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Crossing Life’s Bridges: Embracing the Unknown

The meadow sparkles in the clearing ahead — far beyond the  narrow footbridge I’ve come upon on today’s walk in the woods.  The shadow of an old pine flits back and forth across the weather-worn timbers and I stop, unable to  move.

The shadow enters the landscape of my mind: to cross this narrow bridge means leaving the familiar path I’m on and moving into unknown parts.  Land I’ve never walked before that may not be safe or where I may not be welcomed. Do I take a risk and forge ahead or do I turn back to the safety of the familiar?

A voice speaks within.  Keep walking and remember what it feels like to be part of something large, something timeless, a world that welcomes you beyond your current experience – a world that reaches beyond you and includes you, too.

So I walk … I remember … I am enlarged.

When spiritual truth and nature meet, I follow the Voice to its source and find an eternal display of meaning and connection.  I find the wisdom and the courage to embrace the unknown and to keep moving, letting go of the past (the good and the bad of it all) and moving into the future with hopeful anticipation trusting God’s good plan for my life.

Love & Peace,

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. Philippians 3:13

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

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The Raven Speaks

As for me, time spent in nature means time spent connecting and communicating with our Creator God.  And ravens speak to me.  Not literally, of course (lest you think I’ve lost my mind completely).  And not in some dark, macabre way, as some would imagine.  But in a coruscating light-filled visionary way, I suppose.

Sauntering through a shop in the historic district of Old Quebec, a glistening black-winged raven catches my eye. Ravens—independent flight takers of wilderness heights. I admire it.  Perhaps even envy it.

“Do you like ravens?”  The young Inuit shop keeper takes me off guard.

Words spill out, bubbling over, in an attempt to put language to thoughts never voiced. 

The shop keeper translates for me, “Oh, it’s your totem”.

Don’t go there, religion whispers.  But the raven speaks louder, and I make a decision to choose connection without judgment.

“Why, yes.  It’s my totem”.

And in that sacred moment, together we move, my First Nations brother and I, to a higher spiritual plane.  Choosing connection at his heart level and communication through his heart language, I become a trail sister on life’s journey towards closer communion (common union) with our common Father.

Nature is the common language in which God is revealed.  Nature, and all creation, testifies to God.  It speaks a common heart language to all mankind.  And I listen … in any way He chooses to speak.

Love & Peace,

“Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”  Job 12:7-10

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The Journey Back to Eden: A Poetic Reflection


She inherited a clear mountain stream
It murmurs and burbles with hope & dreams.
Life-giving waters that renew & refresh
Lined with fruit-yielding trees that long to bless.

She inherited a wood where roots run deep
Where leaves do not wither, where souls do keep.
Where hope springs eternal in her fertile breast
A lush garden, a vineyard, a celestial nest.

Cast out of Eden love welcomed her back
Forgiven, redeemed with no shame attached.
A fountain of grace springing up from within
She inherits a Life that has always been.

Love & Peace,

“We were never cast out of Eden. We merely turned from it and shut our eyes. To return and be welcomed, cleansed and redeemed, we are only obliged to look.” – Margaret Renkl

“…Every fountain of delight springs up from your life within me!”  Psalm 87:7 (TPT)

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Nature’s Whisper of Divine Presence

Another windy day, my favorite kind of day. Not a gale-force dangerously windy kind of day, but a Winnie the Pooh-blustery kind of day every child enjoys … leaving its wind-swept imprint of rosy cheek glow.

In sacred writings, wind is often symbolic of God’s sovereignty over creation, as well as His power and presence. In Hebrew “wind” can also mean “spirit”, combining both the natural and spiritual realms. God’s desire has always been to use both natural and supernatural means to speak to His children.

Today I hear the wind whistle among the trees, and when the wind whistles, I listen. For in the presence of wind everything rises, and I look forward to the ascension.

An exhaling of the Creator’s breath
Carried on the wings of the wind.
Fanning to flame the doused wick within
Left breathless by secrets revealed.

Love & Peace,

“He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants.” Psalm 104:4

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Finding Hope in the Waves of Grief

Sitting quietly, I listen with my ears and watch with my eyes, the eyes of my heart that is.  Eyes unlike my natural ones that are myopic with a touch of astigmatism causing an annoying blur when my contacts don’t settle just right. I listen and watch with my heart-eyes until I “see”. 

A mother lamenting the death of her child. This is not the way it’s supposed to be!

So much dark-water pain in her ocean blue eyes. Tidal pools formed in rocky coasts, filled with hard-shell creatures imprisoned in isolated depressions.  Living pain feeding upon trapped-water memories until they rise and spill over in tears. 

