The opening verses of Paul’s letters are easy to fly past to get to the meat of the letter. They often sound similar, for one thing, and it sometimes seems like the skip-over yada yada yada parts that we tend to skim to get to the greatest hits.

I’m guilty of doing that, but let’s not do that this time.

Paul starts his letter to the Galatians, making it pretty clear that he has serious authority. It seems a strange thing to do, especially since he had been to Galatia and had taught the Gospel to the people there. Surely they already knew who he was, didn’t they?

People haven’t changed. I’ve been foolishly involved in plenty of arguments in which the foundation of using the Bible as a source is stripped away by the “red letter” only people, or those who think that if Jesus didn’t say it, we can ignore it.

How do you pull the rug out from under someone in a debate?

You suggest they don’t have the right or authority to be debating at all.

Maybe they are from the wrong denomination, they’ve associated with people or teachers you don’t approve of, they are a woman or lack a theological degree—it’s a long list, these strawman attacks in which we go after the person instead of the words. Maybe that’s why God uses unlikely sources to speak, like donkeys.

Anyway, once the person has been shown to be unlikely to have valid ideas or the right to say them, no point they make after that lands.

So why was this an issue for Paul? Remember, false teachers had gotten to the Galatians and told them Paul was not legit. This made them question everything he said by questioning his right to say them.

This is a common experience for us: how do we trust people we don’t know personally, and what kind of expertise or vouching will allow us to trust them and what they say? What we think about the messenger necessarily colors our view of the message.

Paul rightly knew that he had to establish his bona fides (once again) to address the doubt that had crept in to give his words weight. So he makes it clear that he is an apostle, one sent by Jesus Christ and God the Father, not by people who were propping up their favorite teacher. He also points out (verse 2) that fellow believers agreed with him on what he was about to write.1

The very next thing he does is extend grace and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ, which is good because he’s going to drop the hammer in a bit.

A couple of things we note from this passage:

1. God the Father and Jesus Christ are two unique persons of the Trinity, not the same. They are both on the same divine level, and Paul is making it clear that Jesus is God.

2. God the Father and Jesus Christ directed Paul to extend grace and peace to the Galatians. That is, it wasn’t judgment and condemnation that was to be extended, which any fellow doubters out there will be relieved to hear once Paul really gets going and his words land. However convicting, it was grace and peace that were being extended, even if it didn’t feel like that.

3. Verse 4 is an incredible summary of the Gospel: Jesus died for our sins to rescue us from the evil in this world we live in, all done according to the will of God the Father, who is eternal, and to whom all glory will go forever.

We have a statement on who God is, a statement on how God works towards his wayward people, and a reminder of what Jesus did, all in the opening greeting.

Back to the grace and peace thing, though.

Grace is the central theme of this book. As we’ll find out, Paul will use the concept of grace as the balancing point of the entire argument he makes. And peace, extended to a group of churches that were now confused and likely fighting amongst themselves thanks to false teachers, definitely needed to be extended as well.

Grace is the heart of the Gospel. It’s a bunch of sinners who didn’t deserve God’s favor who got it anyway. You’ve probably heard the quote that mercy is not getting what you deserve (punishment), while grace is getting what you don’t deserve (salvation from evil).

In the verses we’ll cover next time, you’re going to see many of these same themes pop up again, as Paul defends himself and the Gospel he preached, along with reiterating what that Gospel is.

But just remember that Paul is writing this letter because the Galatians stumbled, and still God extends grace and peace to them. He is a gracious God, indeed.

If you’d like a worksheet for this lesson, you can get a copy here.

“If you don’t know what transcendentalism is,” said Wren, our delightful young Harvard-sweater-wearing tour guide of Alcott’s Orchard House in Concord, “just think of it as early veganism.”

I can’t speak to that idea; transcendentalism is a notoriously difficult-to-define New England religious and literary philosophy that thrived in the mid-1800s onward.

As the nation marched into the Civil War, Emerson assured people that individuals could access God through nature and their inner sense of good. He was joined by Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women), among others. These transcendentalists believed they could discover truth on their own through inner reflection and intuition, though the Bible says otherwise.1

Personal intuition, inner discovery, and experience surpassed religious dogma, logic, or inherited authority. For the transcendentalist, God was an impersonal, vague force present in nature rather than a personal, rational being who cares about and seeks to connect with each individual. As you may have guessed, Transcendentalists did not see a need for a savior; they could do it themselves by transcending through self-realization, appreciating the Bible mostly as a historical text, one among many useful tools.2

To be fair, the self-focus of transcendentalists wasn’t like today’s narcissists, who can’t stop taking photos of themselves and struggle with Main Character Syndrome in which all things are about them, their pleasure, and their renown. Instead, they were concerned with issues such as social justice and abolition. I have to wonder if peering into ourselves reveals not truth but a darkness that is so shameful we have to madly do good works to offset it, a classic salvation by works, essentially, seen in today’s activism and race-based guilt. But regardless, the narcissist who loves himself and the one who hates himself is still a narcissist; they are looking to self for all things.

On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin on Walden Pond, just outside of Concord. He wanted to strip away anything he deemed non-essential for life. He saw society as people living in “quiet desperation,” sleepwalking through life unaware of what mattered. Like so many before and after him, he felt that he could discover the secret knowledge that would give his life meaning if he could just spend time with self. He wanted to see if transcendentalist philosophy could be put into actual practice.

He grew beans. He observed nature closely and kept detailed notes. He kept careful financial records to see how cheaply and simply one could live. He read books, and he wrote his first book. For two years, he tested himself to see whether he could be self-reliant. His experience there would inspire him to later write Walden: Life In The Woods in 1854.

If you’d like to hear what it sounds like to stand where Thoreau’s cabin was and listen to nature in early June, you can:

Thoreau’s actions are admirable and attractive to an individualistic culture like the United States, and for this reason, Thoreau (and other self-reliant authors) has inspired people to do the same, bucking normal society to test their mettle.3

In 1971, Ted Kaczynski headed to Montana and built a small cabin in a remote area. Ted Kaczynski was a mathematical genius.

Kaczynski wanted to live off-grid and also be self-sufficient, just like Thoreau, with no running water or electricity. Yet Kaczynski did not identify with Thoreau. He admitted to reading Walden when he was younger, but did not admire it much. Thoreau was too moderate, too passive, too literary. Symbolic resistance would not suffice. He saw society as dehumanizing and wanted to escape it and reclaim autonomy as an individual. It was good for a while, but four years into it, as his isolation stretched double what Thoreau had ever done, he saw dozers and development creeping closer to his personal wilderness; he was no longer happy to live autonomously.

