“The soul has two faces. One is directed toward your life, the other toward God.”
Meister Eckhart
The Altared Heart is a place and a practice. It’s both the harvest and a new planting from a journey that started, ended, and began again in the Arizona desert. It’s an offering of thirty years of seeking and God’s ever-present call and answer. The paradoxical reminder that we would not be searching, as St. Augustine reminds us, if we had not already been found.
The logo for The Altared Heart is a manifestation of my own personal experience of the Divine. It is a combination of the natural world — its trees and plants and flowering beauty— with the reverence of Native American wisdom and the devotion of Christian Mysticism. The altar is made of natural wood and adorned with a wreathed heart of Lillies, the traditional flower of Easter, and the Resurrection. The candle represents the eternal light at the center of all things. The turkey and hawk feathers are symbols of spirit presence and offering. The cross represents the path of forgiveness and the holy teachings of Christianity and the crow, finally, is the keeper of the laws and the mysteries.
The foundation of my work is faith. It’s method is a balance of sacred teaching and radical unknowing for God is both law and mystery. Interwoven is my reverential relationship with the natural and invisible world, which I see as a physical manifestation of God’s presence and a live and interactive force available for support, guidance, and wisdom. I have spent decades on farms with horses and know what it means to work to the bone in all weather. Unknowingly, I began many years ago to practice The Rule of St. Benedict, and my life is a testament that simple living, hard work, devotion, and service can bring a happiness that cannot be explained. I live in-tune and necessity with the seasons and embrace the natural circle of life, which includes death both accidental and devastating and ultimately miraculous and healing.