I’ve a very good friend, an infectious disease specialist of some renown. She’s so good she can often diagnose what’s going on with a patient as soon as she enters their room...

I tell them the same thing each time I stand before a new class. I’m not sure they believe me. Not sure they can. I tell them that I’m here learning along with them this week. I tell them our class is going to be a dialog, not a monolog.

Ricardo’s interpreting for me this week. It’s a tough job. I forget to slow down when I speak. I use big, theological words and obscure Texas colloquialisms. Sometimes I slip up and cuss a bit; sometimes I do it on purpose.

When I turned 20 my dad surprised me and a friend with a trip to Las Vegas. Not a gift that I would suggest to anyone wanting to encourage their kids to follow Jesus, but in a strange way the experience has had a profound effect on my faith.

They came from all over the world; heads of state, dignitaries and veterans from later wars - warriors called up long after the “war to end all wars” wrapped up...

It’s cold here in the Ozarks. The streets are damp and the leaves are changing. I woke up on this crisp autumn morning to the news that Eugene Peterson is entering his final days of this life.

It might take a minute or two before you get up to flip the album over and drop the needle on the b side. There might be a pause in the storytelling or a let up in the laughter making the subtle silence noticeable.

We’re all a lot skinnier in the first picture, that’s for sure. You can also see the varying effects of thirty-five years of life; wrinkles, gray hair, the sloop of the shoulders. But there’s so much you can’t see...

These images are not hypothetical to me. I don’t have to use my imagination to conjure up the terror and shock, the acrid smell of the gunpowder...

“Did that really just happen?” Jane and I were driving home after a weekend of gathering with friends. It was more than just a get together though...

Every year, somewhere around the middle of July, downtown San Diego undergoes a metamorphosis.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” - C.S. Lewis

This cold snap is settling in and looks to stay awhile. It’s frozen Ladybird’s  water bowl solid through and turned the leaves crunchy with frost.

Even on land, here in the port at the end of the glacial plain, you feel the sway of the sea...

“What we owe the future is not a new start, for we can only begin with what has happened. We owe the future the past, the long knowledge that is the potency of time to come.” — Wendell Berry

11/8/17

The fog is so thick this morning it condenses on the leaves and falls slowly as rain drops on the roof. The streets and sidewalks are slick and shiny, the oaks and mums and grass are weighted with the moisture.

12/26/16

The present was wrapped in a box big enough for a major appliance. Inside was another box a small child could fit in. After that, the boxes inside got progressively smaller. With each successive opening, the excitement built … what could it possibly be? What would this reveal?

September 7, 2016

Yesterday I began a nearly-vertical ascent on my mountain bike toward the famous 401 Trail outside Crested Butte. We parked the 4X4 at 8,500 feet; from there, the road climbed ever higher. Within minutes I was gasping, and at every turn of the track there was only more incline ahead. Jeeps and ATVs blew by us, kicking up dust to be sucked into my struggling lungs. I was already in my lowest possible gears, barely staying upright. The bone-dry air quickly evaporated my sweat and spit, while the altitude and my asthma conspired to leave me fighting for breath.

My friend Matt Covington researches hydrogeology and geomorphology, with a particular focus on karst aquifers and landforms. This means he spends a lot of time underground. Sometimes waaaayyyyyy underground. And not just on Saturday afternoons, but sometimes for weeks at a time. He has explored some of the deepest caves in the world in Mexico, Peru, Sumatra, Alaska, China, Slovenia and Croatia.

Weeks. Underground. Deep underground. Sometimes scuba diving deep underground so he can go deeper. Places so dark that your body loses its ability to tell night from day, to know when to sleep or be awake.

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We’d left the trees about half an hour before, but the peak of Engineer Pass still loomed impossibly far away, and far above us. With each pedal stroke, oxygen became more scarce. Legs burning, lungs gasping, heads aching, each member of the ride somehow found the strength to fight their way to the top. Along the way, people making the ascent in ATVs and 4X4s looked on with a mixture of confusion, awe and pity. Some even stopped to take pictures, knowing their friends wouldn’t believe ‘em if they told ‘em.

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My dad called my mom from The Barn, our family’s restaurant down the street.

“Where’s John?”

Mom took a quick glance out the window into our shady backyard and saw me quietly playing.

“Get him inside quick, and stay away from the windows,” Dad said. “There’s some guy in the Tower shooting people.”