The Wisdom of Wild Grace. Christine Valters Paintner

Julian and the Cat

       St. Marvan and the White Boar

       St. Paul and the Lions

       St. Ailbhe and the Wolf

       St. Gall and the Bear

       Ross Errilly Friary

       St. Gobnait and the Bees

       St. Kevin and the Otters

       St. Kevin Holds Open His Hand

       St. Cuthbert and the Otters

       St. Columbanus in the Forest

       St. Macarius and the Hyena

       St. Clare and the Cat

       The Swifts Preach to St. Clare

      

       Once Upon a Time

       What She Does Not Know

       Selkie Song

       Little Red Riding Hood

       Pomegranate

       Handless Maiden I

       Handless Maiden II

       Apple Tree

       Once

       Dreaming

      

       “When the Moon Comes Up”

       When She Despairs

       Love Letter

       There is Wonder, Still

       “Peace Comes from Dropping Slow”

       “A Glimpse of the Underglimmer”

       Spring Mysteries

       Always

       Spring Ephemerals

       Summer Breezes

       Nocturne

      

       Into the Forest

       Crossing the Divide

       Autobiography

       “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved”

       Where Are You From?

       Wittgenstein in Connemara

       Every Day Has Its Dog

       Welcome Home

       Faith

      

       My Last Poem

       A Door Opens

       Credits

      Introduction •

      These poems are invitations.

      When I long for expansiveness and connection to something far greater than my own daily concerns and struggles, a walk by the sea or in the forest expands me.

      We live in a time when Earth is threatened on so many fronts by human development. Slowly we seem to be awakening to the truth that our personal well-being is intimately woven together with the well-being of all creatures and plants. Many of us might have been taught by our religious traditions that humans have dominion over nature or that animals don’t feel pain or have souls.

      The more we cultivate our own intimacy with the wild, the more we open to different truth. Wildness doesn’t mean we have to go out into the forest or travel long ways; the wild is a place within us.

      Each poem here is a doorway into this inner wilderness, a call to sit and be present to what we discover beyond the borders of our neatly controlled worlds. Wildness is vulnerable,