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Nearly 20 years ago, my dad’s older brother, my Uncle Dillon, told me a story when we were together for Christmas that’s never left my mind. It was the 1960s and Uncle Dillon, a Catholic, had just started seeing a Lutheran girl from school. They eac…
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I know I’m not alone in saying this: It can be really difficult to choose a Christmas present for someone else, unless that person is a child, of course, in which case anything spelled T-O-Y has pretty good odds of being perfect. Some of us lose slee…
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Ten years ago, only a small percentage of people had heard the word “Advent,” and even fewer had used an Advent calendar. Most of these early calendars helped count down the days to Christmas and told the story of Jesus. Every day a little door opene…
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Last week, we had an electrician working at our house. More specifically, we’d called to have someone look at the outlet on the outside of our house. All of our outdoor Christmas lights were plugged into this particular outlet and then one evening, f…
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Editors who are good at titling articles and books look for attention-grabbing headlines. They want to persuade readers to read on. A favorite book title on my bookshelf comes from poet and friend Luci Shaw: The Crime of Living Cautiously. You don’t…
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Today, or sometime this week, many of us will pause to observe Thanksgiving. We will reflect on the blessings we can count in our lives. We will take a break from the humdrum patterns of daily life and from the persistent intrusions of bad news into…
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Earlier this fall, Mike Fitz was sitting at his computer gazing at a webcam streaming from Katmai National Park near Kodiak, Alaska. The stationary camera has been in place for years and often catches bears or other animals meandering around the pict…
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On Monday evening, I found myself stuck on I-90 in downtown Chicago. I had been visiting friends at my former university and, much to my chagrin, hadn’t paid attention to the time well enough to avoid the inevitable rush hour traffic. If you’ve never…
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This weekend, our family went to see a local production by some amazingly talented youth and kids of the musical Matilda. The musical, based on the Roald Dahl book, tells the story of a girl who stands up to a bully schoolmistress, Mrs. Trunchbull. M…
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Here comes the rain, doo-doo-doo-doo! Ok, it doesn’t quite have the ring of the Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun!” And sure, sunny days allow for playful outdoor activities without the mess of wet clothes and shoes. Yet, this morning, when I opened…
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I’m always learning something new, but this week I learned something big. At least it seems big to me. The human eyeball, especially in children (though also in the rest of us), can get physically reshaped by excessive screen time. That screen time w…
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Nearly every year since I’ve been on staff at St. Paul, the annual Golden Agers event, a worship celebration for members of the congregation 75 years and older, has seen rain clouds. This year, the rain held off until nearly every guest had left. But…