The Timberline Letter

Produced by Ed Chinn, Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy

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Think Clearer, See Further, Hear Deeper. timberlineletter.substack.com

4D AGO

What Goes Around Comes Around

Written and Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy Our family cautiously approached the battle-scarred property. Giant oaks leaned precariously close to the house. The forest of longleaf pines had been ripped apart and scattered like a box of toothpicks. But the awe I felt for Mother Nature paled in comparison to the fear I had for Ron, the owner of this house. I knew the towering Vietnam veteran would never hurt me, but I also knew he could go scorched earth toward anyone he thought might be a looter. And he didn’t know who we might be; he had not seen me since I was a child. We rapped on the screen door. Ron doesn’t hide behind an iron gate—he is the iron gate. The door opened to two of my favorite people on the planet. Not my aunt and uncle, technically, but so closely tied through blood and belief that our families had bonded years ago. The last time they saw me, I was a kid. Now I came bearing a husband, four kids, chainsaws and loppers. Hurricane Helene had dealt a violent blow to south Georgia. Our task was not an easy one. Cutting down trees and building up burn piles were the least of my concerns. What concerned me was the knowledge that Ron, at 78, would not stop working unless my husband David did. How were we going to clear timber and brush without Ron working harder than his health could tolerate? Less than two weeks prior, Jeannette had gone through knee replacement surgery, but she still woke early, determined to cook breakfast. It was hard to gift them with a full work crew. On Sunday morning, they insisted on taking us out for a meal. Not a minor cost for a family of six. I was uncomfortable, but I feared declining their generosity more than I feared straining their fixed income. Back at the house that night, all the kids slept with bellies full of banana pudding and the bounty from the all-you-can-eat buffet. Us four adults sat around the kitchen table, silently negotiating how much giving and kindness we could live with. We wanted to complete another day of work; David couldn’t stand to return home with so much undone. I also knew Ron and Jeannette didn’t want to accept more help. So, I tapped the table and declared, “Look; we are all uncomfortable. We didn’t want you paying for our meal, and you didn’t want us working on your yard. So, I think we all just need to be okay with being uncomfortable.” A group chuckle revealed surrender by both sides. The next day, after working for several hours, we began loading our van. Ron and Jeannette gathered our kids and thanked each by name. The tears in Ron’s eyes added to his heroic stature. As we drove home, I told the kids the story of how, when I was an infant and my family of seven had no money for food, Ron and Jeannette filled our refrigerator and counters while we were away from our house. What goes around comes around. A life lived around our loved ones has a way of repeating itself. Within that framework, reciprocity is not a duty, but a natural result of loving relationships. As the Bible explains that cycle of blessing, “... give according to what you have, not what you don’t have. Of course, I don’t mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later, they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be equal.” – 2 Corinthians 8:12-14 (NLT). The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

5 min
5D AGO

What Goes Around, Comes Around

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5 min
MAY 14

Messages in Bottles

Why would anyone write a note on paper, seal it in a bottle, and drop it into the ocean? Is it a romantic Hail Mary? A plea for rescue? A gesture of grief? Human ashes have been found in bottles washed up on distant shores. According to Guinness World Records, the oldest known message in a bottle drifted across the seas over 131 years before someone finally opened it.[1] In one way or another, they are all messages from isolated souls cast toward the vastness of existence—a whisper, a groan, a cry of triumph from one small voice in the cosmos. A recent article in The New Yorker explored the enduring fascination of messages in a bottle: A pen pal writes to someone. The sender of a message in a bottle writes to anyone. The wish, sometimes granted, is that the trajectory of the note is as ineluctable as the tides that carry it; that sucked into currents and pounded by the surf and tossed onto rocks and scorched by the sun, the message ends up exactly where it ought to be.[2] Most of us only encounter messages in bottles through popular culture—Nicholas Sparks’s novel (and movie), Message in a Bottle, or songs like Message in a Bottle or Time in a Bottle. But why do they linger in the imagination? Consider all the forces required to deliver one: currents, tides, buoyancy, storms, rocks, chance, timing, and the sharp eyes of beachcombers. Maybe that’s part of the enchantment. A message in a bottle feels both accidental and guided at the same time. So, why does all this matter? The Theater of God’s Glory For centuries, theologians, poets, and philosophers have wondered if human beings live inside a reality that is larger and more layered than we normally think. John Calvin called creation “the theater of God’s glory.” Many others see creation as a kind of language, something not merely existing, but listening and speaking. Perhaps that is why messages in bottles move us so deeply. They hint that unseen currents may shape more of life than we realize. So, why do so many miss that? I once heard Charles Simpson say, “There is seeing, and there is seeing.” What does that mean? Over time, Western cultures have increasingly viewed human beings as mere physical creatures moving through a material world. Yes, that perspective has brought some gains in science and technology. But it also flattened mystery, wonder, and largeness of spirit. Are We All Messages in a Bottle? Maybe we are more multidimensional than we appear. Do consciousness, memory, love, longing, imagination, intuition, hope spill beyond the physical edges of the self? Like a murmuration of starlings shifting shape across the evening sky, perhaps human beings are more fluid, connected, and mysterious than we know. Could that be why the image of a bottle bobbing in the sea feels so strangely personal and enchanted? Maybe every life is, in some sense, a message in a bottle. The book of Exodus shows the infant Moses being placed by his mother into a handmade basket and released to the river. From that moment forward, she controlled nothing—not the current, not the timing, not the destination. She simply entrusted her son to One larger than herself. Perhaps we all do something similar. We release our words, our work, our love, our wounds, our small acts of kindness into a future we cannot control. And somehow, some of them arrive where they were meant to go. Maybe we each carry seeds of eternal purposes, destined for people and regions far beyond ourselves. If so, maybe we should all walk more carefully, selflessly, and boldly. [1] https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/oldest-message-in-a-bottle [2] Lauren Collins, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.” The New Yorker, May 4, 2026. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/signed-sealed-delivered#rid=570a63de-51fb-41a2-b9cc-66771768506d&q=lauren+collins The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

