Emulating men with backs that bend has been an indispensable part of my journey. As a priest, however, it is easy to hide behind a public persona of self-denial. The challenge, as always, lies within one’s private life. This is why I pray at night...

On my day off, I escape to my uncle’s farm and climb into the cab of a tractor. I turn the key and bump the throttle a notch above idle. Beneath the driver’s platform, hydraulics and pistons rumble...

It was a Friday night rehearsal. The wedding coordinator lined up the bridal party: “Slick, you and Amanda follow Josh and Jean...

The clip begins at the scene of an accident: flashing lights, a traffic jam, smoke rising into the air from an overturned car. In the highway-turned-parking lot, the driver’s door of a silver pickup swings open, as heat waves rise from asphalt and automobiles...

The view out the window never varies: wheat fields and football fields; warehouses and apartment houses; truck terminals and transmission lines. Who wants to live in a place like this? Well, I do!

Ms. Davies’ wrinkled face scans the room. “I been livin’ in this contry for over 65 yeers.” She leans in and puts the backside of her hand flat against the smiling corner of her mouth. “But I’m still the Queen’s gurl!”

Moses crouched low, loosened a strap and removed the sandal. The sand, warmed by sacred fire, seared his sole like embers fallen from an altar...

The foreheads of four men leak beads of sweat as they sway shoulder to shoulder, like a buoy tipping back and forth at the gentle wake of a motorboat. A statue of the Virgin Mary, hands folded at her breast and face resolute yet gentle, towers above them...

The older I become, the more penance I crave. I never expected this evolution in my spiritual maturation...

I had never seen a field of wildflowers quite like it. The ground had responded to the spring rains with a fertility that flashed flames of fire: reds, oranges, and yellows dancing in the wind like the tongues above the apostles on Pentecost...

I’m in my truck when I get a call from my great-nephew, Gus. He tells me he landed a job with a harvest crew. His voice sounds scuffed, like a work boot kicking a tire. 

My four-year-old niece is in my arms, her wispy blonde hair floating above her head like spider webs adrift the fall wind. We are jumping on a discarded box-spring mattress near a pond on the backside of a spillway dam. A giggle bursts from her lungs. “Again!!” This time, we are astronauts on the surface of the moon...

“You are in my prayers.” I say this all the time. Most the time I mean it and most of the time I hold myself to it. Truth be told, it’s hard to hold back the intentions logged in my memory...

I sit in a bedroom of my grandparent’s old house, a shelf over my head containing hundreds of thimbles collected by my grandmother who had no use for them, her fingers tougher than any ceramic after sewing the blue jeans, feed sack dresses, and cloth diapers of seven children...

Sometimes people kneel to pray. Sometimes people kneel to play: a girl on a sidewalk with a piece of chalk; a boy on a creek bank skipping a stone. Sometimes people kneel to work...

The truck rumbles to a stop, gravel crunching underneath the tires. The doors on the old pickup slam shut, causing blackbirds to flee into the morning light. We ease our way down to the river, waves lapping the city park sidewalk. Debris crunches beneath our feet: sticks, moss, cicada shells. On the side of a rusted walking bridge, chalked in white: John 15:13.

I have never been to Rome, but I’ve been to the Rockies. No offence, Michelangelo, but no Renaissance glory can compare to the beauty of Creation. I suppose this is why I love the story of the Lord’s Transfiguration atop Mt. Tabor.

Metal slides shimmering in sunshine/Slope down to the soft sand below...

I have a horse named Buddy. He is gentle and eager to please. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence. He lets other horses push him around and, sometimes, they beat him up pretty bad...

My ten-year-old fingers shove a nail into the feet a Christ I have drawn upon some discarded wood laid across the workbench in my dad’s shop...