There are a lot of ways to judge the coming of spring. Around here, there is a sense that spring weather ought to contain at least one slushy blizzard - or at least a downpour. The moisture of spring weather is essential to the health of the hills and the years when moisture is short in May have long and hot summers - often with severe fire seasons. Right now it is difficult to remember that we were facing moisture shortages just over a month ago. The reservoirs are full to overflowing and the creeks are all running bank to bank with plenty of water. We’ll need that water as the summer progresses, so we express our gratitude for the bounty that we have received.

Another sign of spring is the birth of baby animals. There is a ranch family between our home and town who used to have heifers calving out in a pasture right next to the road. However as the years have gone by and the rancher aged, they haven’t been raising calves in that pasture in recent years. Still there are places to look if you want to see new life.

On my way home from Montana I saw antelope that looked like their fawns would be born any minute. Antelope are naturally slim, so an animal with a very full belly is especially obvious.

We celebrated yesterday by spending quite a bit of time in the early evening looking across the yard at the first deer fawn we’ve seen this spring. Around here the deer usually fawn out in June, so it is time to be looking. We have a neighbor who doesn’t mow the back part of their lot and it provides excellent cover for the babies to be born. Most years we have one or two fawns who are born there.

Living next door to a newborn deer doesn’t mean that you will see it. Those little ones can disappear into the grass only a few feet from where you are and you’d never see them. Yesterday, however, Susan noticed the flick of the little white tail and we got to see as the little one tested out its new legs. It is amazing that the tiny animal can jump and run within minutes of its birth. The mom was walking a little tenderly as she licked off her fawn. It was mesmerizing to watch the little one as it would take a few steps, nurse a few minutes, jump up so it could see above the grass, nurse a bit more and then lie down to rest for a few minutes. After a half hour or so, it settled down for a longer nap. I knew about where it was hidden as the mother grazed nearby, but I couldn’t see it at all.

These are urban deer. When I go out to get my newspaper in the morning, they look up, but they wont’ even leave my lawn unless I come within 15 feet or so of them. Then they just saunter off across the street or into the back yard. The little ones will be jumpy for their first few months, startling and running each time they notice me. This baby was born within a hundred feet or so from Sheridan Lake Road, where the cars were zipping by at 45 to 50 mph. We always worry about the deer on the road, and each year several are hit trying to cross the road. They develop a bit of wisdom about cars, but never become completely car safe. We often hear the tooting or horns or the sudden application of brakes in the morning and evening hours.

It seems to be a blessing that our wild neighbors have adapted to our incursion into their neighborhood. They are, for the most part, pretty tolerant of all of the accoutrement of their human neighbors: lawn mowers and gardens and sprinkler systems and outdoor lighting. I’ve heard of folks who put out food for the deer. We don’t do so, feeling that it would create a dependence that wouldn’t be healthy for the animals. Furthermore, abundant feed affects the reproduction cycles of the deer. Our green lawns, however, provide ample feed for the animals through the year. And we maintain a compost system next to our vegetable garden that is appealing to the deer when we have certain types of household food waste. We don’t do anything to stop the deer for nibbling there, though there is a very tall and sturdy fence around the garden. We don’t like to share our vegetables with the deer, especially since they won’t wait until things are ready to harvest.

Susan has learned quite a bit about which flowers are less likely to be eaten by the deer, but we’ve decided that there is no plant that a deer won’t try, especially the young fawns. We’ve found marigold blossoms, for example, that have been bitten off and then spit out when the fawns discover that they don’t taste good to the deer. The older deer leave those flowers alone. The same goes for the iris. Fortunately the iris often complete their blooming before the little deer are venturing into our front yard.

I know that the majority of the world’s population live in large urban areas and don’t get to see the natural cycles of life of wild animals, but I feel like my life would be a bit more empty if it weren’t for the critters who share the hills with us. I look forward to the ducklings and goslings at the lake every spring and anticipate the fawns for weeks before they are born. I find myself studying the deer as they graze in the yard and trying to predict which does will be having their fawns first.

Life has its cycles of birth and growth and death and new life and we do well to pay attention to those cycles. Spring has come to the hills and it is a joy to watch it unfold.

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It may be a sign of my age, but lately I have noticed more bits of advice on retirement coming into my e-mail inbox. The same is true of our U.S. Mail box. We get sample copies of senior citizens newspapers, offers for health letters, advice on investments and savings, and quite a few questionnaires and quizzes. I ignore most of it. My work schedule doesn’t have enough breaks for me to attend meetings at the Senior Citizens Center. My retirement plans are, for the most part, in the hands of the directors of the United Church of Christ Pension Board. My doctor has been giving me sound advice on maintaining my health.

Every once in a while, however, I read one of the advertisements that comes my way. The other day there was something about choosing retirement housing that had a questionnaire. I didn’t fill out the form, but I did read a few of the questions. One had me pondering as I went about my chores last night. The question was, “Are you a mountain person or an ocean person?”

On the surface, the answer might be easy. I grew up in the mountains and I’ve always had a love for the high country. Looking to the northwest from my home town are the Crazy Mountains. The view down main street is dominated by the peaks. Crazy Peak, at 11, 214 feet, was the first mountain over 10,000 that I summited. It isn’t a technical climb, but there are a few places where one has to be careful. Head south from our town and you’ll find yourself in the boulder valley where the mountains rise higher and higher and the valley becomes narrower and narrower until you climb to the Slough Creek divide with Yellowstone National Park on the other side. To the west is the Bozeman pass. On the other hand, the land to the east of my home town is relatively flat.

I grew up with a kind of elitist attitude toward mountains. I remember visiting the Black Hills as a kid and being careful to tell anyone who would listen that these aren’t mountains. Despite the named peaks, the hills don’t rise high enough above sea level to have tree lines. Compared to the high country of the Rockies to the west, the hills are a little clump of somewhat worn-down peaks that one would hardly describe as alpine. Having said that, however, I really like living in the hills. They are accessible in ways that the high country isn’t. There is great beauty in the hills and it is easy enough to get away from crowds and experience solitude.

Returning to that question, however, I don’t really want to have to choose between the mountains and the ocean. I have loved the times when we were able to visit the ocean. I have a couple of bags of kites that are just right for flying on the beach and I’m a big fan of playing in the surf with my kayak. I have now made two sea kayaks that are capable of handling bigger water. Although I’m not up for an open ocean adventure, I love paddling along the coast, in coves and protected areas. Showing my grandson the sea stars on the bottom of the harbor and watching the harbor seals from a rowboat I made with my own hands has a satisfaction that is hard to match.

I wouldn’t want to have to choose between the ocean and the mountains.

More importantly, the question fails to address all of the other kinds of country that are options for places to live.

The cure for my elitism over my mountain upbringing was being called to serve congregations in Hettinger and Reeder, North Dakota. People from Montana love to tell North Dakota jokes in which the North Dakotans are somewhat less intelligent or perceptive than other folks. The reality is quite different. People who’ve never lived there will be surprised at the percentage of college and graduate school educated people who ranch and live on the plains. They’ll be surprised at the quality of public education in North Dakota and the intelligence of its citizens.

And for a young man with all kinds of biases about what constituted beautiful scenery, living on the prairie was an eye-opener. There were vistas that rivaled those seen from the peaks. There are places where one can see for miles out on the prairie. There are fields of flowers and the serenade of the meadowlark is a sound that has penetrated into my heart. There is a beauty to the plains that is beyond description. I thought that I would endure living in North Dakota for a while as a way of paying my dues towards an assignment in the mountains. What I discovered was that living in that place was a gift and a treasure. There were many days in our time in Idaho when I longed for the peacefulness and quiet of the prairie. And, although it is hard for someone from the prairie to imagine it, one misses the wind when you live in a sheltered place. The air becomes stale and the stillness can be oppressive.

But mountains and prairies and oceans aren’t the only available vistas. One of the treasures of living where we do is that we have easy access to the badlands. You might think, from their name, that such lands are no place to live and there are some challenges to the difficult terrain and lack of water. It can get downright hot there in the summer. But there is beauty in the badlands. Antelope and buffalo make interesting neighbors and the sky seems to get a deeper blue over the sunlight-washed face of the badlands. The texture of the hills makes for a constantly-changing interplay of light and shadow. You’d never be bored with the view out your window if it included the badlands.

The list of beautiful places to live goes on and on.

Maybe the answer to the quiz is that I’m in no position to choose my retirement home yet.

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I remember back in the 1970’s when a college professor became divorced. Then it happened to another and another. The same was happening to ministers. What had been once unheard of - divorce among clergy and other highly educated professionals - became common in a very short amount of time. By 1990, it was estimated that more than half of the clergy divorces in all of history had occurred in a two-decade span.

Clergy who have been divorced are no longer an anomaly. There are plenty of clergy serving congregations who have been divorced and remarried. I have colleagues who continued to serve their congregations through the process of becoming divorced, though a change in call often accompanies such a major change in lifestyle.

Dealing with divorce and the complex sets of relationships that follow is a normal part of life these days. I’ve become accustomed to helping couples figure out the dynamics of who sits where and how to manage different expectations and roles when divorced and remarried parents and stepparents are part of wedding ceremonies. I’ve worked hard to find the right words for a funeral when I know that both the ex-wife and the current wife are grieving the death of the same man, but that their feelings toward him are distinctly different and their feelings toward each other are not pleasant.

You can like the status of the contemporary family or you can be upset about it, but you will still have to deal with it. It is simply a reality.

Most of us, who serve the church, have a few stories about the stepmother who thought that she was in charge of the wedding or the ex-husband whose toast was decidedly inappropriate at the reception. I’ve learned to carefully go through the ceremony with the couple - with no parents or stepparents present - and then become a bit of a dictator at wedding rehearsals out of a sense of time management. There is no particular gain in having what should be a half hour event disrupted by disagreements that I am unable to solve.

There are, however, some incredible displays of forgiveness and love that I have witnessed. I remember a time when an ex-wife helped through every stage of funeral planning for her divorced husband out of love and concern for her young adult children who were grieving the death of their father. She clearly put her concern for her children over her own comfort and since I could see it so plainly, I’m sure that they were grateful that whatever had come between their parents was not allowed to detract from their celebration of their father’s life.

As a pastor, one of the things that I have to remind myself is that I don’t know the whole story. I am witness to part of people’s lives, but there are many things about them that I don’t know. Even in this congregation, where I have served for two decades and have watched marriages blossom and fade and children grow into adulthood and officiated at multiple occasions in the life of a single family, I know only part of the story.

There is always more than meets the eye.

There is always more than what gets said out loud.

These are things of which I must remind myself nearly daily as I work with individuals and families.

One place where my work can be challenging is in the area of unacknowledged widows. Living together without being married is very common. The relationships that are formed often are deep and significant and when a death occurs the grief felt by the surviving partner is very much akin to that felt by a widow. The legal rights and responsibilities might be very different, however. I’ve been involved when parents have rushed in and taken over all of the funeral planning, leaving the surviving partner without a role in the process, and often without access to the shared living space and shared possessions. I’ve witnessed arguments over possession of the cards written to grieving families. I’ve learned to offer the copy machine to make copies so that two sets of memorial cards can be produced.

‘It can be less confusing when the roles are clearly identified and acknowledged, but there are always differences when it comes time to plan a funeral because different people knew the deceased in different ways and they grieve in different ways.

I am quick to say that grief is one thing that our church does well. When a family has an on-going relationship with the church, there are many more structures to support them in their grief than is the case with people who turn to the church only for a ceremony and are not known by the congregation. Our church is gracious about doing what it can regardless of the membership status of the grieving family, but there is less support for those who are not known. The relationships aren’t established.

All of this is dancing in my mind today because it is the day of a funeral of a man who was active in our congregation while his family was not. He sang in the choir and was a part of that group in our church for several years following his retirement. Over the years we established enough of a relationship to have seen his children and grandchildren on occasion. We never got to really know them, however. Now he has died and we need to minister to the grieving family, even though they are not easily recognized by the majority of the congregation.

I have no doubt that the funeral will be well done. The lunch will be served with grace and care. The ushers will do their part. The church will demonstrate hospitality and compassion. it will, however, be an event confined to today. After today the people will go back to their own communities and we will not have access to provide continuing support.

We live in a complex world with complex relationships. And we serve as best as we are able in this world. In this generation, as has been true for all generations, we do what we are able and know that we have to trust God with much that is beyond our reach.

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I probably wouldn’t have remembered it on my own, but from time to time I read those “today in history” postings on the Internet. There was a time when I was a huge fan of that kind of thing. I purchased record albums (remember record players?) with radio stories from the birth days of our children, and I’ve looked up the front pages of major newspapers from my own birthday and the birthdays of other family members. It is kind of interesting to me to put the times of our lives into perspective. Sometimes we experience life as a series of events. First this happens, then that happens, and on and on. Other times, however, we gain enough perspective to understand that our events fit into a context and the often what we think is a “stand alone” moment is really part of a bigger process.

Anyway, I read “Today in History, May 28.” It is mostly birthdays. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is 71. Senator Marco Rubio is 44. The singer, Gladys Knight, is 71. There are some other events reported. A year ago today, President Barak Obama addressed the graduates at West Point.

And it has been a year since Maya Angelou died at the age of 86.

I’ve been thinking about Maya Angelou for more than a month because I have been reading her poems each day. I obtained a copy of “The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. The poems in the book were originally published in at least five volumes. There is something powerful, however, about reading them all at once. Of course I can’t really read poetry that way. I would be overwhelmed trying to read them all at once. I read one or two poems a day at the most. And I read the poems out loud so that I can catch the rhythm and power of the words in ways that are not evident when reading silently.

There is little that I could write about Maya Angelou that someone else hasn’t already written. She certainly was a prolific writer, with nearly 30 books. She wrote poetry and essays and children’s books and picture books and children’s books. She wrote seven volumes of her own autobiography.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have seven autobiographies in my. I’m not sure that even one autobiography would be worth much for more than a dozen or so people to read. But there was something about the incredible experiences of a woman who assembled an incredible life from humble and oppressed beginnings that has resulted in an incredible kaleidoscope of powerful expressions of the essence of being human. She had much to say and she said it so well that her stories become the stories of our people.

And there are many ways in which my story is different. I grew up with great privilege. She did not. I am not a woman. I am not African American. I didn’t experience the life of a street kid in a major urban area. Some might say that she and I are so far apart and so different that we couldn’t possibly share the same story.

Reading her poems often is an experience of looking into another world. Some of them hit me like a slap in the face. They are more angry than I might have expected, but they are also more humorous than I would have guessed.

One thing about Maya Angelou, you can’t ignore her. You can’t forget her. She may have died a year ago today, but she isn’t going away.

So I have been reading her poems.

I don’t think I’m surprised at anger or even a touch of bitterness. She has earned the right to speak the truth of some pretty harsh and ugly situations. And we learned as we journeyed through the American Civil Rights Movement that silence was not the path to justice. What is most surprising for me is how intimately connected are deep love and deep pain. She has the tears of sorrow and the tears of deep grief mixing with the tears of laughter in the turn of a half dozen phrases. Describing the poems as an emotional roller coaster doesn’t begin to do justice to the ups and downs of the book. There are too many times when you don’t know if you are heading up or down for it to seem as simple as a set of cars on a track.

Perhaps most exciting about the poetry is that it is accessible. Despite the obvious pain and discrimination she experienced as a child and as an adult, she understood not only that she was a child of God, but that it was her duty and privilege to recognize that everyone else was also a child of God. “Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.”

Perhaps it is the power of a great writer to tell not only her own story, but the story of all people.

In 1982, Bill Moyers conducted a series of interviews with Maya Angelou about returning to her childhood home. She was raised by her grandmother and her uncle in a home behind the family store. She said, “the truth is you never can leave home. You take it with you everywhere you go. It’s under your skin. It moves the tongue or slows it, colors the thinking, impedes upon the logic.”

Having just returned from the country of my childhood beginnings, I am deeply aware of how different my story is from hers. Yet she has found a way to tell that story in such a way that it sounds familiar - and if not familiar at least so deeply human that I can understand it and experience it complete with the emotions that such experiences produce.

