When the Wind Becomes Breath And The Spirit Lights Us on Fire

When the Wind Becomes Breath And The Spirit Lights Us on Fire

We call it sheep running when the wind moves in the tall grass. It’s a glorious sight, that wind in the grass, not something you’d think glorious like a mountain range, but that grass up and headed out, lush from a spot of rain and warm days, it’s glorious, and if we cut and bale it with enough chance to dry, it will feed Mrs Horse and the neighbors’ cows. It’s the nesting ground of meadow birds—redwing black birds, bobolinks and king birds. Dick sissles have arrived. We drove Mrs. Horse into the living, flowing grass, alive as the current in a river, only the grass stands at her nose, easy to snatch like a woman pulling weeds, her mouth lime green, grass stems sticking out like the farmer who picks a stalk to stick between his teeth. She comes round, using her hind legs to lift herself as she breaks into a trot. She becomes light in the bridle. Light. You are the light of the world. This little light of mine, I’m gonna’ let it shine. I’m relaxed, hands by my thighs, finding the fun, her trot easy. Bruce and I see a pair of Bobolinks fly up. And a king bird and a meadow lark, their names prettier than their dull brown coats. (We’ve seen a purple finch come to the feeder and Baltimore Orioles and a cardinal, but the dull birds are in the fields.) The swallows swoop and wheel around us. At night I walk in the barn and they fly out. Bruce says they fly under the door to get back in after I close it up. (I prefer Mrs. Horse stay in the barn at night and shut all the doors so she has the run of the barn.) The swallows have raised a few fledglings that peek out of their mud nests. Those sculpted mud huts are wonder, bowing out from the barn rafters, with no way for cats to climb to them. The plan is to plow up half the field after it’s cut. Our hay guy hopes to plant timothy, orchard and alfalfa because we have so many weeds and his cattle need alfalfa. My birdwatcher friend says that will destroy the birds’ habitat, though it’s still grass coming. He says our hay field is rare because there aren’t many grasslands in DeKalb County. Farmers would as soon plant cash crops—corn, beans, and wheat. Hay is hard work. It is a gambler’s work because you need to pick three or four dry days in a row for it to cure. The adage make hay when the sun shines holds. Our hay still stands despite a month of dry days, our hay guy not available then. We need small squares to set in our barn loft. It’s hard work to stack hay on the wagon, pull it off, and hoist it to the loft. Bruce stacks it the way he wants. I’m told the old barns are held together by the weight of hay stored there. I don’t like to drive Mrs. Horse when it’s windy because the wind can spook her. (High wind has been my excuse not to drive) And this wind was brisk enough to call for my winter coat. But I was relaxed. She was relaxed. Birds flying up didn’t bother her. The wind is combing the leaves hard like my mother when she hit a tangle and it hurt. There was not gentle twittering of the leaves in stillness. There was no brushed back undersides up either. These flowed in the wind as hard as a current pushes freshwater grasses in a river. Jesus said the Spirit blows where it will. I think of this in the hard winds, the trees bending with it, their voices a kind of praise. The breath takingness of it. I think about my breath—in and out, in and out, and sometimes a deep sigh that catches the relief of good air. Our lungs seem like the strongest thing about us, but are so, so fragile. We can breathe calm for ourselves. I have breathed to keep hold of Mrs. horse when she is about to turn tail and run. I’m waiting on the results of a CT scan my lung doc ordered because my breath isn’t quite as good as last year, but still normal. He is careful. The tech said it’s for interstitial lung disease, something I know about. It can be caused by breathing moldy hay or autoimmune disease. I do this because hay can be moldy but not be obvious. Mrs. Horse’s breath has been more important than mine. Breath. Breathe. Lost breath. No more freedom of wind combing grass, shoving leaves back, no free Holy Spirit who breathes in, breathes out with us. Bruce and I sat in vigil when his mother died, her breath sounding like a race horse held in check, held to a gallop, not a run, around the early morning oval and spread dirt of Churchill downs. Her lost breath. Her quiet body. Called for silence. The sacred. The Spirit Moves Over the Face The Spirit moved over the face of the deep. Murk. A smooth ripple over chaos. A hand pounding water so it turns to rock and shoved into the foundations of the earth. Chemicals and gas bubble from the ocean floor. Water from the rock. Water that is rock. I just learned the Kola Superdeep bore hole was drilled seven miles into the earth’s crust. Surprisingly liquid water and hydrogen were found at the bottom. The temperature--356 degrees Fahrenheit—was far hotter than they realized.1 Scientists have found there is water held in a rock called Ringwoodite, that it can be found in the transition zone between 250 and 410 miles deep. Scientists think this water makes up three times the amount on the surface, makes up deep rock in a solid, not ice, form.2 When the writer of Genesis said God separated the waters above and the waters below, maybe he meant he parted the oceans from water frozen in rock hundreds of miles deep. On Fire for The Lord When I was a child, I was told to stay on fire for the Lord. On fire like the flames that dropped on the disciples when the Holy Spirit whooshed in and they spoke in languages foreigners could understand. They spoke the good news Jesus broke death’s back. On fire to seek God and back in those days tell people about him. On fire, the flames of hell, licked on the edges of my imagination, I wept for my friends to know Jesus, to be delivered from that. Nowadays I think we’re all going to be salted with fire, a fire that will mold and shape us into the people God had in mind when he made us. God a consuming fire. The prophet Isaiah says: The sinners in Jerusalem shake with fear. Terror seizes the godless. “Who can live with this devouring fire?” they cry. “Who can survive this all-consuming fire?” He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, who despises the gain of oppressions, who shakes his hands, lest they hold a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking on evil, he will dwell on the heights; his place of defense will be the fortresses of rocks; his bread will be given him; his water will be sure. Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar.3 The Spirit moved across the face of our church, across the face of our country. We called it the Charismatic Movement. People spoke in tongues and chanted “Praise you Jesus. Praise you Jesus.” Their voices sounded rushed, like their chant would call down the Spirit, call down wild tongues that weren’t their own. Some seemed to think you weren’t filled with the Holy Spirit if you didn’t speak in God’s language. I didn’t. Those were the years our youth leader said you weren’t much a Christian if you hadn’t lead people to Christ in the last little while. I hadn’t. I wept, while I walked our mile long road at night, longing for my high school friends to know Jesus. I didn’t hesitate to offer my own hellfire and brimstone sermons. No I didn’t hesitate. And was not well liked. (Though my classmates begged me to come to our fortieth reunion. I begged off because I was so fogged up mentally I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to get to the party.) I didn’t claim the label charismatic until a devil handsome young man with shining eyes at college said, “Of course you’re charismatic” because I knew my Bible. Finally, I wanted to tell you, the other night I