By mid June, I thought we were in for a long, hot and dry summer. The grass in the back yard was beginning to go dormant from a lack of precipitation and the only patches of green were where we were watering every other day, such as the garden. It was promising to be a good year for tomatoes, however. The plants were thriving and putting on lots of fruit and as along as they get water, tomatoes love the warm weather. From Father’s Day on, however, I didn’t have to mow the back yard. It was so dry that the grass simply quit growing. For nearly a month, I got used to what I thought would be the pattern for the rest of the summer.

Then on the afternoon of July 15 we got hail. Lots of hail. There was a lot of precipitation with that storm and the water was gushing down the streets, but the lawn was covered with hail. The garden appeared to be devastated. The leaves were stripped off of most of the plants, with just a few stalks remaining. The squash plants were crushed into the ground. The few tomatoes that remained were bruised. The peppers had holes in them. I had visions of a long, hot and dry summer with no garden produce. That is the way of this country. Sometimes the weather can disappoint you. Sometimes it can seem a bit cruel.

Interestingly, however, the hail matted across the lawn and garden, a couple of inches thick in many places. The individual hailstones melted and refroze into each other, making a sheet of ice even though the air temperature remained in the sixties. It took more than 24 hours for the hail to melt. That long slow melt was the beginning of healing. Instead of running off, the moisture in the hail soaked slowly into the lawn. In a week, things began to green again. The grass that had appeared to be fully dormant took on a spring color. The deer began to nibble on the tender shoots. Meanwhile, out in the garden, the plants began to send out new leaves. The sunflowers started to produce new heads. The tomato plants were blossoming even though they barely had any leaves. Even the squash braved a few new blossoms that appeared to be growing directly from the ground.

The thunderstorms have continued at least one rain storm every couple of days. The humidity has been rising in the hills. The grasses have been greening. The plants are growing. With the warm temperatures and sufficient rainfall they are beginning to thrive.

The restorative capabilities of the land are amazing.

So I’m back to mowing the lawn again - all of it. We got three tomatoes from the garden in the last couple of days and more are coming. Things are growing again.

It has been a strange year, even for the hills.

And there is another bonus for me. The higher humidity means that in the wee hours of the morning there is a mist rising from the lake. The busy pace of my life has meant that I haven’t been able to paddle every day, but I still can find a little time for paddling many days. And, from my point of view, the best time to paddle is first thing in the morning before the sunrise burns the fog off of the lake.

For those of you who live near the ocean and know well the perils of fog, you have to understand that the lake where I most frequently paddle is very small. Chances of me getting lost are very slim. I know the lake very well and if I were to get disoriented, all I would have to do is paddle in any direction for ten minutes or so and I would encounter the shore. And I don’t encounter dangerous waves in the fog. If the wind were to blow enough to raise even a mild swell on the surface of the lake, the fog would be blown away. And the chances of encountering another boat in the fog are very slim indeed. First of all, most of the other boaters don’t like to get up as early as I. I usually encounter fishermen, who are among the earliest of risers, launching their boats as I am ready to take mine out of the water. And the jet skiers and wakeboarders don’t show up before 10 am or so. I pretty much have the lake to myself and when there is another boat out there, I’m aware of it long before our paths cross. There are no particular perils of fog as would be the case on the ocean or a more massive lake.

Paddling in the mist is a delightful and refreshing experience that always makes me mindful of the intense beauty of this world in which I am graced to live. A simple wooden paddle and a wooden canoe make for quiet travel and the fog seems to hold the sounds close in a way that is opposite to the amplification of sound that comes from very calm water on a clear day. Quiet and beauty combine for a type of solitude that restores the soul.

Of course there is no chance of getting lonely on the lake. The geese and ducks and the shorebirds all make their presence known and unlike some of my human companions, they don’t seem to mind rising early in the day. The deer come down to the shore to drink in the wee hours and barely lift their heads as I pass. The eagles like to fish in the mist. I think their vision is better tuned to see through the fog than mine. And the fish rise very close to the surface on a foggy morning. I often see lots of them as I paddle, so I assume that it is particularly good fishing for the eagles.

Most of all, the natural world retains its ability to surprise and delight me. Indeed, I am fortunate. And just when you think you’ve got it figured out and know what is about to happen, nature surprises you in a big way. It is a joy!

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 didn’t check the official count, but by the amount of food that we served, I think that we served about 130 people last night. It was our turn to serve supper at the Cornerstone Rescue Mission, a ministry that provides basic food and shelter for homeless people in our community. The team from our church always prepares a solid home-cooked meal of casserole, hot vegetable, fruit salad, rolls and dessert. My schedule doesn’t always allow me to participate in the serving, but I am able to be a part of the action three or four times each year.

The evening begins with a brief devotion, which I was honored to lead last night. The dining room was packed with people of all ages.

The amazing thing about serving is the parade of people that comes by. In Rapid City, many of those served by the mission have jobs and have been working all day long and they arrive in their work clothes. In the summer, the basement of the mission is a cool place to temporarily escape the heat of outdoors. The dinner line is a parade of people of all ages and abilities - a mixture that reflects the wide diversity of our community. As one might expect from a group of people that size, there are a variety of moods. Some folks are tired and silent, others are talkative and enjoy visiting as they go through the line. Some are quick to express their gratitude for the food, others are simply interested in getting through the line and getting fed. Some of the children are shy and reluctant to talk to the stranger behind the serving line. Others smile eagerly and have a few words for us as they wait for their food. Some people have eaten at the mission many times before and are familiar with the routine. Others have just found themselves in a place of need and are looking around to discover what to do and how to act. A few are embarrassed to be found in such circumstances.

The staff at the mission are practiced at making folks feel welcome and there is light banter between the staff and some of the folks who are being served. Some folks will be sleeping in the shelter while others will receive the meal and spend the night in their cars, campgrounds or other places.

I am struck by how many of the people who are served live with disabilities. There are wheelchairs, scooters, walkers and canes. There are folks who need assistance carrying their trays and there are others who are quick to help.

What is obvious from serving and watching the people go by is that there are many different kinds of folks who arrive for the meal. If one has stereotypes about the homeless in the community, it only takes one evening of sharing with the people at the mission to discover that these are not people who are different from ourselves and our neighbors. They are, in fact, our neighbors: people who share our community.

In order to provide a safe place, the mission screens for intoxication. As a result we might not be encountering those who have the most persistent and deepest problems. There are safe beds available at City-County Addiction Services, but those folks often get a cold meal and don’t have the kind of community support that is found at the mission.

The need to be a part of a team that is efficient in serving a number of people means that my evenings of volunteering don't give me time to sit and interview the people served by the mission. My conversations are brief and I never really learn the stories of those I encounter. I can tell, however, that some of them have long and complex stories. Sometimes I make assumptions, but they could be off base. For example a man about my age who is wearing an old military jacket might be a veteran of the war in Vietnam. There are about 58,000 homeless Vietnam veterans in the United States today. A woman assisting three children with their trays might be a single mother struggling to provide for her family little or no assistance. A young couple might have been traveling through our area and encountered unexpected expenses or trouble. The guy in the corner fingering his bible might have had a relatively recent religious conversion or other religious experience. The person with a grease smudge on the cheek might have a car that is broken down somewhere outside, or perhaps might have come straight from work, rushing to make it into the serving line before the doors are closed and there is no more food for the evening.

I have long been a people watcher. I enjoy looking at the parade of people in any crowded location and thinking about the stories that are behind the lives that are present. The mission makes a very good place to watch people. I read the logos and sayings on the t-shirts, but I know that some of those shirts have come from the thrift store and were chosen for utility not for the image on the shirt. I notice some of the tattoos and piercings, and recognize that there are folks whose stories are very different from my own. I make assumptions about relationships based on the order that people go through the line, but I know that my speculations could be wrong. A pair of women look similar and I think they might be sisters, but their stories remain hidden from me as the next folks come through the line.

Last night as I lay in my comfortable bed, well-fed and satisfied, I kept remembering the people at the mission. Our paths crossed briefly one evening. For many of them, we’ll never see each other again. For a few, I’ll eventually learn their names and part of their story. Some I will meet in another context and not remember why they look familiar to me.

Each is a person, distinct and wondrously human. Each is a child of God. Each is a brother or sister. And I am better for the brief time that we were able to share.

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 is probably a product of my age, but I have little interest these days in debating the existence of God. The notion that God is is so deeply engrained into my psyche and worldview that I can’t imagine my being without God. Furthermore, the arguments presented by those who claim not to believe in God are all ancient. There doesn’t seem to be any new information in the arguments of today. It is rehashing arguments that have been going on for centuries.

Nonetheless, I do try to be a careful listener. Not long ago I encountered a particularly strident atheist who seemed bent on converting me to his point of view. He had a statistic, which I have forgotten, about the number or the percentage of Anglican clergy who do not believe in God. I wondered how he obtained that statistic. It seems to me that in order to get that kind of a result, the question must have been worded in such a way that “god” was defined as something quite unlike the God in which Anglican clergy believe. Nonetheless, he thought that Anglican clergy who do not believe in God is particular dangerous because it is their job to promote belief in God. From his point of view there are people who are actively engaged in intentionally leading people away from the truth when they themselves know the truth. A scientist, he claimed, would never do anything of the kind.

I decided not to engage the argument. As I’ve said before I seem to have tired of such arguments.

I did, however, ask him if he believed in money. I took a $20 bill out of my wallet and asked if he believed it was worth $20. He replied that of course he was aware that the value of the paper and ink - the raw materials of which the bill is composed are not really worth $20. The bill, he said, has a commonly accepted value that means that he can trust that it will be exchanged for $20.

I observed that the entire monetary system is a product of human imaginations and not based on any objective values. It is simply a very clever and complex bit of fiction that we have all decided to believe. When people stop believing in that fiction the piece of paper loses its value. Such is the case in Costa Rica, which has seen periods of financial instability and rapid inflation. A US dollar will buy nearly 550 Costa Rican Colon. Last time I was in Costa Rica, I think it was only worth about 480.

He was quick to point out that it isn’t the same thing at all.

I decided to move on to other topics.

Had I been younger and more combative, I might have spoken of the speculative nature of mathematics. There is no substantial evidence that can be offered as proof that the so-called laws of mathematics have any identity independent from the human imagination. It is a system of measurement and calculation that was invented by humans to explain part of the observable universe. Just because we humans think in terms of mathematics doesn’t mean that mathematics are adequate to explain the entire universe. There have been some dramatic instances of mathematics being a very accurate system of measurement. For example, the gravitational waves recently detected by teams of scientists are remarkably similar to the projections of the mathematical models that were developed before the waves were detected. The fact that was was detected is what was predicted is a validation of mathematics as a way to talk about the universe.

It is not any indication that mathematics is the best or most comprehensive way to describe the observable universe.

I remember a college classmate who was a math major who loved complex calculus. He would get into a kind of ecstatic state when talking about a particularly complex formula. He spoke of the beauty and wonder of mathematics with great enthusiasm. It was a joy to talk to him precisely because I felt the same thing about a particularly beautiful theological statement. Humans have the capacity to observe and revel in the beauty of the universe. We do, however, interpret that beauty in different ways.

Compared to religion, science is a relative newcomer in the history of human evolution. We have solid evidence of theological roots of our contemporary scriptures that are around 4,000 years old. The scientific method, on the other hand, arose sometime in the 13th century or so. Roger Bacon (1214 - 1284) is often credited as the first scholar to promote inductive reasoning. He didn’t actually invent the scientific method, but the thought of scholars of his time gave rise to what we know as the modern scientific method. That’s about three millennia after the concept of monotheism.

It is also one of the benefits of a solid liberal arts education. Unlike my scientist friends, I have studied the history and philosophy of science. I do know a bit of the story of the particular ideas which they simply accept as established fact and upon which they base their thinking.

So when someone wants to talk to me about what is “true” or “false,” I need to consider their authority. From a theological perspective truth is never possessed by any single generation. The true nature of reality is something that is beyond the ability of any individual - or any time period. It took generations for the idea of monotheism to arise. The first to consider the concept hardly had a fully developed theology.

It is remarkable to me that those who are such strident believers in biological evolution can’t allow that there is also an evolution of human ideas. The concept of God held by religious people today is different than that held by our forebears. And generations in the future will have far more sophisticated and more fully developed theologies than we.

For me, it is all about relationship. God doesn’t exist because of our thinking. Our thinking evolves because of our relationship with God.

That, however, is not an argument for my atheist friend. Fortunately I don’t have to convince him of anything. The relationship with God is far beyond a single generation. When our time has passed and all of the current atheists have done what they can to persuade us to abandon belief, there will still be people pursuing a relationship with God.

And God is love.

Try arguing that love does not exist. It would sure take the joy out of science for most of the scientists I know.

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 simple fact from my history. I grew up in Montana, lived in Chicago for 4 years, then moved to North Dakota and from there to Idaho and finally to South Dakota. That means that of my 63 years of living, I’ve only had four years of residency in a state that has a resident major league baseball team. Still, I understand the regional effect and appeal of baseball. Living in the Dakotas for nearly half of my life, I’ve heard so many Minnesota Twins stories that I can tell a bunch of them myself. I try to be polite and not to attack. After all, I sort of shared their excitement when the Twins, new to Minnesota in 1961, made it to the World Series in 1965 and demonstrated the home team advantage until game 7, when Sandy Koufax and he Dodger shut them out 2-0. Losing, however, only increased the Twins’ appeal. After all, they were typical midwestern humble. Very good, but not calling themselves the best. In ’67, the pennant race was close, with only two games left to play the Twins were out front by one, but the Red Sox won both of their games and ended up clinching the title. Still a 91-71 season isn’t bad and after all the Sox hadn’t had a tenant since 1946.

Those Twins were a truly mediocre team in the 1970s, but things changed in the 1980’s. I blame the Metrodome. What mother says to her kids, “Why don’t you go inside and play baseball?” It’s unnatural. But by 1987, the Twins were World Series Champions setting a record for the fewest regular season victories by a World Series champion. That record stood until 2006, when the Cardinals went 83-78 during the regular season. In 1987 and again in 1991 the Twins lost three away games and won four home games to seal the World Series. That old home field advantage really works for them.

In 2006, on a close vote in the Minnesota House, Governor Tim Pawlenty signed the bill authorizing a new stadium for the Twins. Named Target Field, they finally moved back outdoors where baseball belongs.

But I didn’t mean to write a blog about the Minnesota Twins. I’m just saying that when you look at the team and the ardent fans, they suffer from having been too successful. The humility which is a natural part of the culture of the midwest is simply absent. They have won too many times and been too successful to truly reflect the dogged, hard working persistence of our people.

Still they remain the region’s most popular team while the obvious alternative has been a part of the midwest all along. Unlike the Twins, who started out in Kansas City, moved to Washington DC and ended up in Minnesota, there is a midwestern team that has always stayed in the midwest. Starting out in the National Association in 1870 and a charter member of the National League, our Chicago Cubs did begin with an unfortunate name. Once they shed the White Stockings moniker, however, they’ve represented true midwestern values: Stay put. Try hard, Don’t make too big a deal of yourself.

Anyone can cheer for a winner. That’s easy. It takes real loyalty to stick with a team that occasionally has an off season, or an off year, or, in the case of the Cubs, an off century. 1978, the year we moved from Chicago to North Dakota, the Cubs finished in the middle of the division at 79 wins to 83 losses. It was a typical year.

But this year is different. I don’t want to jinx things, but I’m not inherently superstitious in the first place. And the Cubs did win a very important game last night. Three home runs, including and Addison Russell grand slam, resulted in a rout of the White Sox. Not only did they win the important cross town game, It is nearly the end of July and they are still out in front in their division. I suppose you have to be a fan to sit through 5 1/3 scoreless innings to get to the good stuff, but it was a grand night for the Cubs.

Wrigley Field is an appropriate-sized ballpark. They sort of ruined it with all of the lights, but it still is a great place to play the game. Add a crowd of over 40,000 and you’ve got the makings of an exciting evening of sport.

Any baseball fan knows that it takes more than a great season to make a championship team. A lot can happen in the postseason, something the Cubs know as well as any other team, even with their limited postseason experience. But August is the month of hope for baseball fans and with a records like the ones the Cubs are taking into this August, you can’t blame us for our excitement. After all, we’ve all fantasized about a Cubs World Series victory in our lifetime. It has, to be sure, been a while since those back-to-back victories in 1907 and 1908. OK, to are honest they haven’t even made it to the series in my lifetime. 1945 was before I was born. Still, I’m not likely to have much to say about the Detroit Tigers, but that’s a different story entirely.

