Possibilities are always more interesting than facts.

      – John O’Dononue

I’ve been spending these cooler early mornings with John O’Donohue, through the wonder-full compilation Walking in Wonder, based on conversations with his friend John Quinn.

Today I aim to practice his advice on landscape.

One of the lovely ways to pray is to take your body out into the landscape and to be still with in it. If you go out for several hours into a place that is wild, your mind begins to slow down, down, down. What is happening is that the clay of your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.

Landscape is always at prayer, and its prayer is seamless. It is a high work of imagination, because there is no repetition in a landscape. Every stone, every tree, every field is a different place. When your eye begins to become attentive to this panorama of differentiation, then you realize what a privilege it is to actually be here.

Dear friends, let’s get into the landscape today, whether it’s a potted plant or vast forest.

Perhaps we will feel sisterhood with the clay.

Perhaps we will hear the seamless prayer.

Perhaps we will see a teeny tiny frog no bigger than a fingernail.

Perhaps we will realize what a privilege it all is.