He had to fight back.

He wrote his manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future”, boldly stating that current industrial society has been “a disaster for the human race.” People were reduced to cogs, stripped of purpose and freedom by technology. You may feel uncomfortable as you read the manifesto because much of it sounds true and resembles what we often read on Facebook on a casual Tuesday, particularly in the conspiracy sectors.

Eventually, Kaczynski turned violent, earning his Unabomber name, leaving death in his ideological wake. Seemingly reasonable ideas, left to fester in an isolation humans were never created for, lead to unreasonable results (a huge problem with the internet today).

The same apparent path doesn’t lead to the same result. Starting points matter; they determine where you end up. Thoreau wanted to be a better person for society; Kaczynski wanted to get away from society. Whereas Thoreau had done a good job putting a name and finger on the problem, he left society intact and, as we’ll see, still participated in it. That was not enough for Kaczynski, who wanted to destroy the problem society, not just protest or make people think.

Thoreau went to find himself; Kaczynski went to lose himself. They are not the same, but they are remarkably close.

The two cabins are similar, but different.4

Thoreau’s cabin still has the trappings of a comfortable, but simple, life. Kaczynski’s cabin, on the other hand, is almost stripped down to not just the bare necessities, but a removal of anything that might bring human joy or pleasure. One cabin is human, the other is harsh. One gently reins in the industrial horse, the other slaughters it.

The ideals of living more in tune with nature, particularly as our world careens uncontrolled into technology and AI, make Transcendentalism ever more attractive. Emerson and Thoreau’s writing resonates as strongly today as it did then, if not more so. You can see this on social media, where people are lauding a kind of Instagram version of homesteading, and pretty young women in flowing milkmaid cotton dresses are gathering eggs, churning their own butter, and making candles out in a pasture full of flowers, oddly unaware that using technology to sell that lifestyle—and that a lifestyle could even be sold—is a righteous clash.

Can we style a life? Should we waste time styling, when living one is difficult enough?

The appeal is understandable: when life is chaotic, operating under a belief system that allows (and requires) us to rely on ourselves to understand and control it seems simple and manageable. It seems better, more righteous. We will slip the bonds of modern age and gain our autonomy by refusing to buy eggs at the grocery store like the “normies” still do. We are special, we are aware, we are separate.

Getting out into the steady seasonal rhythm of nature has always been a balm to the human soul, the reliability of the seasons a constant in a world in chaos (Genesis 8:22). We’ve all been to a place in life where we needed to “touch grass” and disconnect from the chaos to find some rest and peace in nature.

But ultimately, it’s a trap.

We can’t conflate the need to retreat, take a break, and rest with the long-term solution for how life should be lived. What happens when you go out to find yourself and don’t like what you find?

When I go out into nature, I do not talk to self; I talk to God personally. I do not look inward, but upward. The sound of the wind, different in the pine than in the cottonwood, brings relief but mostly because I celebrate the glory of the Creator who was wise enough to make such beautiful variety. It is the times I live in that cause the distress, so I look to the One outside of time for relief. Nature is a balm because it is quiet and less distracting, and I can talk to God without interruption, not because nature is God. Technology is not anathema to truly connecting to God. Idolatry is. Worship of nature and self is idolatry.

It is possible to connect with the Creator of the Universe out in the woods, or in your office cubicle surrounded by screens. You can connect in the truck or while washing dishes (true story). The moment and place we are in—good or bad—will always be surrounded by the discontent of greener grass if we decide it must be so.

Consider that the Transcendentalists in the 1800s felt their lives were dehumanized and consumed with the unnecessary details of an industrialized life. Funny, no? We would consider the mid-1800s as the time we’d like to go back to for a simpler life, not realizing that those who lived then saw it as too complicated. Nostalgia is just a fog blanket over the past, a lying bastard that makes you forget that you’ve always longed for what was, because hindsight makes us feel god-like in our understanding of reality (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” Thoreau wrote in his 1854 book Walden, suggesting there was some fear that, at death’s door, his life would have counted for nothing, barely a real life at all.

When transcendental good works replace faith in Christ, you will have this fear.

A life that cannot be lived anywhere or at any time in any situation is not a truthful life. God infuses who we are, where we are, and when we are with great potential; He is willing to help us walk through it. As mom often said, “Bloom where you are planted.”

If you’d like to hear what it sounds like on the walking path I frequent, not in isolation but here in town, listen and compare to Walden Pond:

Because God is personal and cares about the individual, we are never cogs in a wheel. We always, by our very existence, have purpose and meaning, whether we feel like it or not.

Life is to be lived when and where it comes into existence; it is a seed always capable of doing just that. Changing the geography or pretending you live in a different time period or different circumstances with the hope that it solves some kind of problem, neglects the reality that wherever you go, there you (and your problems) are.

Years ago, after reading about Chris McCandless in John Krakauer’s 1996 book Into the Wild, I was struck by how much effect Thoreau, and others like him, such as Jack London, had on McCandless. Rugged individualism is wonderful until you find yourself alone in the wilderness with a broken leg and a wolf nearby, or lost in the fog of yourself, writing manifestos and sending out actual bombs or ideas that explode into lives and leave the Chris McCandlesses of the world dead. Heroic individualism makes for great books and films, but individuals are easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

McCandless realized this too late. Toward the final days of his life, he wrote, “Happiness only real when shared.”

Thoreau knew this, despite all appearances of individualism.

His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, owned the fourteen acres Thoreau lived on near Walden Pond; Thoreau did not need to worry about such things as property ownership. Thoreau would frequently walk several miles into town to visit with his friends, and even ride the train to Boston and Cambridge.

He was not an island at all, and he knew it all along. His goal was to put distance between himself and the bustle and distraction of life, to get outside society yet near enough to observe it more clearly. This is a fine point lost on many who followed him, who missed the value he placed on maintaining community connections and saw only a man alone in a small cabin in the woods rejecting modern life.

Thoreau concluded his experiment in his writing, pointing out that most people overcomplicate their lives and lose themselves in the process (“simplify, simplify”). He determined that simplicity and looking inwardly helped restore freedom. Moral responsibility must be central.5 But most importantly, he made clear that the way he lived wasn’t intended to be a blueprint, but instead, everyone should find their version of Walden.

Thoreau’s Walden is gone.

Walden Pond, a small but surprisingly deep lake, now has a parking lot, a manicured beach, and a brand-new building for all the people who flock here to swim, snack, and make noise.

