Every once in a while I read an article that reports on the results of a study by the Pew Research Center that reports that church attendance, especially among Roman Catholic and Protestant mainline congregations is declining. There may also be references to generational differences in church attendance . A popular topic is ministry to and with millennials. I’m starting to get to the point where I only skim such articles these days simply because they are boring. The decline in church attendance has been a reality and widely reported for all of my career as a minister. Differences between generations marked my adolescent and young adult years and have been visible for millennia. William Strauss and Neil Howe’s book, “Generations” was mildly amusing when it first came out but that was 25 years ago and a lot of contemporary generational theory is rehashing the issues raised in their book.

These are realities that have been a part of the landscape of religious life for all of my life and they are realities that will continue after my lifetime.

Although readers of this blog are not the ones writing the articles, I’d like to make a few observations about what is not going on. I’ve already read enough articles whose authors think they understand the dynamics of church growth and decline to know that there are plenty of theories that are useless in the real business of church life.

It is not about the music. Yes, it is true that you can tell the difference between churches by the beat at the door. Yes, there is a popular genre of music that is called “Contemporary Christian” that can be distinguished by slightly more modern rhythms and the use of different instruments. It can also often be distinguished by decidedly lightweight theology, but that is a different blog entirely. But the key to church growth and decline is not based in music. I have a hymnal from the 19th century that refers to the struggle between “old” and “new” hymns. Innovation and tradition have been in play in church music since Roman times. People of all ages have differences in their preferred music. There are teens walking around schools today with classical music loaded on their devices. There are seniors in nursing homes who have different tastes in music and who dislike the music that is beloved by their peers. Praise bands exist in declining congregations as well as in growing congregations.

Music is important in worship and a congregation that uses one type of music exclusively will attract a particular following. Usually those congregations also have detractors who once attended but have switched in search of something different. I happen to prefer worshiping with a very diverse congregation, so I enjoy many different styles of music in worship. I also enjoy working in the midst of community, so I favor types of music that involve participation and are led by groups rather than by individuals. And I enjoy working in a volunteer institution. Although we have a few part time paid musicians at our church, their jobs are to facilitate groups of volunteers. Even when attendance is light our choir has more participants than the praise band at churches that are much larger than ours.

Faithfulness is not measured by counting the number of people. One way to have a large church is to make the level of commitment very low. Show up when you feel like it and be entertained is the mode of some congregations. While that works for those congregations, it is not the manner of expressing faith that appeals to me. Big box churches are like big box stores - mass marketing that searches for the lowest common denominator. Wal-mart’s slogan “Always low prices. Always” might be adapted for some congregations: “Always low commitment. Always” Take a look at the agencies in the community that are providing direct services to help people. Whether it is Habitat for Humanity or Love INC or Hope Center or any of a dozen other institutions, you’ll find that their volunteers and financial resources often come from small congregations. The attendance on Sunday is not an indicator of how engaged in ministry a congregation will be. There are plenty of churches who spend all of their resources on institutional maintenance and have little impact beyond their own doors. Both small and big congregations can be places of service, but not all churches make mission a priority.

Identifying a target audience leads to a congregation where the people are all the same age. Part of the decline in mainline congregations is that they were very effective in recruiting members of the World War II generation. Right after World War II congregations filled up with young adults starting their families. They enjoyed being together and they formed strong communities. Then they grew old together. I’ve observed this phenomena in other congregations with different generations. I know a church that was filled with young families in the 1970’s that is now filled with people in their sixties and seventies and has very few children in attendance. It is a strong community, but it has been a community of people who are all the same age.

It is much more difficult to build a community of all ages than to form a monolithic culture where everyone is the same. However, a truly multi-generational community is a very meaningful place to belong and explore faith. Grandparents are great teachers of the value of faith and mentors for younger people who are seeking answers. Churches that target a specific age group tend to experience growth at certain phases of their history but also experience decline. While a young person might be interested in a congregation that has many different ages, they might be less attracted to a congregation that is exclusively elders. If they choose a congregation that is all people their own age they will become a congregation of elders with the passage of time.

So we will continue to seek to be faithful in the midst of seasons of growth and seasons of decline. We will seek to serve others without counting the cost. And, for at least the foreseeable future, we will be a congregation where one member’s favorite song is disliked by another member. You might not hear your favorite song every Sunday, but if you stick with us you’ll hear a lot of different kinds of music and we’ll get to know you well enough to include your songs in the mix.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Somewhere I once read that there are some nursing homes that offer extra services in exchange for an extra fee. They provide basic services to all who are in their care such as nutritions food, assistance with medications, a safe and clean room, nursing services as needed. I’m not sure what the extra services are, but I think they include things like assistance with correspondence, reading books and newspapers, running errands, laundry service and other services. At any rate, the story that was told to me was that one day a family was arranging care for their loved one and after the representative of the nursing home explained the services that would be provided for an extra fee, the family asked the aging person if there were any questions. After a pause the response came: “How much less could I get you to do if I paid you less?”

That very well could have been my Uncle Ted. Widowed at a fairly early age, Uncle Ted was a very independent person. When he got older he developed some problems with circulation. A couple of times he fell when at home alone. He may have passed out, that part is unclear. One time he grabbed the top drawer of a chest of drawers to steady himself. The drawer came out of the chest and landed on him after he fell. Without consulting any family members, he walked across the street to a nursing home and made arrangements for his own care. Shortly afterward, my father got a call from the nursing home. He and my mother went over to meet with the staff of the nursing home. They were at wits’ ends with my uncle. He would get up in the morning and be dressed by the time the staff came to assist him. He would make his way to the dining room before breakfast and sit waiting for his food. As soon as breakfast was served, he’d head for the door and leave the facility. The staff had tried talking to him about it and he would just respond. “No listen here. I’m the customer. I’m the one paying the bills. I came here for meals and a safe place to sleep. If I want to walk over to my house, I’m going to do it.”

We discovered he was going farther than his house. He was walking all around our small town when the mood seized him. He showed up for meals and to sleep at night, but most of the rest of the time he was out of the facility. Eventually my parents were able to negotiate permission for the facility to allow him to come and go. It was a lot of years ago and it was a small town and everyone involved knew that we wouldn’t be solving problems by suing one another.

From my Uncle Ted I learned an important lesson for ministry. Most of the time people don’t want you to try to improve their lives. Lots of people come to talk to me about a wide variety of things going on in their lives. Very few of them want me to actually give advice. Even when they talk to me about moral and religious matters, even when they say, “What do you think?” they don’t want advice. Sometimes people come to talk to me and want me to agree with some point they are making. Sometimes people come to talk to me who wish that another family member or friend would make some changes in their life. People rarely want me to tell them what to do.

They want me to listen.

Yesterday I visited with a church member who came into my office eager to talk. We got past the small talk about the weather quickly and went straight to a disagreement with an adult child. I have my office set up so that I have to turn away from my desk to greet people coming into the office. That way I can show them that they have my attention by turning my back on the computer and the pile of books and papers on the desk. I invited my visitor to sit down and repeated a few of the things he had told me so that he knew I heard what he was saying and that I was paying attention. After a short period of time he got up, thanked me for the visit, and went on about his day.

Most of my pastoral counseling works in a similar fashion. It isn’t much like psychological counseling or cognitive therapy at all. I don’t set goals or work for specific solutions to problems. I don’t offer advice or make suggestions. I just listen. Sometimes I offer a prayer. Most of my prayers are non specific. I ask for peace or clarity or discernment.

I am often told that I’m a very effective counselor.

I have a number of congregants who come by on a fairly regular basis for a short chat. Mostly what they get from me is a listening ear. Sometimes they find out that I share their grief; that I, too, miss their loved one; that I resonate with their sense of injustice; that I am puzzled by the decisions and behaviors of others.

What I have discovered is that what people really need doesn’t come from me. When facing a life-ending illness, a person needs peace that comes from God, not platitudes from my mouth. When journeying through grief, people need to know that God has not abandoned them, not something that is mine to dispense. When feeling alienated and cut off from the community or from God, individuals need relationships not techniques.

Sometimes, on good days, I can be a pathway for God’s grace and healing and peace. Usually that happens when I relax and allow God to work through me. I can always tell when that occurs. When it does occur the exchange with another is energy-giving and not energy-sapping.

Whether it be a nursing home or a church, I’m not interested in the “add ons.” Far more valuable may be the discovery that less, not more, is what the person needs from us.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

It isn’t uncommon for me to devote a blog post to some obscure theological debate that probably isn’t important to most people. But I have other interests and passions beside theology and there are other topics upon which I am capable to engaging in rather obscure debates and conversations. My love of canoeing has led me to reading quite a bit of Canadian history. The role of the canoe in the story of Canada is huge and the adaptation of settlers to native technologies and ways is a big part of the story. Fur traders and settlers succeeded in their lives in Canada in large part because of their ability to master the use of canoes and other skills that were a part of the indigenous way of life.

The adoption of indigenous ways was so complete that many of the early explorers became part of native communities. By the 19th century there were so many people of mixed American Indian and European ancestry that a new category, Metis, was named and is still in use today to describe people of mixed heritage. A movement, especially strong in the Red and Saskatchewan river valleys, arose to call for independence for what was called the Metis nation.

As has been the case in the United States, there were also Canadians of European ancestry who so fully adopted indigenous ways that they self identified as Indian even though they had no genetic connection to those whose way of life they had adopted. If you speak of “wannabe Indians” in Canada, the name of Grey Owl usually comes up. Archibald Belaney was born in Britain and emigrated to Canada at the age of 19. He managed to make his way to Bear Island on Lake Temagami. The trip, in those days was a rigorous canoe journey. Belaney was led by Bill Guppy who was a professional trapper and guide. Just making it to Bear Island required the young man to learn whitewater paddling, upstream polling and strenuous portaging. Perseverance, a positive attitude and the willingness to learn survival skills in the face of exhaustion would have been required of the young man. He seemed to thrive on the challenge.

On Bear Island, he met people Teme-Augama First Nation who furthered his education in wilderness travel and survival skills. He pursued the life of a trapper and took his first wife, Angele, on Bear Island. It was there, in the early 20th century that he adopted the name Gray Owl. Later, after trapping a beaver with two kits who survived because Gray Owl adopted and bottle fed them in his cabin, he gave up the life of a trapper and became an outspoken advocate of conservation. He was a good writer and eloquent storyteller and soon he had quite a following across Canada and in several other countries. His writings urging the conservation of wild places were influential in the formation of Canadian parks and preserves.

It was only after his death that Grey Owl’s English roots and ethnic heritage came to life. Since that time he has been a controversial figure. Some argue that he was a fraud who lived his life pretending to be something that he was not. Others see the wisdom of his words and his positive impact on the preservation of wilderness as a lasting legacy to the nation of Canada. Listen to enough Canadian paddlers and the topic of Gray Owl, along with passionate opinions is sure to come up. Kana, the journal of Paddle Canada, will run articles and letters mentioning Gray Owl from time to time and wilderness advocates frequently quote some of his words.

There is something very appealing about native ways and identity. There seems to be no end of people from outside of South Dakota who want to visit a reservation and participate in tribal ceremonies. I know of some people who have two separate tracks of spiritual ceremonies: one that is private and part of their own traditions and practices, and another that is open to participation by non-natives for an appropriate donation. The small stream of revenue from those who want to sit in a sweat lodge or witness a sun dance helps support people who are the victims of generational poverty that grew out of the reservation system. If people knew the whole story of attempts at genocide, of boarding school violence, of the lack of jobs and economic collapse, they would not choose to identify as “Indian.” Still there is so much romance that I know hundreds of Americans of European ancestry who claim to have an Indian - usually a woman - somewhere in their family tree. There are probably more Indian princess or Indian maiden stories told by Americans of European descent than there are actual Native people who are known face to bace by members of the dominant culture.

I have found that long term relationships with our neighbors, however, require honesty. I don’t need to pretend I’m someone that I am not. I don’t need to claim a heritage that doesn’t exist. I am welcomed into the lives, homes and churches of our Native American partners by simply being myself. Our brothers and sisters don’t expect us to become them. Most of my native friends are very adept at sensing insincerity and the inconsistencies between outward appearance and inward commitment. They’ve taken enough BS to recognize it a mile away. There is no need for me to do any pretending when I am spending time on the reservation. I’m just me. Most of my mother’s ancestors were settlers who came from Europe for a wide variety of reasons including the promise of economic gain. My father’s people were more transient, rarely living in the same place for more than a couple of generations, who left Europe under pressure because of their religious and political beliefs. I grew up in territory that was taken from the Apsaalooké, known as The Crow Nation, when the reservation was downsized to its current borders.

So I won’t be weighing in with an opinion on Gray Owl. I'll leave that debate to my Canadian friends. His contributions to the conservation remain regardless of his heritage. His adopted ways and family were meaningful to him and I’ve no problem using his adopted name as well. By the words he wrote and spoke and the way he lived, his story has captured my attention.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Yesterday five chaplains served a barbecue lunch to about 125 Pennington County Sheriff’s employees. It was snowing here in Rapid City, so we had to adapt our plans because of the weather. We went to work. We rearranged the furniture in the Patrol Briefing Room, set up the grill in a protected outside area near a stairway door, set up some steam trays to keep the food warm. By the time the officers began to show up for lunch, we had a system going with some staffing the grill, others shuttling food back and forth, others greeting guests and helping serve the food. When the meal was finished, we cleaned up the room, rearranged the tables, put away our supplies, loaded coolers and grill into pickups and had the facility ready for the next shift briefing which occurred at 2:30 p.m. What made the adventure so much fun was the way in which we chaplains work together. There were just five of us, all from different denominational backgrounds, with different theological perspectives. One is just completing his studies at a four-year Bible college. Two have bachelors degrees and two have earned doctorates. We range in age from early thirties to mid sixties. A couple of us are old enough to be parents to the youngest ones. But we work together very well. It isn’t that we have had a lot of practice working together. We are just a group of people who are used to pitching in and getting the job done.

I have the good fortune to work with several different groups of people who are that way. Our woodchuck team at the church is that way. When we have taken trips to Costa Rica, our traveling groups have been that way. The rummage sale crew is that way. But not every group comes together to accomplish a task as easily. I’ve been in the room when we were short of volunteers. I’ve known people who are quick to want to be named chairman or leader, but slow to get the work done. I’ve hung out with groups where there is more talk than work.

I think that part of the difference comes from the way we grew up. It is not a generational difference, however. I’ve known people of all ages who know how to work and who are quick to participate in group activities. I’ve known other people, of different ages, who don’t seem to know how to work with others.

I remember being a junior high student (although our town was too small to have a junior high school). I was at summer camp. One day we went with our family groups on a hike. We carried with us foil pouch lunches. The lunches had hamburger, potatoes and carrots and the plan was to build a small fire and cook the lunches over the coals. After watching our counselor try and fail to light the fire, I began to gather moss and kindling from nearby. I took out my pocket knife and shaved a dry stick. I found a small piece of pitch wood and laid a small fire. After the counselor had gone through half a book of matches without success, I started my little fire with a single match and added wood until it was ready to cook the lunches. I remember thinking that it was strange that the counselor didn’t seem to know how to build a fire. I also remember thinking that it was strange that the other campers didn’t automatically gather firewood. They seemed to be waiting for instructions when the situation seemed to me to be obvious.

Over the years at dozens and dozens of camps I have observed that some campers come with the basic skills and abilities to participate in small group work and others seem to lake those skills and abilities. I remember a camp a dozen or more years ago when I had to provide some basic instruction on passing food for family-style dining. There were campers at my table who figured out how to get food from the serving dish nearest to them, but who didn’t think to pass it to others or to ask that other dishes were passed to them. I have no memory of learning such things. It was just a part of the family where I grew up.

Lately, there have been some good articles in the magazines I read about the need for unstructured play for children. In our over-organized world, some children are not given enough time to just play. They have organized activities to fill their days and as a result don’t develop the same initiative as those who are given opportunities to create their own activities. I’m encouraged to read these articles because I have observed the same thing. There are children who don’t seem to know what to do unless given direct instructions from a leader. Youth become involved in our youth groups who don’t have basic planning skills and who expect programming to be provided for them. When asked what events or activities they’d like to pursue, they are slow to answer, wondering why they are even being included in the process. We have to teach them how to take on basic leadership roles. Sometimes they even resent the fact that they are being asked to provide leadership.