“Always in the black spiritual there is that promise that things are going to be better, by and by, now. Not at any recognizable date, but by and by, things were going to be better.”

Despite the differences that are real, we are all connected by our human experience - by the fact that we all “come from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.”

It isn’t her death that we will remember. It is her life. Still, today seems like a good day to pause and experience our gratitude that such a powerful voice was given expression in our generation.

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Among the resurrection stories reported in the Gospel of John is an interesting exchange between Jesus and Peter. The scene is preceded by one in which the disciples are fishing and they see Jesus on shore by a charcoal fire. Jesus invites the disciples to haul in their nets, which are very full and invites them to come and have breakfast. After breakfast, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. When Peter says, “Yes,” Jesus says, “Feed my lambs.” The question is repeated a second and a third time. It doesn’t take a biblical scholar to recognize that there is a parallel between the three times that Peter denies Jesus on the eve of his crucifixion and the three times Jesus asks Peter about his love after the resurrection.

The concept of feeding Jesus’ sheep has been one of the images of the pastoral ministry from the early days of the church. One of the ways to demonstrate love and affection for Jesus is by providing care for those who follow Jesus. Pastors are charged with care of their congregations a sign of their love.

Having been a pastor for nearly four decades with this image in my mind, it still remains interesting for me, on occasion, to visit the ranch where they actually feed sheep. For a couple of days, I’ve joined in the farm chores, which includes giving bottles to the bum lambs. My visit coincided with the beginning of the process of weaning the sheep from their bottles. For a couple of months they have been receiving two bottles each day. After they got old enough, the bottles have been supplemented with grain and recently they have been turned out into fresh green grass each day to supplement their feeding. The lambs are getting big enough to need more food than that provided by the bottles. During my visit, it was time to decrease from two bottles a day to one. Instead of getting a bottle in the evening, they got their morning bottle as usual, were turned out to pasture during the day and then were given grain in the evening.

By the next morning, they were hungry and eager for their bottles. At that point, they’re ready to follow anyone who walks into their pen, in hopes of finding a bottle. They don’t care that I’m not their usual person. They don’t care who feeds them as long as there is formula in the bottle.

Although metaphors of sheep and feeding sheep abound in the Bible, I don’t really find too much in the behavior of the sheep that is reflected in the behavior of my congregation. The process of feeding actual sheep at the ranch is quite a bit different from my work as a pastor - and a change from my usual.

Even though I was away from the office for two days, there were phone calls. People needed to talk. They were facing major decisions. They have challenges. I missed a couple of calls and returned them later in the day. I did a little bit of my at home work while I was visiting at the ranch. But mostly I just did a few chores, visited with my sisters and headed back home yesterday.

I don’t have any bottles to prepare or wash today. There are no lambs bleating outside of my window. I won’t be opening many gates today. I probably won’t spend much time scraping mud off of my boots. Life is different at the ranch than it is in my regular place of work. In a little while, I’ll sort through the accumulated e-mail and phone messages, prepare for a Bible study, and plan my visits.

Returning to the conversation between Peter and Jesus about feeding sheep, the ending of that story takes an unusual twist, one that is not often the subject of sermons. Jesus says to Peter, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

I’m not sure what to make of Jesus’ prediction about Simon Peter. And I don’t know if that prediction was unique to Peter, or a more general commentary about the life of pastors. I suppose that it is a general truth that we all have less freedom of choice when we become old enough to require the care of others.

I have a great deal of freedom about coming and going at this phase of my life. My job has a certain flexibility that allows men to make changes and come and go a little bit. There are weeks, such as the last one, when I get several days away from the office. There are others when I must stay close and work in the office every day. Compared with many other jobs, however, I have a great deal of freedom to come and go as I choose. And I suppose that the time will come when I am no longer able to fit 900 miles of driving, visits with two of my sisters, and a day’s of ranch chores into a two-day break from my duties at the church.

But I have no more idea what it will be like to relinquish my freedom than did Peter when Jesus make this prediction to him. The hint, provided by the gospel writer in the form of the parenthetical phrase about the indication of Peter’s death, doesn’t add much clarity. And, in a manner that is typical for the Gospels, the narrative quickly moves on to a discussion of the unnamed beloved disciple.

So today I’ll be feeding sheep in a different manner than was the case yesterday and I still will not have direct knowledge of the shape of the future. I’m comfortable with living today and trusting God with the future.

It doesn’t appear that I’ll run out of sheep in need of feed.

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I’m not very active on Facebook, but sometimes I read the posts that others have made. One of my classmates from grade and high school is very active and makes a lot of nostalgia posts about the past. He will find an old class photo or an article from the newspaper, or a piece from an old yearbook and post it. Then the comments roll in from others. I haven’t done a very good job of keeping track of friends from that part of my life - I’ve been away from my home town for a lot of years and I’ve formed some really meaningful friendships with others along the way.

A week or so ago, he posted a set of answers to the question, “Where will you be 25 years from now?” that were in the 1990 high school yearbook. Some students had answered lightly, others had taken the question quite seriously. In a large part the answers were, I suppose, similar to the ones that might have been offered 45 years ago when I completed my high school career. The majority of the students predicted that they would live far from our home town. Some were going to California; some to New York or Paris; some to Hawaii; and one or two planned to live in Alaska. The majority believed that they would be living in a city much bigger than our home town. Like my classmates, the graduates of 25 years ago have scattered to many locations. A handful have remained in our home town, and a few more have lived in our home state for all of their lives. Some, like me, have lived in several different places over the years.

When we were high school students, we really longed to get away from our home town. Although we had had a good time growing up in a safe and loving environment in a time when considerable energy and investment was made in schools and other programs for children, we set our sights on getting away from what we saw as a place that was too small and too set in its ways for our futures to unfold.

Needless to say, we didn’t think of our little town as a place of innovation and ideas that were ahead of their time.

So, as the years have gone by, and I have returned to my home town to visit several times each year, it is interesting to see what has happened. Unlike some other small towns, our home town has not died up and become even smaller. New folks have moved into the houses that we used to live in, new homes have been built, new businesses have come to main street and there aren’t many, if any, vacant buildings in the downtown area. For a town of its size, it is a thriving place with an active history museum, art galleries, a movie theater, several cafes and restaurants, a good grocery store and other businesses and services. Almost all of the businesses that were active when we were kids have either moved to new locations or been replaced with other businesses. I don’t know many of the people that I meet on the street these days.

Yesterday, I noticed something at a thriving business that was a tiny rock shop in an open field when I was a kid. The original log cabin is dwarfed by the additions. There is a large sporting-goods section, a complete convenience store and deli and rows of gas pumps outside. And, alongside a fence, behind the gas stations, there are four charging stations for electric vehicles with modern signs designating it as a “Tesla 30-minute quick charge station.” I would have expected such a station in a large west-coast city. And, if you had asked me, I would have said that there would be one of those stations in my current town, which is 30 times the size of my home town, before you found one in the little town where I grew up.

But they have the right address. As the Tesla Motor Company expands its fleet of all electric vehicles and seeks to demonstrate their practicality for long-distance travel, they are establishing a series of charging stations spaced evenly along major highways. I suppose they started at the West Cost, perhaps Seattle, and chose locations that were within the range of the cars to establish the charging stations.

However, it happened, there is a small place of innovation where services for the future are being envisioned and offered today in my little home town. I’m pretty sure that no one in my home town owns a Tesla automobile, but my sister has reported seeing multiple cars stopped at the charging station.

Actually, when I looked it up on the Internet, the charging stations are more common that I expected. There is one in Butte, 150 miles to the west of our town and another in Billings, 80 miles to the East. And, yes there is one in Rapid City, on North Haines avenue. I just hadn’t noticed that they had installed the station. The network of chargers is more extensive than I had expected. Perhaps, my home town isn’t on the cutting edge of technology, but it hasn’t fallen behind the times as well.

It seems like a very nice place to live and I suppose that had I stayed there, I could have built a meaningful life. As it turned out, I wasn’t so much moving away from things, but rather being called to new adventures. I needed to leave town to pursue my education and when one serves the church one has to have the flexibility to go where the need exists, not choose the location first and then find a church job. And ours has been a full and meaningful life filled with good people with whom to share the ministries of the church.

I don’t think we were asked to make predictions about where we would be in the future by our high school year book. I’m sure that had we been asked, we would not have been accurate in our predictions.

On the other hand, things as they turned out have been as good as, or in most cases, better than what we might have imagined.

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Our bible reflects a certain slice of the story of our people. Although there are several places, including Psalms and the opening stories of the book of Genesis, where the Bible looks back at the beginnings and origins, for the most part, the story begins with Abraham and Sarah and their journey away from the land of their parents and grandparents. It continues through many different generations of our people and tells of the places where our people lived and died and the generations of of Israel from freedom to slavery to freedom to the establishment of the monarchy to glory in the days of Solomon to the fall and eventual exile and the words of the prophets.

Similarly the New Testament tells the story of Jesus and continues through the early generations of the Christian Church. After the books that are in our Bible were in their completed forms, it took quite a while for the church to settle on the exact configuration of the Bible. Other books existed that weren’t deemed to be biblical and, as is true with all family stories, there were some gaps where the stories had been lost or forgotten.

After the bible was set in a form close to what we now know, it was used by our people for many generations - in worship, in private study, and for teaching language, culture, history and theology.

For the most part, the bible chronicles a time in our people’s lives when we were rural - often nomadic - and lived close to the land. From the beginnings of the stories in our Bible to the days then the letters of Paul were written, we shared our journey with animals. Most of the time our people kept a few sheep and goats and other livestock raised for milk and meat. Agricultural images were important ways of communicating the stories of our people and animals were often part of the metaphors that were used to point to larger truths. This was because animals were something that our people knew.

These days, when we recite “The Lord is my Shepherd,” not many of us know that image in the same way that our forebears did. I’ve never raised sheep. My children didn’t have livestock in the yard during their growing-up years. The animals that we eat for food were raised by others and, for the most part, were obtained by us as packaged meat in the supermarket - well removed from the processes of its growing.

So it is good for me to visit the ranch from time to time. In my growing up and teenage years, when I spoke of the ranch, I was usually thinking of the place along the Missouri River between Carter and Floweree, Montana, where my Uncle and Cousin farmed the homestead of my mother’s parents and grandparents. It was mostly a dry land wheat operation, with a few chickens and a milk cow thrown in from time to time. Then, as my cousin acquired more of the river break land, the operation expanded to beef cattle. These days, I often refer to the Duck Creek ranch where my sister lives, which is a mixed cattle and sheep operation with a few hunters and dudes tossed in for good measure.

My sister raises bum lambs. This year I think there are ten of them. Orphaned near their births, the lambs have to learn to be fed by humans. She starts them out with a powdered milk formula in beer bottles and as they grow the bottles have to get bigger to hold enough for the lambs and they begin to eat grain and before long they can be turned out to the fresh green spring grass in the pasture. The lambs are about a month old now. They’re used to the bottles and when she puts them out, the lambs rush in and eat as quickly as they can. The bottles are emptied in just a few minutes. It takes longer to prepare the formula and wash the bottles than it does to feed the sheep.

The lambs follow her around whenever she goes out into the yard. They know the source of their meals. And, when they are hungry they bleat and cry and fuss. At this age they are small enough for her to pick them up and sort them out when they get mixed up or when a bully tries to steal another’s bottle.

It won’t be long before the lambs don’t need the bottles any more. They’ll be weaned and will be able to forage for their own food in the pastures. The other lambs on the ranch have already been moved, with their mothers, to summer pasture. Before winter returns to the high country the lambs will have been sold and the cycle begins again. There will be new lambs next spring and some of them will need to be bottle fed and raised close to the house.

It is a very different enterprise than what I do for a living. My job title, pastor, has agricultural roots and pastors are often referred to as shepherds and our congregations as our flocks, but the analogy that seemed so appropriate in the days when virtually all of our people had a few head of sheep. The title was acquired by ministers when everyone knew that sheep come and sheep go and that the flock, while carrying the genetic strain of its heritage, is constantly changing with some animals becoming dinner, some being bred for next year’s young and a constant process of turnover. It was assumed that every shepherd was constantly welcoming new birth, nurturing weak or injured animals, but also culling the herd and looking to the long term life of the group to provide individuals for food for the people.

We don’t think of our churches that way these days. We long for a sense of stability. We want guarantees about the future. We wonder about funding and finances and institutional maintenance in a manner that is very different from raising sheep. We hold capital funds drives and talk about cash flow and energy management and volunteer coordination.

And so, every once in a while, I head to the ranch and help with the sheep and remind myself that it is all a matter of perspective.

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In the languages of the bible, the predominant image for spirit is wind. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word that is most often translated as “spirit” in English is a word that can also be used to describe wind and air. In Hebrew the word is “ruah.” It is “pneuma” in Greek. We use the Greek word “pneumatic” in English to describe tools that are powered by air pressure. There is another Greek word, used primarily in the Gospel of John, which means “advocate” or “counselor,” but the dominant image is that of wind.

It makes sense. You can’t see the wind, but you can see its effects. Trees move. Dust flies. Wind has power to create a lot of damage. It also refreshes and clears out smoky and unclean air.

In the history of modern medicine, there are three phases of distinguishing life from death. The most ancient is the breath test. A being who is breathing is alive. One who does not breathe is dead. Physicians used to place their ear next to the nose or mouth of an unconscious person to determine whether or not that person was breathing. A mirror was also used, knowing that the moisture in the breath would condense on cold metal or glass. Later, the primary test moved to circulation. Is there a pulse? Medical responders were trained to feel for a pulse in the major arteries of the body. CPR - the technique for resuscitating a person who has stopped breathing - focuses on both the breath and the circulation by blowing air into the lungs and compressing the chest to start the pumping action of the heart. In modern medicine, the use of a series of tests to determine brain activity - primarily measures of electrical activity in the brain - are used to determine life and death. Breathing and circulation can be maintained artificially for long periods of time, but doctors know of no way to restart brain activity once it has ceased.

From ancient times, the difference between life and death has been a mystery. We know the difference - we feel the presence or absence of the spirit of the individual. We know that there is more to life than simply having a body - and that there is more to the ones we love than physical presence. This understanding has led to an imperfect understanding of what it means to be alive. Arising out of the Greek culture there was a dual view of humans - of body and spirit - sometimes called body and soul. Of course we know that the image of body and soul is not complete. We aren’t simply two parts that can be separated, with the body decomposing after death and the soul going on to a new independent, but distinctive life. Complex thoughts like the nature of life itself sometimes require that we break them down and think of them in ways that we can grasp. The duality of human existence has persisted for millennia and dualistic language is common in human funeral services.

Today, on Pentecost, we celebrate the presence of the spirit in slightly more complex ways of thinking. The reports of the first Pentecost in Acts describe a scene that is clearly beyond the power of language to describe. The writer uses simile to describe the scene: “a sound like the rush of a violent wind;” “divided tongues, as of fire.” We know the words aren’t perfect descriptions, but ways to stir our imaginations to capture a bit of that early experience. Growing out of those descriptions, the church has used images of flames and fire to describe the movement of the spirit in our midst. Fire with its dancing and difficult to predict behavior provides a visual image to consider when thinking of the spirit.

Today, as I awake, I was thinking of the spirit in a different way, however. I was listening to the sound of rainfall on the roof and the flow of water through the downspout next to our bedroom and reflecting on what a blessing rain is for our hills. Just a few weeks ago the ground was parched and dry. A blizzard and several rainy days have refreshed the ground. The grass is green, the perennial plants are poking up from the soil, and the appearance and mood of the hills have been transformed. The rain refreshes and renews this place we call home.

We know of the potential for destructive power that water possesses. Even those of us who were living elsewhere during the 1972 flood know story upon story of the destructive power of flash flooding in the hills. I am sure that out in the valley there are places where the creeks are overwhelming their banks and it is likely that there are a few wet basements in the neighborhoods. Water, when it goes places where we don’t want it, can be very destructive.

But we can’t live without water. In fact we are mostly water. The fluid dynamics of a human body are amazing with our cell walls holding fluid within and arteries and veins to transport fluids containing nutrition to our bodies and fluids containing contaminants out of our bodies. Our life is a process of the exchange of fluid. It might even be said that we flow through life.

