Judith Valente's Blog: Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter

I want to thank Katie Gordon, co-founder of the Nuns & Nones organization for Millennials and staff member of www.MonasteriesoftheHeart.com, for her kind words about my new book, "How to Be" with Brother Paul Quenon of the Abbey of Gethsemani. Katie writes, "This book is 'a small taste of eternity' as Judith and Brother Paul invite us into stories of ancient wisdom lived in contemporary contexts ... They tackle some of the biggest questions: change and stability, humility and purpose, time and eternity, life and the afterlife ... People of all spiritual backgrounds and across generations will find insight on how to live through challenging times, personally and societally, in these pages." Thank you Katie Gordon! "How to Be" is now available for pre-order.

Today's #SundayThoughts explores ways of finding moments of beauty and grace in this time of the coronavirus crisis.You can read the text only below or see the post with photos on Medium.

In Lulu Wang’s delightful 2019 film “The Farewell, a young woman learns her beloved grandmother in China has only a short time to live. Her family conceals the diagnosis from the old woman so that their “Nai Nai” can enjoy whatever time she has left. “There is a Chinese saying,” the young woman’s mother explains, “It’s not the cancer that kills you, it’s the fear.”

I’m reminded of a story a poet friend of mine tells about an uncle who received a similar diagnosis. The family kept the news from him and he lived for another eight years. “He didn’t know he was supposed to die,” my friend says.

As the country and the world copes with the devasting effects of COVID-19, fear is likely to become just as pandemic as the virus. True, we have to limit visits to public places and our exposure to anyone who might be symptomatic. We don’t have to let fear force us to stop caring.

We can make valuable use of this rupture in our ordinary routine. One thing I am trying to do is reconnect -- via phone or email -- with friends who might feel isolated. People who live alone, or who are at particular risk for illness.

The virus scare is also forcing me to take a hard look at other fears in my life. What are the anxieties that make me fall to my knees? We all have them. Fear of getting a life-threatening diagnosis. Fear that our savings will run out. Fear that we will have to face our fears alone.
.
It’s important at a time like this to lift each other with positive messages. As Joy Harjo writes in her poem, “Praise the Rain:”

Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we’re led ….
Praise beginnings; praise the end ...
Joy Harjo

Like thousands of people, I was inspired by the residents of Siena, Italy, a city where I once studied, who dealt with the boredom of a national lockdown by serenading each other from their balconies and their windowsills.

Italy is a country that has seen more than 17,000 cases and over 1,200 deaths from the crisis. Yes, if there ever was a time we need both song and praise, it is now.

This crisis also offers a chance for us to refocus on the things that truly matter. What are the things that nourish our souls? That’s a question we all have to answer for ourselves.

Still, I’d like to share something my friend the Minnesota writer Tracy Ritmueller posted the other day on Facebook. It was part of a conversation she had with her husband Ken. Ken’s advice to all of us in these difficult days is so wise, I’ll quote Ken here:

“Be grateful. Embrace your life. There is something beautiful in every moment, even if it’s simple and small—the chair you’re sitting in; the plaid shirt you’re wearing; the glint of sun coming through the window. Breathe in, and notice how wonderful it feels, going in and going down … Any pleasure you have right now is good.”

Ken is correct. Right now is good -- even if the world seems perilous, our future uncertain and our fears ascending. We can still seek out moments of beauty and grace.

My friend the Boston poet Lisa Breger sent me these equally wise words from her Zen teacher, Lama Tsering Ngodup Yodsampa.

“Remember to meditate for the whole world and every sentient being,” Lama Tsering says. “Every single act of kindness and compassion through deeds or prayer will bring hope and peace.”

I pray that a vaccine will arrive to combat coronavirus. I pray that our health care system will be adequate to succor those who are sick. I pray that this crisis will pass quickly.

This week, can we remember to embrace life in every small moment, as our friend Ken advises? Can we meet this challenge - as Lama Tsering asks of us - with deeds and prayer that bring hope and peace to “every sentient being?”

https://medium.com/…/staying-positive...…

Here in the Midwest where I live, the Winter Solstice occurred at 10:16 last night. That was the moment when the earth’s northern hemisphere tilted farthest from the sun and then began to reverse course.

