Blog - Hope

Here’s the two-fold gist of this Ash Wednesday/Gearing-Up-For-Lent blog:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born 112 years ago today on February 4, 1906.

Every day, I get to drive my girl back and forth to her high school in Duluth.

We’ve all asked ourselves, when hearing of some moment of historical courage, “What would I have done?”

I was already late and well on my way to my late husband’s memorial service before I realized that the urn with his ashes still sat on the kitchen table.

This past Sunday, November 19th, I had the pleasure of preaching at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Grand Marais, MN.

For what may or may not be the umpteenth time, E and I were belting out Hamilton on our way to her confirmation class this morning.

Adjectives are the unsung heros of nouns.

This past week, I celebrated my birthday.

My two children, my father, and I, we really lived it up for our New Year’s Eve last night, I tell you what.

“Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
So, tells Matthew in 2:7-8, said King Herod to the wise men after learning from them that the king of the Jews had been born.

I think it was in the early winter of 1996 when I won a gaudy set of dishes, flatware, and stemware simply by chucking my name in a box at the Watertown SD Target.

The late Joseph Sittler, Lutheran theologian and wordsmith, savored life.

“Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.”  Elie Wiesel, Nobel Lecture, Hope, Despair and Memory

I know Christmas is around the corner (even my family is starting to bust out the Christmas decorations), but Advent does yet have dibs on our attention for a short spell.

Hermey: Hey, what do you say we both be independent together, huh? 

Below are photos from my home office (I’ve discovered that you can see them a bit more clearly if you click on them.)

A few months back, which was several years later than it should have been, I stumbled on poetry by Billy Collins.

This year’s Advent launches us into the “Year of Mark,” the period when the primary gospel readings come from, well, Mark, obviously.

If you have never read Wendell Berry, or worse, never heard of him, stop reading this blog this very moment and go to your nearest local bookstore to buy his stuff up before your neighbor snags all the goods first.