Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
Six of us have fallen in together, walking side by side for the last several miles of the Camino de Santiago. We are all strangers. All pilgrims. From different nations. There is dust on our backpacks, mud on our boots, and we all smell like something a diuretic horse produced.
We are walking through Navarrete on Easter Monday the moment Pope Francis dies. The bells of the massive church are ringing, non-stop. Locals are in a kind of reverential shock.
The woman at the hostel utters four magic words. “Si, we have beds.” This is amazing. There have been no beds in Spain for Holy Week. It’s almost Easter Sunday and we have been beggars, compelled to walk the Camino de Santiago with our hats in hand, and our hands out, looking for beds.
When we were growing up, my brother and I never got Easter baskets. Easter meant going to church and getting new Easter clothes. Our parents (actually, we just blame Mom–sorry, Mom) wanted to instill in us that Easter was not about rabbits or chocolate eggs, but rather about the resurrection of Jesus.
The stone doorway arch above us features carvings of angels and demons which date back to Roman times. Eight angels surround Christ, who is looking straight at me as though He is saying, “‘No room’ at the inn?—Now where have I heard THAT before?”
The 83-year-old woman has been opening her home to pilgrims since before I was born. Currently, she is bustling around her house, gathering fresh towels and soaps for us. We are standing in her doorway, drenched, cold, and looking about as content as wet Himalayan cats.
It is no accident that history is filled with stories of slavery and redemption—it’s an archetype woven into the fabric of human experience.
There are hundreds of pilgrims. Very few speak English. We are all from different countries, age groups, and walks of life. And yet, somehow, although we are foreigners sojourning in a strange land, we all manage to—this is beautiful—gripe about how slow the line moves.
The modern obsession with happiness—comfort, entertainment, ease—is not only misguided, it’s harmful. It’s a form of “infantile hedonism”: a worldview more suitable for children than for adults who wish to live meaningful lives.
Life is chaos. Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. At its core, existence is one long, tangled mess of disorder, uncertainty, and entropy. From the spinning galaxies to the storms on Earth to the mess in your kitchen—chaos is the natural state of things.
Today, my wife and I will become pilgrims. We will walk the breadth of Spain, upwards of 500 miles, over Pyrenees Mountains, on foot, to visit the remains of the apostle James.
People from all over the world are traveling to this sacred place. Farmers and peasants. Lords and ladies. Rich and poor.
Today is a big deal.
If you don’t read any further, just keep repeating the above sentence in a loud, clear voice until it sinks in and your spouse begins to wonder whether you’re clinically insane.
Five years ago I was in Huntsville when the world shut down. Five years. Almost to the day. I’ll never forget it.
The young woman sits in my truck passenger seat. She is 19. Her hair is red. Scottish red. Luminously red. People always comment on her hair first.
I have here a letter from 19-year-old Erin, who lives in Bristol, Virginia.
“Dear Sean,” she begins, “I want to be happy, but I’m not…
“My family is stressing me out, big-time. Especially my mom.
One of the most beautiful short stories ever written, The Book of Ruth may be brief, but it has a powerful message.
Once upon a time there were three little ants. The ants had an unusual home. They lived atop an elephant. Long ago the ants’ mother had reasoned that an elephant would be a wise place to lay eggs to keep them from danger.
It was a big storm. The television showed weather updates. The radar looked like red-and-yellow vomit.
“Find shelter!” the weather guy kept saying. “There’s a tornado on the ground in Calera!”
Have you ever wondered what Jesus was thinking as he headed to Jerusalem for what would be His final Passover? He knew where he was going, he knew why he was going, and he knew what would happen. And because of you and me, He did it anyway.