Please join me in Nakusp for the launch of Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Path. We will meet at the Nakusp Public Library on Wednesday, April 30, at 4 p.m. There will be readings from the book, a time of question and answer, and yes, there will be books for sale!
Join me at 7 pm on Wednesday, April 23, for the first official launch of Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Life. The launch will be at Knox Hall in New Denver, and I will read from the book, talk about the process of writing the essays, and answer questions. And yes, there will be …
Strengthen your capacity to stand strong amidst the raging winds of contemporary chaos. Come spend the day in New Denver with others who love silence, prayer and community, and who are committed to loving as God loves. Contemplative in the Kootenays meets on Saturday, March 22, 2025. We will sit in Centering Prayer together; ponder …
There are some big things facing us these days: “us” collectively as in the human race, and “us” as in my little family. Some of those collective big things are so big—global climate change, vicious politics—that I have no idea how to repair, heal, or change them. Sure, I know how to complain; I also …
I have been reassembling our freezers, moving turkey and frozen wontons and homemade soup from the inside freezer to the newly empty outside freezer. It’s empty because friends have been able to go home: their frozen chickens, applesauce and tomato paste have gone home, too. I am also re-assembling my office. Strewn across desk and …
I have been thinking that we may have reached the chronic, as opposed to acute, stage of our forest fire saga. For many of us, evacuation orders and alerts are rescinded, at least for now. For others, there’s at least a system to check on livestock and land. People are making plans to sustain a …
One predictable result of a good retreat is the scramble at the end when people start asking, “How can we keep this great community going?” Then follows a frenzied exchange of emails and phone numbers. Equally predictable is that any community formed simply for its own continuance inevitably falls apart. I find this depressing. I …
Wide Spot: Cellular Life In 1837, the botanist Matthias Schleiden and the zoologist Theodor Schwann had dinner together. Comparing their research while they ate, they realized that there was a deep uniformity between Schleiden’s plant structures and Schwann’s animal structures. Both plant and animal tissues were built of cells: autonomous, independent cells, living their own …
“Our fingers imbibe like roots,” begins a prayer by Francis of Assisi, “So I place them on what is beautiful in this world.” Beauty may feel like a shaky reed these days, nothing much to hang our hat on. Most of us are more inclined to attend to what’s ugly: environmental degradation, wars, famines, loss …
I remember looking up at Goat Mountain from the Kohan Garden that evening. We’d had a lightning storm about an hour earlier and now the trees were candling, just up the mountainside from our house. Close enough that if the wind kept up, we’d be evacuated before the night was out. I sprinted home and …
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Box 452, New Denver, BC, V0G 1S0, Canada