Shows
Katie’s Ground PodcastYou Want Me to Fast? Are you Kidding?February 19, 2026My gosh the train was loud this morning, so loud it hurt my ears. I watched two engines pulling tankers to the east. My phone dinged, so I checked it and Mr. Dog, who has been walking out kindly, thought it was cute to grab the leash and pull, grab my shoelaces and pull. Like Mrs. Horse, when my attention strays, the playful joker in him arrives. (Mrs. Horse would stop if my mind wandered while we were driving.)The redwing blackbirds are back. Three were calling each other from assorted electric wires and...
2026-02-2215 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Wonder About Hagar, Who Saw the Angel of the Lord--TwiceDo you think Abraham studied the stars, so that when God found him, and said, “Your descendents will be as many as the stars and as the sand of the sea that he was gut punched with the enormity of the promise, as he looked at stars so bright they burned his eyes, and at the Milky Way so clear it looked like a distant front, clouds billowing, pregnant with rain?It’s Hagar’s story I wonder about, especially since the angel of the Lord appeared to her twice. Questions rolled out in my journa...
2026-02-1508 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Ask Myself What Parts Have I Suffocated?I walked up to the horse farm and back listening to Martin Shaw’s I Set my Mind on the City. It was the first walk back after the bitter cold kept my walks short. And underneath his words quiet, the fields themselves quiet after the work of the big machines planting and harvesting, the work of cranes laying a new natural gas pipeline, the noise of gorgeous pickup trucks running back and forth, the men inside nodding as they pass. The Peterson’s house is quiet now too, with both Chuck and Donna gone on to the...
2026-02-0811 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhen the Mountains FallLast week my reader @Mama reminded me of John’s words about Jesus: “In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. 1 And Jesus words about himself, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”2 So I thought I’d post pictures of light showing up around the farm.This is a good reminder because these days powers of darkness are jerking our chains, so we are at...
2026-02-0109 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastStars and Fret NotMonday, January 19, 2026One evening I looked out the window, Orion was close, and swollen, to the west of the barn, in front of the kitchen window. Where before in the summer we could only see him in the middle of night, bright and far away, crisp. The Northern lights aren’t showing themselves behind clouds and a cold wind, even though there is a G4 solar flare. When I was a young girl, I loved looking at the stars and thinking about Psalm 8:When I consider your heavens, the moon and the stars, wh...
2026-01-2514 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow I Answer Dr Martin Shaw's Nosy Questions During the Quest for the Holy GrailFriday, January 16While it was still dark, and I would remain in sleep, the snowplow scraped by. He went north and came back south. We had a bit of snow last night, but nothing Bruce would have to plow. I’ve seen bits of asphalt tossed in the ditch, black seeds that will not sprout. And my wild, young pup, Aiden has dived for them, rolled them into his mouth. I pull off my gloves, reach into his mouth, and pull it out. He’s done this with stones, black walnuts and branches. He’s quick...
2026-01-1816 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow Rebuilding the Temple Nudged Me to Get Involved in Church a LittleYesterday, when I woke before dawn, the day looked dark and lowering, the moon cloaked in heavy clouds and silent. Last night’s wind had calmed. Finally, when the sun rose, when I ate my snack and drank my water, I walked both dogs down the road in spitting rain. It was glorious. Both dogs pulled ahead, not hard, but like the dogs you see with dog walkers in a park. I was pleased that they walked quietly, without ra rahing at each other. I even took them down to the willows before I turned back. But th...
2026-01-1108 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastA New Year's MeditationSunday December 28It’s raining warm buckets today. I let Mrs Horse out to stretch her legs, but the rain is so persistent, she stood by the barn, her hay soaked and untouched, so brought her in. I played the kid’s game of digging out the blocked rivulet under the barn eaves, so it would run away from the doors. Tomorrow that water will be ice. The air is full of energy. My head aches.The air is so alive the clouds came down. “Heaven came down and glory filled my soul”—a camp son...
2026-01-0410 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThis Year I Crossed the Threshold of 70The day before Christmas Eve I walked Omalola behind the shed and manure pile. The sun had dropped behind the horizon to pull in a darkness with presence. The clouds were low and heavy, threatening rain that never came. Morgen’s back was against the barn, her ears forward. She always watches when I’m out with the dogs. My excuses not to work with her suit me—mostly having to do with no energy or needing to write. The vet has reassured me that she is living a good life.This year I crossed the th...
