WEST FARGO – Greg Lardy wasn’t looking to write a book. He was just seeking a deeper relationship with God.
But the devotional he’d committed to reading during Lent 2016 challenged readers, especially men, to share more about their faith lives on social media. So Lardy took up the charge, one post at a time.
“Once the Easter season concluded, I was ready to move onto something else, but several people who had been following my journey throughout Lent encouraged me to keep going,” he says. “Before I knew it, I was sharing a daily inspirational message.”
The practice drew him on an even closer journey with God, prompting him to pay attention to how God walks with us in our daily lives, especially through nature.
Raised on a farm and ranch near Sentinel Butte, North Dakota, the oldest of five boys, Lardy has always been attracted to the outdoors.
This led to a career steeped in the study of agriculture at North Dakota State University, where, as vice president of agricultural affairs, Lardy leads the department’s teaching, research and extension programs. Though he’s been there for 27 years in various positions, he stepped into his most recent role in 2020.
It was around that year, during Covid, that Lardy’s reflective posts began gaining momentum, leading him to compile some into a book, ” Come to Him in the Silence: Meditations for Life’s Journey .”
Though Lardy expresses astonishment at how strongly his reflections resonate with others, his longtime friend Keith Wilson isn’t surprised.
“I look at Greg as a guy of true integrity who truly cares about people, encourages people, and wants the best for people,” Wilson says, adding that Lardy also “knows just where to re-center himself.”
The two met several decades ago, through the agriculture community, but also have communed through Holy Cross Catholic Church, where, 15 years ago, they committed to rising early every Thursday morning to attend a 6 a.m. group for men, “That Man is You.”
Initially, Wilson says, he and Lardy were slow to share their internal lives with the other men. But in time, that changed.
“I started to see Greg sharing more, and developing that relationship with Jesus,” he says. “The book fits well for Greg, with meditations that speak to his growth and his faith,” offering others the same encouragement and inspiration he’s brought to their group.
“He also shares many resources with us, whether meditations or podcasts,” Wilson says, including inviting members to attend a yearly silent retreat to strengthen their prayer lives.
“We still also get together for coffee or a bike ride,” Wilson says. “In those times, we don’t necessarily talk about our faith lives, but just share life experiences with each other.”
The book-writing process brought Lardy into a new dimension, with many stops and starts. When he realized the challenges of traditional publishing, he pursued self-publishing, finding WestBow Press a good fit.
An editor there talked him into a 30-day meditation, rather than the 365-day one he’d been envisioning. It was solid advice, Lardy says. The book launched in late May, and at his first signing at Holy Cross last month, all 100 copies he’d brought sold.
The Rev. Phil Ackerman was at that event and admits to being a bit nervous at first. “I thought, what is the turnout going to be on a Sunday afternoon in July?” But to his delight, it was “a huge success. We had to stand in line!”
It makes sense, he says, given Lardy’s involvement in the parish as a lector and Eucharistic minister. He also helped with the church’s massive building project, serving on a committee to plan fundraising. “Being part of that committee was actually fun, which seems odd,” Ackerman says, “but he was very capable and well-organized.”
Beyond those skills, however, Lardy has a keen “sense of the presence of God everywhere around him, and especially in trying to discover God in the silence.”
That’s not easy today, Ackerman says. “We busy ourselves with lots of noise, and while those things are good to some extent, (Lardy) challenges us to think and reflect on fostering our relationship with God in the silence.”
The inclusion of nature photos, matching them with various reflections, adds further value to the work, says Ackerman, who wrote the book’s foreword. “He took those himself. Just in his being out and about in God’s beautiful creation—and knowing the beauty of the creator because of what he created—that’s all so evident” in the reflections.
The pastor has found the meditations calming, “an invitation to slow down and just be aware of God’s presence.”
Ackerman says Lardy’s perseverance, especially as he hit roadblocks along the way to publication, also impressed him, along with the fact that the book is “a lay person’s book on meditations for other lay persons,” offering a perspective clergy might not have. “It’s written from the perspective of a man who holds a professional job, goes to work, and takes care of his family.”
Lardy’s maternal aunt, Rose Krukenberg, says, as the oldest sibling, Lardy has always had “a kind of take-charge personality,” but he also excelled in school. “He continues to be a learner.”
Krukenberg says she appreciates Lardy’s deep faith, and how he shares it in a gentle way. “You always knew he had a great love of God. A lot of that came from growing up on a farm and watching nature, and what God does in nature—in all his creation.”
Lardy’s reflections bring hope, she adds, something the world needs more than ever. “Even though I haven’t read it yet, I know that’s what it’s about,” she says confidently, “because I know him,” adding that she’s been promised a copy at an upcoming family reunion.
Wilson is about halfway through the meditations but plans to start over once he completes the read. “I suspect it will hit you in different ways each time you read through it,” he says, noting that Lardy’s “silent or soft fascination with nature” comes through.
Lardy credits Covid for helping bring him, and others, to a new level of dependence on God. “It interrupted the work and faith routine, and you had to really be more deliberate in saying, ‘Okay, we’re doing this virtual stuff, but that’s not enough.’ You wanted to go deeper, and that was the impetus to my starting to better understand this relationship.”
Finishing the book has not meant ending his nature observations. Lardy continues to seek out signs of God’s presence in the world, he says, jotting down notes into his phone when something catches his eye and heart. And by being open to those moments of glory, his own faith continues to be enriched.
“If you’re going to write about something, you need to go a hair deeper than what your reader would see,” he says. “This has forced me—or given me an opportunity—to learn and study things a little more, with a different purpose.”
Having now learned some of the ropes of self-publishing, Lardy is looking to a possible sequel. “Now that I know more than I did when I started, I can speed up the process a bit.”
“Come to Me in the Silence” can be found online, as well as locally at the NDSU bookstore and at Ferguson Books & More in West Fargo.
Below is one of Greg’s favorite entries in his book:
Psalm 46:10
Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations; I am exalted in the earth.
Being in the present is very hard for us to do. We are constantly thinking and worrying about what we have coming up later in the day, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. Or we are frustrated about something that happened in the past, bothered by something someone said, perhaps angry that we were cut off in traffic, or irritated about some other minor inconvenience.
God desires a relationship with us that is in the present. He desires a small bit of our time on a daily basis to help us get to know Him. He desires to give us time that is free of worry and anxiety about the future and time that is free of irritation, frustration and anger over what might have happened previously.
So don’t be afraid of the silence. The silence is where you will find Him seeking you. The silence is where He will calm your fears about the future. The silence is where He will give you peace from the frustrations of the past. The silence is where you will get to know Him.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Aug. 11, 2024.]
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