How long do you need to sit doing nothing before you become extinct? This ancient rock heap in front of me holds that secret deep inside beneath the earth’s crust. Palo Huerfano, as the caldera in these Picacho Mountains is called, has a 12 million year history of dormancy according to geologists. That would seem to qualify as “extinct” because even in geological terms that’s a good long while.

I remember when Mount St. Helen’s blew back in 1980. At the time, I was working at a retreat center in the North Cascades above Lake Chelan. The volcanic eruption was…

During our Christmas gift giving this year my wife presented me with a small bag, deep plum colored. It was one of those translucent gauze bags with a ribbon cinch, like a jewelry gift bag which was mysterious because I don’t wear jewelry.

I untied the bow and expanded the cinch to reveal a small gold box. Again, jewelry? Couldn’t be. But then what? I opened the box and inside I found a tiny clam shell tied with another bow. My curiosity was running high at this point as I opened the shell to find a small note. …

I guess what I’m trying to say is, pay attention. As creatures of habit we fill the space around us with our decisions, our categories, and our unceasingly acquisitive store of data points. To be human is to carry around a satchel of these conceptual tidbits, eventually identifying that bag as ourselves.

This atomistic fallacy requires us to assert a rationalization of our existence. In this process we are… almost there — not quite — just about to add the final piece. We become puzzle piecers. But this puzzle has no edge pieces. And before you get too cocky about…

It’s a strange feeling to know you are somewhere near Paradise. I read the sign, “John Prine Ave.” as we passed through Drakesboro and knew it was true. The vanished town from the song was near. I never made a hard plan to visit Paradise but now we had our chance.

When you cross the Green River on the parkway north of Drakesboro there’s no easy access to the site of the old homeplace of the Prine family. We just happened to be winding down roads to the south of that site when we stumbled on a street named after…

I didn’t want to do this. This presidency seems like a series of flaming bags of dog shit placed on my porch. So far I’ve resisted stomping them out because that would be fun for everybody but me.

Well things are about to get entertaining.

This President was just asked if he’d ensure a peaceful transition of power if he was not elected. He refused to do so and instead talks about getting rid of ballots. That got my attention. I’ve had this essay in rough form on my desk waiting for him to say that.

Since he’s ready to…

It’s the Fourth of July. This is America. That used to be a kind of automatic “Hell yeah!” I remember fireworks celebrations by the lakefront in Chicago where the waves of human goodness would wash over me in a sea of every type of people this world has created. All the pettiness, division and strife was put aside for one unifying moment of national celebration.

Right now the country is largely in the dumps about itself. I read that a recent poll found some 3/4 of us think we’re basically screwed up. …

If you want to avoid engaging with a difficult issue just break out the generalities, the banalities, the platitudes. They have the same effect as a lullaby on a cranky baby.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to have that process of sedation interrupted by the shock of hearing truly revolutionary rhetoric. Two terms that have dislodged passivity for me recently are “Black Lives Matter“ and “Defund the Police“.

Taking a knee. We all lost our mind when Kap did it. His protest against police brutality was made into something else. We forgot that thing; that righteous protest is the height of patriotism. Obsessed on him as some kind of “anti American” instead of respecting a man for doing what he feels is right. We forced the loss of his football career. We should have listened. Instead we tried to legislate morality, forgetting that any act is only authentic and meaningful when done with free choice.

But we didn’t listen. We rarely do. We react from a pose of…