Excited First, Practical Later, Ep. 29

Episode 29: Celebrating Arizona

Lisa walks us through the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott before Julie shares her reaction to watching the sunset over a golf course.

Mug: Hassayampa Inn, Prescott, AZ

From Arizona: 100 Years Grand

by Lisa Schnebly Heidinger

I am so glad, so glad, so glad that God met me be an out-door woman and love the big things.  I couldn’t be a tame house-cat woman and spend big sunny, glorious days giving card parties and planning dresses.  I’m not unwomanly – don’t you dare to think so – but God meant women to joy in His great, clean, beautiful world, and I thank Him that He lets me see some of it not through a windowpane.”

Copyright 2011 Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, All rights reserved

The Firebirds

by Julie Morrison

Arizona skies are known across the world

for pinks and golds and oranges its sunsets unfurl,

and locals know, but seldom say, the color’s from the dust—

no one wants tourists to be asthmatic in disgust—

and, sure, the desert’s dusty, but its skies just help conceal,

the firebirds that live there, only sunset will reveal.

Because the Phoenix bursts to flame, then burns to dust and ash,

after it’s flown a soul to a new life from one past—

each and every firebird born to be unique

to each soul on journeys to the new life that they seek—

and after completed passage, each Phoenix flames and burns,

just like the former life to which the soul will not return,

and it settles into ashes just as a soul might go to seed,

then pops up anew when called to go and serve a need,

as fresh and strong and capable as that new soul that’s beckoned,

growing more wise and colorful with each passing second.

Other souls, content with one life lived, are met by other birds:

hawks and doves—sometimes vultures from what I’ve heard—

but the firebirds hatch and grow and fly for those saintly few

who feel they must return for what they know they can still do—

I hope someday you meet someone who fits that description.

I’d like to think that kindness will never be a superstition.

Copyright 2025 Julie Morrison, All rights reserved