The longest night of the year is behind us. Now daylight grows longer, if only a few seconds each day.
We might fear darkness, but it is essential to creation. About 85 percent of the universe consists of dark matter that does not absorb, reflect or emit light. In underground darkness, the soil revives itself during the winter months, preparing a place for new shoots to burst open in spring.

Likewise, the darkest periods of our lives often illuminate a new path forward. At least that is how it has been many times for me.

Like many people I used to dread the coming of winter with its cold weather, shorter days and added layers of clothing. The more I age, though, the more I recognize the subtle beauty of this season.

Winter encourages us to settle down. The necessity of spending time indoors invites us to look inward. This is a time for sweeping out the dust that’s accumulated in the psyche over the course of a year. These are the days for brewing a steaming cup of tea and sitting quietly reading in a warm room.

In their book, “The Circle of Life,” Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr write, “Let us remember and embrace the positive, enriching aspect of winter’s darkness. Pause now to sit in silence in the darkness of this space. Let this space be a safe enclosure of creative generation for you.”The Circle of Life: The Heart's Journey Through the Seasons

The Danish practice hygge, the art of staying cozy. The Dutch embrace niksen, the pleasure of doing nothing. Niksen by the way, is a verb in Dutch. To do nothing requires a conscious act.

The Swedish aim for lagom — reclaiming a sense of balance in their lives. Italians ascribe to la dolce fa niente, the ‘sweet do nothing.’ It is a recognition that the need for repose extends beyond winter to all seasons.

We have no such vocabulary in English. Perhaps it’s because many of us suffer from two distinctly American illnesses: workaholism and over-achieverism.

Only about 19 percent of Americans take their full allotment of vacation time. And when we do, we don’t truly niksen. We confuse lagom, a year-round pursuit of balance, with a short getaway to Puerta Vallarta or some other place where we fill our days equally, just with different types of activities.

As the poet Charles Pequy once noted, “They have the courage to work/They lack the courage to be idle.”

Winter reminds us of another important lesson. As the Scandinavian author Signe Johansen, writes. “We can’t control outside events, but we can control ourselves.”
Signe Johansen

It is the season that lends itself to seeing broader vistas. In winter, when the trees are bare and the foliage thins, I can detect things that lie concealed the rest of the year: a barn, a bridge, a bird’s nest tucked between branches.

Just the other day, driving in the countryside, I noticed a blue house standing in a field behind a bank of bare-limbed trees. I hadn’t known that lovely house was there.

Because of winter’s deeper darknesses, I appreciate more profoundly those nights brightened by a full moon, the distant light in someone’s living room seen from the highway, or the dazzle of a fireplace.

In the weeks ahead, can we cultivate a sense of coziness and contentment wherever we are? Can we reflect on those parts of our lives that need ‘lagom,’ greater balance? Can we look beyond the darkness and discover a broader vision for ourselves? Can we have the courage to see that doing nothing is not only necessary at times, it can also be holy?

Click here for essay published on Medium with images. https://medium.com/@judithvalente/how...

In today's #SundayThoughts, a friend's comment at the Thanksgiving table sparks a reflection on the importance of seeking beauty even in unlikely places.

At the Thanksgiving table this past week, my guests took turns naming one thing for which they are particularly grateful. A close friend who moved from Italy to central Illinois a few years ago offered an intriguing response. She said she is most grateful for “small moments of beauty.”

My friend grew up in the Abruzzo region of south-central Italy in a home that sits amid pine-studded mountains. On clear days, it is possible to see the stunning blue of the Adriatic Sea. She explained that in her town of Guardiagrele, the Medieval architecture of the stone buildings and churches provide a constant feast for the eyes.

Vibrant paintings and elaborate sculptures line church walls. This is the everyday beauty — both natural and artistic — that the people of Guardiagrele enjoy.
It’s somewhat different in central Illinois’ flat land of prairie grasses, corn and soybean fields. There is beauty here, too, but you sometimes have to look harder for it. That’s especially true at this time of year. My friend talked about taking in the changing colors of the sky at sunset on her evening walks here with the dog, and of learning to appreciate the intricate architecture of our bare-limbed trees. Her “small moments of beauty.”

