Lucinda Mary Vardey is a writer who lives a semi-solitary life in an ancient Tuscan property in Italy. Married to writer, ethicist and theologian, John Dalla Costa, she developed her close relationship with nature as a child growing up in England. The eldest daughter of writer/artist parents, she would spend hours in their garden with her siblings and ventured into the surrounding playing fields when needing time alone. This time alone was precious to her. She would often lie in the tall grasses to gaze at the clouds and the vast skies beyond, when she lost all sense of time caught up in the wonder of what she perceived as the heavens and God’s dwelling place.

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Amongst her closest friends were animals. She raised and bred guinea pigs, some of whom lived far longer than their usual life span. And she loved horses and when old enough saved her pocket money for riding lessons at the local stable. Listening to music, playing the piano, reading and writing adventure stories for her school friends were her favourite pastimes. After school and college, where she won awards for piano performance and ballet, she ventured into book publishing in London. Yet she longed for bigger canvases for her career, and more unpopulated lands to discover, and chose Canada as her new home.

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Northern Ontario provided food for her soul with its windswept landscape and patterns of lakes. Summers spent alone in a rustic off-the-grid cabin were more blissful than anything she had experienced, where she found solace being accompanied by tall elegant pine trees, the warmth of smooth rocks under her bare feet, and the thrill of swimming naked in fresh cool waters.

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The world of books and the literary business gave opportunities for plenty of travel. She recalls times alone in the Australian outback, a deserted Geizer park in New Zealand, the Rockies in Canada, and Big Sur in California, as hugely significant in bringing her closer to the profound sense of spiritual presence in nature.

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In her late thirties, Lucinda was called to change careers and focus on studying the worlds of consciousness and spirituality with yoga and gestalt therapy. She began a 4-year training course in experiential teaching and soon afterwards offered retreats and pilgrimages to the sacred places in Tuscany, Italy.

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The country where Saint Francis of Assisi worked his miracles with animals and all natural life, beckoned, and an abandoned farm with its embracing stream was waiting for her. Following restoration, it became a retreat house for pilgrims for more than a decade, where most of Lucinda’s later books were written, including God In All Worlds: An Anthology of Contemporary Spiritual Writing; The Flowering of the Soul: A Book of Prayers by Women and Traveling with the Saints in Italy: Contemporary Pilgrimages on. Ancient Paths. During this period, she was commissioned to compile a book with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, called A Simple Path which became an international bestseller.

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Lucinda began researching and writing The Green Soul: Returning to Our Sacred Belonging in Nature at the onset of a long illness. It has taken her 20 years to complete the book.

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She presently shares writings on contemplative spirituality, mysticism, creativity and renewal on www.sapielbooks.com.