Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: Which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, [and] gathereth her food in the harvest. –Proverbs 6:6-6:8 Scripture praises ants, children are mesmerized by them, and yet ants in the garden are so commonplace as to be easily […]
Be Careful of Little Lives Read More »
The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I
Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred Read More »
The classroom rug was a little crusty, stamped with squared-off primary colors. At its far end, the beautiful Miss Chantry sat cross-legged in white stockings and a plaid wool miniskirt, while the rest of us sat “Indian style” upon the rug before her. From a stack of old favorites, she selected a crisp, clean book
Ode to the Great Black Swamp Read More »
Recycling a Well-Tended Garden She side-bends and stoops after decades of puttering limber-up work-in-dirt yoga, knee bends to growing graces. Her garden sprawls on its back, open palms to June sun, humming a hover and rest like the blue darner. Her fingers spread compost, sifting the strumming of vegetable patches into mantras – mantras learned
Recycling a Well-Tended Garden Read More »
The revival of an ancient religion has taken Mongolia by storm. Decades of oppression and religious conversions could not stop Mongolia’s first religion, Shamanism, from surviving. The hundreds of years of Chinese influence over Mongolia before the turn of the 20th century brought in heavy pressure for the region to convert to Buddhism. A majority of
Mongolian Shamanism: A Return to the Beyond Read More »
The yard looks still. Winds riffle green-coin leaves, slim white-preened bark. Sage blooms rust and scratch, each purple nodule at last breaking in breeze to settle in a riverstone crevice. Pale roses wilt. Ridges curl, brown-strafed. Below, roots mottle and twist, an endless lurching and creeping through undersoil. Ants hustle through flagstone fissures, scream a
Garden Constellations Read More »