Wild Kingdom

Andrea trains the hummingbird to do unusual tricks as...

Lyle feeds the ferocious Chipmunk...

Then the wild bull elk charges us both but we manage to get a picture off just before Andrea swings onto his back riding him down the mountain and breaking him so small children can now ride him with out fear.

Hummingbird Greetings

© photo by Andrea

We sat sipping coffee for almost an hour as we watched, closer than nature has ever allowed us before, or witness the little winged creatures, as they busily collected nectar.

New Home!

Home for this week!

Estates Park, Colorado

Dayle Kitch

Dayle Nicole Kitch
CARROLL, IA

On this Blog go back to March 31. This was the last time I got to meet and work with Dayle. She has been an amazing light to many. She is someone who I hoped to work more with in the future. Thank you God for the blessing of Dayle.

Dayle Nicole Kitch, 19, of Carroll died Tuesday, May 29, 2007, at Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines.

While at Carroll High she participated in band, pep band, choir, swing choir and cheerleading. At Kuemper she was a member of the LIFE Core Team, wrote for the Kuemper Charger and participated in speech, one-act play and large-group speech. She was also a member of and adult volunteer for Destination ImagiNation for five years.

Dayle completed her sophomore year at Luther College, where she was working toward a degree in social work with minors in Spanish and religion. She was a member of Lambda Theta chapter of Phi Alpha Honor Society for social work students and served as its co-president, played percussion in the varsity band and pep band, played recorder in the Collegium, sang in the Gospel choir, was a part of an outreach group, worked at the financial aid office and planned to be a writing tutor.

She was a member of St. John Lutheran Church in Carroll and was liaison to the National Lutheran Youth Organization of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, She was member of the Definitely-Abled Committee, attended and was a counselor at the Wholly Iowa Youth Leadership Discipling Event, was a member of and traveled the U.S. with the Beyond the Ramp Speakers Bureau and helped organize, plan, and lead the Definitely-Abled Youth Leadership Event. She was also a counselor for the State of Iowa Youth Leadership Forum and was scheduled to be a counselor at Ingham Bible Camp at East Okoboji this summer.

damp wood resists light

"And then Garion perceived yet another truth, a truth at once enormously simple and at the same time so profound that the scope of it shook every fiber of his being. There was son such thing as darkness! What seemed so vast and overwhelming was nothing more than the absence of light. So long as the Child of Light kept that firmly in mind, the Child of Dark could never win." – p.27 King of the Murgos: Book Two of the Malloreon by Eavid Eddings

Oh my… how that thinking could change the world. It is worth wondering. There are only sources for light. I can point to where light comes from. I am unable to point to a source for dark. Dark just is when light lacks.

I do understand the concepts of evil, pain and even sin. The assumption is that darkness can and should be fought. If we want to rid the world of evil and dark, we must fight it, sub due it, even win over it. Yes, I have seen Star Wars and know about the dark side. (“May the force be with you.” I still love them all.) But how do you battle something that has no source? What if it is not about a battle at all? What if the answer lies not in acts and attitudes of conquering, but instead the lighting of lights! How can we fight something that has no source?

So, “All we need is love?” It does sound too simplistic. Feed the poor, do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God? Proclaim the good news? Maybe all the ills of the world, the dark side, would just go away with a bit more love? We need to help build more assets? (Thank you Search Institute)

So maybe lighting lights is not all that easy? I did just try to light my back yard fire with wet wood. It resisted being lit for quit a long time. (Still seems to be more of a smolder than a dancing gleeful fire.) Maybe dark cannot be conquered into light, but maybe it does resist. You cannot light something that does not want to be lit.

Okay, I’m not the first to ponder this. But as for me, I’ll keep assuming a positive lighting and brightening is more effective than the energy of anger attacking or building walls for defending. Sounds a bit rosy. I know I still have my days when my wood seems a bit damp.

????

Brandi Carlile

A late night at the Varsity theater.

Andrea and I first heard her over a year ago when she was the warm up for Jamie Cullum.
Nathan and Heidi heard her as the warm up for Shawn Colvin.
Now she is selling out her own shows.
Energy, blues, country and rock all to come together as Brandi Carlile becomes one of my new favorites.

(Nathan gets the credit for the pics. He was there the night before.)