While I agree that free play is important in child development, I also believe that work is important. A few simple chores can teach a child a great deal about successful living with others. A preschooler can place dirty dishes in the sink and wipe off a table. They can pick up toys and help put clothes away. Children enjoy real work that contributes to the family. When our children were little, some of their chores required assistance. I would sometimes have to re-wash dishes. When camping, I might have to go around and set the tent pegs a bit deeper. Raking leaves with the kids didn’t always result in less time or even less work for me. But we learned to work together and our children grew up to be people who know how to pitch in and participate.

Decades from now people will recognize the difference that a few chores have made in people’s lives. I’m grateful to the parents of young children who have the patience and foresight to help their children learn how to work with others.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I am fortunate to work in a place that encourages prayer. It isn’t just that prayer is expected of pastor snd encouraged by the church. The place is well suited for praying. Just across the hallway from my office is the sanctuary of the church, a room that was carefully designed and built for community prayer. That space has been made holy by over a half century of weddings, baptisms, funerals, and regular worship services. When I sit in the pews thoughts come to mind of others who have come to that room at important moments of their lives, of promises that have been made in that place, and of those who have passed on. The light streaming through stained glass gives the room a special quality and the large free standing cross lends a distinct visual focus to the room.

What I know, however, is that prayer and drawing close to God is not limited or defined by space. There are places that are special to us. There are places of beauty where we have encountered God’’s ongoing creation. There are places that carry deep and powerful memories. But I don’t need a special place to pray.

Some of the most meaningful prayers have come to me in places that were designed for other purposes. I have prayed with people in hospital waiting rooms and at the bedside in a nursing home. I have prayed in the county jail and in the back seat of a patrol car. I have prayed standing in the front lawn of a home while officers conduct an investigation inside. I have prayed sitting alone on a hard wooden chair waiting for the conclusion of courtroom proceedings.

There are some who question the value of church buildings. If God is everywhere, they ask, why do we need a special building with all of its associated costs? They note, rightly, that one can pray while walking in the woods and while waking the creek on a fishing expedition. I hear those kinds of questions and observations less frequently than others because my position in relationship to the church is clear. But I know those thoughts are a part of our community and they are reported to me more often that I might have expected. My response usually is something like, “God not only speaks to individuals, but also to groups of people. A church is a place where you can belong to something bigger than yourself and connect with experience deeper than your own.” I have no illusion that my thoughts have much impact on those who do not find meaning in the structure of a church, but I hope that we can continue to keep the door open and the welcome mat out so that those who are not familiar with the ways of the church feel invited and welcomed to come and see what we do.

I have the feeling that many people, even those who are regular participants in the life of the church, don’t really know what I do with my time. There is much to my work that isn’t immediately obvious and often I am engaged in activities that are about the lives of others and the stories of what has happened are not mine to tell.

Some of my daily work, however, is just slogging through the mundane and everyday tasks. There are pieces of equipment like the sound system and adaptive listening devices and the church’s computer system that need maintenance and ongoing care and attention. I might spend an hour in front of a computer screen followed by another hour reading before the next person comes to the church in the morning. A small portion of my job is providing supervision and guidance to others who work at the church. I can be a counselor and consultant for their work and home lives at times, and an advocate for increased supports for them at another time. I participate in a lot of meetings, some directly involved in the operation of the institutional church; others expanding my education and work skills; still others seeking solutions to issues of our community. I visit people in hospitals and nursing homes and in their own homes. I move the furniture and set up rooms for use. I even employ somewhat limited janitorial skills to keep everything running smoothly. One thing is certain, my work is varied and different, with new challenges every day.

What I do hope can be known is that the work I do is worshipful work. It is infused with prayer and careful listening for God’s direction in my life. It is conducted with an understanding that the work I do cannot be done by myself.

My office has gorgeous windows that look out on the back yard of the church, with its crab apple trees and the wooded hillside beyond. We are on a hill so I can also look down on the urban core of our city. It seems as if my work is conducted at the place where open nature and the city meet. I often spend a few minutes just looking out the windows at the world. Occasionally an airplane will go past on its way to or from the air base or the regional airport reminding me that the world is much more vast and interconnected than can be seen from my windows.

I pray that my life and my ministry will not, however, be conducted from inside the building looking out. As wonderful as the windows are, the place of my work isn’t an office surrounded by books and staring into a computer screen. The place of my work is where the people of the church are and the windows invite me to go outside and experience the world.

Years ago, at the end of a 12-hour day in which I had invested a lot of time supporting a grieving family, a church member casually commented to me, “You must have had a fun day. I stopped by your office and noticed that you weren’t at work.” I responded that much of my work doesn’t take place in an office.

I hope that I take not only my body out of the office, but also the prayers of my people. It is the prayers that make all the difference in the world.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Although it was 42 years ago, I remember the first day of the first class of seminary. I had recently graduated from college at the top of my class and was proud of my new degree and my proven ability to succeed in academia. We had completed our first year of married life and I was feeling at home in a joyful relationship. We had successfully navigated a move from Montana to Chicago on our own. We had earned significant fellowships for graduate theological education and I was confident that we could negotiate the expenses of urban living and full time study. I also had a clear path in my mind. I intended to study hard for a few years, earn my degree and when completed we would move back to our home state and begin serving as ministers in one of the churches there. We’d probably start out in a small town, and though I was enjoying our brief sojourn into urban living, I knew that I’d be just fine in a small town.

In that first class session, we sat in a circle of chairs and one by one we were to introduce ourselves and speak of what brought us to seminary and what we hoped to get out of our time there. I was eager to share, but listened as the others spoke. There was a student who wanted to become an academic and teach religion. Another had started down the road toward a career in engineering and discovered that it wasn’t yielding joy and wanted to switch directions. Another was emerging from a painful breakup and was seeking to get to know new people in different ways. There was a student who was passionate about working for social justice and felt that a seminary education would boost effectiveness for the struggle. Several were interested in becoming counselors and using their skills to help troubled people. A couple told of hard and challenging travels from distant countries in pursuit of obtaining an American education.

Afterwards a handful of us gathered in one of the tiny seminary apartments for a cup of tea at the end of the day. I asked rhetorically, “Doesn’t anyone else want to just be a minister in a church?”

Of course, God works through our many different callings with grace and direction and now, looking back, I can see that many of my classmates have given long and faithful service to the church. Not all of us, however, did end up dedicating our life to the ministry. There is a colleague who later became a lawyer. There are several who have served much of their careers in secular organizations. Some have gone into church administration, serving in Conference and national church settings. One colleague went into military chaplaincy and earned an early retirement. I think that those of us who have served in local congregations for all of our careers are the minority.

Throughout my career I have had plenty of contact with those who consider themselves to be experts on the Christian ministry who have found ways to work in other settings. A successful writer who received the bulk of his income from the proceeds of his books and from his speaking engagements traveled around the United States and internationally proclaiming the results of his extensive studies of the church. He was full of advice, most of it good, about changes in practice for ministers and trends for churches of various sizes. He was considered by many church leaders to be the leading expert in small church ministry. At the time I had been serving a 42 member congregation and a 160 member congregation for more than 5 years in a rural and isolate corner of North Dakota. I noted that by serving two churches at once, I had accumulated some experience in leading small congregations. The “expert,” I would remind people, had never actually served a small congregation.

There have been plenty of other experts over the years. There are dozens of companies who employ those with theological training to serve as consultants. Some of those firms specialize in fund-raising, others in institutional organization. There are building consultants, program experts, and folks who sell different products to churches. Hymnbooks, educational curricula, Bible study books, small group resources, video series and more are all available from these various companies. There are a lot of people who are promoting various financial investment and retirement savings schemes for ministers and who, for a small commission will manage our funds. There seems to be no shortage of people who claim to love the church who can’t imagine actually working for a church.

I am struck by how many people there are who claim to be in love with the church and who have found jobs which involve very little commitment to actual congregations. I’m known to often ask rhetorically whether or not these people even attend church.

I have been continuously employed by local congregations of the church since the beginning of my senior year in college. The church has not been my only employer in my adult life, however. I’ve worked other jobs because of a need to supplement my church salary to support my family. I’ve driven school bus, been a radio DJ, done page layout for a weekly newspaper, been a free lance writer of Church resources, served as an educational consultant, and done a variety of other jobs. The focus of my life and the core of my experience, however, has been working in congregations and serving them as they pursue their ministries.

I am among the lucky ones. I had a sense of how I wanted to invest my life and I’ve been able to do so. My career has, however, been filled with surprises and unexpected turns. There have been a couple of times when I believed that God was calling me to serve the church in a different setting when no call existed. There have been a few efforts at being called to positions that were for others. Still, for a guy who wanted to be a minister, I have been blessed to be a minister. I got my wish and I know it was the right thing for me.

I pray that those whose careers led them to other places have found some of the joy and satisfaction that I have known. It is a good life to be a pastor.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

In typical South Dakota fashion we went from spring to summer in a single day yesterday. The temperature was very close to 80 degrees in the late morning and I forgot my water bottle and regretted it for splitting wood. I came home and drank a couple of glasses of water to restore myself. Then I waited until late afternoon to mow the lawn just to avoid a bit of the heat. In the summer I often mow the lawn after supper in the evening. There is plenty of light and the temperatures are cooler. I nearly ran out of light last night, but things don’t look too bad out there. I’m a bit behind the curve with yard work this year. It seems like our “on again, off again” spring doesn’t always line up with days when I have time for yard work.

This being South Dakota, of course, the forecast is calling for the possibility of snow on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week, though it is unlikely that there will be even an inch of accumulation. Perhaps the snow and colder temperatures will help to counter the dry conditions in the woods.

We could see the smoke plume from a fire burning about 15 miles from our home as we drove from town yesterday afternoon. The fire crews are already getting an early workout. According to the Great Plains Fire Information web site the fire has been named Storm Hill fire. Flames were clearly visible from the corner where highways 385 and 16 meet at three corners and the road into Hill City from the east was closed over night. There are some pretty good pictures of the fire on the web site.

The place where the fire is burning has a lot of dead trees that were killed by pine bark beetles. I’m sure that they provide a lot of fuel and add to the complications of fighting the fire.

It seems like it might be a long summer for firefighters. They were battling not only the flames and rigged terrain, but also the heat of the day. Waiting for a cooler time wasn’t an option for them, though I’m sure that there were ground crews working through the night establishing lines around the fire.

It has taken us a long time to begin to understand the role of fire in the life cycle of the forest. I grew up straining my eyes looking for fires. My father flew fire patrol in a light airplane over Yellowstone Park several days a week. I often was allowed to go along on the flights and remember learning to look right at the horizon for smoke plumes. It was assumed that fires needed to be put out and that early detection, while they were small, was the key to keeping the forest alive. My father was proud of the fire record established in the 25 years that he flew patrol. Then, after he had died, in 1988 and 1989, the fires that came to Yellowstone were huge and nearly impossible to fight. Great sections of trees were consumed in fires that were impossible to fight. Despite extensive bulldozer lines only the coming of winter snows finally extinguished the ’88 fires. Putting out every small fire wasn’t the best forest management plan.

On the other hand, the hills are now occupied by lots of houses and other buildings. And many of them are scattered in the trees. Allowing fires to burn quickly threatens homes and the infrastructure that supports our living in the forest. Its a tough balance to maintain. Our attempts at working with fire by starting controlled burns in particular areas has only been partially successful. We’ve seen a few “controlled burns” burn out of control and fires spread in unintended ways. Even with a lot of modern fire information the behavior of fires is unpredictable and conditions can change with every shift of wind or change in the temperature.

Today won’t allow time for yard work in our household. We are hosting our Conference Minister at worship this morning. Two organizations upon whose boards I’ve served, The Black Hills Chamber Music Society and Bells of the Hills are holding concerts this afternoon and the Black Hills Association of the United Church of Christ meets in Edgemont. Obviously that’s more events than one person can attend, so we’ll be going two different directions in different cars today. There’s nothing new about that. It has been our lifestyle for long enough that it all seems pretty normal.

The busyness of our lives is minor when compared to the lives of the folks in our congregation. There is at least one wild lands fire specialist who will probably be out on the fire lines today. Another family has members out of town traveling with a son’s soccer team. Another family is deep into plans for a weeding next week. The snow birds are back in South Dakota and we’re already gearing up for tourist season, when many of us welcome guests into our homes as family and friends come to the hills for the same beauty and tranquility that attracted us to live here in the first place. There is plenty to see and do and it is a joy to live in a place that others like to visit.

Of course what is appealing about the hills is not the intense activity and running around. This is a place for quiet contemplation, for sitting still and watching the birds build their nests, for paddling on a reservoir and listening the the quiet, for taking a long walk and feeling the wind on your cheeks. The hills are best enjoyed at a very slow pace with time to just sit and listen. Sometimes we clutter our lives with so much activity that we don’t take full advantage of the place where we live.

So I treasure the moments to sit on my deck in the evening and just listen to the hills. I enjoy the opportunity to just go outside and breathe the air. And I resolve to slow down just a bit and pay a bit more attention as I enter this new season. That, of course, is easier said than done.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I’ve been flirting with spring fever for quite a while, but yesterday it hit full force. It was a lovely day in the hills. We slept with the bedroom window open and I drove around town with the car windows open. After work I put on a pair of shorts, which is fairly unusual for me. I don’t wear shorts that often in the summertime. It seemed right, however, and a way to enjoy the weather.

Of course we know the perils of spring weather - at least those of us who have lived in these parts for a few years. I can remember a blizzard on May 11 that deposited a couple of feet of snow on everything. Although the crab apple trees are in full bloom, there are some other trees that are just beginning to bud out, still suspicious of the possibilities of additional snow.

The daffodils are putting on a display in front of our house. They’ve been snowed on at least twice since they started blooming and they look pretty sad with the heads turned down when they are covered with snow. Still they are resilient flowers and a little sunshine turn them back toward the light and perk them up. You have to look closely to see the imperfections in the blossoms that are the result of the ups and downs of the weather. There is plenty of green foliage and there will be sufficient sun and rain to nurture the bulbs to produce more blossoms next year.

It is interesting that the deer seem to have left the daffodils alone this year. I don’t think that they like the flowers, but some years they can’t seem to resit biting off a few blossoms. Even when they spit them out, you can tell that they have been sampling. One theory that I have is that the young deer don’t know what does and what does not taste good to a deer until they sample quite a few things that they end up spitting out. If that is the case, the daffodils fare pretty well simply because they bloom so early. We’ve probably got three or four weeks before we see the baby deer appearing in our neighborhood. They like to wait until the threat of snow is over before the little ones are born.

The daffodils have gotten me to thinking about resilience. The ability to experience adversity and persist is a quality I admire. I like to think that I could show resilience, though my abilities in that arena haven’t really been tested. I’ve lived a privileged life with little adversity. I’ve been fortunate in family and marriage. I’ve enjoyed exceptional health. I have a loving and supporting congregation of people who surround me. I’ve not been present for the worst of natural disasters. Life has been good to me.

Still, I know that I will need resilience before this life’s journey is over. Every human being faces loss and grief. Pain is built into this life. There are a thousand things that today I do with ease that will become challenges as my physical abilities begin to fade. I won’t always be able to swing a boat up onto the rack on the back of my pickup. The day will come when I will have to pause to catch my breath to walk in the woods. As a friend who uses a wheelchair for mobility is fond of saying, “Just because you are temporarily abled doesn’t mean you won’t be parking in the handicapped spot before the end of your life.” I think “temporarily abled” is a pretty good description.

We will all experience disability of one form or another in this life.

