Katie’s Ground Podcast

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]

We Celebrate Our Fortieth. Sometimes the Day is Gray, the Wind is Cold, and the Argument Silent

Sometimes it seems like our whole culture is aligned against the deep commitments of a marriage that lasts over many years. There are rough patches that can last months, that are just that-rough patches and not the truth of the marriage. There are reasons why you chose that person, that are perhaps deeper than you first thought. With Bruce, my body sang to him, the first night we stood under a tree in Rockton. My body was wiser than all the lists I made out when I prayed, telling God who I was looking for in a husband. Even though his silence can sometimes leave me lonely and reading too much Facebook, I am grateful I didn’t marry a chatterbox. Well, here’s a perspective I wrote for WNIJ, our local NPR station. While I was warming up from a walk in the cold, I watched CBS This Morning. The hosts were interviewing Oona Metz, a therapist who’d written Unhitched: an Essential Guide to Divorce. “Divorce is painful at first, but women who divorce find themselves transformed. Women are throwing over thirty, forty-year marriages.” Another time they discussed Strangers, a memoir about marriage heartbreak. CBS gave them ample airtime. CBS promoting a practice that breaks hearts and spins families apart left me empty, wishing I could watch a story about the transformation that long marriages can bring. Then I opened Substack to Sherman Alexie love poems. (Sherman Alexie is the author of the classic The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven [https://katieandraski.com/signs-in-the-sky-the-horizon-and-forgiveness/] and the writer/director of The Business of Fancy Dancing.) Here’s part of one called To Be Continued: [https://open.substack.com/pub/shermanalexie/p/better-than-wings?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] “Listen, Listen. Most people Still want to get married. Most people still want to have children. We humans are not so different than hummingbirds and brown bears. I’d often dreamed of being a groom during my childhood. And now look at me sharing this house—sharing all these rooms with my wife and sons. I want my descendants, the grandchildren of my grandchildren, to study the old photographs of my face and see their eyes and nose and hair. I want them to hang family portraits in their homes and say, “That one there with the big chin, he’s the tall Indian who loved to write poems.” I’m Katie Andraski with Sherman Alexie [https://shermanalexie.substack.com.] and that’s my perspective. 1 . Bruce and I celebrated our fortieth anniversary by going to a greasy spoon out in the country. The place was packed with the local farmers and fun to look at, especially their trucks in the parking lot. I wanted to save calories for chicken marsala and cannoli cake at our local Italian restaurant. The day was gray, with dripping rain. And sad for me. My tears rose like the water running through ditches. Maybe not for you, but these big anniversaries can do this, because there is pressure to be happy, and sometimes the day is gray, the wind is cold, and the argument silent. I believe the pastor who married us, my spiritual director, and Bruce’s mother when we announced our engagement were concerned our match wasn’t quite made in heaven. Bruce’s pastor noted how difficult it would be for Bruce’s mother for Bruce to move out of her house and told her the choice was hers to make this either a heaven or hell. He asked if Bruce would mind if I made more money than him. I never did. My spiritual director knew about my horrible dating pattern. To him it seemed I was bouncing from one inappropriate man to another because Bruce and I got engaged and married in less than a year. Bruce’s mother nudged Bruce saying, “She’s intelligent.” But I found Bruce is just as intelligent as I’m supposed to be, but his smarts are in his hands. I found we are in step with each other as far as the important things—loving God, loving creation, living simply. I was relieved he was a Lutheran because as a Christian, liturgical worship made the most sense. Being a former evangelical I don’t think marrying one would have been a good thing. It’s been forty years of blessing each other, learning how to love who is in front of us, not our imagined idea we first fell in love with or who we think our beloved should be. I learned that full frontal conversations did not work. I have learned to leave our marriage in God’s hands because only Jesus is powerful enough to pull him, to pull me out of the grave. In the meantime, we bless each other, and occasionally say the Daily Office [https://www.missionstclare.com/english/index.html]. Like a friend who asked her husband to read to her, I have needed Bruce’s voice saying those old words that speak of God’s goodness. Those old words are more than just words, though saying them feels ordinary, maybe even boring. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve been together longer than my parents have been part of my life, that Bruce has been more family to me than they were able to be, simply because of length of time and faithfulness. As John Behr says in From Adam to Christ [https://thepocketscroll.