The Story About Nature and Grace Journal

This blog began as a quarterly print journal from Autumn, 1997-Spring, ‘98. Nature and Grace Journal was 4 pages, then 8, reflecting on the ‘God and us’ situation. I’d make a hundred copies at Kinko’s and plant them in the entrance of the church I attended, the 10:30 Catholic Community. Our top-notch Denver independent bookstore, Tattered Cover Books, allowed me to place a stack in the Religion/Spirituality section.

By the third issue I had 35 paying subscribers, and it was seen by Father Richard Rohr who asked to reprint an excerpt in his then-newsprint journal, Radical Grace.

Meanwhile, Dr. John Kane, PhD, then a religion professor at Regis University in Denver, quietly (I had no idea) sent some of my work to his publisher, Loyola Press. An editor emailed me requesting an introduction and three chapters for a book for the target audience of 30-Somethings and older who sought a means of staying Catholic while navigating the secular world as modern, sophisticated and spiritually hungry adults who might easily find their needs met elsewhere.

This book would also address those who felt themselves pushed out of the Church: LGBTQ +allies, divorced and remarried without an annulment, those who felt a decision about abortion ought to be between a woman, her doctor and God, those women who felt called to ordination.  And I had to say, to Loyola Press and maybe to God, Who probably already knew, “Not now.”

The obstacle most of us work around in life is usually either a lack of Time or Money. I couldn’t grab this brass ring on life’s carousel, as much as I yearned to, because I was cranking out these pages (and the laundry) on weekend nights while my toddler slept or was with her father. The rest of the week I had three and sometimes four part-time jobs as a single mother.

Now, 20+ years later, I have the time, having retired from my psychotherapy practice and only seeing spiritual seekers. I now blog about many more spiritual matters, beyond Catholic identity and into the ongoing struggle between our human and therefore mortal limits, which our inner divine attributes call for us to transcend. We live in both worlds: secular and sacred.

~ Laura