was awakened by light flashing in our windows, so fast and so hard it looked like a war. I got up, unplugged the phone, checked the weather and saw a line of storms, mostly orange moving west to east just north of us. I went back upstairs and looked out the north window. Lightning flashed in bulbous clouds--flash, flash, flash but no sound. Sure there’s a weather map, saying what I saw, but it was more, St Michael fighting the devil, protecting our little ground? God saying Holy! on Mount Sinai, calling the people to stay back, but calling Moses to come up? Then it was done. I’ve held that fire, up here, in my head. I hope you never stop being on fire for the Lord, the youth leader wrote in my Bible. I’ve picked up Wounded by Love [https://a.co/d/01aCPs0X] by St Porphyrios and found the following wisdom with regards to fighting the powers of darkness. Don’t struggle to expel darkness and evil. You achieve nothing by flailing at darkness. Are you in darkness and you want to escape? Then what do you do? You assault darkness with all your might, but it doesn’t go away. Do you wish light? Open a little hole and a ray of sunlight will enter and light will come. Instead of expelling darkness and instead fight the enemy to prevent him from entering you, open your arms to Christ’s embrace. This is the most perfect way. That is don’t wage war on evil directly, but love Christ and his light, and evil will then retreat.4 Fire. On fire for the Lord. Fall in love with Jesus, who dwells in your mortal body, this soft creature that breathes spirit in, breathes spirit out. Turn toward the light that settles into trees or flashes through the barn, slides along walls. Fall in love with him who was dead and is now alive. Let the Spirit move over the face of the deep. Your deep. Thank you for listening to and/or reading this essay. I hope you consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. References 1 How Deep is the Deepest Hole in the World? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-deep-is-the-deepest-hole-in-the-world/ [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-deep-is-the-deepest-hole-in-the-world/] 2 New Evidence for Oceans of Water Deep in the Earth. Brookhaven National Laboratory. June 13, 2014. https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=111648 [https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=111648] 3 Isaiah 33: 14 – 17, ESV 4 Saint Porphyrios. Wounded by Love. 149 Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

I Get Caught Up in UAP Chatter. Jesus Gets Caught Up in the Clouds

I’ve been caught up in the chatter about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena since Trump began releasing previously top-secret files. Pastors who have seen files have said that these would destroy Christians’ faith1. Others are concerned about how we would be deceived as revelations ramp up. Rod Dreher has said these phenomena are demonic. Now we are faced with a universe that is more mysterious and odd than our post-modernist world view has suggested. When I watched one UAP video, Facebook obliged and showed more. So I watched balls traveling through the sky over war zones with no propulsion. I saw one dive into the ocean. There was video that showed an angel dancing in the sky that turned out to be a Star Wars Storm trooper balloon. One man videoed a shadow moving across the ground when the sky was clear. As a young girl, I was fascinated. I read Chariot of the Gods [https://a.co/d/02CRNntK] in one sitting, browsed through Project Blue Book and even started a UFO club at school, which didn’t last long. I remember wishing a spaceship would take me away when I watched jets on approach switch on their landing lights and drop their wheels. The last time I saw my brother, he swore he saw a flying saucer land on the flat, a low-lying field surrounded by the Normanskill. We saw black helicopters dropping into the valley south of us. (They were likely training for Viet Nam.) This is fascinating stuff, with a curiosity that feels illicit. Addison Hodges Hart identifies this as: Turning to the matter of “spiritual delusion,” the Russian term for it is prelest (прелесть = “charm,” “fascination,” derived from a word meaning “allurement,” “flattery,” “adulation”).2 That says what this is. I’m being charmed and fascinated by these reports. My Facebook addiction and desire to write this post, keeps my eyes on it, where it might be better if I read Julian of Norwich’s Revelations [https://a.co/d/0a83rJ5e] or the Biblical readings for the day. It’s so easy because the powers of darkness are as spectacular as a tree falling, the crack of timber, the slow fall, the roots tipped up. And the powers of goodness are slow growing like said tree growing from an acorn to a twig to a tree that becomes the biggest creature in the neighborhood. Stephen Spielberg, with glittering eyes says he wished E.T. were true when he made the movie back in 1977. He says now he believes there are extra-terrestrials.3 He is releasing Disclosure Day [https://www.disclosuredaymovie.com/tickets/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23885359595&gbraid=0AAAAADmNt6sR14rySDQaCZgYPe58zF-Hr&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlerQBhDMARIsAB16H-XLf2i-hl2aybubJ6Wqo5_pYLpRsm54Ma40yV94qdOyU6dawZs15jIaAmA7EALw_wcB], a movie I think I’d like to see, though Bruce says no way. Glenn Beck says that AI will destroy freewill because it has the ability to send propaganda tailored to us. It will shape our perceptions. We won’t know what’s true. I have experienced this personally. My concerns for my aching legs are getting answers with Facebook ads that claim their products will ease my pain. I am sorry about a friend’s deceased dog and get notices about others who have lost beloved pets. Beck sounds an important warning: Human propagandists could manipulate crowds. AI manipulates individuals, personally. And unlike people, the machine never sleeps. It runs billions of tiny emotional experiments every day: this image worked, that phrase increased fear, this music created trust, this story kept him engaged longer. Most people still think they are using the algorithm. The algorithm is using them. And honestly, maybe that is why Spielberg’s movie lands at exactly the right moment. Because beneath all the UFO fascination sits the biggest question of our time: what is real? Seriously, what is real anymore? Videos can be fake. Voices can be cloned. Images can be generated. Outrage can be manufactured. Soon, entire realities may be personalized for every human being alive.4 I have felt the pull to dive deep into what the powers of darkness are up to because I’ve been attacked and I want to know what’s coming. It seems we are in the part of Revelation where Satan is “released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth,”5 the part just before the final judgement. I am afraid of being deceived. I am afraid that I will think the antichrist is Christ. Just from seeing the Disclosure Day [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQhSDMYuL_U] trailer, with images of a stag walking with a woman to a lighted building, the stag and light images for Christ, I can see how I could be deceived. (I wonder if Martin Shaw will speak/write about this movie.) Addison Hodges Hart quotes St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807 – 1867) who offers some reassurance that maybe I’m in a kind of safe place. That drawing near to Jesus through prayer, scripture, the sacraments is a way to find the truth. Spiritual deception [prelest] is the wounding of human nature by falsehood. Spiritual deception is the state of all human beings without exception, and it has been made possible by the fall of our original parents. All of us are subject to spiritual deception. Awareness of this fact is the greatest protection against