And here is the Wannaskan Almanac with Word-Wednesday for October 21, 2026, the forty-second Wednesday of the year, the fifth Wednesday of fall, the third Wednesday of October, and the two-hundred ninty-fourth day of the year, with seventy-one days remaining. Wannaska Phenology Update for October 21, 2026 Tamaracks Turning Larix laricina, commonly known as the tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, or American larch, is a species of larch native to Canada, from eastern Yukon and Inuvik, Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, and also south into the upper northeastern United States from Minnesota to Cranesville Swamp, West Virginia. There is also an isolated population in central Alaska. The Anishinaabe word for tamarack is mashkiigwaatig /mash-KEE-gwah-tig/. A boreal deciduous conifer tree common to low-land areas such as swamps, fens, and bogs, reaching seventy-five feet tall, with a trunk up to twenty-four inches in diameter. The tamarack leaves are need...
With all the unrest going on in the world of immigration and ICE, I want to take us to a small book tucked quietly in the New Testament—Philemon. It’s only one chapter long, but it carries a story that speaks loudly into one of the most heated conversations of our day: how Christians should think about illegal immigration. The story centers around a man named Onesimus. He was a runaway slave—someone who had left his obligations, broken the law of his time, and fled. In Rome, he met the apostle Paul, and under Paul’s ministry, Onesimus became a believer… a brother in Christ. But here’s where the tension comes in. Onesimus had to go back. Paul loved him and valued him. Paul even said, “He is useful to me.” But Paul also knew Onesimus had unfinished business. He had obligations. He had wrongs to make right. He had a master he had fled from. And so Paul sent him back—not as punishment, but as part of repentance, restoration, and integrity. There’s a side of the immigration...