Pete Kauffman

Sandhill cranes, long legged and musical, pitching into the estuarine mud flats with stilted legs outstretched. A flock of several hundred White-fronted geese, these with a watery cackle, circle once and join the cranes. The sky is alive with birds: Lesser Canada geese, Pintails and Mallards, a wigeon, some Northern

The happiest man is he who loves his enemies and enjoys his work. -Unknown These are heady times in which it seems anyone who can think and labor simultaneously can stay financially solvent, and by all appearances, even the thinking part is negotiable. Like other modern marvels, it’s easy

(Part 2 of 2) Bend the mind with me for a bit, and let’s pretend Christian theological authority was established beyond reasonable doubt to the entire world. All the philosophical, scientific, and historical debates would have been definitively settled. Leaving aside questions as to whether this is possible or

(Part 1 of 2) Granted, most of us aren’t regularly debating atheists or even other Christians. I’m from the hill country of Kentucky where the people we work to reach are not the type to have intellectual problems. Whether or not God is an organism who casts a

We hunted. When I attempt to trace the origins of this part of family culture back to the beginning, I do not know where it began. Perhaps it was because my father told stories of hunting the Tuscarora Mountain in Pennsylvania. How they would arrive at the foot of the

“Asceticism is for the monks,” you say? Fine, I suggest we need some Anabaptist monks so they can give us a report from the outside. “It’s like beating your head against the wall,” I've been told. Beating your head against a wall does burn calories, and it

The internet has problems a Pollyanna couldn’t miss, but the trouble with human nature is when a problem is embedded into something we like, we have a hard time knowing where to stop. But hope is a virtue—which means we should have it—so I am trying to