Ecofeminism – Feminism and Religion

Autumn Equinox ’26 – Seeding by Sara Wright

Everywhere I go seeds are taking to the air or spilling out of capsules, flowerheads, mushrooms and lichens.

Yesterday two women gathered in the local pollinator garden where millions of seeds were rattling in light winds. Hundreds of wild asters had shriveled flowerheads, seeds still hidden. Some bean pods were splitting open spilling out black and white beads. The entire garden was a celebration of what seeds do so effortlessly. Provide for the Future of Life.

Accustomed to a riotous bouquet of blossoms, initially I noted the lack of brilliance that characterized summer in this overstuffed garden! But because we were meandering, I began paying more attention to seed heads while the woman I was with was collecting seeds. The more I looked the more ingenious these capsules, seedheads, pods became! I too began seeding, entranced by the infinite variations on one theme; after a while all I could see were seeds!

This was a perfect day to acknowledge the autumn equinox turning because this was the time of the seeding up and the time of letting go.

Notes from the ‘Field’ in August 2026, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

Choosing Change:

Because of such poor air quality Coalie and I walk in the morning when the air is clear or isn’t as toxic as it will be by afternoon. For the last two years the ozone level has skyrocketed due to unchecked deforestation, and the ever- worsening particulates burn my eyes. Headaches strike as soon as the air begins to thicken. As a result, summers have become another challenging season with me prioritizing clean air over outdoor time. My Coalie has a small set of lungs and mine are aging.

Although making this transition has been hard on the naturalist who thrives in the woodlands, the outcome is that we have adapted. I am grateful (and guilt -ridden) that raging fires are not at my door. I sense that the trees around me know their sisters and brothers are burning. I also note that when the air quality deteriorates Coalie wants to come indoors of her own accord. The lack of bird song on any day that the air is polluted is astonishing. My guess is that poor air quality is very apparent to all non – human beings.

I used to complain about my sensitivity to moderate air quality. Now I am grateful that my body makes it clear that we belong indoors, not even on the porch on ‘bad air days’ which are increasing in severity. It troubles me to watch others running or biking on the roads for fun. Virtually all other outside work is done with air polluting machines contributing mightily to the problem. The exception is a person like me who chooses to do outside chores by hand. But only on days when the air is relatively clear. But I still drive a car.

Notes from the ‘Field’ in August 2026, part 1 by Sara Wright

I thought that I would tell a few personal animal stories because they are for the most part uplifting and demonstrate how easy it is to develop relationships with just about any non – human being you meet.

Heron – A Visitation

Imagine my astonishment when I walked by the window and saw a heron striding through tall grasses. A sword -like slivery beak and sinewy neck. One glassy eye. Grey blue body. Long splayed feet firmly planted on the ground with each determined step. My dog Coalie barked once and poof – heron was gone. Oh, I was so disappointed.

Baffled, I immediately walked outside trying to imagine what a heron could be doing walking by the house. Illumination struck when I noted a slight depression that led into wild summer greenery. Thick lush ferns hid the ‘pond’, a sunken barrel ringed with stone. Heron must have been on his way to fish there, a place where frogs often hunted from a partially waterlogged, moss-covered log. I parted the greenery as one green frog dove into murky waters. No doubt there were others close by.

Historically herons could be found hunting at the brook. l sometimes glimpsed one flying out of the gorge – a prehistoric being flapping his great, syncopated wings. With worsening drought conditions, the waters were low. Yet, frogs and toads were still abundant the last time I had been down there a few days before – enough to keep mink and weasels around all year. Tell -tale footprints were often visible in the mud.

A CALL TO CELEBRATE TREES by Janet M Rudolph

Olive Tree from the studio of Judith Shaw. Judith has a special offer to purchase this artwork as a giclee print through August 24th. Details below.

With the trees burning around the world, in Canada and the US as well as in Europe and Africa, Asia, South America and more, it seems to be an especially important time to be with the trees, to recognize our kinship, and to celebrate them.

To see just how bad the fires are around the world, below are the links to two maps that are kept in real time.
NASA Greenpeace

I don’t know when and where the initial hatred of trees began, but I would tag the Bible as an early and influential proponent of destroying trees.

The viciousness against trees appears to have grown out of a desire to erase Goddess worship in Biblical lands. The terms for Goddess groves were Asherot and Ashereem named after the Goddess Ashera. An individual tree was called an Ashera. The charge given to the people was to cut down everyone.

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves (Ashereem) with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
Deuteronomy 12:3 KJV

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
Exodus 34:13 KJV

Sleeping Solo in a Stone Circle by Eline Kieft

What twenty years of pilgrimage taught me about ritual, place and the slow cultivation of perception…

Ever since my first shamanic training in the UK and in Sweden in 2005, I felt called to seek out prehistoric ritual landscapes. Over the past two decades I slept in Neolithic burial chambers, welcomed the dawn from Bronze Age stone circles, wandered among standing stones on remote islands, and returned to certain places often enough that they became companions on my journey.

In this post I share some images and insights from my latest overnight solo adventure at the sacred site of Machrie Moors, on the Isle of Arran, Scotland, and how my practice of spontaneous immersion grew into a deep way of listening.

Going to Machrie Moor

Unlike the better-known circles of Avebury or Callanish, Machrie rarely appears in guidebooks outside Scotland, and perhaps because of that, it retains a remarkable intimacy. Sheep wander freely between the stones, the wind rolls in over the hills, and the landscape seems content in itself.