5 min
MAY 7

The Accidental Poet

Written By: Darrell A. Harris Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy In my earliest days as a music industry executive, our contracts were four-finger, hunt-&-peck documents, hammered out on a primitive, portable typewriter. But that manual typewriter gave me a mystical quickening . . . Feeling the velocity of the keys as they traveled from machine to paper; the uneven rhythm of their sound was somehow deeply satisfying. I have also owned fine fountain pens—like Mont Blanc and Lamy—that carried their own quiet pleasure in the way ink flowed from the pen onto the paper. It confirmed that I was actually creating something. Come to think of it, that little love affair between heart and paper probably started in 1st grade with my red Big Chief writing tablet and my No.1 pencil. In my self-absorbed little boy reverie, I would finish some letters with a kind of snail-like, curlicue filigree. My 1st grade teacher, unable to dissuade me from my embellishments, enlisted the help of my mom to get me “in line.” She must have succeeded because that’s all I remember of that moment. Today’s keypads do not deliver the same pleasures of the soft lead of a beginner’s pencil, the flow of a fountain pen, or the staccato mechanics of a typewriter. Perhaps it’s just as well that for many years I was more drawn to music and cinema than to writing. But somewhere along the rise of the keypad, I stumbled into poetry. It all started one day when, at fifty, I revisited a jazz composition I first heard at ten and had not heard since: Blue Rondo à la Turk by The Dave Brubeck Quartet. After forty years, I was transfixed all over again—captured by the prestissimo propulsion of the piano, the spritely movement and lilting legato mews of the saxophone, the pizzicato bass, the splish-splash of the cymbals, the peculiarly phrased, riveting pulse of the 9/8 time signature. As I began it drink it all in, I had to write. I was compelled, called by the music, to describe both the piece itself and the visceral response it stirred in me. Something like lightning struck. I could feel the impact of poets I had read over the years—Milton, Vachel Lindsay. James Weldon Johnson. Gabriela Mistral. Alan Ginsberg. I felt their love of language pulsing through my veins. And my humble keypad became a kind of accomplice. It gave me the ability to cut and paste, to rearrange phrases with precision, to work with words the way a sculptor works with stone. Blue Rondo à la Turk, and the poets who had formed me, begat my own Blue Rondo . . . though as a Texas kid, mine was probably closer to Blue Rondo à la Big Gulp. I often think of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who wrote, “Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental,” and Woody Allen, who said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” So I keep showing up, following my nose in pursuit of my Creator’s beat. Like jazz, I adapt as I go, moving through the swirl and improvisation of constant change. The universe still hums with possibility. And every so often, if I’m paying attention, another small happy accident appears—like a phrase of music I didn’t know I was waiting to hear. A husband, a father to two and grandfather of six, Darrell A. Harris enjoyed twenty-five years in the music business and nearly another twenty-five in chaplaincy ministry. He is now retired and writes poetry, essays on various subjects and the occasional song lyric. The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

