The pager of the hospital chaplain buzzes on the glass tabletop of his desk, rattling the pennies that lay beside it. He picks it up and squints at the screen. “Code Blue in the surgical waiting room. We need to go.” He stands and throws on his blue sports coat, then tugs on the bottom hem, “Follow me.”

It is two days before Christmas, and the excitement and anticipation of what is to come in the following days is evident in the parish office: lights are strung about the tree in the corner, reflecting their soft light off of the glassy red ornaments; tins of candy line the reception desk; Christmas cards form a pile of their own among the mess of papers on my desk. The phone rings. It is a call from the mortuary down the street....

During my first year of priesthood, I would keep the livestream of St. Francis' tomb pulled-up on my desktop. (you can find it on the webpage of the Basilica in Assisi). The live video of his real grave all the way in Assisi would be full screen whenever I left the office: pixelated vigil candles flickering in the dark. Waiting...

I enter the elevator, push a button, a bell dings and the doors split open. I step out into the smell of hand sanitizer and plastic. The nurse sitting at the desk looks at me. I walk over. "I am the priest here to visit the patient in Room 488"...

The way the cottonwoods sang in the summer breeze, the sound of the dead grass crunching beneath bare feet, the color of the sand as it blew off into the distance. Mr. Allen, now blind, recalls it all with astounding detail...

A white dress spreads open in a twirl, absorbing the blue lights of the DJ table that strobe across the room. My cousin, Macy, spins beneath the hand of her new husband. Behind them, a row of little girls line the dance floor, slack-jawed at the sight...

On my day off, I escape to my uncle’s farm and climb into the cab of a tractor. I turn the key and bump the throttle a notch above idle. Beneath the driver’s platform, hydraulics and pistons rumble...

The clip begins at the scene of an accident: flashing lights, a traffic jam, smoke rising into the air from an overturned car. In the highway-turned-parking lot, the driver’s door of a silver pickup swings open, as heat waves rise from asphalt and automobiles...

Ms. Davies’ wrinkled face scans the room. “I been livin’ in this contry for over 65 yeers.” She leans in and puts the backside of her hand flat against the smiling corner of her mouth. “But I’m still the Queen’s gurl!”

The foreheads of four men leak beads of sweat as they sway shoulder to shoulder, like a buoy tipping back and forth at the gentle wake of a motorboat. A statue of the Virgin Mary, hands folded at her breast and face resolute yet gentle, towers above them...

I had never seen a field of wildflowers quite like it. The ground had responded to the spring rains with a fertility that flashed flames of fire: reds, oranges, and yellows dancing in the wind like the tongues above the apostles on Pentecost...

My four-year-old niece is in my arms, her wispy blonde hair floating above her head like spider webs adrift the fall wind. We are jumping on a discarded box-spring mattress near a pond on the backside of a spillway dam. A giggle bursts from her lungs. “Again!!” This time, we are astronauts on the surface of the moon...

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...

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.

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

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...

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...

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…