Author: Rod Anderson

Early in my ministry, I realized that the most significant days on the annual church calendar coincided with legal holidays. These were days off for many with regular jobs. Meanwhile, festive holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter were the busiest for pastors. Please understand that I’m not complaining! I loved working really hard to give my very best effort for the Lord, the church, and its people on each of these beloved days of celebration. I cherish the seasonal nature of the liturgical church year with its immense opportunities for teaching and learning the faith and life of the church…

I am writing today from the American Cancer Society’s Sandra J. Schulze Hope Lodge here in Rochester, Minnesota, right next to the Mayo Clinic medical complex. The late Sandra Schulze was the wife of Best Buy founder Richard Schulze, who made it possible for anyone receiving cancer treatments to stay here for free. My wife, Julane, and I are living here for six weeks while she receives daily Proton Beam Radiation treatments for squamous cell skin cancer on her face. Ten years ago, when she received a liver transplant resulting from Primary Biliary Cirrhosis (the non-alcohol-related type of cirrhosis), we…

My morning walk to the mailbox to get my newspaper is a favorite part of my wake-up routine all year around, especially when my timing is right to hear an early chorus of bird songs. Winter has been cold and blustery, long and hard, but the blue jays, red cardinals, and black-capped chickadees never fail to make their presence known. But now comes spring and new wake-up notes and melodies of robins and warblers. Wake up … it’s Passover Jewish Passover comes around the time of the vernal equinox when equal day and equal night mark the transition from winter…

Now comes the 40-day annual season entered on Ash Wednesday by Christians, both Roman Catholics and Protestants. This season is historically intended for self-denial and prayer, worship, and service in preparation for the observance of Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter. The journey through this time, scripturally and personally, has always been very important in my faith life and church life! But when I write for this spirituality column in this EP Local News, my preferred intention is to be focused “ecumenically” in hopes of offering something of spiritual value to all readers regardless of their faith orientation. Could it…

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and in anticipation of Black History Month, I made the drive to Gustavus Adolphus College to take in a 90-minute conversation between Black English and African Studies Professor Phil Bryant and our first Black Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, Alan Page. Christ Chapel on the campus was packed with students, faculty and staff, and campus visitors like me, numbering more than a thousand. Trust my estimate, please – I was Interim College Chaplain in that room at Gustavus from 2011-13. Of course, Page needed no introduction for most attendees. Still, hearing that he was inducted…

Decorating a saguaro cactus is a prickly undertaking, but with ladders and lifts, they do it each year all around the southwest’s Sonoran Desert. We traveled to Phoenix this Advent to spend time with close friends to mark the first anniversaries of both their parents’ deaths in the past year. Like with many people, this season of family gatherings brings grief to the surface, but more importantly, also faith, hope and love that still remain! Picture the saguaro’s lighted form as metaphorical, representing worshippers with arms lifting up bright lights to pierce the darkness in this holy season of joyful…

“The principle of give and take; that is diplomacy – give one and take ten.” Mark Twain Sad but true, we all tend to categorize others, and even ourselves, as a giver or a taker. Both result from intentional and/or unintentional motivations that come into play in our daily relationships. We may admire givers over takers, but, as Mark Twain suggests, even if we aspire to be givers, all of us likely are well-practiced at each. In his book, “Give and Take; A Revolutionary Approach to Success,” Adam Grant adds a group he calls “matchers” – those who practice reciprocity…

Several years ago, a friend of mine was on a business trip in Kansas City, where he treated a client to a Royals baseball game. They left the stands before the final inning, but not remembering their rental car’s color, couldn’t find it in the parking lot. Only when the game ended and the parking lot cleared were they able to find that car by a frustrating process of elimination. That story came to mind for me recently when I couldn’t find my own quite recognizable car in the huge Hennepin County Medical Center parking ramp in downtown Minneapolis. When…

A few years ago, my wife Julane and I were privileged to be guests of friends in Hartford, Connecticut, who took us on a road trip to see the breathtaking autumn leaves around that whole region from the Atlantic shore to Mount Washington State Park. Our friends didn’t have to try very hard to convince us that “God paints the leaves, but in the northeast God uses a bigger brush!” Our home is in the Cedar Forest neighborhood along Pioneer Road in southwest Eden Prairie, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that we have 22 red cedar trees on our…

During a discussion of DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) at a meeting I was attending, God brought to mind a song titled “All God’s Creatures Got a Place in the Choir.” Some characterize it as an old children’s song, and I remember learning it from my mom’s cousin, who taught it in our Wastedo Elementary School music class. The lyrics include a menagerie of creatures — literally a diversity of animals singing in the same choir, but those critters are analogous to all God’s people, for sure! Nothing brings all of us together like music! Every voice in the vocal…