Part of developing resilience is learning to be fully alive in each moment. Being fully alive requires the discipline of paying attention to what is going on right here, right now. We are equipped with brains that are capable of envisioning the future. We are filled with anticipation about what will come. When the future looks bleak, we can become depressed. It isn’t the only way that humans become depressed, but when times get tough it can be a real advantage to be able to simply deal with the present and let go of our hopes and fears for the future. “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.” (Matthew 6:34)

The daffodils are here to be appreciated today. I know that the blossoms will be gone by July and by the end of August it will be difficult to distinguish the remaining leaves from the other things in the garden. They are good models for me. Shine while you are able. Shake off the snow and raise your head high. Display what beauty you are able while you are able. Understand that other flowers will come and display more colors later.

The daffodils are the first blossoms of the spring in our yard if you don’t count the dandelions. We tried crocus and tulips the first years we lived here but the deer really love those plants and they have not survived. The daffodils promise that the iris will follow. There will be flowers this summer. There will be flowers next year as well. Even after the time comes for us to sell this house and move to a place that requires less effort and care, the flowers will come.

Last year, in an effort to reduce yard work, we moved a couple of flower beds that were farther from the house. We dug up the bulbs and transplanted them to areas closer to the house. We hauled in fresh compost and seeded grass in the old areas to reduce the care to mowing and occasional watering. The daffodils are blooming in their new bed. But there are also a bunch of daffodils that we missed that have come up in the old beds. Even with the disruption of the rototiller and the depositing of fresh compost and the seeding of grass, they have made their appearance in the old place. Some of them will get transplanted this spring. We really only want grass in the old places. But it might take several years before we get everything moved.

I admire the resilience of the daffodils.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Here is a fragment of a sermon I doubt that I’ll ever preach:

When you say that you are spiritual, but not religious, I have listened carefully and tried hard to understand what you mean. Quite frankly the not religious part is pretty easy to discern. You don’t participate in a formal religious group. You don’t attend church regularly. You don’t have a discernible spiritual discipline. You don’t aspire to a particular creed or doctrine. Your criticism of religious institutions is familiar to those of us who are a part of religion. You are quick to point out cases of corruption and abuse perpetrated by church leaders. You can cite occasions in history when the church has, through political manipulations or through silence, perpetrated violence. You point out how religious fanaticism and fundamentalism have led to violence. These criticisms are not new to us. We understand them. In fact, we in the church are very good at self-criticism. We have a history filled with divisions and reforms and differences in institutional policy. We have been frustrated with the institutional church. We get your criticism of institutional religion.

What is less clear, looking in from the outside, is your claim to being spiritual. Of course all human beings are spiritual by nature. Without imposing our theology on you, we believe that every human being is born of God and loved by God. We have discovered, however, that nurturing the spirit is not something that occurs randomly in the midst of a busy life, but rather something that grows with attention and practice. Spirituality is not, primarily, a set of beliefs or a certain kind of intellectual assent. But we know that much of the interiority of a person is not visible to those who are looking in from the outside and we are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

We have a closely held theological concept that is called incarnation. You’ve heard us speak of it because you’ve allowed yourself to be dragged to church at Christmas time. Being one who attends at Christmas, however, you may believe that we apply this principle only to Jesus of Nazareth, who was God in human form. What you might not know is that we see God’s presence in every person. We see God’s presence in you. You, too, are the divine in a human body. Our question for you is this: Will you become totally embodied? Will you open yourself to fully experience grief? Will you risk loving enough to have your heart broken? Are you willing to be fully alive? Will you show up and be physically present?

We don’t know the answers to these questions because from our point of view it appears that you are constantly in motion - defined by doing rather than by being. You fill every awake moment with activity and impose that level of activity upon your children as well. We’ve seen you run from event to event and activity to activity. We are aware that your time is consumed to the fullest, that you are short of sleep, that you are involved in so many activities. We don’t always understand why you drive your 10-year-old thousands of miles to participate in an interstate hockey league. We don’t always understand why your teen’s soccer became such a priority that you invest two out of every three weekends supporting that passion. But we know that you are constantly in motion and that you have structured your life to be as void of free time as possible.

You see, from our point of view, you appear to be religious. Your religion is not a conventional one. It is sports or work or a particular recreational activity, but you are willing to dedicate a huge portion of your life to that activity. It does confuse us. You say that you are spiritual but not religious, but it appears from the outside that you are religious, but not spiritual.

So I will tell you something about our religious practice that you probably already know at some level. We take that whole incarnation theology very seriously. Not only do we see the divine embodied in human form so much that we seek to encourage everyone to be aware of that embodiment, we also believe in the form of embodiment that takes place in groups. You know the word: corporation. It comes from the Latin word for body, corpus. A corporation is a body. It is a group of people sharing a common task. You’ve experienced this in your work and in many of the recreational activities you pursue. You enjoy being a part of a group with similar goals and interests. It isn’t just your children’s sports that you enjoy. You also enjoy the culture of other parents who pursue the same goals and interests.

We believe in the concept of incarnation so much that we have come to the conclusion that there is more to life than a single individual. The spiritual is embodied not only in individuals, but also in groups of people. We call them congregations. For us a creed is not some document that every individual has to endorse, but rather a statement of faith that is so expansive that it takes all of us to embody such a belief. It is more than we could believe on our own. It is what we believe together. Just inhabiting the world is insufficient. We feel called to display a willingness to be found by the world we inhabit.

We gather with others not because we feel some kind of superiority over those who do not, but because we have discovered that being spiritual requires practice. Some things are not easy the first time you try. Being quiet is a challenge. Our minds try to wander the first time we try to be fully present. We feel disconnected in the early stages of attempting to experience the spirituality of the group. The prayers and songs that connect us with the flow of history - with generations past and future - have to be repeated again and again.

Still, we have not connected well with you. We need more practice at that task. So we will listen more carefully. We will observe more closely. We will speak less often and open ourselves to you. We know you are right. You are spiritual. The spirit does occupy your body. We hope you will help us discover who you really are.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I hear my alarm and roll over to turn it off. I have read about the applications that monitor your sleep cycles and the modify the moment of the alarm to go off when you are near the waking cycle of your sleep, but I haven’t invested in such a device and, frankly am unlikely to bother to wear a monitor when sleeping anyway. Some mornings I’m more alert than others, but I have been good at getting up quickly since I was a little boy. My first task, while I’m still sitting on the edge of my bed is to mentally review the day ahead. Without checking my calendar for the complete list of appointments, I can recall most of the major events by memory. I’ll need the information about what I am doing to choose appropriate clothing. Some days simply demand a change of clothes. Yesterday I started out with a Sheriff’s Office shirt and a pair of tactical pants and mid day switched to casual work clothes. Today, I remember that I need to wear a suit and tie because I am officiating at a committal ceremony at Black Hills National Cemetery before I will have a chance to stop at home. I’ll probably be in the suit and tie all day long, which gave me a twinge as I arose because I also have an appointment to get my teeth cleaned before meeting the family at the funeral home. Usually I avoid wearing a tie for medical or dental appointments and for days when I get a haircut. I wear bow ties which make the dentist’s bib sit rather unevenly on my neck and chest as the hygienist performs the routine duties. I could remove or at least untie the tie for the dental appointment. I could just make the hygienist deal with it. We’ll see.

The problems that arise in my morning stream of consciousness are incredibly small and insignificant when I think of the things that others are facing today.

Later today I’ll visit with a man and his wife in the hospital. He will awaken in the hospital for another day. It has been two weeks for him and the end is not yet in sight. No one will say for sure how many days he will remain in the hospital and whether he will be discharged to rehabilitation or a nursing home when he is ready. She will rise weary from weeks of stress and worry and the effort of keeping a daily vigil that involves leaving her home and routine behind. Both need to make a conscious effort to keep one another’s spirits up. The news and slow progress have been discouraging and it takes a real effort to avoid projecting depression on a partner.

If I get time I’ll make a few phone calls trying to find single bed for an elderly woman who was dropped off at an area motel by a family member without any resources at all. After a night in the motel, she had no place to stay the next night and no resources to even obtain a meal. Helpers have intervened and there is a place where she can gain temporary lodging, but a bed is needed. The waiting list for Section 8 subsidized housing has more than 80 names on it. It takes about 18 months to work up to the top of the list. That’s 18 months of homelessness for many. If you don’t have an address, you can’t qualify for food assistance. Combine that with those who are chronically addicted and not even on the list and those who are transient and won’t be in our town long enough to qualify for housing and there are probably between one and two hundred people in our city who wake this morning without knowing where they will sleep tonight. There attention will be diverted from this problem by the fact that finding enough food to eat will consume much of their energy today.

I have two friends who will receive infusions of chemotherapy drugs today and another who will undergo dialysis. They will wake with thoughts of needles and medical treatment on their minds, each wondering how much they can tolerate and whether or not the treatment is being effective. Once you enter into a plan of treatment, there is a feeling that others are taking over some of the decisions. You comply with medical advice but wonder how much of it is really aimed at a cure and how much is simply going through the motions because no one knows what else to do. How long do you keep up without giving up?

Another friend, now a couple of years into recovery from a stroke will wake knowing that he will have to wait for help before he can get out of bed to take care of his basic needs. He can be somewhat self sufficient once he is in his wheelchair, but the transfer from the bed to the wheelchair still requires assistance. Usually he needs assistance to transfer from the wheelchair to be toilet and though he can wash and dress the top half of his body, the bottom half requires more help.

These and many other people around the world aren’t worrying about what they will wear.

There are millions of people in the world who don’t even have a choice of what to wear. The abundance in my closet and chest of drawers would baffle them. Why would anyone need so many different outfits?

It is clear that I need to change my routine.

Before going through my day, before worrying about what clothes to wear, before thinking through my appointments, before consulting my “to do” list, before anything else, I need to give thanks.

Thanks that I wake in a warm and comfortable bed, with a loving partner by my side.
Thanks that I can hear and that I can see clearly with my glasses.
Thanks that I have a loving son and daughter and their families who keep in touch and share their love.
Thanks that I can rise and dress and walk without assistance.
Thanks for meaningful work.
Thanks for nutritious food in abundance.
Thanks for a community of caring people.

The list would take more words that this blog.

Indeed I continue to be blessed. May I learn to count my blessings.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

In March of 1991, amateur video of Los Angeles Police Department officers beating Rodney King became a sensation on the television. I watched the scene several times. I didn’t know at the time, nor do I know now much about what preceded that famous beating. There had been a car chase in which King tried to evade arrest. With that video as part of the evidence, four officers were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and the use of excessive force. Three were acquitted of all charges. The fourth was acquitted on the assault charge, but a verdict on the excessive force charge could not be reached. The jury deadlocked at 8 - 4. After those trials, Los Angeles erupted in riots in which 53 people were killed and over 2,000 were injured. The governor finally called in the National Guard to end the riots. After the riots the four officers were charged with violations of King’s civil rights under federal statute. Two were found guilty and received jail sentences. Two were acquitted.

I have no inside information on what happened or the dynamics of the judicial process. What I do know is that there were several things that mystified me and that I still do not understand. What was it in the officers that caused them to respond to Mr. King with such violent force? Did he somehow pose a threat to their personal safety? Was the force required by the circumstances to provide for the safety of others or of the community? Was their training improper?

The reaction of the community was also mystifying to me. I can at least understand, at an intellectual level, the anger of the community over institutional racism, violence against a suspect before a trial, and generations of entrenched injustice. I can’t however, understand how that justifies destroying the businesses that serve a community, theft, wonton destruction of property, and violence against more innocent victims. What induces someone, who perceives an injustice to respond by creating another injustice? Why did the rioters destroy the businesses of their neighbors and the services that supported the community in which they lived?

Many years have passed and the Los Angeles police department has undergone a series of reforms and changes in which it conducts investigations of abuse by police officers. There are new training requirements in law enforcement agencies across the nation.

A decade later we all watched in stunned horror as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon unfolded in a single horrible day. There were plenty of unanswered questions on that day and in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Later, when we tried to see what could be learned from the events, it was discovered that several of the first responders who died in the tragedy had behaved in unexpected ways. They had violated department protocol and parked vehicles in the wrong places. They had entered the building without first donning proper safety equipment. They had ignored command structure and sometimes direct orders from superiors. While we were all awed at the heroism and personal sacrifice of firemen and police officers, we began to ask what might be done to alter the training of those first responders so that in the future tragedy might be mitigated. What is it in the psyche of a human brain that casts aside all caution when a friend or colleague is threatened? What makes us leave reason aside when a crisis occurs.

On the surface those two prominent events have little in common. However, as a result of those and other events, I have become more interested and involved in the training of law enforcement officers. As we work to refine our program of stress management training for employees of the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office my colleagues and I have reviewed video of officers acting and reacting under stress, interviewed dozens of officers about how they manage stress and family members about the effects of living with individuals who spend large amounts of time at the peak of the hypervigilance scale. Trying to improve the support and training we give to those officers has led us to read research articles by brain scientists and to try to understand what goes on in the lives of those who dedicate themselves to serving others.

One of the things that we have learned is that although we think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think. Sensory information streams in to our brains through our sensory systems and is processed through our limbic system before it reaches our cerebral cortex for higher thinking. This process has deep roots in the development of the human brain. In generations where survival depended upon proper activation of the “fight, flight or freeze” impulse, humans needed to be able to react instantly to a threat and respond without taking the time required for complex analysis. In our contemporary setting, we expect law enforcement officers to train their reflexes and reactions so that their responses will be quick and effective. We train them by exposing them to various scenarios in which fast reaction is required. We constantly remind them that life and death hinge on instant reactions.

It is important to understand that the capacity to react quickly to a threat comes from the same region of the brain where feelings of sadness, joy, anger, frustration or excitement are generated. The cells of our limbic system link our reactions to our emotions. An officer who spends an eight or ten hour shift constantly alert and poised for the next possible danger who then goes home and snaps angrily at a family member for some trivial word or action is responding exactly the way we have trained that officer to behave. You can’t shut down your reactions just because the shift has changed.

As we grow in our understanding of how our brains work we are learning more techniques for training officers to deal with the stressors in their lives and to make different decisions in the heat of a threatening moment. Maybe we can learn from the public incidents lessons that will decrease violence and save lives in the future.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Like today, yesterday started out gray. The fog was lying all around and the world appeared in soft focus as the light crept slowly into the country. There is no sudden daybreak in the fog, just a growing awareness that it is no longer night. You begin to be aware that there is more distance and that you can see things a bit farther away. The colors are softer. It is a pleasant experience.

Yesterday I did something that I don’t think I’ve ever done before. I’m not sure why I’ve never don it before, it must have been common for the original peoples of the north woods. The Micmac and Cree and Anishinaabe must have done it frequently. The Dene and Gwich’in and Tagish people could not have found anything unusual about it. Salish and Athapaskan people must have known the experience from their early days. And for the Squamish and Snokomish and Salish and Tlingit peoples it must have been a way of life. But I had never before paddled in the snow.

Big, fluffy white snowflakes were falling as I unloaded my little kayak and placed it in the lake. As the snow fell, the fog parted and I could see the other side of the lake and the reflection of the hills in the absolutely calm waters. There was something very quiet about the day. Two geese scurried ahead of me and took to flight, but even the normally loud ones were quiet. I could see where the deer had spend the night in the grass by the edge of the water, the matted grass where they had lain dozing and chewing their cud was abandoned. They were probably nearby in the trees, but they weren’t in sight. The water was absolutely calm with a glassy surface that reflected not only the surrounding trees and hills but also the snowflakes as they fell.

Snowflakes disappear when they hit the surface of the lake. The liquid water is warm enough that the crystals instantly become droplets upon contact with the water. There is no splash like the rain. Just a falling snowflake, beautiful and distinct from the air around it soundlessly merging with the lake without fanfare or display. For moment I thought I saw a snowflake floating on the surface, but it turned out to be a white feather.

I was pleased to have a wooden boat and a narrow greenland paddle. I could paddle almost silently, with the only sound being the small bow wake splashed up by my passing boat. I listened, and what I heard was silence. I was surrounded by a world that didn’t need a soundtrack. The songbirds watching from their perches, the ducks witnessing in the reeds, and the beaver in his lodge all felt no need to make any comment at my passing. The campground was empty. Even the hardy springtime campers decided that the foggy, rainy, snowy weekend wasn’t the right time for outdoor adventures - or they had chosen other campgrounds. I had the lake to myself. Only one of the summer cabins even had smoke coming from its chimney and those folks were sung inside.

