History, Real Life, and Faith
“The Sound of Music tour! You have to take it if you’re going to Salzburg,” insisted my daughter. Several other friends chimed in with the same advice. My husband and adult son didn’t see it that way. They wanted to visit the castle and admire the armaments. So, feeling silly, I went by myself in March 2015. I faltered at…
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When my daughter was eight years old, I realized she had never seen The Sound of Music. So, I went to the local video store to rent it for a weekend. I couldn’t find it amid all the musicals and other garbage in the store, and went to the counter to ask about the 1965 Academy Award’s best picture Oscar winner. The…
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After spending a day sifting ashes and clearing up after a fire, I and my companions have personal thoughts. A fire is a terrible thing, as I’ve written about here, here and here. I’ve also planned what to do in a fire, which I wrote about here. But seeing the devastation and my reaction to it, I have several other thoughts….
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A dozen of us spent five hours sifting through the ashes of a friends’ home following the Valley Fire in Lake County, California. Four weeks after the fire roared through the neighborhood and destroyed everything around it in minutes, we descended on an ash-filled house. As explained here and here, our task was to clear a cement pad that used to…
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We traveled to Cobb Mountain following 2016’s Valley Fire to dig through an ash-filled house. A sobering, dirty job for friends. Some eighty of us gathered at the Middletown Lion’s Club in the morning. After being given general directions and specific supplies, our leader spoke to us about our “mission” that morning. “You’re here to help, of course,” a fire…
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We drove out to Cobb Mountain on Saturday to work on the site of a house that burned down last month. A dozen of us from St. Mark Lutheran Church arrived at the burned-down home of a church member. I hadn’t been up to Lake County since the Valley Fire. I’d never glimpsed a scene quite like it before. Middletown…
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