Crossing Nebraska

Every so often I find myself drawn to one of the books of my youth. Part nostalgic reflection, part introspective rediscovery, part discovery anew, rereading a great work of literature after many years of lived experience can be an interesting endeavor. I first read Herman Hesse’s The Journey to the East back in my youth. I’d been introduced to his work when I read Demian for a college humanities class, and I then went on to read Steppenwolf , Siddhartha , and “ The Journey ” in fairly quick succession. For some reason, though, I subsequently began and then abandoned mid-read The Glass Bead Game ( Magister Ludi ). Perhaps it’s fitting that I should wait until later in life to finish that one given the fact that it was Hesse’s final novel and all. Such a thought especially resonates with me now that I’ve discovered that I am presently the same age that Hesse was upon completion of The Journey – a realization that has me wondering whether I finally have enough life experience in my ...

It can be pleasant at times to remain asleep – snuggled under the covers in our comfy bed, strolling through fantastical dreamscapes entirely of our own creation. And even after we rise, we may remain lost in reverie for much of the day – savoring our dreams, and pondering ways to bring their deliciousness into reality. Yes, the real world can be harsh at times, and sometimes we succumb to an overwhelming urge to simply escape into our fantasies for a time. The problem comes when we confuse our fantastical dreams with reality. Spiritual growth is often likened to waking up. When we wake up in the spiritual sense we begin to see the dreamlike nature of the life that we are living. Those awesome achievements that we once celebrated, that we’ve been so proud of for so long, that we thought defined who we are – we come to see them as meaningless in the ultimate sense. Our pursuit of them and the importance we once gave to them comes to be seen as but a dream. Cassandra was a pr...

A friend and I were driving from Colorado Springs down to Santa Fe yesterday. The following poem virtually leapt onto the page of my notebook as we skirted the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rocky Mountains. I present it here in pretty much first-draft form.           A Sangre de Cristo Surrender     Dying slowly, and comfortably, must be similar to this... Dying joyfully, and wholeheartedly, must be just a little bit like this...   Like looking out at mountains rooted deep within your heart, and watching clouds billow like the warm breath of a billion prayers offered up to heaven.   Like dancing with so many antelope across an endless field, and sinking like snowmelt deeper and deeper into the earth.   You know me well. You know what words we've had. But good and bad are now so very far away. Everything is like a smile growing wider, and brighter, unti...

From That Which We Already Know . This passage is from Chapter Nine of my forthcoming book: It likely goes without saying that I was a quiet child, pulled as if by some magnetic attraction to places of solitude that weren’t always easy to find. You see, my father was then a young schoolteacher, with a family that was fast outgrowing our modest home. Compounding matters was the fact that entrance to my older sister’s bedroom required passage straight through mine. Thus, I had no quiet space inside that I could really call my own. I had to find it. Cover Artwork And that is how the Nursery became my refuge from the moment I was old enough to venture out beyond the garden gate. I could be alone there to enjoy the silence whenever I needed. Perhaps that’s another reason Mark Patrick’s tiny room was so appealing, sparse as a monk’s quarters though it was. Sure, his half brother was around for at least some of the time, but things must be different with a brother, I likely reasoned. But thi...

The world is broken. From the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, to police and citizens battling in the streets of Ferguson, the world is broken. From the inhumane and exploitative factory farming practices that put cheap food on our tables, to the murderous rampages of the drug cartels down in Mexico, the world is broken. From the actions of those with money and power who use them both to keep them both, to our dependence on cheap fossil fuels that is driving climate change and the likely extinction of numerous species, the world is broken. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful. I think this brokenness can be fixed, as long as we come to understand its nature. The nature of the world’s brokenness is that we all too often think that the brokenness is somewhere else, or in someone else. We rarely grasp the fact that the brokenness is in each and every one of us. Ah, but don’t we all behave like little despots much of the time! It’s just that when we wield whatever power...

From That Which We Already Know . This passage is from Chapter Four of my forthcoming book. Included in the assortment of Christmas ornaments that my family unpacked each holiday season was a set of six sturdy aluminum foil snowflakes in those anodized metal colorings now so familiar to us all: blue, green, red, violet, silver, and gold. They unfolded from the flatness of their latent state into eight-pointed wonders for which I took personal responsibility. Perhaps because of their size—they were about as big around as dinner plates—they usually ended up becoming my personal bedroom decorations. I’d climb up on the stepladder and attach their strings to the plaster ceiling with asterisks of masking tape that occasionally required a supplemental strip or two over the course of the holiday season. Cover Artwork I liked to watch them as I fell asleep. They’d spin one way when the furnace kicked on and then gradually unwind once it kicked off again, over and over again. I recall my paren...

From That Which We Already Know . This passage is the introduction to my forthcoming book: The back gate of the very first home I ever knew opened onto a tract of land that I’ll not forget for as long as I may live. Ostensibly, it served as the nursery for nearby Gerhardt Gardens. By the time I arrived on the scene, however, the various plots of shrubs and saplings had become so overgrown as to seem more like wilderness to the child that I was. If not exactly wilderness, it was a crazy quilt of different habitats stitched together and overlaid with whatever weeds, grasses, and woodland succession plants happened to have put down roots and begun working their way toward the sun. Notwithstanding its state of near abandonment, we still referred to those 20-odd acres of beautiful wildness as the Nursery. If nothing else, it was a nursery for young minds. Cover Artwork A well-worn path headed east from that gate, through a dark patch of woods squeezed between the corrugated steel fence of a...