I had a similar experience driving from Illinois to Minnesota this past week. Farmers have cleared the crops — only the husks remain — and our deciduous trees have shed their leaves. The once colorful wildflowers that grow along the roadsides are gone, too. What remains is a variegated palette of gold, brown, amber and gray gleanings. With careful observation, you can perceive subtle differences in color.

I was struck by the beauty of these late autumn colors are, muted as they are. I felt gratitude at how the land keeps on giving, year after year, how it knows when to rest so it can rise renewed again in the spring.

In the Academy-award winning film “American Beauty,” a troubled young man obsessively videotapes the world around him. He marvels at the sight of a plastic bag dancing in the wind. He sees something transcendent in the eyes of a dead pigeon. When his girlfriend asks him why he makes these recordings, he responds, “It helps me to remember — I need to remember — there is so much beauty in the world.”

St. Benedict, the founder of western monasticism, understood that the pursuit of beauty is also a spiritual practice. He insured a place for artisans in the monastery, recognizing that art is another way in which God may be glorified. The poet Mary Oliver writes, “Maybe the desire to make something beautiful/ is the piece of God that is inside each of us.” She often found her small moments of beauty in the most unlikely of places.

As we lean into winter in the coming weeks, let us look for “small moments of beauty,” as my Italian friend does, even in unlikely places. Wherever we go, let us seek to “make something beautiful,” as Mary Oliver urges, however simple, however small.
Mary Oliver

For many years, I lived alone as a single woman in cities where no relatives lived close by. Holidays were particularly painful times. When I first moved to Chicago, I had an apartment in a high rise where hundreds of other people lived. I could literally peer into the living room of the couple that lived in the building next door. I could even see what they were watching on TV. Yet I felt impossibly alone.

The feeling was more acute on holidays when I couldn’t get away to be with family. Wherever I lived, though, I was always fortunate enough to find people who welcomed me. When I was an exchange student in Paris, it was the family of a French friend the same age as me whose parents worked as the concierges in a building near the Eiffel Tower. My first year living in Washington, D.C., a friend’s large Lithuanian-American family invited me for Thanksgiving dinner — a day, by the way, I had to work as a young staff writer for The Washington Post.

When I moved to Chicago, a generous and gregarious Italian-American family took me under its wing. And when I worked as a correspondent in London, a Catholic priest I knew arranged for me to spend holidays with families from his parish.

Those were often lonely years before I met my husband. But they taught me something valuable. We might not have the family we want or the spouse we desire, but we all can have community. Robert Frost famously defined family as the people who have to take you in. Community, by contrast, is something we construct, through a thousand small acts of decency.

During the Depression, artist Normal Rockwell created his famous “Four Freedoms” series. “Freedom from Want” depicted what most people recognized as a nuclear family — parents, grandparents and grandchildren gathered around a table about to launch into a turkey dinner.

The models Rockwell chose were all white. Today’s nuclear family might look quite different, as the artist Hank Willis Thomas and photographer Emily Shur showed in their series of contemporary re-imaginings of Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms.” Their “Freedom from Want” offers a mixed racial and multi-ethnic as well as multi-generational vision of family.

Today, family connotes more to me than blood relations. All who enter my life in a meaningful way are family. Now that I am married, I love nothing more than to fill my holiday table with a wide cast of friends, but also people I don’t know very well. People who might otherwise be alone.

My friend, the retired pastor Jim Bortell, writes with insight about the internal turmoil that holidays can cause:
“Thanksgiving is usually a happy-thankful time, but not always. It may come when the inward springs of the human spirit don’t match the outward festivities. The occasions for this are legion. They include family problems, losses, distress with what is going on in the nation and world, encounters with human suffering, and anguish about what humans are doing to the beautiful world in which we live. And this is the short list.”

