In our eighth podcast, "Before, After, and the Atomic Bomb," Tessa and Dave remember the “before” and “after” of their lives in Sedona, Arizona and relate this to “before” and “after” the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. They respond to “Oppenheimer,” the latest film by Christopher Nolan, about the father of the bomb. Hear their...
Tessa Bielecki and I recently visited the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, Arizona. I visited once when I was attending nearby Prescott College in the early seventies. Back then, a gaunt, blackened sculpture of Christ crucified hung above the altar. It reminded some visitors of the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many tourists came to...
In February 1975, I joined the Spiritual Life Institute’s young Carmelite community in Sedona, Arizona. As a college student, I fell in love with the red-rock chaparral beauty near Oak Creek Canyon. I wanted to learn more about Catholic contemplative life, which I first encountered on my occasional retreats at the Institute’s Nada Hermitage....
Where do you place yourself? How does it taste? In our latest Fire and Light podcast, "A Taste of Place," Tessa Bielecki and I share a taste of the Sonoran Desert as we savor picking saguaro fruit with guidance from Tohono O’odham neighbors. We relish the physical act of picking fruit with a traditional tool and preparing it to eat. And we...
It’s not a stretch to say Dave Denny is what Thomas Merton would have looked like today had he lived. Both avid writers, teachers, inter-spiritual pioneers, activists, and...
Tessa’s experience of June was not so carefree, and I suspect...
My brother has a friend who teases him about growing up in a Norman Rockwell painting. It isn’t far from the truth. I suspect few people grew up as far from death and loss as I did. My friend Tessa’s experience of June was not so carefree, and she speaks beautifully and poignantly about this in her recent post, "Rare...
Our Summer Caravans newsletter is now available here. You'll find a description of our lovely weekend in Patagonia, Arizona, where we built an altar, explored what we can learn from scarred saguaros, and how poetry awakens us to contemplative wonder. Caravans includes responses to our Fire and Light podcast, which we launched in January. If...
I love the word sierra, and not just because you get to roll the r in Spanish. It means a range of jagged mountains, or a sawblade. The serrated complexion of the desert cuts into me. It makes me cry out, if only silently. If I did cry out loud, it would sound like the Muslim call to prayer, a lament, a curse, or a mayday alert. That’s the...
Twenty twenty-three marks a lot of landmarks for the Desert Foundation, including my seventieth birthday on May 2. In this month’s Fire and Light podcast, Tessa Bielecki and I explore the mystery of our lives’ stories. What does it mean when someone from Ireland says, “My story, your story”? Concrete details of the joys and sorrows in...