In a pre-scientific era, before we used such words to describe what we saw, the ancients were aware of the dynamics of wind and water. Depending on the translation, the first or second sentence of the Bible speaks of “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The word is “ruah.” The wind is spirit and the waters were the element from which all creation came forth.

Like the ancients, our words fail us when we try to talk about the essence of life. But we understand that spirit is a life-force and a reality that exists even when we are unable to describe it.

May you feel the movement of the spirit in your life today.

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My father was an entrepreneur at heart. After he completed his military service, he started a flying service that offered sales, instruction, maintenance and fuel services. He built a series of T-hangers and began to rent space to customers to store their airplanes. This led to the need to become skilled at roofing. His business expanded into agricultural spraying, search and rescue, air ambulance, fire patrol and a number of federal and state contract services. After a number of years, he purchased a farm machinery dealership. While still running the airport, he expanded that business, adding to the shop several times as he added a feed warehouse, expanded parts and repair services and began to reach out selling machinery in a wider and wider circle. This led to a business of renting and leasing farm and construction machinery and a trucking business that specialized in hauling machinery. He was constantly thinking of new companies and new ways to expand his business. As an entrepreneur, he considered debt as a cost of doing business. His farm machinery business required him to use factory credit programs to increase his inventory. He carried a line of credit at the bank that allowed him to make big purchases. As long as his profit from an investment exceeded the cost of credit, he didn’t mind borrowing money.

Growing up, I was aware that I had relatives with much different attitudes towards debt. One of my uncles was a farmer all of his life and he expanded his operations without ever borrowing money. If he didn’t have the money, he didn’t make the purchase. They build their home with available cash. They drove vehicles that were purchased from money they had saved. He was considered to be successful and was highly respected by other family members, including my father.

Over the years, I have borrowed money and paid it back for a variety of projects. We borrowed a little money to complex our graduate educations. Compared to student debt in this generation, the amount we borrowed was very small and it was repaid about five years after we graduated despite our comparatively small salaries in the early years of our career. We have borrowed money to purchase cars, used credit cards and purchased our home with a mortgage. Over the years interest rates have varied widely and there have been times when we have paid more than we should have in interest charges.

I am quick to say to the people I serve, “Don’t turn to your minister for financial advice.” The same applies to legal advice and medical advice. Although there are churches and church agencies that provide financial education and advice, I’ve never considered myself to be an expert in that arena.

The financial debt I have incurred in my life has always been manageable. I’ve figured out how to keep my payments current and maintain a good credit rating. I have carried life insurance that exceeded the debt that I have carried and disability insurance that guarantees that I’ll be able to repay borrowed funds.

There are other debts, however. Emerson wrote, “We are born with a mortgage. That mortgage is a debt that we owe to the past and the future.” As I age, I have become more and more aware of that debt.

I am the beneficiary of a great deal of hard work, sacrifice, and faithfulness that generations have invested in the future. Some of that is obvious. We have received modest financial inheritance from some of our relatives. I am a partner, with my siblings, in a piece of recreational property that belonged to my parents and was passed to us free of debt. There are other inheritances, and these are the most valuable, that don’t have to do with the transfer of financial resources.

I stand in a long line of people who have considered honesty and integrity to be critical to a life well-lived. I was taught from an early age by example the value of investing time and energy in relationships. I am the product of generations of healthy marriages and lasting commitments.

The cornerstone of my life, my faith, is based on generations of people who thought about God, formed relationships with God, and passed on their understandings to future generations. It once was the case, in ancient times, that human sacrifice was common. Many ancient people found the practice to be not only acceptable, but required of them. Our grandfather Abraham came very close to the sacrifice of his own son, Isaac. We will never know all of the details of that encounter on the mountain, but the basic outline of the story is clear. God interrupted the process. Isaac was not only spared, but our people learned once and for all time that human sacrifice was not a dynamic in our relationship with God. Never will such a sacrifice be demanded of us. I believe that so deeply that I found the courage to name my own son Isaac.

In the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus our people learned another “once for all times” lesson. Love never dies. Wisdom can fail us. Intelligence and understandings are always imperfect. Our own strength is insufficient. But love will never fail us. In a world where the cycles of life and death are so evident, there are things that reach beyond the span of a single life. Our impact is more than one generation.

Knowing that reminds me of the debt that I owe not only to those who have gone before, but also to those who will follow after me. I owe it to them to hand on the wisdom of previous generations. I owe it to them to be a steward of the resources that have been entrusted to my in my time. I am one link in a long line of faith and love that connects our forebears with our grandchildren.

A mortgage isn’t necessarily a bad thing. This debt that I owe gives me purpose and adds meaning to the work that I do. The debt I owe to previous generations is too great for me to repay in the span of a single life, but I have been given the opportunity to invest in the future. It is a future that has the potential to yield great dividends.

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I’m no hydrologist, but the Black Hills are pretty interesting from a water standpoint. The upthrust hills have been an important part of the water system of the entire region since they rose. For most of their geological history, the hills stored water underground. There are no natural lakes anywhere in the hills, but the hills are dotted with limestone caves and other underground structures that serve to store water. The Deadwood, Madison, Minnelusa, Minnekahta, and Inyan Kara aquifers all are large underground areas that hold huge amounts of water. These waters can be accessed with wells and pumps and also provide sources for springs and other naturally flowing waters.

Beginning in the period between World War I and World War II, and accelerating as the United States worked its way out of the Great Depression, several large reservoirs were built in the Hills. Pactola, Sheridan, Deerfield Belle Fource and Angostura are the largest reservoirs, with dams to hold back many acre feet of water. In addition the hills are dotted with many smaller dams and reservoirs: Canyon Lake, Sylvan Lake, Bismarck Lake, Center Lake, Legion Lake, Stockade Lake, Bear Butte Lake, Horse Thief Lake, Dalton Lake, and many others are found throughout the hills. The lakes provide storage for water and mitigate some of the effects of sudden runoff.

Still, the hills are prone to flash flooding and lots of sudden runoff. Spring snows, like we received in the last couple of weeks combined with additional rain can quickly saturate the ground and the water starts flowing through the narrow canyons that dot the hills. Early summer thundershowers can “park” themselves over the hills and build to the point where they drop several inches of rain in a very short time. The resulting rush of water is enough to flood low-lying regions and create hazards to people and livestock.

The most dramatic flood on record occurred in June of 1972. As much as 15 inches of rain in a six hour period. After becoming clogged with debris, Canyon Lake Dam failed. 238 people perished. More than three thousand were injured. Several bodies were never found. over 1300 homes were destroyed. In the aftermath of that flood there were many changes to the city and surround area to minimize the effects of future floods. A large floodplain was established and no building is allowed in that area. Remote monitoring stations provide some advance warning of future floods. We who live in the hills have tended to select hilltop locations for our homes, or at least places that are farther from the known drainages. We know that flooding is always a threat in the hills.

For the most part, however, our waters are docile. Despite the excellent guide written by my friend Kelly Lane and other Black Hills paddlers, there are very few opportunities for whitewater kayaking or canoeing in the hills. Our creeks tend to be very shallow and opportunities to paddle at high stream flows are infrequent and often occur when the weather isn’t the best.

Right now is a good time for those who are seeking a bit of adventure in their paddling, but they need to be very cautious of the dangers. Overfilled streams tend to have more sweepers than more established waterways and there are fences, diversion dams, bridges and other obstructions that pose a real danger for those who haven't properly scouted the streams. As a result, I’ve been a calm water paddler in the hills. I have some boats that are designed for more turbulent waters, but they get their exercise in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Many of my boats have traveled far more miles on the rack in my truck than on the water.

I had a rare opportunity to sneak away from the office yesterday and, of course, I loaded up a canoe and headed for the water. I didn’t have time to properly organize a creek paddle, with the need for companions, a shuttle plan, and scouting the creek. Still, I knew that the creeks were running high and I wanted to paddle a bit of moving water. So I put in at Sheridan Lake and paddled up the inlet until the current became too strong for me. The distance was short, but it gave me an opportunity to practice eddy turns, crosscurrent paddles, and a couple of braces as well as some other strokes. Mostly it gave me an opportunity to get out into the hills, to listen to the calls of the red-winged blackbirds, to scout the cattails for ducks, to check out the beaver lodges, and to smell the fresh air. Working the paddle and stretching my shoulders was another direct benefit of the day.

Most importantly, it gives me a much-needed attitude adjustment. There have been many major psychological studies that demonstrate negative effects of lives with insufficient unstructured time for play. Children who grow up without play in their lives show greatly increased anti-social behavior as adults. Adults who don’t make room for play in their lives have decreased health and are at greater risk for major illness and injury. It isn’t a mistake that the Sabbath is the longest of the ten commandments and is closely tied to the commandments about remembering God. We need recreation in our lives.

Luke reports that Jesus quoted a proverb, “Physician, heal yourself.” It could well be applied to ministers as well: “Minister, heed your own words.” We talk a good line, but often live lives that are cluttered and unfocused. We convince ourselves that we are needed when the truth is that we are most helpful when we have been attentive to our own needs for rest and recreation.

With a wedding rehearsal today, a wedding tomorrow, and a busy week coming up it was a real gift to be able to take half a day off to refresh my spirit. I may not have found any real whitewater, but I stretched my muscles and found enough moving water to fully occupy my mind for a little while. Life is good.

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I don’t know if others do this, but I carry in my mind a list of things I’d like to do someday do. That list includes visits to places that I have not yet been. High on that list are two very different places, Northwestern Canada and Belize. It is technically possible to drive to both locations from where I live, but it is unlikely that driving would be my mode of travel to Belize. My dreams of the Yukon and Northwest Territories have included purchasing “the Milepost” a mile-by-mile guide to the Alaska Highway and pouring over maps.

My dreams of Belize have taken a different form. When I was a young teenager, my cousin, who was older, had graduated from college and earned a graduate degree, appeared to be settled and well on his way to middle class life as a chemical engineer living in California with his wife and two children. Then, through a long process of decisions, they decided to take their life in a different direction. They loaded up their van an sailboat and headed to Central America. When they arrived in Belize, I barely knew where it was. The tiny country, formerly known as British Honduras, was just achieving its independence from Britain while it was still dependent upon the presence of the British military to keep it from being incorporated into Guatemala. There were plenty of maps of Guatemala in those days that showed Belize as simply a part of that country. Culturally, however, Belize was a different place, with its English language and many customs left over from the days of British colonialism.

My cousin and his wife have written extensively of their life in Belize. Two books, “Treehouse Perspectives: Living High on Little” and “Chance Along: A Wind Worth Waiting For” chronicle their adventures, decisions, and transformations from the pursuit of a more conventional life in California to living aboard a sailboat they made by hand from materials that came from their land in Belize.

More than the lure of place, which is the major attraction of the Northwest for me, the lure of Belize is the wondrously adventuresome and highly sustainable lifestyle my cousin and his wife have forged. These days my cousin and his wife spend most summers in Montana and I get to see them from time to time, but the adventure of visiting them and sailing with them on their boat is wonderfully inviting.

As idyllic as their life seems, it is evident, from our conversations - and from the news - that things are changing in Belize. The lure of commercialism, of wealth and possessions captures the minds of Belizean people as much as it does the rest of us. In recent years the government of Belize has allowed development that has threatened the pristine country they currently enjoy. In 2013, a company bulldozed one of the country’s largest Mayan pyramids to gather rocks for a road project. The Nohmul complex was a ceremonial complex, dating back at least 2,300 years and was considered to be the most important archeological site in northern Belize, near its border with Mexico. Belize is dotted with hundreds of Mayan sites and archaeological tourism is an important segment of its economy. The destruction of this heritage is irreversible. Many locals believe that the economic impact of the new road will never match the potential impact of preserving the cultural sites for future generations.

Now the pristine waters off of the coast of Belize may be threatened. The coral reefs that protect the coast of Belize are world-famous for their beauty. Belize is one of the top diving sites in the world. Belize is home to the second-largest coral reef in the world. Those beautiful waters have provided a living for my cousin and his wife. People who wish to charter their boat and look at the waters provide income to maintain the boat. Fishing provides food for their sustenance. the Belize Barrier Reef system provides tourism, fishing and storm surge protection to the tiny country. About 25% of Belize’s GDP comes directly from tourism. The value of this beautiful offshore system is not calculable, but certainly it is hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

In 2013, a decision of the supreme court in Belize invalidated all past offshore oil drilling licenses in Belizean waters. The ruling was that previously-issued licenses did not employ safety or environmental standards. Despite that ruling, however, there has been a strong push for oil extraction. The promise of short-term financial gains is inviting for a country with many who are impoverished. Although many argue that not only would the oil be extracted, but also the wealth taken away from the people of Belize, there are others who have been convinced by the oil companies that great wealth would compensate them for any potential environmental damage. And, as usual, the oil companies promise that their industry is clean and no damage would occur.

It is a big risk when one considers Belize’s Great Blue Hole, a 124-meter sinkhole that is a UNESCO world heritage site. Like the Mayan Pyramids, this is a one-of-a-kind irreplaceable wonder. Were it to be destroyed by an oil spill or other possible effects of extraction, there is no replacing it.

All of this talk, of course, makes me even more eager to visit Belize. It seems as if the pristine place where my cousin and his wife raised their children and about which they have so eloquently written, might not be so pristine much longer. The selfish side of me wants to get there and see it before it is too late.

Of course getting to Belize for me probably means flying, which, of course means using fossil fuels, which means creating demand for oil production. That is, the issues that Belize are not created by some strange class of evil “others.” The demand for the oil is created, in part by the decisions I make. My staying home might in fact be better for Belize than a visit. Before I am too quick to point the finger at others, I need to pay attention to my own choices and how they affect this world.

It isn’t a dilemma I will solve today, but rather one worthy of some pondering and care as I make decisions about my life and the experiences of what remains of my time in this world.

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It has been nearly 50 years since I sat at the homemade desk in a closet, made over into a small private study with a sheet of plywood for a table, in the upstairs of my parents home, declining Latin verbs in my spiral-bound, college-ruled notebook. I’m sure that I’ve forgotten more about Latin than I have retained, but in some ways those exercises have continued to contribute to my daily life. I, of course, came into the study of theology and religion in an era long past the time of Latin as the common language of Europe and the language of scholarship and theology. We knew that Latin was a dead language when we studied it in high school. In fact we thought that our teacher was probably close to being dead and were pretty sure that once she was gone the school wouldn’t be able to find anyone to teach the subject. That idea was partly correct, the subject was dropped from the curriculum when that teacher retired. She wasn’t however all that old - at least she was younger than I am now.

A few years later, I studied French in college and once again found myself declining verbs, though this time the exercise was much shorter and I moved more quickly to simply reading the language as the primary mode of learning. French, like English, has been heavily influenced by Latin. To understand this, it is important to remember that there was a time when Latin was the common language of Europe. The various countries had their individual languages, but when people needed to communicate across the language divides, they used Latin. From the third to the 16th centuries, Latin was the language of scholarship, religion and mass communication.

Today one could say that English is rapidly becoming the common language of the world. It is the most-taught second language worldwide. Air traffic runs on English around the globe and it is also the most common language for business transactions worldwide.

There was a time, however, when the language of commerce and international communication was Latin - at least for Europe. In a strange way, it also influenced the thinking of speakers of African languages as those languages reached Spain and were translated by scholars into Latin.

So declining Latin verbs was a way of learning about culture and history as well as the structure of language. In Latin (and French and English, too!) there are both tenses (past, present, future, and several others such as past perfect, etc.) and moods. In Latin there are three moods: indicative, imperative and subjunctive. Those moods have carried over into our language as well. We use the subjunctive all the time when we talk about what would have been, could have been or should have been. Not all languages share these concepts. For a speaker of Japanese or Chinese or Thai or Vietnamese, it seems silly and strange to talk about things that didn’t happen. Why would you speculate on what would have been when you already know that it has not been? There really isn’t a way to express the subjunctive in many languages.

When you can’t say a concept, you tend not to think that concept.