it. Likewise, the greatest spiritual deception of all is to consider oneself free from it. We are all deceived, all deluded; we all find ourselves in a condition of falsehood; we all need to be liberated by the Truth. The Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ. (Emphasis added. One can read the entire text here [http://orthodoxleader.paradosis.com/articles/on-spiritual-deception/].)2 Then there are the Longhorn ticks infecting people with Alpha Gal syndrome making them allergic to all meat products. The CDC estimates that the number of people infected is 450,000. This is up from an estimate of 110,000 cases between 2010 – 2022. A bio-ethicist research team published a paper saying that there is a moral imperative to make people stop eating meat. And Bill Gates has said that he would like to see ticks bioengineered with this illness. He wants to see all meat consumption stopped by 2030.6 Bruce and I have pulled ticks off our dogs, the horse, and ourselves, so this concerns me greatly. The line from Shakespeare is apropos: Something wicked this way comes. It’s easy to be afraid. It’s easy to drop our eyes and gaze at the wicked because it seems to be so pervasive, though this spring, like every spring the leaves came out, the Irises blossom, the redwing blackbirds sit on the electric wires, our pastor blesses the eucharist, we stand with other members of Christ’s body to receive it. I keep thinking of St. Paul’s admonition to St. Timothy: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits andteachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared…”7 On Ascension Day, our pastor urged us to say, “He is risen. He is risen indeed.” And then we had to repeat, “He is ascended. He is ascended indeed.” While Pastor Rosebrock preached, we looked at a picture of Jesus’ feet hanging down with his disciples, men and women, looking up as he lifted to heaven. Luke writes that before he lifted into the air, Jesus said, “everything that was written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”8 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. When John says at the end of his gospel: “Now there were also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the book that would be written.”9 I wish there were more post resurrection stories of Jesus. I figured maybe we are those stories when I heard Fr. Stephen DeYoung ask, “If Christ is going to come into your family, your workplace, your school, your circle of friends, how is he going to come there? He’s going to come there through you.”10 Before Jesus opened their minds, the disciples were also the people who heard but didn’t hear, saw but didn’t see, along with the crowds that followed Jesus, along with the Pharisees. Right up to the days before his death, James and John asked Jesus if they could sit at his right and left when the kingdom came. They were clueless those places were reserved for the two thieves crucified next to him. Sometimes I think we can be just as clueless as they were. I am not happy that to be close by Jesus means taking up a cross, which was a gross way to die—naked, pinned down, not even able to flick away flies, losing breath. I never would have thought His leaving would fill the disciples with such joy. He told them they would do greater works than he did. They saw demons cast out, people’s heaviness lightened. He sought a man with a legion’s worth of demons, crossing a sea that turned terrifying with wind, to release the man. He raised a little girl from the dead. He stopped a woman’s chronic bleeding. When he disappeared in the clouds, when their beloved teacher, was raised not to a cross but the heavens, their beloved teacher having died and was alive, they returned to Jerusalem, worshipped together and sang with joy. In his sermon, guest pastor Rosebrock reminded us of how many times “all” was mentioned in the epistle reading: And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. 11 He reminded us that in spite of whatever trouble that’s in the world we can know that Christ is head over all things, his fullness fills all in all. And we have that fullness.12 And the natural world is full of God’s love. And people we pass in the grocery store or gather with in church, they bear the image of God, and can remind us what God looks like. All of creation has been put under His feet. Feet that stepped into the Jordan river. Feet that felt the cool bottom and water swirling around. Feet tipping up off the ground as John baptized him. Feet that walked dusty roads, stepped in dried manure. Feet that were slathered with expensive perfume, wiped up by hair and tears. Feet that were pinned to wood, crying out with blood and pain. Feet that stepped into the valley of the shadow, as the dead were pulled out. Feet that stepped on stone and walked into a garden. Think about that as your feet touch the ground. Listen to how those feet talk to you. Remember all things, all politics, all injustice, all weirdness, all pain, death have been put under his feet. Since you are hidden in Christ and Christ is hidden in God, those are your feet too. This is the shield of faith Paul urges us to put up to extinguish all the fiery darts of the evil one. References 1 Alien Disclosure Imminent? Perry Stone Issues Warning. CBN. 2 Addison Hodges Hart. On demons and exorcism (Part 6): Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena and… The Pragmatic Mystic. An Orthodox Miscellany. https://addisonhodgeshart.substack.com/p/on-demons-and-exorcism-part-6-unidentified 3 DISCLOSURE DAY Official Final Trailer (2026) Emily Blunt, Steven Spielberg. 4 “The real disclosure in Spielberg’s comeback film isn’t about aliens” May 28, 2026. https://glennbeck.com/read/articles/the-real-disclosure-in-spielbergs-comeback-film-isnt-about-aliens?fbclid=IwZnRzaASG6jdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEe8OlpzqN9thKpxeV-HK3MwOst_Kc0rFnkDdaW33XsStv6ku_rUjE9vpSMVvE_aem_AIN-D2SEYMMJ0_VBVbHsOg 5 Revelation 20: 7 – 8, ESV 6 BREAKING: RFK Jr. Announces Major Trump Administration Actions To Combat Lyme Disease & Calls Alpha-Gal Syndrome “A Science Fiction Nightmare”. 2nd Smartest Guy in the World. May 30, 2026.https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/breaking-rfk-jr-announces-major-trump 7 I Timothy 4: 1 – 2, ESV 8 Luke 24: 44 – 45 9 John 21:25 11 Ephesians 1: 22, ESV 12 Pastor Rosebrock. Immanuel Lutheran Belvidere. May 14, 2026 Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Well, Sometimes a Person Needs to Learn to Walk and to See and to Hear

The days this week have been exquisite, especially as the sun set, with enough clouds to focus the light, to make the barn, the trees, the grass radiant. One day with predicted rain, possibly severe, the air felt like pressure like there was thunder rolling in the background or a jet readying for take off. The big machines were working the fields. Every few years they get bigger, the finishers they drag, wider, more awkward in the tight corners of the big fields. Planters are just as imposing all folded up as they’re pulled down our little road. Then they unfold and roll down giant fields. Late model pick-ups haul seeds in totes that are augered into the bins at the back of the planter. No longer do these big farmers climb out of their machines to fill individual seed bins, one after another, depending on how many rows they plant at once. The tractors have treads wrapped around three wheels, rolling triangles, a three-point sermon of power. It’s so dry that it looked like they were planting dust instead of seeds. Once I even saw a dust devil swirl up on the neighbor’s field, a whirling dervish dancing across the bottom where his field meets ours. We smelled chemical for several days, so much so we tasted it. There’s change coming after Mr P died. Both he and his wife lived a good many years there, a kind of anchor to the neighborhood, not always easy. I miss their side by side coming up our driveway to talk, despite not quite being done with chores. The farm has been divided between the co-owners though the farming will continue as it has been. The house, barns and dooryard will eventually be sold. There will be an auction for the house-hold goods. Since I walk up to the house to hear the wind in the pines, it’s a good walk with the sun in my face, and a view of fields and distant woods when I turn back I wonder if there will be dogs loose in the yard, if this won’t be a way I can come. This week the Daily Office took us to the story Jesus told about planting seeds—how seeds sown on the path will be snatched up by birds, seeds sown on rocky ground bloom quickly but burn up, seeds sown among thorns are choked, and seeds sown on good soil produce a great yield. The seeds are scattered abundantly, how they grow is a picture of how people receive the good news. But what struck me was Jesus quoting Isaiah: You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear and their eyes have been closed lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. 