5 min
APR 30

The Fullness of Time ... Revisited

Written By: John Sommers Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy When I was nine years old, I wanted a bicycle more than anything. If you had a bike, the world was yours. Anything was possible. But bikes were expensive, and you could outgrow one so quickly. In 1961, my parents bought me a J.C. Higgins 26” Flightliner Bicycle for Christmas. Sears’ top of the line bike was red with whitewall tires, dual headlights, rear luggage rack, and chrome fenders. It was one of the most impressive things I had ever seen. The problem was that even with the seat set in its lowest position, I still could not reach the peddles. Apparently, I would just have to grow into it (as I did with jeans, shirts, and baseball caps). Therefore, my sister Judy, eight years older than me, told me she would ‘give me a pump’ (when one person pedals and steers while the passenger sits on the handlebars). She would take me wherever I wanted to go. Problem solved. So, on Christmas morning, she and I pushed the Flightliner to the top of the 11th Street Hill. From there, with me on the handlebars and Judy peddling, we began our descent. Life was beautiful. Face to the wind, screaming my delight, and the sun shining so brightly. However, as we came down the hill, it became quickly apparent Judy did not know how coaster brakes worked. We picked up speed much too quickly. Then, as we rocketed down the hill, the bike began to vibrate uncontrollably. That’s when Judy, who had a strong sense of self-preservation, dove off the bike into a neighbor’s front lawn. I continued on, precariously perched on the handlebars and moving faster and faster. With no one driving, suddenly, the bike veered to the right, throwing me headfirst into a thorny rose garden. I had no broken bones, but I did have abrasions, cuts, and scrapes beyond belief. I looked like I’d been attacked by a mountain lion. Back at my grandmother’s house, shrieks of horror greeted me as they saw the blood and my torn clothes. I learned two valuable lessons that day. First, never (and I mean never) let Judy drive. Second, we gain all kinds of skills, insights, romantic relationships, marriage, family, cars, and other treasures as we pass through life. And we are simply not capable of managing them. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature. God delivers relationships, visions, and things that are too big for us, even dangerous for that stage of our growth. Our shoes don’t reach the bike pedals. Our levels of maturity do not prepare us to marry at 14. And our big ideas require wisdom, leadership, and funding. What’s the secret? We must grow into them, and you can’t delegate the “growing into” process to a teacher, sibling, contractor, or cop. Those gifts and talents must be mastered by you! The fine old biblical phrase—“The fullness of time”—is part of the magic. It takes time and patience to build majestic structures, thoughts, songs, and families. So, if the bike is too big or if the novel in your heart won’t flow, be patient. Great purposes are at work. Give them room and time. Timing can be everything. The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

5 min
APR 23

Pratt, Kansas

Following our recent essay, A Place in the World, about the Chinn family farm, here is Part 2—Pratt, Kansas. There was something about the way Jack Chinn said “Pratt;” as crisp as a bite of celery. The very sound of the word carried expectancy. Pratt was Dad’s place in the world. It was also that for my brothers, Vernon and Carl, our mom, and for me. Our place was an anvil; there Heaven’s hammer forged our Chinn identity. Like much of Kansas, Pratt County is a latticework of section roads engraved across America’s heartland prairie. One mile apart and running north and south, east and west, that grid contains over a thousand miles of dirt roads. As a teenager, I mowed the sides of those roads. Day after day, summer after summer, I crisscrossed the county on a John Deere tractor and mower rig. Is it merely coincidence that I now see life on a grid of issues, relationships, and propositions? Would my mental software be different if I had been born in Brooklyn or raised in the Rockies? The streets in Pratt ran on that same east, west, north, and south grid; graceful canyons, rivers of red brick streets flowing between the walls of stately oak and locust and maple trees. Not many towns could claim a Main Street over two thousand miles long. But Pratt could. Main was part of a highway which ran from the Rio Grande to Canada. As a boy, my imagination flowed up and down that line, US 281, across Dad’s folding maps. My fingers moved over the map’s ridges, taking my mind past the rivers and state lines into exotic places called Aberdeen and Mineral Wells and George West. First Street, which crossed Main in the middle of Pratt, was about twelve hundred miles long. That line, US 54, ran west across Kansas, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, and New Mexico. To the east, it reached all the way to Illinois. The north side of town was bordered by the Rock Island (now Union Pacific) tracks, and the south side at the Santa Fe (now BNSF) crossing. Each line ran beside a depot and a gleaming white grain elevator. Pratt supported a hospital, high school, movie theater, library, two banks, two mortuaries, and a thriving downtown. There were nearly thirty churches. Somewhat famously, Pratt also includes twin water towers. As a 1950s prank, high school boys climbed the towers and marked one COLD, the other HOT. Instead of treating it like graffiti, the people of Pratt embraced it—something funny, something worth keeping. In those days, life’s borders barely reached the city limits. Family, school, and church produced a strong local culture, one that thrived and largely eclipsed any larger identity. Television had not yet opened the door to a national life. We knew little about life in New York City, or even Kansas City. Pratt was an island of trees, homes, parks, grain elevators, and church steeples rising from an immense sea of farms and ranches. Life on the land pulled men and women close to embrace them, whisper promises, and sometimes to cripple or kill them. I remember prairie compounds, great wood barns, tractor widows, and the way the wind so elegantly raked its fingers through wheat fields. Agricultural life asked people to throw steel blades into the soil, wrestle with banks and merchants, and call on the mercy of God; all in order to pull daily bread (and maybe an estate) out of the ground. For ag people, the scent of rain was the kiss of God; they had to have it and could do nothing about it but pray. So, their lives bent around that Big Sky, its beauty and bounty, as well as its destruction and death. I recall the way men and women stood firm in their place in the world, accepting the limits and losses that came to them. Over time, the lines between themselves and their place fused—soil and soul, horizon and hope. In that long submission to land, seasons, and God, something took hold: a steadiness, a gravity, as the same hand that shaped the landscape quietly set them in place as well. The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