2025-12-2811 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWell, I Guess it's Christmas, Men Plow Our roads, I Remember My Dad and Presents. When the wind threw snowstorms into billows, pirouetting and spinning off the fields, my family waited for the plowmen to clear our road. We respected the power of the wind to plug it up. We stayed put, sometimes as long as a week, until the town plowed us out. At times, my mother called for them to come, afraid my father with his bum knee would have to walk the mile long road through drifts after dark. I watched for his lights, as they turned onto our road, blurred by blowing snow. I watched as...
2025-12-2111 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Happiness of GodMartin Shaw in Keeping Focus spoke about how St. Brendan was visited by the angel Michael in the form of a bird. “It was the sound of God announcing his happiness,” the saint said. (You ever think of what God’s happiness looks like?) Well, that’s what I’m going to do. Tell you how I’ve seen His happiness this week.Saturday o’dark thirty: I see it in the bar of light on our bedroom ceiling. I don’t know its origin because it’s not there every night. I don’t think I’ll investiga...
2025-12-1406 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastFierce Daily Office for AdventThe road where I walk has gone from always straightforward, to it depends on how much snow or ice has fallen as to whether I will walk the dogs there. During the snowstorm, as beautiful as the blur of snow falling across the fields was, I avoid the road. And once the snow is cleared, road salt can burn the dogs’ paws. Aiden is so fascinated by those piles of spilled salt he wants to eat it. Now that we have a fenced in yard, it’s easy to just turn the dogs out and let them run...
2025-12-0712 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastIgnore Evil even if Darkness Bubbles like Billowing SmokeAt Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for St. Porphyrios who says, “You won’t become saints by hounding after evil. Ignore evil. Look towards Christ and he will save you” (137).Ignore evil. Maybe I need to stay away from the amateur punditry that passes for Facebook and only serves to jump into my thoughts, shagging them with Facebook’s ideas of what I should think. I can’t bear the fragmentation that comes with posts spooling by—dead pets, lost pets, fury at Trump, the cold civil war, fury at Congress people agitating for a coup, fear we are wi...
2025-11-3008 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastShoes, Dogs and Grace: A Day at L.L. BeanNote: The title was generated by CoPilot. These words are mine, all mine. While Omalola was getting an ultrasound and other tests, Bruce and I walked around the L.L. Bean store in Hoffman Estates. Not many people were there, but there was something about the casual, yet elegant, outdoorsy atmosphere that made it easy to strike up conversations with strangers. I gravitated to the shoe department because LL Bean shoes look cool. The LL Bean label is a bit of status and holds a memory of visiting the store in Freeport, Maine with our...
2025-11-2314 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow Do We Take Care with Chaos all Around?When I walked out one morning, the sun rose as I walked up our road toward home. Its warmth felt like a hand caressing my cheek, as a lover would as he leaned in to kiss me. I’ve felt the horizon drop away as the sun broke the horizon. Omalola walked quietly beside me. I was too tired to take them both down the road. Then an eagle flew twenty feet overhead, wings wide, buoyed by the wind. He flew up into our giant popple tree and sat. I ask Bruce whether he would go after on...
2025-11-1614 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastTo Honor My DadI know I’m posting this on a different day. But I thought you might like to hear about my father. My father overlooking a stream. Photo by Jean Pauley.[/caption]I pushed the cart out of the oil aisle and turned towards the end cap of books. Woodman’s grocery store stocks a few hardbacks that I check out. My eye was drawn to The Storm on Our Shores.I flipped it open and saw it was about how the Japanese landed on Attu Island and 11,000 Americans landed to fight them and retake the land...
2025-11-1212 min
PerspectivesPerspective: As safe as Little Red Riding Hood...Katie Andraski wonders what it's like to feel safe at home.
2025-11-1101 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastAiden Creates a Ruckus on Our WalksI named him Aiden because that’s the first name that came to me after I put away the name Jack, because it was a saint’s name that came to mind. St. Aiden was a missionary to Northumberland, preaching the gospel and converting the Anglo Saxons to Christianity in Northumberland. He’s considered the patron of firefighters because his prayer slapped the wind in a different direction and turned a fire back. He also made a hunted stag invisible and saved its life from the hunters.I should have researched his name better before I name...
2025-11-0911 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhat about the Noah side of the Rainbow StoryAs I’ve mentioned before I write a response to Martin Shaw’s Beasts and Vines Substack every Sunday morning. His kind response draws these little essays from me. This week I’m going to open up what I wrote.While I listened to Martin Shaw’s Jesus on the River Path I walked across shed leaves, mostly from black walnut and maple trees. We didn’t get much color this year and the leaves went from green to blown down. Some trees are still green. Our squirrels have been feasting. I’d drawn enough water last n...