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/7a129-issue23133a14behr.pdf]: It is, as we have seen above, in laying down his life that Christ shows us what it is to be God and what it is to be human. Our existence as male and female is in fact the horizon in which we (or at least most of us) learn, through the power of erotic attraction, to lay down our lives for another: through the erotic drive deeply implanted in us by God, we are drawn out of ourselves, to “die” to ourselves and to live our lives in virtue of another. As Dionysius the Areopagite puts it, “The divine erotic force also produces ecstasy, compelling those who love to belong not to themselves but to those whom they love.” In marriage, then, male s and females are, quite literally, “human-ized”!2 In another place, Behr says, “Marriage becomes a form of martyrdom as we learn to die for ourselves and live for another.”3 Remember it’s martyrs who are held in high honor in heaven: Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah.For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.11 They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”4 While I know this talks about believers literally dying for the Lord, sometimes brutally, I think it can apply to us, as we learn to die before we die, in the crucible of a marriage, with another imperfect, quirky human, our love calling us to become truly human as Jesus became in his life, death and resurrection. I have seen this with Bruce’s willingness to serve me. I used to feel uneasy about this because the therapists would say he should develop his own life, but maybe doing chores and making dinner is how he becomes fully human and like Christ himself who took on the form of a servant. During a recent rough patch, a friend said we should see a counselor because ways we relate sometimes devolve into dusty roads that go nowhere and they hurt. She didn’t want to see me hurt. Yes those roads sometimes lead us to oak groves, trees too big to cut down, that we thread our way through. Sometimes we sit down and lean our backs against them. Sometimes the woodland sweats, the leaves green and thick. Sometimes we walk along a logging road we cleared, to harvest lumber to build furniture and warm our home. When we renovated our house, when our university endured a mass shooting, when I’d hit my head on black ice, the world swimming, and I was shattered, we tried marriage counseling. It wasn’t long before I fired the counselor, even though we were fighting. A carpenter who worked on our house said each marriage has its own ecology, its own character. Trying to fit that marriage into what a counselor thinks is healthy, is not necessarily what is healthy for the marriage. During that time, I found Dr. Fred Luskin’s Forgive for Love [https://a.co/d/0baafDYz] and grabbed ahold of his advice. You need to appreciate your partner in three different ways, in order to truly foster forgiveness between the two of you. The first way is to recognize the specific good your lover does for you. Look for all the ways, both big and small, in which your lover serves you and makes your life better… The second way to appreciate our lovers is to look for the good they do in the world by acknowledging the help they give to other people… The third way to appreciate our lovers is to look for and praise their good qualities by telling them how much we admire how they think, behave and react. We need to appreciate the everyday good qualities that often go unnoticed like honesty, thrift, gentleness, courage and kindness.5 Sometimes when the rough patches like a tangle of raspberry bushes, burdocks, and weeds wrapped around my legs and stuck to my arms, I’ve asked for prayer from Majik [https://themjkxn.substack.com] and his wife. Their prayers have been particularly powerful in Bruce’s and my life. They’ve cut away the tangle. We speak simple words to God, and He works more powerfully than we can imagine. Stephen Robinson’s Stealing Paradise [https://substack.com/home/post/p-160164713], an essay about deathbed conversions versus long lived conversions was like a machete clearing the weeds wrapped around my feet. So, the metaphorical reality of salvation for most of us is more like living out a passionately begun, illusion lost, knuckle down, gut it out, joy and sorrow, love/hate, war and peace, willful, stubborn perseverance of a long haul, daily same-old-same-old, hill and valley, fifty-year marriage relationship. That is a lot different “work” than a last ditch, desperate “Hail Mary” when you have no other options but to go for it, hell or high water... and by the grace of God he catches your toss and you “win”. Then, to boot, you are made a saint by the church for it!5 A few paragraphs later he says, In the end salvation is as simple (and as hard) as this: Learning humility to accept the love of God as a gift whether it takes fifty years of tedious, monotonous, repetitive, uninspiring existence or a dramatic, revelatory, tragic moment of desperation.5 When I walked this week, I saw water had stopped running in the culvert, water that had begun in the