Embracing Even a Firestorm
This past week I spent some time drafting sample meditations for an Advent series that I’m applying to write for a publisher. (If I get the job, I’ll tell you more about it and where you can, eventually, buy the book.) As I read the scripture passages assigned for the...
Flowering Season
The barrel cacti are blooming here in the Sonoran Desert. They are the latest in a long string of flowering plants that take their turn over the course of the year. The blooming season basically lasts almost all year, regulated more by rain than by temperature. In...
Mountains and Moments
Over the course of my life, I’ve met a lot of people who enjoy moments of being out in nature. They generally fall into two groups: mountain people and water people. That’s a generalization, of course—mountain lakes could feed the souls of both groups, I expect—but...
Ponds in the Desert and Fires in the Arctic
We had a violent microburst blow through our neighborhood this past week. We got hail, sixty-mile-per-hour winds, and almost an inch of rain in under an hour. We lost electricity for over two hours, and lost electricity again the next day as crews continued repairing...
Let the Sun Shine In
We’ve just passed the summer solstice here in the northern hemisphere. The sun is at its most powerful and the days are long. Despite temperatures hitting 100 degrees each day (the average temperature for Tucson in June), we marked the occasion by letting even more...
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