You know what has become one of my favorite summer activities? Going to my son’s Little League games. Well, Travel League, now that he’s a little older. Even though the heat can be straight up oppressive sometimes, there’s always a lot of fun to be had. Watching the kids play oftentimes epic, exciting games. Making new friends with the other parents. Spending quality family time together. Having a great excuse to gorge on hot dogs and popcorn. But besides the fun, there’s also life lesson after

The dictionary definition of "ordain" is precise: "To invest officially (as by the laying on of hands) with mini sterial or priestly authority." In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, that tradition continues to this day. I had the honor of witnessing a historic ordination recently at St. John's Lutheran Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pastor Preston Fields, who recently accepted a call to serve Salem Lutheran Church in Sycamore, would be formally ordained there. Many from his family, as

In 1930, Olaf Stapledon wrote Last and First Men, a science fiction classic that is a history of Humanity’s future that takes place over billions of years. Written nearly 90 years ago, Stapledon closely imagines our present day reality: “In the far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied […] the Americans were rapidly changing the whole character of man’s existence. By this time every human being throughout the planet

Since 1949, America has dedicated one month per year to recognizing mental health , and presidential proclamations about it mostly talk about the same things: • the astounding volume of people who are afflicted • the drive for accessible healthcare • and the importance of eliminating the stigma surrounding the mentally ill. I find one glaring absence in these remarks—where’s the mention of kids? The National Alliance on Mental Illness states that half of all lifetime struggles with mental

My wife Breja and I were walking our black dog Shady down a gravel road near Low Lake, north of Ely, Minnesota. Deer flies swarmed our heads in their hundreds, and mosquitoes and black flies battled for any remaining bare flesh. I wonder what I’ll write about for my next perspective, I told Breja. How about mosquitoes? she said. Mosquitoes? I said. I was thinking of writing about a bog. Something pretty. Lady slippers. Shady dove through the roadside weeds to rid herself of the deer flies. She

A few weeks ago in a local movie theater, my wife and I took in the documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, about a true American hero: Fred Rogers. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend that you do. But, I’ll warn you now, it is shattering in all the right ways. While we watched this quiet, simple and profound film, there was another film playing in the theater next us, one of those “action” movies. So, every few minutes what sounded like a distant artillery barrage would permeate the

Each day it seems we hear news of some remarkable innovation in artificial intelligence. Whether it be something mundane, like a better recommendation algorithm at Netflix or Amazon, or something dramatic, like Uber and Google’s self-driving vehicles that promise (or threaten) to replace human drivers. But instead of looking forward and worrying about some science fiction future, we might learn a thing or two by looking backwards to our past. Whether we know it or not, we have been involved with

There are several biblical references concerning “ we reap what we sow . ” I n Eastern religions , it’s the concept of receiving good karma or bad karma. Many communities of n orthern Illinois are now witnessing the devastating effects of online shopping. Retailers are leaving the area at an increasing rate. This leaves our area more and more of a retail wasteland. In the past 3 and a half years, Sterling has lost Kmart, Radio Shack, Staples, Kidder Music, Book World, and this is the last week

S ummer is vacation Bible school season . Churches host children for crafts, games, and singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world….” A substantial portion of that love is needed j ust north of the Mexican border, where thousands of innocent and traumatized children were torn from their parents who cross ed into our country from Mexico. What kind of policy is this? How can anyone with a conscience support this cruel practice ? Imagine working for a social service

Recently in our sheep pasture, we found a healthy lamb with its throat gouged out, the sad victim of a coyote strike. Thankfully, no other lambs or mothers were harmed. After blocking the hole dug under the pasture fence, we made sure our Great Pyrenees guard dog was out with the sheep to protect them each night. Living at the edges of nature’s life and death cycles has sharpened my senses. I see more clearly how nature and its survival instincts often mirror how humans behave. We know there are