That’s the problem with putting our hope and salvation in a place or time in which we think we can discover ourselves. The place changes, time passes, and we are at the mercy of all of it, having built our house on the sandy beach at Walden Pond.

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If we were to assign each of the seven deadly sins to a month of the year, perhaps it would look like the list below:

January is envy month.

February is lust month.

March.

April is wrath month.

May.

June is pride month.1

July is sloth month.

August.

September.

October.

November is gluttony month.

December is greed month.

Keep in mind that pride has historically been considered the most severe of the deadly sins.

It is a root sin from which the others grow. Pride is a rebellion against God because it is the exalting of self and the refusal to be corrected. It is the fall of Lucifer and the birth of all evil we know.

Pride takes credit where it is not due. It resists authority that tries to control what the individual will not restrain. It refuses any boundaries or limits. It does not allow for the possibility that a held viewpoint might be wrong. It refuses any correction or discipline. It ultimately blinds judgment, particularly moral judgment, so that sin no longer exists and, therefore, repentance and a contrite heart are unnecessary. It redefines evil to be good for the purpose of elevating self. A proud heart cannot receive grace (for there is no need for grace in someone so proud as to depend on or listen to no one) and completely shatters any relationship with God.

Pride says, “I did this on my own, I am this way and don’t need to change, I am great, I am brilliant, I am the one you should look to, I am strong enough, I am the master of my fate and the captain of my soul!” Ultimately, knowing God calls Himself the I AM, we grab that and apply it to ourselves. God is out on the periphery, the one we shake a fist at if things go badly.

In my fictional list above, the only month that actually exists is Pride Month. Of the deadly sins, we actually celebrate the worst.

The seven deadly sins put a name to disordered desire; their counterparts are the seven “heavenly virtues,” traditionally paired as their opposites.

Instead of pride, there is humility.

Instead of greed, there is generosity.

Instead of lust, there is chastity.

Instead of envy, there is kindness.

Instead of gluttony, there is temperance.

Instead of wrath, there is patience.

Instead of sloth, there is diligence.

Instead of a self-centered, inwardly focused, and excessive approach, the virtues emphasize self-control and service to others. They are expressions of waiting, of patience and consistency, of giving instead of receiving, of telling ourselves no.

But unlike the seven deadly sins, the seven heavenly virtues do not sell products, they do not bring personal fame and influence, they do not help you get ahead, they do not get clicks, and they are not rewarded quickly—if at all—in this life.

“JOY is Jesus, others, and then yourself,” my mom would remind me as a child, putting the world in proper order for me. It is only in that order that pride is reversed. Humility isn’t false modesty; it is actually seeing reality and our place in it.

I have learned she was right; when self consumes me and I put me first, my thoughts run dark. The simple act of first asking Jesus for help and then doing something for someone else changes everything. A letter in the mail. Fresh-baked cookies as a gift. An encouraging text out of the blue. Anything but self. I have also learned that, when life is in that order, pride does not thrive.

But then the month of June arrives.

I have always dreaded June, though it’s a shame because it’s when the lilacs and early summer flowers are blooming. I dread traveling during the month because it has come to mean, in the last fifteen or so years, a celebration of evil wrapped up in a rainbow.

God’s promise not to destroy with a flood, the symbol of His promise of divine mercy, protection, and faithfulness, of His holiness and care, of judgment into peace, now painted on the streets and in corporate media logos and hanging from awnings to turn it into a celebration of pride that pretends to be celebrating love.

Love of self, to be sure, but not of virtuous love.

Not only do we steal away God’s I AM and make it ours, but we also see that He says He is Love; so we take that holy nature and slap it onto something wholly unlike him. It’s beginning-grade Garden-of-Eden stuff, making ourselves into God.

I was recently in Massachusetts, and it was difficult to stand on the Lexington Green and take in what happened there— on this, the 250th birthday of the nation—reading the prayers and proclamations on the stone memorials, only to look across the street at the church with its Pride flag.

A church, celebrating Pride, pretending it was about love. How Lucifer must laugh.

God mocks and opposes the proud, but shows favor and kindness to those who are humble (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6). Those who proudly rebel against God in celebration of pride—even a church parked on the literal corner of American history—will discover what it is like to be on the receiving end of God’s rebellion against them.

Pride usually starts from a genuine feeling, one that we don’t rightfully direct quickly enough. We’re proud to be an American. We’re proud of our hometown school. We’re proud of our sports team. We’re proud of our kids. Is that wrong?

Put all expressions of pride into alignment with God’s word (1 Corinthians 1:31, 2 Corinthians 10:17-18, and Philippians 3:3), where our confidence is in Him instead of humans.

A better expression might be that I am thankful.2 I’m so glad I get to be a part of events, of places, of teams, and of moments in which something wonderful happens. It brings me joy (JOY) if it’s in the proper order, but it brings on the other deadly sins if it is disordered. I want to always shift quickly towards being thankful to God, and then remember that I must be a good steward of all the things He’s blessed me with, so I can share them with others.

I didn’t get lucky.

I didn’t make it happen.

It’s not about my personal achievements.

My talents weren’t of my own creation.

If I ran fast, God gave me the legs and the lungs; if I wrote something of value, God gave me the ideas. I cannot let it be about me. I am gladly dependent—and relieved—to place it on the Creator of the universe, confident in God.

So let me tell you about a different, colorful flag to think of this June, when the world is screaming about pride, love, and inclusivity, when it is anything but. It’s a flag that started as a book, a Wordless Book, that I learned about in Sunday School as a small child.

Black is the sin that separates all of us from God (Romans 3:23). Red is the blood of Jesus that he shed on the cross to forgive our sins (John 3:16). White is the cleansing and forgiveness of that sin (Psalm 51:7). Gold reminds us of Heaven and of God’s holy glory that we will live in someday (Revelation 21:18). And green represents the spiritual growth and a life in Christ in the here and now (2 Peter 3:18).3

There is no celebration of pride in this flag.

Pride month celebrations grow each year, in step with our pride in human ability and the idea that we can accomplish anything and everything on our own, without God, thinking through us all things are held together (Colossians 1:17). In June, the walls and buildings are painted and lit up to celebrate “love” and the roads are filled with millions of people around the world screaming and writhing in pride. The way of pride is broad and crowded, well-lit and full of music and glitter. It sparkles and captivates, feeding every temporary thing.

The road to life is much narrower. There aren’t as many on it. Don’t be proud that you’re not on the broad road. Be thankful God showed you mercy.

We had been tasked to get some helium balloons to tie at the end of the driveway so people would know where the graduation party was. We’d picked three: two pink hearts and a round white “congrats” balloon.

