We finished our study of The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin and completed our worship series, Living water. We learned how connected we are to each other, to our own identity, to the earth, and to God. The world is an interwoven tapestry, and Joel Salatin's...
Piglets are crowded in a nursery at Greg Boerboom’s farm in Marshall, Minn. Credit Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times According to research published in the National Academy of Sciences Proceedings, more than 17,000 deaths a year are attributable to pollution from...
As a pastor, I get to hear a lot of stories. My least favorite stories are told about persons not in the room and involve something this person did or didn't do that created anxiety in the storyteller. These stories are particularly annoying when I'm the one telling...
The Center for Disease Control issued new guidelines for wearing face masks on May 13 that offer great hope for more of us coming out into the open. After a year and a couple of months of isolation from seeing smiles and frowns, many of us are excited to rejoin the...
Family farms make up almost 90% of the total farms in the U.S. The average small family farm is just over 200 acres. This is quite a difference from Waggoner Ranch, located in Texas, estimated to be well over 500 Thousand acres. This ranch was acquired by the niece of...
Cyndi and I watched an episode of the dramatic series, The Good Doctor, which featured two mothers finding love for their sons to be a stronger bond than their differences. Their lives intersected at a demonstration - on different sides of an argument. The writers...
I understand that there are still people in the world that question whether COVID-19 is real. I don't have the energy to keep up with the latest bizarre conspiracy theories that support ignoring reality. But stories about some individuals still in denial as this...
Sunbeams are amazing. For some reason, I can remember countless times, from my early childhood, noticing sunbeams seeming to dance in the air as they reflected off particles in the air. But have you ever tried to catch a sunbeam? Cats can tell you that sunbeams are...
It was 2006. Summer was underway with longer days and temperatures. A typical summer — except that this summer would be different. A few months earlier, I signed up to be an adult volunteer to help our youth ministry leaders with a trip to West Virginia. That morning...
My memories of crossing the White River on the Oil Trough Ferry are a mixed bag of nightmares and excitement. During my early childhood, my family lived in Memphis. And we frequently traveled to visit my grandparents. This meant first crossing over the Mississippi...