Katie’s Ground Podcast

Katie Andraski
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  • Christianity
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A newsletter about coming to the ground and catching light through words and pictures. katieandraski.substack.com

  1. Aug 2

    The Redwing Blackbirds Have Left, The Spray Does its Work, I Take a Ride in an MRI

    The red wing blackbirds have left. This time last summer they hung out on the wires, old friends that I greeted. They watched me, then flew from wire to wire. I hoped one would land on my shoulder prove I was a saint. No such luck. This year my rowdy dog would chase them. The kildeer don’t even trot ahead of me. I miss these birds. Even the robins are gone. But the barn swallows have stayed for now. One swooped by us as we turned into the driveway after our walk. And the sparrows make good noise. Our hay field became a killing field when we cut and baled our hay. The dogs found the wing from a redwing blackbird and a dried up toad. I pulled them out of their mouths and missed the flock that settled in our trees, riotous and loud, when they first arrived. I miss their chatter in the willows. For a bit I thought the hawks had left, but as soon as I thought this, I saw a red tail hawk sitting on top of our dead pine, a blackbird, next to him. When he dropped down to fly the smaller bird harassed him. Have they left because of the hawk? Bruce said he saw an owl sitting on the ridgeline of our barn. Have they left because of the owl? Has it been too dry for them? Or is it because there are no insects. The lightning bugs still came, their lights settled low along our yard. I tried to video them, but their blinks didn’t show up. It was a wonder seeing them as Bruce and I and the dogs walked in from our sunset walk. (Even here in August remnants of the sunshine glow off the northern horizon at 9:30. Still. Morgen has begun shedding for her winter coat.) Have the birds left because the sun says it’s time to go south? We thought the rain was coming, so I mowed, but all I did was clip the grass down to crackles underfoot. While I was mowing I saw what looked like a leaf that fluttered low to the ground. I stopped. Did I hit it? I got off. (I hate getting off the machine. If it stops, it’s not easy for me to start.) And went and got Bruce who was spinning the weed eater. It took a bit to get his attention. What is it? A moth. A giant moth. You could barely see it. He touched it with twig. It’s wings opened. Wide. With four eyes. Did I hit it? “No” he said. “They only wake up to mate and then die. They have no mouths. A polyphemus moth.” Last fall we saw a giant green caterpillar right near here. We put him by the birch tree. Maybe he came back in this new, beautiful form, though beautiful as a caterpillar. The corn has grown so tall and dense, when I peer between the rows it looks like a deep dark forest, where there is danger of getting lost, where corn gods might rise. If Mr. or Mrs. Dog took off into those corridors it would be easy to lose them. Once on a walk, we saw a deer step out of the willows by a low spot. Both dogs pulled hard. They’d be gone if I let go. I look at those shadows in the corn, the paths between the stalks and remember looking for arrowheads at a neighbor’s farm. He showed us the bags he’d collected. The rumor our land had a burial ground, was more likely his flat several loops of the Normanskill to the north. On the farm where I grew up I only found one. When I walk up to the Peterson’s farm, I can smell the sweet scent of tasseled corn dropping pollen to ears, each red silk touching each pale kernel. I can also smell the chemical. The other day a helicopter swooped and sprayed and rose over top of the neighboring soybeans. Another day, a heavy plane, it’s engine loud roared over our house and barn, aiming for beans the next field over. I admire the skill these pilots use, clearing trees and electric lines, and aiming to release their spray close to the crop but not on neighbors’ houses. Precision flying as the helicopter dropped down next to our neighbor’s house. Barnstormers. Precision flying that demands attention, a stomach strong enough to withstand the roller coaster of ups and downs and banking quickly off to the side. I couldn’t help but think of the drunk barnstormer who finally destroyed the monster alien ships in the movie Independence Day. I couldn’t help but think of their bravery. Our neighbor says they enjoy flying But I don’t know how these pilots or the on the ground applicators can withstand the damage these chemicals do to their bodies. Our neighbor says they are spraying fungicide to get rid of tar spot which prevents photosynthesis, a chemical that lets light get in. We use these beans for animal feed, seed oil, and biofuels. The plants are as high as my hips and a good green. Poison air with smoke. The smoke from Canadian, Minnesotan and western wildfires plunged to the ground so thickly it looked like fake fog. And made beautiful sunsets and eerie moon rises. These days I pay attention to my breath. Lately it doesn’t take much