Within an hour, only the white balloon remained; the two hearts had slipped their surly bonds and lofted upwards, exploding somewhere high above when the pressure changed.

“I feel like there’s some deep philosophy in this,” I said to my friend, looking at the lone survivor balloon. “I find graduation heartbreaking.”

My high school graduation motto was “We’ve come a long way, but not half as far as we will go,” and I still chuckle when I think about it.

How far did we come, really, when we were graduating from high school? It was high school! We complained about having to do 30 math problems for homework! I wrote in a blog post on April 9, 2006, apparently experiencing that graduation-plus-ten-years angst.1 Mottos like ‘Our future is as big as we make it’ or ‘I can do and become anything, and no one can stop because all I have to do is think I can do and become anything and that’s all it takes’—you might want a poet to clean up that last one and make it flow—but you get my point. The power of positive thinking is severely limited by the fact that I can’t think myself rich, disease-free, or smart.

Around the time of that blog post, a group of friends, who had a good 20+ years on me, were chatting at a local Dairy Queen when we stumbled onto the topic of graduation mottos and greeting card sayings, and came up with our own list:

• Every class needs a student like you, who makes the upper 50 percent possible.

• Dare to dream the impossible, but you’ll still be flipping burgers.

• Prepare to follow your dreams, right into bankruptcy court.

• Your future is before you, including ten years of student loan repayment.

• Be prepared for exciting new chapters in life, including chapter 7.

• Dream big, choose the difficult path, and live off of the state.

We were laughing the entire time we came up with this list, but it was the kind of sad laugh only possible rooted in experience and hindsight. I was two months away from making my final student loan payment, and I could feel it.

We all instinctively knew that graduation too often rang false.

In 1985, Neil Postman, an author and cultural critic, wrote a graduation speech that he finally delivered at the BYU graduation in 2000, just three years before he died. As a professor at NYU, he’d heard many graduation speeches and decided what he would say to graduates if he had the chance.

In his speech, Postman contrasts the Athenians and the Visigoths, pointing out that these two groups represented opposite values and traditions.

The Athenians were literate, thoughtful, and logical; the Visigoths were brutish, crude, and violent. The Athenians valued knowledge, language, and reason; the Visigoths saw knowledge only as a means to get money or gain power over people. The Athenians were interested in public affairs and improving public life and behavior; the Visigoths were interested only in personal affairs and disregarded community. Athenians valued discipline and good taste in art, while the Visigoths measured artistic value only through popularity.

After the Athenians were gone, the good things of their culture still lingered and trickled on. After the Visigoths were gone, Europe entered the Dark Ages.

Postman argued that graduates must choose between two ways of living: they could live like Athenians, valuing knowledge, language, public life, art, and cultural traditions, or live like Visigoths, valuing power, popularity, convenience, and general self-interest.

“[T]o be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organize your life around a set of values,” Postman said. “Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths. That is why there are so many more Visigoths than Athenians. And I must tell you that you do not become an Athenian merely by attending school or accumulating academic degrees.”

These are two clearly competing sets of values; one or the other must be chosen with no in-between.

I think we are all aware that the Visigoths have won the day in broad, consumable culture, though some Athenians do struggle to survive and thrive. Postman’s speech is an anomaly; our graduation speeches have become self-focused, Visigoth in nature with an Athenian veneer. School has become less about knowledge and more about the ability to propel self into society instead of propelling society ahead of self.

We don’t prepare graduates very well for anything but. Self-esteem, self-identity, self-help, individual learning plans—we thought we were recognizing the individual, but instead, fed the self.

At the point of graduation, their entire remembered life is self- and school-centric, being told things like “if you flunk phy-ed, that’ll stay on your record for life” or wildly misrepresenting the importance of winning awards for sports or other activities. Too often, we get so caught up in the things that seem important to get to graduation that we miss the things that are important to eternity.

I wasn’t an athlete, but I won a lot of music and academic awards. As an unpopular kid, I took those awards to mean that someone thought I was worth something. I worked very hard for them and proudly displayed them at my own graduation party.

That was the last day those awards meant anything at all, if they ever did.

My high school diploma, in its folder, sits moldering and musty in an outdoor storage shed back at the farm, along with my high school and college graduation gowns. Nobody cares about being in Phi Kappa Phi or if you wore the summa cum laude cords when you walked the college line. They, too, are moldering.

To head off protestations, yes, those things mean something, I guess, but not what we think, not with the weight we attribute to them, and not for any amount of time compared to what we traded for them. They are all, at best, part of the many life activities that mold us bit by bit into the person we will be. They are not a waste, but they are not a pinnacle, either. We can learn just as much through terrible decisions that leave a mark.

I’d already graduated from college when Baz Luhrmann’s song “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen” came out, but I recognized what it was. When I graduated from high school, each of us in my giant class of 19 students got a copy of Life’s Little Instruction Book, and I still have it. These two things, the song and the book, are full of odd bits of advice that are surprisingly useful and mostly only arrive through the living of life. Advice from those further along in life has always had more value to me than that from those less deep in the weeds. They have hindsight where I still have future unknowns.

You still want your younger loved ones to avoid making terrible decisions, and graduation is a fearful thing because of that.

Mostly, though, you just watch them make bad decisions over and over, refusing your advice and your help—surely they are different, surely the outcome for them will be different, your warnings and admonitions are stupid—until they get old enough to watch the next generation do the same thing.

This is, perhaps, the Ecclesiastes version of graduation.

There’s always the day after graduation.

The open road is terrifying.

Deep thinkers are always taking to that open road to write about finding themselves, though I doubt many actually do. In my experience, I’ve found myself less on the wide open than I have in the quiet whisper in dark moments where you face who you are.

It’s why I wrote about the agony of being “tethered to the sky.” Having the whole world before you is terrible; suddenly, three hots and a cot seem tempting (but please don’t go that way). You can grab the world by the tail or be crushed, depending on the day.

Structure is easier.

It’s the dance we learn to recognize in life when something we knew and relied on is taken away, and there sits that ugly, open road.

No wonder there are big crashouts when, at last, you must step out of a structure and climb into the great wilderness of life. Motivation and destination must become internal; no one is handing out awards in life simply for making a grade or a touchdown. What you want to do with your life is both within and completely beyond your grasp, simultaneously.

Graduation is less a good segue and more like a dump truck over the cliff. All the glory, accolades, and attention are poured onto you in one moment, and within twelve hours, people are already expecting you to figure out what’s next and welcoming you to the rat race.

