share your spiritual biography in 10 words, or less: turn towards that which nourishes you again and again where are you turning for soul nourishment / joy / aliveness? listening to the seemingly hundreds of birds that live on my busy city street provides instant grounding and transport to nature despite the context. a special delight comes if i can spot a specific little bird who is chirping near me and I can see their beak opening and their chest puffing up to send out their song. and the music of beautiful chorus, toni jones, and chris-n-teeb almost every day! what is a text you hold...

I spent an hour or so yesterday afternoon in the woods I frequent most often, pulling garlic mustard from the rain-softened earth. Garlic mustard can be medicine, but it is also invasive, and destroys biodiversity. The roots release chemicals that alter mycelial networks connecting native plants, and passing nourishment between trees. Garlic mustard emerges early in the spring and grows fast; the heart shaped leaves take up too much space, too quickly, at the cost of other forms of aliveness. And yet, garlic mustard has its own offerings, and I tucked a handful of leaves into my pocket to...

“Dead Stars” – by Ada Limón Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing. Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us. Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels so mute it’s almost in another year. I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying. We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder. It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations. And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, Draco,...

By Rev. Anna Blaedel There is a big, old spruce tree right outside our bedroom window that I love dearly. I cannot wrap my arms entirely around it, though I enjoy trying. This tree has withstood so many storms–thunderstorms and blizzards and ice and derechos. I do not know how old this tree is but I know it is old, and has seen and survived so much. Someday it might not. Some day it will not. Recently, when storms were raging in my life, I stood by the tree for a while, nestled my feet between roots pushing through the earth, placed my hands on its rough bark, then my forehead, then the tip...

By Trey Ferguson God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. - 1 John 4:16b I think about this scripture often. God. Is. Love. I struggle with this, for it leads me to question if I understand what love is. I recognize that so much of the meaning we have erected around love hinges on the reality and pursuit of a feeling. But who is to say when feelings are enough to sustain the rugged reality of relationships in a harsh world? I have been Black in America my entire life. The son of an immigrant and a woman whose parents had to navigate a difficult courtship...

By Rev. Anna Blaedel One of my very favorite humans, whose life makes the world more sacred, and my life infinitely more wonder-full and meaning-full, just marked the 10 year anniversary of the very brave decision to seek intervention when she did not want to continue living. She did not want the help she sought, but she calls it now “the best choice I’ve ever made.” It’s a choice I am eternally grateful for, as I am her, and her heart-full, tender, courageous being. There have been times when her presence in the world and in my life is where I turn to, and ground in, in order to cultivate...