To the extent that sports is a metaphor for life, I’m sticking with my team. Playing the game is as important as winning. I know the old quote, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” But that’s a football quote in the first place, and I think it’s wrong in the second place. The game requires winners and losers. If the losers quit, there is no game.

In real life the road can be long and hard and the rewards few and far between. There are all kinds of times when short-term successes become quickly meaningless. The ability to hang in when the going gets tough is critical to a meaningful life.

So I’m sticking with the Cubs.

And you do have to admit, last night was sweet.

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.

With the news headlines full of politics and my head full of family business, I haven’t been paying as much attention to the news from Costa Rica lately. Monday was a big national holiday in that country. The celebration of the Annexation of Guanacaste is big deal with parades, traditional dances, and other events. Each year the country’s northwestern province goes to great lengths to show of its history and traditions. Children dress up in traditional clothing, dancers perform, vendors sell special treats like rosquillas, which are savory cookies and chicheme, which is a fermented corn drink. The president of the country visits Nicoya, a prominent town in the region. The festival is officially known as Partido de Nicoya. Costa Rica’s colors are red, white and blue and there are plenty of banners and buntings sporting the colors.

While most businesses in Costa Rica use the holiday as a time to display their national pride, you won’t notice much of that in advertisements for beer and other alcoholic advertisements. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, Sala IV, recently ruled that the culture, values and history of the country cannot be associated with liquor for advertising purposes. National symbols and traditional Tico music cannot be used in any form of advertising for alcohol. The justices also made changes in the make up of the commission that controls advertising for alcoholic beverages, limiting the participation of representatives of advertising companies. The festival on Monday was a sort of test run for the big national celebration of Costa Rica Independence day which takes place in September.

Meanwhile, the actual day of the celebration, Monday, also saw a huge display of the power of Costa Rica’s natural environment with an eruption of Turrialba Volcano. The volcano sent a column of ash, rock and steam 3,000 meters (nearly 10,000 feet) high. The volcano is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) East of San José, the nation’s capital and most populous city. San José has seen quite a bit of volcanic ash this year. Turrialba has been erupting sporadically since the fall of 2014.

Chances are that the volcanic eruption isn’t that big of a news item in Costa Rica. It offers the occasion for some dramatic photographs for those who happen to be in the right place, but the country has many active volcanoes and the people have learned to live with the volcanoes and frequent earthquakes related to the activity of those volcanoes.

I keep my eyes on the small Central American country because we have many friends there. Our church has been involved in an active sister church relationship with a congregation there since 1988. Volunteers from our church have made visits to that congregation every year. Some years we have traveled with groups, other years just a couple of people head for Costa Rica for Vacation Bible School. Two couples have provided the main conduit for this on-going relationship through their generous dedication and faithfulness to both congregations.

Costa Rica is an amazing place to visit with two ocean coasts (the Pacific and the Caribbean), lush rainforests, active volcanoes, high plains desert, and incredible biodiversity crammed into an area about half the size of the state of South Dakota. Nearly 5 million people live in Costa Rica, with about a third of the population in the immediate vicinity of San José. When you visit the city, it is difficult to tell where the actual city limits lie because all around the official boundaries of the city are densely populated urban communities. Perhaps these communities are technically suburban, but they are as densely populated and have all of the problems associated with the large city. The population of San José exploded after the Second World War and continues to grow. Costa Rica, like Switzerland, is officially neutral. It has no standing army and offers a standard of living for its citizens that is higher than neighboring countries. In the 1970’s and 1980’s when there was incredible violence and conflict in neighboring Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, a flood of immigrants from those countries, primarily single women with children, flooded into Costa Rica to escape violence and pursue a better life for their children.

Our sister church was founded in a squatter’s community on the edge of San José. People lived in shacks made of whatever materials were available for many years. These days simple concrete block houses have been built with the support of the government to replace the shacks and shanties. The legacy of broken families and the lack of adult male role models continues to have its impact on the community, however.

Maintaining our relationship with our sisters and brothers in Costa Rica who are living out their Christian faith in their setting has been critical to our congregation’s understanding of our role in the world. We are not the only church. We are not alone in our commitment to service. We have partners around the globe. Our recognition that the church in Costa Rica is deeply connected with the church in South Dakota helps us to understand the size and scope of the church. We’ve learned, sometimes by our mistakes, that faith and mission are not commodities that we export, but rather ways of continuing connections with people of faith and mission who live in other places.

Central American countries continue to produce a large number of immigrants, many of which would like to come to the United States. In fact Costa Rica has a specific program of temporary sheltering of asylum seekers while they wait for official processing to migrate legally into the United States. Our countries are linked in many ways and there are people in Costa Rica who will one day be our neighbors here. In fact, they and all of the people of the region are already our neighbors. And loving neighbors is one of the invitations of the gospel.

So in addition to checking out the headlines from the convention and noting history being made in our own country, I’ll continue to pay attention to the lives of our neighbors with special attention to the people of Costa Rica.

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.

A quick trip for family business has me back in Montana for a day. Although I’ll be returning home today, I did have a little time yesterday to visit some of my old haunts. The river is running low - just right for the kind of playing and floating that we did as children. I confess that I haven’t taken time to play in this particular river for years. It seems that my adult visits to the home place are focused on business to be accomplished, and tasks that need to be done. This trip is no different. It is about 400 miles one way and I’m here for a couple of one-hour meetings and then I’ll rush back home. Of course I refer to the place where I grew up as “home” and I refer to the house where I’ve lived for the past 21 years as “home” as well, so it can be confusing to talk to me when I’m going back and forth between these particular places.

It is less true these days than was the case a generation ago, but the response to the call to be a minister has always involved a sense of going where one is called as opposed to choosing where one wants to live. In the journals of some of our forebears are the stories of the families of Methodist ministers serving on the frontier of Montana packing up all of their belongings each June and heading of to the annual conference not knowing where they would be going next. The bishop and the conference would make the appointments for the year and the minister and family would go forth, often to a new place. Being ready and able to move frequently was accepted as a normal part of the life of a clergy family.

Our life has been a bet less mobile. In our first call, we served for seven years, making our pastorate the second-longest in the 75+ year history of those churches. We stayed ten years in our second call, which was a record for that church at the time, but our successor stayed even longer. At 21 years in this call, we’ve surpassed all of our predecessors in this congregation’s 137-year history. It is likely that our time of service will extend to at least double that of the longest previous pastorate. These longer pastorates are the product of exceptional matches between congregation and pastor, but they are also reflections of the times in which we live. Ministers are less likely to have to move as frequently as was the case in previous generations.

Still, there is something about one’s home town and home place. Unlike many of my peers, my family still has an actual piece of property that belonged to our parents and was the location of our growing up and the adventures of our early lives. Like the rest of the world, things have changed. I don’t know the names that go with the faces on main street. There are new owners for the businesses and many of those businesses have changed dramatically from their function when we were going up. Our father’s John Deere dealership is now a pet grooming and boarding place. It has been a thrift store, and a variety of other businesses over the years. There is a lawyer’s office on main street in a building that used to be a bar and there is an art gallery on main street - not a feature of the rough and tumble western town of which we were proud as children.

And yet the place has a feel to it that is familiar to me. The feed store is still a feed store. T/he hardware store is in the same location it has occupied for a very long time. And the river still carries fresh snowmelt from the mountains down to the Yellowstone, which flows into the Missouri, then the Mississippi and then on to the Gulf of Mexico. That means that no matter how hot it gets in the midst of the summer, there is a ready source of cool water flowing right by our old home place. Although in the days of our childhood it was safe to drink the water straight out of the river - you’d want to use a filtration system these days before drinking - the river is still fairly clean and definitely refreshing.

I didn’t have time to play in the water yesterday, but I did take a walk along the shore. The river bed is all well-rounded rocks, which makes travel slow. There is a bit of technique to walking on the rocks, but such a stroll was so much a part of my growing up years that it just takes me a minute to remember how to keep my balance as I walk from the top of one rock to the next, looking down to make sure that my feet fall in the right places.

Although this is the place of my childhood and growing up, I now have lived in South Dakota longer than I lived in Montana. The Black Hills are as much my home as is this place. And when I am at our home in South Dakota I feel a familiarity and centeredness in our house that is no longer a part of visiting this place. Here I am not surrounded by my belongings. And as I write this morning, I am eager to return to the hills and my work as soon as I have finished today’s business.

Jesus once commented to his disciples, “foxes have dens, and birds have nests. But the Son of Man doesn’t have a place to call his own.” The sentiment is reported in both Matthew and Luke. There can be a sense of rootlessness that comes from a life that is dedicated to responding to the call of service no matter where it takes one. But that very process grants freedom from becoming overly attached to a single place in a world where our lives pass quickly and things are constantly changing. There is another verse of scripture that reminds me of where my home truly is. It is the opening of Psalm 90: “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”

No matter how much I travel, I’m never far from home.

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.

When we married, we had a car that was seven years old, but had relatively low mileage for its age. We kept that car for another five years during which it got most of its exercise driving back and forth between Chicago and Montana. When we drove across North Dakota on Interstate 94, the trip was 1330 miles. Taking Interstate 90 across South Dakota and connecting to highway 212 up to Montana was about ten miles shorter. No matter which route we took, it was a long ways in the days of 55 mph speed limits. Most of the time we took three days and two nights on the road to make the trip. We got pretty good at planning stops to coincide with the homes of friends or relatives, to keep our travel costs low. We used to stop about every 150 miles or so for fuel. That little car’s gas tank only held 10 gallons. Nearly three hours of sitting made it time to take a break.

Times have changed. Twenty-five years later the speed limits had been raised once again and we had teenage children in our family. When the time came to add a car to the fleet, I was especially interested in obtaining an all-wheel drive car. We had one four-wheel drive that made getting in and out of our driveway in the winter a much easier chore. After quite a bit of shopping and trying to figure out what would work best for our family, we selected a two-year-old car with 30,000 miles on it. In addition to its around the town duties, it became the car to take our son to college. Following in the footsteps of his adventurous parents, he elected a college that is 1250 miles from our home. It was, however, only about 30 miles from where my mother and sister were living at the time, so we were able to combine visits. Still, the job of transporting a college student too and from school meant that the miles piled up.

After college, our son lived in Los Angeles (1350 miles from our home) for a while and his sister was attending college in Rock Springs, WY (only 480 miles). Meanwhile I was helping out my mother at her summer place (400 miles away) when I could. You get the picture: the miles on the car added up.

From Los Angeles, our son moved to Portland Oregon (1200 miles) and shortly afterward began graduate school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1700 miles away). While in North Carolina, he was married, which gave us a joyous occasion for yet another trip.

The years went by and the miles added up. The car we bought back then is now 17 years old and has over 252,000 miles on it. It’s still going strong, but we no longer think of it as our “new” car. There is a spot on one of the fenders where I do battle with rust a couple of times each year now and the “check engine” light illuminates regularly enough that it no longer receives the response of an immediate trip to the dealer. Most of the time it waits to be reset at the next oil change and the information that the catalytic converters (yes that little car has two of them) are getting clogged and will one day need to be replaced at a price that exceeds the book value of the car. Still the car starts easily continues to be reliable and is fairly comfortable. Furthermore, the operating costs are as low as our “new” car that is a dozen years newer and has only one fifth of the miles on it.

There’s no point in reporting the list of cars that I have owned in this blog, though I can still name every one without resorting to a written list. Buying a car isn’t an everyday experience for us and once we get a car we’’re likely to keep it for a long time. There was that well-used Ford Torino station wagon with the rear-facing third seat and the ugliest color of green you could imagine. It was like many other things in the 1970’s. It wasn’t designed for long use and by the time we obtained it in the early 1980’s most of that use had already passed. We drove it for a couple of years and felt lucky to be able to sell it.

The cars we’ve kept longer, however, seem to deserve something more noble than becoming a fishing car or a kids car. One of our cars that we had owned for many years and given a lot of miles finally got to the point of being sold through a newspaper advertisement and the buyer was heading to Alaska with it. He had been successful several times in purchasing old used cars that cost less than the price of an airline ticket to Alaska. He drove them up there, where he lived, and sold them - usually for the same price he had paid in the lower 48, thus getting an adventure and a trip home for the cost of time while saving money. We felt that was a noble adventure for our old car and it seemed fitting for it to make its last hurrah in the last frontier.

I’m hoping for a similar adventure for the car I’m currently driving. Actually, first of all I’m hoping that maintenance costs will remain low enough for me to keep driving it for four or five more years. I don’t need it for long road trips, so can keep the annual mileage pretty low, but if it can continue to serve as a car for going to and from work and running errands for a little longer that would be a good deal. Then perhaps there is some incredibly adventurous person who is short on cash who will be willing to give it just one more adventure before it heads to the scrap yard.

Me, too! I’m up for a few more miles and a few more adventures before moving to the nursing home.

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 woke this morning with a memory of a night years ago when we were camping. We were sleeping in a tent and our father was teaching us to estimate the distance of lightning strikes by counting the seconds between the flash and the sound of the rolling thunder. There are thunderstorms off to the east of our home this morning and the sound of the thunder echoing off of the hills makes it easy to know that there is some distance between us and the lightning at the moment. I’m not sure how accurate my memory is and I’m quite sure that our counting the seconds method of measuring distance wasn’t very accurate in the first place, but the way I remember that night in the tent is that we were estimating that sound traveled at about a quarter mile a second, or four seconds equalled a mile. We were assuming that the speed of light was so great that our perception was nearly instantaneous, so four seconds meant the lighting strike was a mile away, eight meant it was two miles away, etc.

Of course, in those days we didn’t figure in all of the variables. Sound travels at different speeds in different media, so the air pressure, temperature and humidity in the air affects the speed of sound.

The exercise, of course, was in part to calm a tent full of kids who were out in the mountains in a tent in the middle of the night with thunderstorms in the area. There wasn’t much chance of sleeping for a little while as the storms circulated and there was nothing to be gained by increasing the sense of fear, so a little lesson in awareness that the storm was moving away from us was valuable to keep the troops quiet.

I’ve since weathered other storms in various tents. I’ve come to find that wind can make the night in a tent far more uncomfortable than rain or lightning, provided the tent has been pitched in a relatively safe location and has adequate drainage so that the rainwater flows away from the tent. When the wind is blowing hard enough to push the sides of the tent in against your sleeping bag, you begin to wonder if the tent will still be there in the morning.

It is interesting how the insects and birds quiet down when there is a storm. They seem to know how to seek out shelter and their normal activities are subdued during thundershowers. What I could hear this morning was simply the thunder and the sound of the raindrops falling.

The rain, of course, is welcome. Despite a severe pounding by hail a week ago, my garden has started to recover. The sunflowers have new leaves, the squash is sporting a new blossom and there is even one tomato starting to turn color. I don’t know if we’ll get a long enough season to harvest tomatoes, but there are some new blossoms on the scraggly plants and perhaps we’ll see some harvest. I’ve been watering the garden with the hose, but it does better with rainwater than well water.

In the security of our home, the rain is a refreshing sound to which to wake. And the thunder wasn’t really loud enough to interrupt my sleep. I woke to the echoing booms and the sound of raindrops. I doubt if there will be very much moisture from this storm, but every drop is precious.

More and more of the people of the world now live in cities where the buildings are climate controlled and the pattern is to sleep with the windows closed to keep from wasting heat or air conditioning and to keep out the sounds of the city. It was different when we lived in Chicago so many years ago. The apartment building where we lived for half of our Chicago years was receiving air conditioning on the day we moved out of the building. Four years of no air conditioning wasn’t a burden for us because we only stayed in the city for one of the summers. The other years we were in the mountains of Montana away from the heat of the city. As a result, I’ve lived in places where open windows for sleeping has been the norm. I’m sure I could make the adjustment, but it would be a challenge for me. I like the sounds of the outside world. I enjoy the crickets who gather around the foundation of the house. I like to wake to the birds. I appreciate the fact that each day is a little different from each other day. I have my routines, to be sure, but I notice the passage of time and the changing of seasons by the sounds and temperatures of the world outside of my bedroom.