1 What does it mean to have a heart grown dull? To have eyes but not be able to see? To hear this story about seeds strewn everywhere and not understand it? (Here the seeds are laid down by GPS. Bruce remarked the farmer wasn’t even driving the machine himself. The seeds are genetically modified to get along with herbicide and short growing seasons, even cold ground. They are patented.) But less than a week after planting, I noticed ugly weeds, “frankenweeds”, growing along edge of the field. I hope they aren’t thistle as we eradicated it from our fields by Bruce’s patient spraying by hand. Bruce says they will spray again. My physical therapist is teaching me how to walk. While he’s showing me how young people walk with arms swinging and how frail old people walk, hunched over, I think walk, walk with the Lord. Shoes as the gospel of peace. Walk up the road. Be still. I guess you’re not supposed to walk slowly with your hands stuck in your hoodie and your head down, though when I’m on the road, my head’s up looking at the clouds and birds and fields stretching away. I guess you’re supposed to let your hands swing, left hand stepping out with your right foot. (I’m so uncoordinated I will clap opposite the crowd when the pop singer riles the crowd to clap in time.) He’s given me exercises to loosen by lower back and loosen my shoulders. They are simple, painless, but a challenge to fit into my day. I’m learning if I relax and let my shoulders shift, my arms will swing in line with the opposite leg. But I must choose to relax. It’s not comfortable to let them swing, I like to keep me arms tucked in, to keep them from being whacked by branches streaming by as if I were in a car with an open window speeding down a narrow road. I have to remind myself to drop my arms and let them loose. It’s not unlike when I learned to relax while riding a horse, to let my body follow the horse’s movement and not be stiff. It took years and pulling stirrups and reins off for me to learn this back in college, when I spent a day cleaning a barn in exchange for private lessons. “There remaineth rest to the people of God.”2 This is what rest means, relaxing, letting loose of control and that old cliché, “going with the flow.” Walk. Walk with the Lord. Your shoes are the gospel of peace. Walk up the road. Be still. Walking like this. Like walking in good shoes. I feel like I’m walking into an authority that I’m not comfortable with. Michael wondered if I ever walked like a regular person. Probably not. Probably mostly drawn in, quiet. But this walk, this walk, I feel free with more authority. Like people I walk up to would respect me without my saying a word. Walk. Walk with the Lord. Your shoes are the gospel of peace. Your shield is faith. What does it mean to have a heart grown dull? To have eyes but not be able to see? Last week I came across a Substack, Serapex. [https://www.lab.serapex.com/] where Philipp says: Your real competition is the version of you that is still trying to be liked. The version of you that wants to be safe. The version of you that is tempted to turn your life’s struggle into a sales funnel before you have even healed. Win that internal battle, and the external metrics stop feeling like judgement.3 One of the stories I’ve told, that make my eyes blind, my ears deaf, is this story, the repeating words about not being liked, the ache of four horsewomen deciding I didn’t make the cut after my mare died. The lie in my head: “nobody wants what I have to offer.” “I’ve been rejected so much I’m not sure I know how to make friends.” The problem with this kind of blindness is we can set people up to not even try to be friends because that’s what we expect. If we expect people to treat us badly, that’s what we will see whether or not that was their intent or even their action. These lines have closed my eyes and ears so I don’t recognize the friends who have stayed with me, including Mr Bruce, forty years long, Mrs. Horse, Mrs. Dog, Mr Dog and four cats. In fact something broke loose this week. It’s been one of my prayers that I’d know the following: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.4 Just a little bit I felt, in my heart the love of these beings for me. For me! Mrs. Horse wants my company. Oma is delighted to sit, stay, walk when I turn my eyes to hear. Aiden crawls in my lap because he needs me. And Bruce, well I’d prefer to keep how he shows his love private. I’ve been blocked by so much loss, my heart scarred over but this week I felt this love in my heart, like was when the first man loved me back, only better. The promise, the promise that He replaces the heart of stone with a heart of flesh is true. The earth is so full of God’s love that it includes The Tree and the redwing blackbirds, and the bobolink who flies up from the grass and the barn swallows who wheel and swoop and around the fields, and the squirrels running along branches, and the wild, joyous wind combing through grass like so many sheep. Philipp also wrote about writing on Substack: But your Substack is not a content machine. It is a garden. A garden requires periods of fallow. It requires rain, which looks like a gloomy day but is actually nourishment. It requires the courage to trust that something is happening underground even when we cannot see a sprout….5 You Substack is a garden not a machine. I think I’m needing to change things up with these essays. The weather is too beautiful and Mrs Horse waits at the gate for Bruce and I to harness her up and let her take her for a drive. Both dogs need training. And I have this essay collection: “Baptisms…” needing to be worked into a draft. Parts of it have risen in my head, that I’ve not been able to play with. There are some contests where it might be appropriate to enter. I can’t seem to manage working on both. I don’t know how long my break will be even if I will take one. I may stop posting weekly. I may post more than that if I have something to share. I will likely post at odd times. Gosh I appreciate your reading my work, especially those of you who are financially supporting me. But I need to go down in the earth and let things take root, let the well fill up, find the fun again. Thank you so much for reading and/or listening to this post. I hope you consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. References 1 Matthew 13: 14 – 15 2 Hebrews 4: 9, KJV 3 Philipp, Serapex, Stop Creating Content. https://open.substack.com/pub/serapex/p/stop-creating-content?r=2jx39&utm_medium=ios 4 Ephesians 1:15 – 23 5 Philipp, Serapex, Stop Creating Content Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Powers are Jerking us Around, Don't You Know. I Bet You Do. My call to Resist.