to breathe heavy. And we’re not talking passion. Right now, my interstitial lung disease is stable. My pulmonologist is keeping a close watch, has prescribed an inhaler twice a day for mild asthma. What happens to us if we can’t breathe, breathe the ruah of the Holy Spirit filling our lungs and hearts with himself? What happens if the air we breathe is poisoned? It’s the roadside flowers I’m seeing—flowers that have not been mowed because the state has cut our township’s budget. The chicory, what I call corn flowers, are bright blue. Queen Anne’s lace (wild carrot) dances in the breeze. Morning glories wind around Queen Anne lace. Evening primrose like a tiny lantern in the grass. Quiet wild roses. And pups that sidle up to the very edge of the road to take a dump. When Martin Shaw told the The Underworld of a Fairy Tale: A Telling of an Earth Gnome about a girl who ate an apple and she and her sisters were thrown down a well by a ground god. Apparently, there are earth spirits and water spirits that might be creatures born of the ground that are neither good nor evil but spirits rising out of the earth. The ground around here is so tamed, and I’m so blind, I doubt I’ll ever meet one. I’m not sure I want to, though as a kid, like many children, I wished Aslan would roar out of the woods. Of course, the youngest sister eats the apple. The earth opens her mouth and all three sisters are plunged into the earth, buried. The youngest hunter, accepts the challenge to find them. Each one is combing dragons’ hair. He kills the dragons, throws their tongues into his bag. (Did the sister grieve the wild creatures they tended? Did they clips locks of their hair as keepsakes?) He and his brothers hoist the girls to the top. Of course, his older brothers betray him and he’s plunged into the well. The darkness. When he plays a flute lying on the ground, he finds his way out and marries the oldest daughter. Their grieving father stops hoarding the apples and feeds his kingdom. I couldn’t help but think of the day my brother and I and his wife climbed into the Clarksville Cave. “Come on,” he said, when he beckoned me to climb into a chimney, barely wide enough to fit his hips let alone mine. I shivered as I watched his carbide lamp crawl away. “Come on, the room on the other side is beautiful,” he said. The walls echoing. I felt the weight of the limestone and earth surrounding him, close in. Did he do it to fight the fear of the dark, of the close? I said no. I would not climb into the rock. What if the light went out? What if my hips got stuck? What if the terror got the best of me? I couldn’t help but think of my terror at MRI machines. The MRI machine sounded alive, a predator that circled, and purred like a gaucho swinging his his whip back and forth over the horse’s shoulders. It sounded alive and growling, waiting to devour. Maybe it is. A machine that terrified me, the ceiling not far from my chin, a machine that felt like coffin, that jack hammers a whirr of sound, prying into my innermost parts. Buried alive. The machine peering. I fight the terror to get the test. This time to see if my lower back is failing because my legs ache. I fight the terror and then realize that one day I may have to fight the terror of the cross, the strong bulls of Bashan surrounding me, have you seen bulls? Their power. Their weight. Their tiny members and dropped balls? I may have to fight the miry clay, where there is no footing, and the question: Who do you serve? And the price the painful loss of this rumpy, beloved body. My heart pounding. My breath. Saying the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner. Several times before I’ve had visions—Driving Mrs. Horse out our driveway when at the time, no way would this happen. Another time I was riding Tessie through a pine forest, the pines strong in my nose. I was sniffing Frankincense. This time, I found a dopey quiet, with no fields or horse coming to mind. Just quiet. And the computer froze. They tried to start it up. But it froze again, so I had rolled off the table to go to another machine and wrecked my lunch date with Bruce. Did the energy spun off from my dopey meditation shut the thing down? I like to think so, though probably not. All that energy, energy I like to think is the same as the northern lights smeared across the sky. poured into my pelvis. That night my valley rose. It rose high as a mountain, straining towards the sky, towards the real lights the sun’s storm flung out to the north, the magentas and purples and sometimes green. The next evening, Bruce came for me, said come look. At the storms to the east and south. I left America’s Got Talent and walked out to the darkness and stood by the corner of the paddock. With him. And watched the moon rise over the lightning flashing in the clouds. I thought of Moses and Sinai and the terror of the children, my own terror because God is so other. My pastor reminds over and over: There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. We stood quietly and watched a long time. This morning the moon was bright orange. Like a fire in a

