While I was walking this morning, I was reflecting on a quotation from the woman who founded the School Sisters of Notre Dame. With God, what we do is less important than how we do it. Blessed Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger, SSND She said those words a century ago, but they speak to my heart…
The primary nectar flow is in full swing and my bees are single-mindedly going about their work. Some guard the hive, others fetch water from the pond, forage for nectar, alert their comrades to new blooms by dancing on the doorstep. They and their mission are one. The mission is within. And I think of…
Creativity implies creating something. This, however, is the age of Pinterest and virtual creativity. We create vicariously by scrolling through an endless array of elegantly executed creative concepts. Instead of following our own path we settle for pinning the ideas of others to boards stored in the cloud, saving the instructions for projects that will…
photo by Taline Manassian We had a day of silence while at Aldermarsh for the PeerSpirit writing workshop. I didn’t know how that would work for me. Life is loud. We are always talking, sometimes all at once, pushing our points of view. But this is a space where cell phones don’t work. Rather than…
Walking on the beach in St. Petersburg I couldn’t help but look for shells at the tideline. When I was younger I would search for shells that matched those in book illustrations. Trumpeting conch shells with carnation lips whispering secrets, the whorl of the whelk, sunsets captured in the inner concave of cockle shells. I…
A few weeks ago I went with Michael to pick up a package of bees near Winfield. One of my hives had died out after an unexpected snowstorm in March. They were my favorite hive–Carniolan bees, gentler than the Minnesota hygienic Italian bees I usually raise. It was a dreary day with heavy skies and…