“Intention” — it’s a word that gets loosely thrown around in spiritual circles these days: setting our intention to _____. For me, for as long as I can remember, the tone of the day was set by prayers with the intention to walk a path in a sacred manner, caring for all life along the way.

In the beginning, they were simple and spoken from the heart, and a bit of tobacco or cornmeal was blown upon the wind. More intricate prayers from prescribed cyclic ceremonies were memorization work with ancient plays that helped us flow through life and stay in the cycles of the planet.

When I started working in the field of ecopsychology while in college, I discovered most people did not know how to pray, so I became a maker of words, guiding people through their personal affirmations of empowerment and connection with something bigger than themselves.