Written by the Story

Dear Good Shepherd and friends, Music is a great thing. I don't know anyone who does not like music. Some people might not like certain kinds of music, but hardly anyone does not like or appreciate music.  Part of the beauty of music is the nearly infinite possibilities. Hearing music can meet the hearts of different people, and it can express the hearts of many different people. Music moves us in different ways. Sometimes it's the music itself, sometimes it's the lyrics to a tune, sometimes, often, it's the combination of the two.  I am and always have been a huge music person. I love old songs, and hearing new songs. Somehow I've grown an appreciation for all kinds of music: jazz, rock, heavy metal, loud and aggressive music, soft classical music, hip-hop, acoustic and folk, whatever. I often find music is an expression of our humanity, and even more often a signal of our longing for something beyond us, for God.  In my letter today, I want to just share with you ...

Dear Good Shepherd and friends, Some of you might know that Laura and I enjoy gardening. We like the work, the process, the product.  Well, as normal, it's taken two weeks for some of the seeds we've planted to actually appear above the surface of the dirt. Two weeks. There was a while where we weren't sure if the seeds washed away in the heavy rain. But now, after two weeks and all we see is a thin, wiry, piece of green material. The weight of a fly would cause it to buckle. Eventually, hopefully, there will be healthy, tall, broad, leafy, vegetable-bearing plants. But I'm going to need to wait.  Nothing in gardening happens quickly. Nothing. Gardening involves putting seeds in the ground in an uncontrolled environment with too many unknown and unpredictable variables. In the old traditional way of doing it, it's terribly inefficient. And it's not immediate. It's not supposed to be. That's part of why we like doing it. Much of the work seems to be a was...

Dear friends, Do you ever think about our relationship to our location, to our place? Many of you are deeply connected to the land here. While the land is important to our lives, my sense is that we often don't think much about it. We normally go about our lives -- our jobs, our daily tasks -- without too much thought about our relationship to place, to the land, to our geography. The place and the land we live in is like the program running in the background of most of what we do.  Thinking about this got into my mind earlier this week while I was on a quick run to clear my head. As I was looping back home, I passed by Mark Emgarten. I almost didn't see him at first, since he was about 3/4 of the way into the ground repairing something that needed it. I can't recall what he said the problem was, as usually my runs are times when I'm thinking about several other things. By the time I got home, it had escaped my mind.  What struck me, however, was that Mark was literally...

Dear friends, As many of you know, we moved this past week. We're still settling the mess, but we're in the house. It's good to be out here. One of our first encounters as we were just starting to move some boxes was with our neighbor Darrel Gettler. Many of you might know him. He's been in this area and in his house next to ours for a while. And as a neighbor, he's kept an eye on the house we're occupying for a while. He knows about the house. He knows the area. He can tell us all sorts of stories about who's lived in the house, who lives on the block, stuff about the town. We had this sort of experience with a few others, too. Roger and Kathy Metzger, Cheryl Williams, Connie Littler, Rick Huss. I could name more. They know our house, too. They know the area. It's actually quite comforting and good to hear this familiarity. It occurred to me that though we're new, we're moving into a known place. At some point, we plan on not being...