Feed My Llamas
When I stop focusing on the labor involved, feeding the farm animals feels more like love transmuted into hay bales, senior feed, pricey kibble, and scratch grains.
Coming Down to Earth with Barbara Brown Taylor
There is a portal right here on earth that opens every single day with a little breeze of solace coming through, a little slant of light shining on some beauty you might otherwise have missed. That’s where I want to meet you in this column.
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Consider the Fig
A famous parable in the Gospel According to Luke features a fig tree growing in a vineyard, whose owner orders its execution after being disappointed for the last time.
Wild Weather
Whenever people tell me they don’t believe in a higher power, I say, “Weather?” The weather in Georgia has been so hot for the past couple of weeks that there’s nothing to do but wait it out...
Undesirables
I can almost see out of my right eye again. Over the weekend, while I was pulling horse nettle from my garden before it could spread, a wasp flew into the small space between my eyes and my glasses. We both panicked...
Vibrant Matter
The possibility of life on other planets has been in the news lately, which is almost as interesting as how we decide what does or does not have life right here on earth.
Turning Aside to Look
Day to day, I pay close attention to dozens of things necessary to life.
Trash Detail
I pick up trash for the exercise. I do it to see what’s happening in my neighbors’ yards. I do it because the county does not do it, at least not on my road. I also go to see the wildflowers...
Fingers Pointing at the Moon
I have loved words ever since I learned what they could make happen. “Cheese” could make my mother put a floppy square of it in front of me. “Woof” could make the dog wag his tail. “Out” could make the kitchen door open to the swing set in the backyard. This was a lot of power for a child just learning the connection between words and the world.
The Lowdown on Beauty
Today, I’m praising God for creatures who cannot read the headlines. Spring arrives with jubilance no matter what.
The Spiritual Direction of Cats
The cats in my life have taught me more about individuation than any textbook. They know who they are and expect me to know who I am. They remind me that they are their own persons, operating from their own creaturely sense of things, and are willing to accept the consequences of that...
What Neighbors Do
The power at my house went off at 8:47 AM on January 25th. Overnight, freezing rain and sleet had turned into a coat of ice on every outdoor thing in my county...
One Owl's Second Chance
One of the best things about living in a low-density rural area is how much room there is for other creatures to live here, too...
The Automatic Earth
I never put that poor hyacinth in the ground. I never watered it. I totally forgot it was there. Yet here it is, still in its plastic three-inch pot with a faded price sticker on the side—but full of life now, with a sturdy little spike of bell-shaped blossoms reaching up toward what light there is.... Some other power took care of that small life all these months, or it had power in itself that…
The Genius of a Place
For the first time in a long time, I did not welcome the new year in the mountains of north Georgia but in the deserts of southern California—specifically, in the Mojave and Colorado deserts that meet in Joshua Tree National Park.
Live Nativity
The resting sheep put me at rest, too. I caught their peacefulness and didn’t want to look away. Was it all the Bach I had listened to, all the nativity scenes that leaned against the walls of my memory? Or was it a natural gift sheep had, to calm humans down like that?
Meetings with Bears
As much as I never wanted to meet the local bears in person, I longed to see them up close. Their presence proved how much life the land could sustain. Their power made their tenderness with each other all the more touching. Their wildness made my civilization feel like a tight fit.
Lord, Increase My Bewilderment*
What a petition! What a verb! It was only four words long, with such good news in it that I memorized it before the ink dried. My increasing bewilderment wasn't a problem after all. It was an answer to prayer.
Lost Love in the Chicken Coop
I lost my favorite hen yesterday. She was the first to come when I called, the first to let me pick her up, and the only one who seemed content to be carried around in the crook of my arm while I topped up the scratch feed and refilled the water. Her name was Goldie.
Love's Labor
The first thing I learned about Labor Day was to put away my white clothes until the following Memorial Day.... When I entered the workforce myself, Labor Day became a day off from work to honor the value of work. Odd logic, but no reason to argue with a long weekend.
Dharma in the Garden
How well is your resistance to change working for you? When you give yourself completely to what matters most in the present, does the meaning vanish when the future isn't what you hoped? Can you stop the world from spinning by braking hard enough?