For most of human history, people have lived in close relationship with the land and animals. The walled canvas tent of my childhood offered more protection from the weather than some of the structures in which people lived. And we used the tent only for a few nights in the summer. Most of the time we had a sturdy wood-framed house that was well-insulated and had a good furnace to keep us warm in the winter. Sometimes we’d hear stories of our grandfather, who was born in a sod home out on the prairie before his father could complete their house, but we never really could imagine the winter our grandparents spent in that half-buried hovel with only one window. Looking back now, it must have been a long winter and the nights when the winds howled and the snow piled up must have felt very confining.

Somewhere between that way of living and urban isolation, we are fortunate to have a comfortable home where we can sleep with the windows open and the human neighbors far enough away that we can listen to the birds and insects and occasionally be lulled to sleep by a passing shower.

Life is good.

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.

With each succeeding generation the labels that marked Americans have less meaning. At one time the country was divided into two groups: indigenous and immigrant. Most of the immigrant people came as a result of the policies of colonizing countries. Then relationships between the groups produced a new generation that didn’t have their feet firmly in either camp. I have settlers on both sides of my family, but they wouldn’t have accepted the label of colonizers. Their coming to this continent was far more defined by what they were leaving behind than by a sense of political or economic gain from their adopted country. Since arriving on this continent, my family took a couple of different paths. Some of us have moved nearly every generation. Others have stayed put. I have cousins who are the sixth generation on the family farm. I have never lived in one location for more than 21 years, though this home promises to be my place for a few more.

Although it isn’t part of my heritage, there is the whole category of people who came to this continent against their will. African slaves didn’t choose this country as their home. They didn’t come here out of their own greed or desire for power. They didn’t come here with disregard for those who were already here. Their grandchildren and great grandchildren have a unique perspective on land and location.

As time goes by attitudes change and people are transformed. There are those whose ancestry is distinctly colonial who have learned about and adopted some of the indigenous ways. There are people who are indigenous by heritage who have become educated and successful in the ways of the dominant society. And there are all sorts of people whose lives carry aspects and parts of a wide variety of traditions and heritages.

Not long ago I had a conversation with a Lakota person who was speaking of the power of ceremonies. He speculated that the enduring ceremonies of colonist society (his term, not mine) are not based on the land. They are based on family and culture - on things that are portable from one place to another. Indigenous people, on the other hand, according to my friend, have ceremonies for the land and for the plants and animals that are a part of the land. Although his generalization is probably exaggerated to make the point, there is truth in it.

Our faith has its roots in migration. The deepest stories of our Hebrew Scripture came from the wanderings of Abraham and Sarah when they left the land of their ancestors and struck out for a new place to live. Even after the Exodus from Egypt and the occupation of the promised land, our people kept the ark of the covenant as a portable place of worship until the time of Solomon. The sacraments of the Christian church don’t depend on a particular place. A bit of water, a drop of juice and a morsel of bread - these are all we need to experience the holy in ceremony. Our ceremonies are indeed portable. I’ve celebrated them in hospital room and private home, outdoors and indoors, in churches and chapels and jail cells and a host of different locations.

Still, I recognize the power of sacred place. I’ve hiked to the top of Bear Butte with my children. I’ve walked the trail around the base of the rock the settlers renamed “Devil’s Tower,” known to indigenous people as the place (or home) of the bear. In other lands, I’ve visited cathedrals and hiked along the base of Uluru. I’ve gazed out at the ocean from the headlands and I’ve hiked in the midst of glorious mountains. There are places where I go to feel connected to my parents and the generations who have gone before. I do not deny the power of place and the sacred nature of ceremonies derived from the land. And, with my indigenous brothers and sisters, I grieve over some of the senseless destruction of the land and its native creatures in the service of greed and consumption.

I have participated in some of the ceremonies of Lakota people at their invitation. My traditions are not theirs and I do not pretend to be any kind of an expert, but I understand the importance of ceremonies. I have felt the cleansing power of the aroma of burning sage and sweetgrass. I have been cleansed in the sacred Inipi, also known as sweat lodge. I have witnessed the granting of a feather in celebration of the accomplishments of outstanding youth. I have greeted the new day with thanksgiving and the gift of tobacco in symbolic gratitude for the gifts of creation. That participation, however, does not make me indigenous. I am by tradition and choice a wanderer - in some sense forever immigrant.

I suspect that all of the different cultures who share this land have a yearning for new ceremonies. Our children are, in many ways, disconnected from their heritage. They don’t know the traditional ways. This is as true of children raised as Christians as it is of children raised in indigenous ways. I frequently work with people on the occasion of a wedding or of the funeral of a loved one who are not familiar with the age-old traditions and ways of the church. They are often surprised at the power of ceremonies that have been practiced for generations. I am not discounting the value of new ceremonies, but I know that my role lies in the practice of traditional ceremonies. Furthermore, I often find that so-called “new” ceremonies, are more frequently rediscoveries of ancient ceremonies and ways. I’ve been known to quip that the one thing about “New Age” religion is that it isn’t new. The discovery of practices that have a long and honored tradition can be enlightening, but it is not the creation of something that is truly new.

We all are in search of meaning. The ceremonies that are most empowering are the ones that welcome all people into their practice without distinctions based on heritage, ethnicity, culture and other divisions. As I remain open to new ceremonies and possibilities, I continue to offer the sacraments of our church to all who come.

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.

Reading over yesterday’s blog, I think I missed the point that I had in mind when I began writing. This is not particularly uncommon for me. I ramble off topic and end up in a different place than I intended. It might be a sign of aging, but I have never been completely focused either in my writing or in my storytelling. So, I guess today’s blog will be a “chapter two” or “the rest of the story.” The topic, roughly, was online dating and the process of choosing a friend or partner through social media. It is not something about which I have particular expertise. Online dating is a product far more recent than the time before I met and married my wife.

It isn’t the technology that bothers me. It isn’t even the somewhat impersonal nature of electronic communications that raises red flags in my mind. There is another aspect to the contemporary social media-mediated dating scene about which I would caution young adults today.

The concept of an online dating service is one of lining up all of the possible candidates and then searching through the throng until one finds the “perfect” match. Most of the online dating services use a variety of different algorithms to conduct that search, matching similarities in preferences, political ideologies, recreational activities and other aspects. The various sites have different forms of questionnaires designed to determine compatibility. Each site has a visual component, with candidates submitting photographs that they believe will make them appear attractive to potential mates. All of the sites seem to be based on the notion that somewhere out there the perfect match is waiting for each person.

I don’t think relationships work that way.

I don’t think love works that way.

It isn’t a matter of seeking out the perfect mate. Such an effort will inevitably end up with someone feeling that the match is somehow less than perfect and that there is another potential mate out there that was somehow missed.

Love is a matter of growing together, exploring together all of the aspects of life, and learning to change while accepting the changes in your partner.

To be blunt, I’m not the same person at 63 years of age that I was at 20. 43 years of living has also resulted in growth and change in my wife. The strength of our marriage is not based on somehow having made the perfect match decades ago, but rather on a commitment to growing together as we care for one another.

I admit that we didn’t have the technology available to conduct a world-wide search for mates when we first met. But it is also true that we didn’t need that technology. We found each other and in each other found love and then chose to make commitments of our love. And those promises have made all of the difference in the world.

In that process we have discovered that it is not just similarities that make for a strong relationship. Differences are essential as well. We have different personalities when it comes to rising in the morning and going to sleep at night. In the evening, I fade quickly and become tired with a bit less winding down than Susan. In the morning she is slower to wake and rise. In the early days of our marriage, when we were both full time students sharing the same manual typewriter, it was an advantage because she could work into the evening at a time when I didn’t need access to the machine and I could type in the morning when she didn’t need it. We could share textbooks for class in a similar manner, though during most of our student careers we were taking different classes. Later, when we were parents and our children stretched the limits of our ability to stay awake and effective, our different natures gave us the ability to trade parenting responsibilities smoothly. These days when we are officially empty nesters, our differences grant each of us a few moments of personal time without taking anything away from the other or distracting from the time that we spend together.

That is just one example of how differences strengthen a relationship. We also have different skills and talents that expand our abilities to reach out to others and accomplish the work of our lives.

I would say that we found a match that is perfect for us and certainly our love and commitment has deepened and become more rich as the years have passed. Had we each had another hundred or more persons from which to choose when we were first forming our relationship, I’m not sure that it would have made things any easier. In a way the extensive options available to young adults today seems to make the choice of a partner more difficult. There must always be the feeling that someone better is just around the corner. How many potential mates does one try before settling? How does one know if the best mate is discovered early in the process?

Marriage isn’t about comparison shopping in the first place. It is about relationship building. And building relationships is work, but that work is joyful, not oppressive. Investing enough time to really know the other and to become truly known is a gratifying experience. Time invested in relationship building is never wasted. There is real pleasure in listening and talking until a few great ideas and a few great concepts have similar meaning for both of you and both of you know that it is so. Sharing art and music and exploring the similarities and differences in the nuances of style and perception is a worthy endeavor.

I feel fortunate to have been at the stage of dating and exploring when it occurred in my life. My life is no less meaningful or rich without having participated in dating web sites and using technology to find a mate. On the other hand those who do initiate relationships using contemporary media might be richly blessed by the results.

From my point of view, however, it is what happens after you begin to spend time together face to face that is critical, not how you find each other in the first place.

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.

We’ve got another wedding in our family in just a little less than a month. A niece and her fiancé have been diligent in announcing their engagement, sending out wedding invitations and making preparations for their big day. It is an event that we would love to attend, but the location is too distant and the timing conflicts with other obligations that we had already made. So we put a bit of extra effort into choosing a gift and expressing our congratulations to the couple. Along the way in the process, we checked out the gift registry that the couple had created on a social media site. The site turned out to be easy to use and made the process of choosing a gift quite convenient.

I’m not the biggest fan of online shopping, but I do a fair amount of it. There are certain items, such as parts for the car or pickup, that are often less than half the price of the same part at a local dealership. I know that having the local dealership is a benefit to our community and I try to support local dealers when possible, but it isn’t practical to pay over double the price for certain items. Similarly, when a local merchant doesn’t have a desired item and promises that they can order it, I usually decline. I, too can order it and when I do it nearly always arrives much more quickly and at a lower price than the item ordered by the local merchant. Online purchases also participate in the local economy if by no other reason than providing work for the package delivery services. I’ve gotten to know some of the drivers who deliver for UPS in our community. They are good, hard-working members of our community, who participate fully in our local economy.

Still, it is easy for someone like me to take a look at the world of social media and online marketing and the way that the two areas interact and come to the conclusion that I’m confused by much of what is going on and feeling grateful that I’m not facing adolescence in this confusing and sometimes brutal world of online relationships.

Tinder is an online dating site owned by InterActiveCorp, a New York-based company that also owns the dating site Match.com, the search service Ask, and The Daily Beast news site. According to the company, 85% of its users are between the ages of 18 to 34. They also claim to have made 11 billion matches since launched in 2012. That’s a really big number. I don’t know if it means 11 billion marriages, or 11 billion dates, or 11 billion social media exchanges. However the numbers are counted, it is clear that there are at least tens of millions of users of the service around the world and it is being used by young adults as a way to meet others.

I’m not sure, but I believe that our young relatives who are getting married this summer met the old-fashioned way: face-to-face after being introduced by friends. Still they belong to a generation that is quite at home using electronic devices to assist with social functions such as planning dates and meeting new people.

It makes me grateful for the times of my own life. I met the woman who is now my wife at church camp. Our parents knew each other through church functions before we began dating. We attended the same college and shared a similar circle of friends. I didn’t have to spend an evening completing an online profile and wondering which photograph of myself to post to display my best features. I didn’t have to worry about the security risks of meeting a complete stranger through posts on social media. I never felt at risk for cyberbullying or pressure from people I had never met face-to-face. The world of the younger generation of our family is much more complex and difficult to navigate than was the case for our generation.

It is true that our generation didn’t always have success in forming lasting relationships. Although I have been fortunately blessed with a long and joyful marriage, five of the seven children in my immediate family have experienced divorce, some of them have had multiple divorces. I have plenty of friends whose “old fashioned” dating experiences were less than fulfilling and occasionally subjected them to abuse. I’m not trying to make the argument that the world has been somehow damaged by the advent of all of the different forms of social media. I’m just saying that it is different. My particular personality seems to be less well-suited to a social media world than that of some of the younger members of our family.

However, just as I have adopted some online shopping practices, I also find myself employing social media. I signed up for Facebook originally in order to keep track of a nephew who traveled extensively and posted pictures and travel reports on the site. I realize that that particular site is most popular among people of my own age, but I continue to use it as a way to make connections with others. Like many other things on the Internet, you have to endure quite a bit of useless information in order to get to the connections you want, but after a bit of a learning curve, you get better at skipping irrelevant information and getting to the pictures and news of people about whom you care. I’m still amazed at the number of friend requests I receive from people that I simply don’t know. I guess there are some cases in which we are friends of friends, but other times I simply can’t figure out any possible connection. My list of friends on Facebook is very short compared to most. On the other hand, I have a lot of friends with whom I connect in daily living.

Most days I’m so busy talking with the people in my life that I barely have time for my electronic devices.

I like it that way.

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 wife of one of my cousins commented that she had the best night of sleep in years when she was visiting our old home place for the wedding over the weekend. I know for a fact that that great night of sleep wasn’t caused by an expensive mattress. The cabin where she was staying is outfitted like the rest of the place, with significantly used furniture. There are plenty of other possible reasons for the good night’s sleep. I seem to sleep well in that place because I grew up with the sound of the river runny by and I really find that sound soothing as I am drifting off. I think I sleep pretty well when I am there. Another possible reason is that ours is a family of talkers and we are want to get going with conversation and stay up a bit later than usual so that when you do hit the sheets you are definitely weary. It could also be that being away from home puts one into a vacation mood and so you aren’t going over the lists of things to do in your mind as you drift off and wake from your sleep. There re a lot of possibilities.

Medical researchers report that sleep is critical for optimal health. Getting a good night’s sleep doesn’t grant immunity from disease, but study after study has found links between insufficient sleep and serious health problems such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. In one study shift workers who were young and healthy showed increased blood glucose levels in as little as four days of low sleep levels. Another study revealed that participants who suffered from chronic pain experienced less pain when their sleep levels were sufficient.

I pay attention to some of these studies in part because I have never been a particularly good sleeper. When I was a child, I taught myself to wake and respond quickly. If I could wake, get dressed and get going with a small notice, I would get to go flying with my father, something I dearly loved. That ability to get up and get going was further rewarded when I was older and began delivering papers. Because I could get my papers distributed accurately before other paper boys in town, I found it easy to expand my route and increase my income. Later as a college student, being the one to open the library first thing in the morning gave me additional free study time as there were very few patrons in the building in the pre-breakfast hour. And, as a young minister, being the early shift DJ on the radio station was a job that I could do without interfering with my duties as a pastor. As a camp counselor I used to pride myself on being the last one to bed anthem first one up day after day.

Of course rising early isn’t incompatible with getting enough sleep if you go to bed early and, for the most part I do that in my current lifestyle. However, the skill of rising and getting going quickly, honed over years and years of experience, means that often when I awake in the middle of the night, I quickly become fully awake and have trouble getting back to sleep.

One thing I have discovered is that I sleep better when I use an alarm for waking. It seems counter intuitive, and I prefer not to use an alarm clock when I am on vacation. In my everyday life, however, I find that not worrying about oversleeping is very helpful. Knowing that there will be a gentle chime to wake me at the appropriate time saves me from waking to check the clock multiple times in the night. It doesn’t take much of an alarm to get me awake, and my spouse rarely hears the alarm before I’ve gotten it shut off.

In a manner that is similar to other blog posts, I am, of course, writing about something of which I am no expert. I think I have the motivation to develop better sleep skills: who wants to develop stroke, diabetes, obesity and heart disease? I certainly do not. I would like to do what I am able to maintain my health into my aging years. I have collected snippets of information from a variety of sources, including a bit of layperson web research and asking questions of a friend who is a neurologist who has conducted hundreds of sleep studies over the years. One bit of information I learned from him is that the most common person to first notice sleep problems is the bed partner. Since my wife doesn’t complain about my sleep patters, perhaps they aren’t as bad as I think. OK, I know that is rationalization, but it is an interesting bit of my story.