No wonder some people never leave college.

Graduation sounds like something we gradually get through before leveling up, a state of constant life achievement, but it is, like life, more like peaks and valleys. Which peak is up to you, sort of, but sometimes you don’t get to choose beyond whether you’ll climb or stumble. I guess reread Psalm 23 and trust God.

The only way to go is through.

I bought a journal and tried to gather some advice to give to the graduate whose party I was helping with. I wrote it in cursive, staying up late, trying to make it relevant, knowing how hard it is to see advice and take it for what it is until hindsight.

Avoid credit card debt. There is nothing, no romantic relationship, no job, worth more than Jesus. Feelings lie, but they are still real and need to be dealt with. The world is loud, so spend some time away from it in silence.

But what I want to say most is that there are some great things ahead, and some very hard things. No one gets through life any other way. Some days, your heart will float high, and some days it breaks.

It might all happen on the same day.

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You may enjoy some of the comments of that old post:

I did, indeed, flip burgers at the Hampden Mall Cafe.

Well, me, sort of.

I like rules that keep things orderly and functioning. I like general or broad rules that assume people have common decency and common sense to function without a heavy, detailed explanation of what is required. I like such rules to be followed. I like cultural norms and rules that create high-trust societies.

But rules are like rabbits. Where there are a few, there will be many.

The saying is that if you will not follow the Ten Commandments, you will follow the Ten Thousand Commandments, and isn’t that the truth? When people—and their cultures, personalities, and demands for individual rights—get involved, we start to add more rules and laws.

We do it because people lack self-control, and laws must be put into place to force or restrain behavior. We do it if we want to control other people and make them adhere to our preferences. We do it if we want to control our environment and want to avoid the sloppy possibilities of human creativity (see also: homeowner’s associations). We do it in an attempt to keep up with ever-growing degenerate behavior, agonizing over the tiny details we must include to hamper the evil, greedy, and harmful inclinations of other people. We do it to exclude others or to elevate a particular group above other groups.

Maybe we do it because we know our own nature, aren’t too impressed, and project rules on others to make ourselves feel better about dealing with a problem externally that we should deal with internally.

Imagine being Paul, having poured truth and love into the churches of Galatia, and then discovering some false teachers had come along, bad-mouthed him and his teaching, and tried to put new rules on those very people?

This is the book of Galatians, likely written somewhere around AD 49, in which Paul defends himself by saying yes, he was an apostle of Jesus, arguing that yes, salvation was by faith alone without a bunch of other rules, and then goes on to explain how beautiful and challenging it is to live freely.

Yes, challenging.

Slavery is unbearable, but freedom is hard.

Not just fighting for freedom and obtaining freedom, in our human understanding, but living in freedom without becoming absolute monsters.

The human version of freedom is lawlessness, debauchery, and all sorts of nonsense in which our thoughts and motivations are always about self. What I need. What I want. What I think would be fun. What I think is right.

“I’m just being my true self!” people say, which is a terrible thing, really.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul slaps down the false teachers who try to add rules and requirements to salvation and warns us about how to identify them. He explains the proper understanding of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ from every angle. And then he does what seems impossible: he shows us how freedom from the law only works when we have the Holy Spirit in us. Freedom from external restraint only comes with internal restraint.

Freedom is lost in legalism, he warns.

Freedom is not an excuse to sin, he reminds us, counteracting those who want to use rules and law to keep people from sinning.

Freedom is best understood and expressed by serving others in love with the help of the Holy Spirit, he points out, laying out what life in the Spirit really is (and isn’t).

If you’re serving others, you’re not serving yourself, and that stops a lot of the nonsense behavior we tend to get from a purely human understanding of what freedom is. The United States is a nation that values freedom, but daily, we see what happens when immoral, amoral, and ungodly people exercise it.

It’s ugly.

But not as ugly, in a spiritual sense, as someone trying to use works and rules and constraints to hammer people into their preferred image. At best, they create well-behaved people (good) who may never know saving faith in Christ (bad) because they think behaving a certain way is enough. We’re trying, in our own strength and understanding, to create morality and conscience.

We shouldn’t try to do the job of the Holy Spirit, and it’s a surprising lack of faith in God to assume He needs our help to control sin in others, and that He can’t use even the bad outcomes from sin for His ultimate glory.

Galatians is the perfect book to study as we celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday because it’s all about real freedom, rooted in faith in Christ.

If you’d like a worksheet for this lesson, you can get a copy here.

Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time for everything under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11)

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens,” the passage starts, and then lists the most impossible collection and pairing of events that you could imagine. Birth and death, starting and stopping, gathering and casting away, war and peace, searching and giving up, loving and hating.

It’s hard to remember that everything has its time.

When something terrible happens, time seems to stop.

Life around us continues, some kind of blasphemy to our pain, carrying on as if nothing had changed. We feel as if we grow old in a moment, while those around us end up so far away that we can barely communicate with them.

A moving clock ticks more slowly than one that is standing still.

This is time dilation, where time passes at different rates depending on who is observing it and their position and motion relative to others within a gravitational field. Time dilation has been observed; fast airplanes and satellites have shown us that it happens.

The faster you move, the slower time passes.

Time dilation is a favorite mind-bender of hard science fiction, and for good reason. We are trapped in time, seemingly plodding along at the same pace until we die, but this is not the case.

Consider the thought experiment known as the Twin Paradox, in which a set of twins is separated, one staying on Earth and the other traveling through space at near light speed. The twin, moving quickly through space where time moves more slowly for her, returns to Earth younger than her other twin, who had remained at the same speed the entire time. The Earth-bound twin went through more time than the space-bound twin. Though they are identical in DNA, their experiences through time have altered them.

The speed at which we go through life seems to age us at different rates, and the things that drag our being into a near standstill seem to pile on the years.

A few years ago, in the days between Christmas and the New Year, my brother died.

Or at least, he should have.

Barring the small miracles of where he was and who was with him, he is not dead. They brought him back and got the pumps going again. His ringtone on my phone, which has, for years, been Star Trek: TNG’s Worf growling out “it is a good day to die,” suddenly became less of an inside joke and more of a deep philosophy.

I still have the same ringtone, though I thought about changing it. Every time he calls me, I’m now reminded of God’s ungraspable will. Plus, my brother finds it funny. I can’t explain why humor helps, the same way I can’t explain how we mark our personal time, how we set up our own personal BC and AD. 1

Before or after the marriage.

Before or after the birth.

Before or after the divorce.

Before or after the arrest.

Before or after the pandemic.

