Katie’s Ground Podcast

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

  1. Sep 5

    You Said What? Take Up My Cross? With Hay Down the Rains Came

    Sunday Last night we woke up at 3:00 am as lightning flashed. Bruce got up, put his pants on. (I heard the rattle of his belt.) I heard the front door close. My eyes stayed closed. I sucked on a Melatonin and tried to go back to sleep. Finally, I got up, the dog following me. “The horse had the door open like she does.” That means the door was bent outward, stuck on a stump. We thought we’d pushed the stump away but it was still too close. Every time she bends the door, we hold our breaths that she hasn’t broken it. So far she hasn’t. When we push the stump out of the way the door clangs shut. That sucker is heavy. (No wonder my back hurts.) Years ago, Mrs. Horse rolled the big door off its rollers. Thankfully a contractor, who specializes in barns, was able set them back on, and “nail” a stop on both ends. There’s a parable somewhere about itchy horse butts and doors forced open. The gospel reading for this week is the hard one: If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matt 16: 24 -25). What does it mean to deny yourself? To take up your cross? Everyone who heard those words in person knew what that meant—gruesome, naked, helpless, breath squeezed out, flies. I’m with Peter. I’d pull Jesus out of earshot, “Not you, Lord. Never You.” I imagine Peter thinking, “Geez, I love him. Someone needs to stop him from that suicide mission.” Besides, Peter just said he’s the Christ, the son of God. Our deliverer. He got a new name out of it—Rock. And the job to build his church. And the praise that the Father revealed this truth. How many of us get to have the Father reveal a truth people had been waiting centuries to hear? The prophets said that the Christ would defeat that old chaos monster--Leviathan, Empire would be smashed, Isreal liberated. Why would I want this man, who was better than good, this beloved, to suffer and die? Why does it have to be that way? That God has to die. He said he and His father were one, that he does what his Father says. What mortal does what the Father says? Job may have claimed blameless in one speech, but he plunged into complaint about how none of us could pass God’s muster in another. If I were Peter, I’d pull him aside too. Why does any of us have to die? I’m of the age where my friends’ husbands are dying or have died. The loneliness and disorientation gaps wide. There might be a wiping of tears, but there’s also regret, and anger, and I wish, I wish, I wish. At 70, mine or Bruce death looms large. I wake up afraid. I don’t mean to; I want to be one of the spies that trusted God to conquer the giants in the land. And there are giants looming as my hips stiffen, I am breathless more often than not, my memory washes routine to forgetfulness. There are giants looming in our culture that has made selfishness a virtue. People don’t share families like they did back in the day. If I were Peter, I’d take out my sword and take a swipe at the servant’s ear too. As an American I don’t even know how to deny myself. It’s too easy to swipe left and order what I want, for me, books, and they pile up on tables. Ice cream is easy to order. I’ve loaded the pantry with sweets because they call to me at night. And don’t get me started on my failure to go off Diet Coke. It’s too easy to read the latest on Facebook or Substack while the dishes sit in the sink and the cat’s box stinks. Getting out my address book and sending a sympathy card is too much trouble--what I have left undone. For me the cross is taking my neighbor to her hair appointment every week, but that task is also full of neighborly news that cuts through my personal loneliness. The cross has been going to another neighbor’s morning and evening, day after day to treat their mare’s moon blindness. It’s sitting at my desk, and listening to words that come, and dressing my sloppy sentences, while my hips stiffen, so it’s hard to get up from my chair. And these “good works” start to feel like earning brownie points. Though standing before the judgement seat looms. And I white knuckle the promise that he is able to present us before him blameless with great joy. And I shouldn’t even be telling you these good deeds. You know when a spiritual question is on your mind, like what does it mean to take up the cross, responses start showing up. Our pastor preached on this passage, challenging us with stories of people who loved not their lives unto death in other parts of the world, how for us it might mean we are ostracized or lose opportunities. He urged us to not shun difficult words that might bring trouble. David S. Harvey in Followers Follow Jesus says, “The cross’s threefold combination of suffering, rejection, and it being Christ himself is just too much for us. At some level, Christian history has been