Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.


Yesterday Sophie and I visited Heartland Farms, an intentional ecumenical Christian community situated about an hour South of Hays, where a handful of Dominican Sisters and Mennonite families live, pray and eat together. Their lifestyle is a template for simple, holistic living: a commitment to small-scale sustainable, organic agriculture; holistic health; alternative energy; community; justice and non-violence. Our afternoon visit was a good reminder of how the natural world illuminates the spiritual, and how "the tyranny of things" (a phrase I borrow from my good friend Katie) often keeps us from community with others.

Here Sister Ginger holds Sophie in front of the flower garden. The Sisters were overjoyed to have a baby visit and their great delight gave me great joy in turn.

Here we are among the alpacas. The community uses their wool to make yarn. In the background, you can see three-year-old Michael in his baby blue galoshes. Michael introduced us to Heartland along with his mother, my good friend Heather, who is one of the gems I've discovered out here in the middle of nowhere. She's a Pacific Northwest, Quaker transplant to Kansas who has the most fantastic legs and wisdom to match.

At the center of a meditation labyrinth.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.