I have often written of peaceful paddling. Yesterday’s experience was that and more. Snow on the lake is sacred. Being allowed to witness it is to enter a cathedral.

I love to travel. I have been blessed to visit some very distant places. I have witnessed the beauty of many states and provinces. I have spent weeks traipsing around Europe. I have driven across the red country at the heart of Australia. I have ridden the bus on the back roads of Costa Rica. And I love to think about traveling. My study has atlases and maps all around. I have poured over campground directories of places that I have never visited. I can name the towns along highways that I have never driven. I speak often of my desire to visit friends in South Africa, to see the massive Lake Baikal, to explore the fjords of Norway, to paddle the inlets of Prince Edward Island. I have pictured Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake in my mind a thousand times but I have never seen them with my eyes. I can imagine trekking in Nepal and traveling to the extreme south of Patagonia. I would love to one day see the Great Wall in China and the urban markets of Kolkata. I would love to take my own pictures of the Taj Mahal in India and St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square.

I could make lists and lists of places that I have never gone that I would like to visit. A lifetime of traveling would be all too short to see the things that I have imagined seeing in my mind.

Although I know that my traveling days are not over and there are many new sights that I will see in the years to come, I am also aware that I will not make it to all of the places I can imagine traveling. My time is too short. My financial means are too limited. My love of home and family call me to places I have previously visited.

I have, however, discovered something that warms the heart of this traveler: There is always something new to discover in a place that I have been over and over again. There is great joy in returning to the places that I have already seen.

I go to Sheridan Lake nearly every week. There have been many weeks when I have paddled five or six days. I am familiar with the road between my home and the lake. I know the shape of the lake and the nuances of its shoreline. I know where the beaver lodges are and where the ducks make their nests. I can point out the snags preferred by the eagle and the stand where the owl keeps watch. The sights and the smells of the lake are familiar to me. I can paddle a straight line from point to point in the dark on the lake.

But yesterday I paddled in a whole new universe. I had never before paddled in the falling snow. It was an exotic adventure in a whole new world. There is rich discovery in traveling to a place I have been before. There is delight in the familiar, which remains interesting enough to continue to engage all of my senses.

A small boat and a simple paddle seems to be the perfect vehicle for my travels.
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Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

First a bit of history: Guy-Geoffrey was born around 1025, the youngest son of William V of Aquitaine and his third wife, Agnes of burgundy. His brother, William VII succeeded their father and made Guy-Geoffrey Duke of Gascony in 1052. His sister, Agnes de Poitou was married to Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1058 Guy-Geoffrey became William VIII, duke of Aquitaine, succeeding his brother.

Gascony is a region in what is now France, on the border with Spain and the Atlantic Ocean, south of Bordeaux and west of Toulouse. It is the land of the Basque people. Gascony comes from the same root word as Basque.

William VIII brought to the region hundreds of Muslim prisoners. Their culture, religion, language and music contributed to the rich heritage of both France and Spain. With them, the Muslim prisoners brought Near-Eastern instruments such as the rebec (ancestor of the violin) and the qitara, which evolved into the guitar. They also brought unique forms of dance, hand clapping and finger snapping.

Working as common laborers, some of those muslims drifted south where they encountered other muslim people who had drifted into Southern Spain in the territory of Andalusia. The culture of Southern Spain was influenced by the intersection of many different cultures: indigenous Spanish, Roma people who had drifted from Eastern Europe and the people from Africa and the Middle East who had come both by force and by free will. Jews from across Europe drifted to Spain to escape persecution only to later discover persecution in that country as well.

In that southern region was the City of Granada and in Granada there was a high hill named Sacramonte (sacred mountain). Upon the hill the Sacramonte Abbey was founded in 1600. the abbey was built over catacombs that originated as Roman mines and later became burial places. As the impressive stone abbey rose from the hill top, some of the laborers and other poor people began to occupy the caves and former mines because they had no place else to live.

From those caves came the sound of their music. It wasn’t always a happy sound because it told the story of much suffering: a heritage of forced slavery, of forced conversion, of drifting from distant places and of suffering at the lowest levels of a class-based society without any real possibility of advancing.

The music that rose from the caves was the direct result of generations of pain.

The music became known as Flamenco.

Like American Blues, Flamenco is born of generations of pain and sorrow and suffering.

But anyone who has heard that music knows that it is more than suffering, or if it is suffering the suffering must be a blessing because the music comes from the pain.

It is a lesson that is even older that the roots ofd those forms of music. It is a lesson that comes from the origins of our Christian faith. Pain is not always to be avoided. Pain isn’t always bad. From pain and suffering comes resurrection and rebirth.

Knowing that, however, we live our lives with a great deal of fear about pain. The fear can be a barrier to faith and to fullness of life. Perhaps is was for that reason that Jesus repeated so often his advise to “be not afraid.”

Perhaps the music is the way of he people to overcome the fear and turn the legacy of suffering and pain into lives of meaning.

Recently some friends were discussing the role of pain on human lives. It seems that there is so much in our society that is designed to help us avoid pain. I’ve come home from a dental procedure with a prescription for narcotic pain killers. Not long ago I had an injury and filled the prescription for main medication. The instructions said to take one tablet every six hours as needed. Following the directions, I took three pills over the course of the next week. After that I didn’t ever need the pills. The prescription had been for 50 pills.

Modern medicine seems to have invested significant energy in avoiding pain.

It just isn’t physical pain that we avoid. We develop all kinds of techniques to avoid uncomfortable situations. We tend not to speak to those who have different opinions than ours because we fear disagreement. We surround ourselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices that are designed to make us feel good about ourselves. We imagine that the good life is a life that is lived without discomfort and without pain.

In the 17th century, if everyone had been able to live in castles and no one was forced to live in the caves and catacombs; if the heritage of slavery and forced conversion had been eliminated, if the pain of family disruption and persecution of those who weren’t Christian, would we have ever heard the haunting sounds of flamenco guitar? Would the dances we now associate with the region ever have been discovered?

Of course you can’t produce art by causing suffering. Pain is not the only ingredient in the great music, art and culture of the world. But the question remains: would great art exist if it were not for the presence of pain in the world?

I think we know this inherently. Not all pain is bad. Not all pain is to be avoided.

Given that conclusion, I have been fascinated that the same people who work so hard to eliminate pain - the dedicated physicians and practitioners of modern medicine - are the very same people who are patrons of the arts in many communities. The office of my doctor is decorated with original artwork. I had my annual physical last week and there were two pieces of original art in the examining room. The lobby also had original art. And it isn’t just that physicians and medical buildings are consumers of visual arts. I read the programs as music concerts and see who is investing in the music. The relationship between pain and art continues in our generation as it did so long ago in the catacombs under Sacramonte.

I am not eager to face pain. I cringe at the senseless pain that is caused to innocent victims in our world. Still, I am grateful to live in a world where flamenco and the blues are available for the listening. And the music is almost enough to convince me that the suffering is a blessing.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

For generations, our people have taught that language and theology grew up together. In the Old Testament tradition, it has been assumed that theology led language - at least written language. When the time came for our people to have a system of writing down their stories, the stories that they most wanted to record were the stories of the covenant with God and the things that God had done in the lives of the people. As a result, it was necessary for Hebrew to develop a written language that was different from the Egyptian hieroglyphic form. God is a more complex idea demanding a vocabulary that reaches beyond direct depiction in a sketch or symbol. In fact the Hebrew texts of our Bible are filled with many different words for God - even different names for God.

Theology and language grew up together and for most of the journey, theology stayed ahead of language. We were able to pray, talk and sing about God before we were able to write, and when we learned to write the first things that we wrote down were our stories, songs and prayers. It seemed natural that the things we had said would find expression in written language.

That was millennia ago. Much has changed in our use of languages. Much has changed in our ability to read and write. Much has changed in our notions of God and the role of God in our world. Much has changed in our theology.

There was a time when theology was considered to be the queen of the sciences and a study worthy of the highest and best of our thinkers. It was believed that of all the things to study, God was the most difficult and the most important. In the Middle Ages, theology and Sophia (wisdom) were the twins at the top of the definition of a fully educated person.

That also was a long time ago. Much has changed in our understanding of the process of teaching and learning in the intervening years. We have mixed our desire for income and a higher standard of living with our pursuit of an education. We have used financial scales to measure the worth of a person. We have come up with theories of cost-effectiveness and earned income potential. These days the study of theology is often judged to be somehow less rigorous than science or engineering or economics.

Times change. People change.

So it is interesting that the emerging language of our time is not a written language. But to tell that story, it makes sense that we understand a bit about the language of mathematics. Arabic is a supremely logical language. Crafting a sentence in Arabic is similar to making an equation. Every word is extremely precise and carries a lot of information. It important to understand this because much of what we call science and engineering and mathematics was worked out by the Persians in the first century of the common era. Hailed as saviors because they allowed the exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem, the Persians were very powerful, very logical, and very interested in numbers. It was a stark contrast to Hebrew, which used the same characters for numbers as the first letters of the alphabet. It was the Persians who developed what we have come to know as Algebra. In the 11th and 12th centuries the Arabic texts containing the basics of Algebra finally made their way to Spain where an attempt to translate them and share the information was undertaken. There was tremendous interest in the translation. There was a problem. The word, Alshshan, for the unknown quantity in an equation, couldn’t be pronounced by Spanish Speakers. The blended “sh” was a foreign sound. So they instead turned to the Greek, which has a “k” sound which they used for a substitute. The letter Chi was used for a substitute for the words Alshshan. When the texts were translated into Latin, the language of scholars, the Roman letter “x” was used as a substitute. Ever since that time, we’ve used “x” to designate the unknown in a mathematical formula.

It is the language of mathematics that has paved the way for the technological innovations of our time. The formula or procedure for solving a problem in our time is known as an algorithm. That word also has Arabic roots. It was derived from the name of Mohammed ibn-Mus al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician who was part of the royal court of Baghdad from 780 to 850. (I realize that it is a long stretch from “al-Khwarizmi” to “algorithm” but words do strange things when translated through multiple different languages. Suffice it to say that Al Gore didn’t invent the algorithm.

Algorithms, however, are the language of our contemporary computers. They are essentially very long and complex formulas. Computers having the ability to make many computations in very short amounts of time can even be programmed to extend or make algorithms themselves. For example, amazon.com programmers developed algorithms in an attempt to use a person’s purchasing history to predict what might interest that person. As the person makes more purchase choices, the algorithm becomes more complex. It doesn’t have the ability to predict the future, but it does have complex ways of remembering the past and detecting patterns.

The language of algorithms has developed a need for incredibly huge amounts of data. Storage of data is a big business.

All of this data, however, is written in a language beyond computer code. It is written in the algorithms used to sift through the data to find specific information.

The reality is that humans have created a language that humans cannot read. We need our machines to know what it means.

Our theology, however, continues to move at an entirely different pace. In the same millennia that mathematics was developed and we learned to build and program machines to speak the language of mathematics our concept of God has not kept pace. There are more than a few people who retain notions from the early centuries of the common era when it comes to theology.

Our language, however, still is a vehicle for conveying meaning. Understanding God continues to be a basic human need. It is not something that will be solved with an algorithm. In fact algorithm may not even be the best language system for talking about God.

It is evident, however, that now that we have developed a language that we ourselves cannot read, we find ourselves in a place where we often fail to find meaning. For that we need to relearn the language of prayer, poetry and story. Those ancient languages definitely require a human touch.

We have learned much. There is still much that remains to be learned.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

There are plenty of public figures of whom I am aware, but whose lives I don’t follow closely. The actor Woody Allen has been in and out of the press for most of my life. Some of the stories didn’t make him sound like a very nice person. Others revealed a unique sense of humor that has its appeal. Recently I looked up a quote and was surprised to find that it is attributed to Woody Allen. I also was surprised that Woody Allen is now 80 years old. The quote is this: “To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.” I believe that God continues to pursue an active relationship with those who struggle with belief. People and religious institutions may sometimes be threatened or tend to write off those who disagree, but God loves people regardless of what belief system they embrace.

Here is another quote of Woody Allen: “I read ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” That pretty much says what I think about speed reading.

I read a lot. I read many online articles every day. I usually have three or more books that I am reading at the same time. I surround myself with books and reading is one of my favorite pastimes. But I also read for work and I read at work. Compared to some of my peers, I can read fairly quickly. Mostly, however, I read more books than others not because I read any faster, but because I devote more time to reading. I don’t watch very much television. I prefer to read a book when in a waiting room to watching the television. About a year ago the New York Daily News reported data from Nielsen that the average American watches 5 hours of TV per day. Children aged 2 - 11 watch over 24 hours of TV per week. The same report claimed that TV viewing time increases steadily as people age, with people over 65 averaging more than seven hours a day.

I do need to point out, however, that there is at least one flaw in Nielsen’s method of rating television watching. I know because our household has been selected to fill out the two week report for Nielsen at least three times. When you enter “no television watched” on every day of the survey, yours is discarded and not counted. As a result, the average is skewed, because the survey does not include those who do not watch television. Most weeks, I do watch a little television, and I watch several minutes of Internet videos that came from television on a regular basis. But I have tried to be consistent and not turn on the television at any time during the two weeks that our home is included in the Nielsen survey.

At any rate, according to Nielsen, people in my age group watch, on average nearly 44 hours of watching television each week. That’s a full-time job. Turn of the television and there is plenty of time for reading.

When I was in college and graduate school the required reading was significant and I had to learn not only how to read, but how to organize and retain the information in the books I read. I learned to analyze the structure of a book, getting a clear sense of its outline from the table of contents and other sources before diving into the page by page process. Often I could understand the structure of an argument before I read the details. I found that I could engage in fairly intelligent conversation about a book I had only skimmed. That skill enables me to make fairly quick decisions about which books to read and which to pass up.

That skill has also made me intensely suspicious of speed reading. Like the Woody Allen joke, I’m convinced that many people who claim expertise in speed reading are sacrificing comprehension in order to gain the speed. I’m pretty good at rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information. I can get a general idea of what the text is about in a few minutes. To really understand a text, however, simply takes time.

I don’t think that the big challenge to understanding comes from seeing the words, but rather from the cognitive process of processing words into meaning. Strings of words require thought in order to gain the intended meaning. You have to think about the author’s intentions, the structure of the argument, and interplay of word upon word to really gain the meaning. Speed up the process and there is a direct trade off. You gain less understanding. Language comprehension is a complex intellectual task.

There are ideas and concepts that are best learned by reading. For those who don’t have the visual acuity for reading or who have various forms of dyslexia, audio books or having text read to them can be a reasonable substitute.

All of which brings me to another criticism of television. Recently I was in a waiting room while the oil was being changed in a vehicle. I glanced at a television set with the sound turned low. There was a scrolling “news feed” going across the bottom of the screen. I read the headlines that appeared. They repeated over and over again with no change in the 30 minutes or so that I paid attention. There wasn’t any significant content in the words. I had read substantial articles about each topic presented as “breaking news.” I guess if you have no other source, it probably would be worth knowing that the Pope visited with refugees on the island of Lesbos. There was no way of knowing from that television feed, however, that Pope Francis is making a concerted and careful effort to raise the world’s awareness of the worst European refugee crisis since World War II. He is asking the world to respond to a huge humanitarian crisis. You might be able to get the headlines from the television, but it takes a lot more information to understand the meaning of the top stories.

So I continue to read. I read articles. I read books. I try to delve deeply into complex ideas. And I continue to be suspicious of other media to provide the depth of understanding that is required in a complex world.

You must have a similar approach. After all, you have just read this very wordy blog post.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Finally the rain came last night. There were a few booms of thunder, mostly in the distance and we could hear the rain falling outside. What a delicious sound and feeling to go to sleep with the water running in the downspouts and splashing on the lawn outside. The weather forecasters have told us that we are in for a dry year and in the forest dry years mean fires. We’ve already had one significant fire this year and know that likely there are more to come. But last night we were able to go to sleep with the sound and smell of the rain. It was a luxury worth relishing.

