Nikki Sauter

The first snow is magic. Absorbing sound and transfixing our senses, we forget the things that were common sense yesterday. We’re bewitched by slush and flurries and clouds. For me, this manifests into obsessive driveway clearing. Snow falls and I’m out with four different shovel types moving it off the driveway. Does our driveway need…

In my kindergarten classroom, alongside the alphabet cards was a line of rocket ships. Each rocket ship was assigned to a student and was blasting off towards the ceiling of success. Every day I would check on my rocket ship progress. Surprisingly, my rocket ship would move backward, or not at all. When I asked…

Dear Church, Sabbath is one old religious word. For Christians, it can be a guide post, reminding us to pause from our work for rest and renewal. We learn about Sabbath as the day of rest that God enacted after creating all the things. This opens up curiosity for us all as we ask, Does God…

When I was a stay-at-home parent, I needed government support and non-profit support to help feed and care for myself and my kids. Every time I pulled out my WIC checks, or medical assistance cards, I would glance around to see if anyone was watching. When I would go to the government services building, toting…

During some spring cleaning, I noticed a fly, dried up and clinging hopefully to my window screen. Usually, the bottom window track is the place to catch fly parts, but this death was unusual and I took notice. What happened here? While it seems reasonable that the fly tried to exit through the screen, why did it…

A year ago, I retold this old biblical story about Ezekiel and the dry bones. Like all good stories, it still resonates with us today. This is my take on the story from Ezekiel 37. Once upon a time, a tragic prophet, demoralized by his captors, had a dream. In his dream, he was lifted up…

During this season of Lent, our eyes are turned towards war. While we are not actively under attack, we bear witness to the dominion, subjugation, and exploitation of our fellow humans.We see the terror, the fight, the resilience, and the unknown. We ask ourselves seemingly unanswerable questions. We cry tears for wounds we can’t heal,…

As my hands change with age, I think about the hands that raised me. With stoic, Swedish charm, my grandfather would pull a carrot from the ground, wipe the dirt carelessly on his hip, and give it to me to eat. Memory corrodes over time and I swear that carrot was as big as a…

My least favorite part of learning to play the piano was music theory. While I didn’t mind sketching treble clefs and bass clefs, it was learning the terms and symbols that bored me to abandon the theory book on many afternoons. Avoiding the boring stuff worked until the day of my lesson and I’d be…