There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year.

In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made

Wariness about change is a kind of prairie wisdom.

One may have been a fool, but there's no foolishness like being bitter.

I was taught that I had to 'master' subjects. But who can 'master' beauty, or peace, or joy?

But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.

The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.