2025-11-0212 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastRainbows Keep Showing UpBruce alerted me to the rainbow dropping out of the clouds off to the west. It practically sat on our across-the-field-neighbor’s woods. I snapped a picture as I walked out. Then stood by him and watched to see if there would be enough for an arch. There wasn’t quite, the clouds ending in clear sky. So much about these rainbow sightings speak to me about God’s judgement. How He can’t allow wickedness to continue on the one hand. How he promises he will never drown the earth, on the other. Though in baptism, we are d...
2025-10-2613 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastMight Not be a Good Idea to Walk Out of Your Marriage and The Brightness of His AppearingMy Take on “The Woman Who Became a Fox”The following is my retelling of Martin Shaw’s story: “The Woman Who Became a Fox”, that was the first story in his The Green Knight course. I have been hesitant to respond because my thoughts are prickly and people don’t always receive prickly thoughts well. Here is a link to a preview of an earlier and different telling if you want to check out his rendition: The Woman Who Became a Fox. Martin Shaw and his House of Beasts and Vines has been a source of in...
2025-10-1915 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastToo Much Screen Time Or Coming to Terms with my Idolatry“I did not mean to fall in love, but the men with the big machines came up our road to cut the last of the season’s corn.” This line caught the attention of a New York editor with the reputation of buying books from the strength of one line. He looked at the manuscript and commented that I need to format it properly and not use dialogue to convey information. Thank God my work wasn’t ready for him. I was just at the beginning of learning my craft.I still admire those machines—the tracto...
2025-10-1217 min2025-10-0801 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Earth is Full of the Steadfast Love of the LordSunday, September 28Martin Shaw closed out this week’s House of Beasts and Vines essay A Thousand Fires by saying:So here’s to all of us, traveling or stationary, finding a little luminous ground. I don’t mean grandiose especially, just something radiating a low note of soul from it. We get to know the pressure points, the resting-places, the – in Moriarty’s words – seal-holes that are particular to our creative nature. To speak from that is to speak from our love-spot (this is a thing of delight in old Irish stories), and in such...
2025-10-0514 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhen the Killjoy Came ByStretches of sunny days passed this fall and I wondered when our neighbor would drop our hay. Then he rolled onto our field, he and his son, running up and down cutting an abundant third cutting. We weren’t afraid rain would ruin it like it did another neighbor’s field when their hay guy cut it the day before pouring rain was forecast.I’d offered them the whole third cutting because we had enough for Mrs. Horse though second cutting was pure red clover, which isn’t the best hay for a horse. I mix th...
2025-09-2814 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastSarah Who Loved a ManI thought I’d try to imagine Sarah’s life with Abraham from her perspective. I’ve been taking a course on the Book of Jubilees, a series of oral traditions compiled around 150 BC that expand the story of Genesis. Abraham scattering crows comes from there. And in another class we were challenged to find a biblical story and try our hand at the horror genre.I fell in love with my brother when I saw him scattering the crows. The crows that were pecking at our seeds, the seeds we scattered so we could live...
2025-09-2115 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThings Left UndoneI walk out and the soybeans are fattening from patches barely turning yellow, to big swathes of yellow that remind me of the slow changing color where gray horses fade from dark steel to white. One day the corn is green and the next it’s withered, drying rapidly on these dry days. A few leaves are turning.The door between seasons is swinging open. I wake up to ominous darkness like there’s a storm on the move, but it’s only the dark before the dawn. Bruce and I walk the dog after the ev...
2025-09-1416 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastEnvy Rose Up FierceThis Sunday, September 7, 2025, happens to be my mother’s death day. Forty-four years ago, she gave birth to her death on Labor day. The night before, I’d dreamed of a city dropping down to the headlands, where I used to sing hymns while cantering my horse. I had released her. It’s also the day after Omalola’s third birthday.Every Sunday, I listen to Martin Shaw’s stories while I do chores. Often they act as a prompt when I am trying to find a way into what I want to say here. This past...
2025-09-0713 minPerspectivesPerspective: Things left undoneKatie Andraski says sometimes it's not what you do...but what you don't do.
2025-09-0701 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastJesus and the Canaanite WomanI started this essay awhile ago but never posted it. I needed something to offer, that I didn’t have to pull out of whole cloth for this week. It’s funny how days that are open are easy to fritter. It might not be all bad to write a rough plan for the next day. At any rate this is the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman found in Matthew 15: 21 – 28. This was written without the help of AI except for looking up names. The pictures are from around the farm.I saw hi...
