Ansel Adams, Yosemite Falls Julia, Toby (our youngest son) and I visited Yosemite National Park for the first time last week, and I am still vibrating from the stunning rock faces and gorgeous waterfalls. It was remarkable to see what seemed, at a distance, to be thin, almost delicate, streams of water pouring from great […]
Tag Archives: Nature
The Grandeur of God
Spiritual Sunday Julia and I have been in Davis, California seeing our son this past week (he is a graduate student in English at the university there) and took the occasion to visit Big Basin Redwoods State Park. As I walked through the silence of the forest and gazed up in awe at the mammoth […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "God's Grandeur", Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gulf spill Comments closed
Finding God in Nature’s Church
The bobolink, Dickinson’s sexton and chorister Spiritual Sunday “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy,” instructs the fourth commandment. How are we to keep it holy? Emily Dickinson, a writer who wrestled with the stern Calvinism of her day, observed the sabbath in her own way. She was a private person who was skeptical of […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church", "This is what was bequeathed us", Emily Dickinson, Gregory Orr, Heaven, Religion, Spirituality Comments closed
Dr. Dolittle vs. the Oil Spill: A Fantasy
The news is so unremittingly grim from the Gulf oil disaster—I think that BP is up to Plan F in its attempts to plug the gushing oil– that I’m going to share a poetic fantasy about ending it. Maybe it will help keep you from hardening over and becoming fatalistic. The poem was written by my […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Dr. Dolittle, Hugh Lofting, Oil Spill, Scott Bates "D Is for Dr. Dolittle's Christmas Blowout" Comments closed
After the Mess, Can Obama Be Fortinbras?
I’ve been thinking recently about how every Shakespearean tragedy concludes with a restoration of order. The stage may be strewn with corpses and the spectator’s heart may have broken into a thousand little pieces, but (as though to provide some reassurance) someone steps forward at the end to set things straight. In Hamlet it is […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Capitalism, Deregulation, Environment, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Othello, politics, Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Life Storming Out of the Darkness
Spiritual Sunday Today Western Christians observe Pentecost, the day 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection and 10 days after his ascension into heaven. Pentecost celebrates the moment when the disciplines saw themselves surrounded by tongues of fire and felt lifted up by the Holy Spirit. In the Book of John (14:16) Jesus is reported to have promised the […]
Sumer is ycomen in
I’ve been grading student essays for so long that I’ve barely noticed the succession of gorgeous days that have been washing over us. My seniors graduated Saturday, however, and yesterday I turned in the grades for the rest of my students, so I can finally acknowledge that “sumer is ycomen in.” To remind myself and anyone […]
Finding Resolve in the Face of Brokenness
As oil continues to gush unabated into the Gulf of Mexico and as blame (never self blame) gushes from the mouths of company executives in Congressional hearings, we start to see more clearly the results of Dick Cheney’s attacks on oil company regulation. We are at a strange juncture with nature. On the one hand, I […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Beginners", Denise Levertov, Environment, Gulf oil spill Comments closed
This Fragile Earth, Our Island Home
On Monday I talked about how Silko says that, if we are to end our destructive (and ultimately self-destructive) assaults upon the earth, we must come into spiritual alignment with it. I’m aware that appealing to Native American religions is sure to draw jeers from certain sectors of the political right, especially the Rush Limbaughs […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Defense of Christianity, Environmentalism, Leslie Marmon Silko, Religion, T. S. Eliot Comments closed
