As you can see by the title of the photo, I visit this place I call “home of the wounded healer” and photograph it with some regularity. I call it that because it personifies for me, the concept I encountered in the work of Henri Nouwan, namely that the best healers are those that have been, themselves, deeply wounded. I say “those” and “themselves,” but do not restrict the powers of healing solely to human beings. Places and creatures of all sorts share that gift. This home of the wounded healer came into being because humans needed fill to widen…

A winnowing breeze brought it to rest on my deck for a little while, then carried it on its way. Testify. Show us the way of letting go, of yielding to a greater power, of seeing sacredness in all things.

Beaches welcome us to the sea and to the land. It just depends on which way we are going, and I love going both ways. The sea draws me to it and into it. It must be very, very cold for me to walk a beach and keep my feet dry. The day I first encountered this beach during a fabulous wildlife photography adventure, I wrote in a post that evening that I wanted to be taken there “when I’m no earthly good anymore” to be laid among the coconuts and fiddler crabs to slide off into paradise hardly noticing…

The sun slides toward the horizon on a July afternoon, striking tiny grains of pale shell, turning a black sand beach into a starry night. I don’t get all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico from my home in northeast Louisiana very often, so I linger in the fading light. The beach is littered with shells. I know from experience that the original tenants of most of them have died and, in the exemplary efficiency of nature, they now shelter thin-striped hermit crabs (Clibanarius vittatus). As evening falls, the shells scoot across the sand, in search, I imagine,…