With all the vitriol swirling around the recent impeachment hearings, and popping up in the presidential debates, this might prove to be a particularly challenging holiday season for families of differing political views, especially if Fox News or MSNBC forms the background soundtrack of our meals. So let’s turn down the volume. Let’s turn away from discussing quid pro quo, conspiracy theories, and who is perpetrating what lie.

Let’s feel gratitude that we have someone sitting beside us. Let’s be thankful for our ‘freedom from want’ and commit in the coming weeks to filling the needs of those who still live with want.

Let’s remember too that somewhere out there is a person who just might feel impossibly alone. What can we do to change that? As my friend Pastor Jim writes, how can we insure that our outward festivities match the inward springs of our spirit?

Whenever I give a talk on a spiritual theme, I always try to offer meaningful takeaways for those who come to listen. I’m not sure how well I succeed! One thing is for certain. I’m usually the one who ends up being uplifted by the extraordinary people I meet wherever I travel. That was the case this past week in Santa Barbara.

I had been invited to present at the Fall 10-week interfaith Word & Life speaker series. Word & Life has existed for 42 years and meets on Thursdays at the vibrant First Presbyterian Church of Santa Barbara. The group had selected my latest book “How To Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community” for discussion.How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community

I arrived in California anxious and depressed over the current political environment. That, of course, is not a new feeling. Still, this past week was especially disturbing. Our country virtually abandoned the Kurds who had fought courageously alongside American troops to help deter the spread of terrorism.

Then there was the particularly hateful political rhetoric. Especially chilling was a rally in Minnesota at which the President of the United States mocked others, tossed around debunked accusations, used profanity, disparaged a group of legal refugees, and accused those who challenge him of “hating America.”

He did all this standing in front of rows of young people. No matter what one’s politics, what kind of example does this set? Where is statesmanship? Where is grace under pressure? Where is any kind of profile in courage?

Which is why it was so refreshing to encounter a group of such concerned and engaged citizens. My guess is that most of the folks I encountered in Santa Barbara live comfortable, though not extravagant lives. I met educators, business people, retirees, a musicologist, a healing touch practitioner, the owner of an auto repair shop, even the city’s former poet laureate.

It was clear from our conversations that each cares deeply about righting inequalities in the criminal justice system. About working to ease Santa Barbara’s growing homeless problem. About preserving the dignity and well-being of people seeking asylum at our border.

Just as importantly, these are people who understand that nourishing the mind and spirit is far more important than fattening one’s pocketbook.

Before I stepped to the podium to speak, Christine Milne, one of the Word & Life regulars, guided us in a lovely a cappella meditation on the lines from Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.”

The theme of my talk was “Being Truly Alive: On Waking Up.” When I finished, musicologist Tom Heck told the group my words reminded him of the song, “What A Wonderful World.” Sing it, Tom! people in the audience urged. And Tom led us in a spontaneous rendition of the song. It was a beautiful moment of communion.

There wasn’t a stranger I passed in the street who didn’t say hello or good morning. One of the group’s members, Michael Dean, drove a three hour round trip to pick me up at the Burbank airport and bring me to Santa Barbara so I could be on a non-stop flight.

When I attended morning Mass at the city’s Old Mission Church, pastor Dan Lackie, a Franciscan friar, made a point of asking if there were any visitors present. He had each of us introduce ourselves and we were warmly greeted on the way out by just about everyone else in the church.

Back home, when I spoke of my Santa Barbara experience with a friend, she promptly reminded me that there are caring people all across our great nation. And that’s what we need to remember and grasp onto in these troubled times.

I’d like to leave you with some lines from a poem by Perie Longo, a member of the World & Life group and Santa Barbara’s poet laureate from 2007 to 2009. Words to ponder in the coming week:

… Sometimes a love is too grand to fit on a page.
It needs a country to contain its edges and alleys,
not an open woods filled with bears and high peaks.
Let us be dark for a while. Sometimes you need
a whole night to weep. After all, the moon is full
and the world once too large to fit on this page
has become terribly small.
Perie Longo

One of the most Christ-like people I have ever met was a 4’6” Jewish woman. Her name was Eva Kor. She died this past week.