This has theological relevance as well. The tradition of guilt comes, in part, from the ability to imagine a different past: “If only I’d . . .” We find ourselves speculating on how things might have turned out differently. We second-judge our decisions and actions and wonder what might have happened if we had made different choices. Such speculation leads us to judgments not only of ourselves but of others as well. “If only he had . . . “ we think. Guilt, as you know, has played an important role in the formation of many religions and Christianity is one that has a certain amount of guilt in its worldview.

The moods of verbs not only shape how we think about the past, but also how we anticipate the future. In the imperative mood, we consider what must become. We think of the consequences of our behavior as setting in motion results that are inevitable. There are things in our future that we cannot alter. Of course we are often inaccurate when we use the imperative mood. Alarmists of 40 or 50 years ago predicted that mass starvation, plagues and mass die offs of people would result from overpopulation. The population of the world has, however, continued to grow and the results have not been exactly the same as predicted. Sometimes we can imagine outcomes that are worse than what really occurs. Still the imperative is helpful in imagining change. Rachel Carson’s imperatives about the effects of continuing to use certain pesticides led to a change in behavior and the saving of many species.

The indicative mood is also a useful tool for expressing theological concepts. At its simplest, indicative is simple statement of fact. It is the one mood that is shared with the Eastern languages that do not have the subjunctive. God creates. That is a sentence in the indicative mood. Christians love. The indicative mood allows us to reach beyond the normal bounds of language to communicate the basic truth of theology into cultures and language systems that are very different from our own. We might not be able to discuss what might had been. We might find it difficult to speculate about what should or ought to be. But we can speak of what is.

Of course, living among English-speaking people and having a little background in Latin, I find it hard to separate the moods of language from my thinking. When I speak of what is, I automatically consider what has been and what might have been. I read the story of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of Isaac and I wonder how differently the world would be had not God intervened to save the child. I hear the stories of Jesus and wonder what would have occurred had Judas not betrayed him.

I doubt if I could decline a Latin verb any more. I’ve forgotten all of the endings and variations. Still the conduction of verbs continues to shape my thinking and my understanding of God. And, when I am on top of my game I’m a better storyteller and preacher than I might have been had I not had those studies.

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Sometimes, when I think about it, this process of writing a daily blog amazes me. It isn’t particularly amazing to me that I write each day. People have been keeping journals for generations. My family has boxes and boxes of journals of one of my great grandfathers, who wrote about everything from the weather to local politics to recording the high points of sermons that he heard at church. I’ve known plenty of other people who used the process of writing to clarify their thoughts and as a discipline to document the changes of life.

What amazes me is that there are a few people who read what it is that I have to write. Through the technologies of the Internet, what I write is accessible to a wide variety of people. Some of my old friends read my blog posts from time to time. Members of the congregation I serve read it. From time to time I will receive an e-mail note from an unexpected place and be surprised that someone has found my blog.

I guess I want people to read what I write, or I wouldn’t bother to post it on the Internet and make it available. On the other hand, I don’t often pause to think about how many people are reading. It is a bit like worship. It is nice to worship with a group of people, and I am grateful for those who come to attend worship. But it would be necessary for me to worship even if others didn’t come to participate. If I weren’t in a leadership position, I would still seek out a community in which to share the experience.

It is what I do. It is who I am.

Being an avid reader, I am aware of the power of words. My life has been deeply influenced by reading words written by those whom I have never met face-to-face. There are some key concepts that took generations to develop that have been handed down from generation to generation and honed through a long process. It was the Persian king Cyrus the Great who formulated one of the world’s oldest declarations of human rights. His work was preserved and handed down and subsequent generations added to and honed his work. The belief that there are certain rights due to every human being was incorporated into the Declaration of Independence and other documents that provided a foundation for our nation. And human rights continue to have a prominent place in international relations in part because Cyrus had a great idea and was willing to share it with others.

The great writer and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, once wrote, “Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.”

There are moments when what we say is as important as what we do. Telling the truth is a powerful force in our world. This has been recognized by those who have abused power as well as those who have used their power for good. Augustus Caesar sent the poet Ovid into exile. King Soloman banned the priests to Anatoth. Stalin imprisoned and tortured many writers: Boris Pasternach and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He killed the poet Osip Mandelstam. The Nazis in Germany killed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but they couldn’t stop his words from being read - their power inspires many today.

I don’t imagine that my writing has the permanence of the words of the world’s great writers. I’m not likely to make a list of those whose writing has changed the world. I do, however, have the ability to occasionally make a connection by telling a story. And stories have wonderful power.

The Anangu people, indigenous to the center of Australia, tell a story in which the people are the tongue for the body which is the land. The role of the people is to speak for the land. At Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, they invite their guests to listen to the silence of the place and “hear” the land. The experience of standing on a hilltop and watching the giant rock painted by sunset and sunrise sparked an overwhelmingly powerful emotional response for me. There was a sense of connection with something so much larger than my one life on this earth. That connection came, in part, from listening to the stories of the people.

So I feel compelled to tell the stories of our people. When I tell of Moses standing up to the power of Pharaoh and taking a stand against the production culture for the freedom of the people, I know that one man, speaking truth to power, can change the course of history. When I tell the stories of Jesus feeding hungry people, healing those who had been discarded by society, and reversing the societal notion of who is and is not blessed, I offer a way of living that brings forth futures.

And sometimes, when I write, a few ideas become more clear and easier to tell. Words have the power to make connections.

Of course words can be used to harm and hurt as well as to heal. There are days when I despair at the harshness of the language used in our political life. I cringe when words are used to condemn ideas - and exclude people. I despair at the lack of basic civility in too many public conversations. There are other moments, however, when words can reach beyond disagreement. I have found that the simple discipline of listening carefully when someone says words with which I disagree can lead to engagement at a different level. Sometimes when a person has been really heard, they become open to listening. Sometimes when we really listen we can grasp our common humanity that is more basic than the concepts and ideas we espouse.

So, for now, I will keep writing. I will keep treasuring words and trying to craft sentences that exhibit a bit of clarity. I may not change the world, but perhaps I will write enough to enable myself to understand the world a bit better.

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A few years ago I wrote a blog post on clamps. Boatbuilders use a lot of clamps as they piece together the wood. A boat is filled with a lot of complex curves. Often a narrow piece of wood has to be curved in multiple directions at the same time. And, since boats have such beautiful curves in their shapes, it is natural for boat builders to want to use additional curves in the decoration of their boats.

My current project is a 19’ sea kayak. Nick Schade draws beautiful and functional boats. This one is long and narrow and graceful - an expedition kayak that will be suitable for the open ocean, though I suspect that the biggest water it will ever see will be the somewhat more peaceful waters of the south Puget Sound. I’ve got three distinct colors of wood and am working with a design idea that has the colors braided across the deck of the boat. The hull of the boat was a bit more straightforward with straight lines running the length of the boat, but I wanted to do something more dramatic with the deck. After all, that’s the part of the boat I see when I paddle, and the part others see when they look at the boat. With the beautiful wood that I have, it seems appropriate to come up with a design that challenges me a bit.

Most of wooden canoe and kayak building involves cold moulding. Narrow strips have quite a bit of ability to be bent. For this boat, the strips are about 3/4 of an inch by 3/8 inch. However, this boat has a few curves that require putting the strips into a steam box to soften the wood fibers before the strip is put into its place.

Holding those strips of wood in place requires a combination of tools and techniques. I use masking tape to hold the pieces together while the glue dries when the joint is short and small enough for the tape to hold. I also have cut small pieces of wood that can be clamped to the forms to hold the strips right where I want them. The forms for this kayak are one foot apart, so the full length of the boat is made up of 18 forms plus special forms to hold the hand-carved stems in place at the ends of the boat. At some forms it takes a couple of clamps to hold a single strip.

I own a lot of clamps. I have buckets of c-clamps and additional buckets of spring clamps. I’ve been collecting clamps for years, adding a few here and there when I make a trip to the hardware store. There is a critical formula that applies to several things in my life: n + 1. “N” stands for the number of a particular item that you have, say canoes, or kayaks, or, in this case, spring clamps. The number you need is always n + 1, that is one more than the number you have.

I have spring clamps in 1”, 2” and 3” sizes, but for the kind of work I do, a 2” clamp is the most desirable. I have a 5 gallon bucket of 2” clamps. Last night as I worked on the boat, the bucket was empty and I found myself examining the boat forms looking for places where I could remove one clamp to use in another place. At this stage, the boat doesn’t look much like a boat at all - just a forest of spring clamps attached to forms with a few strips of wood.

However, I keep picturing the finished boat in my mind. I’m months away from that point and there are a lot of steps that have to be completed before it will be a boat. Like other woodworking projects there are days of sanding after all of the pieces are put in place and the glue dries. Then there is the process of finishing, which takes about six coats of varnish. And the boat will need to be outfitted with bulkheads, hatches with removable covers, coaming around the cockpit, a seat, footbraces, and more. Each item will have to be fitted, trimmed until it is just right. After I dry fit the piece, it is time to get out the glue and put it into just the right place. When the glue dries it’s time for sand paper. Wood has a distinctive grain, so which direction it is sanded makes a difference. I use 4 or 5 different grits of sandpaper, starting with coarse papers and getting progressively finer as the project continues. Once I get to the varnish stage, all of the sanding is by hand - a power sander would be too rough on the finish.

And, as I have said, all of that is months away. Right now, it is cut and fit and then get out a sharp knife to trim a piece. Each little piece has to be put in one at a time and clamped as the glue dries and the wood gets used to its new shape.

The trick to building a boat is being able to see beyond what is currently present. I can study the plans and imagine what it will look like. And, with the boat at its current stage, I can look past all of those clamps. The clamps are not the boat. They are not the goal. They are a way to get from a stack of wood to a finished boat. As much as I enjoy working with tools, and as many tools as I have, the day of celebration when I launch the boat is a day when the tools are all put away.

The goal of all of my tools is to be finished with the work and allow the boat to float on its own.

We do a lot of that in the church. We work and nudge and hold up the institution with the dream of the day when it will stand on its own in its own glory. In the meantime, we need a little support.

Maybe it is a good thing to be a pastor who owns a bucket of clamps.

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Early in my career as a pastor, I was introduced to a pastor in a neighboring town who had served the same congregation for more than twenty years. At the time I thought, “Wow! That is a very long time!.” My life had been much different to that point. High School was three years. My undergraduate education lasted four years. Then we were in Seminary four years. After serving in our first parish for for years, I began to think about moving. We didn’t actually move until we had served seven years in that parish. By then it was considered to be a long pastorate. Ministers moved all the time. The United Methodist congregation in our town was on its third pastor in the same period of time. All of the churches in our community had seen a change in pastors during the seven years that we served. By the time we left, we had the longest tenure in that town.

That call was followed by a ten years of service to our second call. By that time, the “four year itch” had left me and I no longer was looking to move every few years. I had discovered that there are quite a few things that a pastor is able to do only after having invested enough time to really get to know the dynamics of the congregation and the community.

I also discovered that there is a point in a pastorate where the relationships with the people you serve become very deep. I saw the transition from officiating at funerals for the folks in the church to officiating at funerals for my friends. Most of the funerals were for people I considered to be friends by the end of our time in that parish.

And now, somehow, I find myself attending the graduation parties of youth who weren’t even born when I came to this parish. I officiated at the wedding of the parents and I baptized the children and I have buried the grandparents in some cases. I have been invited into some of the homes of the people of our church so many times on so many different occasions that I no longer need a map to find the address.

The relationship, however, hasn’t been static. A congregation is a living entity. Even when the pastor stays for a long time, the members come and go. We’ve been through divorces and we’ve seen church members move on to other congregations. Some people who used to be active are no longer so. New leadership has emerged. Our community is a place where many people come to retire, so we often gain new members who move to town ready to get involved in a church. The community sees a continual coming and going of people.

May is a season of saying goodbye for a church. Some of our members are moving to new jobs in new places over the summer. Our graduates are heading to colleges and the service. Some will be right in town, others will be a long ways away. The majority of the youth who grow up in our church end up living in other communities. Some will become active and leaders in other congregations. I have had the opportunity to see those leadership skills emerge and I hope that other congregations will be able to recognize their gifts.

There are advantages and disadvantages to long term pastorates. Research has shown that congregations with long term pastorates tend to be healthy. It isn’t clear whether the health is caused by the long term of the pastor or that the long term relationship is made possible by the health of the congregation. Probably it is a combination of both factors. The impact of long term pastorates on the life of churches is so significant that the Lily Endowment has invested millions of dollars in clergy renewal grants that fund sabbaticals and encourage long term stability of leadership for congregations.

It has also been demonstrated, however, that the transition following a long term pastorate is a difficult one for a congregation. Often the next relationship with a pastor isn’t as successful. The congregation becomes used to a particular style of leadership and isn’t quick to adapt to new leaders and different ways of doing business. It isn’t uncommon for a couple of short-term pastorates to follow a long-term one. I’ve thought about those dynamics when I think of the congregation I presently serve. I have been called to serve in the best interests of the church and to do what I believe is best for the whole church, not just what is most comfortable for me. I am aware that I have reached a stage in my life where I am a bit set in my ways and where some changes are more challenging for me. I try very hard to be open to new ways and new possibilities, but I know that I can sometimes have a “we tried that before and it didn’t work” attitude.

So the next couple of weeks will be a time for a bit of nostalgia for me. I look at the pictures assembled for the graduation parties showing the graduate as a baby and a child and all of the adventures of the 18- or 19-year journey that has led to this event. And I can say, “I remember that!” I can remember holding this near-adult when he or she was a baby. I can remember some awkward fifth-grade moments. I was there for the rite of confirmation.

The wonderful thing about graduations, however, is that they are about what is yet to come. The term “commencement” means “beginning.” This is the beginning of something new and important. There is much that is yet to be revealed. The next four years will show us something, but it might take a dozen before the direction of a life is fully evident.

Now that I’ve reached this particular age, I know a dozen years can go by very quickly. It’s OK. I’ve got the time.

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The jury in the trial of Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has handed down a sentence of death. I wasn’t surprised by the announcement of their decision yesterday. I have spoken with quite a few people who believe that the sentence is just and appropriate. I know these people are kind and compassionate and possess skills of good judgment. But I confess that I don’t understand the penalty or the arguments in favor of it.

Before I go any farther, let me be clear that I don’t want to criticize the jurors. I believe that they are solid citizens who gave the case their best judgment and who served in accordance with the law. I’m not trying to second guess the judge or the attorneys or anyone else involved in the process. I just see things from a different perspective.

One of the points make by the lead prosecutor is that the jury had the choice of imposing two sentences in the case. One option would be to impose life in prison without the possibility of parole. The other would be to impose death. He stated that of these options, life in prison was the minimum sentence allowed under the law. Surely the actions of the bomber warranted something more severe than the minimum sentence. It seems that the jurors agreed with his argument.

I’m not so sure. I am not convinced that allowing him to die at a young age is less severe than having him live with his crime for as long as possible. I’m not convinced that he doesn’t want to die and I see no argument for giving a terrorist what he wants. I have no reason to want to make a bomber into a martyr in the eyes of others who share the kind of twisted logic that produces innocent victims.

As I understand the federal death penalty, the means of execution in a federal case is the means employed by the state in which the conviction occurs. In the case that the state does not impose the death penalty, as with Massachusetts, the means is lethal injection since 1988. The sentence is likely to be carried out in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. That won’t happen for many years. The circumstances of the sentencing have handed the defense team the argument for an appeal. The majority of the people of Massachusetts are opposed to the death penalty. A recent pole by WBUR radio shows 60% of the people living in Boston are opposed to the death penalty in all cases. Only people who disagree with the majority - those who are willing to consider the death penalty - were eligible to serve as jurors. The argument, whether or not you agree with it, is that there was no way to have a fair sentencing trial in Boston. The appeals will continue for a long time.

I’d rather not think about it.

I think of the family of 29 year old Krystie Campbell. Krystie went to the finish line to watch a friend compete in the race.

I think of the family of Chinese graduate student Lu Lingzi who was studying statistics at Boston University.

I think of the family of eight-year-old Martin Richard who were standing together cheering the runners when the bomb went off.

I think of the family of officer Sean Collier who was shot by the Tsarnaev brothers as they tried to avoid being arrested.