2025-08-3107 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhen I Heard God's CallMartin Shaw in Live as Large As Homer challenged us to listen for God’s call. Not just listen but have our eyes wide open to a sight as startling as Moses’ burning bush. He says,What habitual task – our tending of the sheep – may keep us from the vivid signs God gives us? The holy terror of his arrival? – he was afraid to look upon his face. Do we keep our lives uncluttered enough to avoid distraction from such encounters? I am alarmed at the notion I could be so entranced I walk past the messag...
2025-08-2415 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastBoone County Fair Marks the End of SummerThe Boone County Fair marks the end of summer and the beginning of school. When I was teaching at NIU, I felt pressure to finish my syllabus during fair week. Hell week, a week of meetings busting with jostling between colleagues--would follow. The social dynamics of our work group were not happy, even though our boss picked parks for our meetings.Since I've retired, I've nearly forgotten how horrible those weeks were, though the memory echoes. The days are visibly shorter. We walk out in the evening the sun dropping behind the horizon earlier and...
2025-08-1713 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastAnother Reason Why I Believe In JesusBecause there was so much pain and so much grief around the time my brother died—I was abandoned by my extended family, mostly because I lived here and they lived there--I somehow got onto the idea of blessing my enemy. To grab onto this and start practicing it was in itself a grace. Here is a piece I wrote and sent off to This I Believe. They did not air it, though it is on their website.God bless my enemy. Bless her. God.For whatever reason she is someone I can’t co...
2025-08-1020 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastImagine Pain Worse than Being Thrown in a FurnaceWNIJ Perspective: It's Time for More Research on This Rare DiseaseWhen Amy Anderson stumbled, she heard a loud pop. Her ankle had completely folded over. She’d torn her peroneal tendon in her foot. The intense pain was immediate. She went nine months of misdiagnoses before she was finally diagnosed with CRPS, complex regional pain syndrome. Then she needed six months of desensitization therapy before they could repair the tendon.She says, “It’s all pain sensations at once, so it’s pin/needles, stabbing, crushing, constant aching. It feels like a red-hot...
2025-08-0309 minPerspectivesPerspective: It's time for more research on this rare diseaseKatie Andraski learns about CRPS from her neighbor
2025-07-2901 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastA Not So Good Response to an Atheist's ChallengeA gentleman on Facebook asked me to say how I know Christianity is true. My post questioning God about King Saul prompted his questions and our conversation. Eric is particularly incensed by verses like: Numbers 31: 1-3“Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the sons of Israel; afterward you will be gathered to your people.” So Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the war, so that they may go against Midian to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.”I have wondered about this sort of...
2025-07-2714 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Choose Solitude. I Choose PrayerClover has nearly reached up to Morgen’s bridle. She can drop her nose and snatch a purple flower. About a month ago, the field was newly shorn, nearly down to dirt.We’ve gotten out before noon the last two days to try to beat the heat. Hesitantly I want to say I think I found the fun, and may drive her down the road, looking for apples on a tree, a mile away. Driving her has given me the motivation to get up early, not read the latest news on my phone and take...
2025-07-2115 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Question God About King SaulDespite road noises, the air itself was quiet when I walked out. Everything was washed gray, the sky, the air, the distant trees and farms. As I turned the corner by our mailbox, I saw several cobwebs spread like mini blankets on the ground. I spoke to the birds—grackles, kildeer, red wing blackbirds. As I turned toward the sun I could face him, cloaked in the clouds, and thought about how God did King Saul dirty.I don’t get it. If God had left the man alone, maybe he would have died in obsc...
2025-07-1319 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhat if We are Full of Light?July 3, 2025Last week Friday, I dreamed thousands of books had to be moved “yesterday” because my time at school was done. Their spines were all kinds of colors, some bright some dull. I had furniture to move too with no room in the car, and no time left. My parents hovered in the background. I don’t get warm feelings when they show up in dreams.I woke utterly exhausted. I woke utterly exhausted. My hip ached. My walk with Omalola was more hobble than walk. Tears seeped out during prayers. The losses of the...
2025-07-0611 minPerspectivesPerspective: Make hay while the sun shinesDespite the weather challenges. Katie Andraski says somehow, putting up hay always works out.
2025-06-3001 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastFiasco: Putting Up HayFiasco. 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 the sun shines, speaks truth for grass farmers, who harvest the sun, when we cut, rake and bale our fields. But it’s har...
2025-06-2912 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Walk Out to Thoughts About the End of the WorldI 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 manner of things will be well.I’ve ducked, my soul remembering the dives under desks, in case th...