Eva left this world doing what was most important to her -- leading a teaching tour at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. She and her sister Miriam had been among the “Mengele twins,” children experimented on by the so-called “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele. That fact alone assured them a place in history. Decades later, Eva would leave her mark on history for a far different reason.

Stricken with grief after the premature death of her twin, Eva went on a quest to track down her Nazi captors. She found one: Dr. Hans Munch. His job had been to sign the death certificates of those who perished in the gas chambers. That encounter sparked a remarkable transformation in Eva.

Though liberated from Auschwitz, the anger and hatred she felt for her Nazi tormentors held her captive. To walk out of that interior prison, Eva realized she would have to find a way to forgive the Nazis.

That she did in 1995. Standing in front of the camp, with the international press recording the moment, she spoke these words, “I, Eva Mozes Kor, a twin who survived as a child of Josef Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz 50 years ago, hereby give amnesty to all Nazis who participated directly or indirectly in the murder of my family and millions of others.”
I can only imagine the courage that took. When I interviewed Eva for “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” on PBS-TV years later, she showed me photos of her as a child including one with her mother, one of older sisters, and Miriam standing in an apple orchard. I remember the lump in my throat when she added, “Everybody here except me are dead.”

Eva spoke to countless school and civic groups about the healing power of forgiveness. I often think of her when I find it hard to forgive members of my own family for old wounds, or former bosses for injustices endured in the workplace. Forgiving is part of the hardest work of life. If Eva could forgive the seemingly unforgiveable, can I have the same courage?

“Forgiveness is nothing more and nothing less but an act of self-healing — an act of self-empowerment,” she told me.

In forgiving the Nazis, she said, “I immediately felt a burden of pain was lifted from my shoulder — that I was no longer a victim of Auschwitz, that I was no longer a prisoner of my tragic past, that I was finally free.”
While a steely will to survive defined Eva’s life, a good sense of humor also helped. The day before she died at the age of 85, she tweeted that she had just eaten chicken McNuggets at a McDonald’s near Auschwitz. “That would have been wonderful 75 years ago,” she observed.

She called forgiveness “the modern miracle medicine” You “don’t have to belong to an HMO. There is no co-pay, therefore, everybody can afford it.”
Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz

My friend Nancy Konopasek wrote that she visited with Eva just five weeks ago in Indiana, where Eva lived in Terre Haute. Though frail, Eva delighted in romping around with Nancy’s young grandson Mike on that visit.
A part of her story Eva did not stress is that she lost her faith in God as result of her experience in Auschwitz.
“I don’t know if there is a God or not. And if there is, I want a debate when I go up there,” she told me. We can only imagine the intense conversation that might be taking place right now. I prefer to picture Eva finally reunited, for all eternity, with her parents, two older sisters, and her twin Miriam in that apple orchard they were forced to leave behind.

Eva’s legacy is the CANDLES Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute. The name stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors. I urge everyone to visit the museum’s website and consider ways to continue Eva’s important work of peacemaking. https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org

Eva died on Independence Day, a time when Americans remember their hard-won freedoms. In this period in which our own government is holding immigrants and asylum seekers under inhumane conditions in what witnesses have described as “concentration camps” at the border, we need to remember that Eva herself was an immigrant, an asylum seeker, and a refugee. We need to examine what kind of nation we want to be. What kind of nation, what kind of people, does Eva call us to be?
Surviving the Angel of Death: The True Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz
Surviving the Angel of Death

Few people have spoken with as much moral clarity about the spiritual illness afflicting our country than Benedictine sister and author Joan Chittister. Oprah Winfrey recently interviewed Sister Joan about her latest book “The Time Is Now.” This is must listening and reading for all of us who care out the soul of America.

We are in a “crossover moment,” according to Sister Joan, traveling without a moral compass. We need only consider the children who have died in detention on our southern border; the relentless gun violence in our public places, not to mention the culture of lies in our public discourse and increasing disrespect for the rule of law.

Sister Joan calls this “a complete collapse and crisis of American values.” And what are those values? Compassionate respect for others. Character as a crucial component of leadership. Striving for the common good. All themes stressed in the 6th century Rule of St. Benedict. All still cogent to a well-functioning (and, dare I say, Christian) society today.