The farmers are on the move. Finally. It’s been a cold week, as chilling as any week in the middle of the winter, with a few mornings of frost, and cold winds roaring through. I watched a maple tree’s leaves wilted, trembling on a rare still day, as if those leaves were trying to warm themselves or trying to say something. The lilacs have lasted longer than normal. I walk past their scent, heavy, the smell of spring which is better than the chemical that blew in dust across our fields—chemical I taste. I make sure docs know Bruce and I have been exposed to the spray—herbicide, fertilizer, whatever else. This week I posted a perspective on our local NPR Station that touches on the political, something I prefer to avoid especially when people want to talk politics to “understand.” I don’t have a mind to call up things I’ve studied to give a reason. Beside politics are ephemeral compared to the people who bear the image of God, who as Lewis said next to the eucharist are the most holy thing we’ll encounter. Well, here’s what I wrote. Not again. Not another assassination attempt on President Trump. I watched the videos of journalists crouching by their tables, of the gun man running through the hallway. I listened to Trump say he hoped the dinner would continue. He looked brave and tired, maybe close to tears. I wondered how the would-be assassin got so close. Forty-five years ago, I was at the Washington Sheraton promoting well known Christian authors, when the Secret Service cleared us out of our rooms so we could avoid the sniffer dogs because President Reagan was speaking. The black SUVs parked outside were something to see. Yet again, national chaos grabbed my attention. I began doom scrolling. One writer wondered how these lone wolf types seem to know where security is porous. Others said this attempt like Butler was staged. But this time it was so Trump could get his ballroom. With regards to the would-be assassin, NPR correspondent Odette Yousef [https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5800212/alleged-assassins-online-presence-belies-claims-of-radicalism] said, “But honestly, his content falls into a kind of mainstream left now.”1 During the protest outside the correspondents’ dinner, a man held a sign--Death to Trump supporters. “Rainbow!” I yelled, jumping up from the news to run into the sun shower, to see a rainbow as bright as I’ve ever seen arching over the neighbors’ farms. Why am I doom scrolling when there’s this? When daily I walk past redwing blackbirds sitting on sticks of weeds? I thought about the yard sign “Hate has no home here,” how it also applies to Trump and his supporters. I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.2 I wonder how you feel reading this. Are you hoping I’m pointing fingers at Trump and his supporters? I’m not. I realized after I recorded it that the ending is ambiguous, even though the essay points to that line: “Death to Trump Supporters.” Is the protestor’s next move a weapon aimed at me? (I’m not exactly a Trump supporter, but I felt he was better than the alternative. He’s done some good things and some awful things. I’ve given up trying to make an opinion because there are dogs to walk, a horse to curry, books to read.) Is the death-to-Trump-supporters-protestor’s next move a weapon aimed at me? Even my own governor, J.B. Pritzker has called for violence against Republicans. State representative Kevin Schmidt summarizes what he was saying a year ago: Referring to President Trump at a speech in March, Pritzker said, “Bullies respond to one thing, and one thing only, a punch in the face.” During that same speech at a California LGBTQ convention, Pritzker said, “I won’t continue to advocate that we wage conventional political fights when what we really need is to become street fighters.” Pritzker’s calls for political upheaval and his wink and nod toward political violence didn’t end there. Just this week, at a New Hampshire Democratic party fundraiser, Pritzker ramped up the rhetoric. First, he started his speech by saying, “It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once.” Then, Pritzker dipped his toes in even more dangerous rhetorical waters. “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I am now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”3 So my governor is saying as a Republican I can’t know a moment of peace? He is advocating “a punch in the face” for his political opponent? While I’m not comfortable pointing fingers at the left, because judge not and all that, I feel it might be useful to point out my alarm at the left’s violence. It’s disturbing, well frightening, to hear Governor Pritzker say I should not have a moment’s peace, when all I want to do is walk the road, say good morning to red wing blackbirds and offer thanks. All I want to do is wave at the neighbor driving by and take my other neighbor to her hair appointments trading stories about the fields. Using the language of 12 Step groups, Beckett Adams in “Political Whataboutism has Gotten out of Control” says, “The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. And the left has a very real problem. Nearly as great a problem as left-wing violence is the left’s refusal to admit it has a problem.”4 I’ve thought this for years. When Biden talked about how white nationalists were a threat, I wondered where’d that come from? White nationalists weren’t burning cities across this country. Ironically it turns out the notorious white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, turned out to be funded by the supposed anti racist group the Southern Poverty Law Center, in order to keep the funding coming in for their anti-racist work. Adams continues: When a Republican or conservative is shot, stabbed, or beaten by a left-wing assailant, the activist left adopts one of three standard responses: The first: The violence is deserved. He had it coming! The second: It didn’t happen. It’s a hoax! The third, and by far the most common, is: Right-wing violence is still worse… Anything to deny legitimacy to the idea that conservatives deserve dignity, sympathy, or even empathy. To grant any of these would be to concede that conservatives are human. But in the universe of left-wing activism, the right is evil incarnate.4 Seeing someone as evil incarnate is the ultimate in dehumanization, and when people are dehumanized, it’s not a big step to move from a sign saying “death to Trump supporters” to actually carrying it out. Adams summarizes the violence: You can have multiple presidential assassination attempts; the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the murder of Kirk; multiple shooting attacks on ICE facilities; a violent, weeks-long siege of a federal courthouse in Portland; “social justice”-themed riots of all shapes and sizes; and nearly 100 crisis pregnancy centers and pro-life groups vandalized or firebombed since the 2022 Dobbs decision, to name just a few, and the response from dedicated leftists will still be: I don’t care; the right is still worse.4 And don’t forget the Bernie Sanders supporter who tried to assassinate Republicans at a softball game. I hear whispers that civil war is coming in