I think of those who received life-altering injuries in the blast.

Is their grief any less if Tsarnaev dies? Will their pain be decreased? Will we, as a society, feel any less fear and terror, knowing that we have the power to end the life of the bomber?

In my life, I have had one sister and one brother die. I think of my sister’s death. She died suddenly and traumatically when the bullet of a murderer tore through her body as she danced with her husband. The bullet that killed her sliced through him as well. He survived. She was dead before I knew that the shot had been fired. She was dead before her oldest graduated from high school. She never met any of her grandchildren.

I think of my brother’s death. A sudden heart attack killed him as he drove his van, recently loaded with newspapers to be delivered to paperboys in neighboring communities. They say he was dead before the van veered off the street, down an embankment and into the Missouri River. Earlier that day he had been talking with his daughter about her high school graduation. He didn’t make it to the ceremony. He never met his granddaughter.

Is one death somehow worse than the other? Is one somehow more tragic? It is possible that both could have been prevented, had we known they were coming. Would my grief be less if someone else were to die? Does the cruelty of a killer have the power to make me, as a citizen of the state, into an executioner?

I don’t know the answers. I just don’t think that dying is always a worse penalty than living. I don’t want to have our society forget Krystie Campbell, Lu Lingzi, Martin Richard or Sean Collier. I don’t want us to forget the pain and loss and grief their families feel. I don’t even want Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be allowed to forget them. As twisted as his brain must be, as unfathomable as his logic is, we, as a society, should never allow him to forget that the victims of his actions were real people and that the pain and loss and grief of their families is real. And that we will never forget - and he shouldn’t be allowed to forget, either.

Stopping his heart and declaring him brain dead ends a memory, strange as that memory might be. It destroys evidence of how and why the crime was committed. That evidence may never provide answers. It may never show signs of remorse. Still I can find no peace in his execution.

There will be no closure. There will be no end to the pain that was caused. You don’t get over the loss of the ones you love. The families of the victims won’t get release. They have to live the rest of their lives. The sentence they received is cruel, regardless of what happens to the bomber.

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Rock me baby, rock me all night long
Rock me baby, rock me all night long
Rock me baby, like my back ain't got no bones

Rock me baby, honey, rock me slow
Rock me baby, honey, rock me slow
Rock me baby, till I want no more

Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long

Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long

Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long
Rock me all night long

And then there was silence.

And in the silence we could remember the sweetest guitar licks that were ever played and we could picture the man with his eyes closed and his fingers dancing and the moments when race and economic difference and the wrongs of history and the injustices of this world simply faded away because we knew that the music was the most important thing of the moment.

Lenny Kravitz said, “BB, anyone could play a thousand notes and never say what you said in one.”

BB King started out this life as a farmhand. A few years ago he earned his 15th Grammy award. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When he held that Gibson ES-355 in his hands, the guitar he called “Lucille,” folks just wanted to close their eyes and listen.

And now the King has gone on to a place where, for a little while, we cannot follow. He died in his sleep in Las Vegas. On the map that might be a long ways from Mississippi, where he was born, but music has a way of bridging the distances and BB had a way of making every town his home.

He had been sick for a few months, probably due to complications from diabetes. There is no need for a medical explanation. Maybe the best we can do is to listen once more to “The Thrill is Gone:”

The thrill is gone
The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you'll be sorry someday

The thrill is gone
It's gone away from me
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away from me
Although, I'll still live on
But so lonely I'll be

The thrill is gone
It's gone away for good
The thrill is gone baby
It's gone away for good
Someday I know I'll be open armed baby
Just like I know a good man should

You know I'm free, free now baby
I'm free from your spell
Oh I'm free, free, free now
I'm free from your spell
And now that it's all over
All I can do is wish you well

And he is free. Maybe he was always free.

And after the silence, the song lingers on. And among the songs that keep coming to my mind is that epic performance with Buddy Guy of “Stay Around a Little Longer:”

I thank the Lord
I thank the Lord for letting me stay around a little longer
But I feel like I got a lot more to give
I thank the Lord for letting me stay around a little longer
Lord knows I love the life I live
Thank You, Lord, I love the life I live

Until very recently, King was playing over 100 concerts a year. When he was 85, he commented in an interview, “I can’t retire, I need the money.” But anyone who heard King, even those of us whose experience was limited to recordings and videos, knew that King was a man whose motivation was far beyond money. You can’t keep music like that inside.

If Louis Armstrong was the definition of jazz, surely BB King was the definition of the Blues.

And the blues are a unique expression of the simple, basic, human reality of grief. You can’t run away from grief. You can’t escape without having experienced grief. You can’t run away. You can’t hide. You can’t be human without coming face to face with the reality of loss and the pain of loss and the power of grief. Grief, however, isn’t bad. It is a gift of healing. It is how we get from one moment to the next - from one day to the next. Facing death and loss squarely is the only way to discover that death is not the end.

The blues bridges the normal lines that divide us from one another. A few years ago, at our first Holy Week Blues concert at the church, I sat in a crowded room and listened to Jami Lynn sing the blues. I closed my eyes and when I opened them up, I literally rubbed them both to try to clarify my vision. I couldn’t believe that a white girl, who grew up in South Dakota, who had the privilege of a good education and a good family life and a wonderful way to grow up, could really sing the blues. I rubbed my eyes again. I couldn’t believe that anyone so young - with so little life behind her - could really sing the blues.

But Jami can sing the blues.

You shouldn’t be able to put Patsy Cline and BB King on the stereo and mix them up and pull out Bob Fahey and Jami Lynn. But the blues don’t recognize the boundaries. The blues reach beyond our own experience and enable us to share the experiences of others.

BB King brought us the woes of a Mississippi sharecropper and the legacy of slavery. BB King brought us the hope that tomorrow will come and that we will all be able to say, “Thank you, Lord!”

But today:
No fancy words.
No slick guitar riffs.
Just the weight of silence.
Cause, BB, today the whole world’s got the blues.

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I grew up in the 1960’s, but I’ve never found marches and demonstrations to be especially meaningful ways to communicate my concerns, political or otherwise. It seems to me that there are plenty of marches these days. On Tuesday 150 or so people marched around the Rapid City Regional Hospital campus, led by Brent Phillips, president and CEO of the hospital. A nurse recently posted a video on Facebook in which she used graphic profanity toward Native Americans. She was fired within a few hours of the discovery of her racist post and later apologized in a television interview, but the hospital was scrambling to come up with a clear public demonstration that it in no way condones such hateful and hurtful expressions. The march was dubbed a “solidarity” march to demonstrate that the hospital was committed to serving the entire community. The newspaper has a picture of hospital president Mark Gibbs walking hand-in-hand with Horace Wounded Arrow at the solidarity rally.

I am appalled at the racist statements, embarrassed by the video that should have never been made, let alone published for others to see, and disappointed by the actions of some of my neighbors in this community. But I didn’t take part in the march. I failed to see how being part of a crowd was going to build relationships. Maybe the community needed public demonstrations, but I couldn’t quite see how marching was going to solve the problems of institutional racism and embedded distrust.

Tomorrow there is a “Keep the Promise; Stop the Lies” rally, march and demonstration, complete with picketing in Hot Springs. Hot Springs has been home to a Veterans Administration hospital for a long time and its stately campus is a beautiful part of the the community. Things are changing in health care and the Veterans Administration keeps making gestures that the hospital will one day be closed. Alarmed citizens of Hot Springs are doing whatever they can think of to try to keep the hospital in their community. Of course the economic effect of closing the hospital would be devastating to the small town.

The problem of how best to provide health care for veterans is complex. In an era when there were far too few hospitals to provide adequate care to the citizens of the country it seemed to make sense to create a separate health care system to provide care for veterans returning with combat wounds and other needs. This evolved into a system of hospitals and care centers spread across the nation. It also meant that veterans might have to travel to obtain health care. For a veteran living in Rapid City with its regional medical centers and conveniently located physician practices, it can be a bit frustrating to have to travel to Hot Springs or Sturgis to receive routine care. But hospitals are huge institutions and making changes is always complex. The location of a hospital effects the local economy, the lives of employees and the vendors that provide supplies and resources to the institution.

It is easy for me to say that the decisions about the hospital are complex. And understanding a bit of that complexity makes it hard for me to take sides. And thinking the way that I do, I can’t quite figure out what is accomplished by a rally, a march and picketing at the entrance to the hospital.

Historically, picketing and marching have been ways for people who had few resources to express their opinions in a public manner and get noticed. In the struggles for a 40-hour work week, reasonable job safety, an end to child labor and other fair employment practices, strikes and public demonstrations were methods of rallying support for causes that were, at least initially, unpopular. The point of the demonstration was to show the public how many people supported a particular cause and to demonstrate majority support.

With all due respect, 150 people marching around the hospital doesn’t even demonstrate a majority of the physicians employed by the institution. Yes, the executives and corporate heads did show for the press photos and make a splash for the news cameras, and I suppose it is good to know that they are willing to step away from their desks long enough to express their opposition to overtly racist statements. I remain, however, unsure of what was accomplished in terms of creating an environment in the hospital where patients don’t fear that they will be treated unfairly.

If we refuse to talk about the out-of-control cost of health care in our community and the effects of entrenched poverty among Native Americans in South Dakota, can we really address institutional racism in the hospital? What causes more harm in our community: overtly hateful statements posted on YouTube or the pay discrepancy between the CEO of the hospital and the minimum wage worker washing dishes in the cafeteria? At least the minimum wage worker isn’t the lowest paid employee of the institution. Regional also employs disabled workers at sub-minimum wages.

Let me be quick to say, since I have already been critical of the institution, that I do not have the solutions to the out-of-control increases in the cost of health care in our community or in our nation. I don’t have an answer for the increasing discrepancies between the care afforded to the wealthy and that obtained by those who are impoverished. I don’t know how to “fix” poverty in our community.

I do, however, have an obligation to be an informed and engaged citizen. I do owe it to my neighbors to try to live responsibly and to seek justice for those who have been wrongly denied access to the benefits of our society. It is incumbent upon me to work to end racism and to open up channels of communication, conversation, and community for all.

Eldridge Cleaver famously said, “There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem.”

I really want to be part of the solution. I’m just not convinced that the best way for me to do so is to join in with the marchers.

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We are pretty quick to talk of God’s judgment. Ours isn’t the first generation of faithful to invoke God’s name agains the powerful and elite. A few minutes with any of the biblical prophets will illustrate the the concept of God’s judgement has been with the faithful for a long time. Understanding God as the judge of all the people of the earth has long been a consolation to those who are powerless and downtrodden. Unable to obtain justice in this life they focus their faith on the belief that God has not forgotten their cries and that justice will come in what lies beyond death. Even if the rich and powerful have the ability to take away life itself, God’s judgment gets the final say.

You can find strains of those notions in sermons throughout the history of the church and echoes of the threat of God’s judgment in contemporary sermons as well. Yesterday, Pope Francis warned “the powerful of the earth” they will answer to God if they fail to protect the environment to ensure the world can feed its population. “The planet has enough food for all, but it seems that there is a lack of willingness to share it with everyone. We must do what we can so that everyone has something to eat, but we must also remind the powerful of the earth that God will call them to judgment one day and there it will be revealed if they really tried to provide food for Him in every person and if they did what they could to preserve the environment so that it could produce this food.”

The pope was making a reference to the separation of the sheep and the goats as reported in Matthew 25:31-46. It was a reference that would have been clearly understood and readily brought to mind for his audience: the general assembly of the Catholic charitable organization Caritas. In the story, the righteous ask the judge, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?” Similarly, those who are accursed and sent to eternal punishment ask, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” The answer to both questions is that whatever has been done to “one of the least of these” was done to God.

The story, of course, can leave almost any person in a quandary about our own judgment. For clearly most of us have been in both camps. There have been times when I saw a hungry person and gave that person food. There also have been times when I passed by and did not offer assistance. If God wants to judge me as “sheep” or “goat” there is a clear case to be made for both positions.

The world doesn’t easily divide into the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Most of the time we find ourselves with a bit of good and a bit of bad in the same person.

Fortunately, the Bible doesn’t paint a picture of an angry God, intent on wreaking vengeance, though some preachers have invested their careers in depicting such a God. For the most part, the God of the Bible is the source of forgiveness and grace and the author of second and third chances. God seems much more eager to forgive than to punish. Even the stories that speak of God’s punishment, show another side of God. Moses is able to persuade God not to destroy the Hebrew people after they worship a golden calf. The prophets speak in angry voices and then provide verse after verse of the poetry of compassion. Jesus speaks much more about God’s love and forgiveness than any other topic.

Seasoned pope watchers - and I must convince I’ve become somewhat of a pope watcher with this pope, though I haven't previously paid a lot of attention to other popes - are paying attention to Pope Francis in expectation of a papal encyclical on the ethical aspects of environmental issues. The pope is set to address the U.N. Special Summit on Sustainable Development in September. And Pope Francis seems to be fearless when it comes to speaking about justice and God’’s interest in what humans are doing in this world.

Still, there are voices within the Roman Catholic church that are warning the Pope to avoid controversial and political topics. He has been counseled not to speak out on issues that might offend the rich and powerful of the world. Preachers are often warned away from politics - especially when they risk offending wealthy donors.

In my own case, I have been careful to be sure that I am speaking to the people of the church and that outsiders don’t get the mistaken notion that I am able to speak for them. My congregation is diverse and widely varied. And the people I serve are perfectly capable of making their own opinions known - they do not need me to speak on their behalf. But observers who are outside the church sometimes mistakenly conclude that statements made by the preacher somehow represent the entire congregation. As a result, I have been reluctant to speak publicly on some issues. I don’t mind sharing my opinions with my congregation, but I don’t assume that I am able to tell others what they should think or believe.

The pope has no similar luxury. He has been elected to be the public representative of the largest church in the world. His every move is watched and interpreted as a sign of the directions that the church will take.

So it will be interesting to watch and listen as the pope speaks to the church and the world. As he calls forth images of God’s judgement, will he also find a way to voice God’s forgiveness? As he addresses the rich and powerful of the world, will he speak for those who are impoverished and powerless? And, when he speaks the truth of God, will those who most need to hear that truth be listening?

It is enough to make one want to pay attention.

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According to Erik Erikson’s psychosocial stages, I am coming to the end of the stage of Generatively vs. stagnation. The question of “What am I going ot make of my life?” is being answered in the living of my life and soon it will be time to turn my attention to ego integrity. Erikson’s model gives the task of making sense of all of the different phases of life to the end stage of life.

Of course no model, such as Erikson’s, is complete. At least it doesn’t tell the entire story of any individual. Recent years have seen quite a bit of criticism of developmental psychology. While developmental models give some understanding to the processes of the journey through life, there are other perspectives. It is clear that human beings don’t all go through life’s tasks in the same order. And societal pressures shape lives in different ways in different times.

As a child psychologist, Erikson focused on the earlier stages of development. His first two stages span 18 months each. Subsequent stages are 2, 7, and 6 years and then things spread out to 22 and 25 years. The final stage is simply age 65+. With the length of lives in today’s world, that last stage can be the longest developmental stage.

I was schooled in Erikson’s model and have used it to interpret my own life as well as approach much of my work in education and curricula development over the years. Still, I am aware that there are other ways to think of life’s journey and other models for understanding how we develop. I am also aware that life is not always sequential and that people don’t always go through the stages in the same order or at the same ages.

Somehow Erikson came to mind yesterday when I read a poem by Stanley Kunitz. Kunitz was U.S. Poet Laureate twice and lived to the age of 100. He was just two weeks short of his 101st birthday when he died. He was 95 years old when he served as Poet Laureate the second time. His poem, “The Layers” begins like this:

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.

I think I rather like that image of walking through many lives, some of them my own. It seems to really ring true for me. Part of my vocation is listening to the stories of others. I share their experiences through the process of seeking meaning together. A life of faith is shaped by many others.

I am constantly aware of how the lives of those who have gone before have shaped my life. I study and tell the stories of our ancestors of faith in part because those stories are critical to understanding the lives we live today. We are who we are because of the lives of those who have gone before. Being able to remember those stories and see their connection to our own helps us see the context of our lives and understand that we are providing a foundation for that which is to follow.

