Icons of Loss and Grace

'Whether Texas State University lecturer and lay Episcopal chaplain Susan Hanson is hiking with her students or grubbing alone in the alkaline soil of her small garden, she sees glimpses of God everywhere...In careful prose that sings on the pages, Hanson eschews pat answers while inviting the reader to explore deeper spiritual truths' - ""Christianity Today"". 'From the marmot in Colorado to the javelina of South Texas, from the False Dayflower in her yard to the palmettos in the Ottine swamp, from the Cooper's hawk to the cormorant Hanson calmly and gracefully informs us. And she relates all of this to the humans who live with these and other things, things natural, every day, and wondrous' - ""Southwestern American Literature"". 'Susan Hanson offers snapshots of all the natural glory that is Texas. Her kaleidoscope of words pixel together scenes of God in nature be it in the small ramblings of a rolly polly, the flight of a butterfly or cardinal, maggots feasting on a roadkill possum or, especially, in the time-sacred act of gardening...This book offers the best of a Walt Whitman flair for poetic natural observation translated into prose...But, most importantly, this collection of 'moments in time' offers a new set of new eyes with which to perceive Texas' vast and minute beauty' - Suzanne L. Moore, ""Times Record News"". 'Susan Hanson finds comfort, meaning, and joy in the natural worldin the turning of the seasons, the growth of a seed, the flight of an owl...Dip into it when you need to be heartened, grounded, and centered' - Lorraine Anderson. It is through brief moments in our lives that the spiritual most often communicates itself. Fleeting as they are, these small encounters with the familiar wild instruct us in dealing with change and loss. They are the icons that point not so much to answers, but to a way of living in the tension between life and death. Each of these essays represents one moment. Most of them occur very close to home. There is nothing exotic about any of the landscapes Susan Hanson depicts the oak mottes and scrub of the South Texas Plains, the rocks and rivers of Central Texas, the soil in her own backyard yet these are the sorts of...