There is, however, one thing that I know I can do to improve my sleep patterns. That is to practice my didgeridoo. I picked up the instrument when we visited Australia in 2006. The year before our visit a study printed in the British Medical Journal found that learning and practicing the didgeridoo helps to reduce snoring and obstructive sleep apnea by strengthening muscles in the upper airway, thus reducing their tendency to collapse during sleep.

Circular breathing, the process of inhaling through the nose while blowing air out of the mouth is often employed in playing the didgeridoo. It is a technique employed by other instrument players, commonly low brass instruments. it is common among accomplished didgeridoo players. There are many stories of didgeridoo players being able to maintain continuous tone for an hour or longer. Although I have a book and a recording of lessons on circular breathing, it isn’t a technique that I have mastered. One of the suggested learning techniques, breathing in through your nose while drinking water through your mouth, is counterintuitive for a swimmer.

All of this presents me with a bit of a dilemma. While my sleep patters currently don’t seem to be bothering my wife, I have noticed that excessive didgeridoo practice does not seem to be one of her favorite experiences. I have received sufficient feedback on my playing to know that it isn’t soothing for her. I think I should definitely avoid practice when she is sleeping. That might create a whole new world of problems.

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.

Our mother was a person of lists. She preferred stenographer’s notebooks, with the spiral binding at the top. She made lists for all kinds of things. Our family used to go to family camp every year and she would keep the lists of what to take from year to year, carefully copying the previous year’s list and adding and deleting as necessary. We were a big family and we didn’t travel lightly. There were some years that it took a car and a pickup to get us up to camp. Mother made a set of matching shirts for everyone in the family each year and most weeks at camp, we wore matching shirts every day. As the oldest boy, I often was wearing several new shirts while my brothers wore hand-me-downs that I had worn previous years.

Mom’s lists didn’t stop with camp. She had lists for local shopping and lists for occasional trips to a larger city. She had lists for traveling in the airplane and different lists for traveling by car. She had lists of back to school items for each child and lists of birthdays and anniversaries for the extended family. She had address lists. These, too, were periodically hand-copied from one notebook to another and edited as she went. Each Christmas there was an elaborate process of editing addresses as she sent out our annual Christmas letter. As she received letters from others, the address list was updated. She could tell you who had received letters from us and who had sent letters to us for several years running.

I still have a few of those notebooks, including one of the last ones from her life, which contains lists of books she had read and when she finished them, including those that were re-read. As her memory slipped, she would repeat books that had been previously read and seemed to enjoy them as much the second or third time as she had originally.

I’ve never been quit as organized as our mother. I do make lists, mostly for short term projects such as shopping lists (which I now keep on my phone) “to do lists” (also kept on the phone and synchronized on my computer) and occasionally I’ll have a list of short term tasks on paper. I carry a small pocket notebook that mostly contains items that will be copied into the phone or computer as time allows and then the pages discarded. I doubt that there will be a legacy of lists for my children, though there may be a rather extensive digital database. Like my mother, I record the books that I read, posting them on this web site. Unlike my mother, I tend to get behind in my posting. As I write this morning there is a stack of at least six books that need to be posted to my site. I’ll get around to posting them one of these days.

My short term “to do” list keeps getting longer. We have company coming later this week and I need to get pictures hung in several places around the house. We did some painting last year and it set off an avalanche of moving pictures from one place to another and I’m not quite done. I have an unfinished boat under construction in the garage. The garden, devastated by the hail storm, needs to be cleaned up and I’ll spend the rest of the summer fighting weeds in an area that probably won’t produce much food. There are a couple of small repair projects on vehicles and the camper to which I should attend.

This list of tasks at work is even longer. Part of the nature of my work is that each day presents many reasons to re-prioritize my time. And I always go home in the evening with unfinished work on my desk. A few years ago I had a conversation with a retired teacher who said she had never left unfinished work from one day to another in an entire career of teaching. Her worldview and mine were so divergent that we found it nearly impossible to even maintain a conversation about the subject, let alone understand the other. I couldn’t fathom adding more hours to my work week and doubt that doing so would result in accomplishing more work. She couldn’t understand how I could have tasks that take 20 or 30 hours added into a normal work week. Another time I had a conversation with a pastor friend who said he always dealt with each piece of mail that came across his desk the same day that it arrived. In pursuing the conversation I learned that he was doing about the same number of funerals and weddings each year as I was doing each month. He reported on a week when he had two funerals in the same week. I can remember three weeks in a row in which I had a total of eight funerals.

This is not a complaint. I love my work and I find the pressures of constant change to be invigorating. But there is always more that could be done. And I tend to put off some chores, such as cleaning, using other chores as an excuse.

So I will continue to make lists and carry even more lists in my memory. I will continue to have enough work ahead to me to insure that there will never be a day of boredom. I will continue to head to the lake when there is unfinished work because I have learned from a lifetime of working that I can be more efficient and accomplish more if I am attentive to quiet time and contact with nature. Weeks without recreation result in accomplishing less, not more.

There is one chore that I do need to get to right away, however. I now have three picket notebooks that need to be sorted, there are a few phone numbers and addresses that need to be saved and a couple of notes that need to be copied in each of them. I need to get through them soon so I am not collecting a pile of notebooks. If I’m not careful, I’ll start to look like my mother, just with a different size of notebook.

Then again, a comparison with my mother would be a compliment in my mind.

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 was a tradition whose origins I don’t know, of saving the top layer of a wedding cake to be eaten on the 1st wedding anniversary. I don’t know if the entire cake was made as a fruitcake, but at least the top layer was done that way. The top layer was then placed in a tin, and sealed with wax and stored in a root cellar or other cool place to be included in the anniversary celebration. Our Aunt Teddy was the first of the five Lewis girls to be married and the top layer of their cake was thus preserved. Times were tough back then. The country was just beginning to emerge from the Great Depression and that had shaped all of the people who had come of age in those times. And the groom, Ralph, was a very conservative man. He was a hard worker and wanted to get started in farming and didn’t believe in taking on debt. You got what you needed by saving. The couple were by nature savers, who were willing to delay gratification in order to accomplish their goals.

So when the first wedding anniversary came around, they simply saved that cake. And then they saved it some more. Eventually the family became established enough to have a freezer in their basement and the tin was wrapped in a layer of aluminum foil and placed in the freezer. Life went on. The couple had two sons born to them and raised them on the farm. The sisters of the bride got married and started families of their own. I’m one of the children of one of the sisters.

Those sisters remained close to each other for all of their lives and though they lived in different communities, they got together as often as possible for family fun and celebrations. I was eight years old when the younger of their two sons got married and it was one of the first weddings of which I have a clear memory. I was included in the process of decorating the couple’s car and can remember the opening of wedding gifts. There were many cousin weddings and I don’t remember the order of all of them, but I have clear memories of the weddings of both of the sons of Aunt Teddy and Uncle Randy.

Years later, we had a family gathering at which we celebrated the wedding anniversaries of two of the sisters, Aunt Teddy and Aunt Myrna. The group crafted wedding dresses out of newspaper and had a mock wedding complete with mudpie wedding cakes. It was a fun family gathering with lots of laughter and storytelling. The subject of the original wedding cake came up and we were surprised to learn that the top layer still existed, in the freezer, in a wax-sealed tin wrapped in aluminum foil. The group decided that it should be taken out and eaten when the 50th wedding anniversary came around. I was present and got a small square of barely-recognizable cake with a couple of raisins in it. It wasn’t particularly tasty, but along with the others I had a taste before turning to other foods that were abundant at the gathering. So, although I wasn’t born at the time of the wedding, I did have a bite of the cake.

The years have passed. More weddings have occurred. Some were in distant locations and I was not able to attend. Others I was able to attend. I have been the officiant at a few family weddings. Yesterday we celebrated the wedding of the great-granddaughter of my Aunt Teddy and Uncle Randy. At the dance they had a couples dance where married couples danced as the DJ called out numbers of years of marriage: 1, 5, 10, 20, etc. Couples sat down as the numbers were called out. The last two couples on the dance floor turned out to be the parents of the bride and the parents of the mother of the bride. Had my wife been present, we would have been between those two couples in longevity. Of course the grandparents were the longest-married couple in attendance, having been married 55 years now.

Later that evening, I commented to the couple that I had eaten the cake of the bride’s great-grandparents, attended the wedding of her grandparents and although I didn’t attend the wedding of her parents, I had known her mother for all of her life and her father for more than 30 years. This new family, formed by the promises they made yesterday, stand in a long line of family-making and a tradition of love and commitment.

Our family is like other families. Over the years there have been more than a few divorces. There have been some tragic deaths and some reconfigurations of families. We’ve got our quirks and stories and even a few black sheep, as the language is used where I come from. Through all of this and all of the changes of history and culture over the years we have remained a close-knit family. In this digital age, one of the ways we stay connected is through an email list serve that we call “Verneva,” the name of our Aunt Teddy which itself is a blending of her parents’ names, Vernon and Eva. As we all are the descendants of common grandparents. The bride is the sixth generation of our family to live on the ranch near Floweree, Montana and the fourth generation to have lived in that same farmhouse.

She and her husband will explore territory where the rest of us have never gone. They will travel to the places of his family and explore his heritage as well as hers. They will likely witness history that is beyond the span of my lifetime. It is unlikely that I will live to meet their grandchildren.

But I do know that the legacy of love begun generations before I came into being, will continue in our family will continue. I do know that the commitment to family runs strong in their lives as it has in all of the cousins who gather for family celebrations in this generation.

I have tasted the cake of yet another family wedding. And I can report that it is as sweet and good as ever.

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 always feels a bit strange to me to wake on a Sunday morning and not be focused on getting ready for worship with my home congregation. There is a routine to my life that has been practiced for so many years that when I step out of the routine there is a slight sense of disorientation. I am in Montana, staying at our family’s home place, preparing for a wedding this afternoon. The bride is the granddaughter of my cousin. Family gatherings have been priorities for my family for generations. It is interesting to now have become a member of the oldest living generation of the family. The gang of kids laughing into the wee hours once included me and my first cousins. Now we are the elders, sitting in the corner discussing the weather and politics. Except no one is really discussing politics this year. We shake our heads in amazement and go on to another subject.

I have a pretty good sense of what will happen at the church this morning. I participated in Vacation Bible School all last week and kept up with what was going on in the congregation. I studied the scriptures with my colleagues as usual and know what texts will provide the focus for the morning. I reviewed the bulletin with the church staff as usual and know what songs will be sung and the order of the liturgy. I even helped make a list of the routine things I do, such as unlock doors, turn on fans, turn on the sound system and the like, so that all of those tasks will be accomplished this morning. But for this Sunday, my routine is different.

Breaking up the routine is usually good for me. It gives me a fresh perspective. It helps me appreciate the truly wonderful and amazing congregation that I serve. It also reminds me that I am not the church. It continues without me and in years to come it will thrive with the leadership that is provided for that generation of the church.

Like my shifting role at family reunions, my role in the church is also shifting.

My energies are not depleted, however. I still was able to lead games with children, share songs, take pictures, tell stories and participate in the activities of Vacation Bible School. I still am active in meetings of boards and committees. I still plan and lead worship regularly.

I am, however, no longer the young pastor trying to disrupt the status quo at Conference meetings. Still, I have retained my respect and admiration for those who do and they are aware of my support. For some years now I have stepped out of the role of the “go to guy” for every youth trip, conference, camp and adventure. I’ve found that the youth can travel with others in leadership. I’ve noticed that others can manage the logistics of busses and places to stay and meals and snacks for ever-hungry teenagers.

Erik Erickson’s theory of human development posits that the chore of this phase of life is integration. Becoming an elder is about incorporating the learning, inspiration, faith, and love of and entire lifetime and forming them into a whole. It is encouraging to me to recognize that the next part of my life is not about “slowing down,” “taking things easy,” or “backing off.” Integration is an important task for the community. That cluster of elders in the corner of the cabin that I used to observe and now participate in is more than the collective memory of the family. We have a distinct role in keeping the family together. We may not be doing the heavy lifting of preparing meals and planning that we once did, but we understand and live in the network of family connections that brings the group together. We often are the ones making introductions and explaining how different cousins are related. We can identify the faces in the old pictures on the top of the piano and tell the stories of those who have gone before.

And, when we are paying attention, we can see the patterns of family life. Yesterday, someone commented that the bride is young. Another person reported that her mother was a little nervous about her marrying so young. I chimed in with the story of how her mother had also been young when she married and the cause of some concern to her mother because of her age. And together remembered that the same had been true of her grandmother when she married. This new marriage is opening up a new future for the family and will bring forth surprises and lead us into new territory. But it is not disconnected from the stories of who we are and where we have come from.

I rather enjoy being one of the keepers and tellers of family stories.

I also enjoy a similar role in the church. And in that arena there are stories that we’ve been telling for millennia. Last week, when I was teaching preschoolers to sing, “The church, like a body has many parts too. And each one is different, so which one are you?” I was passing on a concept that Paul wrote in a letter to the young church at Corinth in the first century. His advice to that new community was meaningful and a factor in the on-going life and success of the new church. It still rings true today and is worth teaching to each new generation.

Telling the old, old stories, whether in my family or in the wider community of the church is a humbling experience. I am aware that it is important to tell the stories and tell them well. I am a link in a long chain. Stories that I fail to pass on to those younger than I might be lost from the family repertoire. On the other hand, the stories don’t belong to me. When the younger generation has learned them they will have become older. Just as we once were the kids and now are the grandparents, so too the future will unfold for them.

As we sat visiting over a cup of tea last night, It was easy to recognize traits that our grandparents possessed that are present in our grandchildren. Soon they will see the connections between their experiences and the stories of the family. Life goes on and each generation takes its turn.

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 grew up with my eyes on the sky. My parents were pilots and at an early age I learned to detect the sound of an airplane. Before long I knew how to recognize different types of airplanes by the sound of their engines. I learned to scan the sky for motion to detect an airplane at a distance and soon learned to recognize airplanes by shape as well as by sound. In those days in our area a Ford Trimotor meant Johnson’s Flying Service from Missoula. I even learned to distinguish our Beach 18 from other twin Beeches by the distinctive way that our father synchronized the propellors.

We were always scanning the skies even when no one was flying. An airplane heading for our airport was a potential customer and even if we were at a family gathering it might mean a trip to the airport with dad. And when there were no airplanes in the sky, we were looking at the weather. In the days before weather radar, we had fewer clues about what the weather might be in a few hours or a few hundred miles away. The Federal Aviation Administration ran numerous weather stations that used balloons to determine the windspeed and direction aloft and had weather observers who passed on information to the other stations. But a lot of our decisions about flying came from our own direct observations.

I learned the ten basic types of clouds. High clouds were cirrus, cirrostratus and cirrocumulus. Those rarely kept our airplanes on the ground, but were indications of possible icing at high altitudes, especially cirrocumulus. Cirrocumulus often indicated that a change of weather was in store. Mid level clouds were called altostratus, altocumulus and nimbostratus. These usually occur with other clouds and altocumulus are the most common clouds. Nimbostratus will lower with rain or snow and sometimes can blot out the sun. The low clouds, are definitely to be avoided by light planes. Cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds have lots of vertical movement of wind and wind sheer. They can have lots of precipitation, including hail. Stratus clouds produce drizzle, but will often break up as the day warms up. Stratocumulus clouds give beautiful sunsets and sunrises with the tops glowing from reflected light. Of all the clouds, the cumulonimbus was the most ominous.

Here in the hills we see cumulonimbus clouds almost every day in the summer. So many of those clouds form with the natural convection over the hills and then blow off over the prairies before dropping their rain and hail. Occasionally, however, the clouds park over the hills and let loose their precipitation. There are numerous reports of multiple inches of rainfall per hour when under one of these clouds.

I watched the clouds build yesterday without much thought. A little rain would be welcome. The hills are dry and I would have to water my garden in the evening if it didn’t rain. Then the rain started. I remember thinking that I hoped that it would be raining at home. In the middle of the afternoon, I had to run home. I had the wipers going all the way home, which is a good sign. As I entered the house, I heard the ping of small hail on the skylight, but that is a part of the weather around here and other than having to wait a few minutes for things to let up before dashing to the car, I wasn’t worried.

I didn’t get back home until 8 pm. I was amazed at the huge drifts of hail on the road and in the ditches. Our subdivision looked like we’d received a snowstorm, with drifts piled up around the houses. Our deck was white beneath a two-inch thick layer that had melted and merged into a solid sheet of ice.

