At the heart of Mormonism is a high regard for community. That is its strength. I have great respect for that.
In the early days of the Mormon Church, stewardship toward the land was a priority. It was a matter of survival in the desert.
I am not so interested in religion or dogma of any kind. It is too restrictive for me, too organizational, too hierarchical, and too tied up in power and being right. You call it a “rabid evangelism.”
I think we have to stand up against what is unacceptable, and to push the boundaries and reclaim a more humane way of being in the world, so that we can extend our compassionate intelligence and begin to work with a strengthened will and imagination that can take us into the future.
Hopefully there will come a time when I have no words, when I can honor and hold that kind of stillness that I so need, crave, and desire in the natural world.
There are times we have to put our body on the line for what we believe, for the injustices we see even within our own families.
To engage in civil disobedience is to feel the abundance of courage, the gratitude for a democracy that still invites us to speak from our hearts, to act from our conscience and have faith in the consequences of moral action. Abundance is a form of consciousness.
I write about nuclear tests in Refuge – “The Clan of One-Breasted Women.” With so many of the women in my family being diagnosed with breast cancer, mastectomies led to one-breasted women. I believe it is the result of nuclear fallout.
I can tell that in Refuge the question that was burning in me was, how do we find refuge in change? Everything around me that was familiar had been turned inside out with my mother’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer and with the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge being flooded.
I believe capitalism will eventually be replaced by a communitarian ethic where the rights and care of all beings will be taken into consideration, not just the greed of a corporate few.
I think about capitalism, consumerism, our consumptive nature as a species approaching the 21st century. I certainly don’t have the answers.
I was extremely close with my mother and my grandmothers, we shared our lives – fully, honestly – and it was heightened as each succumbed to cancer. Little was hidden between us. No time. And what was hidden, turned inward. I made a vow to speak. Speak or die.
My spiritual life is found inside the heart of the wild.
Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder. This is our inheritance – the beauty before us. We cry. We cry out. There is nothing sentimental about facing the desert bare. It is a terrifying beauty.
Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together.
Boundaries are fears made manifest, designed to protect us. I don’t want protection, I want freedom.
Silence introduced in a society that worships noise is like the Moon exposing the night. Behind darkness is our fear. Within silence our voice dwells. What is required from both is that we be still. We focus. We listen. We see and we hear. The unexpected emerges.
Reading has not only changed my life but saved it. the right picked at the right time – especially the one that scares us, threatens to undermine all we have been told, the one that contains forbidden thoughts – these are the books that become Eve’s apples.
We borrow. We steal. We purchase what we need and buy what we don’t. We acquire things, people, places, all in the process of losing ourselves. Busyness is the religion of distraction. I cannot talk to you, because I have too much to do.
Our public lands – whether a national park or monument, wildlife refuge, forest or prairie – make each one of us land-rich. It is our inheritance as citizens of a country called America.