the story of how much, or how willing, we are to accept the story that Christ has placed us within. I think it sucks that Jesus had to die, that we have to die. Jesus called Peter Satan, accuser, tempter, not Rock upon which he would build his church. Satan. The same being who met Jesus in the wilderness, offering the world if he skirted suffering. He called Peter that very thing, the Messiah was supposed to obliterate. Harvey puts a hopeful spin on this by saying that Jesus put Peter behind him. That Jesus comes between us and Satan and evil. If “take up your cross” means that you must go and find some suffering and make it your own, then it does sound unusually harsh. But what if taking up our cross is doing what Jesus did to Peter? Getting Christ between us and what is evil, to stop rejecting my “death” in favour of others? In work, community, relationships, society, and even sports(!)? To stop requiring that others’ lose so that I can win? This. This makes sense. This feels like gospel. He spells this out more concretely by referring to Romans 12: 9 - 21: Each of these Christ-shaped values involve “taking up our cross” by refusing to inflict harm upon the other. Echoing Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Paul invites us to resist dehumanizing one another through loneliness, isolation, ostracism, impoverishment, violence, power, or separation⁠ that are all forms of “death” social and otherwise. Yes ,this feels like gospel. It brings me up short when I want to grump about our hay not being cut during a span of dry days, only to have it dropped after gully washers poured dust into it. Maybe taking up the cross means, we resist the maxim “hurting people hurt people” by not lashing out when we are hurt. But I am still uneasy with the Christian emphasis on suffering with the cross at the center of our faith. I sometimes wonder if we’ve made the cross into an idol. I have felt the same thing as a young friend, who wondered shouldn’t we feel burned out and/or exhausted if we’re truly following Christ? I think we wallow in the suffering and gore. We butt up against: what I want to do I don’t do and what I don’t want to do I do when we try to deny ourselves. I certainly do when I decide yet again and again to give up Diet Coke. But maybe Diet Coke is a good gift. Maybe I should offer thanks for the pleasure it brings. Harvey says we eagerly skip past the cross to get to the resurrection: We want to jump quickly from Christ’s death to his resurrection so that we don’t have to ponder what it all really means. Our fight is to stay young and alive, what would it mean to contemplate that Jesus died? I’m not so sure. I think we don’t meditate enough on what Jesus’ resurrection and ascension mean for our lives. I don’t think we practice the part of “I am crucified with Chirst” that says “nevertheless I live, but not I, Christ lives in me.” This is the Christ who obliterated death. Didn’t Jesus’ resurrection change everything? Didn’t it make difference in the disciples who fled at the crucifixion, were so terrified of being killed they locked themselves in a room, fled to Galilee? Even good days, long stretches of good days that are peaceful, even happy, where it’s easy to be grateful are disorienting. Shouldn’t I be burned out? Ashamed I am so blessed? Afraid that in a twinkling of an eye or gradual slide it will all be taken from me, like it was Job? What does it mean to know the resurrection? To live the new creation? The earth’s fate, the earth groans for the revealing of the sons of God. What does that mean? Do we somehow live into what it says, “Whoever believes in Him have to the right to become sons of God.” Then I think of those lines from Hebrews, “Looking unto Jesus who for the joy set before him despising the shame.” Jesus who knew joy above his fellows. The joy set before him, even on the cross, crying in agony, with enough Presence to say, “Father forgive them.” Eugene Terekhin affirms this in The Soul is Always Dyed with the Color of its Thoughts. The only way to endure a crisis is to do the most counter-intuitive thing — prioritize joy over duty. The only way to survive hell is to keep enough visions of heaven before your eyes. Those who focus on fulfilling their duty will never fulfill their duty. Those who focus on joy cannot help but fulfill it. Jesus, descended to hell, who for the joy set before him, the joy of making “sad things become untrue.” The redemption of creation, including us, the joy set before. “Those who focus on joy cannot help but fulfill it.” My mother used to say, “There were two prisoners, one focused on the bars, the other the stars.” I never liked her saying that because I was a sad kid, but I see now how she had a point. Monday Well, well, well. At 3 am Bruce woke and saw that Mrs. Horse had shoved open the big barn door, wedging it against The Log. (This log used to brace the door shut, but her b