2025-06-2212 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastElder Not Elderly A WNIJ Perspective And SomeKathy 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 trivialized and marginalized, and often actively ridiculed” (6).Things have shifted from when I was in my twenties and thought nothing of making friends with women older than I who became surrogate...
2025-06-1510 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastGuard Your Heart. We say Goodbye to Little Dog“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 nature of pundits with regards to Ukraine’s drone attack on Russia’s nuclear triad, an attack that was planned for a year and a half.We've alr...
2025-06-0809 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastA Bit of MysteryWhile 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 already destroyed death by death. Death is dead. So our despair, our fear when our beloved departs and enters rest is...
2025-05-3000 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow I met and Married Bruce Part 2Here 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 kayaking. I watch bees fly in and out of their nests and people think I’m bo...
2025-05-2326 minPerspectivesPerspective: Elder, not elderlyKatie Andraski says older women have a lot to offer the world.
2025-05-2001 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow I Met and Married Bruce Part 1Warning: 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. PreludeThe 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 desire of my heart, a man to love, a man who would love me, wrap me...
2025-05-1614 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Love Behind the AnniversaryThe Love Behind the AnniversaryForty 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, but married us, nonetheless.Instead of spouting cliches about a long marriage, let me tell you a bit of the Lindwor...
2025-05-1010 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow to Respond to the Chaos or NotSunday, April 27While 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, English tea. He has also started a You Tube channel called Jawbone, which is also published in podcast form if you prefer...
2025-05-0311 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastPoison in the AirNote: 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 14Despite 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. It wasn’t long before I became lightheaded, and my stomach turned queasy. My legs d...
2025-04-2511 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHoly Saturday StoryAnointing JesusI 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 out from the earth like Abel’s? Would God come down and mark the preachers scheming to kill...
2025-04-1910 minPerspectivesPerspective: The love behind the anniversaryKatie Andraski shares an unusual tale to explain 39 years of marriage.
2025-04-1601 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastFinally I Remember a Dear Childhood Friend and dig into history, literallyThrough 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. "Shouldn't you be as excited about your readers?" she wondered. She has a point. I'm deeply grateful you show up faithfully to read my words, but I still answered, "These...
2025-04-1318 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWeek of Storms and JoyMarch 31, 2025I 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 neighbors’ dogs because they don’t like being barked at, but the road that turns me into the sun...
2025-04-0612 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhere I Confess a Major FlawSometime Around March 18,2025Two 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 believe the old stories of saints being so full of The Presence animals are no longer shy with them...
2025-03-3013 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastMoses' Complaint Before He DiedWith 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 yourself into Biblical scenes. Doing this has made those stories come alive because they’ve entered my imagination.Those warnings show up in...
2025-03-2309 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastLoneliness Bites Again This Week of Dangerous StormsSaturday, March 15, 2025I 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. I looked at the survey stakes for the repair of the natural gas pipeline and turned...
2025-03-1614 min2025-03-1101 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastNotes From the Week of Ash WednesdayMonday, March 3, 2025I 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 call him that) and by the time he got back, she’d birthed her calf. Already we’ve seen some...
2025-03-0917 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastNotes from the Bitter Week, Notes from Mud Season's ArrivalNotes from the Bitter WeekI 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 be crying but I’m not. I’m walking into wind chill. It’s not much better when I t...
2025-03-0215 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastShe Came through the Cloud of Witnesses to Sit By MeI 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, so that’s what I've started: praying my beloved dead enter into that joy, that peace. Stephen Freeman in h...
2025-02-2417 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhat if We Look For God's Glory. Right Here. Right Now?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 shade when horses plowed these fields.The Tree’s presence comforts me because she is so...
2025-02-1616 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastCalling For RainEarly, 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 second parents’ home on a cove protected from the wild Atlantic. Orion was cocking his leg toward the western horizon. All day the fiel...
2025-02-0910 min2025-02-0401 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Still Have the Valentine I Bought for My DadWhen 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 a quarter beef from them, the meat almost too rich and sweet.Our neighbor’s joints have stiffened so he shi...
2025-02-0211 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWalking in Freeze TimeI 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 walking.The road sparkles and glints with salt that has been grou...
2025-01-2610 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Listen to Wise Men While I Vacuum and DustI 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, dirt. I look at the seven bookshelves that all need to have the books pulled out and dusted. Sometimes they are so d...
2025-01-1919 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastMaybe We Are Mini ApocalypsesI 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 far it has trotted from the horizon.The sun is s...
