About

All that is real and good comes from God. The role of a priest (“the cloth”) is to offer the gifts of God’s earth (grain and fruit), reimagined by human culture (bread and wine), back to God in thanks and praise. We invite God to bless those gifts and share in our joy, and then we distribute the meal to everyone around. A love feast! If you’re human, we believe you’ve been given the role of a priest.

The people who followed Jesus in the gospel stories (“the wandering”) didn’t always know where he was going. Often, they wandered with him across wild places and ended up far from a familiar meal at home. Following Jesus today might feel like wandering too. Now we see him in one place; now we lose sight and scan the horizon again. He’s further up and further in, and we must leave behind what is familiar to find the life we cannot lose.

What does it take to carve out a home in unfamiliar territory, or stability in uncertain times? The gifts of God are popping up even in the most unlovely places: between the cracks in our sidewalks, in church parking lots, among fields of corn and soybeans. We couldn’t shut out God’s earthly gifts out if we tried, but we can grimly overlook them. To find a home in the wandering, we must learn to see what is real and good around us.

When we acknowledge those small gifts in thanks, Jesus will bless them. They will spread from hand to hand until all of us are comfortably fed. Jesus, who will never leave or forsake us, can make a home for us, always and everywhere.

If the Wandering Cloth is an offering of thanks in uncertain times, let’s watch together for what God will do with it!

The Wandering Cloth is an ecospiritual lifestyle blog for the people of Chicagoland. The prefix “eco” is distantly related to the Greek word oikos, referring to a home or a dwelling place. (Anyone remember home ec?) Ecospirituality brings our spirituality home: to our physical bodies, to our dwelling places, to our communities, to our environment. To foster cultural and ecological healing, our spirituality must return to the earth, and to our bodies, where God dwells with us.

Many churches and religious institutions have turned spirituality into something separate from the real world and our real bodies. Much doctrine and preaching has had little bearing on the lives we actually live. Sadly, it’s easier to exploit the earth, and to exploit people, when we can’t track the practical and physical ramifications of what is being said and done in God’s name. Let’s have a spirituality we can trace in the real world.

What does God have to do with salamanders, or supermarkets, or solar panels? If we can work it out, there is much joy (and sorrow) to be had. We gain an old-and-new depth to our humanity when we can feel the state of the land in our bodies—when our chest bursts in celebration of our sister earth’s lively abundance, and when our belly clinches in grief for where she is torn and diseased. We cannot be anywhere else but here, and God is right here with us. Let’s have a spirituality we can trace in the real world.

The Wandering Cloth is an ecospiritual lifestyle blog for the people of Chicagoland. Not many of us are indigenous to this land. We go about our lives from supermarket to digital marketplace, rarely making meaningful contact with the land where we live. The land of Chicago is not all well. Healthy ecosystems that support diverse life, even human life, are diminishing. We are not all well. Healthy communities that support diverse life, our actual lives, are vanishing. We live in our heads and through screens, and our bodies and the land suffer. But we can become native to this land, a kind of second birth.

Yes, we are invited to become native to Chicagoland. At the Wandering Cloth, we want to imagine together what that newly native life can be like for a diverse people. Our content focuses on personal stories from real people here, about experiences we’ve had here, activities that have taken place here, goods and art that are made here, places we’ve explored here, problems we’re seeing solved here, and organizations and businesses that do good work here, just to sketch some abstract possibilities. What kind of ecospiritual life can a person in Chicagoland have? Let’s expand our imaginations together!

The Wandering Cloth is an ecospiritual lifestyle blog for the people of Chicagoland. We want to feature diverse voices sharing real stories of living in loving relationship with the land of Chicago. We are inviting everyone! Young and old, straight and queer, religious and secular, liberal and conservative, mystic and scientist, Black and white, homemaker and professional, friend and stranger. If we didn’t mention you, O person of peace, we want you to “come down and join our band”!

We focus on topics that can bring us all together in thankfulness and love for the land where we live. Each person has a unique way of connecting with the natural world. We hope to expand the possibilities for others by sharing the personal and specific ways each of us do this. Topics can be as diverse as the people of Chicagoland. Here are a few ideas:

• Experiences in favorite natural spot
• Personal experiments in reducing waste
• Recipes for enjoying wild foods
• Small-space gardening tips
• Stories of businesses and organizations doing good in the land
• Profiles of a beloved native critter or plant
• Songs, poetry, prayers, or visual art created in response to the land

But we hope you’ll bring your unique take! How do you receive the gifts of the land where you live (no matter how small), and what do you do with those gifts? How do you return the love you’ve received? Let’s talk about something good in the land of Chicago! But let it be true. Let it be personal. Let it be an act of thanksgiving.

Read more about pitches and submissions here.