neighbor’s field and run across ours, when it was a gully washer, washing the neighbor’s precious dirt into our hay and not so precious field trash. But now it had become quiet. Bright green grass has grown up around the trash, grass that had been nourished by lightning, that releases nitrogen. The red wing blackbirds chattered. They watched from twigs as the dogs and I walked by. A few killdeer trotted across the field. I know these birds are ordinary, but there’s something of the glow about them too, their lives in themselves, miraculous and joyous. Our neighbor stopped by with a pot full of cut flowers and a box of rhubarb. Her five-year-old son was proud that he’d helped cut them. This is old fashioned neighboring--the simple love your neighbor we are called to do, and a way to resist the trend these days to bury our noses in our phones and invest only in online friendship. She couldn’t have known how badly I wanted cut flowers these last weeks. There is something of the sacred in these simple gifts and conversation. Bruce and I took our first bike ride of the season and rode a little past our neighbor’s cattle farm. What a beautiful crop of black angus calves his “ladies” gave him. He said his calves are worth a thousand dollars apiece right now. I wonder if it’s because Nebraska’s grasslands are on fire, and cattle ranches are being burned up. It’s shocking this has not been in the national news, where even the tornado whacking Lena was covered by in person reporters. Do remember us in your prayers. A very serious tornado outbreak is predicted for our region on Monday, May 27. Later when we drove to town, we saw an eagle sitting on a lone, dead tree, looking at the calves. Our neighbor was working by road, so we stopped, pointing out the eagle. “Are they watching for the calves?” “They’ve been hanging around, but no they won’t get them.” References 1 Katie Andraski. Perspective: Marriage. https://www.northernpublicradio.org/wnij-perspectives/2026-03-31/perspective-marriage 2 John Behr. From Adam to Christ. From Male and Female to Becoming Human. https://thepocketscroll.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/7a129-issue23133a14behr.pdf2510 Dionysius, On theDivine Names 4.13,trans. as Maximus the Confessor, FifthCentury on Various Texts 85, in The Philokalia, vol. 2, ed. and trans. G. E. H.Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and KallistosWare (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), 281.2 3 Orthodox Christians of Constaninople’s Post.https://www.facebook.com/christianorthodoxia/posts/%EF%B8%8Fmarriage-becomes-a-form-of-martyrdom-as-we-learn-to-die-for-ourselves-and-live-/1144710561028034/ [https://www.facebook.com/christianorthodoxia/posts/%EF%B8%8Fmarriage-becomes-a-form-of-martyrdom-as-we-learn-to-die-for-ourselves-and-live-/1144710561028034/] 4 Revelation 12: 10 -12, NIV 5 Fred Lufkin. Forgive for Love [https://a.co/d/0baafDYz]. Harper Collins. pp. 136-139 6 Steve Robinson. Stealing Paradise. https://substack.com/home/post/p-160164713 Thank you so much for reading and/or listening to my words. It would be lovely if you considered becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A Week of Tears. A Week of Storms

The Week of April 12, 2026 The willows are alive with red wing black birds. A squirrel runs across the road. Aiden alerts and pulls hard on the leash. I don’t see many squirrels at this part of the road. The squirrel colony is by our house—living in our trees with clumps of leaves as nests. Our multiple black walnut trees keep them well fed. Outside our bathroom window, I watch them run branches that I hardly believe hold their weight. They’ll fly between them. Play for the sake of playing. I’m as fascinated as if I were watching a model trains run through an intricate landscape. I stop and listen to the water running into the culvert. The stream begins as drainage, a wide mud spot in the low part of the neighbor’s field, that becomes water on the other side of the road where I turn to face the sun. It has a name that I don’t remember. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard water moving. It’s been a long time since I’ve cried like this. Finally, I weep for Little Dog who passed last spring. Have you ever done something you regretted? The kind where you rehearse the scene in your mind and wish you’d done it differently? And you’re pitched into a healthy dose of guilt, that swims up around you, so you don’t see the redwing black birds fluffing their wings and calling? So the days are gray with blessed rain, then they clear and each day becomes a threat of severe storms. And your sense of your sinfulness blooms. Tears run like storms pouring rain down on a plowed field, water pushing trash into our hay field because there is no grass planted in the water way. My grief is like walking through a plowed field that bogs me down, with weight and mud. Like that. My shadows lengthen. (Sometimes my sense of sin has been slight, like the sun over head,1 tucking my shadow under my feet. But these last weeks the shadow has broadened to deep and so dark, stepping forward was like stepping into the mirey clay, the Psalmist talks about.) Our pastor said