The indisputable reality of flickering flames. — Even though I hold a degree in philosophy and have read hundreds of religious and philosophical tracts since my college days, what little insight I have into the nature of things has come to me during excursions alone in the wild, usually while sitting before a campfire. …

Modern cosmology has created an inescapable conflict. — The truth of the world is written in the stars. Shamans believed as much in the centuries before the birth of civilizations, and later high priests acted upon this belief. They built temples in alignment with the sky, calibrating the positions of the sun, moon and stars, thus divining the…

Seeing the sacred in the natural world — The juvenile hummingbird sucking nectar from the flowers in my back yard is loading up for its first flight south. It will fly alone, thousands of miles, across the Gulf of Mexico, to a winter home it has never seen. That’s quite the undertaking for a three-inch creature that weighs…

How close are we to truly understanding the universe that we inhabit? Does nature exist apart from our idea of it? For as long as we have been using the word “nature,” we have assumed that there is a certain order to things, that immutable laws rule the universe. Logic…

A painful glimpse into the reality of being human. — Each morning while eating breakfast, I get the news from various sources, checking in on what the rest of humanity is doing. By then I’ve done a couple hours of literary work, along with some reflection, and feel I have a good bead on things. But the news confounds me. …

What the wild teaches us about ourselves and the world. — Living in the Information Age, it is all too easy to mistake knowledge for wisdom. This is not news, of course, to anyone who pays close attention to cultural trends. Facts increase exponentially, but we spend less time than ever reflecting upon them. The movement away from reflective, introspective thinking…