One evening, more than three decades ago, I stood on the deck of a home in the Black Hills. It had been a long day, with a drive from our home in North Dakota in a car with no air conditioning, a doctor’s appointment for our son and the usual trials of travel with two young children. We were staying with Susan’s aunt and uncle and would be heading back home across the dry plains of northwestern South Dakota the next morning. In the midst of all of that activity, there was a peaceful moment standing on the deck, listening to the whisper of a breeze in the pine trees, smelling the fresh air, and feeling the cool of the hills. I allowed my imagination to wander, thinking how nice it would be to live in such a place.

A year or so earlier, we were in Rapid City for the weekend and we went with Susan’s relatives to their church. I remember sitting in the middle of that large sanctuary, listening to the pipe organ. Once again I allowed my imagination to wander and thought how awesome it would be to be called as pastor of that congregation and to preach from that pulpit.

As is often true of moments of imagination, the times passed and we went on with our lives. From North Dakota, we received a call to serve a congregation in Boise, Idaho. We moved to a home right in the middle of the city, built a six foot privacy fence around our back yard and had a wonderful decade serving a growing and challenging congregation.

Last night I stepped out onto our deck in the evening and gazed up at the moon, just a day past full, and smelled the breeze blowing through the pine trees and felt the cool of the land. It has been an amazing year in the hills. It is nearly the end of August and the lawn is green and the garden is high and all of that is from natural water. We’ve barely watered anything this year.

It has been twenty years since we moved into this home. Our children have grown up and moved away. Our parents have come to the ends of their lives’ journeys. We have become older.

Standing on the deck last night, I remembered the dreams of a younger phase of my life and I realized that I have been living that dream. This morning I will be the first to arrive in that beautiful church and I’ll get a few moments of peace in that sanctuary to prepare for delivering yet another sermon. I’m nearing a thousand sermons delivered in that place. My job and my home have pretty much turned out the way I imagined them long ago. The reality has been richer and deeper than what I had imagined. In my younger days, I didn’t know how beautiful it would be to watch the sunrise from the surface of Sheridan Lake as I paddled a boat I had made with my own two hands. In those days my sermons were a bit academic and often somewhat disconnected from the everyday lives of the people I served. Often I was encountering situations and circumstances in the parish that were entirely new to me. I hadn’t been through conflict in the church and panicked when people disagreed with each other. I didn’t know that there are times in pastoral calls when silence is the better part and was always trying to come up with the right words to say. I hadn’t learned how to craft a funeral service from the words that grieving families express when I visit with them about their loved one.

It is not that I have somehow reached perfection - far from it. And this place is just one place where people can live in peace and happiness. While the hills have been a wonderful home for us, it isn’t the only place that we could live and there are some problems with living in this place.

As beautiful as has been this summer, I know that the air we breath has not always been healthy. The wildfires in the northwest have filled the skies with smoke and the smoke is hanging in a bubble over the hills. The air quality index for the central hills is in the “Very Unhealthy” category today and has been in that category for much of the last month. When the air is in this condition the entire population is likely to be affected. The sweet smell of the wind in the pine trees is not the same as the familiar smell of woodsmoke in the air. My eyes burn. I blow my nose repeatedly throughout the day without much relief. I long for the wind to clear the skies.

In my work, I have met people with challenging personalities. Not every idea and plan that I have had has worked out. Some suggestions that seem obvious to me take years to be adopted by the congregation. People have sometimes had difficulty reaching a common vision. I hear rumors of complaints from people who won’t express their concerns directly to me, but instead choose to talk behind my back. Our church, in short, is filled with regular people who behave like normal people and that means that we sometimes have to work through difficulties and differences.

South Dakota has made some poor political choices that have left us with schools that are grossly underfunded and falling apart. The school district has lost a lot of good teachers. Positions remain open without applicants because of low pay and poor working conditions. Our schools are at the bottom of the rankings in many national studies. Our incarceration rates are among the highest in the nation. Our suicide rate is more than double the national average.

I’m not one to dream of perfection. I have no desire to serve in a church where there are no problems and no need of leadership. I prefer to struggle amidst real people in real situations.

Instead, I am living my dream in a real world. Who knows? Some of the visions I have when I stand on my deck in the evening may come to pass in ways that will surprise me a few decades from now.

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