we should fast during Lent. I’ve never heard a pastor preach on fasting before. Usually Lutherans have been challenged to add something, like extra prayer, or going to church. Many of my friends are Orthodox or Catholic, who take meat and dairy out of their diets to fast. They have advised don’t do this without advice from a spiritual father. Our pastor suggested maybe we skip a meal or take some days off from eating. I know we’re called to fast and pray, but if you tell me to fast, I will eat. I will visit Culvers just for the ice cream. Saint Paul’s words: “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”2 But I didn’t even want to fast. It’s taken years to make peace with food after trying to will my way into proper eating. Only when I found the freedom to eat anything I wanted, did I find moderation. I bought books, some to support the author, so there’s now a stack of to be read books, thicker than the boxes of books I donated to the library. I bought dog equipment. Lent was a season of indulgence. So I’ve chocked up gluttony and materialism (all that buying). Haunting dreams have returned. In one dream I turn down a light without touching a switch but tell someone his new age practices were a crock. He charged after me in an empty school building. I burst through a door. I screamed and woke to Bruce’s arms. We bought a van that Bruce calls a hearse. I wonder if ugly spirits, rode into the farm, in that thing. I’ve become too aware of my own missteps, aware of my sin, in ways that are crippling. My shadows have cast long. I weep. The mud around my feet does not feel like the gospel of peace. No it feels like the suck of guilt. I suck guilt, even if I’m not guilty. I can feel guilty even if I didn’t do anything. Aiden peed on the bed. I pull the sheets and threw them in the wash. Bruce asked what was the dog doing in the bedroom? I was changing clothes. He said nothing. I didn’t even feel anger coming off him. We go for an evening walk. We see a pile of white and brown on the road. A kildeer has been hit by car. Bruce picks it up and tosses it in our field. Even though spring is supposed to be the energizing time of new birth, all I want to do is go back to bed, maybe crack open a novel that takes me away. So we can chalk up acedia on the list. I crack open Project Hail Mary [https://a.co/d/0gQam48z] and find a story that takes me to wonder, to cross cultural communication between an Eridian, who looks like a spider, and a human, both on a mission to save their species from their sun dying. The book makes me think of the myriad animals who perceive the world so differently they might as well be from another planet. It showed how there could be deep respect between a creature made of stone and heavy metals and one made of flesh and blood. Good reads are such a gift. My feet are sunk so deep, the tears so overwhelming I ask for prayer from a friend I met through Frank Schaeffer and blogging. My friend’s prayers opened up the truth in Psalm 94: 17 – 19 because sometimes you need someone to intercede: “If Lord had not been my help, my soul would have lived in the land of silence. When I thought, ‘My foot slips’ your steadfast love O Lord held me up. When the cares of my heart are many your consolations cheer my soul.”3 The next morning I wake up in Bruce’s arms, the sunlight shining from across the house into our bedroom. I step on the solid, cool floor. I step on squares of light and look toward the window smeared with dog slobber. In the bathroom I watch squirrels running up branches that can barely hold them. They nibble on buds that have sprung into greens and yellows. All week, storm chasers predicted severe weather. By late afternoon, we’d go under a tornado watch. I’d wait with anticipation and dread. It’s like dark gambling. Your place could strike it “rich” and be smashed by a tornado or high winds or tennis ball sized hail or the storms could run north or south of us. Early in the week I took the new dog crates to the basement. I put out the cat carriers. Packed up medications. Important papers. My computer. My jewelry. I wear my rings. I put Mrs. Horse in the barn with plenty of hay. And we’d wait and watch Ryan Hall Y’all [https://ryanhallyall.com/] talk about storms moving across the whole country. We step outside with the dogs to give them one last potty break before the storm hits. Light from lightning flashes against the barn. Thunder bangs high up. Our phone dings, a tornado warning for us. Ryan Hall mentions our town. He posts videos of tornadoes dropping like whirling, cruel ghosts, tossing dirt and debris. Our local news reporter walks through Lena, where a tornado smashed up the town. Finally, Bruce comes downstairs. References 1 Somewhere I read the image of the sun overhead and feeling a slight sense of sin but I don’t remember where. 2 Romans 7:18 – 19, ESV 3 Psalm 94:17 – 19, ESV Thank you for reading and or listening to this essay. None of my posts are behind a paywall but if you would like to financially support my work through a paid subscription, I’d be most grateful. Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe [https://katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]