On a side trip last year while camping my way to the west coast, I found myself casting up dust along a tooth-jarring washboard road across Nebraska’s badlands. After twenty miles I arrived at a gravel parking lot, from which a dirt path led down to a Monet-like pond. Glassy water mirrored sky, cattails, willow, […]
A Reflection on Wounded Knee
This December 29th will mark the 125th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. As students of American history probably already know, this 1890 horror was, in a real way, the end of the so-called “Indian Wars.” That is, it marked the final crushing blow specifically against the Lakota on the Great Plains, but symbolically against […]
Transcendence for Atheists
Let’s begin with a neurological reality: we humans are limited in what we can experience. The finite human nervous system can only absorb about 10% of the information around us. The other 90% goes unprocessed: unseen, unheard, untasted, untouched, unfelt–unimagined. Mind you, that’s only talking about what lies within earshot and vision. It’s not even […]
Reflections on Wind and Trees
“The world offers itself to your imagination,” wrote poet Mary Oliver. On good days, we can journey through the poem. It’s a big danged poem, but after awhile it kind of starts to make sense. Wandering the hills of southern Indiana, where I live, I marvel at the wind and trees. A microburst of wind heedlessly […]