I checked the garden. It appears to be a total loss. The tomato plants were crushed and nearly all of the green fruit was on the ground, severed from the stalks. Every small pepper on the plants was torn by the hail. The squash was squashed - literally. It had both fresh blossoms and some forming squash, all torn from the plant. The leaves were nearly all crushed into the ground. Even the sunflowers, normally resilient to hail, were stripped of their leaves with the forming heads hanging. I know that plants have amazing powers of recovery, but I’m not expecting much of a harvest from the garden this year. What just yesterday was promising to be a banner year for tomatoes, now looks like one in which we’ll be lucky to harvest a handful to eat as soon as they get ripe. That may be all we will eat from the garden this year. I carefully gathered up the green tomatoes from the ground that were no longer connected to the plants. I don’t know if they will ripen in the window or not. It looks pretty sad.

In the flower gardens, the marigolds and petunias were so buried in the ice that you couldn’t even see the plants. The same was true of the herbs, which will probably recover for the most part. We’ve been harvesting fresh oregano for cooking for weeks now. It will probably recover in another week. The seed pods were stripped off of the iris. They, however were finished blooming from the year and propagate primarily through their underground rhizomes, so we’ll have plenty next year.

There are still piles of unmelted hail this morning, 12 or more hours after the storm with the temperature never dipping below 55 degrees. It takes a while to melt all of that ice.

But we are not farmers. This isn’t our livelihood. I can only imagine what it might be like to look at promising wheat fields flattened. Our little garden plot doesn’t produce our livelihood. I’ve experienced a setback in a minor hobby. And we live on the top of the hill. There are folks with flooded basements and lots of other problems in low lying areas.

We got hailed on, but we’re not wiped out. I’ll keep my eyes on the sky.

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.

Tucked away in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke there are four verses that report of an exchange between Jesus and the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Luke’s Gospel doesn’t give much attention to Lazarus, whose famous resurrection is reported in the Gospel of John, and there really isn’t too much information about the sisters in Luke, either.

Here’s what Luke has to report:

“She [Martha] had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’ And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken from her’ ” (Luke 10:39-42).

Over the centuries, a lot of preachers have preached a lot of sermons about this brief text. The conclusions drawn in some of these sermons are, at best, speculation. We don’t know what impression this brief exchange had on Martha. We don’t know if she changed her mind or changed her ways. We don’t know how it affected Mary, either. Was she just trying to get out of the work, or was she able to see clearly what was most important in the process of offering hospitality to their honored guest? Did she somehow sense that attentive listening was as critical to hospitality as serving food, or did she just skip out of her chores?

We don’t know Jesus’ intention behind the words he said. Was he truly bringing a revolution to an intensely patriarchal culture that often did not value the roles and contributions of women? Was he trying to make a point to his male disciples about the role of women in the church that was to come? Clearly the later consideration is worthy of contemplation if for no other reason than the timing of the writing of the Gospel. The Gospel first appeared in the early days of the formation of the institutional church, a time when the leadership of women was critical. The companion book to Luke, Acts, reports of the critical roles of Lydia and other women in the founding of the early church.

Do women in leadership roles transform the nature of the institutions of society? The question may be more sociological than theological, but there is a very real possibility that the world is about to find out. Now that Theresa May has become Prime Minister of Britain, there are women in leadership positions in many major governments around the world.

If Hillary Clinton wins the American presidential election in November, there will be women in charge of five of the leading countries and organizations in the world - the US, the UK, Germany, the IMF and the US Federal Reserve.

That's three of the world's biggest economies and two of the most important financial institutions. There's also the reasonable possibility of former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres becoming the new UN Secretary General.

Obviously we don't yet know about either the US or the UN. There are many other possibilities about how history might unfold. Even if they do not succeed in achieving the offices to which they aspire, in addition to those named above, there are 22 other women who are monarchs, presidents and prime ministers of their countries.

I’m not certain, but it seems that these developments are unprecedented in the history of the world.

I, for one, am not worried about women being in charge of some of the most powerful positions in the world. It isn’t as if centuries of male kings, presidents and prime ministers has yielded a world of peace and justice where the aspirations of all humans are respected and there is liberty and justice for all. The one thing that all of these men have given us is a deep appreciation for the gap between intentions and realities, between vision and actuality.

A wealth of global studies now show us that organizations perform better when there is a mix of men and women in charge. There is something about the combined different experiences and styles that seems to make for better decisions. Most importantly, women in leadership also means that half the talent in the world isn't excluded from the selection process.

I speak from personal experience. My time as an ordained minister corresponds with the opening of the Protestant clergy to women. Although my own denomination has been ordaining women since 1853, there was a definite increase in women attending theological seminary and becoming ordained in my generation. My class in seminary was one of the last classes in the long history of that school to have a majority of male students. These days, women outnumber men by a significant percentage. I have always worked with women as colleagues and leaders and I know that the leadership of women is critical to the church we have become.

And yet, there are still some glass ceilings in the church. Our United Church of Christ has never had a female General Minister and President. There has never been a woman serving as the Conference Minister of the South Dakota Conference. There are more than a few congregations whose senior pastor position has never been occupied by a woman. Studies, including those of the church, clearly demonstrate that there is a significant gap in the pay of women and men for the same job.

I’m not sure whether or not Jesus’ comments to Martha give the church any definite directions in regards to the role of women in the church. It might be reading a bit too much into the ancient text to say that it is a clear endorsement of women clergy. On the other hand, it does address the diversity of roles that might be occupied by women in the process of spreading the Gospel.

I’ll be away from the pulpit this Sunday. Our congregation will have a woman in the pulpit preaching on this text. I wish I could be there to hear the sermon. As it is, I also keep wondering about what I would say were it my time to speak.

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.

Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopalian priest and preacher who has written and published several books, including collections of sermons. I have not yet read her book “An Altar on the World: A Geography of Faith,” but understand that it shares how she learned to find God beyond the church walls by embracing the sacred as a natural part of everyday life. I am intrigued and inspired by the title of one of the chapters of her book, “Waking up to God.” It is a concept that is familiar to me.

During the summer especially, I have learned the practice of waking up to God. Most days I rise in the wee hours when much of the rest of the community is sleeping. I quickly get dressed and publish my daily blog and then head to the lake for my early morning paddle. If I get on the lake early enough, I have time for breakfast and a shower and still can make it to the office by 7:30 a.m. or so. It is rare for me to have a meeting before 8 a.m., so I have time to get in my entire routine.

I arrive at the lake and unload my boat and slip it into the water. These days, I don’t need to bother with a paddling jacket or dry suit. The water is relatively warm and the air temperature is such that a light hoodie is sufficient. A wooden canoe and a wooden paddle makes for a very quiet journey across the surface of the lake. Since I frequently paddle in the same lake, I know exactly where to sit to wait for the sunrise. The predawn light often reveals a mist rising from the surface of the lake and the various birds and animals are just getting going.

The glory of a sunrise from the surface of the lake is not to be missed. When the water is calm, your eyes are treated to two of everything because of the perfect reflection on the surface of the water. A glorious sunrise is doubly glorious on the water.

It is, for me, most frequently a private devotion. Although I could take someone else with me, most of the time I’m the only one who wants to get up and get going at that particular time of day. My life demands a balance of time spent in community and time alone. Since my work is primarily about forming community, I get a lot of intense time with people during my work day and appreciate the opportunity to spend a little time alone first thing in the morning.

Of course, I’m not really alone. That’s why I like Taylor’s title so well: waking up with God.

There is an old African-American Spiritual that begins, “Woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Jesus.” I’ve heard it explained that during the time of slavery, just waking up in the morning with one’s mind was a major accomplishment. The cruelty of slavery was enough to drive some people mad. So to wake up with one’s mind at all was a sign of resilience and character. Then, to wake up with one’s mind on Jesus - the central character of the religion of the slave owners, that had not only been adopted by the slaves, but in a real sense was better understood and better practiced by those slaves.

Some mornings I am blessed to wake up with my mind stayed on Jesus.

There are, to be certain, many opportunities to witness the glory of God.

Last night, on my way home from Vacation Bible School, I stopped along Omaha Street and took a few pictures of the wildfire burning on M hill. It was an awesome sight from my very safe vantage point. I could see the firefighters working the edges of the flames and knew that they would be feeling the intense heat as well as hearing the loud crackling of the flames. A helicopter was later brought in to assist with the firefighting, but I didn’t stay that long. It was pretty impressive just to see the power of the flames. I don’t know if I was experiencing God in those moments of watching the flames, but I was aware of how powerful the forces of this universe really are. It was a dramatic and impressive display.

The natural world is chock full of examples of the glory of God and I really appreciate being able to live in a place where I have so much access to the beauty and glory of God. On the other hand, I am no less aware of God when I sing with the children at Vacation Bible School, or work with one of the committees of the church. People who are giving so generously of their time and energy to build and sustain a community of care are a constant reminder of God’s glory and presence in the world.

Once again, I have been blessed to wake with God this morning. I haven’t yet stepped out of my door. I haven’t yet dipped my paddle in the lake. The sun has not yet made its first appearance in my neck of the woods, but I am confident that God is at work in the world ant that God will be revealed to me in the events of this day. It is indeed a blessing to wake with God to a new day.

I’m not good at poetry and I’ve never written the words to a hymn, but I admire those who possess such a skill. There are some wonderful hymns about the process of waking with God: “Morning Has Broken,” and “God has Created a New Day,” readily come to my mind as I write this morning. Add those to “Woke Up this Morning with my Mind Stayed on Jesus” and there should be a song on my heart all day long. Still, if I could, I’d write a new hymn about waking up with God. Already the concept didn’t start with me, but it is one that is rich in meaning and possibility.

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.

Throughout my career I have struggled with different parts of my job at different phases of my life. Recently I’ve been experiencing my pastoral prayers as somewhat less than I wish. the process of crafting a prayer for the congregation is a challenge. There have been times in my career when the prayers came easily and I was able to have a sense of being guided by the Holy Spirit in that aspect of my worship leadership. Recently, however, it seems that my prayers are somehow inadequate for the difficult times in which we live.

Of course praying is not a matter of getting the right words. God understands our silence as well as our speech. And there are no words that are adequate to express our gratitude to God. Praying with and for a congregation is an enormous challenge. The people I serve come to worship with such a wide variety of needs, wants and considerations. I try to remember each week, as we prepare for our prayers, to remind people that the concerns they brought into the room with them are as important as those that have been printed in the bulletin. This reminder is also a reminder to me that I don’t know all of the problems, trials, concerns, griefs, losses and other things that people have brought with them into the room. Our prayer is much more than a product of the thoughts that are present in my mind.

For some reason, I’ve been wishing I had put a little more effort into my pastoral prayer last Sunday. I had written the prayer on Friday. It had been a difficult week. On Monday, one of the Elders of our Dakota Association has passed away, making three significant elders in the last year. These people were my friends. I had known them for more than twenty years. We had worked together, prayed together, sung together and served together. Then, Thursday night, my phone began to light up with messages as the ambush-style shootings of police officers in Dallas was taking place. By Friday morning when I sat down to write the prayer for Sunday, my mind and heart was filled with that particular tragedy. It wasn’t that it was more important than other losses, or that the families of those slain officers grieved more deeply than the loved ones of other victims in recent weeks. I wasn’t unaware of the numerous deaths of unarmed civilians by police and the disproportionate number of those victims who are African-American. I wasn’t trying to make any kind of statement about institutional racism or the privilege I have enjoyed as a pastor in South Dakota. It was just that the tragedy was recent and raw and as a Chaplain to law enforcement, I was sensitive to the fear and pain that is experienced in our department whenever an officer is killed in the line of duty, no matter where it occurs.

The prayer I wrote was a good one for that particular day.

However, it fell short of what was needed for the congregation on Sunday. It wasn’t that I shouldn’t have used the words I had written, it was just that the prayer ended short of addressing all of the pain and sorrow and loss of our nation in the preceding week.

I named the slain officers in the prayer and I make no apology for doing so. One of the ways that we honor those who have fallen and their families is to remember that they were not statistics, but rather individuals with names and faces and unique memories. Michael Smith, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa and Brent Thompson deserve to be remembered as dedicated servants of public safety. It is just that they aren’t the only ones who should be remembered by name.

In the same week that the officers were killed, Philander Castile was shot in his car in St. Paul Minnesota on Wednesday as he reached for his driver’s license. Alton Sterling was shot dead by police during an incident in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Tuesday. I said neither name in my pastoral prayer on Sunday.

Those names are just the tip of the iceberg. At least 102 unarmed black people were killed by police in 2015. Unarmed black people were killed at five times the rate of unarmed whites that year.

There is enough pain and loss and sorrow and grief in this country of ours to fill up hours of prayers.

A prayer is not about politics or taking sides or solving the problems of entrenched racism, however. A prayer is not the appropriate time to give an index to the week’s news and offers commentary. A prayer is about opening ourselves to listen to God’s call for our lives. A prayer is about presenting all of ourselves - our joys as well as our sorrows - to God. A pastoral prayer is offered by a pastor to give words to the prayers of the congregation. It is a moment when the congregation asks me to speak on their behalf. The immensity of that responsibility overwhelms me.

I worry that my prayers aren’t as expansively inclusive as God’s love. We say we welcome everyone into our worship, but I fear that at times I may be leaving out the concerns of some as I pray. I know that I need to trust God to guide my prayers as well as my actions.

The term “Spiritual Practice” is meaningful to me in part because it reminds me that there are many aspects to the discipline of being Christian that require practice. Some things need to be done over and over again as I think of what was good and what was not so good and learn from the experience to make a fresh attempt. It is clear that when it comes to pastoral prayers, decades of leading worship is insufficient and I still need more practice. Perhaps one pastoral prayer a week is simply too small of an effort. Perhaps I need to write one such prayer each day and then lay each week’s worth aside and create a fresh new prayer for each Sunday’s service.

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.

Despite a busy week with Vacation Bible School, things are relatively calm here in Rapid City. That isn’t quite the whole story, with a drowning in Pactola Reservoir, a suicide in the hills and several other things that are keeping law enforcement and rescue personnel busy. But in many ways this week seems like about our usual. Our community is large and complex enough that there are always tragedies and problems. But nothing too out of the ordinary is going on unless you happen to be a relative of one of the people involved in the tragedies that have taken place.

Part of my attention, however has been focused on the adventures of our friends. For many years, I have dreamed of following the Dempster Highway to Inuvik. I think it would be a grand adventure to take the 450-mile gravel road that extends the farthest north of any road in Canada. Up above the Arctic Circle, alongside the Mackenzie River, the town of about 3,500 doesn’t have much for tourist services and is nearly as far off of the beaten path as one can go. This summer, we have friends who have made the trip all the way up there. Their plan was to stay in Eagle Plains, about half way up the Dempster then make the run to Inuvik for one night and return to Eagle Plains. Things were a bit sketchy however, last week. On Monday of last week the Dempster Highway ferry crossing at Fort McPherson was closed briefly. Then it reopened on Tuesday and our friends made it up there.

On Thursday, however, with the Peel River in flood, the ferry was closed again and it still has not reopened. The traffic on both sides of the river is backing up as crews scramble to repair the landings on both sides of the river. Among the vehicles waiting to cross on the southern side of the river are a couple of truck loads of freight, including groceries.

I understand that our friends are playing a lot of hands of cards as there really isn’t much social life in Inuvik at the moment. And the days are long, with the warmest part of the day coming around 8 pm. And the mosquitoes are really big and really hungry.

Oh, and to add to the situation, there have been several mudslides in the area and one took out a cell phone tower, so cellphone service is down.

Our friends’ grandson is getting the adventure of a lifetime. I’m thinking he’ll have a few stories to tell when he gets back to school in the fall.

The ferry being down for several days is not out of the ordinary for the people who live in Inuvik. The ferry generally funds from June to October. Most years there is an ice road from about December until late March.

Probably our friends are also spending some of their extra time while they are waiting revising their plans for the rest of their trip to Alaska. Each day that passes means one less day for touring and traveling in Alaska and the trip back to South Dakota.

I still dream of making the trip. I’m pretty sure that I need to do so when I have some flexibility to my time.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Company, resident Robert Alexie Sr. of Fort McPherson says that the little hamlet is busier than usual. “I keep telling themn, you’re a resident of McPherson now,” he said. “Welcome to the Arctic.”

