Texas is my Spiritual Home

I love Texas because it loves itself. I love it for it’s ego, its comical arrogance. I love that everyone there loves where they are.

I love Texas  because it’s chock full of contrast, from Mount Pleasant to Valentine. In skin color, language, customs, barbecue, and club memberships. NRA and NOW and NEH and the Eagle Forum all in the same neighborhood.

I love Texas because of Big Tex himself. He is a real person in my inner support circle. He gives good advice and serves as a landmark if you’re ever lost at the fair.

I love Texas for its largesse: big sky, big hair, big smiles, and big hearts.

I love Texas for its culture of expectations: the kind that say, Go! Learn! Create! Be as lovely and rich and intimidating and shockingly vast as you can be!

I love Texas for its problems: the water shortages and crowded cities, the searing heat and cracked earth, the endless shopping centers and overspending, the crazy politics, and the in-your-face refusal to slow its development. (And yes, these things will soon bite it in the ass).

The human will is a gift from The Great Creator. So the human ego, like the cowboy spirit, cannot be all bad. Wisdom lies in finding a balance between humility and the drive to create.

I am like Texas in my arrogance, my need to do more and be more, my inner diversity, and my generous heart that sometimes gets me into trouble.

I am not like Texas in that I’ve taken refuge . . . in stillness, in small spaces, in a smaller state that still has trees. Of this, I am sometimes ashamed.

But Texas is in my blood. I renew my commitment to live like a transplanted Texan. I commit to thinking big and coaching others to do the same. I commit to loving with exuberance and extravagance and a wide-open heart.