In this interview, healthcare chaplain and author Lisa Lundeen shares the inspiration behind her spiritual practice of botanical photography and how it informed the writing of her new book, “Wood-Solace, or a Return to Belonging.” She discusses the role of art and meditation in the writing process and the themes of nature and belonging present in the book. Lundeen also reflects on the challenges and obstacles she faced while writing and the meaning behind some of her favorite poems and passages. Through her discussion, she hopes to offer solace and contemplation to readers.
What inspired you to start your spiritual practice of botanical photography?
My dad has a passion for ecology, and my mom loved horticulture, so I grew up in woods and garden beds. In college I took general botany, field botany, and ethnobotany, and I’m the kind of person who finds four-leaf clovers even when I don’t realize I’m looking.
The photography part came a little later, deepening in my 30s when I went through a hard and unexpected divorce, which coincided with the rise of good cell-phone cameras. At that time a friend on a similar path gave me powerful advice: “Spend time each day in beauty that you did not make and are not responsible for.”
Taking pictures of flowers, especially, became my way of seeking consolation: beauty and symmetry reminded me that there is order in the world even amidst my own upheaval. I got in touch with the transcendent, the sacred, the Holy Other. Using my phone made the practice simple, and I could share the fruits of my walks readily with friends through text and social media.
How did your experience with insomnia during the pandemic lead you to exploring the intersection of art and healing through words?
I’m a natural wordsmith and have done a lot of writing through my education and even my chaplaincy work, but I had only ever taken one formal poetry course—“Word, Words, and Transformation”—from the Ministry of Writing track in seminary.
Through some alchemical process that still seems a bit magical and fuzzy to me, I began to use early-morning hours to make little collages in what became an art journal. I discovered that creating a little picture meant that I was no longer confronting a blank page, so I felt less intimidated to start adding words.
At some point, I discovered writing challenges and then full online courses by Nadia Colburn, author of The High Shelf and founder of the Align Your Story School, who introduced me to a real sweet spot: a brief combination of mindful breathing practice, a reading of a poem, and a few minutes of supported writing time. Presto: my daily discipline was born!
Can you talk about your Quaker tradition of sitting in quiet, expectant waiting and how it influenced the writing in "Wood-Solace"?
At the root of their worship, Quakers—or the Religious Society of Friends—gather together in quiet listening for divine wisdom and guidance. This shared contemplative prayer is a foundation for how I center down into my own solitude, how I listen to patients and families, and how I practice mindful breathing and writing each morning. I am not just comfortable with stillness; I crave it. The poems that became “Wood-Solace” come from this discipline of seeking generative silence and playing with words and images in that space of deeper reflection.
How do you hope your book will encourage readers to engage with their own noticing and creativity?
“Wood-Solace” is a little unusual for a book of poetry because it includes images with the words. I hope that readers will enjoy the creative interplay between poem and photo, using their own imaginations to explore that “dialogue.” For example, what does a given picture bring up for you? How does it “speak” to the poem? How does it build a sense of place or connection? What happens if you read the poem aloud? What do you notice differently when you see and hear the words together?
Of course I would also be thrilled if readers felt inspired to explore their own playfulness with observation, language, and image—such as photography, drawing, painting, or sculpting. I would encourage readers to go on their own “parable walk,” Flora Slosson Wuellner’s term for a stroll in which one asks, “What is the message for me today?” while moving slowly and deliberately to notice details that might have special or symbolic meaning.
How do the themes of nature and belonging weave through the book?
Culturally, when we talk about “nature,” we often seem to designate something non-human, something that is apart from us ourselves. I hope “Wood-Solace” models a corrective to that limited perspective: We humans are part of nature, not separate from it, and all of our actions affect the life and landscape around us. We are nature, and nature is our home, our ultimate place of belonging. The poems in “Wood-Solace” invite the reader deeper into their own awareness of, in Gary Snyder’s words, how we occupy our “place in space.”
Can you discuss any specific challenges or obstacles you faced while writing "Wood-Solace"?
The trickiest part of the process was “retrofitting” the photos to match the poems! I spent hours scrolling through camera rolls and phone pictures to find an image that aligns with the tone or theme of each piece.
How has your spiritual practice of botanical photography informed or enhanced your writing?
Lovely question. In the spring and summer, flowers abound, so there is brightly-colored subject matter everywhere I look. In the winter, though, the world becomes more monochrome, and I have to turn to characteristics like texture, shape, and line for visual interest. That closer attention to detail shapes my writing, too. As I reread my longhand first drafts, I comb the text for common or repeated words that I could replace with something jazzier or more precise. I ask myself questions about exactly what feeling or thought I’m trying to convey, and seek to hone my imagery or language to get to the deeper kernel of insight or relatability—which sometimes involves making a simpler choice instead of a more complex one.
In what ways do you hope "Wood-Solace" will offer solace and contemplation to readers?
My deep wish is that readers will join me in marveling at the beauty that exists all around and within us. I became a poet because I got brave: I started playing with words on the page and then got comfortable enough with rejection to keep putting my work out there, both in formal submissions and in simple posts for my friends—and here I am with a book!
So too with photographs: It’s so funny to me that people often compliment my photos with a sense of awe, as though I created the subjects. I simply smile and shake my head, noting that I’m just showing them what’s already there—one needs only to look closely. My secret is excluding from the frame whatever I don’t want the viewer to see. For example, I took the photo on page 92, which accompanies “Another Spring,” in a shabby, disused parking lot. You’d never know that the blooms are situated not over a scenic pond, but a giant puddle in a pothole!
Can you share any specific poems or passages from "Wood-Solace" that hold particular meaning to you?
“When A Baby’s Coming in My Child’s Other House, I Dream of My Own Wilds” comes to mind because it describes wood-solace so intimately and tenderly: At a time when I was deep in grief, a fawn came to me in a dream, bringing comfort with the warmth of her own body against my back. Some of life’s laments can’t ever be solved, but from time to time the Universe brings us unexpected glimmers that console, redirect, or share other beauty.
I also have an interesting relationship with “Boulder Grows My Verse,” which won the Adult Category in the 2021 Ross Andrews Nature Poetry Contest of the Center for Human-Earth Restoration (CHER) in Raleigh, NC. CHER requested that winners record videos of themselves reading their works in order to share on social media. In practicing, I read that poem aloud so many times! I still think about the closing image, that lichens “build substrate / for poems that we didn’t know / could grow in such tiny crevices.” For me, wood-solace is also about wonder, delight, and potential.
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