Hands Like Roots

Hands Like Roots

Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Life

Therese DesCamp
Santos Press, 2025
ISBN 9798992412864

Softcover, 172 pp.
9.0 X 6.0 X 0.4 inches | 0.5 pounds

Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled, Contemplative Life draws its subject matter from roots deep in science, spirituality, and a love of life. This liminal work integrates seemingly disparate knowledge-hydrology, cognitive linguistics, climate instability, embodiment-with the inner experience of prayer and meditation, creating an accessible, poetic, heart-opening whole. Authentic, impassioned, intelligent and vulnerable, Hands Like Roots is a real love story about a human heart and the Heart of the Ineffable.

Therese DesCamp started writing at the age of seven and hasn't stopped yet. She was long-listed for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize and has received awards for her scholarship, research, and teaching from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California and United Theological College, Montreal. Therese has taught at Pacific School of Religion; University of California, Berkeley; Graduate Theological Union; and Vancouver School of Theology. She is a member of the 2020 cohort of the Living School, a program of the Center for Action and Contemplation and works as an ordained minister and spiritual director.