I often tell the stories of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses and Jesus in the first person. “When we were slaves in Egypt,” I say, in the style of my teachers. Although I am adopted into the stories of the Old Testament - my genetic lineage is probably not mainstream Jewish - I have accepted those stories as my own and tell them as the stories of our people.

Those are only some of the lives I have walked through. I have walked through the lives of the youth I have mentored in the church. I have walked through the lives of the adults I have served.

The process of preparing for a funeral is always a process of walking through another person’s life. I sit with grieving family members and friends and I listen to the stories. I read the obituary. I study the history of the time when that person lived. Then I go to work to select appropriate words to express that meaning for the grieving community. Together we walk through that life and explore the faith, hope and love that has been demonstrated through a life.

Later in the poem, Kunitz refers to all of the stories as being gathered together:

Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

My tribe, too is scattered. I recognize it when a grade school classmate posts old pictures on Facebook and I recognize the names and faces of people who I probably wouldn’t know if I ran into them today. We’ve all changed a lot since the day we scrubbed up and combed our hair for our first grade class photo. I recognize members of my tribe from my college years and the years we lived in Chicago attending graduate school. Recently I officiated at a funeral for a woman who we knew as a young adult during our time in North Dakota. There are members of my tribe in Idaho and Utah and Oregon and Washington and Missouri and a dozen countries scattered around the globe.

Kunitz’s poem is titled “The Layers,” and it gets its name from a vision that comes at its end:

In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

I, too, am not done with my changes. And I find it deeply meaningful to think of my life as having many layers. These days we are living - this ministry we are sharing - are becoming yet another layer in the story of our people. Like a geologist traveling through the grand canyon, we can find deep meaning in the layers. A trained eye can decipher the history of geology looking at the layers of sediment.

And the stories of our people lie in the layers of human history that we have lived.

Ah that I might “live in the layers, not the litter.”

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I spent a lot of time and energy agonizing over the decision about whether or not to cancel church yesterday. After consulting with the moderator of the church, the decision was made to cancel. I kept having second thoughts all day long. After all, I could have gotten in to church. On the other hand, the worst of the storm was about the same time as church and our congregation has lots of older members who should have been staying inside. Most folks that I talked with thought that it was a wise decision to cancel.

My worries, however, weren’t the only weather worries of the day. Across the state, south of Mitchell, a tornado caused a lot of damage at Delmont. There were reports of three people who were injured, but no deaths were reported. The tornado struck at about 10:45 a.m. With the time zone change, that’s during the same hour that our congregation usually gathers for worship. The town’s Lutheran church and the town’s new fire hall were heavily damaged along with about a third of the homes in the town. By late afternoon the South Dakota Emergency Management Office was advising people to evacuate the area as there was no water, electricity or phone service available.

That wasn’t all for unusual spring weather around the country. Tropical storm Ana made landfall Sunday morning in South Carolina. As tropical storms go, Ana wasn’t all that big. There were winds that reached nearly 40 mph and 2 to 4 inches in rain in some places along the Atlantic coast. But named storms before the official launch of the hurricane season on June 1 are rare. There are a couple of other storms that have been earlier, including a 1952 storm that struck Florida in February. Still, the storm was only the third storm to land that early since official records have been kept.

Out in the Pacific, the storm season is raging. A category 5 super storm hit the Philippines yesterday. May is considered to be early for such storms there as well. Noel, the storm that struck the Philippines, was the third strongest typhoon for so early in the year and it is already the second category 5 storm this year, the fifth named storm in the Pacific.

Folks who have lived in the hills for a while can remember other spring blizzards, some in May, but we still would call this much snow a bit unusual for us at this time of the year. We weren’t the only ones to get snow. There was snow along the front range in Colorado. In 24-hours from Saturday into Sunday, Colorado Springs was under 5 different types of National Weather Service alerts including, a tornado watch, flash flood warning, and a blizzard warning.

Back home in the hills, it is strange that our winter was much dryer than normal, with less snow that usual given that we set the record last fall for our city’s earliest snowfall on record (September 11) and yesterday’s blizzard wasn’t the latest, it was relatively late for us. We’ve set a few records in the past couple of years with the record storm for the amount of snow in April of 2013 and that year’s October storm that caused a lot of tree damage and extended power outages.

There is plenty of weather for folks to talk about and folks like to talk about the weather.

Meanwhile, our friends in Costa Rica keep looking to Turrialba Volcano. Since last October, the mountain has been erupting with clouds of ash on a regular basis. The airport in San Juan has been shut down three times since March. The ash from the volcano has been spreading around the area. The volcano is also erupting lava. Volcanologists with the Costa Rican National Volcanological Observatory expect the eruptions to gradually increase over the next few months. By fall the volcano will be erupting on a near weekly basis. So far the ash hasn’t caused major health concerns in the city of San Jose, but a small change in the weather and the ash could cause serious health concerns. Add a little rain and the acid rain could be enough to contaminate rivers and kill corps. Respiratory problems are common when people inhale the ash. More than half of the people of Costa Rica live in San Jose. San Jose is also the location of the majority of the country’s computers and other sensitive electronic equipment which are vulnerable to negative effects of the ash as well.

Back in the 1960’s Irazu Volcano regularly showered San Jose with ash. The old timers know that volcanoes and their effects are part of living in the country.

When one considers the powerful forces at play in the natural order of the world, we begin to understand that we are relatively small and not very powerful in the face of the giant forces of nature. There are many things that are beyond our control. While we can prepare for natural events and plan to keep ourselves safe, there are many things that are beyond our control. And sometimes our plans and ideas become disrupted.

Maybe there was a lesson for me in yesterday’s blizzard. I’ll keep second guessing my decision for a long time and wondering whether or not I did the right thing. I’ll probably be less likely to cancel in the future. It wouldn’t have made a very big difference in the scheme of things. A few people would have come to worship. We would have been short on numbers and the choir probably wouldn’t have had enough voices to sing. The church school would have been empty. But the real lesson is that it isn’t about me. In the scheme of things we need to learn that we can’t control all of the variables in this world. We aren’t in charge of the great forces that shape our lives. Our role is to look at the world with awe and appreciation and wonder.

In this country, you learn to get up on the morning after the storm and go back to work. And you learn to get prepared for the next storm. Storms will come and go and in the midst of them our lives continue to be filled with meaning.

Besides, you have to admit, it is kind of pretty to look out at all that fresh snow. Enjoy it! It won’t last.

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Now comes the tough decision. It shouldn’t be that difficult, but it is hard to get information at this time of day. We got the snow that was forecast, but we didn’t get the wind. More snow is gently falling and there is over a foot on the ground here at home. I’m trying to get information on how things are in town, but it is a Sunday morning and everyone else posted the storm warnings last night and went to bed. I’ve got a note on the church web site that says we’ll make a decision about whether or not to cancel by 6 a.m. I know that not many of our people will rush to the site and check right at 6, but it makes sense that we should decide by then.

As things look right now, I could get into the church. I have a good four-wheel-drive pickup and I could put on chains if I needed them. But there is more to the decision than whether or not I can get to the church. We have lots of people, of all ages, who have to make a decision that affects their safety.

The winter storm warning issued by the National Weather Service advises, “Stay indoors and do not attempt to travel until the storm is over.” But it also forecast winds of 15 to 25 mph with gusts to 35 mph. And so far we haven’t had enough wind here to blow any of the snow.

There are no tracks in the street in front of our house and no traffic on the road behind the house. That doesn’t mean much - not many people are out and about at 4:30 am on Sunday mornings. There was a time when the newspaper was a 24-7 operation and you could call them to see what is going on. But times have changed, the newspaper is short-staffed, and they’ve all gone home to wait out the storm. The latest posting on the newspaper web site in regards to the storm is over 22 hours old. They wrote an article, suitable for today’s paper, early yesterday morning and no one has updated it. The television web sites are a bit better, we know that the Black Hills Film Festival, the Mother’s Day Express 1880 Train, the Dinosaur 13 screening at the library, and an event at the Matthews Opera House have been cancelled. We have no information about churches.

I hate to bother the folks at the Sheriff’s office. There are over 200 churches in Rapid City. If we all called, it would get downright annoying.

My instinct is to proceed. I hate to cancel church on the outside chance that someone will be out and about and try to come. On the other hand, I doubt if we’ll have much of a turnout. Not many members of the choir are likely to venture out and today is the first day for a new choir director. I don’t know how capable he is of getting out in the weather. I could pick him up and then swing by and pick up the organist, I guess, but if they can’t get to church, who can? And I like to go in earlier than would be necessary for them to make the trip.

So I ponder.

I doubt if my decision is much different than those made by pastors in other generations. One generation ago, the telephone was the primary way of finding out what was going on. A pastor would make a few phone calls and then make a decision about whether or not to hold church. A couple of generations ago, the pastor probably lived within walking distance of the church and could go over, unlock (if the church was ever locked) and see who came - maybe there was no decision to be made at all. If someone showed up, there’d be church. If not, then the pastor would walk home after a while.

In the past, I’ve said that our standard is whether or not the county has banned travel. If they allow travel, we’ll meet. If they have asked us not to travel, we won’t. I don’t remember a time in recent years when the National Weather Service has advised no travel, but the County hasn’t yet issued a statement.

Perhaps I’m trying to make my decision to early in the day.

But I’m not good at waiting. No good at all.

The forecast is clear. It is going to keep snowing through the morning. We’ve already got a foot and more is on the way. The winds could pick up with daylight. The radar shows a large area of snow with Rapid City at the center. It probably isn’t the best time to head out. If it weren’t for church, I’d probably not be agonizing. I’d just say, “Today isn’t a good day to venture out. We’re safe and warm right here and other things can wait.” Worship, however, is different. I hate to cancel worship. It can’t be rescheduled. We’ll have worship next week, of course, but we never get this week back.

I guess there is a part of me that is still the kid who would venture out in almost any weather. When I started delivering newspapers, they arrived in our town on the railroad, which seemed to run in almost any kind of weather. When they switched to trucks about a year later, I’d be disappointed when the weather got so bad that we didn’t receive our papers. I’d still go out and wait to check. If the papers got to town, my customers had them by 6:30 every morning. I liked the designation of one who wasn’t held back by weather.

But I am older these days. I am more experienced with genuine risk. And I have to make a decision that affects not only me, but a lot of other people.

I guess you’ll have to check the church web site a little later to see what I decide - because I’m still unsure.

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Throughout my career as a preacher, I have been careful not to criticize other ministers. Even though there are many disagreements, and I have encountered ministers whose work does not inspire respect on my part, I have tried to avoid voicing my criticism. There is already too much dissension and disagreement in this world and I feel like my role in the world should be to seek common ground, support other people of faith and promote the unity of the church.

Additionally, it is simply true that there are many different expressions of faith. Not everyone interprets the Bible in the same way. We look at things from different points of view. It is clear from reading the Old Testament that there is a fundamental struggle within the document itself between those who associate faith with consolidation of power, wealth and might such as Solomon and other royalists; and those who find the core of the faith to be love, justice and service. The prophets openly criticize the actions of the very government whose praise is sung in some of the historical books. Similarly, the New Testament points to divisions and disagreements in the early church. Ours is an expansive faith and the people who follow our faith are complex and diverse.

It would be wrong for me to assume that the way I see things is the only way that things can be seen.

So I am careful with my criticism and try to use my limited authority as pastor and preacher of a congregation to build up, not tear down.

Even as I do so, I understand that there are others who do not show the same restraint. There is a Christian school in our town that has, as part of its curriculum, a text that refers to my church as “apostate.” Apostasy is usually reserved for an open renunciation of a particular religious belief or principle. The meaning, in this text, however, is slightly different. It means those who claim the title of Christian, but do not share the specific beliefs of the authors of the book. They are quick to criticize recognized Christian groups as having “fallen away” from the “true” faith. In the view of the authors of the book, my church was once Christian but is no longer so because of the beliefs of some of its members.

There is a Christian organization in my town of which I am no longer a member because I chose to stand with others who were being excluded from the group. The organization adopted a creed as a test of faith, stating that those who didn’t believe the creed were not welcome. I actually have no problems with the creed they chose, but I have a problem with abusing a creed to make it a badge of exclusivity, and I have a problem with excluding recognized and historical faith groups because they choose not to embrace a particular creed.

So we don’t all stand together. And there are those whose expressions of faith are different than mine.

The problem with my silence in regards to others, however, is that silence doesn’t garner public attention the way that vitriol does. I have been reading studies about those who claim that they are not religious in our society. It is common for people to label themselves as “spiritual, but not religious,” meaning that they reject the institutions of faith, but claim some religious beliefs. What is becoming clear as I seek to understand these people, is that the public perception of the church from the outside is vastly different from the church I know and love. Many see the church as hateful, angry, exclusionary, and fearful. They see us as anti-science, fearful of those whose lifestyles are different from ours, judgmental of those we deem to be different, and violent in our rhetoric and behavior. Their perceptions are not without a basis in the behavior of some religious people. My experience, however, stands in stark contrast to this perception. I have found love to be the core of the gospel, justice and mercy to be values that are essential to Christianity, and openness and acceptance to be central to the practices of my church.

Why do others see the church so differently than I experience it?

Part of it has to do with the theology of some who preach. There is plenty of intolerance preached from pulpits. There is plenty of violence and anger is some sermons. I don’t attend worship in other churches very often, and I have heard preachers speak of God’s hatred of sinners, of harsh punitive judgment, and of an angry God that is so quick to reek vengeance that he is willing to kill his own sinless son for the sins of others. I tend to think of this as simply bad theology - often coming from the corners of the church that do not uphold an educated clergy. Sacrificial theology is, from my point of view, a product of an immature faith and a partial reading of scripture. The antidote to such is education and study. “Read the scriptures. Read the entire Bible,” I say. Look deeper and you will find that in the Christian faith God is not distinct from Jesus - God is not the harsh judge raining punishment on those who have made mistakes. God is the source of forgiveness, and even willing to endure pain - the pain of the cross - to fully share the human experience and to demonstrate that death is not the end. From my reading of the faith the cross is not the violent expression of a violent god who demands violence and retribution. It is, rather, an act of sacrificial love of the God of forgiveness who seeks the deepest possible relationship with humans. The cross isn’t about demanding death - it is about overcoming death.

I could go on for hours about my theology and how it contrasts with what some preachers say. I don’t need to attack the faith - or the preaching - of others. What is needed, however, is a proclamation of a wider and more mature theology in the public sphere.

While silence is often a deeply valuable expression of faith, there are occasions when silence isn’t all that is asked of those of us called to leadership in the church.

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The weatherman has issued a winter storm warning for our area. The forecast calls for rain on Saturday turning to snow in the afternoon and for the snow to continue through the evening and into Sunday with an accumulation of 3 to 6 inches. Those of us who have been around for a while can remember a May blizzard that dumped plenty of heavy wet snow not too many years ago, so we’ll probably take the news seriously and do a little preparing. One good thing about spring blizzards is that they melt of quickly. The other thing is that the hills are dry and we need the moisture. It isn’t prudent to complain about precipitation, no matter how it falls. And snow is likely to seep into the soil as it melts.

But yesterday, though a little chilly, was a great day for a spring paddle. I took the day off and got an entire day to take care of recreation and catch up on a few personal chores. So, as is my inclination, I started out at the lake with an open canoe. It isn’t my first paddle in an open canoe this year, but I tend to paddle in a kayak during the early season. The kayak, with a spray cover, is a pretty warm place for one’s legs and lower torso. With a good paddling jacket, I can stay warm in almost any weather.

However, there is something special about a well-designed canoe. The one I was paddling yesterday is a homemade woodstrip canoe made to the lines of a 16’ Chestnut Prospector. The Prospector is probably the most sought-after design in the north country. There are dozens of companies that offer their own versions of the Prospector made from all kinds of different materials, including high tech and expensive kevlar and kevlar-carbon fiber composites. The original Prospectors, of course, were wood and canvas canoes, mostly cedar with ash gunwales, thwarts and seats. The canoe is large enough to be used as a tandem, and has quite a bit of freeboard, so it will haul a good load. It is symmetrical, so a solo paddler can paddle stern first and sit on the bow seat. There is enough rocker to make the canoe very maneuverable in flowing water and enough length to make it track fairly well on a lake.

