And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. –John 1:14 Merry Christmas, everyone, and many blessings in the new year.

I am often in my own way. Instead of experiencing the Universe, I write about experiencing the Universe, while at that very moment, the wind had holy secrets to tell me. –Kaitlin B. Curtice

The fields, rain, sun, sky, mud, clay, wind, and fire are all masters of sacred wisdom, and worthy subjects of contemplation. –Kathleen Deignan Deignan makes the above statement in the introduction to When the Trees Say Nothing, a collection of Thomas Merton’s writing on nature that she edited. Merton’s desire for greater solitude led his Abbott to make him “forester,” which entailed restoration of the woods near the monastery. This work, in turn, led Merton to become a competent naturalist and transformed his experience of solitude from that of “privacy for intellectual pursuits” into “an opportunity for embodied engagement with…

Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend. –Dennis Covington