I was recently interviewed by Katherine Overall-Cass for the SGM blog about my 2023 book Rain Walk. It turned into a great conversation about a sacramental encounter with the elements and contemplative art-making…
—
From the interview…
You have commented that Rain Walk is the most contemplative of your five books. Can you say more about that?
A contemplative way of being is core to my creative life and approach, so that has been important in all my books. But I think this one is more explicitly contemplative.
The experience at the centre of the book is contemplative by nature – walking in the rain as a deliberate act desiring encounter, carrying the reality of the human condition, with an intentional receptivity to the divine, to the transcendent.
That is then passed through a contemplative lens in the form of a poem, and deeper thinking about the experience through the essay. Those language forms make the contemplative spiritual aspect a bit more explicit, including themes of sacramentality and such.
I don’t say this in the book, because the idea has only just occurred to me now: perhaps nature and the rain were the clothes of God for me that day.
The Sacrament of Breathing 