Currently Reading
Through Painted Deserts : Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road
By Donald Miller


Two Don Miller quotes, marking that today he's here!

Describing a sunrise in the deserts of Nevada, "I can only hear a faint flow of wind slide down from the hills, rolling like water from high pressure toward some swirling low. The interestate slices through a field of sand before climbing into a distant pass behind me, and this desert floor, still dark with night shadows, lies flat for miles before giving rise to those sleeping peaks in the east. And the sand has the ghostly stare of a blank canvas, as if to hope something beautiful will be painted on its surface, as if to want for flesh. I press into the desert, aiming for a spot to watch the sun break. Every ten steps I check the east and it changes as I walk. Black gives to blue and it is a blue like no blue on any painting or picture. This is living blue, changing from one hue to another, shifting slowly the way color only does at morning. Spilled on the brown, then, are dry and shadowy lakes of deep, rich darkness; the absence of light. My tracks are laid out, marking my path, and as I look back, I see the van is now a small form beside a black threadlike strip. To the east, the first tint of red arrives in weak shades through overpowering blue. There are clouds now, and as the light comes in slow, the great vapors establish form; tall clouds with thirty--thousand-foot lifts. And though tremendous in size, they are guarded by the length and depth of a black-blue sky, held back by mountains. Morning lifts with her finger first, streatching her long bones into the clouds. Engaged, I set myself down on the cold morning sand, my hands besdie me and half buried in the frozen dirt. I pull them out, dust my hands against each other, and slide them into my jacket pockets. The black hills ghost to gray, revealing crags and cliffs lifting up toward their summits."

While watching the sunrise in Oregon, "And if these mountains had eyes, they would wake to find two strangers in their fences, standing in admiration as a breathing red pours its tinge upon earth's shore. These mountains, which have seen untold sunsrises, long to thunder praise but stand reverent, silent so that man's weak praise should be given God's attention."



I finished the book last night. I suggest all to read it.