I sit in a bedroom of my grandparent’s old house, a shelf over my head containing hundreds of thimbles collected by my grandmother who had no use for them, her fingers tougher than any ceramic after sewing the blue jeans, feed sack dresses, and cloth diapers of seven children...

Sometimes people kneel to pray. Sometimes people kneel to play: a girl on a sidewalk with a piece of chalk; a boy on a creek bank skipping a stone. Sometimes people kneel to work...

The truck rumbles to a stop, gravel crunching underneath the tires. The doors on the old pickup slam shut, causing blackbirds to flee into the morning light. We ease our way down to the river, waves lapping the city park sidewalk. Debris crunches beneath our feet: sticks, moss, cicada shells. On the side of a rusted walking bridge, chalked in white: John 15:13.

I have never been to Rome, but I’ve been to the Rockies. No offence, Michelangelo, but no Renaissance glory can compare to the beauty of Creation. I suppose this is why I love the story of the Lord’s Transfiguration atop Mt. Tabor.

Metal slides shimmering in sunshine/Slope down to the soft sand below...

I have a horse named Buddy. He is gentle and eager to please. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence. He lets other horses push him around and, sometimes, they beat him up pretty bad...

My ten-year-old fingers shove a nail into the feet a Christ I have drawn upon some discarded wood laid across the workbench in my dad’s shop...

As a priest, when I prepare engaged couples for marriage, my mind returns to my sister’s wedding over sixty years ago....

We crawl through charred landscape, trees like burnt toothpicks against a twenty-foot cliff. “To the next ravine!” My buddy’s voice raked in my ear. “Hurry!” His voice downshifts to a husky whisper. “Remember, grunt, we’re in enemy territory!” I scramble behind him...

Street lamps circled the city blocks like lights on a Christmas tree. The snow, silent and soft, swirled amid steeples and tenements. It was around 3 AM...

I didn’t expect the fatherhood of the priesthood to be so analogous to natural fatherhood. For instance, I feed my children while making faces to help them eat the Bread of Life from my consecrated hand…

In Genesis, Eve was created in the garden. But Adam was created in the wild, before the garden took shape. Formed from dust in the outback, his soul—and hence the soul of every man—would bear the imprint from that primitive place where God molded mud into muscle...