Thanks, Mom!

My folks were never big on Mother's or Father's Day. I don't think they cared for the commercialism. Plus, if you loved your parents, you showed it throughout the year, not so much with gifts, but with kindness, being helpful, showing respect. You didn't wait for a holiday to "honor thy father and mother."

But having lost my mother 25 years ago, I'm coming to really like Mother's Day, and I like celebrating it. It gives me a chance to stop and reflect on all that she meant to me, and that's more than you can possibly imagine. I learned so much from her: all of the basic virtues and values, plus things like the power of positive thinking, the ability of affirmation and encouragement to change lives, and the importance of valuing all human beings. Remember the children's book "The Little Engine That Could"? "I think I can, I think I can" was the little train's mantra, and that was hers as well.

She started the girl scout troop in our little home town of Corcoran and led it for years, changing countless girls' lives for the better. I bet that some of them even now remember Mrs. Barnes on Mother's Day.

Her home was the most welcoming place. No matter who you were, when you walked into our house, you were welcomed, you were asked how things were going, and you always left with a word of encouragement. My friends used to tell me how lucky I was to have a mom like mine. They were right. I was lucky, and am still blessed.

So even though you weren't big on celebrating it, Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks for everything.

Places That Touch Your Soul

One of my best friends absolutely loves the ocean. Standing on a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean, the surf pounding against the rocks, is like going to church for him. No, he isn’t one of those “nature is God” types. It’s just that the ocean is where he really feels the presence of God. With my dad, being among the giant redwoods in Big Basin is like that.

Those places are special to me, too, but for me, the place that really touches my soul is the desert. Yeah, I know. What’s in the desert? Sand, cacti, scrub brush, lizards, ghost towns. Not nearly the grandeur of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon. But the desert speaks to me like no other place.

It might be because of where I was raised. I grew up in Corcoran, a small farming town in California’s central valley. No hills, no rivers, just a checkerboard of land planted with cotton, barley, alfalfa and safflower. All of my summer jobs were out in the farmlands — a surveyor’s assistant, a row boss on a cotton-chopping crew, painting cotton trailers, running parts at an equipment repair shop. I came to see beauty in a perfectly leveled, plowed section of land. Out there in the middle of nowhere, miles from anybody but your work crew, there was a serenity that took me to a thoughtful place.

I vividly remember a trip to Death Valley in my mid-teens. Death Valley is like the Yosemite of deserts, so many natural wonders, strange formations of rocks and minerals, ghost towns that held more secrets than they revealed, a place of austere beauty and mystery. God often speaks to us in silence, and I think it is this very quality of the desert that I find especially spiritual.

In the last few years, I’ve had the opportunity to spend several memorable weekends at the Tubac resort south of Tuscon, Arizona (they have really low summer rates, ‘cause it’s, well, summer in Arizona). These weekends reminded me how special the desert is to me. Yeah, the resort is a draw, but it’s the peace I feel when I’m there that is the real attraction. I hope I can go back again soon.