Katie’s Ground Podcast

Fiasco. Every year Bruce mutters fiasco. “But it works out,” I say. I remember the time a storm sped down from Minnesota soaking raked rows of hay—500 bales worth. But even then, a neighbor round baled it for his cattle. Often, we haven’t known who would help put it up, but someone invariably arrives to move those bales onto the wagon, off the wagon and into the sweaty, dusty loft. Make hay when t...

I walk out the week after Little Dog died and saw another rainbow, so faint it looked like a ghost. It was a rare rainbow off to the west with the sun doing one of those fancy numbers behind clouds, rimming them with gold light. Slowly it spread across the sky. It seemed another reassurance that Little Dog is all right. But it also seemed a reassurance that all will be well, all will be well, all...

Kathy Bates as Matlock speaks a truth we know well as elderly women. “Well, you see, there’s this funny thing that happens when women age. We become damn near invisible,” she says, before lowering the boom. “Plus, it’s useful,” she continues, “because nobody sees us coming.”. Sharon Blackie in Hagitude concurs by saying, “Older women, when they’re not rendered completely invisible, are still trivi...

“Nuclear showdown proves Trump’s incompetence. Or, as Walter Kirn put it, ending the world to own Trump,” says Matt Taibbi in his essay, Ending the World to Own Trump on Racket News . “Few outlets attempted to answer what should be the first question after these attacks. How much danger are we in? What is the likelihood of a Russian response in Europe or the United States?” He reports the giddy na...

While we were driving Mrs. Horse on a day that felt like Paradise, Bruce and I saw this bit of mystery—a dust devil, a whirlwind spun up and gliding across our Mr. P's field, only now it's his sons' field. Sometimes the wind delights us, shows us a picture of the Holy Spirit at play. Our pastor reminded us that Jesus promise that no one can take our joy from us, is true for us, because he has alre...

Here is the sequel to last week's post How I Met and Married Bruce Part 1 and more of the back story to The Love Behind the Anniversary . I met Kurt at the Rockton Inn when I stopped over for a blackberry brandy, my throat and nose raw from a cold. The Super Bowl played in the background. I liked the music of his words. We talked until two that morning. He said, “I don’t drink as much when I’m kay...

Warning: I wrote this years ago and thought you might be interested in how I met and married Bruce, how my spiritual father, midwifed very deep healing and how God’s grace was present despite my riding Eros in the wrong direction. Prelude The story of how I met and married my husband began two men back from him. Actually it began a long time before when I was a girl praying that God would grant me...

The Love Behind the Anniversary Forty years ago, Bruce yelled across North Boone School Road, “Will you marry me?” “Yes,” I shouted back. A shelf cloud hung low in the distance. You couldn’t have found people more different. He’s quiet, a genius with his hands. I’m a talker, a writer, up in her head. His mother hinted I was too intelligent. (She was blind to his smarts.) His pastor held his breath...

Sunday, April 27 While I listened to Martin Shaw ’s essay “ The Merrie, a Reliquary for Saints Yet To Come ” I poured water into the buckets, making sure the end of the hose was buried in the water so I could hear what he said. Martin Shaw is relatively new convert to Orthodoxy and well versed in folklore and mythology. His House of Beasts and Vines storytelling pours into my soul like hot, Englis...

Note: I’m posting this early because I need to get this off my desk so I can take a break this weekend. I read a passage in Jeremiah that was quite convicting as far as taking Sundays off. Thank you for reading and listening. Monday, April 14 Despite how cold it’s been the farmers are on the move. I walked out to air that bit my nose. I walked into wind blowing as hard as a roaring thunderstorm. I...

Anointing Jesus I poured the nard over his head, massaging it into his scalp like Samuel anointing David as King of Israel. He closed his eyes as I rubbed his hair. Someone needed to anoint him King, but I’d heard the high priests, I’d heard Jesus speak woes to the Pharisees. He said he’d tear down the temple and rebuild it again. He said he was going to be mocked and killed. Would his blood cry o...

Through the years, I've remembered the hard parts about growing up in my family. Sometimes I think the good times are more private, too precious to share. Even before my family left this earth, I didn't talk about the Heldeberg Workshop or the people I rubbed shoulders with. A friend wondered why I was especially pleased when Martin Shaw, my latest literary favorite, responded to my comments. "Sho...

