Celebrate Anyway
Yesterday we went to visit our Venezuelan friend at the Eloy Detention Center. She celebrated her birthday last week. We sent her a card and spoke to her on the phone, but it’s always better to see someone in person, and I can imagine it’s tough to be in a mood to...
Not Giving in to Despair
Easter occurs very late this year, so Lent is also beginning later—certainly later than it did last year, when it fell on Valentine’s Day—and what a paradox that was! This start to Lent also feels rather paradoxical, because yesterday the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona...
Millions of Years and Counting
The Grand Canyon celebrated one hundred years as a national park last week. As I mentioned in my prior post, we visited recently—two weeks before all the centennial festivities. While it might have been fun to be there for the celebration, somehow that century seems...
One Human Flock at the Grand Canyon
This past week was spring break back east, and our younger son and his family visited for their annual winter migration south. They expected warmth, but Arizona greeted them with rain and snow! We had planned a trip to the Grand Canyon and were very fortunate that our...
Flock Together and Seek Abundance
Last week, in my post on the state of our various unions, I included an image of a flock of snow geese. It seemed an appropriate image to illustrate the color and nature of the conformity I saw in one portion of the congressional audience at the State of the Union...
The State of Our Imperfect Unions
I broke my television-news fast to watch the State of the Union speech last week. (I’ve been choosing to ingest news in less emotional, more balanced written form, mostly through The Week.) Early the next morning, I lay awake, processing what I’d witnessed. It wasn’t...
Baby Steps on a Long Journey
On Tuesday, Henry and I, along with a deacon who works with Henry on the border, went to the first hearing for our young Venezuelan friend in the Eloy Detention Center. It felt like taking baby steps, because the lawyer (hired by Cruzando Fronteras) told us that this...
The Value of Experience
My editing work is influencing my spiritual life again. I love it when that happens. I consider it a great honor to get to read what I edit—and to edit spiritual works so that often what I read is edifying, and sometimes challenging, for me. I value the experience,...
An Abundance of Love in Challenging Times
Today’s gospel reading in the liturgical calendar is the story of Jesus changing water into wine. It’s his first public miracle, and it’s all about abundance. Last week, I talked about abundance in the natural world, and today I want to talk about abundance of the...
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