One of the worse evils in such a time, Sister Joan points out, is to remain silent.

I recently watched a History Channel documentary on the rise of the Third Reich. Even some German Jews initially supported Hitler’s grand promises to rebuild the economy and make Germany “great again.” A majority of the German people wasn’t responsible for the racist laws that led to abductions, beatings, arrests, and ultimately to the death camps. The vast majority was guilty of keeping silent.

Sister Joan calls on all of us to be not merely churchgoers, but prophets. A prophet, she notes, speaks truth to lies. A prophet says no to the abuse of other human beings based on their skin color or their passport designation. No, to the degradation of our natural resources. No, to the concentration of wealth and power among the few. No, to national self-centeredness, but yes to mercy, compassion, and to life.

She reminds us too that Jesus -- the ultimate healer -- was also the ultimate prophet. Jesus contended, contested, confronted and challenged those who put the good of the few ahead of the common good.

Sister Joan’s words challenge me to speak up, to work harder for the kind of country I want America to be. She recommends meeting with our neighbors, going to community events and meetings, and keeping ourselves informed.

I would also suggest that we start demanding to talk about these issues within our churches and to hear about them from the pulpit.

As a daily Mass-goer, I’ve heard three homilies about abortion law changes in recent weeks. (Chittister accuses many churches of being “pro-birth,” rather than pro-life). I’ve heard nothing about the deaths at the border, the recent deployment of additional U.S. troops and military equipment to the Middle East, or the growing evidence of corruption within our government.
I’ve heard nothing about the need to improve our health care system or the growing gap between rich and poor.

A storm is gathering, Sister Joan warns. We can close our eyes and hope it won’t hit us. Or, we can work to force that storm to change course. We’re not on this earth simply to win, she notes, but to love, to grow and to leave the world a better place. That’s when everyone wins. How can I begin this week?

The Time Is Now

Here is a link to Oprah’s recent interview with Sister Joan. https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey...

Two experiences infused me with hope this week – despite the chaos emanating from Washington, the sad news of yet another school shooting, and the disturbing announcement that a million species are in danger of extinction, due largely to human hubris.

I was invited by the Benedictine sisters of Annunciation Monastery to give three talks at University of Mary – a striking modern campus on the rolling plains of Bismarck that the sisters sponsor. My topic was “Stirring the Ashes: Reclaiming a Sense of Hope, Balance and Sacredness in Our Work.”

It was heartening to meet so many talented people – faculty, administrators, and staff -- seeking to live the Benedictine values of community, consensus, compassion, respect, hospitality, humility, and balance in their work lives. It was equally inspiring to learn the history of these Benedictine women on the Plains.

In 1878, five sisters braved the rugged journey from St. Joseph, Minnesota, to Bismarck, North Dakota. Their goal was to open a boarding school for the children of Norwegian and German immigrant families on the Plains. They soon discovered health care, like education, was also a major need.

Though untrained, and out of necessity, the sisters began caring for the sick and injured. Among their patients: Chief Sitting Bull, Medora de Mores, the wife of a French aristocrat who built a castle-like home on the prairie, and later, Theodore Roosevelt, who explored the area’s majestic terrain on horseback. It was an experience that would lead him as President to champion the conservation of U.S. natural areas.

The sisters’ early efforts blossomed over the decades into University of Mary, which specializes in leadership training and has a top-notch nursing school. Their early efforts at health care grew into CHI St. Alexius, a top-rated hospital system. More recently, they formed Ministry on the Margins, a service that supports people who might otherwise might “fall through the cracks in times of transition.”
In these days when the faults of the Catholic Church are apparent in broad Cinemascope, it is good to remember with gratitude the debt we owe to the Bismarck sisters and the other monastic communities – like Sacred Heart Monastery and Assumption Abbey -- on the vast, western Dakota Plains.

With my friends Sister Thomas Welder and Sister Renee Branigan as intrepid guides, I had the chance to journey farther west, to the North Dakota Badlands. It was named by the Native Americans because little would grow amid its rocky buttes and sandy soil, yet the Badlands might be better called Grace-lands. Rarely in any place in the world will you see such breathtaking natural beauty.

