Rev. Ethan Brown, Pastor and Minister of Care & Discipleship

There is a Pakistani proverb that says, the first cup of tea is shared between strangers, over the second cup of tea people become friends, and the third cup makes you family. I was first exposed to this proverb in the book Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson as he detailed his encounter with the Taliban after a failed hike up the mountain K2 in 1993. Motenson had stumbled across a village in Central Asia and was warmly welcomed, fed, and cared for. As Mortenson recovered, he noticed how the...

Our master bathroom isn't much of a "master bathroom." It used to be shared between two rooms before losing a door and being elevated in status. Yet change always brings about unintended consequences, and our tiny bathroom is a bit of a damp cave without the air passing through from multiple rooms. Someone, at some point, tried to improve the air situation with the addition of a bathroom fan—just the wrong kind. When we bought the house, a beautiful hunter ceiling fan hung in the middle of...

Wolves, it seems, can shape the land around them, even determining the course of rivers in their territory. If you are curious about the details you can find a National Geographic video that outlines everything, but essentially it all comes down to the interaction of the wolves with deer. Wolves died out of Yellowstone National Park in the 1930s due to over-hunting, but a small number of them were reintroduced in 1995. In the intervening years, the deer and elk populations had exploded. The...