My wife and I are in training mode. We walk 10 or 12 miles, several times per week, practicing for our second Camino. We will walk across Spain soon, and we need to get in shape.

We get up early. And we start walking. We walk for most of the day. Until we’re covered in sweat and smell like the hindparts of a filthy goat.

And with each Camino training walk, I am remembering what I learned on our first Camino. Something all pilgrims eventually learn. It’s not the magic of the Camino that changes you. It’s the walking.

When I was a kid, walking was life. I walked everywhere. I walked through the woods. I walked miles of neighborhood to see my friends. I walked to the filling station. I walked to school.

But as I got older, I quit walking. Namely, because America is not built for walking. Not even a little. We are a nation of highways and overpasses, with few sidewalks. If you don’t believe me, try

walking to Walmart and see if you survive.

In the last 10 years, pedestrian death rates have risen by 25 percent. The average American sits for 8.5 hours per day; 50 percent of all car trips in America are under three miles.

It’s a shame. Because the act of moving your legs does something to you. And I don’t mean it makes your butt smaller, although this happens, too.

As you walk, you feel your mind getting quieter. There’s less chatter up there. You become reflective. Relaxed. Your body and legs go on autopilot. Your soul begins to emerge. Although you THINK you’re walking, what you’re actually doing is praying.

We don’t know this, of course. We never knew what real prayer was. Growing up, we were taught to think that “prayer” meant clasping our hands, kneeling, and using a physical voice to ask the Celestial Santa Claus for…

The year is 250 A.D. It’s Good Friday. Although, technically, there is no “Good Friday.” Not for another hundred years.

Tonight, all people who follow “The Way” meet underground. They have to.

Followers of The Way are being martyred left and right. They can’t afford to expose themselves and get beheaded. They have families.

Tonight, they meet in a barn. They all gather among farm implements and bleating sheep. No candles.

The children sit in the center of the barn. The adults, on the periphery. They sing a few songs. The lambs and ewes join in.

Theirs has always been a singing tradition.

They sing to honor the fallen. They have many loved ones who were captured and killed for following The Way.

Everyone in this barn knows that it’s probably just a matter of time before they themselves are arrested. They have prepped their kids for this.

“If Mommy and Daddy go missing, run to Aunt So-And-So’s house. She’ll know what to do.”

They are all fasting tonight. Not just from food, but water, too. They

will fast for 40 hours to remember the death of the Nazarene. It’s just what they do on this particular Friday.

Someone gets up in front of the group. Brother Andrew. He explains why they are meeting in darkness tonight.

Because they are remembering the Jewish Carpenter’s sacrifice. Also, they remember the lives of martyred brothers. Last week, two teenage girls were beheaded in the square for refusing to light incense to Caesar.

Romans have all sorts of interesting ways of killing these followers of The Way. They dress their prisoners in fresh animal carcasses, then turn wild dogs loose. They place them in barrels with spikes then roll them down hills. They dip them in tar, light them on fire, and suspend them as torches.

Ironically, Romans call them “atheists.” Or worse, “Little Christs,” or “Little Messiahs.” This is because they have…

Hello. I am a sea turtle. We turtles don’t actually have names. But you can call me Squirt. Pleased to meet you.

Maybe you’ve never met a talking sea turtle before. Well, I’d like to change that.

The first thing you should know about me is that I’m very old. Much older than you. I was born before automobiles. Before lightbulbs. If I wore underpants, I’d have underpants older than you.

The reason I am writing is because I have something to share with you. I’d like to talk about water. Water is my favoritest thing on earth.

You probably like water, too. But probably not as much as me.

See, water doesn’t just fill the ocean. For sea turtles, water fills the entirety of all I know. To me, water isn’t just a thing. To me, water is all-powerful.

Water contains the most power in my universe. I have seen water swallow islands whole. Filling every coral forest, immersing every sandbar. Water engulfs. Water overtakes.

Imagine water behind a dam. All its weight. All its raw

power. All its energy. Just begging for someone to poke a tiny hole in the dam so that tiny stress fractures can soon rupture the steel and concrete which try so feebly to restrain it.

That’s the power of water.

But water is more than just power. Water is my life. You see, water is always around me. I drink by filtering saltwater through glands in my eyes. I eat by allowing the water to bring me bits of food.

Water bathes every fiber of my being, flowing inside me, and outside. Water is in my organs. Inside my muscles. In every patch of flesh. In my bones, and cartilage.

Water fills in my heart. Water is inside my skull. My brain is mostly water. So is yours, actually.

There is nowhere in my kingdom where water is not. Water is even what…

I had a toy rocket when I was a kid. It was made of plastic. The word NASA was printed on it. It was a Saturn V rocket, king daddy of all rockets. The same one that took men to the moon. My GI Joe doll could ride it like a horsey.

My friend Bradley had a shuttle-stack rocket, with winged orbiter and two solid rocket boosters. You want to talk power.

All the boys wanted to play with that thing. We would fight over who got to play with it.

“It’s my turn, Randy. Give it here, you big hog. You’ve had it forever, it’s not even yours.”

“I’m telling Mom. What did you call me? No I’m not. Say that again and you’ll have a fat lip.”

“What did you call me? Nuh, uh. YOU’RE a stupid turd monger. Oh yeah? I know you are but what am I? MOM!”

I recently had a conversation with some young people about space. They were teenagers. They were uninterested.

I asked whether they knew we’d

been to the moon. One of them shrugged and said the moon landing was a hoax. I smiled. Then, I asked whether they knew what the International Space Station was, and how it was designed in 1984, and how it’s been in orbit for 27 years, and how it’s been visited by almost 300 astronauts.

The teen just smiled vacantly and said, “The international what?” Then they went back to texting each other dirty pictures on their phones.

But there was a time in our culture when space exploration was treated very differently. I come from old men who worked on Roadmasters and Impalas beneath shade trees in the backyard. Men who loved machines. Men who thought rockets were the glory of all manmade achievement. Men who used the words “John Glenn” with the same tone they used when speaking of the Gentle Nazarene.

That’s…

Wake up. Start coffeemaker. Turn on TV. A panicky news journalist is saying America is doomed and only minutes away from exploding. And if not America, at least my house.

Turn off TV.

Coffee is ready. Pour said coffee. Check my phone. Look at emails. The first subject line attracts my attention. “YOU ARE NOT A TRUE AMERICAN IF YOU DON’T READ THIS!!!”

I want to be a true American, but for the next few minutes I’ll have to settle for being a fallacious one. Namely, because it’s a little early to be reading anything in all caps.

Sip coffee. Massage eyeballs. Leash up dogs. Take them outside for morning walks. It’s still dark.

One of my dogs doesn’t want to pee. So we walk in tight, concentric circles through the neighborhood as I whisper-shout, “Go pee!” As though these two words have ever helped a canine successfully urinate within the long and noble history of dogdom.

I check my phone. To give

my dog privacy. Hop on social media. My newsfeed is nothing but politics. Whatever happened to cute kitty videos?

The first post I see shows the picture of an American flag covered in mud, or perhaps it's a more organic substance. The first words are: “PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND TOTALLY FREAKING BLOWN, AMERICA!”

The user who shared the brain-blasting patriotic item is my childhood Sunday school teacher. A woman whose wardrobe once consisted entirely of polyester. Her profile picture is a bald eagle wearing a bikini.

Soon, I am walking through a dark neighborhood near my house. My dog is sniffing the millions of locations where other dogs peed. I’m encouraging my dog to leave her mark on this world so we can go back home.

Surrounding me are yard signs galore. There must be hundreds, perched in everyone’s yards. Each sign has some urgent message.…