Generosity is the only story
I’ve noticed the two words I use most often on the road are generosity and wow. It feels important to record examples of both as nothing-too-small counterweights in our current perilous season. I parked my van Monday evening in the driveway of Morgan Varner and Charisse Matlock’s new home in Iowa City. They had finished the laborious process of […]
The mud, the blood and the beer
I have given up trying to craft a pithy and succinct explanation for my walkabout adventure, now nearing the three-week mark. Or more accurately, fresh explanations arrive nearly every day to satisfy the part of me that insists on order and narrative continuity. That part of me cringes when I say I am doing this thing […]
Shopping for God
My friend Arthur Crowell owns 50 acres of deep woods in Franklin County, Missouri, 40 miles southwest of St. Louis. He bought the property four years ago and named it Sage Mountain. Arthur is driven by his unwavering vision to coax enough structure to make this wild place hospitable for campers and rock climbers and […]
Shining like the sun
Trappist monk Thomas Merton was a prolific writer before his early death in 1968. But he’s best known for a spiritual epiphany that happened on the corner of Fourth and Walnut streets in Louisville, Kentucky. “There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun,” he wrote afterward. Today […]
Escape velocity
After a push at the end, the preparations for my walkabout are done. All of the real estate and bank forms: submitted. All of the boxes helpfully marked “miscellaneous”: stored. All of the jars of specialty ingredients that I used once in six years: given away. My camper van: filled with diesel, tire pressure checked. […]