When I was young, wearing shoes in summer was a luxury reserved for Sunday Mass. No shoes? No problem! Except when my father needed help sorting calves in the stables. “It’s good fertilizer,” he’d say. “It’ll make you grow." Now that I’m retired, I’ve reverted to going shoeless much of the time. Not only that, my house is part of a barn...

From a distance, the cloth patch on my shirt—vaunting the Lone Star of Texas—looks like a badge. The two-way radio on my belt commands respect. Mounted on my steed with a Stetson pulled low over my brow, I’m tempted to introduce myself as Fr. Walker, Texas Ranger...

It was a day of packing straw in a barn. On the fifth load, one of the bales broke and sprayed slabs of straw across the mow. My great-nephew, Patrick, kicked the hunks on the backs of Holsteins in the stable below...

My four-legged companion, Guapo, gazes at the passing countryside with a contented expression. I, on the other hand, am caught up in complicated rumination...

It’s 7 AM. The tent is folded, the cooler packed, and I’m gassing up at a filling station in Doe Run, Missouri. Yesterday, Guapo and I logged over seven hundred miles on our Midwestern road trip...

It’s after midnight and near freezing. My buddy, Carter, and I stand still and peer into the canyon. It has sharp shadows. The moon lights up the flat surfaces of rock. The coyotes start yelping and there is a gentle rumble behind us...

When a teenager attends a religious retreat, a moment arrives when he or she is handed a folder stuffed with letters. These letters of support, written by parents, teachers, coaches and friends, express the love and admiration we often fail to articulate in day-to-day life...

Gian Sardar wrote a book about her father who grew up in Kurdistan. “I saw my father as a boy in fields of blood-red poppies,” she said in an interview. “I imagined the mud huts he lived in, the sound of the call to prayer early in the morning and the howl of the planes that brought destruction to the land..."

The courtroom was packed. Lawyers, reporters, county commissioners and law enforcement officials crammed into the benches next to ex-offenders, recovering addicts, clergy...

In high school, books by John Steinbeck were assigned reading: The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl and The Red Pony. I loved those books. Now that I’m getting ready to retire, it’s time to read Travels with Charley: In Search of America...

The Road, a film based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, unfolds in a devastated world where every city lies in ruins, animals no longer exist, all plant life is destroyed and bands of cannibals roam the country. At the center of the story, a father and young son journey toward the ocean...

The kid slouches over a plate of stew, eyes glued to a phone, a storm of red hair billows beneath his cap. I unfold my napkin and glance at his dad. “Zeke,” he says. “Put the phone away.”

I have a great-nephew who bears my name. When I get a chance to introduce him to someone, I always point out that he is the “new and improved model.” And I’m sincere about that...

A lynching took place in Maysville, Kentucky in 1889. Over a thousand people traveled to witness the murder of a man condemned without a trial...

I am helping a parishioner pour a concrete driveway. He points to the wooden form at the edge of the dugout pad. “I paid eight bucks for that 8-foot 2x4.” He shakes his head, “Last year, the same size board cost two bucks..."

I envy pilots, bronc riders and quarter-backs. Their jobs require grit and fortitude and they earn the respect they receive. Some professions, by their nature, elicit admiration and high regard. These days, priesthood is not one of them...

A short story by Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried,” centers on items that soldiers in Viet Nam stuffed into their pockets while on patrol: Bibles, cigarettes, tooth picks, letters from home. Sometimes, something as simple as a pack of Planters Peanuts helped those grunts remember where they came from and who they were...

I shoveled a path to the church doors this morning with a wind chill of -16. I felt alive...

The morning drive to my mission church is treacherous. The snow-packed road points a narrow path up a steep hill. I chide myself for not cancelling Mass. Nevertheless, my truck crunches ice beneath its wheels like a dog gnawing a bone...

As a priest, celibacy is nothing less than a lifelong Search and Rescue mission. With no family at home, there is nothing to hold me back. So, I give my all...