If a person were to have only one canoe, the Prospector might just be the best choice. I really enjoy paddling mine even though I have some specialty canoes that work in specific situations.

Yesterday was a good day for a little freestyle paddling and then a trip across the lake. There was a stiff breeze, so it was good exercise returning into the wind. With only me in the canoe, there was plenty of canoe above the waterline for the wind to blow around, but that just increased the value of my workout.

The only disappointment, and this one very minor, was that I headed out with my spare camera battery in the car, so I discovered that my battery needed to be recharged too late to get pictures. The great blue herons have returned to the lake and I might have gotten a good picture, approaching one from downwind, but alas, I didn’t get any pictures until after my paddle was completed.

It was good for my spirits and good for my body to get out and paddle. It fascinates me how attracted I am to paddling. As far as I know, I do not come from a nautical heritage. It is mostly farmers on my father’s side and my mother’s people were ministers, lawyers and court reporters. No seamen that we know of. And my generation isn’t exactly filled with boat people, though I do have one first cousin who has a live-aboard sailboat off of Belize that he built with his own hands. He has also built several dinghies and rowboats.

Despite my heritage, there is something deep inside of me that really appreciates paddling. Both the kayak and canoe were old and highly developed technologies before European settlers first came to North America. They were quick to recognize the value of such boats when they tried to row the rather beamier European-designed craft in North American waters. Quickly the preferred craft of the explorers was the birch bark canoe. When built properly the craft was incredibly capable of carrying a load, would weather all kinds of water, could be used as an emergency shelter, and was easily repaired with materials that were common and readily available.

In the 19th century when commercial canvas became readily available, canvas was substituted for birch bark in the construction of canoes. This made it practical to mass produce canoes in factories. There are good examples of 19th and 20th century canoes still being paddled to this day. One of my favorite boats is a 1959 Old Town that I rescued the night before it was slated to head for the dump. With a few new ribs, new stem pieces and new canvas, the boat is clearly as good as new and a joy to paddle. It is a very stable boat, just right for the first canoe ride for a child.

My fascination with canoes began with attending church camps located on lakes. In Idaho, I worked with American Canoe Association (ACA) certified instructors to create a water sports program that included paddle instruction. I still belong to the ACA and value the commitment of the organization to paddle safety. I’m a stickler for lifejackets that are worn, not just thrown into the boat and have been known to write letters to editors of paddling magazines when they print pictures of people without life jackets.

Yesterday, however, was a morning for just having fun on the water. I had no destination in mind, no one who needed instruction, nothing to prove. I was wearing cold weather gear, so knew I was safe and had a self-rescue plan that would work should a sudden wind and rusty muscles result in a capsize. There was little risk of that and the day provided me with much-needed contact with God’s creation and the creatures of the lake.

The fish were jumping and spring was in the air. A little snow won’t dampen my spirits.

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I have always had music in my life. My mother played the piano and sang to us when we were very young. I can’t remember a time before there was singing in my home. My father grew up without musical training, but he could match pitch pretty well. He always stood next to my mom in church and sang the alto part an octave lower, imitating her.

I was in the children’s choir in church, took piano lessons from the age of six and started playing the trumpet at age 10. My parents encouraged my musical interests and when I was in high school they paid for private trumpet lessons and the expenses of travel 60 miles one way each week for those lessons. In high school I sang in the choir and played in the band. In college, the pressures of academic life meant that I had to make choices, but I continued with band, playing in the marching band, the symphonic band and a brass quintet. I wasn’t in the choir in college, but I sang contemporary church music with an outreach group from our campus ministries, the Rocky Road Scholars.

There were two somewhat traumatic events in my early music career that I remember well, with many of the feelings intact. After my sophomore year in high school, our band and choir director took a job in a larger school system in another town in our state. The year before he moved, I had helped him build a harpsichord and he had been teaching me to carve reeds for bassoon and oboe, though I played neither instrument. He was very excited about his new job and I tried to share his excitement. I even helped with the move, carrying boxes and furniture, but my heart was heavy. I knew that I would miss him. I didn’t really connect with our new band director. I continued to play and sing, but it just wasn’t the same. My level of emotional commitment was lower.

But I really enjoyed my college band director. He was really tough and he was a stickler for precision both with music and with movement when we were marching. I was short, but I loved the large shako hats that we wore for marching. I took instrumental methods as a course and learned to play a few other instruments and occasionally would play a baritone or a flute for marching practice.

Then, during a summer break, our band director, who was a pilot, experienced a sudden engine failure in his airplane. He was flying over a very populated urban area and didn’t have power to make an airport. He headed for a parking lot, but failed to see some power lines. He died in the subsequent accident.

The school scrambled, found a new band director, and life went on. Again, I had trouble connecting with the new band director. I played and our band continued to make good music together, but I never was as emotionally committed to the new director.

Life took me to new places. I’ve loved music in many different ways since. In the early years of my ministry, I played in a community band. In Boise, I was in a brass quintet. I occasionally play my trumpet for church.

All of this is to say that as our choir has traveled through the past few years, I have had sympathy for them and their journey. A couple of years ago, our choir director retired to spend more time with her husband who had health problems. She remained in our community, but we hired a new director. In her first season with us, the new director contracted a very aggressive cancer and died. Then the previous choir director suffered a sudden heart attack and died.

We have been through a period of transition with an interim choir director for an entire choir season. Last night we introduced our new choir director to the choir.

I don’t expect the bond to be formed quickly. I expect to continue to hear a complaint now and then from the choir about their new director. I expect that our new director will hear a few comparisons to former directors in his first months with the choir. It is only natural.

Now that I’ve had more years of education and experience, I understand that a big part of my inability to connect with choir and band directors when I was younger was fueled by grief. I was grieving over the loss of other directors and I didn’t know how to express my grief. Unfortunately, anger is a natural part of grief and it can come out in some pretty crooked ways when we aren’t aware of what is going on. I doubt that my high school and college directors did anything to earn my anger - it was part of my learning to accept changes that I didn’t want to have in the first place.

Our whole congregation is still grieving over the loss of the talented directors who gave of their energy to help provide music for our worship. We miss them. We will never forget them. But God always provides leadership for the church - not always the leadership we want, but always the leadership that we need to move in the direction that God is calling us.

Last night as I sat downstairs in the church and listened to the rehearsal, I could hear familiar voices learning parts and working on the anthem for Sunday. It sounded really good. I know that our new director chose an anthem that would show off the choir for his first time directing them in worship. I’m grateful that he did.

This time, with a few more years and experiences under my belt, I pray that I can be welcoming and open to the new leadership that we have received. I hope that I can create an atmosphere where it is a joy for our new choir director to work.

That might be the best tribute I can pay to those who taught me so much about music.

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Earlier this week our local newspaper had a story about Shaina Johnson, a student at Black Hills State University who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. She was recently awarded a summer internship with the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. It is clear that this gifted student has exceptional abilities and has already achieved a great deal in her life. Her high school and college careers have been academically brilliant and she has demonstrated an incredible ability to overcome obstacles and accomplish big tasks. At college she is majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry and plans to attend medical school upon graduation.

One of the reasons that the paper ran the article is that Johnson is defying the stereotypes that many have of reservation youth. She was raised by her grandmother in a traditional Lakota home. She is fluent in Lakota and learned the Lakota values of courage, generosity, respect, wisdom and fortitude from her earliest years. Although she never knew her father, she had a very strong family to support and nurture her. Her grandmother emphasized education from her earliest years.

One of the reasons we are so attracted to these stories is that they are exceptional. There are hundreds and thousands of stories of the oppressive effects of generational poverty on the Reservations. Violence, addiction, unemployment and despair are all too common among our neighbors land there are plenty of academically brilliant students who fail to achieve even modest goals in college.

Entrenched and systematic racism is part of the problem. Those of us who grew up privileged are often unaware of how significant that privilege has been in our lives. We like to think of racism as something of the past - belonging to other places and other people and often are blind to the oppression that arises from our own attitudes and prejudices.

Even more difficult to see than racism, however, is classism. Increasingly, our country is a classed society with layers of privilege and poverty created by great disparity in income. It isn’t always easy to see entrenched poverty.

We like to think that the great equalizer in our society is education. Those who become educated have more options for their lives and a greater opportunity to overcome poverty and become upwardly mobile. We are less likely to think about how much more difficult it is for students of modest means to achieve their academic dreams.

It is simply harder for a student to succeed academically when that student has to work 50 hours a week at a job in order to make rent and groceries. It is harder for a student to succeed when there is no money for books or the technology that is assumed by the institution.

Some may find it hard to believe, but poverty is a major barrier to success for some academically brilliant students. Prestigious universities such as Columbia, Brown, Stanford and Yale all have scholarship programs that allow impoverished students to get their tuition paid if they succeed in a very competitive application process. But getting into a university is only part of the struggle. Only 11% of students who come from poverty and are accepted into top tier colleges are able to graduate.

It is hard to imagine that a student at a university with a multi-billion dollar endowment would have to go multiple days without food, or sleep on the streets, or sell their body in order to stay alive. All four of the above-named universities now have Facebook pages that enable students living in poverty to connect with one another. The anonymous posts tell stories of students who face incredible challenges just to stay alive. One student simply could not afford any textbooks at the university bookstore. The same student had never had access to a library and didn’t know that the books were available at the library until he was already significantly behind in all of his classes. A dedicated professor discovered the lack of books and helped the student to discover how to use the library. This challenge overcome, grades improved, but having to do all of his studying at the library was time consuming and forced the student to cut back on work hours. Among his posts on the Columbia website: “Ive eaten enough meals out of dumpsters to know that squirrels and rats often get stuck in there.”

I had several part time jobs during my academic career, but never had to fight hungry squirrels and rats to get a meal.

I understand why the newspaper likes to run feel good stories about exceptional students who achieve great successes in the face of great odds. I like to read the articles. Those students are inspirational not only to others who grow up in difficult surroundings - they are inspirational to the rest of us as well. But for every student like Shaina Johnson, there are a hundred who drop out of high school or college and never achieve their dreams. They don’t land the prestigious internships and wouldn’t be able to travel and support themselves if they received such awards. They might work twice as hard as a student from a privileged background and still not succeed living far away from home with little or no support for the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter.

Our society has treated education as a commodity that is bought and sold on the open market. And one thing about capitalism - it loves a shortage. It is the simple rule of supply and demand. Short supply means high prices. it also means that there are many who want the commodity who are unable to afford it. There simply aren’t enough places in our universities for all of the academically brilliant students. There aren’t enough openings in medical schools to meet the demand for physicians, forcing the United States to be a net importer of doctors.

Maybe it is time to set aside the big profits and increase the supply of educational opportunities. It isn’t like we couldn’t afford it if we wanted to do it.

How I wish Shaina Johnson’s story was about the majority instead of a single exception.

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Several years ago, we were given the honor of hosting a visit to our city by a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Monastary. There are two large groups of monks that travel with the Dali Lama in a kind of leapfrog manner, with one group appearing with the Dali Lama while the other is traveling. They do a particular kind of chanting with circular breathing and play some large horns. They make intricate sand mandalas and teach a bit about Buddhism in general and the specific situation of Tibetan Buddhists under the government of China. Many of the traveling monks don’t speak English, but they always have at least one who is fluent and available to translate for the others. We found hosting them to be a very pleasant experience and many from our area came to hear their chanting and experience their presence. Most of the monks hiked to the top of Bear Butte with Lakota spiritual leaders early one morning to share in the culture and traditions of Lakota people.

There were many things about the experience that surprised me and there are many stories from that visit that I enjoy telling. One of the surprises was that these monks, who have devoted their entire lives to religious practice, were such happy people, constantly laughing and enjoying life.

I’ve had a similar experience visiting in Roman Catholic monasteries. The religious servants living in those communities are often laughing and smiling and filled with joy.

Again, I remember a radio interview that I heard with Desmond Tutu. In the midst of serious conversation about making peace and living in a troubled world, there were frequent interruptions of laughter.

I think that laughter may well be an important spiritual tool and one of the marks of a truly religious person. Laughter usually reflects our humanity: our flaws and mistakes and the parts of ourselves that are a bit inconsistent. When I laugh, I am often looking at myself as I really am, filled with foibles and vulnerabilities. The people with whom I feel the closest are also people with whom I feel free to laugh.

There was a lot of laughter in the home of my childhood. There are a lot of occasions to laugh with a household of children and parents who delight in them. But my parents made it clear, early in our lives, that there is a big difference between laughing at someone and laughing with someone. Laughing with someone is a form of intimacy. Laughing at them is a form of cruelty.

I was thinking about laughter yesterday as we went through the ritual of committal for a woman who was being laid to rest at Black Hills National Cemetery. The Cemetery has a strict time schedule and we have only 30 minutes to get in, conduct our ceremony, and get out for the arrival of the next group. The committal itself was emotional - with plenty of tears for her husband, brother, sister-in-law, mother-in-law and other family members. But as we were returning to our cars following the service, there were spurts of laughter as a story of another family visit to the cemetery was recalled.

It is often the case that tears of sorrow and tears of joy intermingle on our cheeks. Laughter is close to the core of who we are and an expression of something that is deep within our being.

Another story: A few years ago we were concluding the first meeting of a new group of students preparing for the rite of confirmation. The teens were a bit uncomfortable with the entire process, and some were there by their own choice, others with a little pressure from parents. We had a group of adults and students, some mentors, some parents, the students and ministers as well. We invited the group to stand in a circle and share a moment of silence with our eyes closed. The adults complied. The teens started peaking to see what others were doing. Within a very few seconds, their eyes would meet and a giggle would emerge. Then another. Pretty soon the teens were all trying to suppress giggles while some of the adults opened their eyes and shot fairly harsh glances at the rowdy teens. It occurred to me as we tried to pray silently that laughter is another form of prayer. We were in the process of building community - forming a cohesive group that would go on to support one another in their lives. Laughing together was a shared experience that connected the youth to each other.

Months later the group became quite comfortable with quiet prayer and often stretched their times of silence into several minutes of quiet. Sometimes after a long quiet time, we would recall the story of the first day giggles and share smiles around the room. We had prayed with giggles and with quietness and both seemed to be appropriate ways of praying.

I think that when we practicer our faith, we might need to remember my parent’s warning about laughter - laugh with others, not at others - and apply it to our silence as well. It is possible to be silent at others. We call it giving them the silent treatment. The question is whether or silence draws us closer to others or alienates us from them.

Silence and laughter may be two very important resources for lives of faith. Silence provides a counterpoint for our words - and we often have too many words in our religious observances. Laughter provides a counterpoint to our solemnity - and we often have too much solemnity in our religious gatherings.

I am reminded of the classical theatre symbol of the comic and tragic masks. Dramatists remind us that they are two sides of the same person - each of us is at once comic and tragic. Perhaps silence and laughter are similar partners - two aspects of humanity that enable us to go deeper and learn more fully who we are and what we have been called to do.

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There was no small amount of hype involved before the introduction of the Segway. Inventor Dean Kamen grew up with a father who was an illustrator for comic magazines, including MDA, Weird Science and EC Comics. The son, however, took another career path as an inventor and entrepreneur. He is the developer of many different medical devices, among them “Luke,” a prosthetic arm replacement that offers its user much more find motor control than traditional prosthetic limbs. He invented water purification systems, portable dialysis machines, insulin infusion pumps and many more important and useful devices. His rolling iBOT mobility system allows wheelchair users much more stability and mobility than previously thought possible. The iBOT can climb stairs, glide over curbs and mount other obstacles.

What made Kamen famous, however, was the Segway personal transportation device. The two-wheeled platform with a single post with a handlebar is stabilized by gyroscopes in a similar manner to the technology used on the iBOT. After a lot of hype and promotion without specifics, the Segway was introduced in 1999 as the device that would transform society.

