Last month, as Chicago and other Midwest cities made headlines for smoky skies, I donned my mask and headed outside. A certain sadness, much like the haze, enveloped me. I wondered whether the tears in my eyes were from the smoke or for the smoke, and what it meant. By the end of June, Canada…
Over Christmas break, after the brutal winter storm gave way to unseasonal warmth, my sister and I made a clandestine visit to the property where we lived during our teen years. We were looking for the freshwater spring where, every day, no matter the weather, the two of us filled jugs with cold water and…
Episode 56 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Email | RSS | More “Community extends beyond just a group I belong to… we need to extend that belonging to fellow human beings, no matter who they are.” –Teré Maya IN THIS EPISODE In this episode of Messy Jesus Business, Sister Julia…
Episode 55 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, with Sister Julia Walsh. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Email | RSS | More “We all will be affected by climate change… can we learn how to understand each other as shared participants in this project of being on earth together?” –Dorothy Fortenberry IN THIS EPISODE In this episode of Messy Jesus…
I started dumpster diving because of free boxes. I live on the edge of Hyde Park, an affluent neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago on Chicago, Illinois’ south side. My boyfriend and I used to go for neighborhood walks and stop to pick through curb-side boxes, often left by students moving out of their school-year…
Season 5, Episode 9 of Messy Jesus Business podcast, hosted by Sister Julia Walsh. “Going barefoot connects me to the Earth, which connects me to the whole.” – Sister Roselyn Heil LISTEN HERE: IN THIS EPISODE: In this episode of Messy Jesus Business podcast, Sister Julia Walsh talks with “Nature Nun” Sister Roselyn Heil about…
When I was in first grade, I made a stapled-together picture book about the pear tree in our yard called “My Friend the Tree.” I drew her in each of the four seasons with me, a smiling face attached to legs, right alongside her. I sensed that before I knew how to talk about it…
In hope, in prayer, we find ourselves here … I sang these words with a chorus of climate and Indigenous activists on a humid June morning in front of the White House. In hope, in prayer. The words became a refuge, an embodied cry that gave me courage as my timid self stood steady, as…
Since I began homeschooling my children last year, I’ve felt compelled to raise them as amateur naturalists. We take walks together as a family. I casually acknowledge the lifeforms we pass if I happen to know their names, trying not to intrude too much on our experience by making it sound like a lesson. “Hello…
Her wide arms reach and summon. I feel the lure even from a mile away. I met her, the giant Grandmother oak centered on an island in the Jackson Park lagoon. In those days, I wore rubber gloves and a mask, sanitized the handlebars. When air frightened me I met her, the giant. Immediately I…
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