According to the forecast, we’re in for several wet days if the cold front succeeds in stalling over the hills and expected. We might even see a few snowflakes over the weekend, though the temperatures will probably not sink low enough for much accumulation. By Monday and Tuesday, the forecast shows a 75% chance of rain with combined accumulations from this system in excess of one inch.

There shall be showers of blessing:
This is the promise of love;
There shall be seasons refreshing,
Sent from the Savior above.

Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need:
Mercy-drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.

The hymn by Daniel Whittle plays in my mind often when I hear the sound of rain. I’ve always thought of rain as a blessing.

I’ve never lived in rainy country. In fact, except for the four years that we lived in Chicago, where average annual precipitation is 37.1 inches per year, Rapid City, with 18.32 inches per year is the wettest place I’ve ever called home.

Our son and his family live in Olympia, Washington, where they see 57 inches a year. Our sister church is in San, Jose, Costa Rica that has a six-month rainy season with more than 10 inches per month. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the wettest place on earth is a cluster of hamlets known as Mawsynram in India, where annual rainfall is 467.35 inches. That’s a lot of water. To put that into perspective, it would take us more than 25 years to see as much rain as they experience each year.

My hunch is that people who live in places like that don’t have the same appreciation for a little rain shower as we do.

In ancient times, religious leaders were called upon to explain why some places received adequate rains and other places experienced drought. Our faith, Christianity, and its antecedent faith, Judaism, grew up in rather dry climates. At 23.2 inches per year, Jerusalem is slightly more moist than the hills, but comparable in terms of its climatic conditions. Our forebears knew how to appreciate the blessings of rain and understood that a lack of rain could quickly become problematic. In the Bible, periods of drought are often described as periods of famine and some of the major events in the story of our people arise from migrations forced by famine. It was a famine that resulted in the children of Israel ending up as immigrants in Egypt where they were eventually enslaved. God’s chosen people were not exempt from the forces of nature and the power of the climate.

It is in the face of the amazing power of nature that we understand a bit of our vulnerability. There are forces in the universe that we cannot control that have a deep impact on our lives. Knowing that, climate change is a threatening part of our current situation and the topic of more than a little bit of conversation. It surprises me that there has been a connection between the denial of climate change and certain parts of evangelical Christianity. Perhaps it is a result of a suspicion of scientific method that arises from the debates over the theory of evolution. Those debates were fueled with what look, from my point of view, from some serious errors in biblical interpretation. That, however, is the topic of another (and probably much longer) blog.

For me, lying in my bed listening to the rain last night, it was enough to know that each drop represented a blessing to the grass growing in my lawn and the flowers springing up in the beds around the house. In our porous soil, rain both runs off and down the hill and penetrates to the roots of the trees. It is almost as if you can sense the change in the pine trees if you walk in the forest during or after a rain shower. The water is lifeblood for the forest and each drop produces a surge of energy and growth.

I am not immune from paying attention to the weather. I check the forecast every day as a part of my routine of starting the day and refer to updated forecasts throughout the day. I’m not a farmer and much of my life goes on without disruption when weather changes. Except in the case of a big blizzard, most of my activities are unchanged when it rains. But I might take a bit deeper breath when I step outside and my smile might be a bit broader when I greet my friends. I do like the rain.

A few years ago I took the opportunity of having family in Olympia, Washington as an excuse to purchase a good rain jacket. It isn’t real foul weather gear by any stretch, but it is waterproof enough to make it comfortable to go for a walk in the rain. I’ve never lived in a rainy place enough to have mastered the use of an umbrella. Usually when it really rains, I’m inside and the umbrella is in my car, requiring me to get wet on the way to getting the umbrella. But the jacket is just right for my lifestyle. I’m hoping that I get the opportunity to wear it in the next few days.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I was an early adopter of personal digital devices. Before there were smart phones, I had a palm pilot in which I had my address book and calendar. I had a palm device with a cell phone almost as soon as they became available. I even owned a blackberry device for a couple of years before obtaining my first iPhone. Now on my second iPhone I realize how dependent upon the device I have become when occasionally I forget it at home or it needs a quick charge in the late afternoon before heading into evening meetings.

What surprises me is how much of my personal life I now keep on my phone. Of course I still have my address book and calendar, along with several alarms set for various meetings and other events in my life. I have my email accounts, which are synched with my computer, so there is a fair amount of email history available to a hacker. I also have an Internet browser that has the same favorites and browsing history as my computer. Then there is the text message session, which has both business and personal exchanges. Some of the messages in that section contain pictures of our grandchildren, but there are also images of family history documents my sister has sent me as well as a few legal documents exchanged by photographing them and sending the photographs via text message. In the message area are more intimate conversations with my wife and children as well as the types of everyday messages exchanged with colleagues and peers.

I now keep a lot of my medical records on my phone including all of my medical appointments, my medication logs, my blood pressure log, and ECG records. There is a way to access my bank records and as many of the customer loyalty cards as have the application to be carried on my phone instead of having to have a physical card in my wallet.

From my smart phone you could see which news sources I frequent and check out how many friends I have on Facebook. My twitter feed is on my phone as well. It has my grocery shopping list and notes I write to myself about things I want to remember and things I need to do.

There are a lot of things on that phone.

I was thinking about that as controversy ranges over the decision by Apple to no longer offer assistance to law enforcement to unlock phones, tablets and other devices as a part of criminal investigations. Like most disagreements, there are two sides to the story and I am sure that there are good arguments to be made both for and against providing unlock software to law enforcement. In general, I’m in favor of enforcing laws and am a supporter of law enforcement agencies. I understand the argument that if you aren’t engaged in illegal activities, you shouldn’t have anything to hide. However, as I look through my phone, I am aware that the request of law enforcement to have full access to our electronic devices is different from other requests.

If a judge grants a search warrant and criminal investigators gain access to a vehicle or a residence, they can search for physical evidence. There are many different kinds of evidence that can be gained through such a search, some of it important for keeping our communities safe. For example, child pornography destroys the lives of its victims. Locating those who buy and sell such destructive items can have a measurable effect on reducing the victimization of children. A search for physical evidence can increase the safety and livability of our communities. The same can be said for illegal drugs or weapons. There are good reasons for granting search warrants.

But searching a home or a car doesn’t allow the searchers access to the private thoughts and conversations of the home or car owner. Those being investigated for evidence of crimes still retain rights including the right to be silent to avoid self incrimination. Searching a personal digital assistant gives access to personal messages and conversations. Such devices keep items that are legitimate for the use as evidence, such as photographs and criminal communications right next to personal information such as health history and family conversation. Theoretically, granting law enforcement access to a phone to search for criminal evidence also grants access to privileged information that would not be allowed into evidence.

Apple’s claim is that their software is written to protect the privacy of their customers and therefor it is impossible for Apple to gain access to the personal data of their customers. It isn’t just that Apple won’t turn over the keys to the phones, it is that they can’t access the data any more than can law enforcement.

At the same time, the same device is reporting my shopping habits to amazon.com. There are all kinds of applications on our devices that we willingly install that have the effect of giving us less, rather than more privacy.

It is a whole new area of information. It is almost as if the old tools of search warrants and the like don’t quite fit the new technologies.

We all acknowledge that freedom comes with responsibility and that a society without restrictions and regulations would quickly become dangerous and ruthless. We all agree to a certain level of government in order to assure safety and protect the common good. In this era of new technologies, and plenty more technologies that are just emerging, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how we can use those technologies to promote the common good and how they can be abused to commit crimes that victimize the innocent.

This ends up as yet another blog post that doesn’t yield answers. I’m not sure what the right answers are. I am aware that there are complex issues and challenges for society as we go forward. I hope that conversations about these issues will help us to make wise decisions as a society.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I don’t have the latest model, but I use an iPhone for my mobile communications and a variety of other applications. Like many other iPhone users, I have played with the phone quite a bit and made a few changes to personalize it to my liking. I use the voice activated commands with this phone more than I did with previous phones. Perhaps the user interface is more intuitive, or perhaps I’m just using the technology a lot more than once was the case. One of the features I use is the digital assistant that Apple calls Siri. I use to to look up addresses in my address book, to get the phone to give me navigation instructions, to look up some items on the Internet and to dictate text messages. Since the phone uses a digitally generated voice to answer some of the questions, I decided to change the factory default.

We have a GPS device for the car and when we visited England a few years ago, I downloaded the maps of England and that somehow set the voice of the device to British English, an accent that I found much more soothing than the default accent in the device. I renamed the device “Hyacinth” and have been using the British voice ever since.

The English accent in my iPhone somehow reminds me of HAL 9000, the computer character in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey series. HAL stands for Heuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer. The H comes from Heuristically. The A and L come from Algorithmic. I know it is kind of corny, but I didn’t write the books. In the movie the character has a male voice that is slightly altered to sound a bit like people thought computer generated speech might sound like back when the movie was made. Siri is a generic female voice that is a bit more human sounding. Interestingly, Siri is genuinely a computer generated voice. HAL, on the other hand, is a fictional character - that of a machine - played by a human actor. Anyway, I didn’t like the English Siri.

I really wanted a Canadian Siri, but frankly, she simply doesn’t pronounce “about” the way a Canadian does and so I rejected that accent.

For now I’ve settled on the Australian accent, which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t sound very Australian to a person from that continent, but is foreign enough to be a bit exotic for me.

Frankly, I still feel self conscious and a bit silly talking to my phone. I tend not to use the voice activated features when there are other people around. I’m going to have to get used to that. Speech recognition and voice activation of computing devices is already with us, works very well, and will increase.

The algorithms of the amazon.com web site periodically try to sell me their “smart home device” called Echo. The system remembers that I have previously looked at, but not purchased, light switches and heating controls that can be activated with the use of a smart phone. The Echo devise plays music from several Internet sources, acts as a voice activated digital assistant to look up recipes, answer questions, read audiobooks, read the news, remember schedules. It also will turn on and off lights, turn up or down the heat, order a ride from Uber or a pizza from Domino’s. The service is called Alexa Voice Service (so I guess the device’s name is probably Alexa instead of Echo). Anyway, every time I look at the advertisement for the device on the Amazon web site, it sort of creeps me out. The thought of having a devise that is always turned on and constantly sending amazon information on what I read, what I cook, my schedule, and even when I turn out the lights to go to bed is not exactly the kind of surveillance I want in my home. As these devices become more and more common, I’m sure that I won’t be an early adopter. It might just be a bit like television - a device that a lot of people use that I just don’t seem to like very much and so the set remains turned off for days at a time.

Electronic assistants are coming. Some people call them bots, which is a shortened form of robots.

Facebook, another service I use, but not nearly as much as many of my peers, announced yesterday that they will soon be releasing bots that work in conjunction with the Facebook messenger service. They will be able to take commands such as instructions to transfer money between bank accounts, pay bills, and other online bank functions. Facebook promises that they will also initiate conversation, asking something like, “Do you want to hear today’s top news stories?”

OK that one creeps me out, too. First of all, I don’t like the idea of an algorithm deciding which news is most important. Secondly, I don’t like a device telling me when to look at or listen to the news. Thirdly, my phone interrupts my conversations and focused thinking way too much as it is. I don’t need more interruptions. Despite the claims made at the Facebook developers conference, I don’t think that any conversation with an electronic device will be “natural.” At least it won’t seem natural to me.

All of these digital assists come with costs that may not be apparent at the outset. In addition to the cost of the devise and the ongoing costs of data services and some of the applications, the big cost of these services is the privacy that you give up. The devices are constantly sending data to marketers who are customizing their pitches to you. That’s how Amazon got me to read the advertisement for their device. Increasingly they are expanding the amount of information that is used. If you use a digital assistant for online banking, for example, how much money you spend is entered into the formula.

Having all of those fears about the devices, however, I know that I will use some of them. There is no way to measure the joy of being able to read bedtime stories to our grandson last night over Skype. That’s what I like best: when the device allows me to converse with my loved ones and I am able to forget about the device. If I feel a need to talk to someone when my family is not available, I can always talk to myself.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

In botany there is a theory called the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis. I’m no botanist and I probably can’t explain it in any depth, but the basic theory is that when something occurs to disrupt normal conditions, it can actually contribute to increased diversity. In botany, as in the rest of biology, diversity adds to the strength of a system. So, for example, in the forest, if all fires are aggressively fought and there are sections of the forest where fire never occurs, diversity of plant life decreases. The trees tend to be more similar to one another and there is less ground cover and other plants. In a place where fire is too frequent, diversity is also less. Only plants that are extremely fire resistant or that can remerge after fire will survive. However, in places where fire occurs, but infrequently, the forest develops its greatest diversity. Disturbance has to be intermediate, not too much, not too little, for the greatest diversity.

This is not only true of forests and fire, but of other ecological systems as well. For example on a cliff wall above a stream, there will be different layers of moss growth. At the lowest level, where high water immerses the plants on a regular basis, only mosses that can withstand immersion will thrive. At the highest level, where mosses that cannot withstand immersion will dominate. In between, however, where high water occasionally immerses the cliff wall, will be an area of greater diversity with many different kinds of mosses.

Human communities are biological systems as well. Although we have distinct features and capabilities, we are not exempt from the basic principles of biology. One illustration of Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis in human communities occurs when comparing an extremely isolated community with an urban center. In the very isolated community, people tend to be very similar to their neighbors. They meet, socialize and marry people who with similar cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In a huge urban center, people will also become isolated. Fear of danger and crime can encourage people to withdraw and only meet, socialize and form relationships with those who are similar to themselves. However, in mid-sized communities there is enough safety and enough interdependence that diversity thrives and people will meet, socialize and marry in very diverse groups of people.

Reading a book about botany recently, I began to speculate on the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis in regards to church growth and development. One of the things about the church is that people genuinely want diversity. This is perhaps most evident when it comes to age. Although many congregations tend to appeal to one age grouping over another, if you ask people about what they want from a church, they will often say that they prefer a congregation with people of all ages. Grandparents want to see grandchildren in the congregation. Young parents want their children to have contact with elders. Mature adults serve as mentors to teens and teens introduce new ideas and fresh thinking to the congregation. A congregation that has groups of people in all age categories tends to be healthy, engaged and growing.

Developing a congregation of mixed ages, however, is a special challenge. First of all there are very few social institutions that mix ages well. Schools are graded and students are divided by age. Sports programs nearly all use age differences to divide participants into categories. Even family organizations such as the YMCA and very large congregations plan programming by age groups. I have frequently stood in the entryway of our local YMCA and watched families arrive together and as soon as they are in the door they each go their separate way. A similar phenomena can be observed in a mega church. Even in our mid-sized church the fellowship hall after worship is frequently nearly completely segregated by age, with some tables completely occupied by retired persons and some completely occupied by families with small children.

We have invested considerable energy, over the span of our careers, in planning and leading intergenerational events and activities. Some ideas have worked well, others have struggled. I can tell you stories of lifelong friendships formed in the process of members serving as mentors to confirmands. I can also tell you stories of mentor-confirmand pairs that went through the process without making any significant connections. We have had some wonderful family nights at the church, where families of all ages and shapes have participated and singles felt as welcome as traditional families. And we have had family nights where one or two disruptive children have dominated the attention of all and participants have gone home frustrated. Not everything we try works.

So the theory that periodic disruption might contribute to diversity gave me a new way of thinking about congregational life. I have only served stable congregations in my ministry. A typical first call is a four-year connection. We served for seven years before making our first move. That was followed by a decade in our second call. Then we came here. It will soon be 21 years since we began our ministry in this congregation. Although all of the congregations we have served have experienced modest growth, the actual size of the congregations have been stable. There has also been stability in financial affairs - no big crises and no big windfalls.

I don’t think that some kind of made-up or induced disturbance would be healthy for the congregation we serve, but it might be fair to say that we have become a bit set in our ways. Looking back, however, I can see some disturbances that have occurred in our life together. Members have come and gone. Some deaths have been sudden and unexpected. Some moves of members to other communities have caught us by surprise. We have lost some strong leaders over the years and have experienced some times of searching for new leaders. Our life has been disrupted by strong personalities assuming a bit too much responsibility and by conflicts between those who disagree. There have been some animated debates over issues from time to time.