Our sense of time doesn’t always line up with the ways of nature. Folks who live in places like Fort McPherson and Inuvik have had to learn to adapt to things like the ferry being out and food supplies from lower regions being delayed. The grocery store occasionally runs out of bread and milk and other items.And now they have a group of tourists who also are competing for short supplies. After all there is no cafe in Inuvik. It isn’t a place that is used to taking in a lot of guests.

It isn’t that my life is dull by comparison. I seem to have a lot of things to do to keep me busy. I’m responsible for part of the program of Vacation Bible School. I have regular meetings to which I need to attend. I have a family gathering this weekend for the wedding of a granddaughter of a cousin. There are the usual chores at home and in the yard. It continues to be very dry here, so the garden needs to be watered regularly. And I have the usual concerns of a congregation with its share of normal illnesses and problems.

I don’t think I want to switch places with our friends. I have no need to be stranded on the other side of the river with the ferry out. Still their dilemma does hold some fascination for me. I am delighted with their sense of adventure and their willingness to go to considerable effort to experience things that many people would never consider trying. I like the idea that 450 miles (one way) of gravel road isn’t a barrier to them. And I know for a fact that their grandson is on a once-in-a-lifetime trip that he will remember for the rest of his life.

The good news is that they are safe. Inuvik does have air service and food and freight can be flown in if necessary. Ferry service is likely to be restored soon and I’m pretty sure they’ll be on their way before long. And they will have great stories to tell.

And, while they have been waiting for the ferry, crews have repaired the places where the pavement has been torn up for installation of new water pipes around the corner from our home. The commute to and from church will be smoother now that the repair is completed. If there are a few potholes and rough spots and some uncompleted work alongside the road, we’ve got nothing to complain about. We’re not waiting for them to figure out how to get the ferry close enough to shore to drive on it.

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 thinking lately about a few young adults I know who are struggling to find their career paths. In their thirties, they can’t seem to find jobs that work for them, and have been wandering from job to job and from financial crisis to financial crisis for some time, some of them for more than a decade. Their employment history has proven to be a challenge for other aspects of their lives including relationships with spouses, parents, children and other family members. As I write, I know that I am not doing a good job of describing their situations in part because each situation is unique. One is back living temporarily with parents while job searching. Another is working at a convenience store to make ends meet while trying to discover some other direction for his career. Another is getting by financially but feels stuck in a job that he doesn’t like. It really isn’t fair to consider them to all be in the same category. What they have in common is their age and the sense that they haven’t yet found the right job.

Our society is filled with the advice to young people to follow their passion. Usually this takes the form of “find what you love to do and then do it.” It is good advice in theory. If you love the work you are doing it doesn’t seem like drudgery to go to work. The problem with that advice is that it doesn’t take into account the simple fact that not every passion provides enough income to cover rent and groceries. One of the biggest factors in the economy of our country today is the rapidly increasing divide between the rich and the poor and the shrinking of the middle class. So called “entry level” jobs are decreasing in pay. Minimum wage doesn’t cover the basics of survival. The number of jobs that lead to riches are few and growing even more scarce. Young workers entering the market often have to accept a dramatic decrease in their lifestyle compared to their parent’s standard of living.

The malaise over jobs is not restricted to those in their thirties, however. I have had many conversations over the last couple of years with mid-career adults who are dissatisfied with their jobs, but who feel stuck and don’t seem to have options beyond staying with a job that makes them unhappy. I recently read an article that claimed that the majority of Americans were living so close to financial distress that they didn’t have reserves to cover an unanticipated expense of $400. A car or home repair can easily exceed that amount.

I have very little personal experience from which to garner advice for these people. I’ve been blessed to have discovered, very early in my life, a vocation that is meaningful and that has provided for my family. While my career is not one that leads to riches, it has provided a home and the things that are most important to us such as education for our children and occasional travel. We have been able to donate to the causes that are meaningful to us and save modestly for the future. I can’t really imagine starting out in an entirely new profession or switching career paths.

What I don’t know is how much I happened into a job that I love and how much I learned to love the job that I have. When I was a student, I envisioned myself in specialized ministries. I interned in counseling and pursued quite a bit of training in that field. At one time I was a candidate for full credentialing as a marriage and family counselor. A mentor advised that a few years of experience in parish ministry might strengthen my resume. A few years turned into a few decades and I never left the parish. A while ago I considered becoming a Conference minister and pursuing judicatory work, but my timing wasn’t right and the crumbling of mid-level judicatories in contemporary mainline churches means that there are very few such positions left in our denomination. Looking from the perspective of my current situation, I’m grateful that I didn’t make that switch.

I remember times when I was less satisfied with my job than is now the case. I have been frustrated with the challenges of working with volunteers. There have been times when a bully has made my position uncomfortable for a while. Congregations don’t always make the choices I think are best. I spend more time raising funds and administering an institution than I would like. The days are long and time off is often short. Still, over the years, I have learned to balance the joys and frustrations and I have discovered ways to get small amounts of personal time for renewal. I don’t know if my “perfect” job is the product of the job being right for me and me being right for the job or the product of both me and the job changing so that we are a better fit.

I guess what I’m thinking is that not every job is a perfect match on the first day. Part of finding joy in work is sticking with something long enough to learn to love it. Love is often portrayed in our society as an instant flash of emotion. In reality it often is the product of a deep commitment to sticking together through hard times. If you can’t have the job you love, perhaps you need to learn to love the job you have.

My heart goes out to those “thirty-somethings” who can’t seem to get on their feet. It is a challenging and difficult world and it can be difficult to find a meaningful career. Perfection is elusive and often simply can’t be attained by those of us who are imperfect.

When I was in college I had several jobs to pay the bills that ended up being things I didn’t pursue for the rest of my life. I worked in a bakery. I assembled machinery. I drove truck. I even spent a summer tipping garbage cans into the back of a compactor truck. None of those were jobs I loved, but I learned to get better at each one. Each was easier on the last day than on the first.

Thus comes my one piece of advice to those who feel stuck in a job they don’t like: While you are looking for a change, invest enough energy in your current job to get better at it. While you search for the perfect match, make the current match better.

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.

One of the podcasts I enjoy is Intelligence Squared: The World of Debate. The programs started in England and now there are spin offs in many countries, including the United States. I often listen to the English version because they focus a bit more on international issues. The basic format is to posit a basic resolution, gather a panel of experts, and conduct a respectful debate with opening arguments, rebuttals and audience questions. The audience is polled on the issue as they arrive and after the formal statement are made, the audience is polled once again. Usually there are a sizable percentage of audience members who are undecided at the beginning of the debate and it is interesting to see how many make up their mind during the debate. What I appreciate about the program is that the debaters show respect for one another and genuinely listen to the arguments of the other side.

We have gotten used to a different kind of debate of political issues here in the United States. Candidate debates are far different. In general candidates come to the debates with prepared talking points and specific attacks on their opponents. They present themselves and their point of view without respect for the questions answered and generally without careful listening to their opponent. Points of logic are rarely conceded and the focus is on “winning.” The point is to get the audience, which in general means the wider television audience rather than the people actually present with the debaters, to choose sides.

I’m interested in more nuanced conversations. There is far too much of choosing sides in our public conversations. At times it seems as if no one is willing to change their opinion and no one is looking for the positive contributions of the other side. I, however, often find it difficult to choose sides. I think there are more than two perspectives on most important issues. I am interested listening to viewpoints that are different than my own. I can be persuaded to change my mind by a well reasoned argument.

There is little doubt that the times in which we live feel precarious to us. Large scale migrations of people, global climate change and an upsurge of religious fundamentalism have left many nervous about the future. The rise of China, the re-emergence of Iran, the posturing of Russia and the volatility of the Middle East all hold potential for incredible violence and an uncertainty about the future of our world.

The world has known the rise of modern democracies and a focus on western style democracy for nearly half a millennium. Those of us who live in democracies are very comfortable with our form of government and believe in its potential to raise the prospects of people everywhere. We squirm with the rise of other forms of government and systems that are less democratic. Some pundits have even posited that in the ebb and flow of history we may be entering a phase of less democracy in the world. This leaves us nervous and worried about international affairs and about the role of our country in shaping the future.

In these uncertain times there may be some comfort in choosing sides and clearly labeling an enemy. There are many of us, however, who are uncomfortable with such a simplistic view of these complex issues and very nervous of “us” and “them” ways of thinking.

A clear example of this is our response to the tragic shootings of police officers in Dallas. I have clear sympathies for the families of the victims. As a sheriff’s chaplain, I have a great deal of compassion for the hard work, quality training, and excellent judgement of law enforcement officers. Their self sacrifice in order to provide for the public good is a shining example of what is best about human beings. The thought of a sniper systematically killing offices is sickening and repulsive. The tragedy for the families of these officers is unspeakable. My prayers and my heart goes out to them.

At the same time, I have sympathies for the protesters who gathered to speak out against systematic racism in our legal system. The high profile deaths of people of color at the hands of police officers require careful investigation and more needs to be done to protect innocent victims. The over reaction of some law enforcement officers has led to unnecessary deaths and the disproportionate number of victims who are African-American is not easily explained. Peaceful protest is one way to address systematic racism and to work for change.

I realize that the lone shooter was not in line with the organizers of the protest. I understand that the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement are as appalled at the shootings as are those who disagree with them.

In sort, I refuse to take sides.

Even if I were to take sides, I refuse to employ the tactics of contemporary debate. Jesus instructed us: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, . . .”

Loving my enemies means being intentional about looking for the good in those with whom I disagree. It means understanding their beliefs and convictions well enough to identify the qualities and aspects of their lives that are worthy of love and compassion. It means listening carefully enough to know who they are and what they are about.

But there is more. I believe that loving our enemies means being willing to show our own vulnerabilities. It means being honest with our own doubts. The traditional debater’s stance of not showing your weakness and pursuing an attack at all times may be useful for verbal combat, but it does not open us to loving our opponents.

In these uncertain times learning to love our enemies and understand the basic humanity of those with whom we disagree is critical. And you don’t get there by choosing sides.

Our culture needs a new way of debating and a revival of respect for the art of listening. It starts by renewing our commitment to love.

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 grew up in a family of pilots and learned to fly as a teenager. However, my salary and the costs of general aviation haven’t always lined up during my career, so I made the decision to stop flying as an active pilot several years ago. Flying is a skill that demands constant practice and I simply wasn’t flying enough to keep up. These days I’m a bit of an airport bum and I often get to ride with other pilots when they fly. Back when we lived in North Dakota, I kept up with my flying by renting an airplane from our local airport operator. They were really easy people to work with and very helpful. One day, when I was hanging out at the airport, I talked about the possibility of renting the airplane for a trip to Rapid City. The owner of the airplane was eager to rent the plane, but said, in no uncertain terms, “There’s only one thing about flying to Rapid City. If you land that airplane at the Air Force Base, you just bought it. You’ll pay for the whole airplane.”

As it turned out, weather prevented my flight on that particular trip. In subsequent years I did fly into Rapid City in another airplane without incident. Most of my flying has been done in Montana, North Dakota and Idaho. There are large military operations areas in all three states and I leaned about paying careful attention to your location and the rules of flying in those areas. One time, when flying in North Dakota in the same rented airplane above a military operations area, air traffic control advised me that a B-52 would be passing below me a mille to the left of my flight path. Even at that distance, from my vantage point in my little two-seated Cessna, that airplane appeared Huge. I was just as glad that ATC had advised the B52 of my presence as I was that they told me about it. I must have just been a tiny speck from their point of view.

All of this is an introduction to an event that occurred Thursday night here in Rapid City. For the second time in the years I have lived in Rapid City a commercial airliner, bound for Rapid City Regional Airport, landed at Ellsworth Air Force Base. There were 130 passengers on flight 2845 from Minneapolis. It was about 8:45 pm, which around here isn’t dark yet.

Just to paint the picture in your mind for those unfamiliar with our area. The two airports are about 7 miles apart and the main runways at both fields are aligned roughly in the same direction. The runway at Ellsworth, however, is much bigger, both longer and wider than the runway at the public airport. Because of the close proximity of the two fields, the Air Force provides approach and departure control to airplanes arriving at both airports. However, they have separate towers so once lined up for a landing the pilot switches frequencies and is talking to the appropriate tower for the final part of the approach and landing. Tower operators are supposed to confirm visual sighting of airplanes when conditions permit, but that doesn’t often happen. Responsibility for the location of the landing rests solely with the pilot.

The electronics carried in contemporary airplanes are far more accurate than seven miles.Even a small general aviation airplane carries a GPS with pinpoint accuracy. It isn’t a failure of the instruments or electronics. Landing on the wrong runway probably would never occur in bad weather or the middle of the night because the pilots would be focused on their instruments. What happens is that they switch to visual flight rules and land the airplane by hand when the weather is good and they have the airport in sight.

In the case of the commercial airliners, there are two pilots at the controls. One is doing the primary flying and the other is assisting and paying attention to details to double check all of the decisions and procedures. In order for the airliner to land at the wrong airport two pilots have to be making the same mistake at the same time.

It is a BIG oops! The pilots have been suspended pending an investigation. The last time it happened the pilots lost their jobs over the mistake. On Thursday night the 130 passengers and the crew sat on the ramp at the Air Force base with the window shades pulled down for 2 1/2 hours while calls were made, an investigation documented and negotiations were held to allow the airplane to take off and fly to the correct airport. The Air Force has specific procedures for such situations that are followed precisely. Passengers were, however, allowed to use their cell phones during the wait, so waiting families were aware of the situation. The delay was, to be sure, an inconvenience for the travelers, but there was no particular danger to passengers in the event.

Still, one has to ask what circumstances allow such a huge mistake. Missing another airport by seven miles means disaster, though the would not be looking at a perfectly safe runway in other circumstances and probably would catch their mistake earlier. I am sure that the airline pilots were properly trained and current on all of their requirements. I don’t know whether they had been fling into Rapid City many times before. It is possible that this was a first light into this particular airport for one or both of the pilots.

We are all capable of making mistakes. Fortunately many of those mistakes don’t result in serious injury. But there can be huge consequences to human mistakes. In the church we give a lot of thought and energy to examining how people get beyond their mistakes. We believe in the power of forgiveness to allow lives to resume and people to live fully. I’m confident that the pilots can be forgiven for their mistake. That may not, however, mean that they will get to keep their jobs.

I’m pretty sure neither of them ever heard the warning I received before my first flight into Rapid City as pilot in command. I wouldn’t even think of landing until I had both airports in sight and was confident about which one I was headed for. Then again I’m not an active pilot any more.

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 read a report from the BBC website yesterday that reported that biologists in western Iceland are hoping that brightly colored roads could prevent Arctic terns from being hit by traffic. There was a picture with the article of a road that was painted pink and green. The theory is that the bright colors will make the birds more visible to drivers when they are sitting on the road. The birds are attracted to the road surface because it is warm. Young birds are particularly vulnerable to traffic because their feathers are a mottled brown which blends into the traditional paved road surface from a distance. Arctic terns are small birds, weighing only about 3 1/2 ounces. They are hardly a match from a car speeding down the highway. Part of the problem is that traffic is way up from a few years ago as tourism in Iceland has increased quite a bit in recent years. I have some understanding of this if for no other reason than that I would love to visit Iceland myself. The terns themselves are tourists. They migrate from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Scientists at Newcastle University tracked one bird that flew 59,650 miles from the Farne Islands to the Weddell Sea and back. It is the longest bird migration ever tracked by scientists.

I kind of like the idea of pink and green roads. I’m thinking that it is a solution that might never be attempted in the United States. We are more likely to try to figure out ways to keep the birds from going on the road in the first place, claiming the highway as our exclusive domain. In Canada we saw several overpasses made to accommodate game trails. The deer, elk and moose apparently will use a more direct path under the highway when it is provided. It doesn’t eliminate cars hitting the animals, but apparently it decreases the number of such accidents.

Most days when I am paddling I see multiple animals on the road between home and the lake. Early in the morning there are usually deer and turkeys on the road. This time of year, the bucks are often out and about at first light. They have their new antlers and though they don’t have the single-minded focus of the autumn rut, they seem to prefer to strut and don’t like to have to speed up just because a car is coming. There are also plenty of fawns and they are starting to graze with their mothers these days, so that is another reason for caution. When I’m going to the lake I generally am not in a hurry and so I usually avoid hitting animals. In the past, however, I have hit deer on occasion. It always makes me feel bad. I don’t think, however, that the color of the highway would make much of a difference. I’ve only hit deer in low visibility conditions.

