Month: March 2014

darkness and light

  Light in the desert is different than it is anywhere else.  My favorite gospel is the Gospel of John in which light is the co-star with Jesus and alongside friendship. The prologue of John's gospel - that song which begins chapter one- is full of references to light and...

words, rocks and life

  Last night I watched The Book Thief with some friends after a long dinner of an appetizer pizza with apricot, brie, garlic and olives, some sushi made with freshly roasted nori, avocado and sticky rice along with some some vegetable penang curry.  We talked and we laughed and cried...

perspective

There are two images in this blog.  They are both one photo I snapped just before my Godson and I climbed this tree just for laughs and giggles.  But the two ways the tree is seen in these two photos tells a story.  It is an old story, often quoted...

learnings in Lent

These purple flowers were growing in the desert alongside the path I was taking recently in the desert.  There is nothing around them much.  There is a barbed wire fence for some cattle which seem otherwise engaged in some distant part of this land.  There is a lot of lava...

something good

Trusting that God has existence under control and is unfolding life the way it should is hard.  I have friends who say that there is a God but that God does not care what happens to us. And I can see how easy it would be to think that.  God...

gouges

Prayer does't just wash over one in a hallmark-greeting-card sort of way. Prayer will actually change the topography of one's being.  It would be easy to say that it changes the soul, but then we could so easily spiritualize the entire thing.  It changes the soul but it changes our...

bounty

In the Hopi language, this plant is called Masi ousvie. It lives in the desert and thrives even in such harsh landscapes.  It's nick-name in the west is Mormon Tea and its medicinal, technical  name is Ephedra Viridis. I came across it a lot as I hiked.     The...

lenten terrain

  The terrain of lent can be daunting.  Truly looking hard at our lives in this season is not so much about how sinful you are (though the church will enjoy the power-play of that conversation)  as much as it is about where you find freedom and where you do...

Beauty-seeing is a choice

The Buddhists say that dissatisfaction is a threat to a happy life.  Jesus invites us to consider the lilies of the fields and it is the saying which I most long to be able to do and the one I am least able to do.  Forgive me but being a...

an icon to God’s Glory

Someone once helped me to express my belief in God by using the creation as a pathway to that belief.  We sometimes know people not simply by what we experience of them, but by what we experience of what they create.  One of the things I know about Kai is...