Perhaps we are an example of an intermediate disturbance congregation: one that experiences periodic, but not too frequent disruptions of our usual way of life. It is a theory that is worthy of more consideration.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I have a lot of jokes and sayings about musicians. One that I heard from someone else, but do not know the original source is this: A musician is someone who loads $5,000 worth of gear into a $50 car to drive 100 miles to a $50 gig. I think that most of the musicians I know had already heard than one before I got a chance to tell it to them.

This past weekend has been a wonderful time for our congregation in terms of music. We had a delightful folk/pop musician in concert on Friday night. The attendance was a bit smaller than I had hoped for, but the concert was excellent and those who attended really enjoyed it. Our Sunday morning worship included our usual excellent music by our choir and our organist continues to engage us with his preludes and postludes. In addition, we had a jazz pianist and a singer who led us in a couple of hymns that really inspired members of our congregation. Then in the afternoon, the Black Hills Jazz Hymn Festival was a great event. The band was first rate and the congregation really got into the music.

Since I’ve blogged about church musicians before and because I have a history of telling jokes about musicians I want to be clear up front that I am grateful to the musicians in our community who add so much to our life together. I don’t intend to complain about musicians, just offer a few observations.

I think that there is something in the musical brain that gives a person the ability to focus their attention more specifically than some other people. I listened as the musicians shifted from one key to the next, playing their riffs without flaw and trading solo opportunities. I was amazed at the ability of the bass player to consistently lay down the line wherever the music was taking the band. I marveled at the pianist’s command of his instrument and ability to lead the band from the keyboard.

The ability to focus on the music, however, does seem to result in inattention to other details. I have previously commented on the fact that musicians aren’t the best choice when it comes to asking someone to turn out the lights and lock the building. You’re likely to find lights that were left on and a door that is unlocked. Those details just don’t seem to concern many of the musicians I know.

Yesterday, when we were setting up for the jazz band, it was decided that we needed to move our communion table. Our Communion table weighs over 300# and moving it is a major effort, but an effort for a musical event is a worthy enterprise. So I got out levers unblocks and dollies and recruited an assistant to move the table. The placement of music stands was also discussed and I got them out. A single chair was requested and provided. The sound system was set up, with monitor speakers and microphones placed where requested. The band set up, went through its sound checks and rehearsals and a wonderful afternoon festival. Then things were taken down and put away. I’m sure that no one in the band noticed the same details as I, but it was interesting for me to note:

At no time in the afternoon did any musical stand, or sit in the area where the communion table had been. No instruments were placed in that area, either. If we had not moved the table, it would not have changed the physical location of any musician or instrument.

No one ever sat on the chair provided at any time during the rehearsal or performance.

When I went back into the room to put away the sound system, music stands and other equipment, all of the stands were placed into areas on the north side of the chancel, as if someone thought they were putting them away for the next service. Which was nice, I guess, but on the south side of the chancel is a rack designed to hold music stands that sat with only three or four stands waiting for the rest of them to be put away. If the musicians had left the stands where they had used them, I would have had less carrying to do to put them away.

Some details just aren’t important to musicians, I guess.

Still, I’m glad I moved the communion table, fetched the chair, and put away the equipment after the performance. It was easily worth the effort to have happy musicians and joyful music filling our space.

I think that there is a meaningful role, for those of us who don’t have as many musical gifts, in supporting the musicians of the world. I have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase musical instruments that I am not capable of playing. I have invested hundreds of hours in board meetings of nonprofits that support the arts so that musicians can continue to make their music while some of the rest of us provide administration in the background. I have carried heavy musical instruments long distances and loaded trucks and vans and trailers and then unloaded them again. I have fetched glasses of water and cups of coffee and then done the dishes. I have set up and taken down special lighting, adjusted sound systems, provided microphones and done a myriad of other tasks.

Some are gifted to make music. Some of us are called to support musicians, including turning off the lights after they have left the building.

And some of us are called to make the occasional joke just to relieve the tension.

Did you hear about the pianist who decided to pursue a career in jazz because he didn’t like crowds?

Or how about the jazz musician who ended up with a million dollars? (He started out with two million.)

The difference between a jazz musician and a pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.

St. Peter in Heaven is checking ID's. He asks a man, "What did you do on Earth?"

The man says, "I was a doctor."
St. Peter says, "Ok, go right through those pearly gates. Next! What did you do on Earth?"
"I was a school teacher."
"Go right through those pearly gates. Next! And what did you do on Earth?"
"I was a musician."
"Go around the side, up the freight elevator, through the kitchen....."

Thank God for the musicians in our community!

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

The book of Acts reports of the dramatic conversion of Saul. The former persecutor of Christians had a radical change of mind and heart as he traveled the road to Damascus. In the end he became one of the most ardent Christian missionaries, spreading the faith to a string of communities and writing a series of letters that became Christian scriptures. The transformation of Saul into Paul is reported as a series of fantastic and miraculous events. He starts out thinking an speaking of murder of Christians intending to arrest members of the new sect to bring them to Jerusalem for trial. Then a bright light flashed about him. He fell to the ground struck blind. He heard a voice asking him why he persecuted Jesus. The voice identified itself as Jesus. He remained blinded for three days during which he neither ate nor drank. It isn’t until he receives a reluctant visit from Ananias that his sight is recovered. Immediately he becomes a preacher and promoter of the Christian faith. Like other Biblical accounts, there are certainly details that have been left out and the whole story is difficult to discern, but the basic information is pretty clear. Saul experiences a dramatic and sudden conversion of his beliefs and worldview that comes from outside of his own mind. He is forced to change.

We speak of this as a miracle and believe that it is unique to Saul. Tellers of the story rarely point to other stories in which such conversions have taken place. I don’t mean to in any way discount the dramatic experience of Saul, but in my experience, people are forced into a new worldview on a fairly regular basis.

A teenage couple, young and exploring the nature of love, through inexperience and a touch of carelessness or a sense of “it couldn’t happen to me,” engage in risky behavior. In the amount of time it takes for an instant pregnancy test, their entire world is turned upside down. Their vision of their own future is forever changed. They are forced to do a whole lot of growing up in a very short amount of time. A year later their lives have been permanently changed.

An elder, with years of solving his own problems behind him, who is independent and competent and managing all of his own affairs and viewed by his family and friends as a very successful person, consults with a doctor concerning some pain he has experienced. Tests are ordered. A diagnosis is made. Treatment begins. In a matter of weeks the independence is completely lost. This person who is used to doing all of his own driving and cooking and cleaning is no longer able to do any of those tasks. He ends up in the hospital where he needs assistance for every basic human function including bathing and going to the bathroom. There are stories of recovery, but even when treatment is successful, things have changed in such a way that there is no going back.

A sharp headache causes alarm and the more the person tries to work through the pain the more problems arise. Vision becomes blurred and sounds seem different. Lying down doesn’t bring sleep and the pain seems to increase. Normal activity seems impossible and by the time the victim realizes that the condition is serious, even the process of calling 911 is a huge chore and explaining distress to the dispatcher is nearly impossible. Paramedics arrive and make an initial assessment that is quickly confirmed in the emergency room. A major stroke is taking place. Surgery is quickly scheduled. The pressure is released, The pain is decreased. Sometimes a vessel can be repaired in the surgery. The stroke redefines the entire personality of its victim. Memories are permanently lost. Basic skills like talking and walking have to be relearned. For those who do recover, years and even decades of work lie ahead to simply regain the basics of adult living. Everything changes in little more than the blink of an eye.

A couple eagerly awaiting the birth of their child receives an indication from the doctor that something is abnormal. Sometimes this information comes in the middle of the pregnancy. Sometimes it is not known until the birth occurs. The vision of a child who will be easy to care for and will grow into a productive adult is altered. The child has a host of special needs that strain the finances and patiences of the parents. New plans have to be made for an individual who may never have the capacity to live independently. Names are given to conditions and diagnoses are made. The image of what it means to be a parent is forever changed. In some cases the child’s life is shorter than the time remaining to the parents. The basic order of life and the vision of the future that once existed have to be abandoned in the face of the new reality. Things are different and cannot go back to the way they were.

I don’t know exactly what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus. I do know that events that completely change a person’s beliefs and way of thinking occurs on a fairly regular basis. I’ve experienced such events in the lives of the people I serve. One moment things seem to be one way, the next they are dramatically different.

The realities of life have left me a bit suspicious about religious leaders who stage dramatic rallies and events intended to force people to change their beliefs and undergo conversion. They openly speak of saving other people. My experience has taught me that radical conversion is rarely the product of human manipulation. If human officiants are required, it is almost by definition something quite different from divine intervention in human experience.

I’ve witnessed a lot of conversions. I’ve caused none.

My role seems to be a bit more like that of Ananias. I find myself reluctant to go to the places of suffering, but when I do my role is simply to lay my hands on the other and to try to share the pain and confusion and witness the change that is occurring. As a result, along with the dramatic conversion, I have been witness to amazing healing.

The conversion of Saul to Paul may be far more common than we think.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

On the shelves in my library, among other possessions are serval metal boxes designed for holding 2” x 2” photographic slides. There are an additional group of carousels of more slides. My grandchildren have no idea what those are about. There was a time when they were the height of photographic technology. Color transparencies were the actual film that was in the camera, processed into a positive image, cut from the roll into individual frames, and mounted in cardboard sleeves that were dropped by gravity one by one into a projector. I still own a slide projector, though I don’t think we’ve used it in several years. Like our old record player and cassette player, the technology has been replaced with another form.

Little by little, I have been scanning the slides into the computer so that the images can be stabilized and kept. It is a task of love, I guess. I doubt that it is something that our children or grandchildren would ever care to do. Roughly half of the photographic slides in our home are photographs that I have taken. The other half are photographs taken by our parents. They record some precious memories and reveal some important family history.

In the span of a single generation we have gone from black and white film photography to color digital photographs. That may not be completely accurate. The first commercially successful color process, the Lumière Autochrome, invented by the French Lumière brothers, went to market in 1907, before the birth of our parents. But color photography wasn’t common or very affordable for personal use until Kodak developed films and cameras for 35mm color photography in the late 1950’s - well into my lifetime.

At the time of the birth of our children, I was still using black and white film for about half of my photography. I processed the film myself in our basement and made my own prints from negatives using a rather simple enlarger in a makeshift dark room. I also processed my own color slides using the Ektachrome process. We also took many pictures using color negative film, but sent it to commercial labs for processing.

All of that is history now. While there are a few film photographers around, they are few and far between. Film is considered to be exotic and it is rare and expensive. I still have a few film cameras in my collection, but will be disposing of them soon and I haven’t used film for quite a few years now.

Film deteriorates, so the process of scanning the images into the computer is time sensitive. Most of the fading that has already occurred is easily corrected digitally and some of those old images are pretty good.

The new technology has radically changed how we think about and value photographs. Back in the late 1970’s we saved for film and processing for a big trip. I budgeted 72 frames per day, which was two rolls of film, for the time of the trip. That was considered to be extravagant and a very generous about of photography. From those 72 frames, most were processed into slides and shown by projecting them with a slide projector. A typical presentation was 140 slides. The projector I used had two sizes of carousels, 80 and 140 slides.

Today there is no limit on the number of pictures we can take. With my digital camera it isn’t at all uncommon for me to squeeze of a dozen frames and then delete 11 images to get just one. With my phone I will take a picture of a sign or some other item I want to remember for a few minutes and delete the photograph as soon as I get to a place where I can record the information in a more organized fashion.

My way of thinking about photographs has changed.

My grandchildren will never see photography the way I do. Their entire lives have been lived in a world where most phones have built-in cameras and people think nothing of sending a photograph to friends to show what they are doing at the moment. The hugely successful applications instagram and snapchat provide formats for automating the process of sharing digital images with friends.

Snapchat is particularly interesting to me though I don’t use the application myself. The basic concept, as I understand it, is to provide an instant visual message that can be viewed and then automatically discarded. A picture is no longer something that you keep or treasure, but rather a moment that is shared and then automatically deleted. Snap chatters don’t fill up the memory of their phones with thousands of images the way that I do.

Devaluing photographs so that they are viewed and quickly forgotten doesn’t just change the role of photographs in terms of single verses multiple viewing. It also changes how taking photographs is done. It is a completely instant process. Future generations will probably consider it strange that I go out in my boat in the darkness and wait until the light is just right to make a single image. You can already obtain inexpensive game cameras that take pictures without your having to be in the same place. The motion of the animal triggers the camera to record the image.

I’m confident, however, that photography as an art will remain. The options for altering images through the use of filters and other digital manipulations are truly amazing. I am no expert in photoshop, but I do find that spending some time editing my best photographs can yield some dramatic results. I can see how those who master the software and have a good eye for color balance and composition can employ the software as a form of artistic expression. There will still be plenty of places where images will be printed. In fact there are more options for printing photographs in different formats and sizes than was the case back in the days of film photography.

My grandson recently asked me whether or not the world had color back when Jesus was alive. Having seen old black and white photographs he assumed that color itself took time to develop and didn’t exist in prior generations. Most technologies that I see because they are new are practically invisible to him. He will discover artistic expression in media that I can’t even imagine. Still, there is something very powerful about seeing someone. And I believe that images are still important to human expression.

After all, I’ve still got thousands of slides to scan if I am going to get them into a format that will mean anything when I pass them on to my grandchildren.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

It has been a long time and emotions have cooled, but I remember some intense disagreements with my brothers and sisters growing up. We were a large and loud family and serious debate and discussion were expected. We were encouraged to express our beliefs and ideas and the family dinner table was a place of lively discussion. I know that some of my friends were alarmed when invited to be guests at our table because we raised our voices so often. Having three brothers resulted in a small amount of physical fighting, although I remember learning at an early age to restrain my urge to tackle a brother. Bullying by the big brother definitely was not tolerated.

We may have fought with each other, but those fights were kept in the family. Out in the neighborhood, we brothers presented a united front. Every one of my friends knew that picking on one of my brothers wouldn’t be tolerated.

I grew up with a sense that there is a huge difference between a fight that is inside of the family and one that involves folks from the outside. Now that we are becoming seniors I still stick to that same sense. I am comfortable with disagreements between my siblings, but when they take those arguments into the public arena - through a nasty post on Facebook or even in a list serve that involves cousins - I squirm.

As my father said repeatedly, “This is a family. You can’t resign from a family. You’d better learn to get along.”

I tell that story because it is also the way that I look at the church. We’ve had some rather major disagreements in the family of the church. A major argument over theological issues and organizational principles led to a break between the Greek Church of the East and the Latin Church of the West in 1054. Subsequently, the Eastern Orthodox church divided into Russian Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox. Those two parts of the church remain in communion, but do not report to one another. On the Latin side, the Protestant Reformation resulted in a large split within the Roman Catholic Church and Protestants have subsequently divided over issues such as baptism, church structure, and theology. There are a lot of different “brands” of Christianity in the world.

Still, when the recent historic meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Krill of the Russian Orthodox Church finally met after nearly a thousand years of division between the two communions took place, Pope Francis is reported to have said, “We are brothers” as he embraced Krill. Later a 30-point statement was released in which the two leaders declared themselves ready to take all necessary measures to overcome historical differences. That statement also said, “We are not competitors, but brothers.”

The disagreements within Christianity are disagreements within the family. They will not be resolved by one part of the Christian body saying to another, “I have no need of you.” Even if such a statement were to be said - and such statements have been made in anger over the years - it would not change the fact that we are linked together.

So it isn’t an inconsequential matter that Pope Francis has become the favorite pope of Protestants in the world. Despite evidence of some pretty sharp disagreements and divisions within the Vatican, those of us who are Christian but outside of the Roman Catholic Church find the populism and progressiveness of Pope Francis to be refreshing and inspiring. We are reminded once agin that we all belong to the same family of faith.