It is interesting what we will do in an effort to protect wild animals. Recently I read that environmental officials in Turkey are attempting to stop a flock of critically endangered birds from migrating to Syria because in recent years they haven’t come back. Northern bald ibises were once found across Europe, but now the population has declined precipitously. The plan in Turkey is to capture the birds and keep them in cages to stop them from flying south. One environmental official told reporters, “if peace comes to the Middle East and we can be sure of their safety, we can send them out again to migrate in future years. But we won’t let all of them go. We will chose adults to preserve.”

If the only way to save an animal is to keep it locked in a cage are we really preserving the animals? I think it is a legitimate question. On the other hand, if concerns for the birds were to motivate a peaceful settlement to the terrible destruction and bloodshed in Syria, I’m in favor of exploring whatever we can do.

Mostly, I’ve been watching birds as I paddle. Sheridan Lake is breeding grounds for ducks, geese, herons, red-winged blackbirds, owls, eagles and a host of other birds. My canoe is fairly quiet in the water and although the birds won’t allow me to approach too close, I often get a good look at them before they decide to fly away. I like to pay a waiting and watching game with the herons. They will stand still believing that their camouflage is hiding them. However, they do turn their heads to keep an eye on me. I will stop paddling when I see one and allow the canoe to drift with my camera to my eyes trying to see if I can get close enough for a picture before the bird flies. Sometimes, I get a reasonable picture, often I don’t.

The geese are more tolerant. They allow me to paddle close enough for pictures as long as I don’t put too much pressure on them. A few weeks ago, the goslings hadn’t fledged yet. They were great swimmers, but weren’t yet flying. They would really get those webbed feet going to keep up with their parents as my canoe glided toward them. Ducks, on the other hand, are quick to take to the air when our paths cross. They are unlikely to change direction even though we appear to be on a collision course. They will just fly a few yards to make sure that they stay ahead of me.

I guess all I am saying this morning is that the wild animals add so much to our lives. I feel so fortunate to live in a place with them as my neighbors. I love people. I love working with people. But I also gain great insight and peace from observing the non human neighbors in our home. How much poorer my life would be without them.

So if a few Icelanders want to paint roads in an attempt to protect their birds, I’m with them. I say, “Go for it!”

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.

When I was still a graduate student, I explored the possibility of specializing in some form of counseling ministry. At the time, I was serving as an intern at the Wholistic Health Care Center and working on qualifying for membership in the American Academy of Marriage and Family Counselors. My supervisor was handing me a wide variety of counseling cases to give me a broad experience and the center had an excellent format for clinical supervision and feedback. It was in those days that I started reading the abstracts of psychological and psychiatric studies. I was seeking to keep up with a rapidly changing profession.

My life took a different course and after I completed my second year with the center, I never again worked as a professional counselor. I still do a fair amount of pastoral counseling, but I am quick to refer people to counselors when I feel that their needs require any form of intensive therapy. The habit of reading the abstracts of studies, however has remained. As a professional member of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, I receive access to a large database of psychological and psychiatric studies.

The other day a study at The Ohio State University caught my eye. Researchers have found evidence that acetaminophen not only dulls physical pain, it also reduces our ability to predict pain in others and empathize. If the results of this study can be confirmed and replicated, it has potential for adding to our understanding of how our brains work.

Acetaminophen is marked under the brand name Tylenol in the U.S. but it is contained in hundreds of medicines that are sold over the counter and as prescriptions. Despite some risks of liver damage, it is still considered to be a very safe drug when administered according to label recommendations. And, for many people, it works.

Researchers theorized that the same area of the brain that responds to physical pain might also respond to psychological pain. This theory was born out by a study conducted by a team from the University of Kentucky. Another study by Ohio State University researchers found that acetaminophen reduced people’s evaluation and response to both negative and positive stimuli. This lead those researchers to design the current study. In the study 80 participants were either given a liquid containing 1,000 milligrams of acetaminophen or a placebo solution with no drug. One hour later the participants were given scenarios to read. The stories included characters who were subjected to pain such as a knife wound or losing a loved one. The participants then rated the physical and emotional pain experienced by the characters. The team found that the individuals who had consumed acetaminophen rated the pain of the characters in the story as less severe. This part of the study was followed up by two additional double-blind studies that rated the empathy of participants.

It is important to note that this is just one study and that much more research will be needed before conclusions can be drawn about the causation of the decrease in empathy, but it makes some sense that if one’s pain is dulled, so also might be one’s ability to sense the pain of others. And, if follow-up studies demonstrate consistent results, it seems obvious that studies of other pain medications might show similar results.

The potential ramifications of the study are significant. What if pain medications decrease our ability to empathize with others? What if treating our own pain makes us less compassionate toward the pain of others? We live in a pain adverse society. We are quick to reach for medication to dull pain that previous generations simply endured. I’m no fan of pain and I understand why people seek treatment for their pain. I certainly do not want my loved ones to suffer unnecessarily. But just as I am cautious about the trade-offs that come with pain killers such as drowsiness and how those effects can limit one’s relationships with others, it seems to follow that too much pain medication might become a major barrier in our ability to give and receive love.

Mind you, the evidence is not yet clear. Drawing these conclusions is premature. Still, reading the abstract got me to thinking about the choices we make.

We’ve known for some times that pain can be an effective teacher. Numerous studies have demonstrated that it is not as effective as a teacher as reward, but nonetheless people do learn from the experience of pain. Furthermore, pain can be a good signal to people to disengage from practices that are causing harm. If we were to lose our ability to experience pain, the result would likely be an increase in injury and in the severity of injuries simply because we might become unaware that we are being injured until after the injury has already occurred. There is also some evidence that using medication to treat main can, in some cases, suppress the natural pain controlling mechanisms of our bodies. The more pain medications we take, the more are required to achieve the desired effect. Addiction to pain medications is a major problem for millions of people.

The study, it seems, at least encourages me to display a bit more caution in my choices about the use of medications. After all, my job - and my life - is based on a healthy dose of compassion for others. I don’t want to avoid the places of pain, but rather to go directly to those places to aid those who are suffering. I want to become sensitive to the pain of others so that I can intervene in positive ways to reduce suffering.

As I age I discover that I experience some pain that I don’t remember from younger phases of my life. I develop muscle stiffness a bit more easily and it persists a bit longer. I sometimes have unexplained joint pain. I’ve been advised by medical professionals that taking pain medication on a regular basis might be a good idea.

For now, however, I choose to feel a bit more of my own pain if for no other reason that it reminds me that I am alive and a part of a world where others experience pain that is far deeper and more severe than I have known.

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.

Its pretty hard for me to work up much self pity. As lives go, mine has been very fortunate. I found a vocation and meaningful work early in my life and have had work that is challenging and interesting all of my adult life. I met my soul mate when I was young and have enjoyed a wonderful marriage that continues to enrich and bring deep joy to my life. Our children grew up without some of the major challenges and problems that some have had to face and overcome. We have wonderfully delightful grandchildren who are healthy and whose parents are committed to their role. Our lives have been lived in places of peace and we have escaped the trauma of major accidents. If I am ever tempted to practice self pity for some little thing that seems to be going on all I have to do is look around and the world is filled with people who are less fortunate and who have enjoyed less privilege than I.

It is a good thing, because the world doesn’t really need the sound of more complaining. There is enough of that noise in the media every day. If you listen to a television channel that seems to be a favorite of doctors offices and a few other waiting rooms that I occasionally visit, you might come to the conclusion that our nation is falling apart and our leaders are out to ruin us all with excessive taxation for unlimited spending that benefits other people. You might feel that we are somehow oppressed by university admission programs that seek a diverse learning environment for all students. You might conclude that providing health care for those with low incomes somehow limits the amount of health care available to others. You might believe that unemployment is caused by people who come to this country who are wiling to take jobs for low pay that employers can’t find local people to do. Judging from all of the complaining that one can hear from television, it seems as if our nation was on the verge of collapse and our people are terribly oppressed.

My recommendation is to turn the television set off.

I woke this morning, as is my usual in the summer, to a chorus of birdsong. The birds like to sing and be active before the sun rises around here. I’m not sure what gets them going. Perhaps there is an abundance of their favorite insects at that time. Perhaps they can sense the light that appears before the sun rises. Maybe they just get up in a good mood every morning. After all they too live in this beautiful place.

Some mornings I can see as many as three fawns in the yard at the same time. The twins were born in the neighbor’s yard where the grass is still high enough to hide them from sight when they lie down. The other little one is just a tad older and occasionally the white flag of its tail shows its location. It has a highly developed startle instinct and sometimes will run around and around with the slightest motion or commotion. The woman delivering newspapers can inspire it to excited motion.

I wonder if the television news would be different if the reporters had time, on occasion, to take a canoe out on the lake before heading to work. I doubt that they do. There are a lot of people in this world whose lives are filled with constant motion and action. Because the news cycle is now literally 24 hours a day seven days a week, those who report have to keep some strange hours. They live in fear of some other media outlet getting to the news before they do. Their lives are based on quick reporting, not careful analysis. Then, like many others, they become addicted to electronic devises. Even when they are not working there are e-mails, text messages, Facebook posts, twitter feeds and a thousand other applications cluttering their devices and their lives. Then there is the mad rush of modern child rearing. Children have intense schedules that require elaborate planning. Modern families are on the go all the time. There is scarcely a moment for quiet or reflection and when there is a brief moment, out come the devices.

Yesterday I rode an elevator from the ground floor to the ninth floor, stopping occasionally. People were getting on and off of the elevator. I was the only passenger on that trip who didn’t have a smart phone in my hand tapping at its face. I was able to watch the other people and imagine what might be going on in their lives because they were not paying attention to me. There was no music on that elevator. The people were perfectly silent. I could have prayed the entire time without distraction.

Maybe all of those busy people are simply too engaged all of the time to complain about the pressures of their lives. I suspect, however, that when they do get time to be with a friend or family member, there are plenty of complaints about all of the pressure in their lives and the fact that they never get a moment to themselves. I’m pretty sure that they don’t know that they could have a quiet moment to themselves on every elevator ride if they just slipped their phones into their pockets. I took the stars going down. I had the entire stairway to myself all the way. I could have recited poetry out loud without bothering anyone. Instead I just sang a little song in my heart and listened to the echo of my footsteps in the stairway.

Today I need to drop my pickup off at a shop for some routine work. I could easily get a ride to the office. I’ve decided, however, that my circumstances have given me a perfect excuse to take a walk. A ride would only save me ten minutes and the walk will give me time to think about some things that require more than a fleeting thought. And the walk will be a gift to those who work with me. I’ve already voiced a few complaints in this blog. By the time I get going and take a little walk, I’ll be in a good mood and they won’t have to listen to any of my complaints: a little gift to them that I think they might appreciate. After all the world doesn’t need the sound of any more complaining.

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.

Decades ago a friend was trying to explain the differences between the culture of his reservation and the dominant culture in which I had been raised and live. He was explaining how a person could legitimately have more than two grandmothers or grandfathers - how all of the elders of the community were grandmothers and grandfathers to him. He spoke of the reverence and respect of elders that was inherent in his culture and in his way of living. I was young. The popular media was filled with news of the generation gap. I was feeling particularly that there were plenty of elders in the church who didn’t understand the youth who were coming up. I bristled at what seemed to me to be a lack of sharing responsibility. “Age alone doesn’t make one right,” I argued. “You don’t understand,” he responded.

So many years have passed. I am older. I’m not the oldest of the people in the church, but my white hair and beard are not the product of any type of premature aging. A few years ago I noticed that when I attended functions on the reservation, I was shown deferential treatment. When they bring the plates to the elders, a plate is set in front of me. When the elders were recognized at an event my name is sometimes on the list.

Still, I can point to many who are older, wiser and more experienced than I.

It reminds me of an experience I had back in the ’70’s. My teacher was in his seventies and taught a class entitled: “Spirit in the Aging Years.” I naturally assumed that he considered himself to be an expert in the field in part because he had entered into his aging years. One day, at the beginning of class he told us a story. He had been visiting his mother and noticed that she kept the thermostat very low. He was cold and asked her to turn up the heat. She replied that she had seen the President of the United States on television urging people to conserve energy by turning down their thermostats. He replied that he was sure that the president has specifically exempted elders from the request. She looked him right in the eyes, pointed her finger at him, stamped her foot and declared, “If you think I’m any less patriotic because of my age, you’ve got another think coming, young man.” The class laughed. I realized, all of a sudden, that for our teacher, when he spoke of aging, was describing the culture and attitudes of his mother who was then in her nineties, not himself. She lived to 100. He died at 89.

News reached us yesterday of the death of yet another elder. Winifred Boub was the administrator of the Dakota Association of the United Church of Christ and an elder in the church and in the Council for American Indian Ministries. Her tireless devotion and dedication to the church has been a hallmark of our church for a very long time. Freddie had been experiencing a wide variety of health problems and had often used a scooter of wheelchair to get around for many years. Her husband and partner in ministry died a little more than a year ago and it seemed as if her health declined more rapidly after he died.

I would not want to have her suffer more than she did. I would not want to hold her back from the adventures that lie beyond this life.

Still it is hard to imagine our Dakota Association churches and meetings without her. She was always present at every gathering and event. I knew I could look forward to a visit with her each time I traveled to attend a DA event or activity.

Within the last year, our Dakota Association has lost some incredibly strong elders. Rev. Norman Blue Coat was our partner at Eagle Butte and a mainstay of the Association. Norman officiated at more funerals than anyone I’ve ever met. He had the committal service down just right. He would hold his book of worship in front of him, but he didn’t need to read the words. They were in his heart. He understood just how to reach out to the grieving family and communicate words of hope and blessing and support and community. Rev. Hampton Andrews was always the comic relief of any gathering. His stories had us rolling on the floor with laughter. His unconventional ways, however, were filled with compassion and deep love for the people he served.

The deaths of these elders do not come as a surprise. We knew they were getting older. We knew that their health was fragile. But each of them kept working and kept serving the church despite their limitations. I used to laugh that I had the joy of attending two different retirement parties for Winifred. Her retirement, however, didn’t seem to change anything about her work hours or her dedication to the Dakota Association. I once told her that she was teaching me how to retire because it was obvious to me that retirement looks exactly like working. I could tell that by watching her.

And now she had died. I know that I don’t have words for my friends and colleagues at the funeral. What will I be able to say? It is the passing of an era. the loss of these particular elders has left a hole in our church that cannot be filled. We will go on. Our churches will survive. We will continue to serve our people, Just how that will happen, however, is not clear.

I am confident that God will provide the leaders that the church needs to move into the next phase of its life. We have been taught that God will provide everything that is needed for the church in each generation. It is clear that it will take more than my understanding and imagination to come up with the next generation of leaders.

So I will go to be with my colleagues and friends and attend yet another funeral and open my heart to listen to God’s call. There is much that remains to be revealed.

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.

From a theological point of view, there is a big difference between independence and freedom. For the faiths that turn to the Hebrew Scriptures, there is are some crucial pivotal events in the story of Israel. One, of course is the Exodus. After slavery in Egypt, the people achieved freedom with the help of God, whose intervention was at once miraculous and consistent. There is no question that the people would not have achieved freedom without God’s help and the years of wandering in the wilderness that follow the initial breakthrough into freedom teach that the people weren’t prepared for the responsibilities that come with freedom. They had to learn to live as free people, a process that included a close scrape with idolatry and false gods.

Pivotal in the literature of what Christians call the Old Testament is the fall of Jerusalem in 586 bce. The Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar installed Zedekiah as tributary king of Judah. Zedekiah attempted to revolt against Babylon and enter into an alliance with the Pharaoh of Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar responded with a siege in 597 that lasted until the eventual fall of the city eleven years later. The Solomon’s temple was demolished. The city was razed to the ground. Many were taken away as captives.

Thus ended the period of monarchy for Israel.

Much of the historical books that followed contemplated the reasons for the destruction of the city and the end of Israel’s status as a world power. The prophets point out the behavior of the leaders and the failure of Israel to practice justice, steadfast love and mercy to the widows, immigrants and orphans in their midst.

The lesson, gained from studying the sacred scriptures is that Israel’s freedom is completely and utterly tied to God. Their freedom is dependent upon their faithfulness to the Sinai covenant with God.

For Israel there is a big difference between freedom and independence. True freedom comes from admitting their dependence upon God.

