The maps we carried were hard to read. Trail markers were scarce. When we lost our bearings, we had no choice but to press on.

The message on the billboard proclaimed, "Church Should be Fun!" I shook my head, "What garbage!"

You can take the boy off the farm, but not the farm out of the boy.

The Word of God does more than echo within our minds and souls, it resounds within forests and stadiums, rumbles like traffic amid sky-scrapers and apartment buildings. It forms farms from the soil of the earth and assembles factories from the labor of workers.

She rushes to the shelves to rummage through piles of hand-me-downs. “Mira! Mira!” The word means “Look!,” but today it sounds more like “Miracle!”

"Looks like we'll be renting an apartment," says Travis. "Interest rates are mighty high right now."

Water can carry ships, flood a city and, when pressurized, cut through stone like a child's finger through a piece of cake.

The elderly woman praying a rosary in the front pew of church? Her daughter is married to Ernest Hemingway’s son. The district judge who serves on the pastoral council? He was General Schwarzkopf’s driver during the first Iraq war.

Is the water in the creek safe for my cattle to drink? Will customers buy tomatoes at my roadside stand? Why are my chickens laying purple eggs?

I was fired up. I could hear conviction in my voice and felt intensity in my glare. But, as often happens when I assume the role of teacher, the instructor learned more than the students.

When I was a boy, my grandmother lived on a farm across the road from my parents’ farm. Like all grandmothers, she was the best grandmother in all the world.

Today, I shook Jesus’ hand. Well, kind of…

Ever try to convince someone that they are an important when they’re convinced they aren’t worth the time of day?

His songs swirl with dust, blizzards and the rugged life of ordinary ranch hands.

"I like my parish.” “What do you like about it?” “The men’s group.” "What do you do?” “We drink beer.”

It is late when I put the novel aside, but tiredness is not the reason that I close the book. I stop reading because the kid in the story is getting to me.

Whenever I contemplate the hands of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I think of the hands of my sister.

The park rangers asked if I would help vaccinate their herd of buffalo. “You bet!” I said.

I received a call to visit a mother and infant in a neo-natal intensive care unit. When I arrived at the desk, the nurse directed me to the wrong room.

The rector at the local cathedral is on a pilgrimage in the Holy Land. I covered his weekend Masses and experienced a pilgrimage of my own.