Brother David Kline

December 3, 1938 to October 19, 2010

Brother David at the first hearth. Spring 1974. Restored from original.

The Founding

Brother David Kline was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in the winter of 1938, the second son of a dairy farmer and a schoolteacher. He was raised Catholic, and he served in the Army in the late 1950s, and he studied at a seminary in the Midwest before leaving his order in 1968. He spent three years after that wandering. Some of those years were in the mountains of Peru, and some of them he would not speak about later. He returned to Nebraska in 1971 with a small satchel, two travelling companions, and what he called a plain instruction from the Shepherd.

In the spring of 1973 Brother David purchased a failed dairy farm outside Madison, Nebraska, with the last of his savings and a small loan from his elder sister. By the end of that summer, seven souls were living on the land. By the end of the decade, forty.

The Man

Brother David was a quiet man. He spoke softly and with long pauses. He wore the same grey wool coat for twenty years and refused to let it be replaced while it could still be mended. He loved the goats. He disliked the cold. He taught the Littles to read from a single Bible and a single almanac, with his own patient commentary filling in the rest.

He did not often give sermons. When he did, they were short, and they were mostly about tending.

The Vision of the Golden-Eyed Ram

In the autumn of 1983, at a Calling ceremony, Brother David had a vision in which he saw a single ram among the lambs, with eyes the color of old gold. The ram turned and faced the Shepherd directly, unafraid. The next morning Brother David named the boy he had seen in that vision, and began the long work of preparing him for a calling greater than his own.

That boy, twelve years old at the time, is Galeo, the Shepherd's Voice who leads us now.

His Passing

In the autumn of 2010 Brother David grew very tired. He asked to be moved to the small room behind the hearth, where he could smell the smoke of the kitchen and hear the Littles playing. He died on a Tuesday evening in October, with one of his hands on the shoulder of Galeo and the other hand on the floor.

He was seventy-one years old. He is buried on the east slope, under a cairn of river stones.

Stay in the Fold, Brother David.

Last Updated: August 3, 2019