Set between sea and the dramatic outline of Goat Fell (which in the morning light appeared like a reclining goddess, see image below), the Machrie Moor complex consists of six stone circles in open moorland. There are also several other smaller menhirs that seem strategically placed like signposts leading into the site, which you can’t see from very far because it’s in a valley.

The Turning of the Wheel by Sara Wright

Today Grace enters. The air is clear, the window open. One hummingbird hovers at my window. Every twig is covered with lush green leaves and every time I gaze into the green, I feel that gratitude pulsing through me – the wonder of being alive. A brilliant green frog inhabits my toad pond. Last night a Datura blossom literally opened before my eyes etched with pale lavender – a moonflower of exquisite fragrance and beauty. If anything, I appreciate these moon blossoms more than I did in the desert.

My bee garden is humming, saturated with crimson, deep orange, yellow, pink, a cacophony of color and sound. I say sound because I also imagine that I can hear the flowers singing their song of abundance, gratitude, and praise to all there is…

The first lemon lily pods are ripening, green apples bend the trees low, grapevines are heavy with new fruit, and columbine spikes are bursting with seed that I scatter between the cracks of stones. Diminutive pale pink poppies keep popping out of a tangle of ajuga runners and fledglings hug the cabin. The forest birds have quieted. Some will soon be migrating but stillness blotted out the forest trills when the deadly smoke first filtered in. Little gold birds flit back and forth, sunbursts singing up the dawn. The Mourning Dove waits for me at twilight…

She Changes Everything She Touches: A Reflection on Love and Loss, part 2 by Sara Wright

part 1 was posted last week, you can read it here.

How much I like clipping by hand. Surprised by this realization I feel satisfaction rising. I was bored by this task as a child. I am delighted to meet a bevy of fat nubbly toads who appear out of the overgrown ground covers and in between sun warmed stones. Both child and ‘old woman’ feel happy that none will get mowed down by a polluting gas guzzling machine. The Peace of this Land that we belong to steals over us. Less is more. I’ll tackle the patch of bracken later, or maybe not until tomorrow. In this weather accomplishing one simple chore a day is enough.

Well not quite. I am creating a serpentine path of fieldstone that stretches from my front door to meet the path that climbs the hill. My original intention was to have someone ‘more professional’ do the work, but they were too busy so here I am, an almost eighty-one-year-old woman, creating a mosaic out of cracked stone! ‘I am the artist’ I say, as I carry a few more irregular rocks down from the huge pile sitting in front of the garage eyeing the mosaic for the perfect fit. Illumination strikes when wind hits the stones. Blowing seeds, withered crabapple bits, pine needles and leaves into the cracks I see what is happening. Small plants like violets, creeping charlie, ground ivy, and catmint will find niches in the soil that is being created before my eyes. Mosses will follow in the shade. Ah, Nature is going to help me craft a unique and imaginative fieldstone floor. Each time it rains the stones flatten out becoming more stable. That same feeling of satisfaction steals over me again. Vaguely I think that I may be doing something else besides laying stones in an artistic way and trusting that Nature will fill in the cracks, but I am not clear just what this might be. All I know is that it doesn’t matter how long this project takes. Process has taken precedence. This much feels just right.

What is a Glorian? Almost a Review of Terry Tempest’s book by Sara Wright

There is something deeper than hope that is calling us writes Terry Tempest Williams internationally acclaimed naturalist, environmentalist, and author in The Glorians. When we focus our attention on what she calls the ‘holy ordinary’ we are transported into a new way of being.

A Glorian can be a life changing dream like the one Terry had that inspired the title of this book. “Your vow is to create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians,” she was told as she reached the top of a tower by way of a spiral staircase. “What the hell is a Glorian” her father asked. A Glorian can be a moment, memory, an animal, plant, root, eclipse, an encounter with self or with others, an ordinary or non -ordinary experience that pulls us into the Now when the cloak of linear time falls away, and presence is all there is.

Terry shares her experiences with Glorians throughout the book but refuses to define who or what they might be believing that each person’s perceptions are different.

Falling into Spring by Sara Wright

The glorious
white stars
waited in vain
for rain
for miner
sweat
mason
or bumblebee
to feast
on pollen
sacred to All
after three days
petals
drooped
golden
eyes shut
pearled
almonds
fell
one by one
next year’s
compost
soaked in
unshed
tears.
Perhaps
Bee Goddess
has a plan
Changing Woman
transforms
Sky Woman
holds the
seeds …
clasping
bloodroot
spears
and
buds
wrapped in
gray shawls
she may
yet
choose
to
intervene.

Missing Trees by Beth Bartlett

The gap in the trees is a painful reminder of the one that is missing. This past winter an ice and wind storm late in the season brought down the aspen that had sheltered our deck. Its absence is more than a hole in the canopy – it is a hole in the heart. I miss its friendly presence, its shelter, its shade. I suspect I never fully appreciated it until now. It is just the latest in a long line of missing trees – trees lost to disease, insects, climate change.

The paper birch were the first to go. When my dad first bought our family cottage in 1964, paper birch trees arched delicately over the cottage, framing it in white branches against the blue sky. Another large birch stood as a landmark on the top of the hill, and another by the lake was the centerpiece of the circular bench built around it. Several more lined the path down to the lake and dotted the hillside.

When we bought our home in Duluth, paper birches graced the yard on all sides. In the woods out back I’d befriended several of the birches, naming them according to their distinctive shapes – there was the “Mama” birch with its bulging pregnant belly, the three then four-clump birches that I’d named after our music group – “Wild By Nature,” and the glorious “Tree of Life” – a magnificent clump birch of at least twenty connected trunks that served as a talisman for me during the most difficult days of my illness and for many years after my transplant.