  2. Jul 18

    How a Chance Meeting Gave me Some Tools to Help Mr Wild Dog and Rejuvenated My Dream

    Remember how I told you about those mini communities that we can find in waiting rooms and grocery stores? Well, something magical happened by the grapes at Woodmans but first I need to back up a bit. A few weeks ago, I participated in a Tracking Wonder class about cultivating community through my writing. Tracking Wonder is a business that helps creative people find themselves as entrepreneurs by asking questions that work to get at their core values. Jeffrey Davis points us to wonder. His workshops are affordable and practical, conducted on Zoom. He sent enough personal emails that convinced me to join, even though I’ve lost hope as far as marketing goes. I believe in the goodness of serving a country church (you my readers) and don’t have much ambition for explosive growth. For an early exercise he asked, “Think about your dream.” There I was facing boxes of energetic, hopeful people’s faces. “Think about your dream.” Tears welled up because I don’t have a dream or the drive to untangle my brain and collect essays from Substack or rework drafts that have already been laid down. There are several literary publishers with open reading periods right now. But I have no drive to come up to my office and shape that work. My collection of essays are maybe closer than I think to collect and send out. But I have no drive, and some of the essays, well, I’m not sure I want to make them public or that you might find them too raw. I have no tree to aim for, like a farmer used to aim his tractor to plant straight lines. No tree, no teacher, that’s right, keep your eyes up, adjust the wheel to stay straight. Look back at the planter. Then look ahead. So when Jeffrey Davis asked about my dream, I mumbled, “Write a vision of glory” leaning back on that old call from the big barn in a cold rainstorm in winter, the call to write a vision of glory that sprang out of my longing to do for others what C.S. Lewis did for me. That year I read as much of C.S. Lewis as I could get ahold of for an English term paper and his words sparked a bittersweet longing. I was homesick even though I was home. Deep wrenching tears came. Maybe one day I will share the essays about this. But so much silencing, so much disappointment, so much rejection, made my drive go limp. I fear you’re thinking, what are we chopped liver? I am grateful for Substack giving me the opportunity to find you, but often I feel like I work hard on these essays, send them out, only to be met with silence. Those of you who are supporting this page financially mean the world to me. There are essays I would not have written were it not for you. It’s been wonderful to take a break and to not push for an essay every week. There are several in the works. During class, I was impressed by the energy and creative ideas from the other entrepreneurs. My main takeaway was to ask my readers what you think and to set up guidelines for comments. (Substack has helpfully offered a comment box before the comment section, where I can state my rules for respect.) That evening we were finishing up Last Man Standing on TV when a certain light slanted across the fields making the fields, the barn glow—the setting sun flashing up beneath clouds. I ran out to look. The light was that alive. A vision of glory. I walked toward the barn and toward surprise when I saw a rainbow hanging between the barn and pump house and old well house now home to wild honeybees. What? Where’s the rain winnowing the light into seven colors and a bunch more we don’t see. When John the Baptist said a winnowing is in Jesus’ hand, he’d burn them up with unquenchable fire, I wonder if that fire would be like the winnowed colors made by sunlight and water. Morgen waited for me. She always comes and waits when I step outside. And there was a bright rainbow, farther south than I’ve seen it. I ran to get Bruce. And it just hung there longer than most, like an aroused stallion. The clouds glowing inside pink. You know how I talked about finding community in the grocery store? Even though it was godawful hot, I told Bruce we needed lettuce and I wanted to make sure we’d canceled our Costco membership. “You need grapes,” Bruce said just before he drove off to get gas. As I pulled up to the grapes counter, I recognized Joan Krumm, a dog breeder I’ve known since I started showing my dogs. She sat in a motorized shopping cart, dressed in bright colors, with a bright hat. She knew me. And it was a feat on my part to recognize her. “Where’ve you been?” She asked. I’d gone to conformation class with Mr. Wild dog. (In these classes dogs are trained to stand still, while a judge feels them up. They trot out, so the judge can look what their gait looks like. It’s a wonderful discipline because dogs get treats and learn to be quiet when someone greets and touches them.) “I didn’t want Aiden to knock you over.” In class