2025-01-1208 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWalking into the New YearWhen I turned the corner of our house, two eyes flashed in my light. Our feral cat, Tiger ran ahead and sat. Why didn’t he bolt for the barn? He ran ahead and sat. My dogs strained at their leashes. Tiger yanked at my heart strings. He snuggled the earth like when Gray was alive. Would the dogs be his friend? Tears welled up. Someone had set out rat poison, heedless of the broken hearts, heedless of poison running up the food chain.There is no mending Tiger’s losing his brother. The sparrow God...
2025-01-0514 minPerspectivesPerspective: Walking into the new yearKatie Andraski says the new year is a good time to leave some things behind.
2025-01-0101 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Women of Bethlehem Paid a Terrible Price After Jesus Was BornYesterday, December 28 was the Feast of the Holy Innocents where Bethlehem paid a terrible price for the birth of Christ. Here I imagine what it might have been like to be a mother who gave birth to her son the same time that Mary gave birth to Jesus. This is a repost from last year. I gave birth to my son the night the shepherds banged on the door. “The Messiah has come,” they shouted even before they reached our home. They were shouting up and down the street. When Amos opened the door, we were...
2024-12-2913 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastNo Tears at Christmas“Finally, finally the tears blew out of me into sobbing in the barn, the cats waiting impatiently for me to leave, Morgen quietly munching her hay. The light softening the wood beams. A hay bale holding my butt. I hoped Bruce wouldn’t find me.Katie’s Ground is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.“Bruce and I had just been talking how Christmas was a hard time. It’s like a sink hole in our path, that we need to wa...
2024-12-2209 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastPut on the Armor of LightI was walking the road, my thoughts scattered by what I read on Facebook first thing. I don’t remember what it was that day, but I am obsessed about the drones spooking New Jersey and points nearby. My imagination has gone Hollywood. Is it a foreign adversary sitting off shore sending them in? Are they spraying a biological or chemical agent on New Jersey? Are they our drones doing miliary exercises or looking for a broken arrow? Or are we passively allowing them to spy, like with the Chinese spy balloon?Governors and mayors ha...
2024-12-1507 min
Sparkle on Substack(Live) How to Build a World Class SubstackThank you Christopher Pepper, Allegra Chapman, Katie Andraski, Susan Kuenzi, Amber Horrox, and many others for tuning into my live video with Russell Nohelty! Join me for my next live video in the app.If you have questions on anything we talk about in our publication celebration, drop them below and we’ll circle back after the holidays.Claire and Russell This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sparkleon.substack.com/subscribe
2024-12-131h 20
Katie’s Ground PodcastHe Said Imagine Sainthood. Here's what I wrote.Paul Kingsnorth says it’s not just the indigenous peoples who have a sense of the world being alive or who have relationships with animals. It’s also the Christian view of what it means to be fully human, fully alive. I was sitting in front of my computer for the third of his classes inSt Basil’s Writers Workshop. What it means to be human is to be like Adam and Eve in the garden when they were at peace with the natural world. We broke the communion we had with God and with animals because we wan...
2024-12-0808 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastAfter the Election Fear Like Poisoned RainSeems like fear has settled over us like a fine, poisoned drizzle. The news, social media, talk shows are like crop dusters spraying ways for us to be afraid and ways to hate each other. The Atlantic cover art shows Trump driving a circus wagon with an elephant trapped, an image echoing the Bradbury novel, Something Wicked this Way Comes.Memes reinforce that message. Cut off friends. Cut off family. Divorce your spouse. If they voted for Trump.But some are turning to creation for courage and solace. With a big smile, next...
2024-12-0112 min
PerspectivesPerspective: What to do with this fearKatie Andraski wants to talk about good things this post-election time.
2024-11-2601 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Delight in SquirrelsI delight in squirrels running the trees, jumping from one to the other, sometimes dropping ten feet from one twig to an another. They curl around each other, fighting. We watch through our brand-new kitchen window, that Anderson Construction plugged into the wall last week, and trimmed out this week. We'd grown tired of feeling cold air pouring into the kitchen when winter nights fell. Bruce would climb on the counter every evening and hang a blanket stapled over a dowel rod. Then he took it down every morning to let the sunlight warm us. You might c...
2024-11-2410 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Follow a Sparrow Who Leads me HereThe tiny sparrow hopped ahead of me. (Before, it was a junco by the house.) She’d lift a bit and then trot along. This time while I was walking on the top of the hill towards Petersons. Where did she want to take me? She’d trot a bit. Then lift off. Trot a bit. Then she flew off. I was relieved she could fly. I kept walking. The walk as ordinary as they all are, well actually boring. Sometimes the sky is spectacular with long gray breakers in the clouds, that sometimes look splashed up like...