Morning and evening tides of pain.  Patterning, rhythmically, methodically – in and out, ebb and flow, always moving.

Both King Solomon and Bob Seeger remind me, “For everything there is a season”.  Yet today I question … does the season of weeping over the death of a child ever really end?

While the pain may lessen as time goes on, the impact of the loss seems to me to linger on and on, season after season.

I hear the mother’s lament once again, lingering decades beyond her precious child’s parting.  And with it I hear all the aching voices I have known, including my own, that still weep from time to time.

Yet in the moment I’m reminded that in every lament there’s a latent hope: God hears, and God cares.

We ride the waves of grief—up & down, down & up—until eventually, somehow, we land upon solid ground.  Ground that takes us in—womb-like—and protects.  The solid rock of trust in God when there are no answers to the hard questions. 

Love & Peace.

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The Story

“All of these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am …”

The song lyrics linger with a reluctance to leave the divine divide between conscious and nonconscious thought.  By now I recognize that this is just one more way that God speaks to me: through music and lyric and poetry and prose.  I ask for understanding and patiently wait.  Selah – a Hebrew word used in the Psalms meaning to stop, pause and reflect. 

It makes no difference to me that the song would never be sung in a religious setting.  Some of my greatest prophetic inspiration has come from music not written for the church. God speaks in a multitude of ways, if we but choose to be open and listen.

Leaving some of the lyrics here … to linger a while. Selah.

The Story
Words and music by Phillip John Hanseroth

All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true, I was made for you ...

You see the smile that's on my mouth
It's hiding the words that don't come out
And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed
They don't know my head is a mess
No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know what
I've been through like you do
And I was made for you ...

Love & Peace,

My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all are written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”  Psalm 139:15-16.

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Eben-Ezer: Stone of Help

“You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.” ― Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Yet still I raise my Ebenezer to you and by your help alone I come.

Love & Peace,

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Table of Trust

The LORD speaks, “I prepare a table before you in the presence of your enemies”.  So, I pull out a chair and take a seat at the table.  I mean, what else can I do?  And I eat.

* * * * * * *

In 1888, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”  This aphorism has been quoted, paraphrased, and parodied by people throughout the world since.

Yet 2,000 years before, a young shepherd boy and giant killer, who will later become King of Israel, said it this way: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”, delivered as a poetic praise to G-d.

The symbolic table of trust—an inexpressible mystery that transcends my limited understanding. My enemies become bread at the table of trust. I eat the mystery, no matter how difficult to swallow. And I am stronger because of it.

Love & Peace,

Author’s note: When I refer to “enemies” I am not referring to people, but the enemies of my soul. I understand all too well, that at times, my greatest enemy is myself.


“We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us.”

Walt Kelly

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Holding Hands With Strangers

Driving along the rim of wild, navigating a backcountry road in Maine, I embrace the solitary.  Content in the fellow-less firmament, holding hands with nature, I enjoy an awareness of simply being.  Until …

A stranger walking the road ahead.  Who is she?  Why is she here?  And the biggest question of all … do I stop to ask if she needs help?  Fear would say no, but a greater faith speaks. 

“Hello there. Are you okay? Would you like a ride?”

“A ride would be much appreciated.“

By the rim of the wild, I could not turn away from the tears in her eyes, so I left my fellow-less firmament to hold hands with a stranger that day.

“What’s your name?” (it seems the right thing to ask).

“Amy”, she replies (a name I know means beloved and dearly loved).

She tells me her story:  a broken-down vehicle, miles to hike to her wilderness camp, eight passerby and not one willing to stop.  A sad lament of rejection, loneliness and fallen faith in her fellow man; I cringe. 

I silently entreat the light of God’s love to shine upon The Beloved’s discouraged heart, as we drive the distance to her rustic camp and deliver her safely at tent’s door.

Days later, in a serendipitous moment, we meet once again at the local town store. 

“It’s you!  I was just telling my family about the kindness you showed me.”

Amy the Beloved’s face shines with renewed faith and hope in her fellow man because of one small act of kindness.

Something happened that day in the wild, when I did not turn from the tears of another but made the decision to hold hands with a stranger. 

Could it be that holding hands with nature, in the wrap-around presence of the loving Creator God, brings an awareness of a deeper spiritual connection we have with all of God’s creation? An awareness that empowers me to hold hands with strangers?

Holding hands with strangers is rarely comfortable, especially for an introvert like me. Yet I have to believe that the reward for doing so is exceedingly great.

Love & Peace,

I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what’s important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it’s through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellowman.

Louie Schwartzberg

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

The Holy Bible

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