Before or after the death.

Before or after getting fired.

These rare or first-time experiences stand out because new or unusual experiences hit our brains hard and lock a memory—even if it’s the memory of how we felt, rather than the specifics of the moment—as an important point on our timelines.2 In those memorable moments, time feels expanded, and maybe even seems to slow down.3

That’s wonderful if it’s a good moment, that we can savor it a bit more, but too often it’s the painful moments we wish to walk through much more quickly. I have a fear that Psalm 23 is not describing a short travel through the valley of the shadow of death, but a long one.

It is not always possible, when the thing happens, to realize we’ll end up using it to mark our personal timelines and break our lives into the chunks we think make the most sense. Those moments seem too big, too overpowering, to use so callously as a mere tick mark on a timeline. But the further we get from them in time, the more they fade, just a bit, until they become a soft emotion and marker on our timeline.

Memories are personal road signs, the important ones we try hard to hold onto, though we know they muddle and fade. Ebenezer Scrooge, a lifelong unhelpful character, was given an ironic first name, one that means “stone of help” in the Bible. An Ebenezer is a personal or group reminder of how God helped us. For the Christian who believes God will work all things out for His purpose and our good—even the bad things—we can understand why we might memorialize both the dark days and the light.

It will make sense in time.

But it does not make sense in the moment.

We will still try to make sense of it as soon as we can, often reverting to the idea that “everything happens for a reason.”4

Let’s remember the Twin Paradox, and consider the paradox part: who is older than whom depends on where you are observing.

On Earth, the twin in steady speed experiences a straight timeline. The space twin’s timeline bends, going outbound, then turning around to come back. The straighter the path, the more time there is, yet we know life on earth is fleeting. The path isn’t straight. How good is that God, outside of time, sees and hears our prayers.

One of the greatest things about Heaven—second to being in God’s presence forever—is being set free from time.

I don’t think we realize what the bounds of time do, how so much of our pain and fear are hooked to experiencing time.

And because God created us to be eternal, I don’t think we realize how hard it is to understand anything that matters within those bounds. We see eternity and infinity, and our hearts shout and cry at the same time.

No, I’m not deconstructing.

No, I’m not fudging the lines and becoming progressive.

No, I’m not saying what God has said is true has come into doubt.

The Bible has not changed, regardless of what the culture tries to insist.

But in my younger years, I wielded the Bible like a sword to chop people to bits, drawing lines in the sand that had no business being drawn. Passion and the over-confidence that comes when you’re pretty sure you know it all—a strength and weakness of youth—had me fighting battles I didn’t need to fight at all, or I was on the wrong side of.

Do you ever feel confused or overwhelmed at the amount of Christian fighting?

I do.

A lot.

It’s gotten bad enough that I often feel I’ll never be a good enough Christian, based on all of this disagreement as to what proper Christian living and theology looks like, to the point of isolating myself from believers. Sooner or later, I’ll say something, and it’ll spark unnecessary disagreement.

I’ve often referenced the idea of the three types of convictions, something a college professor taught in Systematic Theology class. It has proven to be one of those rare tools that have helped me keep some sanity in the world of fighting Christians, in that, when I can’t wrap my head around the nonsense, I can at least categorize where that nonsense fits.

But read the fine print under the Biblical conviction section on the left.

That’s where it gets really ugly, because there are believers who have latched onto a particular understanding of theology that they are absolutely willing to fight about, split, separate, and avoid each other over. Two true believers who can’t agree on what the Bible says seem impossible if they are filled with the same Holy Spirit, doesn’t it?

And yet we have endless denominations, versions of denominations, church splits, and so it goes, fighting over theology, involving true followers of Christ headed to the same place for eternity. I’m not saying the fights are never worthwhile, but the cumulative effect of everything can be confusion and doubt. (It is one reason I’m very grateful that the Bible doesn’t hold back on showing the reality of church infighting, disagreement, and temper outbursts because I need to know I’m not alone.)

The confidence of my younger years, in which I was sure I was correctly figuring out all the things of faith, has been replaced by someone who actually feels the tension of what it means to work out my salvation in fear and trembling.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. — Philippians 2:12 (NIV)

The enemy has not missed the opportunity, though.

It often feels as if the biggest challenges—and I do not mean iron sharpening iron—of my faith come not from the devil or the world, but from other believers.

There are the obvious sources, such as the pastor I once worked for, who destroyed my trust in pastoral leadership, or the Christian men who were the most difficult bosses or landlords to deal with. These kinds of moments are destructive, but obvious. It’s the subtle ways that grind down gently and slowly and introduce confusion; good people who hurt you slowly and with best intentions are confusing.

“I’m just not a good enough Christian to hang around them,” I told a friend recently. It’s something I’ve said often, and it’s a strange, sad statement I know shouldn’t leave my lips.

Have you ever met sincere believers who have some theological quirk, preference, or insistence that made you aware you weren’t up to their standards?

Bible translations.1 Worship music styles and sources. Articles, videos, or books by someone on someone’s discernment blacklist, or someone who is associated with someone on a blacklist. Theological disagreements that aren’t about core Christian beliefs.

I thought I’d come across it all, but no.

Recently, in yet another attempt to find a church, I found myself in a group of people who only say YHWH, not God or Lord, even when they are reading out of the New Testament. In one hour, I heard YHWH more times than in my entire life, and I felt wildly uncomfortable. I’ve been around people who will only say Yeshua, not Jesus, and gently correct or rephrase what you’ve said using that Hebrew name. I’ve seen people argue over which of the Trinity—Father, Son, or Holy Spirit—you should pray to.

Am I reading the wrong Bible? Am I damned or at risk because I was spiritually encouraged by a teacher, book, or singer on a list somewhere? Have I been praying to God the wrong way my whole life? Is the way I read and study the Bible incorrect? What are the rules, and how can I keep track of all of them, and whose rules, and how do I know which ones are right?

It’s a question of how I can be good enough for people, but that’s the wrong question entirely. The exercise of extending grace to Christians I don’t agree with is a difficult one to practice in a world where we easily announce our lines in the sand and then cover them with scripture to suggest that if the lines create conflict, that’s what itching ears would say.

The polarization of our culture isn’t just political; it’s now a way of daily life. We’re all loaded for bear and ready to argue and defend our individual castles against any invader. Valid, if it’s valid. Destructive, if it’s not. Well-defended castles are very similar to prisons.

Which is why, in recent years, Galatians is my favorite book of the Bible. In my teens and college years, it was Ecclesiastes; life was dramatic for me then. Now, it is Galatians.