the comments sections. People who just want to be left alone and live their lives are growing weary of the left’s violence, the left’s insisting on getting their way, if they don’t, a tantrum erupts. I see a number of “vote red” comments that were silenced a few years ago when cancel culture was dominant. These days feel like a replay of the late sixties, early seventies. Those years felt like our civil order was fraying. I wondered if I’d have a country where I could grow up, go to college, get married, build a career. Back then bombings of academic and government buildings were common. I remember how jumpy I was with regards to the Moral Majority and talk of revolution on the evangelical side and how a journalist friend said the inertia of the majority of the American people would prevent that. Now I’m not so sure. Families and friends have spun apart over politics. Social media has given everyone the right to be an amateur pundit, to say things we might not say in person. Ben Sasse in Them says, “The incentive structure in the media complex rewards pushing the gas, not tapping the brakes—or qualifying a point…No one wants nuance. We want white hats and black hats”5. I dread the reaction to this post, dread the outrage, when the point I’m trying to make has to do with how political rhetoric is fomenting violence. Outrage is the enemy. Outrage that silences, that abandons relationships. Outrage that paints dehumanizing words on placards and in memes. Awhile ago, I was wondering what Jewish people did with the violent God portrayed in the Old Testament. One day, right there in the bookshelves at Barnes and Noble, I pulled out Not in God’s Name by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi in England. I felt like God answered my question as I walked through the stacks. Sacks offers three moves a people makes toward genocide. He says, “Pathological dualism does three things. It makes you dehumanize and demonize your enemies. It leads you to see yourself as a victim. And it allows you to commit altruistic evil, killing in the name of the God of life, hating in the name of the God of love, and practicing cruelty in the name of the God of compassion”6. Only instead of the name of the God of love, this dehumanization is being practiced in the name of “tolerance.” Sacks says, “The first stage is dehumanization. This is the prelude to genocide. The paradox in the phrase ‘crimes against humanity’ is that the great crimes are committed against those you do no see as sharing your humanity. To the Hutus, the Tutsis were inyenzi, cockroaches...”7 (57). Republicans are called Nazis, fascists, racists, white supremacists, magats. “The second stage is establishing victimhood. Just as it is necessary to rob your enemies of their humanity, so you have to find a way of relinquishing responsibility for the evil you are about to commit. You must define yourself as a victim. It follows that you, in committing murder, even genocide, are merely acting in self-defense.” 8 For instance, Luigi Mangione justified killing Brian Thompson because of how insurance companies treat people unfairly. “When dehumanization and demonization are combined with a sense of victimhood, the third stage becomes possible the commission of evil in the altruistic cause.”9 The young man who attempted to assassinate Trump claimed he was doing a good thing. He says, “And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”10 I fear we have sidled very close to that last move, the commission of evil in the altruistic cause. As I said earlier: Death to Trump supporters on a sign is a short step, to picking up a weapon. I fear either side could blow, the aforementioned civil war coming to no good end. I’ve been reading Joe Jackson’s Splendid Liberators [https://a.co/d/09gpP47b] about the Spanish American war. The Cuban and Philippino revolts against the Spanish rule lead to death and starvation for ordinary people. And left both countries open to brutal American intervention. (I haven’t gotten to that part yet.) The only ways I know to combat this is to identify my own resentments, put them away, and reach for the common ground. I’ve said often that our friendship is more important than our political opinions. We need to resist the powers that are jerking us around. I’ve resented how non citizens are awarded free health care, free housing etc when citizens have been denied those benefits. Well, I am putting that away because that disparity is a tool to build outrage. I want no part of it. People, whether citizens or not, are next to the eucharist as the most holy thing I will encounter, made in the image of God. In a recent report in Newsweek the authors talked about how our values have become inverted. A famine is reported in Gaza for instance but that famine turns out to be inaccurate, but the retraction is too late. People are already running with protests against genocide. Instead of the in group being hyper nationalists who love their country, it’s the opposite, people joined together because of their hatred. This is manipulated by the CCP. At their worst, they have learned that accusations generate attention—corrections do not. When the United Nations declares famine, governments mobilize and courts take notice. When that declaration later turns out to rest on bad data and buried evidence, no correction follows. The damage is done. The funding has already moved. The second force operates at the street level, where organized protest ecosystems amplify the accusations that institutional bodies generate. Documented research [https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/SID4P-Report_May-2024.pdf] has traced how the Singham network, a global infrastructure with documented financial ties to Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-affiliated entities, directed funds and narratives into American activist organizations. The protest activity that followed was, in significant part, engineered. The institution names the violation. The protest ecosystem amplifies it. The accused defends itself. And the regime actually responsible recedes from scrutiny.11 We are being jerked around. Maybe the real revolution is to resist the outrage, resist hating our neighbor, hating the undocumented immigrant, hating the Jewish person, the black person, the Islamic person, the man or woman you can’t stand. Maybe we should value our culture, even though we’ve done stupid and cruel things because we have the sense to reflect on those. We also aspire to freedom of speech and religion and protest and the press. Stripping the clothing that is our culture just leaves us naked and vulnerable and angry. This wreck of a system that is working is better than no system at all. It was a beautiful Friday afternoon walk with the dogs. Soft sunlight with cloud shadows. Green grass. Freshly tilled ground. The weed killer settled and not in my breath which reminds me of the New Testament reading from this morning. “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.”12 Did you hear that? With the breath of his mouth, the Lord Jesus will kill the lawless one. The breath that breathed life into Adam, the breath that said “Let there be and