Dominican Preaching through Word and Image
Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society.
Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you, I thought you were only the background for the leading characters—the plants and animals and human animals. It’s as if I had loved only the stars and not the sky which gave them space in which to shine …
“If not ignored, nature will cultivate in the gardener a sense of well-being and peace. The gardener may find deeper meaning in life by paying attention to the parables of the garden. Nature teaches quiet lessons to the gardener who chooses to live within… Continue Reading “Gardening”
…hope is openness for surprise. – David Steindl-Rast To learn more and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings, please go to: http://www.santasabinacenter.org/retreats-page
“Being silent for me doesn’t require being in a quiet place, and it doesn’t mean not saying words. It means, “receiving in a balanced, noncombative way what is happening.” – Sylvia Boorstein To learn more and/or register for Santa Sabina Center online retreats and offerings,… Continue Reading “True Silence”
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do it knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructively, it is a desecration. – Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land… Continue Reading “All Is Sacrament – Let Us Bow”
. . . a life of kind words and gentle gestures, planting seeds and seeking peace—where could that lead? – Kim Stafford, from “Connect the Dots” Starting on February 11, 2021, Santa Sabina Center’s will offer an Online Writing Retreat with Kim Stafford: “Speak Beauty to… Continue Reading “The Fruit of a Gentle Life”
Do not be small minded. Do not pray for gourds and pumpkins from God, when you should be asking for pure love and pure knowledge to dawn within every heart. – Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Great Swanby by Lex Hixon
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community,… Continue Reading “The Soil Connects Us”