The Scriptures are truly our foundation, and when confusion is coming not only from the world, but from the church, all I can do is go back to that. Having simple faith is incredibly complicated and scary in this world where we’re all card-carrying members of some kind of creed. All I can do is trust that God knows my heart, knows me, and will help me understand what I’m reading; I can step out in faith even if Holy Joe next to me scolds and says I’m doing it wrong.

And that’s why I love Galatians.

This is a world and a church with so many people and ideas. So many Christians have a personal theology that might not be unbiblical, but reflects cultural or personal convictions they confuse with Biblical convictions. Some are so confident in what they think they know, even though we are told we are looking through cloudy glass and can’t know all mysteries. Some insist on their conviction so much that it’s equated with required, a kind of works or rules-based system in which true followers of Jesus are defined by these characteristics.

I can’t be good enough, by someone else’s standards and understanding, to be the Christian they think I should be, and Galatians is where I run to when I feel like I’m failing for not checking someone else’s boxes.

It’s a reminder that Jesus wasn’t good enough; he was perfect, and he finished it all on the cross so I could rest in Him. Faith in Christ is the main box to be checked; the rest of the work is done by and through him. It’s where I go if I need to be reminded that Jesus’ yoke is not a heavy burden, and that there is freedom in Christ.

So we’re going to focus on Galatians for a while.

We can see the sky clearly now that the human virus is almost gone.

The
sky so clear
roads so empty
cars so silent
office lights turned off.

We’re thrilled to see you lose your job so nature could take over.

So glad you dirty humans aren’t
touching
hugging
caressing
comforting
hol…

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This is probably more for my own benefit than yours, possibly.

The act of writing, whether private or public, has always been both an organizer and an explorer of my own thoughts, helping to process things.

This won’t be like a typical daily devotion or tidy Bible study. It’s an exploration of the Bible, considering what God is saying, how that’s landing, and what it means. It will be based on Bible passages, though other terms, history, or related material might be included. You are free to pray about it and determine what you’ll take in and what you will not.

A couple of things:

• There are no comments. I’m not going to have theological arguments. I’ve had enough decades of that, and my soul is tired. You can debate the ideas on your own platform.

• These posts will be free. If I forget to unlock one, let me know, and I’ll fix it.

• This is not a daily thing. We all love our daily devotions, whether in book or email. This isn’t that. It reflects my own study, my own time to write, and frankly, whether I’m striding in victory or limping along in my faith. They probably won’t be structured exactly the same and as tidy as a regular email devotion. But they will be Bible-focused, not idea-focused like my other writing.

• A woman is teaching you. I’m a woman, and just because it’s the written word and not at a pulpit or in a classroom with an audience doesn’t mean it’s not teaching and taking some leadership. I’m going to be very direct about that. Too long people have had an adamant and limiting position on women in ministry while fudging over things like authors, bloggers, writers, and video creators, denying women a chance to step out in gifting in the real world, knowing if they carried their ideas on women in leadership to the fullest extent they would have to outright advocate that women not be allowed any access to the internet, pretty much. Pretending that I’m doing otherwise only furthers that behavior. A woman is assuming some authority here and teaching you from the Bible. Best not read if you’re against that. No, I am not a Jezebel.

• A free systematic theology download is available. If you want to understand my theology (though I’m going to try not to browbeat the particulars during these Bible studies), you can find it at the bottom of this post.

There is a limit to how many signs a store should have.

Pandemic signs made shopping more complicated than rebuilding a transmission. It was either for safety or an effort to ward off a lawsuit. It left shoppers scratching their head in wonder.

Signs about times reserved for certain groups. Lining up outs…

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And now we get to our annual trip to the Twin Cities for Shepherd’s Harvest, a fiber festival that features several vendor buildings and a barn where various sheep breeds are displayed. My sister has California Red sheep, which are a bit unique, and so we drag one of what must be the largest fifth-wheel dually truck camper-tack-four-horse trailers in the world. This rig and driving it through Minneapolis traffic have greatly increased my prayer life.

Many things were similar this year, including our failure to behave like adults. However, there was a significant change to the route we took home. Last year, we learned that it would be easier to get through the mines of Moria than through Sisseton, South Dakota, and that knowledge, along with heinous road construction, led us to a different route that was far more pleasant.

While last year was unbearably hot and windy, this year was chilly and windy. For people in the wool fiber business, a cold day is a good sales day. It’s less motivating to buy mittens and shawls when it’s 95 degrees.

But let me back up a bit, lest we get lost in the Midwest-tempting topics of road conditions and weather.

The adventure really starts the day before, when my other sister and I drive to South Dakota, converge on the farm, and are roped into chores. The drive is not without its own challenges.

Upon arrival, it begins.

Parking my vehicle in front of the goat barn, I noticed the pleading eyes of a mama goat, whose two kids were taking turns bouncing from the ground up onto her back. Pogo goats, I guess. Mother’s Day weekend, indeed.

While my sister was attacked by a grumpy hen who wasn’t giving up her eggs so easily, I spent time in the open pen providing enrichment for the cluckers, tossing feed, and asking them what they thought about various philosophical topics. I have heard that chickens are rather smart, but they didn’t really rock my world with theories so I don’t know.

We took some time to scritch Chunkers the pig’s ears, who is on the farm payroll informally.

The next morning, with cackling and baa-ing wafting through the open window, I sent a text to my sisters at 5:15 a.m. “The rooster got me up.”

My sisters were already up.

On the road we went, stopping in Summit, South Dakota, for some snacks and the requisite Caribou Coffee beverage.

About an hour inside Minnesota, thanks to too many beverages and a lagging morning constitutional, one sister insisted we “find a bathroom right now or it’s going to get really ugly you thought your barnyard was bad just wait.” We happily found a small gas station, though we didn’t need any diesel fuel yet.

“I’d better go buy a Snickers or something,” my sister said, reaching for her wallet as we watched the other sister dash inside. “We can’t bomb their bathroom without some kind of purchase.”

I do like a Snickers. Any excuse is fine by me. But after a few moments alone in the truck, I decided a walk would do me good. Near the door, my Snickers sister met me excitedly.

“This store is awesome!” she said.

And indeed, it was. Red Wing boots, Army/Navy surplus, scotcheroos, and Snickers.

I couldn’t decide between the gas masks or the grenade casing, but ultimately we decided on two gray (Navy) wool blankets at the bargain price of $30 in great condition.

“You found our hidden stash of wool blankets!” the young fellow at the register said. After chatting a bit more, one of the few conversations I’ll likely have this year involving MREs, we headed back to the truck.