she looked fragile, said she’d just had hip surgery. A fall would be catastrophic. She’d said, “He needs an obedience class.” So I signed up for an obedience class. Sometimes meetings in the grocery store are providential, good gifts from a God who brings people together and answers a prayer, we might not quite say. “You need a dream,” she said. How’d she know I don’t have a dream that lights me on fire? (Writing seems to be one of those gifts and calling that are irrevocable, but I’ve lost the fire, especially for drafts sitting in notebooks, that weigh on me with guilt and overwhelm.) “I don’t show any more, but I love helping people show their dogs and win,” she said. There she was, frail elderly, needing a motorized shopping cart, not able to do what she loved-show her own dogs-dressed to the nines, for the store, lit up about helping people show their dogs. “Give me a call.” She wrote down her number and handed it to me. A woman nudged between us and picked out some grapes. “I have to be at the dog show and watch my students but I’m available on Sunday. You should bring Aiden to the show. He needs to get out and be socialized.” I felt a little hope. Often I have regretted bringing Aiden home. He’s been too much dog—circling the coffee table in the evenings, his eyes blank. He pushes boundaries so well, pushes boundaries so well, my anger sprouts like thistle. My voice bellows. He has an uncanny talent for chewing things that are the most “beloved”—my mother-in-law’s stuffed Mongolian bear, papers from the doctor’s office. He took out chunks of several chapters of I Corinthians in my little Bible. The more I push him away, the more he pushes back. My treat bag has made a fool of me several times when he jumps for it and succeeds in reinforcing himself by gobbling the treats he has scattered. He’s taught Omalola how to be naughty. Before Aiden she was well trained, able to be loose in the house, and our walks, her eyes looking up at me, companionable. Now she plays hard to get when it’s time to come in. Her gaze is penetrating when Aiden takes my attention. Sometimes the idea of the option to place him rises, which we are committed. I tell Bruce he does better with him because Aiden will lie down when Bruce is watching TV. I tell Bruce Aiden is his dog. I have been too inconsistent. And yet when I leave him in the yard to go in the house, he looks for me, his eyes betraying how we are bonded. But he’s come a long way from the dog who circled or wrestled with Omalola when I walked him. That weekend I took him to a local dog show and was shocked to find how calm he was. Aiden stayed by my side. He laid down. He allowed strangers to go over him. I first learned how rewarding a dog for doing it right with Laager, a Bernese Mountain dog who became more wound up the more I disciplined him. But if I rewarded him for being quiet, he learned how to relax in the chaos of dog shows. A week later I met Joan at a local training facility. She was hopeful and positive we could get Aiden behaving better. She asked me to tie him to the wall and use another leash and collar to correct him. If he moved, I’d tighten my leash and loosen it when he stayed still. It was all very quiet. The pressure on a buckle collar. The release soft and as important as the pressure. I was reminded of traditional horse training that uses pressure, release to unite horse and rider. Sometimes putting an animal in a posture of quiet, they learn to be quiet. I left with some useful tools to calm Aiden. (Not knowing how to respond made me more reactive, which made him more reactive.) I left with energy and hope and joy I hadn’t felt in a long time, maybe because someone poured their know how into me. And Joan is a role model for that dreaded frail elderly stage, that a person can look beautiful and find ways to offer their gifts and love for their sport despite physical limitations. Because I was so hopeful and want to give Mrs. Dog the attention she deserves, I found a rally dog class that will occupy her mind by asking her to kinda dance with me. As an even bigger gift, the class is set up so the dogs are crated and other class members can visit with each other while we wait for our turn. I’ll bring Mr Wild dog along too. Before we finally cut our hay, we chased rainbows. They showed up in odd places at sunset, hauling the light that makes the barn, trees, grass glow. They kept coming. Kept reminding. Storms became a kind of friend, their violence going north or south. Then the weather took a breath and dried enough to drop our hay, bale it and put it up. This is going to sound odd, but it’s been disorienting that life has been so quiet and so good. There have been heart aches and loneliness and griefs, yes, but not like the turmoil of my working life, or the long walk through grief after my parents and brother died within in a six-year period. Maybe just give thanks for these days, for this quiet. Let the thanks banish the guilt th

