Frogs & toads of Lost Lake

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Friends of Wisdom Prairie 2 Comments

Submitted by Howard Fenton (he/him), Friends of Wisdom Prairie, Sunday Assembly. The photo accompanying this article shows a grey tree frog, one of six frog and toad species that use Lost Lake as a breeding site during the spring and summer. While I believe it is a grey tree frog, I am not completely certain. It could potentially be a Cope’s grey tree frog, which is a distinct species but nearly impossible to differentiate from the grey tree frog by sight alone, even upon close examination. You might be wondering, “How can you tell them apart if they look so …

Wisdom Prairie: Notes on prairies and connections

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Friends of Wisdom Prairie 2 Comments

Submitted by David Kelly (he/him), Friends of Wisdom Prairie. When I write about prairies, I’m torn. Either I’m penning an elegy – prairies in Wisconsin are a mere hint of their pre-settlement vastness – or I’m composing an ode to a place that defies awe. To enter a prairie is to enter the past, a time when prairies covered the land. If you go deep enough in today’s prairie, you get a taste of a prairies’ long-ago grandeur. I suppose this writing is some combination. To appreciate a prairie’s beauty is also to mourn its loss. The early morning air …

Community of Joy: Quinn Casey

Amy AlstadCommunity of Joy 6 Comments

Submitted by Amy Alstad as an article to the May 29, 2026 issue of Weekly Wisdom. Dear Holy Wisdom Community, It is a real pleasure for me to feature Quinn Casey in this next installment of our ‘Community Joy’ series. Erin conceived these articles as a way to lift up what is good, true and joyful, as well as highlight community members whose contributions and connections to Holy Wisdom might not be visible to many. Quinn’s grandparents, Biby Gubler-Casey and Bob Smith, will be familiar to many in the Sunday Assembly community. For the past couple years, Quinn has been …

A new family at Lost Lake

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Friends of Wisdom Prairie, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Submitted by David Kelley (he/him), Friends of Wisdom Prairie It’s early spring. Tendrils of mist dance like sprites on the water. The lake’s surface is smooth like polished silver. Several ducks skim silently like shadows in the fog. This is Lost Lake, a relic of the glaciers, which covered much of Wisconsin until 10,000 years ago. Lost Lake is nestled in prairie and woodland just west of Holy Wisdom Monastery. You hike along the trail, which meanders around the lake. To your right oak trees rise like pillars, leaves rustling in the spring breeze. On your left emergent vegetation creates …

Monitoring Bird-Window Collisions at the Monastery

Amy AlstadUncategorized 1 Comment

Since the Fall of 2021, volunteers from Madison Audubon and Holy Wisdom have been monitoring windows at the Monastery and Retreat & Guest House for bird collisions. The volunteers detected 21 window collisions during fall 2022. This was more than the combined number of collisions documented during the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022. The greatest number of collisions occurred at glass doors at the Retreat & Guest House courtyard. Dr. Amy Alstad, the Director of Land Management noted “This is a protected area with vegetation that is attractive to song birds. As soon as it warms up, we …

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“Restoration and Care for the Earth,” The Holy Wisdom Podcast

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Podcast Leave a Comment

Want to be the first to hear every new episode? Click here to sign up for email notifications! What does it truly mean to “care for the earth“?  In this episode, take a deeper look at what “care for the earth” means from two leaders of our natural restoration efforts – retired Land Manager, Greg Armstrong and his successor, Amy Alstad, PhD. Both our guests share their knowledge of the restoration work that the sisters have done over the years.  You’ll also hear about Friends of Wisdom Prairie, one of our volunteer communities, and their amazing contributions to the land at …

Spirituality on the prairie

Lynne Smith, OSBCare for the Earth, Living in Community Leave a Comment

“When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language. In these ways we begin, I think, to find a home, to sense how to fit a place.” – …

Prayer and work

Lynne Smith, OSBCare for the Earth, Living in Community 2 Comments

It was 73 degrees in Middleton on Monday, April 8, 2019. Since Monday is a day of leisure for the sisters, I spent a large part of the day outside. I raked up the sticks dropped by the oaks during the winter in the front yard at Bingen House and listened to the birds. This will be the last week of free meals for the birds. The squirrels have learned how to climb down onto the feeder from the roof of the house, hang from the upper perches by their back feet and eat their fill from the lower seed …

Rodent wrangling and ambiguity

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Living in Community Leave a Comment

This week, on Tuesday morning, a group of us headed over to the garden. We hoped to beat the day’s heat and get some weeding and other work done before it became unbearably hot and humid. Sister Paz Vital and I were working in a fenced-in garden plot that contained rows of okra, cabbage, radishes, kale and a huge grouping of tomato plants. Suddenly, I heard a rustling in the corner of the garden near where we were working. The many, many weeds in that corner shook. A rabbit emerged, bounding through the garden. “BUNNY!” I yelled to Sister Paz. …

Sister Lynne, hoe in hand, working in garden, caring for the earth

Why care for the earth?

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community 1 Comment

Why care for the earth? Monday morning, while I am working in the garden, a turkey hen appears from behind the compost pile, shepherding two very young chicks across the grass toward the garden. The hen stops and turns back when she sees me, but the chicks continue ahead and take cover under the rhubarb plants. As I walk away trying not to scare them, the mother clucks softly to her chicks and they come running out of the grass and into the woods with her. Tuesday morning I see them again from my office window as they enter the …