcement for The Dance of the Caterpillars ~ In a Time Before Texting. The back story is embedded in the post itself. It has taken me twenty-five years to see it in print, the reason being that I needed – and couldn’t persuade – a “legitimate” publisher. It was an ego…
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The Three Trees ~ an old story told anew
“I should be content,” writes the poet David Ignatow, “To look at a mountain for what it is, not as a commentary on my life.” As many of us have experienced, this winter of 2014 has been snowy, cold, and interminably long. For me personally, it has seemed even longer, for I had my left…
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Sense of Place ~ Part Three
With thanks to Douglas Wood, author of Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, who so generously offered his permission to adapt his work to an outdoor theater. Continuing my series of reflections on Sense of Place, one of the deepest layers of place holds the beating heart of the local community. Whether or not we…
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The Legal Standing of Eco-systems
I would like in this post to introduce the work of the Community Environmental Defense Fund (CELDF), whose Associate Director Mari Margil offered the 2010 keynote at the Bioneers Conference. Margil articulates in a far more eloquent and succinct way than I can, the seedling work of turning existing environmental regulatory laws on their respective…
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Restoring the Waters ~ Community Puppet Theater
As you may or may not know, Jim and I live in rural New Hampshire in a small village called Wilmot. For a small community, Wilmot has a big heart: our library is a treasure, with a librarian unlike any librarian you’ve met or imagined. We have a Post Office; a gazebo for summer music;…
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Sense of Place ~ The Layers Part Two
Wendell Berry, among others, writes about love of place. If you love a place, you’re not likely to destroy it. In the first of this series, I wrote about love of place as a child loves place, knowing place as a child knows place. To know place and to love place are not the same…
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Sense of Place ~ The Layers Part One
Once in a while I experience myself ingesting a particular metaphor, or a quotation, or a line from a poem, or an image. The experience is one of inhaling it, and allowing it to circulate throughout my various life systems. Such is the case with lines from the poem The Layers, written by the late…
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Courage Earth Retreat
For those of you who might not yet be familiar with the work of The Center for Courage and Renewal, I am including a link to a richer explanation. Sally and I would love to host you at the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center, with its extraordinary relationship to the Columcille Natural Park, a park rooted in…
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For All the “Bostons”
I was going to write today about the aging and broken grey poplar at the southwest corner of our house, and the discussion as to whether or not it needs to come down. It will have to wait. So many things I do not understand. The Boston Marathon is a moment of joy in a…
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Courage Earth ~ Invitation to a Retreat
with thanks to Rex Nelson for his photographs If you are reading this and know nothing about the work of The Center for Courage and Renewal, I hope this will offer enough background to whet your desire to know more. If you do know some about the work of The Center, I would like…
Read More Rainforest Eco-activist R.I.P.
“We don’t always know exactly what it is that creates social change. It takes everything from science all the way to faith, and it’s that fertile place right in the middle where really exceptional campaigning happens–and that is where I strive to be.” These were the words of Becky Tarbottom, a woman who died accidentally…
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Mapping and Mindfulness
I did not know I had a passion for maps and map-making until 2007, when Ira Flatow interviewed Vincent Virga in celebration of the release of his book, Cartographia. Pre-2007, for me, maps served the useful function of getting me from one place to another. As I have always been directionally challenged, I did exhibit…
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Does the Language Matter? A Question of Paradox
This is a question that has puzzled me for a long time, both as a clergy person and as an ecologist. The question arises from my conviction that language matters because it is formative. Whether or not we are conscious of it, language forms and shapes our attitudes, our ethics, and our behaviors. Here is…
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Belonging
For years I served as a visiting pastor in a summer chapel on the south coast of Massachusetts. The houses along the beach were enormous, their inhabitants young and wealthy, second houses for most of them. Although I am not particularly proud of this story, I’ll tell it anyway. I was walking my dog along…
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