The fall of leaves is the image we most often associate with Autumn. We think of the bright blaze of oranges and reds, yellows and browns. Of course, the impending rush of bare branches swiftly reminds of the coming winter and the harsh press of its pale bone chill. Yet, I’ve been reminded in this shifting season of why those leaves fall. The world, preparing for the coming cold, signals its benevolence in the drifting descent of each faded leaf. The tree sheds all that it does not need in preparation for winter. In doing so, it allows the sun to slip more easily through its twisted fingers to bless all that had so recently huddled in its shade.

To butcher a timeless verse from Leonard Cohen: That openness is how the light gets in.

Read More

Social distancing, enforced isolation, job insecurity, and resource shortages that define our circumstantial present seem not that far a cry from the social and personal landscape that we have more broadly constructed or have had constructed for us… At the moment, the ineffable drollery is all that we have. There are no illusions or sporadic rushes of life and beauty and engagement and discovery to cut through the fog of the mundane and repetitive and anesthetizing.

Don’t let everything be the same.

Read More

Sinking toes into the icy water at the end of a sweat-soaked, dusty trail has a way of bringing you to that present and presence Alan Watts tried to tell us about. Children squealing as they splash and dogs barking and plastic wine cup passing and sour-dough bread chewing have a way of reminding you that nothing that you can plan could ever compare with what is. 

Read More

“This land like a mirror turns you inward / And you become a forest in a furtive lake; / The dark pines of your mind reach downward, / You dream in the green of your time, / Your memory is a row of sinking pines.”

Much like walking a labyrinth in meditation, the trail guided me to where I needed to be: the present.

Read More

Some of the beautiful sites from Millard Canyon Falls and the first wandering of the Church of All Wanderers

Read More

We cringe from the idea of relinquishing, in any moment, all but one of the infinite possibilities offered us by our culture. Plagued by a highly diffused attention, we give ourselves to everything lightly. That is our poverty. In saying yes to everything, we attend to nothing. One only can love what one stops to observe. ‘Nothing is more essential to prayer,’ said Evagrius, ‘than attentiveness.’ — Belden C. Lane

Read More

Sacred writings are bound in two volumes—that of creation and that of Holy Scripture. —Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274) 

Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and deity—however invisible—have been there for the mind to see in the things God has made. —Romans 1:20

Read More