Chum’s 50th Anniversary — A Reflection Offered at the Service of Thanksgiving on June 4, 2023 When I moved to Duluth in 1991 to be the lead pastor of Peace Church I heard right away about Chum. My first thought though was what a weird name for a social service organization. When I hear the…
Monday morning I officiated at the burial service for a sweet man named Lyle. It was a foggy, gray morning, and the grass was wet as we walked quietly to the grave. His nephews carried his casket and placed it gently between his brother’s and his mother’s markers. I had done their funeral services too. There were…
Most days Tim and I wake early to walk along the Shores of Lake Superior. There is something sacred in being able to stroll together silently and watch the sun rise over this incredible lake. It is our prayer time on the Lake Walk. In eighth grade earth science at Lincoln Park Middle School the…
In February we went to Arizona and for the first time in my life I saw the majesty of the Grand Canyon. We got to the park late and so couldn’t see anything in the dark. We got up before dawn and made our way to the rim. The sunrise was amazing as we watched…
Our daughter Hannah is doing one of her last clinical rotations as a physicians associate at St. Luke’s Ob/Gyn here in Duluth. She is learning so much from this all woman team of health care providers. Hannah works both in the clinic and in the hospital’s birth center. It’s the same birth center where she…
It has been three years this month since Covid-19 came into all of our lives. So much has changed in these past three years. I met this past Wednesday with 25 folks who are part of a non-profit organization in our community to help them talk with one another about what has happened to them…
Tim, my partner, recently printed off this photo he took in May of 2018. Back then, we were visiting our daughter, Hannah, who was just finishing up a semester abroad. Part of our trip included a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. While in Stockholm we made sure to take in some of the art in their…
Last week in the Life Skills Class where I help as a paraprofessional, we played a game of Jeopardy on the white board. All the categories had to do with personal safety. The middle schoolers would pick a category like home alone, stranger danger, or technology and then pick a 100-to-500-dollar square in that category….
The smell of ginger and cinnamon filled our house yesterday. Hannah, our daughter, was home from her clinical rotations and was making ginger cutout cookies. She got the recipe from a cookbook given to her many years ago as a Christmas present from her Aunt Robin. She’s always loved to bake. I helped her finish…
Friday will be our daughter Hannah’s birthday. Before she was born we called her banana because her boy name was going to be Ben, and her girl name was Hannah. We just combined the two potential names. Often, I still call her banana. There is incredible power in being the one to name another person….