Narnia, Asteroid B-612, Middle Earth, Earthsea, and earth. I’ve spent a lot of time in each of these places. Plus a few more. They’re all real, you know, just real in different ways. But there is a Reality that is more important than them all, and I’ve gotten to know Him, too. I’ve been to dozens of countries on earth (on every continent except Antartica) and He has been there. He’s been in many of the other places, too, the places you can only get to through stories.
But I’ve seen, in many places, that who He is has gotten bumbled up. So I wanted to create a place where He could be seen for who He really is. The place turned out to be green–at least the sky–and very hard. I used to teach Latin and the word for green, in Latin, started with ‘ver.’ The word for hard started with ‘dura.’ So I decided to put them together to name my place: Verdura.
I learned later (in a grocery store in Barcelona) that the word ‘verdura,’ in Spanish means ‘vegetables.’ I hope the Verdurans won’t hold it against me that they live on vegetables. And I hope Spanish-speakers will understand that I didn’t mean to borrow their word for vegetables and will, maybe, see their way to believing Verdura to be a hard, green planet. Where Reality lives.
I’ve been blessed with a great wife and companion for over fifty years, three kids, six grandkids, and the memory of a cat and a dog who, no matter what anyone says, have both gone on to heaven. We’re pretty close to heaven, here in Colorado, and I hope you’ll get here someday. But it’s more important that you get to know the One who is in every place at every time and who, really, makes it all happen.
