One thing I know already: I wouldn’t have missed this adventure, these people, this place, for the world.
OUTSIDE LIES MAGIC
THE SPIRIT JOURNEYS
‘The greatest among you must be as the least, the leader be as one who is a servant.’
And again, ‘A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.’
THE GARDENS AT ALCATRAZ
For four decades after the penitentiary closed, the gardens were abandoned. That so many plants survived the harsh climate and barren soil seems a metaphor for the inmates who served out their terms and went on to lead productive, useful lives after their release.
VISITING THE MARYKNOLLERS
“You prayed for his coming, but you were wise not to let your longing, your loneliness interfere with living, with what had to be done from moment to moment. You kept giving even when you felt nothing in return.”
THE FRIENDS OF GRIFFITH PARK NEWSLETTER
What I love most about the park is the smell of sage, plus the array of people: elderly ladies power-walking with their visors, tanned buff guys running shirtless, young people talking about their screenplays and restaurant jobs.
THE DAY BEFORE THE LAST SUPPER
It might be a nice reflection for Holy Week: to imagine Jesus taking one last walk.
CROWNED WITH THORNS
I may not look like I’m doing much, but believe me, the wheels are turning! My spirit is forming and firming up by the minute. And to top it all off, from walking around for hours every day in the blazing sun, I’m getting a tan!
THE SPIRITUAL CASE FOR A DAILY WALK
In “A Philosophy of Walking,” Frédéric Gros reflects upon some of the many thinkers and writers throughout history who have also considered walking essential to their work: Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thoreau.
MIDWEST AUTUMN
Chicago, Lake Forest, and Oak Park were incredible. But way more important–I made a new friend.
MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN, SCIENTIST AND ARTIST
Read up on this amazing 17th-c. caterpillar obsessive, butterfly aficianado, explorer and artist!
BRIGHT FIELD
One day last week I tramped through a dark wood, up a very steep hill, and around a couple of bends and came out at the edge of meadows and meadows full of…could it be?…I was pretty sure…heather! I’ve never seen my namesake flower growing in the wild so this was a rare thrill.
MAKE CLEAR MY WAY
We long for purity, we humans: purity of heart, purity of motive, purity of way of life. But life, culture, our era and place inevitably make it so we can never be as pure as we’d like to.
KEEPING THE PATHS CLEAR
. “Battouflet’s chief concern was the vegetation on the ghostly paths. Cutting and thrusting impatiently, his stick kept open a vestige of the vineyard tracks which would otherwise have been overgrown and lost. It was his single self-imposed task.”
THE INNER LIFE OF AN LA STREET PAINTER
“I don’t pretend to be van Gogh. I’m a commercial artist. I’m one of a thousand. I do simple landscapes to support my family. I don’t do what I want to do; I do what the people who buy my paintings like me to do. If I paint the Manhattan Beach pier ten times, I’ll sell all of them. If I paint the Virgin Mary, I don’t sell one.”