Chip Shots

Last weekend, following my weekly Friday night prayer at the Buffalo Chip rodeo, I came home to find Donna watching the end of a favorite movie: The Notebook . Have you seen it? It tells the story of an older couple who live in a nursing home. She’s there because she has senile dementia. He’s there because that’s were she is. When their children try to persuade him to leave and come back home, he says to them, “As long as she’s here, I’m not leaving. Wherever she is, that’s my home.” Each morning he leaves his nearby room in order to spend the day with her. She doesn’t recognize him, thinking instead that he is only a visitor who has come to read her a story. In fact, he does read her a story: it is the story of their life together. She wrote it herself when she knew her memory was beginning to fade. Near the end of the movie we see the title page of the notebook from which he has been reading. Written in her own hand: “The story of our lives. Read this to me and I’ll always come bac...

Sitting on my patio while I write this, I enjoy a direct view of Black Mountain to the south. Around me are the sounds and sights of spring. Dozens of birds – sparrows, cactus wrens, cardinals and quail – feast on the food Donna puts out every day. Their enjoyment of this free meal nearly matches my joy in watching them feast. While I enjoy this scene, I’m startled by a mule deer (I assume that’s what it was) darting across the wash. One Christmas morning I saw three, but I've seen very few since. No sooner had I spied him than he vanished behind the dense desert shrubs. Some time ago I sighted a Gila monster on the dirt road near our home. That’s right: a reclusive Gila monster, replete with orange and black markings, waddled carelessly across the road. I stopped to watch – and protect – it on its dangerous trek. Returning to the present, I try in vain to catch sight of the vanished deer. Native mesquite trees line the wash. Paloverde trees, less common, display brilliant yellow f...

Sometime ago, I enjoyed a fascinating conversation about Jesus with someone I’d recently met.  “I believe he was a great teacher,” she said, “but I can’t accept that he was the Son of God.” “But isn’t that precisely what he claimed to be?” I asked. “How could he be a great teacher and be wrong about such an important thing as that?” “Well, great people are often a bit eccentric,” she said. “Eccentricity is one thing,” I replied, “but claiming to be God? That's not merely eccentric. If he wasn't God, and claimed to be, he certainly wasn't a great teacher. More likely, he was delusional. And if it weren’t for his resurrection, I’d probably say he was crazy.”  “But that’s just it,” she said. “Don’t you think the resurrection is rather incredulous? “I’ll admit it seems far-fetched,” I said, “but when you consider all the facts, it seems to me more incredulous to doubt it than to believe it.” “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed. “Why is that?” I was reluctant to get into all of thi...