Minding Nature

Been leading two middle east travel seminars, woke up to the call of the muezzins in Bethlehem. This morning we will worship at the Christmas Lutheran Church with the congregation of the Rev. Mitri Raheb. In the meantime, here is a link to an article of mine published last month in the journal Minding Nature, from […]

Thank you to Carmichael’s

Carmichael’s Bookstore on Frankfort Avenue and Louisville welcomed more than forty people in from the snow and sleet for my first ever public book signing. Friends new and old came in–and strangers too. Nina Maples of Highland Baptist introduced me, and I talked about how the book came to be, read a little from it, […]

In the Media

 A sign of parental success is watching your children do greater things than you ever dreamed of. A couple of weeks ago I postedan interview with my daughter Claireabout her social work and teaching of family counseling in Pokhara, Nepal. Now it’s my son Ian Willey’s turn to take the spotlight. Dean of KIPP Washington […]

Attitudes and Behaviors

          The natural world doesn’t care what humansthink. But it responds forcefully to what we actuallydo. Climate change was no threat for the first million years of human existence, not because we paid more attention then to the atmosphere’s carbon level, but because we hadn’t discovered fossil fuels and their energy […]

Kentucky Holy Land Energy Vision

Sister Claire McGowan, an Energy Vision statement author Hooray for central Kentucky nuns! This past Tuesday, the 45th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death, the Dominican Sisters and Associates of Peace, the Loretto Community, and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and Associates hosted an interfaith prayer ritual to publicize the Energy Vision statement written in response […]

The Help of Doubters

Sleet and snow all day yesterday. By mid-morning, every twig of every tree was a crystal shaft. It’s an enforced Sabbath. No lamps are lit today—the sunlight, unobstructed by foliage, refracts from the snow into every window. Bread is rising over the woodstove. I’m thinking of mixing pesto from last summer’s basil and garlic.           […]

Checking the Math

5 pounds of coal– two hours of electricity per person I wanted to make a table display, an un-powerpoint visual to take when I’m speaking, a reminder that what flows invisibly from the wall as electricity begins as burning rocks. I recalled that the basement of an old house where I once lived in Georgia […]