I think it is safe to say that the Segway failed to live up to some of the expectations. I, for one, have been nonplussed with the idea. I haven’t ever ridden one, and I’m not inclined to do so, either. I am an overweight person living in a society filled with overweight people. We don’t need devices that enable us to walk less. Walking is good for us and is an excellent way to get around a city or town. A vehicle designed to get us around at just over the speed of walking, that carries only one person, and that moves effortlessly just doesn’t appeal. Various models of the Segway sell for $2,500 to over $6,000. I’m pretty sure I can live without one.

I have, however, watched some of the video footage of the Segway Polo World Cup and it was, for the moment entertaining. Yes, there is an International Segway Polo Association (ISPA) and it really holds matches and tournaments around the world. The game is played on Segway models that have been modified to produce more speed. They can make up to 12 miles per hour, resulting in some rather dramatic crashes and falls for the players.

I’m not a fan of polo and don’t even know the rules. Basically it is a process of two teams trying to get the ball into their opponent’s goal while defending their own goal at the opposite end of the field. They use mallets to hit the ball and because they are in motion as they swing their mallets, it takes a bit of skill - and perhaps a bit of luck - to get the ball to go in the desired direction. The mallets offer other possibilities for action, including contact with other players or with their vehicles. It doesn’t appear that there are any major injuries, but I’m thinking that the players are a bit stiff and sore after a match.

The UK Segway Polo Tournament was a week ago, featuring 16 teams including teams form Sweden, Germany and Barbados. Speaking of Barbados, that is the site of the 2016 tournament at the end of April next year. If you combine a Caribbean beach vacation with an opportunity to watch a match or two of Segway Polo, it might be an interesting week.

It is, I assume, possible that one could get a bit of exercise from playing Segway Polo. But probably not as much as from a full soccer match.

And, face it, the scooters look silly and those riding them seem a bit foolish.

A few years ago there was a company that was renting Segway scooters for riding on the Mickelson Trail. I’m not sure how that worked, because the trail is not for motorized vehicles except for powered wheelchairs. At any rate, the business wasn’t a long-term success and has disappeared. The trail remains as a great place to ride bikes, cross country ski, and just go for a pleasant walk.

I’m a bit of a technology junkie, enjoying the brilliant engineering and the creative ideas of those who create some of the modern hi-tech electronic gadgets. I’ve been carrying a smart phone since the term was invented, and I use my computer every day. These days I have a work computer and a home computer and I carry a computer with me whenever I travel. Susan and I have been known to both take our computers on trips - something we never thought would happen. We can share the same tube of toothpaste, but we have individual computers these days.

I’m thinking, however, that I won’t be taking up Segway polo as a retirement sport.

There is another invention by Dean Kamen that hasn’t gotten the promotion afforded to the Segway. I don’t even know the name of the device, but it is a machine that works on compressed air that can launch a human into the air. The device is supposed to be capable of quickly launching members of SWAT teams or other emergency workers onto the roofs of all, inaccessible buildings. It seems to be a variation on the old human-shot-from-a-canon routine.

Now, there’s an invention that I’d like to try. Stand on a platform and WHAM! you’re flying through the air. When you reach the height of your arc and start downward, you gently descend to a rooftop. Pretty neat, if the device is aimed properly. And if the amount of compressed air is right to get you to exactly the correct height. Too low and you miss the building. Too high and you’re going too fast when you get back down. Ah, but they’ve got computers to work out the trajectory and velocity. At least I hope they do. It seems like something that I might want to try.

Maybe there is a form of 3-D human pinball that could be invented if I could get my hands on one of those devices.

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My Uncle Randy was a staunch Methodist. They attended church every Sunday and were leaders in the congregation, taking on various jobs in the church over the years. There was one exception to the every Sunday pattern: harvest. They were dry land wheat farmers in northern Montana and thee always was a lot riding on harvest. They operated older, used equipment and breakdowns were always a threat. Weather could make or break a harvest. The wheat, vulnerable to hail and high wind all through its growing cycle, was especially vulnerable once it was headed out and the moisture content was right for cutting. They usually took on one or two extra hired hands for harvest and everybody pitched in. I worked the harvest two years when I was a teenager and I remember the pace of that time.

Much of July was about preparing. The combine was started up and gone through. Every belt and hose was inspected. Every fitting was greased. The engine was started and all of the various controls exercised. Then the oil was changed and the fuel tank filled. The trucks were prepared as well, usually with an oil change and a check of everything. Parts like teeth for sickles, various belts and other items were loaded onto the service truck along with grease guns, fuel pumps and other items. Evenings, after supper, were spent inspecting the fields. We’d walk out into the field, remove a few heads from the stalks and roll them in our hands to remove the chaff. The kernels were inspected, and often chewed to make sure that everything was right.

Then, when Uncle Randy said so, we’d move into high gear. The combine would be moved to the first field and a test cout would be made. The grain would be checked for moisture content and everything put into place. Once we started cutting, only the weather would stop the process. We’d rise at 5:30 and have a big breakfast. We were waiting for the sun to dry any dew before we’d start things up. If we’d drained oil from a hot machine the night before, we would put the drain plug back in and carefully top it with oil. Oil was checked in every machine, always parked in the summer fallow field just incase of a stubble fire. The combines would make a few rounds before they needed to empty into the trucks, so we’d check out the trucks after the combines were in motion. Then the rhythm of the signal from the combine, driving close to receive the grain, making sure the truck was evenly loaded, and using a grain scoop if it needed to be shifted. When the truck was full, we’d head to the granary to dump and run the elevator to the bin while the other truck was field shuttling. We’d return as soon as possible and begin the dance with the combines again.

At lunch, the combine operators ate while we greased their machines, then we ate while they started back to the field. Both lunch and dinner were brought to us in the field - enormous meals with lots of homemade bread, hot meat, potatoes and delicious desserts. Usually the cool of the evening would have us shutting down at about dark and when everything was unloaded and parked we’d head back for a quick shower before bed. The next day repeated. And it continued for as many days as it took to finish.

When harvest was done, there were usually a couple of bonus days. We’d go to the state fair if we got done in time, or perhaps to the lake for a little swimming and water skiing. After harvest it was usually time for me to clear out of the bunkhouse and head for home for the start of school.

I think of the pace of the harvest when I hit busy streaks at work. I know all of the studies about time off and rest and relaxation. I’ve read the commandments carefully and know that Sabbath rest is a commandment for everyone - including me. I understand the need for recreation and restoration. But I never say “no” to a funeral. And there are occasions in the lives of the people I serve that demand flexibility on my part.

It’s been quite a run at the church since Holy Week. Holy Week is sort of our harvest. We do services every day and there are long hours of preparing worship bulletins, moving furniture, preparing spaces, practicing music, writing liturgy, studying scriptures all on top of our regular work. Most years we get a bit of a break in the week after Easter, but we’ve got big things going in our church. Today is a very important congregational meeting with the largest capital funds drive in the history of the church being proposed. In order to make this meeting possible a lot of behind the scenes work had to be done.

there have also been some very unusual occurrences since easter. We had a week when there were two funerals on the same day. We’ve had a couple of funerals for people who weren’t connected with our church. It’s always harder to conduct a funeral for someone you don’t know well. It takes extra visits to get to know the family and understand their needs. And each funeral means follow-up calls and visits that need to be added to the schedule. Monday is usually my day off, and I did get the Monday after Easter off, but there have been work items on each Monday since.

I’ve been feeling like I’m working harvest. You just get up each morning and tell yourself that you’ve got to keep going. And you do. But I am not superman and I am not exempt from the commandments - not even the Sabbath commandment. So I’ve needed to be creative with my schedule. I have rearranged all of my appointments and meetings for this coming Thursday and others at the church will cover for me so I can take a day off. Now I need to get through today and the committal tomorrow and the usual events of Tuesday and Wednesday.

Having worked harvest is a pretty good preparation for the life of a pastor.

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I’m not a mountaineer. I grew up in Montana and we did our share of backpacking in the high country. I took a few technique lessons and practiced rappelling on the rimrocks in Billings, but I have never developed the technical skills for serious climbing. Over the years, I’ve been more attracted to just walking than to hard core climbing. I think that South Dakota is the only state where I’ve stood on the highest point. I climbed the Barr Trail up Pike’s Peak once. At 14,110, Pikes is pretty high, but not by Colorado standards. I think that there are 30 peaks in Colorado that are higher. And climbing the Barr Trail is simply a matter of getting on the mountain early enough in the day and walking up a trail that is steep in places, but no technical skills are required. It’s a bit like climbing Harney Peak here in South Dakota, just more of it.

But I have always had a deep appreciation for the mountains. I have read lots of stories about mountaineering, mountain rescue, and other topics related to climbing. I’ve studied the maps of Mount McKinley or Denali and used to know the names of some of the more popular ascent routes. Similarly, I’ve poured over records of Mount Everest and the stories of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary’s first ascent of the giant. At various times in my live, posters of the great mountains have decorated the walls of the places where I have lived.

When the National Geographic Magazine published a story about the Wyoming climbers who summited one of the Trango Towers in Pakistan, we hosted an evening for one of the climbers who had grown up in our congregation. I was fascinated by his stories and the adventures of the climbers.

So it is natural for me to have been paying attention to the climbers on Everest stranded by the earthquake last week. As of Thursday, 200 climbers have been rescued from Mount Everest, where 18 died in avalanches set off by the earthquake and aftershocks. So far, rescuing the climbers has been a massive effort. Each helicopter can take only two or thee climbers per flight. Some helicopters were flying non-stop whenever the light and weather allowed. The Daily Beast called int “a rescue effort unprecedented in sports history.”

There is, however, a problem with such heroic efforts. As the grim numbers come out of Nepal and as rescue efforts turn into recovery efforts, it is clear that there was a cost in human life to the mountain rescue. To put it bluntly, the powers that be decided to use rescue helicopters, of which there are precious few in Nepal, to help wealthy adventure seekers off of the mountain while impoverished citizens were left waiting, sometimes in dire and life-threatening circumstances. More lives could have been saved by using the helicopters to provide medical aid in rural and isolated communities.

Like other tourist towns - like the place where I live - Nepal’s economy reaps great benefits from the presence of tourists. One could argue that the country wouldn’t be able to afford any rescue helicopters if it weren’t from the financial benefits of the world’s wealthy and well-funded expeditions bringing adventurers to Nepal. Taking care of the outsiders and practicing hospitality is a way of life. And it is essential to the economy of the region. Rescuing the guests before rescuing the neighbors was a natural instinct for officials.

By world standards, the economy of Nepal is very small. The total economy generates about $20 billion a year. It is estimated that the earthquake caused $5 billion in direct damage to critical infrastructure. There wasn’t that much infrastructure in place before the earthquake. There is only one big helicopter operated by Nepal’s army. Nearly all of the military of the country, including the precious helicopter are engaged in search and rescue missions around the clock. The government of Nepal has only one more helicopter. That one has been dedicated to rescue missions on Everest.

The private companies know that the rich climbers and expeditions on Everest are able to pay the bill for the expensive operation of helicopters. Chances are that they will never be paid for rescue missions to any other part of the country. Other governments, including the United States, have sent helicopters. The United States helicopter has made multiple rescue trips to groups stranded on Everest. It took four trips for the US helicopter to rescue one group of 22 stranded tourists.

More people come to Everest than the ones who summit the peak. For a fee, tourists can go to base camp and hang out with the serious climbers. Just seeing the world from 17,000 feet above sea level and understanding how much more mountain lies above that point is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I’ve read many articles criticizing the climbing of Everest. Some believe that it has become way too commercial. Some say that Everest attracts daily unqualified thrill-seekers who hire underpaid sharps to bring them to the summit. An Everest attempt costs in the neighborhood of $100,000 per climber.

The mountain isn’t a place where people end up because they were forced to go there. It is a destination - an attraction - and part of its appeal is the danger. When danger arose last week, it seems that some climbers felt they got more than they bargained for. Meanwhile there are plenty of poor people in Nepal who were stranded in their houses because they had no place else to go. They didn’t chose to live in a dangerous place - or to visit one for their vacation. They simply were trying to survive in a harsh and difficult part of the world with the means at hand.

The earthquake didn’t make distinctions based on the income of the victims. Rich and poor alike suffered. There was enough danger to go around. The rescue, however, appears to be different. Rich are being rescued first and there aren’t enough helicopters to go around.

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As a baby boomer, theories of education and learning were shifting as I was growing up. We were the generation of new curricula and new ways of thinking about teaching. New math was a technique for enabling us to complete basic computations in our head as opposed to working them out on paper. The Sunday School curriculum used for much of my time was often called “the new curriculum.” It was the first curricula developed after the union that formed the United Church of Christ. It was a major effort with staff writers and hard-covered books. Some of those resources are classics that have influenced and shaped subsequent religious education materials.

One of the shifts was away from rote memorization of facts in favor of examining ways to think, solve problems and analyze information. Because we grew up in a time of shifting ideas and theories, some of the more established theories and ideas were still present. We were assigned poems, famous speeches, and other items to memorize. There were memory verses and Sunday School awards at least in my early years of church school.

Many of the things that I memorized as a child are fairly easy for me to recall. I can sit down at a piano and play my fourth grade piano recital piece without music. I recite the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer on a regular basis. I can rattle off the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address.

But memory can also be a bit tricky. When I recite the 23rd Psalm at a hospital bedside, I get through it without a problem. Sometimes, when I am leading worship, I fumble over the last line: “Surely goodness and mercy . . . then is it “shall” or “will?” I know that in the King James version - the one I memorized, whichever it is, the next part of the phrase is the other: “and I “will” or “shall” dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I’m pretty sure that people won’t even notice whether or not I get it right if I speak confidently. I’m pretty sure that I once knew it correctly because our teacher, Mrs. Gust was a stickler for absolute correctness and she would have been following word for word in her bible.

A few years ago, we were cleaning out our mother’s summer cabin and in the piano bench was the sheet music for my 4th grade piano recital piece. I sat down at the piano and began playing and discovered that I had a mistake in my memorization. I don’t know whether or not I played it correctly at my recital, but the version I play from memory isn’t note-for-note the same as the sheet music.

Not long ago, I read that the memories of our past that are most clear and most often reported by us are the ones that are more likely to contain errors in accuracy. Stories that we tell less frequently are more likely to be true to the facts. It is as if recall is itself a creative process and that we refine our stories in the telling to the point where our memories become less, rather than more accurate. This particular study seemed to explain why there can be significant variations in the way that I remember my growing up years and the ways my siblings, who shared the same events and activities remember them.

From time to time when my brother is telling a story about our past I will look at him and wonder if he really is the same kid I grew up with or if there has been some kind of a switch. How could we have such different memories if we shared the same life experiences? According to studies, our experience isn’t that a uncommon.

As I work my way through my seventh decade, I have become more aware of my memory. I’ve read that exercising memory and using it helps to keep it strong, so I play memory games every day. I have resisted the urge to turn to notes and manuscripts in the majority of my preaching believing that the extra work to get things memorized makes me a more effective presenter. I worry, a bit, that my presentations, especially of familiar and oft-repeated texts, may become inaccurate as memory fades. There are certain occasions, such as weddings and funerals when I work entirely off of a manuscript. Someone else’s once-in-a-lifetime experience doesn’t need to be my mental experiment.

I am fascinated with the ways I sometimes struggle with names. Most of the time I am pretty good with names, but there are many occasions when I need to ask for help. People that I meet out of the context of an original meeting, can challenge me. The other day a man with a very familiar look came up and gave me a warm hug and I was struggling for his name. The occasion was just before a funeral and I was focusing very hard on keeping the names of the grieving family, some of whom I had just met, straight in my mind. I didn’t seem to have enough mental energy to keep the names of the family on the top of my head along with the prayer I was about to lead, while at the same time search for the name of the man who obviously was having no trouble remembering me. On the other hand I was the officiating minister and wearing my robe, so my identity would have been clear to everyone in the room. His memory task may have been easier.

As I learn more and more new names in different contexts, sometimes I lose the ability to recall the names of people I met long ago. I know that those memories aren’t actually displaced, they simply are deeper. The dynamics of short term and long term memory sometimes escape me.

I know that I will lose part of my capacity to remember as I age. I hope that I will be able to retain the most joyful of my memories.

By the way, it’s “shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” At least i think it is . . .

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