there was, the breath that breathed “my God my God why have you forsaken me, father forgive them, into your hand I commit my spirit, today you will be with me in paradise, it is finished.” The work is finished. That breath. The breath that breathed on the frightened disciples when Jesus showed up alive. The breath that poured out on Pentecost, so lively, people heard the good new in their own language. And to the guy in the ratty turquoise truck, our roadside is not your personal trash can. Were you trying to provoke me to shake my finger at you? I’m not stupid and not up for road rage against me and my dogs. Bruce says he’s a neighbor. Sigh. If my words have filled you with outrage, with what about, with how could she support Trump, well maybe take a look, maybe walk down the road to pick up the bag with a Casey’s sandwich box and empty water bottle, and put it in a proper trash can. References 1 Odette Yousef. “Shooting suspect’s online presence belies claims of ‘radicalism’”. April 27, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5800212/alleged-assassins-online-presence-belies-claims-of-radicalism 2 Katie Andraski. “Doomscrolling.” WNIJ. May 5, 2026. https://www.northernpublicradio.org/wnij-perspectives/2026-05-05/perspective-doomscrolling 3 Kevin Schmidt, State Representative District 114. “Pritzker’s dangerous rhetoric aimed at Trump heats up as IL Governor dips toes in presidential waters.” https://repschmidt.com/2025/05/01/pritzkers-dangerous-rhetoric-aimed-at-trump-heats-up-as-il-governor-dips-toes-in-presidential-waters/#:~:text=The%202028%20Presidential%20election%20is,Governor%20JB%20Pritzker%20is%20behaving. 4 Beckett Adams in “Political Violence Whataboutism Has Gotten out of control” https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/05/the-political-violence-whataboutism-has-gotten-out-of- control/ [https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/05/the-political-violence-whataboutism-has-gotten-out-of-%20control/] 5 Ben Sasse. Them [https://a.co/d/00LwUMwi]. St Martin’s. 2018. p. 111 6 Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Not in God’s Name [https://a.co/d/00A3NcRf]. Schocken. 2025. p. 54. 7 Ibid. p. 57 8 Ibid p. 59 9 Ibid. p. 62 10 Stephen Nelson, Chris Nesi. “Read White House Correspondents’ Dinner suspect Cole Allen’s full anti-Trump manifesto.” New York Post. April 26, 2026. https://nypost.com/2026/04/26/us-news/read-whcd-gunman-cole-allens-full-anti-trump-manifesto/ 11 Joel Finkelstein, Shawn Chenoweth, and Judea Pearl. The Moral Mob And the Human Rights Industrial Complex. Newsweek. April 30, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/the-moral-mob-and-the-human-rights-industrial-complex-opinion-11882578?fbclid=IwZnRzaARloLRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeCbTRqu9eJFIdyd7_JGM84bQONE76n1YjmJvsM872pIETyIKlX-EX-Clv20g_aem_m3h5ZvCu4-bOLiFperTbHg [https://www.newsweek.com/the-moral-mob-and-the-human-rights-industrial-complex-opinion-11882578?fbclid=IwZnRzaARloLRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeCbTRqu9eJFIdyd7_JGM84bQONE76n1YjmJvsM872pIETyIKlX-EX-Clv20g_aem_m3h5ZvCu4-bOLiFperTbHg] 12 2 Thessalonians 2: 7 – 8, ESV Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

I Wanted to See God, but Then Again I Don't. Longing

Early, when I’m doing chores I notice but don’t notice: the wood walls of the barn. The manger where I set dusty grooming tools. The shavings pushed back in Mrs Horse’s stall. Water buckets I sloshed and tossed out even before Mrs. Horse walked around looking for me and her portion of hay. I turn on the My Daily Office Podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-daily-office/id1705544277] because I can sometimes hear the word of the Lord better than I can read it. As I hauled a bucket to pour for Morgen’s afternoon drink, I heard the first reading from Job: 23 Then Job replied: 2 “Even today my complaint is bitter; his hand[a [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2023%3A1-12&version=NIV#fen-NIV-13422a]] is heavy in spite of[b [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2023%3A1-12&version=NIV#fen-NIV-13422b]] my groaning.3 If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling!1 The bucket pulled on my arm. I hoisted it and dumped it into the bucket I’d just sloshed and emptied and clipped to the wall. Mrs Horse stepped up to the doorway, ears forward, friendly. I put my hand on her face. Job’s longing, his longing, his longing, his longing. How I’ve longed to see God up close and personal, in the flesh, the fire, ever since I was a little girl. But I was afraid he might take me up on it. I was outside looking at the stars, standing by the elderberry bushes growing alongside the Big Barn at my childhood home. It was so clear I could see the bubbles in the Milky Way. I wanted to see God like the guys in the Bible, like Moses and Elijah, like Abraham and Jacob, like Ezekiel and Daniel, like Mary Magdalene and Thomas and John, who saw the weird turbulence of heaven. I didn’t ask because I was terrified at the thought He might show up with those burnished bronze legs, and hair so white I cannot look, and blazing eyes and a sword flying out of his mouth. I wanted to see God but then again I didn’t. I still don’t, but then again. The terror would kill me. I don’t even want to hear his voice calling in the night, no I don’t, except through the Bible, his love letter to all of us, or what people tell me, or my pastor, or even books, or the created, blessed world. I don’t want to lose my mind. Right around the same time, I was five or six, my mother took me to a foundry, long since abandoned. Foundries shape steel. To be shaped, steel must be liquid, a thousand degrees hot to make it liquid. It was a field trip for the Helderberg workshop, a summer school for children that paired them with their interests without their having to slog through high school to get to explore it in college. Dark. The windows high up. An overcast sky on the other side. The smell, the smell, burned metal like a burned coffee pot water boiled away smell. The floor sandy, black. I didn’t feel my mother’s hand, though she held it, I think. A man lead us. Huge pots swung here. Swung there. White molt spilled out. Then sparks beneath a plate. Somebody welding. Jump. Jump over it. But I couldn’t. What if I stepped on that plate, hot from sparks? Someone lifted me over. Huge pots, out of control pots, with white molt. A vat tipped and liquid light and heat poured out. I screamed in terror—those pots might swing into our bodies, splashing us with living fire. Huge pots tipping, spilling the white molt into a trough. Sparks flying up. Sparks beneath me. Huge pots swinging anywhere they wanted. Huge pots swinging at me. Sparks everywhere. I screamed. Couldn’t stop screaming. Mother hoisted me in her arms. Somebody walked us away from the tour to metal stairs to the office, a wood paneled office and a secretary. My mother set me down, looked out the window. I could feel her impatience. She wanted to see the rest of the fire. Though she said nothing. Even now I feel like Job though right this minute I’m not demanding an audience, to stamp out my frustration at