Gratitude for Study Day at Stanbrook Abbey in England

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I’ve been at work making early modern Benedictine nun Dame Gertrude More’s writings and spirituality more available since I taught a summer seminar on women mystics and visionaries at Marquette University back in 2017. I’d reached out to her community to see if I could edit and publish her shorter works, and her Poems and Counsels on Prayer and Contemplation came out around the time the pandemic started. Then a couple years later, I wrote a chapter on her for A Benedictine Reader 1530-1930. I’m also at work with a colleague editing her more sustained work, a spiritual diary known as her Confessions.

And so it was with great joy that I visited the community at Stanbrook Abbey for their fourth-centenary celebration this year by offering a couple talks on Dame Gertrude’s teaching on mortification and contemplation last weekend for their community study day. All the sisters made me very welcome, and it was a pleasure getting to walk the Yorkshire gills and hear the offices chanted while getting to know them, some of their oblates, and a variety of visitors. The sandstone outcroppings in the gills were gorgeous. My heartfelt thanks to the whole community at Stanbrook!

Can’t wait to get her bigger work out; will be working on it this winter break. Stay tuned!

sna poems #151: north bay

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well, we’ve crossed the line over 150 state natural areas visited. hadn’t thought we’d get here when this began, especially when this project started slowing down after things picked up once the worst of the pandemic was behind us. but here we are. a trip to door cty last week put us across the 150 line.

north bay sna in door cty is a varied site with undeveloped shoreline on lake michigan (rare in door cty), wetlands, springs and seeps, mesic and boreal forest. i only walked thru the coniferous woods at the beginning of the site from the dead end road, but was pleasantly surprised by the variety of plant life, club moss, et alia. got some weird vibes about a half hour in and trusted it since i was alone and turned round, but a fine afternoon jaunt nonetheless.

first id of pearly everlasting, spurred gentian, northern bugleweed, and red baneberry!

a.

so many ferns here

too few names

birch limbs all around

b.

this lune is for you,

dear lorine—

everlasting bracts

c.

how to put in words

the texture

of club moss and fir?

d.

such small minutemen

on cypress

is bear lurking near?

first day of the new academic year, here i come.

and, a closing to the trilogy of essays on chatbots and education, or “on vanity”

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hi folks! back to short poems and close-up pictures of flowers and rocks and stuff soon, but here’s the final installment of the trilogy of essays i wrote this spring as the term wound up and we all handled the situation with chatbots in the educational space we inhabit with our students.

thanks to the plough team for getting this last salvo out into the world!

pax inter spinas.

yet another new essay on the “generative ai” deal, in _dappled things_

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in my ongoing walk toward what i’m now thinking of as a “renewed humanism” in education, the arts, daily living, wherever, here’s another contribution to the discourse on our ‘artificial information processing’ (or ‘machine training application,’ or anything but the usual obfuscatory advertising phrase the industry’s gotten so many of us to use) present.

this one’s on the contribution the catholic intellectual tradition can make to help us see clearly and maintain awareness of the difference between living creatures and machines, between minds and computers, etc. tho it doesn’t draw on any dogmatic aspect of that tradition—rather the anthropological aspects. i hope it’s accessible to anyone and everyone of good will, irrespective of (a)theological commitments.

sna poems, series supplementum #46: whitnall park + a special look at some plants at newark road prairie sna

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as a follow-up to our independence day hike, we stopped at two spots for some walks on our way to pick up the kids in the rock river valley. first up was the sprawling (in a good way) whitnall park in mke cty—prairie, woods, pond, so many plants—then newark road prairie sna as we got to the rock. good day.

first id’s of american germander, tall hairy agrimony, black cohosh, leafcup, broadleaf enchanter’s nightshade, queen of the prairie. (!)

at newark road prairie sna (entry a while back) saw some other first id’s: prairie woundwort, spotted joe-pye weed, virginia mountain mint, michigan lily, and eastern prairie fringed orchid(! again). aside from disturbing a redwing blackbird family, a brilliant short stop.

a.

from a sun-soaked snag

a clear call

indigo bunting

b.

forming culver’s root

pentangles

walking with my wife

c.

in late morning sun

the year’s first

goldenrod blooming

d.

goldfinches calling

by swaying

queen of the prairie

sna poems #150: black earth rettenmund prairie

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been a while. but after a visit with family, me and the kids headed west to this dry mesic prairie remnant just past the terminal moraine in the driftless area (where the last glaciation didn’t touch). mostly situated on a dramatic hill, this prairie was grazed but not plowed, according to the wdnr’s website. lots of native species still inhabiting, a small oak proudly taking up the hill’s crest as its home.

many first time id’s and a few old friends hanging out. first id’s of wood lily, seneca snakeroot, blue-eyed grass, flowering spurge, prairie phlox.

first day that a walk in the sun got uncomfortably hot this year. could have sat on the hilltop all day long.

a.

bright lamp of the hill

bolt upright

in dane cty breeze

b.

above the valley

delicate

puccoon blossom stands

new essay on academic integrity in _jesuit higher education: a journal_

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as some of you may know from things i’ve said, i’m the current academic integrity director at marquette university. it’s been a very active year in the office with the release of ‘generative a.i.’ chatbots to the general public. among other things.

but this new essay, thankfully, is a broader reflection on the nature of integrity in higher education generally, based in my first year’s observations and lessons learned. it explores integrity in three “keys”: medieval monastic (because it’s me), aristotelian/thomistic (which was a new endeavor for me), and existential (to round things out).

even if you’re not in higher ed at all, there are still reflections on integrity as a virtue (in the greek sense of “excellence”) in life generally here that could be of interest.

pax inter spinas

ps. included here are some images of wild geranium from this spring that didn’t get on here.

new short essay (with audio option) on earth as mother, earth day, our extractive capitalist mode, conversion to the earth, etc.

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hey all. if you’ve gotten updates from me long enough, you’ll know that, in the midst of lots of hikes and plants and scholarly musings on medieval monasticism, sometimes things get theological/spiritual here.

if you’re game for that, i’ve got a new “eco-theological” essay out on focolare media’s website today. you can read it there or listen to me read it as there’s an audio option.

i’ve been looking for a place to use st. gregory the great’s observation that “the earth has given birth to us all; we are right to call her our mother,” and this is it!

sna poems, series supplementum #45: semianry woods _again_

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did our early-spring visit to seminary woods at st. francis seminary in st. francis, wisconsin again last weekend. one of our two old-growth stands here in milwaukee county.

trout lilies and early buttercups coming up in all the usual spots; skunk cabbage leafing out in the stream bed and low areas, mayapple along the trail; a barred owl snoozing up in the leafless canopy. a good day.

a.

great horns craned to scratch

vernal sun

shines on buttercups

it’s difficult to see b/c i don’t have a good camera, but there is in fact a great horned owl toward the center (bit to the right) of this photo about a third of the way down.