One lesson many people learned during COVID was the small grace provided by overlooked miracles. Things once taken for granted became essential — like the joyful explosion of color in the leafing oaks, maples, lilacs and redbud trees, coinciding with the scientific wonder of a vaccine that allows us to move with greater ease through […]
Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center
Posted inCommunity/News
Find your church in one of these three local nature preserves designed for ecospiritualists
In our pandemic lives, many of us have deepened, discovered or rediscovered our relationship with nature as a way to cope with the new restrictions on our lives. The benefits likely have been multiple: enhancing our own health, learning more about the land we live on, perhaps even sparking a stronger environmental ethic. Many of […]
Posted inUR Here
Engage in the Great Conversation — with a tree
At first it may sound a bit kooky to talk about “conversing” with nature. But the oddness of that idea is really due to the inadequacy of our words, even our human conceptions. What happens when entering the Great Conversation is much more profound than trading mere words, or even human ideas.
Posted inCommunity/News, UR Here
UR Here: The Japanese art of forest bathing invites you to soak up nature, hug a tree
On an unusually warm but cloudy March day about two weeks before the vernal equinox, I took a group hike in the woods at Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center in Hiawatha. Over an hour and half, we traversed about a quarter mile, a half at most.
Posted inCommunity/News, UR Here
UR Here: Sweating the small stuff
We are in midsummer, and that means sweat. It’s the time of year when our body regulates its temperature through perspiration, when the heat of the season beads up and runs down our skin with our slightest effort. It’s summer in Iowa…
