Category Archives: Desert Diaries
As the sun set over my world early this evening, I watched the shadows grow long and dissipate into night. My thoughts turned toward the families in Bangladesh and Baghdad: victims of terrorism. I also thought of the families in Oaxaca, Mexico: victims of their own government. As that stillness settles over the landscape and the summer heat begins to lift just a bit, I feel helpless in the face of the chaos and homicidal madness of our world. In my prayer, I am with the victims of violence in this moment; I am them. I pray for comfort to come as a miracle for those who mourn. I pray for the root causes of terrorism to become uprooted. I pray for “swords to be beaten into plowshares.” What else can I do in this moment? In this very moment when the cooing of the desert doves begins to quiet and they settle down with their young ones for the night.
Thank you, Elie Wiesel, for your courage, compassion, and voice of justice.
The Next Breath
All becomes gift…
A Prayer for Enfolding and Emitting
Holy Spirit, enfold me into yourself
“Mourning makes us poor; it powerfully reminds us of our smallness. But it is precisely here, in that pain or poverty or awkwardness, that the Dancer invites us to rise up and take the first steps. For in our suffering, not apart from it, Jesus enters our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently up to stand, and invites us to dance…”
-Henri Nouwen,
from Turn my Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times
Afternoon to Evening
In early summer, feel the turning of the long afternoon to evening. If you feel consolation, and then that slight urgency to hold on to it: rest knowing that nothing […]…
“The word paradise comes from the Persian, where it originally meant ‘wilderness,’ and there is no doubt a lesson there.”
-Kathleen Norris