March 31, 2025 I walk into the cold, not dressed for it--no vest under my coat, my gloves mere calfskin. My hands are stiff and red by the time I turn around. I walk straight down our road and do not turn to walk east into the sun. The clouds are low, living, a cloud deck, what pilots call clouds as they introduce their flights across the country. Neither Oma nor Dolly care to walk past our neighb...

Sometime Around March 18,2025 Two red wing blackbirds settle on twigs as I walk back towards the turn towards home. It’s good to see them again, to see them eyeing me. I think of Saints who have birds land on their shoulders because they are so inside the Creator. There’s a video of an Orthodox monk where the bird lands on his shoulders, but he has food. Food will do it every time. Though I do bel...

With the warnings about not rebelling like the children of Isreal at Meribah and Massah repeating in the Daily Office, I was caught by the following, words that caught me while I sifted soiled shavings, in the barn by myself. I spoke them into Notes on my phone. I have since listened some more to what the story wants to say. This imagination is in the tradition of Lectio Divinia where you put your...

Saturday, March 15, 2025 I woke this morning to a hard wind and eerily hazy sky. The sun was blurred as if waxed paper was stretched over it. As I walked the dogs, I thought rain was pouring on the distant farms. But no rain moved or fell. The sun was hazed over with a brown tint, with a bit of the end of the world in the light. Dolly kept swinging around to head home. My legs kept getting tangled...

Monday, March 3, 2025 I stop at the neighbors’ mailbox. It marks a half mile where I turn to walk home. I’m not greedy about making more steps than a mile, though maybe when the weather eases, I’ll cross the tracks and walk by the herd of Angus cows and old oaks. Bruce stopped one day when a cow looked dead, her leg cocked in the air, like rigor mortis set in. He walked up to the Herdsman (I’ll ca...

Notes from the Bitter Week I walk the dogs out into cold so frigid my face burns. My fingers burn if I didn’t curl them around to the handwarmers in my gloves. Bitter cold wraps around my thighs despite long underwear. The dogs dance along. Little Dog turns in front of me, herding me to go home. If they step in snow they go three-legged lame. My heart tightens. My eyes water. My nose runs. I could...

I don’t know why I got to thinking about Del Logan. But it’s almost as though she came through the cloud of witnesses to sit beside me. This doesn’t happen. I’ve rarely felt the presence of my own parents or brother, though I have started praying for them, along with aunts and uncles. A letter Henri Nouwen sent after my mother died, said he’d pray she enter into the joy and peace of the Kingdom, s...

I look to The Tree, an oak, multiple times a day. She draws my eyes to herself when I walk out to do chores or circle the dogs behind the chicken house on their walks. She marks the ground like a surveyor’s pin. She sits at the corner of three fields. I wonder if she’s the tree farmers used to focus on in order to plow straight rows before GPS automated straight lines. Or maybe she was left for sh...

Early, when angels and demons duel over their charges, I woke, my legs singing with electricity. Blondie’s song, “Call me, call me any day or night. Cover me with kisses, roll me in designer sheets” crawled like an ear worm. But it wasn’t just her voice in those words. I walked outside and looked toward humps of trees, reminding me of islands off the coast of Maine. We’d found safe harbor at our s...

When I turn back to walk towards home, I walk past our neighbor’s neat white house and red barns. A breeze combs through yard pines. The small cattle pen behind the barn, is empty. The steers spooked Morgen when we drove by, even if she couldn’t see them, their smell just as alarming to her. These were the steers our neighbors fattened for their own table as well as friends' tables. Once we bought...

I walk outside. The cold wraps around my legs. It’s thorns stick in my skin like brambles I must walk through. Handwarmers in my gloves comfort my palms, but my fingers sting. The dogs need to do their business, so I cross to the other side of the road, so I don’t have to pull my gloves off, stick my hand in a bag and pick it out of our yard. Neither Bruce nor I care to step in dog poop while walk...

I plug my earbuds in and grab the vacuum that I’ve left upstairs because cleaning and dusting there is like cleaning a different house. We live mostly downstairs and come upstairs to sleep. I’m also back using my office to give myself solitude. It’s work to haul the vacuum upstairs, so I leave it to make sure the second floor gets tended to. Downstairs I pick up the big pieces—shavings, leaves, di...

I walked out just as the sun broke the horizon. I don’t seek this liminal moment. I don't hope for extra enchantment. I take my time strapping up the dogs and throwing my coat on. I eat a snack, drink a glass of tea, and check my phone. No I’m not seeking the sun or the minutes where you can feel the earth move as the sun shoots into the sky. By the time I’m turning to go home, I’m amazed at how f...