  3. Jun 25

    Comfort in Tiny Communities

    This year when I went for my mammogram, I barely took a seat before I was ushered into the exam room. I changed, got squished and was on my way. For years I went to Swedish American, now UW. I wrapped the gown around my middle, held it close and sat down with other women. Some of us read a book. Others watched the TV. Sometimes we spoke. Those days we waited for our results with some dread. We shared our stories and offered each other verbal hugs. Sometimes we offered sympathetic silence. We changed and left quickly. Most of us relieved. I’m reminded of the story of “The Handless Maiden” as told by Martin Shaw in his book Smokehole. Her father struck one of those deals that offers riches in exchange for what turned out to be his daughter. To keep the deal, he lops off her two hands. She fades into the forest, marries the king, gives birth to his baby. She is exiled again but finds the Wood Sisters. “From the moment she sat with them and powerfully recounted her story, it was clear she had found a new home in the exact place that she was most terrified to go. A great wonder happened. A joy beyond reckoning. She started to grow her hands back”. Women gathered, even if for a few minutes, waiting for a test, are a community, that can encourage, that can comfort. This year I missed that. I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective. If you’d like to hear this on WNIJ, click here. My producer said she preferred getting through her test quickly, but for me going to that breast center, seeing the same receptionist year after year, putting my clothes in the same lockers, sitting, waiting, marked off each year for nearly two decades. It was a routine that marked the year, and mostly a relief until they spotted some troublesome spots, that later turned out to be pre breast cancer. I was relieved they found it so early and grateful for the yearly mammogram. The biopsy wasn’t as dreadful as I imagined. I was numbed up and the doctor was underneath, so I didn’t see the needles aimed at me. He talked to me and I looked at a large forest scene, the kind you can lose yourself in. My lumpectomy was scheduled quickly. The cancer doc worked to convince me to take tamoxifen. At the end of five years, he said “I’m pleased that cancer had not come back. It’s good for my practice.” Those visits every six months also marked time with blood work that affirmed my health. Waiting rooms offer opportunities to observe people even if you don’t exchange pleasantries. They give you the opportunity to gather yourself before your meeting. In the old days I took the chance to read a book. I remember waiting at Newsweek to see Ken Woodward and I pulled out Teaching a Stone to Talk from Annie Dillard where the shadow from the eclipse moves across the ground. What an image before I went in to pitch some book or other and share my alarm about activist Christians. Occasionally I’ve taken my journal, using the neutral space, to write out my thoughts without the distraction of my own desk, the over familiarity of writing at home can make it hard to let my thoughts speak. But it’s awkward packing up your notebook and pen, when the nurse calls you into the doctor’s office. Phones are so easy because they are full of interesting stories, some of which might not be good for you, since social media can be an outrage machine lurking in the background. They are easy to tuck back in a pocket or purse and they suck you in. We need to be in each other’s presence. Even when we are quiet, our bodies speak to one another. Those below words presences can also put us back together. The last few weeks we waited for storms, with the likes of Ryan Hall Y’all showing a circle with hash tags for our region of the country. A thin whine of anticipation sets up, that’s a mix of fear and excitement. When the drought had settled we prayed for rain. (Now we’re praying for a break so we can harvest our hay.) But when the storm blew through, here with no damage, the relief was palpable. And the rainbow a joy bringer, despite the wet feet walking out in the grass. As I wrote this the end of Psalm 27 nudged at me. “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”2 Waiting at a doctor’s office or for a journalist or a job interview reminds me how we are waiting for Christ’s return, whether that means he shows up in the clouds to finally make things right, or he shows up in the Eucharist, or how he shows up in one of those people sitting across the room, waiting like you are for the next thing. This waiting business can bring hope like the Psalmist said just before he urges us to wait. “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!”3 A grocery store can also become a community of people shopping at the same time. You recognize other shoppers as you walk up one aisle and down the other. Occasionally I’ve struck up a conversation with another shopper and learned about authentic olive oil, or how they raise cattle. Some days the whole store is filled with light heartedness and people smile back. Other days people look straight ahead or look very tired, their lips drawn down. I’ve started asking God to bless people I walk by or even the annoying shopper who is blocking the cheese I want to pull out of the case. And sometimes I’ve spoken with a check out person and found interesting things like frames you can change up for your glasses to go with your outfit or mood, or how he was leaving the next day to study an endangered salamander in New Mexico. The Magic of Everyday Encounters tells that story if you’d like to look. I even look for conversation when I pay my insurance bill. I have swapped stories with the receptionist in the few minutes she takes my money. She listened well on a particularly bad day An elderly gentleman walked in with check after me. These little interactions can break loneliness and in some ways, as small as they are have given my hands back, my hands that spin out words on my laptop or direct my dogs to follow me. What are you experiences with finding community, even if brief, in unexpected places? References 1 Martin Shaw. Smoke Hole. pp. 109 - 110 2. Psalm 27:13, ESV 3. Psalm 27: 14, ESV Thank you for reading and/or listening to this essay. If you’d like to receive these on a regular basis, I’d love it if you’d become either a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Jun 13

    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 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/ 2 New Evidence for Oceans of Water Deep in t

  5. May 30

    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 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 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, 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 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.)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.

  6. May 16

    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. 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

  7. May 9

    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 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 victimh

  8. May 2

    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 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] is heavy in spite of[b] 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, 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 and Malcolm Guite’s Galahad and the Grail 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 and Martin Shaw’s Snowy Tower, 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 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 o

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A newsletter about coming to the ground and catching light through words and pictures. katieandraski.substack.com

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  • Creator
    Katie Andraski
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    104
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Katie Andraski
  • Show Website
    Katie’s Ground Podcast