These short reflections and insights range in length from twitter-length to short essays. They’re free, so what’ve you got to lose but a few moments?
Bliss
I was hiking in a canyon off the beaten path just after dawn when I decided to reach a ridge and see if I could spy Monument Valley from it. I waded and zigzagged through the sage and Mormon tea, finally using a box-shaped juniper as my guidepost. Out here in southeast Utah, […]
I got a flat. Why not me?
I got sick. Why not me?
My dad died. Why not me?
I lost my job. Why not me?
She broke up with me. Why not me?
Someone stopped and helped me change my tire. Why not me?
I got well. Why not me?
I had a son. Why not me?
I got a better job. […]
Love wants not guilt as a sacrifice, as repayment for things given. It hopes instead gratitude as the choice of a generous heart. Gratitude is never forced from the receiver of a gift as a payment, but only accepted when we choose to give it. The age of the world is long because love waits […]
There are over 3 trillion trees on planet earth. No, I haven’t counted them. I might’ve missed one or two that way.
I’m surrounded by pinyon, juniper and ponderosa, with an understory of angry oakbrush that’s like a crowd at Wal-Mart on Black Friday to get through. A lot of the trees are dying. The pinyon, […]
I live in an area forested with pinyon-juniper trees. Groves of ponderosa and underlying oak brush take up the higher ground. In spring, draws carry the mountain runoff from the La Plata Mountains, about 13 miles away. The stems of the oak snap back across the face of the hiker like angry plastic plants. He […]
By the ego’s measure, I’ll always come up short. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll get exactly what I want. I’ll receive the pats on the back that I so crave. But it will never be enough. The problem with the ego’s measure – or the metric as it’s called – is that it’s one […]
No One
If there is a curse in this world, it is loneliness, an old woman once said.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that although there are more people on than ever, and the size of the earth hasn’t grown, people seem lonelier than ever, too. despite the telephones and televisions and teleconferencing, we’re dropping like […]
God is old and slow, someone once told me. Consider Old Man River (or Old Lady River, or Old They River). Rivers meander. The Goosenecks of the San Juan wind 5 river miles across a straight line of 3 miles. Rivers here out West have carved the most extensive canyon system in the world, but […]
Take a holograph, or a broken mirror. Any hologram contains all the information needed to represent the whole. I look into a fragment of a shattered mirror, and I can see my whole reflection.
The truth is holographic. What that means to me is that if I could live any one part of truth, I could […]
When I was a young man, I had a problematic relationship with my father. He had an explosive temper, and, well, so did I. I remember sitting for hours next to his workbench in our basement in Chicago, watching him build a kitchen nook. My dad was very handy. An electrician by trade, he could […]