A Fresh Perspective

From the earliest time I can remember I was in the church house on Sundays. It did not always go well for me on Sundays. I can vaguely remember one Sunday when my parents and my best friend’s parents let us sit together during Sunday worship by ourselves. We decided to take the foil wrapper of a piece of chewing gum and make a little paper football. We had a whole side pew to ourselves so Keith went to one side and I to the other. We made goal posts with our hands and thumbs and kicked field goals. One of my kicks deviated from its intended path and landed inside a curl of the lady sitting in the pew directly in front of us. She was hard of hearing so we didn’t worry too much, but my buddy got tickled and I got tickled. Well, that was the last time we got to sit together for a while. For the next several weeks we were back at the side of our parents.   I can also distinctly remember as a kid sitting in worship as the preacher droned on and on thinking what a terrible way to ma...

In the movie Sandy Bottom Orchestra, based on the novel by Garrison Keillor, Norman and Ingrid Green relocate to Sandy Bottom in Northern Wisconsin from Minneapolis . Norman operates the locale dairy, while Ingrid is choir director at Bethesda Lutheran Church . The choir struggles through a number of  challenges and differences as they prepare for a classical concert to be performed at the annual Dairy Days festival. Ingrid’s harsh attitude and approach leads to conflict with Pastor Sikes who fires her. In the aftermath of her firing, she pours herself into a campaign to save a historic old building that the mayor wants to tear down. At a campaign rally she discovers that Pastor Sikes’ wife is hospitalized in Minneapolis for severe clinical depression, leaving the pastor to care for their three sons. Despite her anger at being fired, she is deeply impacted by the minister’s plight. Secretly she prepares a week’s worth of food and leaves it at the minister’s door. She ...