6 min
APR 16

The Wise Gardener

Written and Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy I hoisted a waterlogged lily sideways onto the potting bench, compressing each side forcefully like a paramedic performing CPR. I threw a sharp trowel into the mass of roots, muscling them apart before plopping the divided plants into various pots. I was working for a pond nursery, a dream summer job. The heat and humidity of the greenhouses were a welcome change to the harsh, dry winds of the Colorado plains howling just outside the glass doors. Most of the gardening around my childhood home was a frantic race against a short growing season—three months for vegetables and annuals. Working in a greenhouse opened up a new world to me. Here, plants thrived, protected from drought, gophers, and adolescent boys who didn’t check their rearview mirrors. Lush lilies rapidly outgrew their pots; frogs hopped into large tubs, and the air pulsed with life—sometimes, too much life. Which is what led to plants being so ruthlessly divided, and a potting bench that resembled the sacrificial altars I’d read about in Leviticus. Years later, I planted dozens of snapdragon seeds on a tray under indoor lights. Slowly, my tender care was rewarded as the tray filled with tiny sprouts. Looking closer, I saw that each “pod” had grown multiple seedlings. My heart sank, knowing that gardening wisdom demanded I “thin” them. To the drought-scarred Colorado girl who had carried buckets of water out to languishing pines while the wind sucked all the moisture from my eyes, the idea of cutting any plant felt like sacrilege. “Why must this be the way?” Finally, reason, research, and faith overtook emotion. When I snipped away dozens of seedlings, I was shocked to see mildew had been lurking under the façade of abundance. The nefarious hairs had spread over the soil, suffocating the roots. I carefully scraped it out, exposing the soil to air and light. Weeks later, my garden was filled with sunset-colored blooms. Had I not cut away the “good stuff,” they would have died. Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely said, “As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and concentrate your force on one or a few points.” As a mom, it is my job to regularly and diligently analyze what needs to be cut away. Are my children’s critical virtues, connections, or conversations being suffocated by distractions? I once heard a commander’s wife, someone I greatly respected, say that as a mom she hadn’t been attending all the squadron’s “mandatory fun,” and she made no apology for it. As a new mom myself, with a baby on my hip and obligations on my calendar, her statement broke shackles off my mind. Here was our fearless leader’s wife—the one who should be hosting, organizing, and fundraising—saying those things weren’t her priority. I was never the same again. If I couldn’t make it to something, I didn’t. Throughout those years, my family and I had room to breathe and connect. I hate that life can so quickly mutate from nurturing a few worthy endeavors into constant management. I want my family to feel like a place of connection, not a corporation. That requires looking at the full, green seed tray of our lives and determining what must be meticulously, even ruthlessly, removed. If our heart rates are constantly elevated, our hair is falling out, and our patience is thin, can it mean that there are too many “good things” inhaling a limited supply of oxygen? Can we eliminate unnecessary stuff, breathe deep, and open up spaces in our lives? My “baby” is now 15 years old. Last night, after a trying day at school, she said, “Mama, will you hold me?” She knows I have margin. She knows she can ask. That’s the kind of growth she—and we—need. The Timberline Letter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

5 min
APR 15

The Wise Gardener

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit timberlineletter.substack.com/subscribe

5 min

Think Clearer, See Further, Hear Deeper. timberlineletter.substack.com

Creator

Produced by Ed Chinn, Narrated by Kara Lea Kennedy
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

78
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Cool River Pub, Inc.
Show Website

The Timberline Letter