WOOD-SOLACE, or a Return to Belonging
WOOD-SOLACE, or a Return to Belonging
Best Selling Poetry Collection 2023
Wood-Solace, or a Return to Belonging by Lisa Lundeen
At a time in her life when beauty felt in short supply, healthcare chaplain Lisa Lundeen turned to nature's bright colors and tidy symmetry for soothing. She began what became a flourishing spiritual practice of botanical photography, often floral portraits, on walks through gardens and woods.
Years later, insomnia struck during the worldwide pandemic, and Lundeen again looked to art for healing. Rooting into her Quaker tradition of sitting in quiet, expectant waiting for the sacred to draw close, this time Lundeen spent the dark hours engaging with words on the page.
Together, these disciplines of attention have become a genre-transcending volume of invitations to go deeper into one's own noticing. Wood-Solace models meditation through creativity, encouraging the reader-beholder to savor each pairing in contemplative, restorative stillness and celebration.
ISBN: 979-8-88757-168-3
"Nature is meant to be experienced with all the senses. Lisa’s photography captures the visual beauty of gardens, woodlands, and rivers, and her words bring to life the rich shapes, textures, and patterns of the landscape. Together these bring a sense of calmness, restoration, and hope."
-Catherine Crowder, Horticultural Therapist, Registered
"Lisa’s beautifully written poetry both amplifies and deepens the soul’s response to the physical and spiritual world. Her accompanying photographs perfectly represent the themes and tones of the poems. I am refreshed each time I return to her work."
-Nancy Whitt, PhD, Professor of English Emerita, Samford University
"Wood-Solace is an earth prayer, a work of art and word and magic that weaves a tender and expansive offering of both heart and soul. I absolutely loved this book. It has a resonance that echoes in the bones and a timelessness that speaks to anyone who has ever loved this wild and wondering earth."
-Molly Remer, MSW, DMin, author of Womanrunes, Whole and Holy, and Walking with Persephone
"I enjoy spending time in this world with a speaker and witness who is mother, granddaughter, healer, human, spirit who invites us into close attention, unexpected beauty, connection, and discovery—outside and in. Images and poems go together to create a place of refuge and, in the speaker's own words, "truth," where "aridity calls for deeper/ seeing," and where, if you enter into a deeper form of looking "you allow yourself/ to burst into flame."
-Nadia Colburn, PhD, author of The High Shelf and founder of Align Your Story school
