Molly Wolf, a graduate of Grinnell College and Dalhousie University, is a freelance writer whose weekly "Sabbath Blessing" has been posted on two cyber lists. This paperback won the Catholic Press Association's Award for the Best First Book in 1998. Wolf is a gifted and imaginative practitioner of everyday spirituality. On these pages she writes about her own experiences and sees in them intimations of God's grace, playfulness and love.

Her walks reveal the many marvels of the natural world. For instance, in one piece the author takes time to appreciate the sprightly beauty of weeds — the kind that spring up through the cracks of cement and stand together swaying in abandoned lots:

"Life has a way of invading, riotously, the spaces of life that we make dead. Joy has a way of upspringing, whether we think it's right or not. It sneaks up on us at inappropriate moments, like funerals or periods of intense pain, and we may try to squish it down again out of a sense that it Just Isn't Proper . . . Surely God delights in the vagrant, the unruly, the jokers — the weeds. Otherwise, they would lack this beauty. Which is considerable. Without them, my walk would lose much of its delight, its gentle wild streak. What, really, is the difference between a weed and a wildflower, but our convenience?

"And I thought also: we need, all of us, to be tied to this earth, to have our toes in it — to be able to see ALL life, weeds included, and to see it honestly and lovingly, without having to reach for the hoe or the herbicide. For God made them all with love."

Whether writing about lilacs, the mud season, turtles, or dancing ants, Wolf keeps our eyes on the prize: the dazzling diversity and wonders abounding in everyday life. She finds opportunities in the internet, home and her encounters with other people to ponder the meaning of it all.