2024-11-1715 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastGood Bye To GrayI’m reposting these two WNIJ perspectives as tributes to our feral cat Gray. We said goodbye to him today. When Feral Cats Show UpIt’s magical when feral cats show up at the farm. We bless them because we’ve had rats so fat and tame I could grab one as she ran up the rafters.This year two gray and white cats arrived. They acted like a bonded pair. We named them Fluffy and Slick. None of our neighbors claimed them. We set out food, the expensive kind. Soon M...
2024-11-1006 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow to Walk as the Sun Comes UpEvery morning the last few mornings I’ve seen a little bird that can’t lift off the ground. Bruce thinks she’s a junco, but maybe she’s the firebird grounded, telling us both something as it hops on ahead of us. Apparently in Russian fairy tales a person finds a feather and searches for the bird, starting a quest. I think of Abraham called from a prosperous family to an unknown land, promised by God that it would be his and his children’s.I’ve seen the junco at odd times, first thing in the...
2024-11-0213 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastScrolling Past MedusaScrolling Past MedusaThe Medusa’s hair writhes with snakes so ugly; one look and you turn to stone. The only way the hero can destroy her is not to look. He holds up his shield, wields his sword.Back in the day, the horrors of children burning, hurricanes flooding cities, students being shot were limited to a half hour each night on the news, a newspaper cracked open in the morning, and magazines. These days we face our phones and scroll. We see the horrors peel past our eyes all day, every day. People po...
2024-10-2611 min
2024-10-2201 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Gift of Tears and Signs in the SkyLast week’s joy came through an abscess cut open and cleared. A relative posted a picture of my mother sitting on the couch the last Christmas she was alive. When I arrived home from grad school, her round curves were gone, but in the picture she looked the same, soft round person I’d known, but she looked tired. In a month, I would be moved to Chicago, all hell would break loose in my life, when I heard she had less than a year to live.An abscess broke and cleared. An old scar...
2024-10-1911 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastAngels in the Air Bringing JoyWay off in the distance, over the farm on the corner, where the road turns toward the tracks, I saw a murmuration, birds rising and falling, swelling and drawing in again. Faint. A rare sight by us. Though a couple weeks ago our trees were loud with starlings flocking to fly south. They crackled with their voices. Not the same as sunlight, but with the energy of animals that fly-angels.I walk by the willows and hear red wing blackbirds. Five, six meadowlarks rise out of the field as we were driving Morgen. Two birds...
2024-10-1211 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhat if God Means It?What if God means it when he says, “there is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom.8: 1)?What if he means it when he says, “now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, as to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever” (Jude 24 – 25). Present you before the presence of his glory--that means white hair, eyes like flames of fire, legs...
2024-10-0608 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Wrath of the LambSomething up in the tree, dripped, drip, drip drip, like after a rain stops but the trees are still raining. I stood in the gate looking for the northern lights because it was Autumnal Equinox when a crack opens in the magnetic fields. The sky was just plain dark except for neighbor’s yard lights. I saw through to the faint Milky Way and heard leaves rustling. There were no eyes peering back in the light. I stood next to the giant poplar tree, where we heard the swarm of bees for the last time. I don’t kno...
2024-09-2808 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastThe Wildflowers (Photo by Jean Pauley)Since we are well into election season, the following are some perspectives I wrote for our local NPR station, WNIJ, with regards to our political environment. I am reading them in chronological order.This Label Shuts Down Honest TalkJuly 19, 2016A person can disagree with President Obama’s policies, or be afraid, or be troubled by our open borders, or question Sharia law, or think “maybe Trump.” These days a person can be white, going about their business. The name flies up: racist.That r...
2024-09-2212 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastOn Watching Barn Swallows Watching MeI first saw the barn swallows peeking out of a nest in the barn. Then they'd moved to a second nest when they were about to fly. A small flock swept in and out, restless, demanding I leave. Imagine being so close to all that flight, to be in the midst of all that fierce, frantic joy. One hovered for a second right in front of me. I was so busy snapping pictures, I missed when the young ones dropped out of the nest. The nests latched onto rafters are impossible for cats to get to.
2024-09-1511 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastMaybe We Are Surrounded by Chariots of Fire We Just Have to See ThemI don’t know what the heck my boss was thinking. He’d do this little nod thing and his eyes would brighten and he’d tell the king where the Syrians would be. The king listened. The Syrians would set their ambush, but we didn’t show up. All we're doing is teasing their anger. And then what?When a commander of the Syrian army showed up at the king’s doorstep, saying he’d heard he could be healed in Israel, the king tore his clothes. I couldn’t blame him. Why would we want to help the ma...
