First Light of Day

This is a December sunrise as viewed from the bedroom of a 117-year-old farmhouse squat in the middle of a Minnesota prairie. (The shadow in the center is one of our four cedars.)

The 'Good Book' Offers Insight Into Our Lives

When I encourage people to write up their life stories, I often face objections. People will humbly say, “I haven’t done anything special,” or “Who would want to read about me?” It seems most people have been acculturated to believe only celebrities and politicians have anything worthwhile to say; sadly, this means regular folks too often let extraordinary everyday experiences slip into the ether we call a forgotten past.

To counter the reluctance of the bashful, I tell people it is our stories that link us to generations past and generations to come and without our stories it’s only a matter of time after death that we’ll be forgotten. Without our stories, our lives will be plugged into a dry column of statistics – date of birth, date of marriage, date of death. That’s not a suitable synopsis for a life.

Still, I face skeptics who don’t think ordinary peoples’ lives make for interesting reading. To these people I share this fact: people read other peoples’ stories in the hope of catching a glimpse of their own stories within the narrative. In other words, people don’t read to learn about other people; they read to learn about themselves.

History has given us extraordinary storytellers, famous for crafting stories about ordinary people — Sophocles, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Frederick Buechner are a few of my favorites. All of these writers have spun narrative into gold. The greatest storyteller of all time, though, was Jesus Christ.

Using his signature parable, Jesus wove deep, magnificent tales around the lives and struggles of ordinary people — beggars, widows, lepers and prostitutes to name a few. If you’re an ordinary human, you don’t have to turn too many pages in your bible to recognize your story or a find lesson that is applicable to your life. The bible is great literature; when we read it, we can learn much about ourselves.

Differing Perspectives on the Same Event

Memory: it’s the second casualty of aging. (The first is our knees.)

How we remember an event in the past depends upon many things: our age at the time, the impact the event had on our psyche, our desire to relive the event, how often in the future we choose to recall it, and most importantly, what is our goal for retelling the story. When there are numerous witnesses to a single event, chances are great each eyewitness account will offer differing details delivered with varied emotions. Individual perspectives truly are “individual,” and so is the way in which each person tells a story for effect.

You can see a wonderful example of how a single world-altering event is recounted by four different eyewitnesses by looking at the story of the nativity in Scripture.

In the book of Matthew, the story about the birth of Jesus doesn’t even share details of birth. Matthew focuses instead on the “shame” Joseph felt when he learned his wife was expecting a baby without his participation and how the angel intervened on her behalf. Then, Matthew skips right past the birth to journey of the Magi and their encounter with King Herrod, which put Jesus in early harm’s way.

The evangelist Mark doesn’t seem too interested in the nativity either. His opening chapter starts with John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus, then skips right into Jesus’s baptism. If the crafting of religious tradition had been left to Matthew and Mark, none of us would have miniature crèches in our homes.

Luke, who most people attribute some propensity toward medicine, offers the most detailed nativity story, including side stories from Mary’s family, the “no room at the inn” metaphor, along with visits from the shepherds and the appearance of the Christmas star. If Luke hadn’t been a doctor or an evangelist, he would have made an excellent screenwriter.

By contrast, the book of John (my personal favorite) doesn’t bring us any news of Jesus birth or his childhood. John’s focus is literary and symbolic; John could be a poet. If you don’t believe me, read his opening lines:

In the beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God.

If the Word is God as John says, I’m grateful to call myself a writer!

Window to a new world

This is the view from the Great Hall, from the inside looking out at the other buildings on Ellis Island, the first glimpse of the new world for many twentieth century immigrants.

The seasons of rural life

There's more ice on the ground than snow, and that makes it easier for pheasants to scour the fields of corn stubble for food. The cleared fields also makes it easier to spot these beauties, but not necessarily easier to hunt them. The crunch, crunch under a hunter's foot will spook the pheasant pretty quickly.

Saturday, I spotted a flock of nearly two dozen ring-necked pheasants in the field across from ours. After awhile, the whole bunch of them scooted into the tall grass near the grove at the south end of the property.

I wanted a closer look, but haven't yet found where the boys put my field glasses upon their return from deer hunting. I had thought the pheasant season had passed, but one of our duck hunters stopped by Sunday to tell me otherwise. He and his dog will be tracking the birds during the last dark days of December.