I have been looking forward to an opportunity to read “Amoris Laetitia” the proclamation on family life that Pope Francis officially released today. It is 256 pages long and it will be a few days before it is available in English, but it is a major teaching for those of us who are not in the Catholic Church. According to the global press release on the document - “The Joy of Love” in English - the proclamation hints at a path for divorced and remarried Catholics to return to communion. What the document does not do is to issue any new rules or give new directions. Pope Francis doesn’t think that way. He isn’t interested in “top down” reforms for the church. He encourages priests and bishops to think and act in accord with their own judgment, conscience and love for the church.

The statement will, I am sure, be dismissed by some in the church as just one more teaching about family life by a person who has made and kept a vow of celibacy. “How can someone who will never marry be an expert on married life?” is a question that I often hear. I, being married, of course, do not know the answer.

Often in family disagreements there is more sadness than anger. I feel this intensely when a couple of my siblings fight. I don’t get very angry, but it does make me sad. That is how I feel about a major disagreement that continues between the Roman Catholic church and my corner of the church. From my point of view the failure of the Roman Catholic church to consider the wealth of leadership from the women of the church and the insistence of making the hierarchy of the church exclusively male is a sad waste of such brilliant potential leadership. Imagine how much more vital and effective the church could be if it learned to accept leadership and wisdom from the other half of its faithful members.

Then again, I shouldn’t be too quick to judge. My denomination, the first to ordain women in 1853, has yet to call a woman as its General Minister and President. I guess I can be sad not only for others but for ourselves as well.

So I will seek to learn what I can from the wisdom of the pope. One quote has already caught my eye: “A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives.”

Inside of our family as well as in our relationships with those who are not Christian, we are called to set aside our judgments and show our love. That, of course is at the core of our faith and the teachings of Jesus.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Tony Fleming is the founder and owner of Fleming Yachts. Fleming Yachts built top-end motor yachts in the 55’ to 78’ range. The hulls are moulded fiberglass composite. Most of the manufacturing of the boats is done in Taiwan, with some of the electrical and navigations systems completed at the destination dealer after the boats are shipped by ocean freighter. These are large and expensive boats, capable of cruising virtually anywhere there is sufficient water. Fleming himself is a world-cruiser. Leaving the day to day operation of the company in the hands of others, he takes his personal 65’ motor cruiser all around the world. He makes and posts videos of their adventures. The boat is named Adventurer and they have been making these videos for 10 or more years. There are videos easily available on the Internet of trips to Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Through the Panama Canal, through the New York Canal System, up the Intercostal Waterway of the East Cost, in Scandinavian Countries, throughout the Caribbean, and many other places. According to the Fleming web site, the boat has over 55,000 miles under her keel.

I’m not exactly sure why I know this information. I learned it mostly by reading and watching the videos on the company website. But why I’ve spent so much time on that website is a bit of a mystery to me. While I have no objection to Mr. Fleming and his boats, they simply occupy a part of the market where I will never operate. At four or five times my net worth, the purchase price of even a used yacht of that type is something that will never occur to me. Furthermore, I don’t really know anyone who is interested in investing their resources in such boats. The customers for the Fleming Yacht Company are primarily very successful business owners or top wage professionals. Ministers have done a lot of amazing things. Earring top wages isn’t among our common strengths.

Furthermore, I don’t come close to having the skills required to operate such a boat. Serving as captain, even in the role of owner-operator of such a vessel requires serious skills and certification in seamanship, navigation, equipment systems and much more. If I were to go to a boat show and take a walk aboard such a vessel, I likely couldn’t even identify all of the controls in the helm.

It is simply a world in which I do not live. And yet, occasionally, I allow my imagination to wander in the travel videos that Tony Fleming posts on his website.

I know that some human fantasies are expressions of desires that we have, but I don’t think I would ever want to have a boat of that size. These are really big boats - too big to be hauled on a semi truck. There is no chance of one ever visiting my home state or any of its neighbors.

Big does not serve my style of boating at all. I frequently go paddling at the lake and notice someone who has a complex motor boat who spends more time launching and retrieving their boat from the lake than I spend on my entire outing. I grab a canoe or kayak off of the roof rack of my car and am in the water paddling in less than 5 minutes. It takes that long to undo trailer straps, put in drain plugs and prepare a boat to be backed down the ramp. I never have to wait in line because I can launch without using the ramp. I don’t need a vehicle to maneuver a trailer, so parking can be done before my boat is in the water. For a person with limited time, as I am, a small and simple boat is the perfect way to spend your time boating instead of getting ready to boat.

As for long distance cruising, let’s be honest. That is a venture for those who are able to invest a lot of time - weeks and months. I understand the appeal of such a lifestyle, but I also know that it isn’t mine.

I don’t think my fascination with the boats and their trips is anything like envy. I don’t want to switch places with the owners of those boats.

I do have a bit of fascination with the technical aspects of boat building. Ratios of length, beam, weight and other factors all affect hull speed of boats. The amount of power required by a boat has to do with its design and how it parts the water as it goes. Efficiency can be as important as total horsepower for a boat designed to have a long range. Even for those with a lot of disposable income, fuel consumption is a factor when your diesel tanks will hold over $16,000 worth of fuel. Running two Cummins, Cat, Perkins of Deere engines 24 hours a day requires big fuel tanks. Electronic radar, navigation and depth sounding systems also fascinate me. The helms on these boats have several multiple function displays that can be used to control complex systems.

In contrast, my current boat project is 19’ long with a beam of 21”. It is the longest boat I can build in one side of our two-car garage. You have to have some room to walk around the end of the boat in order to build it. I don’t yet know that final weight of the boat, but I’m hoping for somewhere in the 50# range, so that I can easily carry it. Such a boat is also designed for bigger waters than we have in South Dakota. It will receive its sea trials in area lakes, but I intend to paddle it in the Salish Sea, primarily at the southern end of the Puget Sound near the home of our son and his family. Spare fuel consists primarily of granola bars and dried fruit, easily carried in a lunch bag. Water capacity is a couple of quart bottles. Holding tanks are limited to the usual capacity of a human with an aging digestive system. Nonetheless it is a yacht in my mind: a boat capable of taking me to the edges of my imagination.

Fortunately I spend more time looking at videos demonstrating construction techniques of canoes and kayaks than I do on the web sites of high end yachts. Still, I wonder from time to time whether or not Tony Fleming ever spends a few minutes checking out the web site of Canoeroots or Cape Falcon Kayaks. I bet those would fascinate him at least as much as his web site fascinates me.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Jill Bolte Taylor was a successful scientist who was beginning to gain some acclaim for her research. Her field was neuroanatomy and she had been engaged in mapping which areas of the brain are responsible for which parts of memory and other human functions such as vision, hearing, speech and the like. Then she woke up with a severe headache on December 10, 1996. It took her quite a while to figure out what was going on, even though she was an educated brain researcher. By the time she had made enough of a self diagnosis to realize the severity of her condition she had lost the use of her right hand and arm. What was happening was that she was having a stroke. The blood clot that was removed from her brain during the resulting emergency surgery was significant. She awoke from surgery without her memories and without her ability to speak. She had to learn to talk all over - from scratch. Her recovery, which has indeed been remarkable, took over eight years of full-time work, during which her primary caregiver was her mother.

Taylor was not yet 40 years old when her stroke occurred.

Her book, “My Stroke of Insight,” is an amazing story of perseverance and recovery. I have heard her TED talk and have heard several interviews with her about the experience.

An interesting bit of trivia for me is that long before I had heard of Jill Bolte Taylor, I have a friend who went through a similar experience. Grant Sontag was working in the National Setting of our church back in 1996. He was involved with a team of people from our denomination who were working on a new set of resources for Confirmation preparation. He was young and brilliant and was an inspiration for many of us in our church. Then on March 22, 1996, Grant suffered a devastating stroke. It left him unable to work, unable to provide for his own basic care. As he struggled through his equally long recovery from the effects of the stroke other colleagues who were serving in Cleveland at the time supported him with visits, while a huge network of us supported him with our prayers. Like Taylor, Grant’s recovery has been incredible. Like Taylor, his recovery has taken years.

I was thinking about those two people and the many lessons they have taught others from their own personal experiences yesterday as I met with a couple in completely different circumstances. The people with whom I met are in their eighties and have, for the most part, experienced excellent health. There have been, however, some signs of their mortality. Heart disease has required treatment and they spend more time with doctor’s appointments than was the case when they were younger. Yesterday the wife brought up the topic of living wills. I was surprised to learn that neither of them had such a document. I found out that they had, some years ago, done some estate planning and an attorney had assisted them with crafting their wills, but they had not taken care of living wills or durable power of attorney for health care decision documents. I had a preliminary conversation with them, recommended that they return to their attorney, and got them a copy of the 5 wishes document that is legally recognized in our state. I hope they follow up.

I’ve known this couple for more than 20 years. They are active church members and during that time we have had four or five different sessions in our church that focused on planning for aging, living wills, 5-wishes, and other topics. At least twice in the last six years we have had lenten studies that focused on issues of aging and end of life decisions. I was surprised that this couple had not previously gotten information on 5 wishes or living wills.

I’m not a doctor and I’m not an attorney. I try hard to refer to other professionals and to not engage in giving legal or medical advice. But there are days when I want to scream, “Hey People! Get with it! Have those difficult conversations and make your plans. None of us is exempted from illness, disability or death.”

At any age and at any life phase a single event can render a person incapable of making even the most basic decisions. A plan of what to do when such an event occurs is simply prudent. The failure to have a plan can result in severe family disagreement and trauma. I understand that it is difficult to think of yourself or your spouse having to be on a ventilator with life sustained by mechanical devices, but it can happen to anyone. Recovery from a major stroke often involves making a decision about the use of a ventilator. Fortunately for Jill Bolte Taylor and Grant Sontag the correct medical decisions were made. There are plenty of cases when those decisions aren’t easy and sound judgment is required. At least once every year, I am with families who are making decisions about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment when hope of recovery has faded. These are never easy decisions and are always influenced by a sense of what the patient would want, were he or she able to express his or her feelings. For families who have never had the conversation, they might not have any idea what their loved one would want.

So, without attempting to give legal advice, people need to know that there are two important documents. A living will is a specific set of instructions on what to do in a variety of different scenarios should the person making the will be rendered unable to express her or his wishes. A durable power of attorney for health care decisions names who will make health care decisions if the patient is unable to do so. 5 wishes is a form for making a particular kind of living will that is valid in 42 states and can be executed without the cost of an attorney. There is a 5-wishes online process that allows people to create, access, change and print a living will at any time.

The best time to create a living will is when you are feeling well and have time to carefully consider your ideas. Then you can return to it again and again, share conversation about it with your loved ones and adjust as your life circumstances change.

If you haven’t made a living will, do so soon. Please! Your family will be grateful.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

The hills are filled with signs of spring. We’ve got a pair of mountain bluebirds eyeing our back yard for a nesting site. We have a birdhouse that has accommodated bluebirds in the past and we’re hoping they’ll take up residence. We’ve also seen western tanagers, who add a bit more color to the neighborhood. There are daffodils blooming and a few other signs of spring. We’ve had a few spring showers, but right now the hills are dry and we’re hoping for more precipitation. The first big fire of the season is burning south of us, with most of the smoke blowing away from us, but we still are beginning to eye the horizon and sniff the air with a bit of suspicion. The dry pine needles crackle under food when we walk in the woods.

Yesterday morning I participated in one of my rites of spring. I headed out at daybreak with a canoe. I’ve been paddling for several weeks, but yesterday was the first time to take out a canoe this year. I paddle kayaks in the shoulder season because they are warm once you slide into the cockpit. Kayaks are lovely boats and have their place in my style of paddling, but they don’t give the sense of freedom and joy that I find in an open boat.

I really didn’t paddle that much yesterday. I just dropped my canoe in the lake and paddled up the inlet. I paid a visit to some beavers that I’ve been watching for several years. They weren’t alarmed enough to even slap their tails at me. They just dove underwater when I approached and surfaced after I went past. With the low rainfall, the inlet to the lake is running slow and before long I cam to a fallen tree that for many years has been the end of my upstream paddling. I suppose that if I got out and carried my canoe over the log I could continue for a while, but it wouldn’t be long before the boat was bigger than the little stream that feeds the lake.

I like paddling in the reeds and cattails that line the stream. There is a sense of privacy that doesn’t exist on the open lake. Sight lines are shorter and you tend to notice things that are closer to you than is the case when paddling on the lake.

The canoe I paddled yesterday is new. I’ve had it for just over a year and it is beginning its second season of paddling. I bought it specifically for paddling creeks and rivers. It is shot with lots of rocker and turns very quickly. It is fun to play with because I can change direction quickly. It is a good boat for early season paddles because it has lots of freeboard and it provides a very dry place for the paddler to kneel. I’ve equipped this canoe with a foam saddle, knee pads and knee and thigh straps so that it fits me snugly. If i turn the lower half of my body, the canoe turns with me. The position is quite different from a kayak, where i sit, but the sensation of wearing the boat as opposed to sitting in the boat is similar to a kayak. The boat responds to my movements The chine on the boat is a gentle curve, so it heels over without feeling at all tippy. I paddle with a beaver tail paddle with this boat, as opposed to my usual otter tail. The wider paddle blade means that the boat really responds to the paddle, but its movements are bigger than the subtle control I feel with a longer boat and a freestyle paddle. I’ve yet to tackle real whitewater in this boat, something I hope to do this summer.

Yesterday was a day for a lazy spring paddle, however. I had the lake to myself. At least the geese, ducks beavers and shore birds didn’t seem to mind sharing it with me. They all keep their distance, knowing that I’m not much of a photographer with gloves on. With only one paddle in the boat, I needed to be careful to have things organized when I took a picture. The procedure was to carefully set down my paddle, placing it in the boat or across the gunwales so it wouldn’t fall out. Then I removed my right glove, pulled out the camera and took a picture. That gave the geese plenty of time to increase their distance from the boat and the beaver time to hide entirely. Even his wake in the water was gone by the time I got the camera out.

Some days are for just experiencing. I don’t really need photographs to remind me of the feel of the boat beneath my knees or the paddle in my hand. I really enjoy spring paddling. The chill of the air, the sense of being alone on the lake, and the freedom of the boat that will go anywhere I direct it are very pleasant sensations.

There is a kind of joke among boaters that having a boat brings with it a desire to have a bigger boat. This seems to be really the case with motor boats. Bigger, faster, more capable all have their appeal at a boat show. My motto, however, has been, “if your boat is too small, you need a smaller lake.” Exploring the nooks and crannies of the lake at a slow pace has its advantages. This is my 21st year of exploring Sheridan Lake. I know its shape well. If it isn’t windy, I can paddle across the lake to a specific point in the dark. I have a sense of its moods and flavors. I know where the beavers like to build their lodges and which places they go onto the shore. I know which snags are preferred by the eagles and where the ducks and geese like to nest. I know where the fishermen congregate on summer mornings and the sound of the wind in the trees in the afternoon.

Still there is always something new to discover, something wonderful to experience. I don’t think I would be bored with another couple of decades of paddling on the same lake.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

Somewhere I heard that there are three distinct types of language that are unique to human expression. I am aware that we now know that other animals have forms of language, but this particular set of distinctions came from a time when it was thought that communication, at least by employing language, was unique to humans. The three types of language are: the language of words, grammar and sentences; the language of mathematics; and the language of music. Music, it was deemed, in this analysis, is the best at conveying emotional content. Mathematics, on the other hand is not able to convey emotion, but also is incapable of lying. It is the language of pure logic. Mistakes can be made in mathematics, but it is not possible to lie with mathematics. Words can convey many different types of human expression, including emotions and logic, but are less precise in their expressions of emotions and of logic.

Like all organizational systems, there are problems with this particular simplification. I have long believed that the visual arts are distinct from music, and may form another type of language, which, like music, excels in conveying emotion. Each of the three languages are far more complex than can be conveyed in a simple analysis and the languages can be combined. Music, can contain sung words. Mathematical problems can employ words in their expression. Written language can contain numerals and even notes. The languages are not distinct.

