November 2021 COver & Highlights

​Highlights for November, 2021

In the cover photo, the family of Kim Rudningen gathers around the Eucharist (Thanksgiving) table in the sanctuary of Volmer Lutheran Church in Dagmar, MT, at the occasion of her son’s First Communion a few years ago on Easter morning. Christian unity as and through the Body of Christ is especially manifest in this congregation, Nathanael-Volmer Lutheran Church, as it is the union of two sister congregations.

As the seasons have turned, Grundtvig’s hymn “Nu falmer skoven” is appropriate to start this issue. May we give thanks for S. D. Rodholm having translated this “Harvest Hymn” and many other lyrics so the messages and sentiments of our Danish tradition can be passed to generations of English-speaking Americans. In an experiment, the Church and Life website has a link to a YouTube video so you can sing along with Danish song leader Phillip Faber. 

The new president of the Danish Interest Conference (DIC), Andrés Albertsen, reviews the  history and purpose of the DIC and gives an encouraging word for its future.
Our columnist from Denmark, Hanna Broadbridge, calls attention to two Danish companies that have not forfeited their founders’ commitment to Christian principles as they have risen to international stature. 

Whatever one’s spiritual path, prayer is an essential element. The poetic petitions of Harold Slater give voice to our yearnings as individuals and in our collective humanity. Three of his gems are scattered through the issue

In the third and final installment of her article, Jone Salomonsen suggests that through connecting to the natural environment of a place, as did inhabitants of earlier centuries, even millennia before, people are connecting with the common roots of humanity. 
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Grundtvig’s “Human first, then Christian” and valuing proximity to nature were central elements of life that those who established the DIC did not want to lose as their church merged with other Lutheran synods. The  DIC board of directors tries to carry this forward. Minutes of its annual meeting, provided by secretary Sonja Knudsen, may not be the most exciting reading, but the intention is to be informative and transparent. One order of business was the election of Virginia “Ginny” Blood to the board. She wrote the summary of the Danebod Folk Meeting that appeared in the previous issue, and in this issue, we learn of her background, which evidences both the rigor and fervor. that she brings to the  board.


“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” 
—William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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