Next to the gas station was a gift store. The sign proudly proclaimed “Three Sisters” and we knew this to be a sign from God. We were meant to stop here.

Out front was a giant chair, and we took turns taking each other’s photo. In the family messaging group, Mom said it would have been good if we could have gotten all three of us on the giant Adirondack chair. Put a pin in that.

The rest of the drive to the fiber festival location was uneventful. Well, except for that semi that about killed us. There was that. We won’t talk too much about it because we really didn’t have much to say about it at the time, aside from a few words with about four letters.

At the grounds, we set up our camper, got the animals into the barn, and set up the booth.

This year’s bottle lamb hadn’t been named, and so my sister allowed me to do the honors. I went wild and named it Bob Gibson. I am fond of naming things Bob, and the Gibson part came later during a discussion with our barn neighbor in which it was suggested that Bob was a terrible name for a cute little lamb and I suggested no, it was heroic, short for Robert, which could be Robert the Bruce which then led to a discussion on the movie Braveheart and William “Bill” Wallace and the actor Mel Gibson and ultimately, Bob Gibson, a name that sounds like an insurance agent.

Last year’s bottle lamb was Fiona, the year before it was George. There is precedence here for names like Bob. Fiona actually came back this year as a full-grown sheep.

The crowds were good, traffic through the barn was heavy, and sales were decent.

Each year, I have done watercolor sketches of sheep and sold the small paintings, which has led to a few outside projects, such as a sheep breed book for a client. I’ve come to realize, based on conversations I’ve had when I do this, that many people want to do watercolor but find it difficult because it’s a medium that resists your attempts at control.

“This is Bob Ross stuff,” I said to one. “Happy accidents are to be embraced.”

My sister spins wool with one of her travel spinning wheels, which people also like to watch, and my other sister does food runs to hit the food trucks and bring back great hits like fried pickles, spring rolls, egg rolls, and apple pie.

Saturday evening, huddled outside our trailer in the cold, wrapped in our Navy surplus blankets, our barn neighbor and the Three Sisters had a conversation that would have disappointed my mom and likely horrified the camper next to us.

At one point, we offered our barn neighbor what I took to calling “briefcase donuts.”

“We were in Walmart, and I came upon her after checkout. You would not believe it,” I said, explaining the name. My sister rolled her eyes, having already been scolded. “She had this box of Krispy Kremes tucked under her arms like a briefcase! Who does this? What kind of animal picks up a flat of glazed donuts and tucks it under her arm?”

“I was hungry.”

“Respect the donuts,” I said. Everyone knows you carry a box of donuts with the horizontal respect it deserves.

I can’t remember the specifics, mind you, because those are the kinds of conversations you don’t want to remember other than in general terms of “we were cold, we laughed about many things, God have mercy on our souls, please still hear our prayers.”

Towards the end of the two-day event, you get a little loopy. And tired. And then what happens is a series of “and then” stories, in which the day seems broken up into events of one thing after another.

And then this happened.

And then she left.

And then this happened.

And then this happened.

While my sister was off learning how to knit socks on a machine, we decided we’d better get Bob Gibson in his own stall to eat creep before we hit the road in a few hours when the event ended.1 Unfortunately, all of the sheep got out in our best, yet feeble, attempts to remove just Bob.

Between the three of us, we have 1.5 functioning knees, and as I watched the two adult lambs bob down the barn with people watching, I felt incredibly weary. Thankfully, a bearded dude called out, “Don’t chase the sheep!” to the people around him, and simply planted himself, grabbing Fiona as she trotted by, holding her still.

“Thank you, thank you!” I said, hobbling up and placing my hands on her neck and tail, the muscle memory of showing 4-H sheep surprising me as I walked her back to the stall with the other sheep following.

When 4 p.m. rolled around, the barn exploded into action, every vendor working quickly to pack up and hit the road. Within 30 minutes, everything had been stripped down and loaded, including the sheep, with the stalls cleaned out.

The three sisters and our barn neighbor grabbed each other in a quick huddle, praying for traveling safety and apologizing for our language the past two days. And then we were off.

According to my FitBit, my heart rate was elevated during not just pack up, but also during the entire drive through traffic.

“I will relax once we get off of I-94,” I said, gripping the phone and checking lanes and calling out instructions. The only hiccup came as we approached the Three Sisters and Pete’s Surplus store.

“Turn left,” I called out. My sister pulled into the right turning lane. “No, turn left! No, left!”

With a smile, my sister turned right. “We’re gonna get that photo for mom.”

And, with the help of a man and his two daughters who randomly pulled up at the gas station to see my sister loping over to ask if one of them would take our photo, wondering what kind of weirdos did this, we capped off Mother’s Day with a photo for Mom, no car accidents, distinct disdain for Sisseton, and a safe journey home.

For all the ladies who get hysterical online, I sure wish you wouldn’t.1

Back in the day, when the medical community didn’t wash their hands and thought bleeding the bad blood out of a person was a swell idea, female hysteria was an actual medical diagnosis.

Yet again, a win …

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The concert started with everyone clapping along to Offenbach’s cancan (Orpheus in the Underworld), the synchronized racket bouncing around the auditorium full of smiling faces. It ended with Ravel’s Bolero, which people either love or hate. Seeing it live is to love it. When it was over, the audience roared to its feet.

Bolero has one basic tune that r…

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Grandma Helen was a tender soul who rarely said no to any of her grandchildren.

She was kind-hearted (though she did spank my sister when she heard her say a swear word out in the garden), and we grandkids thought that was a license to ask her anything.

O…

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If the pandemic of 2020 reminds you of Y2K, a time of ridiculous panic and worst-case scenario preparation that amounted to nothing, you are in luck. I can provide the connection.

My friend told of a woman who had stocked up on toilet paper for Y2K.

“Apparently, she just now used up the …

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Even though the Artemis I…

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It was March 14, 2020. As my mom and I approached the main doors to the hotel ballroom, it sounded like a chicken coop, hundreds of women talking and laughing, the noise bubbling out into the hallway.

I could feel tears at the back of my eyes as I follo…

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I write about what I’m living and thinking about, so this is what happens. By the end of 2022, I’d pulled those posts together, along with artwork, and self-publ…

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Lone Prairie Magazine is a digital publication that functions a bit like the junk drawer in your kitchen.

Somewhere at some point you will need something in it, and though you will find what you are looking for, you’ll also find a lot of other treasures in the process.

Or junk.

They are similar, after all.

For most of my adult life, I have blogged. I had a …

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