What kind of bird are you? (And how do you know?) My penultimate column, "Cowbird/Changeling," is out now in the latest issue of SageWoman Magazine.
Author: Alison Leigh Lilly
Alison Leigh Lilly grew up a shy Irish Catholic hippie girl, exploring the woods and fields surrounding her childhood home with the same curiosity and enthusiasm she would later bring to her studies of mysticism and nature spirituality. Seeking the spiritual heritage of her Celtic ancestors, she discovered poetry and story, mud and blood mingled with the scent of peat fires and the slick feel of damp stone. Eventually, these interests landed her roundly in the square hole of Academia, where she graduated valedictorian of her class, humbly accepted her degree, and ran for it.
She now resides in the lovely, rain-drizzled cityscape of Seattle, where she lives with her husband, her black cat and pet frog. She devotes her time to cultivating a spiritual life founded on peace, poesis, and attentive engagement with the inner and outer landscapes of wildness, wilderness and nature. She explores these themes through writing and visual art, and her work has appeared in a number of publications both in print and online. You can find an archive of her available work here.
How To Think In Public
There's so much I want to tell you — but how?
Snow Globe Starscape: Holiday Cards For Sale!
This series began with childhood memories of chilly winter nights. As a kid, I remember how the cold seemed to contract around you, drawing you closer to loved ones, making your world seem small enough to hold in the palm of your hand... There was a comfort in having nowhere to go and nothing to do, but also a restlessness and excitement to know that outside, a winter storm was raging.
Birches at Sunrise: Cards For Sale!
Birches have long been a symbol of new beginnings -- they're a pioneer species, one of the first to regrow in an area after a natural disaster, and their bark contains oils that make it especially good for kindling life-giving fires in the hearth (and heart) during the coldest, darkest months of the year.
Can Christians Be Animists?
Mark Wallace's new book, When God Was A Bird, represents a well-intentioned first step along the path towards Christian animism. Unfortunately, it is the same first step that Christians have been taking for hundreds of years. Can they do better? ...maybe.
Twice As Much Of Whatever We’ve Become
In light of the more serious challenges to free speech Twitter faces, and their inaction in rising to them effectively, bumping up the character limit from 140 to 280 seems largely irrelevant. What will we say in 280 characters that we haven't been able to say in 140?
Five New Poems: Evolving Gender and the Mask of Social Media
Masks are everywhere these days... and not just because Halloween is just around the corner. Sometimes we don't even realize the masks that we've been wearing -- the patterns and themes and synchronicities that have been lurking behind the mask of random chance in our lives -- until someone else points them out to us. That's sort of what happened to me when, by sheer coincidence (or was it?), a curiously thematic bunch of my poems all were accepted for publication during the month of October.
New Poems: Reclaiming the “Tweet” as Modern Haiku
I've been putting off writing a quick update post for you all, since I don't want to spam your news feeds and inboxes every time a new piece comes out... but at this point, the procrastination is getting a little bit silly! So for now, here are just a few of my latest poems (with more to come next week, so be sure to swing by and check those out, too!)...
New Poem: Abstracted
I can't tell you how honored I am to be included among a handful of amazing writers and artists in the most recent issue of Third Point Press, a literary journal that hails from my very own hometown of Lancaster, PA. (There's an extra special thrill in getting published somewhere that even your mom has heard of!) Check out my piece, "Abstracted."
I Blame Trump on Game of Thrones
I wonder what Jung would have to say about it, how for years now we have saturated the collective unconscious with stories of war, collusion and incest...
Alison Leigh Lilly 