  2. Aug 24

    I Shout Out My Secrets

    It’s been like a bath here, humidity high, a gentle storm last night. Mrs. Horse took a big drink when I came out and wrapped her legs in fancy boots to keep the flies off. She was glad for her hay cubes and hay. The redwing blackbirds, robins, meadow birds are gone. Though after I said that I saw a King bird settle in the grasses. Seems early for them to fly south. We do have a couple hawks around. And the spray and smoke from a few weeks ago can’t be good. It’s been good to see barn swallows, gold finches, cedar waxwings and doves. The other day I saw a line of barn swallows on an electric wire. They too must be getting ready to head south. Finally, finally I found a structure for my essay collection, Baptisms of a Sorta Former Evangelical. It is very raw, but I got over my very real fear and even shame to even look at the stories because I’m admitting hard things about myself in the spirit of “hidden things shouted from the rooftops” a phrase Jesus used when he was warning the disciples against hypocrisy. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known. 3 What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. (Luke 12: 2 – 3, NIV). I figure I’d shout out my secrets, though I will need to sit with some things, maybe ask what trusted readers think, because sometimes that kind of raw vulnerability isn’t useful to the reader. As I added poems from other work that filled in stories I wanted, I realized yet again how the writing tells tales on us and the people around us. Maybe because it comes from a different, hidden place that remembers and picks up on the underneath stuff. Sometimes I think poetry is as effective or more effective than therapy for kicking up forgotten things. There are essays I’ve sat on for years. I remember Jonis Agee saying, “Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean you have to publish it” so I left them in the file folder. When “How I Shucked What Others Thought of Me or a Virgin and the Creative Writers Workshop” was in the top thirty of The Masters Review Best Emerging Writers of 2025 contest, I cussed because the essay flies in the face of progressive mores. It’s not easy fighting for your identity, who you know yourself to be, even though your mother, and assorted people think differently. I found the joy of making again. Or perhaps I found the joy of confession. Or both. Reading Glorians by Terry Tempest Williams gave me a structure. She’s organized the book into sections and placed essays that aligned with the theme of that section. For instance under “The Epic Documentation of the Glorians” she organized the essays having to do her work as a professor. She defines Glorians by saying, “A Glorian is an encounter. A Glorian is a meeting with elan vital. A Glorian is a moment of grace” (15). She calls it the holy ordinary. vital. A Glorian is a moment of grace” (15). She calls it the holy ordinary. My book had already started organizing itself into similar sections as I worked on it. At first I was going to use the elements-water, fire, air, earth but found that the essay groupings were shaped into essay titles that followed the theme of that grouping. Here are the section titles: Baptisms of a Sorta Former Evangelical; Could I See God, Did I Want to?; In Search of Unicorns; Bruce’s Gifts; How I Made Peace With My Name and My Ass, The Water Horse. It’s rough and raw but I used Sarabande’s extended deadline and the gracious invitation: “We pick what we like. There will be no judge or agent.” We even had to click a box saying we’re not represented by an agent, which tells me they are serious about reading fresh voices. For the first time working with this material ,I feel that I have a book. I’m popping with ideas how to fix and tighten some sections. The book raises some artistic and spiritual questions I need to address (that wisdom of the inner poet, the Holy Spirit, speaking). This felt anonymous because I have an ice cube’s chance for them to like it. Or maybe not. Sometimes editors are drawn to raw. Do pray that the book will speak to a reader. (God is lavish that way. Perhaps the book has been written for me and that one reader.) I had a page limit of 250 pages so I turned poems from When the Plow Cuts and The Grieving Dreams into prose to fit part of the story I wanted to tell. I worked blindly and with joy, the joy of making something beautiful. There are essays that are more well written than I remembered, and essays that need trimming. And essays that are so vulnerable they need shaping. But I found the play again and hope. The big deal is that I pushed past my fear, and yes my privacy, to put the words down, to see them for myself. When I came across Joan Krumm in Woodmans, she asked about my young dog, Aiden. She said you need a dream again, and has been training me privately to get ready for the show ring, a world I’m familiar with from having finished a few champions in the 90’s. This elder woman, who wears beautiful blouses and lipstick, light up something in me, like the wise women in the old stories, not just for my young dog, though she is giving me good tools to call him into being a good dog, but also my writing work. This frees me up for other work too. I have a collection of poems that might need to be thrown into prose and expanded, which is up next. I sent that to Sarabande at the proper deadline with an essay added at the end. And prequels and sequels to The River Caught Sunlight, books I’m relieved I didn’t publish when I drafted them. I don’t know if I’ll share these essays with you or not. An anonymous editor, like telling your secrets to a stranger on the plane, is less risky. And some essays are long, and my stats show you all don’t go in for long pieces. (I published “How I Met and Married Bruce” here already.) This book may be just for me. Substack has added an AI check that I am turning off. It’s absurd that a machine is checking whether we are using a machine. This being suspicious of whether writers are using it or not, is another pain in the butt coming about as a result of AI, AI that has been pushed on us, in cultlike ways when it suddenly showed up summarizing our emails, in search engines and our word processors. The fact we have to keep draft after draft to prove we made our writing adds clutter and another barrier to already hard work. It’s not good that the reader writer relationship is no longer based on trust. Three of my photos won second place at the county fair. Bruce’s Christmas ornament won first place. I broke through the block to declutter and sold a few things at a local tack sale, but what a pain to put everything back. (I want to disperse most of my Breyer horse collection.) When I started this essay, the air was like a hot shower, but some cold fronts have cooled and cleared the air. When I’ve stepped out of the shade on my morning walks, the sun’s hand on my face has been nice. The locusts are loud. The wildflowers on the road still entrance me. This morning Aiden jumped after a bee on the bee balm. Well, that’s all I know for now. Well, what do you think? References Terry Tempest Williams. Glorians. New York, Grove Press. 2026 Get full access to Katie’s Ground at katieandraski.substack.com/subscribe

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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.

  8. 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

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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
    106
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Katie Andraski
  • Show Website
    Katie’s Ground Podcast