Donna Schaper

Daily Easter Reflections: I have always loved to walk hedgerows. They are unruly places that refuse to be mowed or that people forget to mow. They are untamed places, often as beautifully wild as they are magnificently unused. They have extraordinary biological density. In this space things are left alone long enough to mingle. 

Daily Easter Reflections: We had sailed at dusk on Florida's Biscayne Bay. We were out for about four hours when our captain turned toward home. Usually, in other sails, she had turned on the engine as we approached the dock. Her boat, a sailing instructor's boat, is docked at the far end of the marina in a corner, a bit of a tight squeeze but not impossible, with the engine going. 

Daily Easter Reflections: "There she was, calmly plotting the resurrection." E.B. White, the children's author who penned the famous Charlotte's Web, said these words about his wife Katharine, also a writer and editor, when she planted daffodils in late November during the last year of her life.

Daily Lenten Reflections: In scripture, we read of Jesus' stories and write our own guidebook from them. We also orient ourselves with prayer. We agree to pay deep attention to the road instead of just gliding along. We look around. We see. We acknowledge where we are. In prayer, we ask God to guide us.

Eco Catholic: Transitioning out of fossil fuels is going to take all the hope we have. I offer pictures of what we need spiritually to transition New Green Deal dreams into reality.

Eco Catholic: Speedup is everywhere in our culture and our lives. This season, consider doing a briefer Advent devotional. You can declare an Advent wait, fully achieved.

If we were to stop trying to dominate God and to instead love and praise God, we could find our way to the courage to protect the sun, the wind, the rain, the clouds — and even ourselves. 

Eco Catholic: The most interesting environmental issue in New York State right now: If we ban fracking and then buy fracked energy from Pennsylvania, are we still helping the environment?

Eco Catholic: My 71-year-old writer friend insists she is not retiring but "rewiring." She says she is trying to connect to another source of power. There's certainly nothing wrong with what she is doing. Still, there is just the clang of the binary to her intention.

Eco Catholic: I have lately been drawn into the big conversation around the so-called humanities — those fields of scholarship that explore humans and culture in disciplines like language, literature, the arts, religion, history and philosophy.

Eco Catholic: Nail salons seem to be everywhere. Why do humans enjoy ornamentation of their nails? Why are there so many colors? Are all those chemicals really useful?

Eco Catholic: I always thought cloves were something you put in spice cake. Or maybe used to mull cider.  While indeed a spice, cloves are also a special word for a special kind of mountain pass.

Eco Catholic: A storm uprooted the two largest trees on our property, both over 75 years old. My small question is one so clearly dwarfed by Puerto Rico and more: But why am I having a mild breakdown over the loss of 23 trees? 

The crockpot lunch is an invention and intervention in climate change and helplessness, as well as in frugality, communal engagement, anti-desk sitting and anti-individualism. It's a kind of anti-mice, pro-human, pro-planet bliss.

Eco Catholic: Everybody is from somewhere, and the answer is usually pretty simple. You know where you are from — or think that you do.

Eco Catholic: To get people out of the absurdity of the car as commute — the one-person-per-vehicle picture that you can get in almost any traffic jam anywhere — we also have to make it easy.

Eco Catholic: On Tax Day think of these 10 ways to guide your prayers of thanksgiving to be able to contribute to a country you love.

Eco Catholic: The pace of closings of buildings, if not congregations, is increasing as congregations get smaller and buildings get more expensive to maintain, but here is an opportunity inside the problem that has to do with the bricks themselves.

Eco Catholic: Community can be the casualty of teleconferencing — and community, once released, is one of the strongest environmental forces on Earth.

Eco Catholic: Our Children's Trust is a coalition of 21 young people who argue that it is the duty of the government to protect the climate, and that they have a constitutional right to a future not destroyed by climate change.