A weekly curated collection of essays, poetry, and reflections for your spiritual journey. From The Wisdom Years.

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet.
Found in Well for the Journey.

God’s Nature – Exuberance or the Cross?
Are you given to laughter or irritation when something unexpected happens? And what does God have to do with it? Fr. Ron Rolheiser suggests that God’s nature is both exuberance and suffering, and that Jesus reveals this in his life and in his death.
From the blog of Ron Rolheiser.

Seven Lessons Learned from Leaves
Who would think that observing the simple leaf, one can learn some life lessons? But photographer Paul Cotter found that leaves suffer from stress, just as we do. The difference between the leaves he examined in 2019 and the ones he looked at in 2020 attested to it.
Found on Daily Good.

A Mother Hen God
Nothing actually keeps danger from being dangerous, says Nadia Bolz-Weber. Of course we are sometimes afraid. Jesus called Herod a fox, then said he wanted to gather Jerusalem to him as a mother hen gathers her chicks. But a mother hen cannot save her babies from a determined fox. What she can do is love them.
From the Center for Action and Contemplation.

Poems for Soft Hearts in Hard Times
Often, we turn to poetry to express our feelings when we don’t have the words. This collection of poetry – from Wendell Berry, Mark Nepo, and Naomi Shihab Nye, among others – draws us in to what our hearts are unable to say.

Turn Aside and Behold a Great Sight
Moses had to “turn aside” from his normal plans to see the great thing that God had prepared for him to do. “The act of turning aside from the paths we think we know is a theme that runs right through every invitation of the spiritual life, and Lent is a perfect season in which to practice this subtle but life-changing posture,” says Brother Sean Glenn.
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