Pray and Paddle

09/11/2026

Our old friend Henry, ever on the lookout for awe and wonder …

A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers.’
- Thoreau’s Journal, Summer 1852

09/10/2026

'The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw, all things in God and God in all things.'

Spoken by Mechthild of Magdeburg, 1207 - 1282 CE. She was a leader in the Beguine community, a community of Christian lay women who lived not in a monastery, rather in towns large and small of Germany. In a patriarchal culture they were self sufficient and female led. They practiced a life of work, daily prayer and hospitality to those on the margins.

For Mechthild there was no separation between the Divine and the everyday. All things were in God and God in all things. Understood in this way every person was a reflection of the Divine with inherent worth.

So too was everything in creation. The natural world was a reflection of the Creator, deserving of respect and care.

Such an understanding was the source of deep wisdom. Wisdom sorely lacking in today's world and truth be told in our nation. Our current political administration treats our immigrant neighbors as less than human. Masked ICE agents drag people from their cars and workplace with impunity. Due process of law cast aside.

Safeguards for the environment are ignored or intentionally undermined.. Nature is viewed as a commodity and profit deemed the greatest good.

For those who instinctively know that our nation has lost its way....we need look no further than Mechthild. She reminds us that all of life is sacred. As we come to understand this, then the choices we make and the moral stands that we take, are guided from a place of deep wisdom.

May it be so.

09/09/2026

Walked to my local beach for a swim. Everything feels different after Labor Day. I want to hold onto Summer but can't. Instead I savor these remaining days to dive into the ocean and swim .... What are you savoring?

'Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.'
~ Harper Lee, great southern American author, To Kill a Mockingbird

09/08/2026

In a senseless time
Hold close to what never stopped
making sense.
Like love
Like trees
Like how a seed becomes a branch
And compost becomes seedlings again.
Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head
Because there is nothing more right than that.
Nothing.
~ Carrie Newcomer, musician, mystic, from her song 'Making Sense'

09/07/2026

The phrase 'Mother Earth' reflects the infinite ways that the natural world nourishes and restores all beings, human and our more-than-human neighbors. Too often in Western society Nature is viewed as a commodity. With tragic result at our doorstep. A Climate Crisis and degradation of our environment.

Where to turn for wisdom? “Ecofeminists understand human beings as not being separate from or above nature,” write the authors of the American Journal of Educational Research report from 2019. “They are one small part of a whole, rather than the pinnacle of nature. In separating nature from persons, humanity creates a concept of nature which is made up of dead, unintelligent matter.”

Amid the struggle to be heard and included, these authors offer hope: “Given that the subjugation of women and nature is a social construct, not a biological determinant, these relationships have the potential to change.”

Ecofeminism is found throughout indigenous cultures. Found too in Western voices such as Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, Gloria Steinem.

Imagine a world where the subjugation of women and nature gives way to a circle of respect, where all voices and all beings are both blessed and a blessing.

We all have the power to bring about change. Together, let's begin, hand in hand, side by side ....

09/06/2026

When I look at my newsfeed...I am most often, filled with despair. Autocrats on the rise on a national level and far away. What to do ... where to turn for perspective and hope? Our old friend Henry, reminds us that we need look no further than a local woodland or wetlands. Listen ....

"Consider the turtle. Perchance you have worried, despaired of the world, meditated to the end of life, and all things seem rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with the turtle’s pace. The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the way of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hold, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. What’s a summer?"
~ Thoreau's journal, late summer 1858

Photo: A snapping turtle can live up to 100 years

Snapping turtle, Nova Scotia

09/05/2026

For many paddling is an invitation to be present. To what is going on within and around us. The rhythm of dipping one's paddle again and again has a meditative quality. Allowing for movement and reflection. Both doing and being.

We humans spend much of life either in the past or in the future. Yet all the great contemplative traditions teach that it is in being present to the moment, living in the now, are we able to fully experience this extraordinary gift of being alive. Right here, right now. One paddle stroke at a time.

When my mind begins to wander, I draw upon a meditative mantra by the Buddhist monk and mystic, Thich Nhat Hahn ... try this with me ... 'Breathing in I calm my spirit....Breathing out I smile...(inhale) Living in the moment... (exhale) This is the only moment.'

Friends, paddle well.

09/04/2026

We remember the life of Gloria Steinem, who died on September 2, 2026 at age 92. A prophetic voice in the rise of feminism.

She empowered generations of women to claim their voice and agency in following their dreams. As the dad of two accomplished grown daughters, I am profoundly grateful for the voice and witness of Gloria Steinem.

Gloria considered herself to be an ecofeminist.

Ecofeminism is defined as a mix of political activism and intellectual critique that takes on traditionally harmful systems within both gender dynamics and the environment.

“Bringing together feminism and environmentalism, ecofeminism argues that the domination of women and the degradation of the environment are consequences of patriarchy and capitalism,” write the authors of a 2019 piece in the American Journal of Educational Research. “And, to fix both these wrongs means acknowledging that the two are intricately linked.”

As Gloria Steinem, one of the Women’s Media Center’s co-founders likes to say, 'we are linked not ranked'.

Ecofeminists argue that the oppression of women parallels that of the environment, which “has led to environmental destruction by the controlling patriarchal society,” write the authors of the journal report.

“Ecofeminism proposes that only by reversing current values, thereby privileging care and cooperation over more aggressive and dominating behaviors, can both society and environment benefit.”

More than ever, the climate movement must include and acknowledge the roles of women in the fight to save the planet. Long kept out of the rooms where policy decisions are made, women throughout the world are, ironically, often in charge of feeding and providing health care to their families, yet are somehow allocated the fewest resources to do so.

Gloria Steinem understood that the domination of women and the degradation of our environment are linked.

Thank you Gloria Steinem for your wisdom and witness. May we too add our voices, to bring healing and hope.

09/03/2026

Remembering the life and legacy of Wendell Berry. Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist and environmental prophet. Wendell died on August 31st at age 92.

‘A mighty cedar has fallen and there is a lonely space against the sky.’

09/02/2026

Yesterday i paddled on Lake Champlain with my friend Gil. We paddled with news of the death of Wendell Berry. His writings and witness were formative for us both.

Wendell Berry the Kentucky farmer, poet and environmental lion who taught us to cherish and protect the waters and land we call home. Let’s listen …

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
- Wendell Berry, 1934 - August 31st 2026

God bless you and keep you Wendell. We are forever in your debt.