About

Thanks for visiting – by accident or design (ha ha) – my website. Basically, I’ve been writing here for a few years, sorting out the tendril thoughts that attend reading and prayer and family and walking dogs in the forest. What have I learned? God is a good idea, one. And we make the soul up as we go. It’s okay. Or it’s going to be okay.

I’m a Christian by birth, a follower of Jesus by choice, and bent on the Kingdom of Heaven, regardless of the many flaws and desires and brokennesses of which I seem to be composed. I’m not under the illusion that Jesus is the only way, but I do think he’s a pretty good way. I hear him most clearly in A Course in Miracles and in writers like Joel Goldsmith and Thomas Merton and Tara Singh and Emily Dickinson and Henry Thoreau.

I spend a lot of time walking in the woods – with dogs, when I can, and walking sticks, when memory serves. I’m a wordy bastard which complicates Heaven but on the other hand what doesn’t? Never leave home without your writing utensils. That’s one motto. Avoid semicolons and conclusions. That’s another. I like being a father and a husband, both of which seem to have the salutary effect I once fantasized monasticism would bring. I’m the only public member of the School of Parenthetical Afterthought. It’s a calling.

I cobble together money by writing and teaching. I practiced law once, drove a cab once, stayed home with my little daughter for a few years once, too. I advise against careers and also against taking my advice. I don’t think Jesus gives a damn about wealth but I do think money (and the inevitable pursuit) makes it harder to hear the still voice inside us. Freedom is not the ability to fulfill our wants. Abundance is faith and all provision is of God. I know it and I know I know it but still.

What else? Did I mention Emily Dickinson? Apples? The Catholic Worker? Bluets and Forget-Me-Nots? My broken heart? Old country songs? Back roads at midnight? Black bears tumbling through bracken? Grandmothers? The smell of wood smoke in November? Baking bread? Longing? My guitars? Trout pools you can’t decide to fish or swim in? Homeschooling? Horses? Used book stores? My gratitude you’re here?

Yes – that. My gratitude. Thank you.

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You can read a slightly different approach to about – an old landing page – if you like. This one, too. Things change a lot around here.

And some technical details (and other musings) about the blog, too.