2024-09-0812 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastHow Being a Tiny Bit Ghosted Can Make Me Feel AloneMy horse died. One by one my horse friends decided I didn’t make the cut in their busy lives. “I don’t want to have lunch with you,” said one friend. Another was done after I canceled lunch. The others mostly sank in silence. I sat down in front of the pony barns at the Boone County Fair, people driving by with their horses and carriages and started to say how horse people are mean. My friend would have listened if I’d kept talking. But why lay that on her? They aren’t really mean. Just busy. Wh...
2024-09-0109 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhat if We Can Live in Paradise Now?Earlier in this summer, Peggy, a Facebook acquaintance, noted she was traveling through a town nearby. I piped up, “Why don’t you come and visit?” She’d gone north, heading for the badlands, and turned around to stay over for a night because of my post about how I believe that small and hidden are just as much evidence of God’s blessing as people with large followings. While I was cleaning, I wondered what was I thinking? I am not good at hospitality, but felt like a door opening.We put Peggy up on her way...
2024-08-2509 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastLeaving my Heart in the Wild Every NightWhen we fixed our barn cats, Kevin, my horse vet said that you spend money on those barn cats and they’ll be gone before you know it, but we could not afford more kitties, so off to Tails they went. Brave and Girl Cat ended up ghosting us, the loss a thud in my gut because I never knew what happened.Tyger and Gray have grown into sleek, striped cats with scraggly, poufy tails and shiny coats. We take pleasure in watching them watching us from the barn. Mama cat watches from the shed. So...
2024-08-1814 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastScreens have Captured Me Not the Golden IdolI don’t think I was honest with you in the last piece about Nebuchadnezzar’s monument that dominated the skyline. I wanted Hannah to refuse to bow to the king’s image because I wanted to put that refusal to go along into my imagination because my greatest fear is that I’ll quail when I’m asked what would you choose--following Jesus or preserving your life?You may have thought, wait, what? The three Hebrews who took the fire were probably eunuchs. I know, I know I should have followed what we know of the historical...
2024-08-1108 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastWhat About God's VoiceAs I was finishing my essay about how my voice sounds like bare feet on gravel, I thought about how our voice becomes incarnate when our breath sings across our vocal cords, driven by our heart and mind because we want to tell something.But what about God’s voice? What does it sound like? I know we can hear his voice as a nudge, or a thought in our mind, or a Bible verse or a friend speaking a word that makes our heart leap up. Right now I'm thinking of how Psalm 29 says: “The voice of t...
2024-07-0710 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Think About How Voice is EmbodiedDavid Whyte in A Heart Aroused says, “The voice emerges literally from the body as a representation of our inner world. It carries our experience from the past, our hopes and fears for the future, and the emotional resonance of the moment…Whether or not we tell the truth, the very act of speech is courageous because no matter what we say we are revealed” (120).I think about how voice is embodied. It not only carries our mood, and how much energy we have, it carries our authority, and even welcome. I remembered how I could tell whethe...
2024-06-3007 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastI Think of Abraham on the PlainIn Revelation, when the Seventh Seal was opened, an angel took the golden censor, full of incense and the prayers of the saints. He filled it with fire from the altar and threw it down on earth, and "there were peals of thunder, rumblings, and flashes of lightning" (Rev. 8: 1 - 5). The voice of God's presence like on Sinai, the power we forget that is in our prayers.Sometimes people frustrated with a mass shooting complain about thoughts and prayers. They want political action. And I feel sorry that people’s condolences are rejected, especially if people do say...
2024-06-2206 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastMountains or ChurchThis is my first podcast, so I picked something short. I hope to record my blogs so you can listen if you like. John Muir says, “I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God than in church thinking about the mountains.” Sure, the earth is full of the glory of God. The mountains can be complicated as a symphony. The heavens pour forth speech. Step outside, watch the moon rise and feel awe. A stand of old growth trees might have been what cathedrals were trying to imitate. Theologians have called creation a sort of Bible...
2024-06-1701 min
Katie’s Ground PodcastAn Anonymous Disciple Speaks Just After Jesus DiedI posted this last February and thought you might want to hear or read this again since this is Maundy Thursday, 2025. Why’d you ride into Jerusalem on the donkey and her foal? We threw cloaks on them both and you hopped on their backs. Everyone knew the prophecy: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zec. 9: 9 ESV). So we shouted and sang. “Hosanna...
2024-02-2509 min