Holy Nature | Paula

Thus, Holy Nature Paula is not animism. It is —the belief that God permeates the world but also transcends it. For the follower of Paula, Nature is the Host (the sacred bread), not the High Priest.

She is often painted in Byzantine-tinged frescoes wearing a tunic of undyed burlap, woven with living moss. Her halo is not gold, but a translucent ring of captured sunlight (a “solar aureole”). In her left hand, she holds a broken rosary whose beads have sprouted into wild berries; in her right, a single, unlit dandelion clock. At her feet, a hare sleeps beside a fox—not miraculously pacified, but because both recognize her as part of the terrain. holy nature paula

: The book serves as a "holy" record—a way to keep her daughter's spirit alive through the power of storytelling when physical nature fails. Saint Paula : Nature and Devotion Saint Paula of Rome Thus, Holy Nature Paula is not animism

“I was cynical about mixing mysticism with ecology. But Paula’s writing on ‘The Cracked Bark’ showed me that Christ, the wounded healer, is present in the scars of trees. I now hold my morning prayers in a sycamore hollow. That is my cathedral.” She is often painted in Byzantine-tinged frescoes wearing

She lived without fire or bread. In winter, she slept in the belly of a fallen oak. In spring, her tears, shed for dying saplings, were collected by finches as medicine for blighted crops. When a drought struck seven villages, the people came to cut her sacred grove for firewood. She did not argue. Instead, she lay down at the tree line and let morning glory vines grow over her mouth. The villagers, ashamed by her utter non-resistance, left their axes in the dirt. That night, it rained for the first time in nine months.