unfair suffering like Job. Simmering underneath my heart is this longing. In the Daily Office, I’ve read how Moses asked to see God face to face and God said he could only see his backside and stuck him in the cleft of the rock, otherwise Moses would not survive. I wonder if that’s because God didn’t want to show the scars in his hands and feet, the pinpricks on his forehead from the crown of thorns. I wonder if God’s suffering would be too much for Moses to see, the suffering of a God whose people betray him by shaping a golden calf, a cow for god’s sake, to control him, by pouring him into a mold, from gold they’d just worn in their ears. The suffering that billowed into anger that Moses quelled with his prayer that God keep his honor among the nations by not destroying the people he’d promised to deliver, promised to give the beautiful land. But Moses threw down God’s careful writing on the stone because he was furious. I wonder what those letters looked like. Were they scrawled with flourish or straightforward print? I don’t get the golden calf. I don’t get the perversion that must have been a wickedness close to Sodom’s, that drove Moses to call out who is on the Lord’s side, the Levites answering, taking swords through the camp slaughtering 3,000 neighbors and brothers and sons. Then Moses called them good. What kind of God is this? Did the vultures dive down to peck at the bodies? Did the flies buzz?And the stink and the tears of the families of the slaughtered men who walked with them through the Red Sea? What kind of people who’d seen the plagues in Eygpt, who’d seen the Red Sea stand up, so they could walk on dry ground, who’d been fed by bread from heaven, and wild quail and water from the rock would fashion a gold god, would dance so crazed they sounded like a battle? Was it the terror of the trumpet, the smoke, the rolling fire, that sent them to Aaron with their gold, pleading for a god they could see and touch and carry from place to place? What kind of gold calf have I built, after I’ve seen God’s work in my life? Heck just the fields and redwing blackbirds and flashing rainbow, a world full of God’s love, and the consecrated bread and wine, even if puny bites and sips, should be miracle enough. And what kind of ferocity do I need to cut down my attachments to those things like the Levites cut down their calf worshipping neighbors? I’ll tell you right now I don’t have it, the ferocity to wheel a sword at my favorites. Or is it letting go of control, of laying ourselves in God’s hands, to let him mold us the way he wants? At times I have wondered if the visions of mystics were mere, clear imaginations, sprung from the Holy Spirit. I’ve written down a few. But I am no starving saint holed up in a cave somewhere. My longing had gone quiet for years until I started reading Martin Shaw and Tony Hoagland’s Cinderbiter [https://a.co/d/02IVJ1R7], a compilation of old stories about creatures crossing between this world and the other, though maybe it’s all this world, but modern eyes can’t see those creatures because we are so seated in materialism and that we have gone blind to other presences. Well at least I have. (My brother claimed he saw a flying saucer land on our flat. A friend says she’s seen ghosts.) Shaw’s Snowy Tower [https://share.google/pfn0DgAVLqhyOECkT] and Malcolm Guite’s Galahad and the Grail [https://a.co/d/05jsx1u6] call forth my longing to look for what can only permit itself to be found. Though sometimes I feel something heavy, fat and slow that swells like bubbling insulation squirted out of a bottle, that swells like a fat pig in the cracks that I can’t push out of the way-- acedia-sloth, the noonday demon where I can’t even call my neighbor to find out how her surgery went. I’m tired of waking up feeling my feet shocked, waking up feeling accusation crawling over me—you’ve wasted your time, you’ve not studied enough to prep for the coming catastrophe. Prayer, my friends’ prayers for me, and a good night’s sleep can shove it out of the way. But a good night’s sleep itself would take a miracle, or good, safe drugs. My longing can turn bitter, it can devolve into longing to die, especially when my sorrows rise. They are never clean, bittersweet tears. The scholars say dying is the route to God’s presence, the gateway to becoming fully human. But my longing to leave this life is a smack in the Lord’s face for the presence he’s already scattered in the world. Other scholars say we can have paradise, here, now. That right now we are seated with Jesus at the right hand of the father. That we are the most frightening thing in the room. A truth that is like a sword popping that acedia pig, dissolving it to nothing more than dew on the grass the sun dances on. That longing is a call to die before you die, to go on a quest for loving God and your neighbor, to not let any root of bitterness or resentment take hold. Malcolm Guite’s Galahad and the Grail [https://a.co/d/05jsx1u6] and Martin Shaw’s Snowy Tower, [https://share.google/pfn0DgAVLqhyOECkT] both talk about the search for the holy grail, an image for this longing to see God, for a power that feeds the people like manna and quail from heaven, or the five loaves and two fishes that fed the 4 and 5,000 or the bread and wine, body and blood that feeds us now. It’s a relief there are stories pointing the way to how a person might search for something as mystical as the grail. It’s a relief to crack open Galahad and the Grail [https://a.co/d/05jsx1u6] and read about wonder, about a story when rivers can be embodied and cry out at their ravaging by machine men and see that kind of magic dwells in the land. Job talks about how he doesn’t see God but God sees the path he takes: But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.11 My feet have closely followed his steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside.12 I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.2 There’s comfort that God is close enough, though hidden, to walk with us. I can tell him things and they get straightened out, quietly straightened out. Though I don’t get it, the confidence Job has by saying he’s kept the way, the commands have not departed from his lips. How do we walk into that, as aware as we are of our failings as people? By faith in the finished work? Faith in what Paul says in Colossians: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.”3 I gather up Mrs. Horse’s hay and walk it outside. I toss half in her bucket behind the barn, where she nuzzles through the clover, candy hay and walk the rest to the other side of her paddock so she gets some walking. The clouds and sun make shadows that move across the distant fields, the sunlight against brand new leaves, the shadow against fields quietly waiting for tilling and seeds, the shadow making me see the light illuminating the fields bathed in it. References 1 Job 23: 1 – 3, NIV 2 Job 23: 10 – 12, NIV 3 Col 2: 9, ESV Thank you so much for reading and/or listening to this essay. I hope you’ll consider a paid or free subscription to support my work. If you enjoyed this post, I would love it if you left a tip. Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]