Category Archives: Seasons

December 3, 2025 · 9:38 am

Advent is “New” Each Year

“Advent reenacts a past event as if it was new each year.” – Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year

There is a familiarness to this Advent time of year. We use familiar decorations, assume familiar routines and find ourselves among familiar people. We attend the usual services, programs and parties. We observe the well known traditions of our upbringing or adulthood. We revisit things from past years by memory or physical reunion.

“This is the day of the Christmas program.” “The yuletide dinner happens on the 12th.” “There’s a gift exchange with staff on the 21st.” It’s a time to reflect, to retell the story, and to make pilgrimage.

But, for all that is familiar, there is room for something new. Afterall, you are not exactly who or where you were last year, or any year prior. There are new factors in your life – new situations and circumstances too. Maybe you are in a new relationship, with a new friend or new grandchild. Maybe you are newly retired, newly unemployed or employed, have newly moved, or find yourself newly energized or challenged.

Life is never static. It’s organic, always changing and growing and evolving. The very composition of your body continues to change as old cells die off and new ones emerge and grow. Your mind is renewed by your thoughts and dreams, by what you read and what you hear and reflect on. Your spirit is refreshed by your devotion, prayer and worship life.

The annual invitation to the Advent season of preparation and waiting is to lean into the new, even as you revisit the familiar. Retell and listen again to the stories of Advent as you encounter the Scriptual themes. But do so in light of what’s new or fresh in you. Listen with a new focus. Allow your new situation to be the lens through which you encounter the familiar once again.

Anticipate Jesus’ coming again. Yet ask, “what’s new in this anticipation” for me? What is it that you are to pay attention? What does this Advent have for you to learn – about yourself, your faith, your relationships, your God? Might you be being asked to pay attention in a new way during this season that feels so familiar but can be so new?

© Daniel M. Cash 2025

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October 29, 2025 · 9:00 am

Why does a Woolly Worm cross the road?

Why does a woolly worm cross the road? I’m not sure it does make it across the road, but I’ve seen many of them from my bike lately, catching the sunshine on the pavement of our county roads.

As morning temperatures dip, reflecting the coolness of Autumn, these orange and black creatures seem to seek the warmth of the sun-soaked pavement. Or maybe they are just out going for a stroll?  Their sunbathing comes at great risk, however.  I may easily dodge them on my bicycle, but its doubtful a grain truck or pickup would be so conscientious.

Wooly worms are fascinating little creatures. They follow an interesting life cycle on their way to transformation. Upon hatching from their eggs on plants, they begin eating and shedding their skin, up to six times as they grow. As caterpillars, with their distinct “woolly”, bearlike appearance, they have the capacity to overwinter in their full-grown state by producing a type of antifreeze in their system to survive the cold temperatures. They will hunker down under a log or other protective surface and wait for spring, some eventually spinning their silk cocoon to enter the pupal stage during winter, others overwintering as caterpillars and not pupating until spring.

Once in the cocoon, it’s just a matter of a few weeks until the transformation is complete and they emerge as the Isabella Tiger Moth. They live in their adulthood for a few more weeks until the life cycle begins anew as they mate, lay eggs and die.

The lore of the woolly worm has long been associated with predictions about winter.  The amount and placement of the various hues of orange and black on their coats is interpreted to mean something about the coming colder months.  More black coloring and a harsher winter lies ahead.  Black on the ends, and winter’s early and late months will be more severe than the middle, represented by orange.

A few years back, as I was riding the county roads, there was an abundance of woolly worms out on the pavement. I haven’t seen that many at one time again, but I do always see some this time of the year. I think one thing is certain, wooly worms, like most other creatures know without a doubt that winter is coming. Somehow their life cycle and constitutional makeup is a harbinger of just this truth.  They are another of God’s creative signs to pay attention to the changing seasons.

© Daniel M. Cash 2025

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October 27, 2025 · 4:13 pm

Ministry Mondays with Meg Podcast

This week I was honored to be the guest on “Ministry Mondays with Meg” – a podcast from my friend and colleague Rev. Dr. Megan Biddle. We talked about 35 years of ministry, writing, teaching, chaplaincy and pastoring. We discussed my three books: 8 Questions Jesus Asked; The Changing Church and Dakota Dreams and Hoosier Homeland.

It was a fun conversation and I invite you to give it a watch/listen. Just follow the link:

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/ministrymondayswithmeg/episodes/Dan-Cash-e39v77j

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October 3, 2025 · 10:15 am

When a Walnut Falls

When a walnut falls, it is . . .
           A sure sign of the autumnal genesis.
           A probable dent in an unlucky car.
           A chore for neighbors whose lawn hosts its sire.

When a walnut falls, it can be . . .
           A hazard to the cyclist who dodges it on the shared path.
           An invitation to the boy who finds it.
           A meal to be stored by the industrious squirrel.

When I was a kid, we took five-gallon buckets into the woods to pick up the walnut harvest.  Dad then scattered our collection across the #3 limestone of the back drive where he parked his truck. Driving across the hulls daily freed the hard inner shells to later be picked up and cracked open, revealing a meaty snack.

When a walnut falls, it is . . .
           A portent of winter to come.
           A provision of nutrients in a fallow season.
           A promise of next generation sapling, tree, wood, furniture and trim.     

When a walnut falls, it is . . .
           An invitation to ponder.
           A sign to observe.
A contribution to consider.

When a walnut falls, it is . . .
           A prompt for a poem.
           A drumbeat in nature.
           A deposit from above.       

© Daniel M. Cash 2025

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September 15, 2025 · 5:39 pm

Halt the Summer Postmortem!

The end of summer’s lifespan has been once again vastly overstated.  Do not write her obituary just yet.  As we move into this third full week of September, and the meteorological end of the summer season is in full view, she has arisen!

We can feel the brush of her high 80’s hot air and bask in the bake of her high noon sun. Sure, the color of the palate has changed – highlighting browns and yellows now, but where sprinklers sputter the grass is yet bright green and growing.

Hummers and Monarchs may be preparing for migration, and who can say about the geese of Canada?  Most of them are now year-round pests. Sunflowers are still blooming, as are zinnias; and sedums are coming into their own.  This can be true even as the coneflower and black-eyed-Susan have gone the way of the day lily and iris.

A bike ride in the countryside shows soybean fields more yellow than green, and some even a crisp brown. The exception being the second crop group that grows green yet – shadowing out it’s wheat stubble bed.  

Some of the early corn has already been picked. Birds flutter out of otherwise drying corn fields, brown from the bottom up, as I ride past. They seem to say, “leave me be while I catch a late summer nap.”

The sun will set a fraction of time earlier this evening, and the rise just a tad later come morn.  We may awaken to temps in the 50’s, but they will be short-lived, climbing higher by the hour, like summer herself who has made a comeback.

It’s a last week, maybe two, in which to remember vacation days, holidays, pool and beach days, or fishing at the pond.  It’s a “Minnesota goodbye” summer offers – first from the front room, then the foyer, out the door and onto the porch, and finally from the drive.  “Come again” we say, “when you can stay longer next time.”
© Daniel M. Cash 2025

#bikeridephotography #backyardphotography

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