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All Posts By

Norman Kolenbrander

Essays

Remembering My First Communion

On a leafy Sunday morning, the girls, adorned in lacy white dresses, and the boys, decked out in immaculate suits and ties, excitedly joined their families in a colorful parade to Our Lady of Grace on Avenue W in Brooklyn, New York. Our son’s second-grade friends and their parents had…
Norman Kolenbrander
January 1, 2019
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A Visit to St. Nicholas

by Norman Kolenbrander St. Nicholas Orthodox Church is located above The Mystical Rose Catholic bookstore, across from Van Den Berg's Gift Shop on the busiest shopping street in my town, Pella, Iowa. It is the twenty-first century, after all, and we have our own little smattering of diversity to prove…
Norman Kolenbrander
January 1, 2013
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Be All That You Can Be

We want our kids to be all that they can be. We read descriptions of "tiger moms," dictating their child's every move to gain maximum results. We observe the phenomenon of "helicopter parents," constantly hovering to protect, defend, and enable their children to achieve their heart's desire So how hard…
Norman Kolenbrander
August 1, 2011
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Take a Poet to Lunch

"How do you find all that time to read?" a friend asks. "It's my job," I respond. "As a minister, I am a servant of the Word. Words are my tools. I need to keep my toolkit well stocked." This calls not only for serious ongoing study of the scriptures,…
Norman Kolenbrander
August 1, 2010
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Opening the Door

Norman Kolenbrander I've decided it's time to "come out of the closet." No, I am not about to leave my loving wife of forty-four years for a same-sex partner. I'm coming out to stand in solidarity with gays and lesbians who have all too often been pitched out of the…
Norman Kolenbrander
February 15, 2007