Brandi

NW Minnesota

Peer Ministry Certification Training friends in the north woods.
Just had to clean off the wood ticks from time to time.
Emmaus camp food! Two thumbs up!

jeep, jeep, jeep

camp somewhere

just before sunrise

a well organized woods

soon to be blueberries

Road to Emmaus

"




On the road again... I always joke that I should have a shirt that just says "camp somewhere" on it. This week I am on the road, literally, to Camp Emmaus. The camp surrounds it's own little lake that makes a nice run. The wood ticks are thick though, so shaking off has become part of the training routine.

Red Wing Black Birds

6 PM – Dogs are being walked, runners out running --- and lapping me!

The air is fall of sounds of the Red wing black birds as they swoop among the cattails. It is a memorable Iowa country sound. I recall my parents pulling over along the cornfields, with windows down, motor off, admiring a red ring black bird sitting on a fence wire with it’s high twirl voice crossing over the fields and ditches.

Green Leaves

tacky, tacky, porch lady

Another full moon remebered!

Cert School Dubuque

Back to the Wartburg Castle
My room just above the front doors, in the tower.

Cert schoolers!

Crash course in
6-5-4-3 Youth & Family Model, Milestones and Peer Ministry

the Inkshuks return

Pizza on the deck!

grinerGUYS

along with Andrea and Heidi
so great to once again move outdoors!

Hennipin Ave. United Methodist Team

I spend a lot of my time convincing groups they need a relational team of caring adults who do not consider themselves “ just volunteers” or “chaperones” but instead are full relational partners in ministry that make a huge difference in the life of kids and their families. The team I got to work with yesterday are well on their way to being such a team. What a joy!

Okay, they still can’t lower that bar to the floor. Such a seemingly easy task that continues to end up going in the opposite direction.

Spring --- maybe it is finally here? Nice early morning run. --- Flocks of happy returning robins everywhere. (Not sure how I know they are happy --- maybe the smiles on their faces??? Maybe the geese told me?)

Richard Rohr

It was a week ago Andrea, Michelle, Peter and myself got to hear Father Richard Rohr a Franciscan Preist from New Mexico ... Part of my Easter day ended at a coffee shop stealing some of Richard's words and thinking about how they fit with my own thinking. What follows are some rather random thoughts...

It is when we are on the edge of life; in the midst of the great joys and great sorrows that I am most aware of God. Strange that it is in the deepest drama of life itself that I most sense a genuine prayer. It is less about the examples, the classes, the retreats, the books, the various practices, all of which must have helped shape me and given meaning to prayer, I am sure. All of which I have used thinking I will be more centered, which I have assumed meant being closer to God. Could it be that it is when I am furthest away from center in these great joys, great sorrows, most troubled, when I am most unbalanced, that I am also most awake, that I am most attentive to God’s being. Being is prayer.

God does not love us because we are good. God loves us because God is good. Thus it is not earned. It is only lived in. At it’s best religion is doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. Even this is not a demand it is only a response out of unfathomable appreciation for something I cannot fully understand. In gratefulness I become more and more passionate in my wanting to share.

This goes so against most religion that worries more about who is in or who is out, who is right or left, who is up who is down, gay or straight, born again or born again and again and again, who can have communion or who can’t, if the music should be by Johann Sebastian Bach or Michael W. Smith, oh my, who should throw the first stone! Trying to keep religion pure, trying to do it right must be a very exhausting and defeating.

It is not about protection… it is about proclamation. I can only share what I have learned, experienced, wonder, and sense as I continue to discover this loving, graceful God, who I must admit, I only get glimpses of. I proclaim and share a faith that becomes more and more a mystery. As I continue to learn I know I know something, but that is only enough to know I know very, very little. Accepting mystery, accepting multiplicity, drops all need to defend or be defensive when I hear or see things not of my experience, understanding or even belief. --- Still, I confess a desire to prove you, whoever disagrees with me, wrong. I have to protect my belief that protection is not important. – Ouch! – So I continue to learn to listen, love, experience, value relationship, grow in my passions, be still, and learn to let God be God.

NW ELCA Synod Youth Gathering

Another fun youth gathering... sharing the mircrophone with Dayle and uplifting the definelty-abled. Music with David Schere and Rachel Kurtz (and one kicking back up band!)

Signature Coaching

Three days with some of the best of the best from around the country working and preparing for more Institute sponsored coaching.

Worm Moon

according to the Farmers' Almanac.

• Full Worm - March Moon As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.