All of that information and those scriptures were available to the founders of the United States as they considered independence from Britain. The bottom line was that the colonial system was not working. It wasn’t just that the colonial system had inflicted incredible injustices upon the indigenous peoples of the North American continent. It wasn’t working for the settlers who had left the European continent for a wide variety of reasons, chief among which was the search for religious freedom. Although some of the colonies were relatively homogeneous in terms of religion and there were settlers who envisioned founding church states on the new continent, it became clear before very much time had passed that the new colonies were destined to be very diverse places with a wide variety of theological perspectives and differences of religious expression.

The stories of our Congregational forebears and their role in the revolution that resulted in the independence of the United States from Britain has been told in many different places and does not need to be repeated here. Suffice it to say that there was more than a small amount of crossover from religious interpretation and political activity in the Congregational churches of New England. In the period before the Revolutionary war preachers were quick to choose sides and to proclaim their loyalties from the pulpit. Even though there was already a long-standing tradition of freedom of the pulpit, there were some who crossed the boundaries of the sensibilities of the congregations they served. Some were even asked to leave their congregations because of their political activities.

But these are not stories that we often tell when Independence Day comes around.

Like Israel telling the stories of the flight from Egypt, we have come up with a more standardized version of the story of the process leading up to the Declaration of Independence and the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Not everyone, not even all of those staunch and independent New Englanders, was in favor of the revolution. Some went so far as to move north beyond the border of Canada because of their loyalty to the mother country in Europe. We often choose not to tell their stories and when we do we tell those stories as if they weren’t ever close friends and relatives of those who stayed behind, fought in the war, and enjoyed the fruits of independence.

We have never been of one mind when it comes to Independence and we are not of one mind when it comes to interpreting the events of the American Revolution.

The Boston Tea Party, an event planned at Old South Church in Boston, a protest against taxation without representation and the ways in which those taxes were used to benefit a monopolistic big business has been reduced to a far more simplistic notion of a dislike of taxes in general in popular American Culture. Today you can find as many versions of the meaning of that event as there are folks to tell the story. The fact that the original participants in the Boston Tea Party would have no recognition of the goals of the contemporary tea party movement has been lost to most political pundits and observers.

So today, 240 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence we celebrate the courage of our forebears. We celebrate their vision and hail their decision to embrace independence. The task of achieving freedom, however, continues. We still have not mastered the concept of responsibility that leads to freedom. We still do not understand the commitment and discipline that is required if we are to be truly free. We still do not understand the concept that as long as one person is unjustly imprisoned, as long as one person lacks for the essentials of life, as long as one person is denied, no one is truly free. Freedom for one means freedom for all.

There is yet more work to be done in this great nation of ours.

So happy Independence Day! May your celebrations be genuine and safe.

And tomorrow we need to get to work. There is much more work that remains.

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 way that I know Elie Wiesel is the way an author is meant to be known, I suppose: through the reading of his books. Although his first book, Night, was written in 1956, I didn’t read it until nearly twenty years later. I discovered the book as a requirement for a seminary class. It was a phase of my life when I didn’t read novels. I was so consumed with the required reading for my studies, that I felt I didn’t have time for fiction.

Elie Wiesel taught me that sometimes fiction can carry more truth than nonfiction can bear. I was immediately hooked. Despite my limited seminary budgets of money and time, I quickly acquired Dawn and Day and The Gates of the Forest. I couldn’t stop reading his books.

“For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living.” Over the years people have applied a lot of titles to Wiesel, “holocaust survivor,” “author,” Nobel Peace Price Laureate.” The title he chose for himself was “witness.”

Being born after the end of the Second World War, I am indebted to the witnesses whose writings have told the stories of the victims. It wasn’t only Wiesel, of course. I had previously read The Diary of Anne Frank, which firmly established in my heart and mind that the victims were not merely statistics, but rather individuals with thoughts and feelings and aspirations and intentions.

The cruelty of the holocaust is overwhelming: six million dead. I don’t know how to wrap my mind around the numbers. The power of the witnesses is even greater. It is a privilege to simply have lived at the same time as these voices who bear witness.

Elie Wiesel wrote some sixty books. I own about half of them and have read a few more. Zalmen or the Madness of God and The Trial of God are two powerful books that examine faith from an insider’s point of view. In Night Wiesel tells of watching the hanging of a child and says that his faith in God was also executed on that scaffold. His experiences raised deep and serious questions. Where is God in the midst of human cruelty? If God made everything that is, how could such evil exist? How could God have allowed such a world to unfold? These are not the questions of an atheist or non-believer? These are the questions of a Jew living in the midst of God’s covenant people. They are searing and eternal.

The term Ani Maamin comes from Maimonides’ thirteen-point version of the Jewish principles of faith. Wiesel chose it as the title and theme of an epic poem. The subtitle has been rendered, “A Song.” My copy of the poem bears a longer version: Ani Maamiin: A Song Lost and Found Again.” It is a powerful testament of what it means to remain in relationship with God even when the circumstances of life force one to question God’s goodness. I was fortunate to have been able to obtain a copy of the book when it was still in print and affordable in my budget. I’ve read it over and over again through the years. I’ve adapted portions of it to be spoken in characters in dramas and dialogues that I’ve written for the church. I’ve quoted it in sermons. I’ve read it out loud with no one to listen and let the words ring in my head and my heart.

In The Forgotten, Wiesel explores the function of human memory. His principal character, Elhanan Rosenbaum is a survivor who is losing his memory to an incurable disease. Haven chosen not to speak of the war, he resolves, in his state of confusion to tell his son about his past before it is too late. His son is then compelled to travel to the Romanian village where the crime was committed. He encounters a gravedigger who leads him to the grave of his grandfather and to the truth that reaches beyond the grave to bind the generations together.

When I pause to think of how close the world came to losing Wiesel before he began to write his stories, it seems a miracle that he survived. His mother and sister were killed upon their arrival at Auschwitz. His father died of dysentery and malnutrition in Buchenwald. After liberation, Elie was taken to a French orphanage. It was from there that he began his career as a journalist. He waited ten years before writing about his experiences in the war.

True to his role as a witness he never forgot.

Once he found his voice, he never stopped writing.

He emigrated to the United States and became a citizen of our country. He accepted his new country with its good and its bad. His personal savings and the resources of the Elie Wiesel Foundation were lost to the criminal actives of Bernie Madoff. His last book, “Open Heart” explores his life from the perspective of an aging man who had experienced multiple bypass surgery. He also explores his regrets over the Madoff losses. Throughout his long and productive life never shied away from the negative. He taught us to believe in hope because he was not afraid to speak of despair. He taught us to believe in faith because he was not afraid to speak of doubt. He taught us to love because he was not afraid to speak of hatred.

In a talk he once spoke of the obligation of the witness. A witness not only carries the obligation to recall and tell the stories of what he has seen. He is obligated to pass on that witness so that it will be shared by another. That to which he bears witness must never be forgotten. It is a duty which extends beyond the lifetime of the witness. We, who have read his stories have become witnesses by virtue of the power of his witness.

Now that he has died, the sacred trust has been passed. We too must not only bear witness to the truth he told, but we must pass it on so that it will never be forgotten.

I once heard a recording of a conversation he had in which he said he still has many questions for God. The questions remain now that he has died. I have no doubt, however, that he now has been blessed with the opportunity to ask them and receive answers directly.

Rest in peace faithful witness.

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.

Warning! I’m about to get on my soapbox and go for a brief rant. Feel free to skip today’s blog if you’ve heard enough of this kind of thing this week.

Many years ago, when we lived in Idaho, I worked very part-time for two weekly newspapers: The Kuna-Melba News and the Meridian Weekly. Initially, I developed and maintained the mailing lists for the papers and printed the address labels each week. I wanted a computer and printer and so I made a plan for the computer to pay for itself. I would set up the labels and let them print overnight. Jams were relatively rare in those days of tractor-fed dot matrix printers and I developed a pretty good set up. The machine succeeded in earring its way. Then, when the newspaper switched from manual layout to computer page layout, I acted as a consultant to the owner and helped select the computers, printer, software and other items. I taught myself to use the software while teaching others to use it. Then, suddenly, the owner became ill and died. Not only did I officiate at the funeral, but I oversaw the production of that week’s newspaper - and every other edition of the newspaper for several weeks until a new owner could be found.

Through that connection and other connections, I became familiar with some of the employees of the daily newspaper in town. The Idaho Statesman was owned by Gannett Company. They weren’t at that time the largest newspaper company in the US, but they were rapidly growing. They published USA today and had begun to purchase major US newspapers. I was able to witness some of the products of their growth as I visited the bustling newsroom with three or four dozen reporters, working at a rapid pace. I toured the production plant with all of the people running the giant presses. I got a flavor of the ad department with sales representatives doing the actual layout of advertisements on computers as they consulted with customers over the phone.

The business fascinated me.

When we moved to South Dakota, Rapid City was roughly half the size of Boise. Still our Rapid City Journal was a respectable newspaper. Owned by Lee Enterprises, I was familiar with the parent corporation and knew of Lee’s commitment to local editorial control of the newspapers they owned. I became friends with some of the employees of the newspaper and spent some time in the newsroom and working with an advertising accounts person. At that time our church was advertising weekly in the newspaper and, in addition, placing feature adds during Lent and Advent and for special occasions.

The first day I visited the newspaper in town was the busiest I ever saw the newspaper. The space that used to be the newsroom now is a beauty salon and the physical space occupied by the newspaper is about half of what it was in those days. The shrinkage in the number of employees is even more dramatic.

I’ve been around newspapers enough to know that they survive on advertisements, not on subscriptions. So it surprised me when the newspaper cut back so dramatically on its ad sales force. Pretty soon, I was doing all of the design and layout on the church’s ads simply because I knew a lot more about ad layout than any of the employees of the newspaper. Then the newspaper went through a series of price hikes and we cut back on advertising. Then one year, in a mood of austerity, we eliminated the advertising line from the church budget. We didn’t place any ads that year. Amazingly, both worship attendance and membership went up that year. It confirmed what I had already suspected. We were putting ads in the newspaper to make our own people feel good about their church. The ads were doing nothing to attract new people to the church.

We’ve never looked back from that decision. We simply quit advertising in the newspaper.

I remain, however, a subscriber to the newspaper. I read quite a bit of it. I’ve never figured out why our particular newspaper is so inconsistent with its sections. First of all the paper is now too small to warrant sections. It could easily be published as a single document. Secondly, the paper has been for many years inconsistent about what it places in the sections. Editorials may be in any of the sections, depending on the whims of the editor or space available or other reasons that aren’t clear. The comics dance from section to section for reasons that escape my understanding.

Subscribing to the print edition gives me access to the online edition and I find that I read it more than the print edition. At least sometimes there are more up to date items in the paper. As our ways of consuming news have changed, the newspaper contains less and less news. Most of the items in the newspaper, I get from other sources before they show up in the paper.

Unfortunately, the newspaper doesn’t understand the basics of an online presence. Its web page features the “most popular” news items: that is items that have already appeared on the page. It is not at all uncommon to find stories among the headlines that I read several days ago. This week there have been two articles appearing in the #1 position on the home page of the newspaper site that were written several years ago. This morning I scanned through 20 different photographs. The newest of them was taken in 2014. Many were from 2012. You get the picture. The newspaper is no longer about news.

I used to get the newspaper for obituaries. However the price of printing obituaries has gone up so much that we all read obituaries from funeral home web sites these days. The families have access to free posting of obituaries and everyone can read them for free.

Day by day little by little the newspaper has become irrelevant in my life. I don’t want to stop subscribing, but I have to admit that it is a very poor value for the price. And I know a lot of people who no longer receive a newspaper and who get their primary news from different sites than newspaper sites.

I’m sad. It appears that we are witnessing the death of an industry that once was vital and important.

I remember a conversation that I had with a newspaper employee early in my time in South Dakota in which he advised that we increase our contract with the newspaper because they understood the business of advertising better than a church could. Now I see that the newspaper not only doesn’t understand advertising, they don’t understand the news business, either.

Both our local newspaper and our church were founded in 1878. Unfortunately, it appears that only one of those institutions is going to make it to its sesquicentennial.

The good news is that the church will be here for another century at least. It turns out that our future was not dependent upon advertising in the newspaper.

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.

We had been married for six years when I officiated at my first wedding. I had a great deal of confidence as I approached that ceremony. I had taken a lot of courses in marriage and family counseling. I was confident with my understanding of the liturgies of the church and with my role as a leader of worship. I didn’t get as much time for premarriage counseling with the couple as I wanted, but we had been able to arrange several meetings and I felt ready for the task.

That couple didn’t make it to their sixth wedding anniversary. I don’t think they even made it to the first. The relationship was, as they say, a disaster from the start. The divorce was handled fairly swiftly and without too much trauma I guess.

That was a long time ago. I’ve officiated at a lot of weddings since that time. Like other officiants in this particular period of history, I’ve seen a fair share of those whose marriages I helped to celebrate separate and divorce. I don’t think my statistics are much better or worse than the national average of around 50% of marriages ending in divorce.

There have been some wonderful marriages as well. We’ve been around for the baptisms of children of marriages at which we officiated and by now there are a fair number of grandchildren from those marriages. We read of happy couples on Facebook and know that there have been some solid relationships that have grown out of wedding ceremonies we helped to lead.

I look at young adults who I’ve watched grow up in the church and I’ve become aware of how truly difficult it is to build a successful marriage in today’s world. First of all our society continues to lengthen the period of adolescence. Marriages in the early twenties are becoming relatively rare. 1st marriages in the late twenties or early thirties are becoming most common. That’s quite a few years beyond high school graduation at 18. And most of the young adults we know have gone through a period of experimentation with relationships that includes living together and breaking up. In terms of emotional stress it is almost as if many young adults have experienced a divorce-like breakup of a serious relationship before they become married for the first time.

Society presents an image of soul mates and the joy of finding the perfect mate. We’ve see it in movies and on television and in the popular culture. The problem is that there seems to be little genuine advice on how to find that special someone other than the advertisements for online dating services.

The images of popular media also don’t portray how much effort and energy are required to maintain a healthy relationship. Marriage is a whole lot more than a fairy tale ceremony with the perfect dress, perfect venue, perfect music, and perfect menu for the reception. It is living with a real human being day in and day out for the rest of your life. It is learning to listen carefully and choosing to grow together instead of growing apart. We all change over the course of a marriage. That process of change can be wonderful and exciting. There truly is no joy that matches the joy of growing old together. But we had to learn to look for the joy in all of the changes. It wasn’t automatic for us.

One of the biggest challenges for young adults who are looking for intimacy and a deep relationship is that they live more isolated lives than previous generations. We had the built-in community of the church everywhere we moved. Even though we have often lived at some distance from our families and don’t have the close network of aunts and uncles and cousins that was a part of some earlier generations, we have always had the community of the church. That means that there are plenty of natural counselors for the times when we have experienced stress or faced new challenges. We’ve alway had access to willing and caring babysitters and friends who were secure in their own marriages. It makes a big difference. Many young couples today don’t have such a community to back them up.

I don’t mean this blog post to be a series of complaints. I am genuinely filled with hope when I work with young couples on their weddings. I find their intentions to be very positive and their commitment to be genuine. I enjoy working with couples on their weddings. It is just that there are parts of being a young adult in today’s world that are really, really hard and my heart aches at some of the challenges that they face.

We chose a job and stuck with it for all of our lives. They will likely have to choose multiple careers in their working life. We have lived in relatively stable times. They face a world of instability and uncertainty.

Fortunately, there are some truly capable and wonderful young adults in the world today. Sure they face problems. Sure they make mistakes. Occasionally their “screw ups” are major and have life-long consequences. Still, there is great creativity and energy and capability in the young adults we meet these days. They seem to be able to face setbacks and reversals with a great deal of grace and intelligence.

And I don’t want to discourage them or say so much about the hard work and troubles that lie ahead for them to frighten them. After all, sometimes things work out really well. In spite of the challenges of this complex world, occasionally a young adult finds just the right person with whom to share a marriage and build a family. There are cases of young adults who discover exactly the right profession on their first try.

For those who are struggling, I simply want to say, “Hang in there! Try again! Don’t let a mistake or failure define you. We believe in you. And please, keep my phone number in your phone. Who knows you may even want to call it once in a while. I’ll be there for you if you need 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.