Here red-toped and striated buttes jut up hundreds of feet. You can see grazing bison, similar to photographs of the Old West. (Just don’t get too close: these magnificent creatures weigh up to 1,700 pounds and can run at 35 miles per hour. No match for my slight 5’2” frame).

There are large stretches dominated by prairie dogs, which are quirky little rodent animals that like to stand up on their hind feet and perform for visitors. You get the sense of what the early environmentalist Aldo Leopold referred to as the community of creation. While the tall grasses sway, the only sound is an incessant wind

At a spot called Wind Canyon in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, we climbed the rims of buttes overlooking layered canyons thousands of feet down, whose artistry was formed by ancient glaciers and decades of wind and rain. It was like looking at the work of a manic sculptor. Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail

I also couldn’t help but think of our current President’s recent statement that the U.S. can’t accept any more migrants because “there’s no more room.” He should visit the western Dakotas.

I walked away from my time here with a greater sense of how blessed we are in this country. Blessed by natural beauty. Blessed by the spiritual depth of the Benedictine sisters and monks who risked so much to serve our citizens. This week, I plan to say a prayer of thanksgiving whenever I encounter the beauty of nature, and whenever I experience even a small gesture of kindness. Will you join me?

Spring took its time arriving this year in central Illinois. Finally, the trees are bursting with green leaves and flowering with magenta, pink or white blossoms. The red buds, with their purple-red sprouts, are particularly stunning this year, as if the long winter’s wait made them all the more determined to showcase their spring beauty.

I have been trying to observe the daily progress of the leaves, but they emerge so quickly. One day there is just a thumbnail-sized bud. The next, the tree is in full bloom. It is as though nothing can stop this breathless march toward new life once it begins.

I took a long hike last Sunday with my friend Mary Jo Adams, an Illinois Master Naturalist who is trained to care for our natural areas. Our walk reinforced what I strongly believe: we, as a society, could dispense with all manner of anti-depressants by just taking regular walks in nature.

My friend Brother Paul Quenon calls nature his “guru.” I call nature my healer. There is something magical and medicinal about spending time among oaks, maples, hickories, and flowering plums, not to mention the bluebells, purple trillium, spring beauties and other wild flowers that spring up this time of year.

“Imagine a miracle drug that could take away many of the stresses or modern life… Just take a hike in the woods or a walk in the park. No prescription necessary,” writes Florence Williams in her book, “The Nature Fix.” With so much violence and insecurity —shootings at a major university and at yet another synagogue, and fires being set at African American churches — we seek comfort where we can find it. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative

For me, increasingly, I need the solace of nature.
My friend and I walked to a spot where three massive oaks had sadly fallen —downed by lightening or a tree disease. These oaks had witnessed more than a hundred years of history on the prairie. Mary Jo likes to stop in this place and sit for a while on one of the fallen trunks. I asked her what she thinks about. Nothing in particular, she responded. “I ask myself, what am I seeing, what am I hearing, what am I smelling.” That’s as apt a description of being contemplative as I can think of.

Mary Jo is also an avid birdwatcher and could identify for me the calls of the warblers making their spring passage through our area, as well as the red-headed woodpeckers, plentiful in our area. It felt as if they were singing for only us.

Aldo Leopold, one of the nation’s first environmentalists, was so right when he talked about all of creation being a “community.” It is hard to feel alone or pessimistic when I am among the trees, flowers and birds. Aldo Leopold

The poet Mary Oliver once wrote about “the many trees I have kissed.” Mary Oliver

The late peace activist and environmentalist Wangari Maathai would always tell her audiences, “When you see a tree, you thank that tree for helping keep you alive!”

When Mary Jo and I left the woods, she turned to say to the trees, “You might be invisible to others, but you are not invisible to me.” I returned home that day with a sense of having visited a sacred place. This week, can we remember to pay attention to our cousins, the trees, birds, flowers, insects and animals of the forest. Let us thank them all for keeping us company and helping us, each in their own way, to stay alive.