I think that in the original expression of the three languages of humans, it was also expressed that while there are many different languages of words, there is only a single language of mathematics. I think this was before the development of quantum physics and imaginary numbers, but the basic concept remains. Mathematicians who do not have a common spoken language can work on the same problem together by using the language of mathematics. Music, while having many different genres, also has an appeal that reaches beyond the limits of the language of words. An audience for a musical performance need not have a common spoken language to share in the meaning and appreciation of the music.

In my life, I have observed, and then dedicated a great deal of time and energy in making a distinction between two forms of the language of words: oral language and written language. In some aspects, they share common traits. Oral and written languages can have the same vocabulary, similar grammatical rules and similar concepts can be expressed. Formal speeches and papers can be read from written manuscripts. Such reading, however, can be dull and boring and often can lack the necessary expression to communicate well. Properly spoken, oral language contains more repetition, more run-on sentences, more sentence fragments and many other idioms that are not acceptable in written language.

Often when I transcribe a sermon that I have delivered orally, I find myself editing the words I spoke to translate them into a written document that communicates more clearly. Similarly, when I read from manuscripts, I frequently repeat, and make subtle changes to the grammar of the written document in order to make it sound better and to communicate with my audience more clearly.

Greek philosophy was most often pursued in oral form. Most of the great classical written documents that have come to us from Greek Culture are in the form of dialogue. Plato’s Phaedrus consists of a dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates in which Socrates delivers a scathing criticism of written language: “He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written.”

The basic concept was that true knowledge is contained within the educated person, not in the books one possesses or passes on. What one is able to speak comes from within and therefore is true knowledge, knowledge that is possessed.

The Romans, in contrast, were great at collecting writings into huge libraries and into volume after volume of history, philosophy and other scholarly writings. While Socrates sees spoken language as true language and writing as a poor substitute for speaking, Roman philosophers such as Seneca the Younger, Cicero and Lucretius were unafraid of recording their words in writing.

This distinction shows up in an interesting way in the written form which is available to modern scholars of ancient literature. The translations, or transcriptions of ancient Greek texts are frequently in rhyming poetry. Poetry is a memonic device. The rhyming and rhythm aid in the memorization of the text. Ancient oral traditions employed group memorization and were very accurate, often more accurate than written language in accurately conveying the original text. While all writing prior to the printing press was subject to errors in copying, group memorization insured accurate passing of the text from one generation to the next. Poetry assisted in the process of memorization of the text.

Such an analysis, however, is overly simplistic. There are great nuances in language that are conveyed in different forms. Both writing and speaking have their place in the exploration of reason, logic, rhetoric and the expression of the human experience. I have tried hard to cultivate both skills as a writer and as a speaker and have dedicated much of my professional career to expanding my skill in both arenas. This blog has evolved out of a desire to improve my skills as a writer. I assumed that writing an essay first thing each morning would help me become a better writer. I am not in a good position to evaluate whether or not I am improving, but I have developed some skills which make it easier to produce a written manuscript than was once the case.

Language has its limitations. I am not able to say everything that I am able to think. My writing falls far short of actual experience. Still it is worth pondering the power and the limits of language. It is clear that there is still much to learn.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

After centuries of conflict between the Christians and the official government of Rome, Emperor Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, rose to power in 307. Her served as Roman Emperor until 337. Son of a Roman army officer, Constantine rose through the ranks to become a military tribune. In 305 he was raised to the rank of Augustus, or senior officer of the western region. His father died in 306 and Constantine became involved in several different civil wars against emperors Maxentius and Licinius. He emerged victorious and became sole rule of both west and east in 324. He was known as a reformer. He instituted financial reforms that curbed inflation, restructured civil and military code and strengthened the empire in many ways. Importantly for the history of Christianity, Constantine was the first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity and, in 313 decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire.

There were gains and losses for the religion in this newfound status. Historians vary in their opinions about whether or not it was in the best interests of the religion. Clearly the endorsement of Christianity by Constantine played a major factor in the worldwide spread of Christianity. An important step in the process was the First Council of Nicaea in 325, called by Constantine. The goal of the council was to obtain consensus in the church about the nature of faith and settle disagreements among Christians. The result of the council was an official teaching on the nature of the relationship between Jesus Christ and God the Father, the formation of the first part of the Nicene Creed, and the establishment of Easter as a major Christian holiday and celebration. It is often referred to as the beginning of canon law.

After the Council of Nicaea, belief became an important concept in the church. It had been a part of Christianity from its early days. The gospels mention belief in reference to the resurrection of Jesus, but aren’t always clear as to the meaning of the term. After Nicaea, belief referred to a specific set of intellectual assents. One had to agree to specific statements in order to be considered a believer. Those who refused to agree, were considered outsiders and not part of the Christian religion. Since that time and continuing to the present day, there are groups within Christianity that require one to make a formal declaration of agreement with a creed in order to belong.

Throughout the history of Christianity, however, there have been those who don’t find the center of Christianity in intellectual agreement. They don’t find ideas to be the core of the faith. Faith is something different from agreement to a certain set of intellectual beliefs or dogma. Faith involves trust more than agreement.

Because of the history of the church and the roles various creeds and dogma have played in conflict within the church, it is interesting to note that some of our oldest stories of faith involve differences in how people came to faith.

It is tradition, during the season of Easter, to read the account of the disciple Thomas, who was reluctant to believe in the resurrection at first. His claim was simple: “Unless I see and touch myself, I will not believe.” For Thomas the reports of others were insufficient for him to accept the resurrection. He requested direct experience in order to come to faith. That is not the remarkable part of the story, in my opinion. There are many who are reluctant to accept the reports of others and who want to verify through their own experience. What is remarkable about the story in my opinion is that the report contains specific details about an appearance of Jesus to the disciples that involves Thomas being given the direct experience he sought. It isn’t just that Thomas places experience over intellectual argument, it is that Jesus complies and provides what Thomas needs. The story, in my opinion, has been retained and treasured by the church because it points to a variety of different ways to come to faith. Some may have faith because of the stories and testimony of others. Others may have faith because of their direct experience.

These different ways of coming to faith are highlighted by other stories of faith in the Bible. The sudden and dramatic conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus serves as another important model of how some come to faith. Some come to faith through the witness of others, some through their direct experiences. Some come to faith slowly, others in a sudden and dramatic conversion.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to come to faith.

Give those stories, I am reluctant to claim that any church organization can create an absolute definition of Christianity or claim to have certainty about who is and who is not a Christian. From a practical standpoint, we simply don’t need to make that judgment.

As Christians, we are called to treat all people as our neighbors, not just those with whom we agree, those who we see as having the same faith, or those who are like us. Consider other stories that we have treasured and are included in our scriptures. Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan precisely to show that neighborly behavior wasn’t restricted to those who were insiders of the faith. Religious officials don’t come across nobly in the story, but rather an outsider, who was considered not to possess the right faith. It is a lesson for all Christians today.

I am grateful to be serving a congregation that doesn’t hold a requirement for people to sign a particular creed, adopt a specific dogma or make a certain set of intellectual assents in order to participate. “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here” is sufficient. We accept people where they are. We try to provide resources for faith development so that all may grow in faith maturity.

It is a good thing I live when I do. I probably wouldn’t have fared well at the Council of Nicaea.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I don’t know how far back stories of unicorns go, but my imagination was stirred by a Shel Silverstein poem that was made famous by a Canadian band called “The Irish Rovers.” A recording of the song was released in 1968 and became a popular radio tune. The record sold 8 million copies. The poem appears in Silverstein’s book, “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and was actually released as a song in 1962 on and album by Silverstein called “Inside Folk Songs.” A number of other artists have covered the song.

A long time ago, when the Earth was green,
There was more kinds of animals than you've ever seen.
And they'd run around free when the Earth was being born,
And the loveliest of 'em all was the unicorn.

There was green alligators and long-necked geese,
Some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees.
Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born,
The loveliest of all was the unicorn.

The poem goes on to tell how the unicorns were playing when Noah was loading the animals onto the ark. They missed the boat. “That’s why you never seen a unicorn to this very day.”

The story is a modern invention. There is, of course, no mention of unicorns in the Bible.

However, I recently read an article on history.com about researchers from Tomsk State University in Russia who have been analyzing the well-preserved fossilized skull of an Elasmotherium sibiricum, a huge, hairy rhinoceros-like creature that was previously thought to have gone extinct 350,000 years ago. What is striking about this particular skull according to findings published in the American Journal of Applied Science is that radiocarbon dating of this skull goes back only 29,000 years. That means that the creature, commonly known as the “Siberian unicorn,” could have roamed the earth at the same time as humans.

The studies made no mention of Noah and his ark. Silverstein might have been using his imagination on that point.

The article pretty much dispels with the notion of a horse-like creature as is often imagined by the writers of cartoons and illustrators of children’s books. This beast was massive and had long hair and the horn was enormous. At their largest, these ancient rhinos were thought to have measured nearly seven feet tall and 15 feet long. They weighed in at 4 tons.

The name rhino brings up entirely different images in our minds than the name unicorn. We do think of rhinos as a kind of prehistoric beast with armored skin. Indeed modern rhinos have been on the earth for at least 60 million years.

Today, however, all five species of rhinos are perilously close to extinction. In the decade of the 1970s alone, half of the world’s rhino population disappeared. Less than 15% of the 1970 population remains, perhaps a total of 10,000 to 11,000 worldwide. While Indian rhinos may be coming back from the brink and African white rhinos have rebounded some from their lowest population level, black rhinos are seriously endangered. It was estimated that there were 65,000 black rhinos in sub-Saharan Africa in 1970. There are fewer than 2,500 left today, in isolated pockets in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya, Namibia and Tanzania.

One of the greatest dangers to rhinos is poaching. Poachers kill the animals and cut off the horns. The horns are prized for a variety of uses. It is said that the horns have medicinal properties, but the most common use is for making handles for knives and daggers. Elaborately-carved dagger handles are symbols of wealth and status in Yemen and other countries of the Middle East. When the price of oil is high, people are willing to pay enormous amounts for this ornaments. As recently as 1990, the horns of a single black rhino brought $50,000 on the black market. Like the poaching of elephants for their ivory, poaching for rhino horn is so profitable that subsistence farmers and herders can’t resist the opportunity at sudden wealth.

In some places conservation officials have even tranquilized rhinos and sawn off their horns so that poachers will have no reason to kill them. In other areas, rhinos are literally kept under armed guard, accompanied by guards as they graze at day and kept in locked compounds at night. There have been some limited success with captive breading programs. The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is the US center of captive breading to save black rhinos.

Rhinos aren’t pretty like mythological unicorns. Still, I think it would be a deep tragedy if we were lose these magnificent animals. Even though I’ve never seen a rhino in the wild, I’d like to have them around for my great grandchildren to see.

In the Silverstein poem, there isn’t much discussion of why the flood is brought down on humanity: “Well now God seen some sinnin’ and it caused Him pain. And He said, ‘Stand back, I’m going to make it rain!’” The song goes on to pretty much put the blame on the unicorns for their own demise: “The unicorns were hiding, playing silly games. They were kickin’ and splashing’ while the rain was pourin’. Oh, the sally unicorns!”

In contrast, the rhinos aren’t having much luck at hiding, which might in fact prolong their existence rather than endanger it in the circumstances of our modern world. The bottom line is that rhinos are endangered by the practices and decisions of humans, not because of some problem in their own natures.

We humans do have a massive impact on this planet and all of its resources. Our behavior and our decisions have altered the world in many dramatic and a few irreversible ways. Animal extinctions often have a direct relationship to human behavior.

I miss Shel Silverstein. I wish he were around today to write us a new poem. Perhaps he could inspire us to more than just a general sad feeling about creatures that have been lost. It is going to take more than a sad feeling to save the rhinos. Poets are often the best among us at motivating us to make real changes.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.

I took a basic biology course when I was a freshman in high school. I learned a few things, but I don’t actually remember much of the content of the course. In biology lab, after a few sessions that were aimed at teaching us to measure accurately and use lab equipment, we dissected a worm. Not long after that we dissected a frog. I remember doing a bit of mental math about the number of frogs that have to give up their lives so that high school freshmen around the country are able to dissect them. I remember the smell of formaldehyde, a smell that I recognize in the preparation rooms of funeral homes. Apparently, it takes a considerable amount of death to teach high school students about life.

In college, I didn’t take many science courses. It isn’t that I am opposed to science. I have been the beneficiary of a great deal of advancements that are the direct result of the application of the scientific method. I was simply more drawn to language and words. While my peers were taking chemistry and biology, I was studying the philosophy of science and the rules of logic.

My fascination with words has continued as a life-long passion. We moved from dictionaries to computers and increased the speed with which I can check the etymology of a word. Now that I am much older, and my career path is pretty much set, I continue to be fascinated with science and read books about science, discovery and the methods employed by scientists. Recently, I’ve been reading some of the books by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a professor on the faculty of Environmental and Forest Biology at the State University of New York. Her first book, “Gathering Moss” is fascinating and contains a lot of information for one not schooled in botany.

Still, the fascination with words remains.

I am struck, as I read about the study of plants, that three words commonly used and all coming from the same root have such different meanings. Most people are familiar with biotic: “of, relating to, or resulting from living things, especially in their ecological relations. The word biology comes from the same root adding the concept to study to make it the science or study of life. And most of us are familiar with the term antibiotic: “the class of drug used in the treatment and prevention of bacterial infection.” Chemicals that either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria have produced one of the major advances in the history of modern medicine. I’m grateful that antibiotics have been discovered and are used to treat illnesses. It is interesting, however, from a linguistic perspective, that the life-giving medicine means the opposite of life. We extend human life by shortening the life of certain bacteria.

There is another, related, though less common term, that shows up in Dr. Kimmerer’s work: anabiosis. There are certain plants and animals that can enter into a state of suspended animation somewhere at the dividing line between life and death. They appear to be dead, showing no signs of life, but when a particular element is added, in many cases water, life returns. After decades of study, scientists have concluded that anabiosis is not a process of death and resurrection, but rather the ability to live in a near-death state, slowing all of the functions of living and decreasing consumption to a level where life can be preserved for restoration at some future point. It seems in biology, the subtle difference between the prefixes “anti” and “ana” is a critical distinction.

That distinction has gotten me to thinking about other words used in scientific study. In the practice of medicine, in addition to the use of antibiotics, another class of medicines are called anesthetics. Anesthetics are medicines that reduce physical sensation, usually resulting in a state of sleep. Anesthetics are administered to manage pain and used to produce a living state where the patient not only experiences pain, but also does not remember the process. Surgeons employ anesthetics to enable them to perform complex operations including incisions, cutting of bone and tissues and making physical repairs to bones, skin and other living tissue.

It is fascinating to me that the word anesthetic means “the opposite of esthetic.” Esthetic is the study of mind and emotions in relationship to beauty. To dull our pain, we literally suspend the ability to experience beauty. Hmm . . . that one gets me to thinking.

Of course all medicines come with side effects and each decision about the use of a particular treatment involves weighing priorities. We have to decide which is worse and which is best. We humans are very complex and messy creatures. The process of living involves pain and the suspension of all pain is not desirable. We don’t want to take away a person’s ability to feel completely. On the other hand we want to alleviate suffering and give relief from pain.

I don’t think I would have made a very good physician. I would have invested far too much energy in the philosophy of medicine, weighing complex decisions about when treatment should be given and when it should be withheld. I would have wanted to dissect words more often than cadavers. I would long to have complex discussions with patients about their philosophy of pain and life before offering treatment options, which would not fit into the typical 15-minute office visit. I probably would offer too much of “on the one hand, this; on the other hand, the other,” to inspire confidence in my patients. Speaking of which, a person would have to be very “patient” in order to put up with my wordiness.

It is, however, fascinating to occupy my position in the community, at the edge of the scientific community looking and listening and being continually fascinated by the choices of language used to describe scientific methods and practices. Once in a while finding just the right word or learning to use a known word in a new way can open up our understanding and provide new insights into the things we do.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Ted E. Huffman. If you would like to share this, please direct your friends to my web site. If you want to reproduce any or all of it, please contact me for permission. Thanks.