We moved a piano yesterday after church. Crews from our church have moved a lot of pianos over the years. I suppose that one of the reasons is that we love music. Our building is graced with some magnificent instruments. We have a 9’2” concert grand in the front of our sanctuary and a 6’ grand in the balcony to accompany the choir. We have brought in additional 9’ pianos on two occasions for the joy of hearing piano duets. We genuinely love the sound of piano music and part of having pianos is moving pianos.

But we also find ourselves moving pianos because we love people. That is what happened yesterday. Without telling the whole story, a little background is necessary. Our congregation is a gathering place for retired ministers. At times we have had as many as ten retired clergy in the congregation. Add that to the three of us who are on staff and another minister who is the chaplain at our hospital, and a very well-trained lay minister who has graduated from the Yankton College theology program and there are a lot of minister types hanging around. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd and so the table in the fellowship hall with a bunch of ministers talking theology after most worship services is attractive to other retired or retiring ministers who happen to visit and the number continues to grow. It is really good for the active pastors to have this crowd around us. There is always a ready hand to help when we need assistance. There are special occasions when we serve communion by having the congregation come forward as opposed to our usual of serving in the pews. We can set up five or more stations staffed by ministers to quickly serve our congregation.

And we ministers tend to form households full of things that are hard to move. We love books and books are heavy. And many of us love music, so there is usually a piano thrown into the mix.

One of our retired ministers has had to move into a nursing home recently. He lost his wife to heard disease suddenly a couple of years ago and has been living independently in their townhouse, but the time came when complications of his diabetes and other health problems meant that he could not longer live alone even with daily assistance from health care workers. So his children assisted with the move and they put his house on the market so that his assets could be used for his care. They didn’t expect a quick sale in the downturned economy. But we are often surprised. Just before Christmas they received a cash offer for the house and the buyer needs to close the deal by the end of the year for tax purposes. So, they had only a week to empty the house. And there was a lot of stuff in that house.

The piano was a family heirloom. It had been the piano of the grandmother of the adult children who were responsible for cleaning out the house. They loved that old piano, but none of them had a place for it. They called the church offering the piano “free to a good home.” It is a quality console piano, the kind of instrument often used for teaching in schools. People at the church got on the phone and went to work to help the family struggling to deal with all of the things in the house. Working with the Red Cross, we were able to get furniture to a family who had lost everything in a house fire. There were even some toys for the children, who were excited to begin with at the prospect of having beds to sleep on. There were clothes to go to the thrift store, some tools to go to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and theological books to go to the Eagle Butte Learning Center. There were a couple of boxes to be put in storage for the church rummage sale.

And, yes, we found a home for the piano. A young family in our church has a mother who plays the flute and loves music. Her mother-in-law is a cellist and music teacher. The father of the family was raised in a musical family and always thought that his home would have a piano. Everyone was delighted with the match. Everything was falling into place. But the piano had to be moved before 10 a.m. on December 31. So after church we assembled a crew to move the piano. Everyone on the crew had a direct connection to the adventure. A couple of our lifters had been special friends with the retired minister and were happy to meet his daughters. The new owners of the piano recruited relatives to help. Another young family in our church lived across the street from the house fire that left the family in need of items that had been moved from the home. They provided a couple of people for our crew as well.

It was a bit tricky backing the trailer through all of the landscaping in the back yard, but we got it in place and the piano fit (barely) through the sliding screen door on the lower level of the building it was leaving. We were soon loaded and on our way. The destination presented several challenges. We had to maneuver the trailer in a very narrow area. It was so narrow I had to fold in the mirrors of the truck and I am used to backing trailers using my mirrors, but we got it in place. Then there were the six steps up to the deck. There was no way to make that part of the move except by lifting that piano. It was a good thing we had a big crew. Soon the piano was in its new home and shortly afterward there were pictures on Facebook posted by the delighted new owner.

I commented that they don’t teach you about moving pianos in theological seminary. It is true. But moving pianos isn’t what we do best at all. What we do is build community. Without the church, there would be no connection between the mother of the retired minister and the 8-month-old little girl who will practice her first piano lessons on that instrument. Without the church the gift of music shared on Christmas Eve wouldn’t get connected to the gift of a piano to a young family. Without the church, the victims of the fire would never have made connections with panicked members of the sandwich generation struggling to sort through all of their parents’ possessions in a harried holiday week. What we do is build community and make connections.

By the way, we also move pianos.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

In the United States, the average 12-year-old boy is about 5 feet tall, weighs in the area of one hundred to one hundred fifteen pounds, and has developed little muscle mass. Most 12-year-olds have significant growth yet to come. We consider them to be children even though they are experiencing a distinct increase in strength and personal power.

For many generations, the tradition of celebrating the coming of age for Jewish boys, or Bar Mitzvah has been celebrated when the boy is 13 years of age. The tradition, firmly rooted in scriptural law, relates to an individual’s accountability under the law. Prior to Bar Mitzvah (or Bat Mitzvah for a girl) a child is the responsibility of the parents. If the child violates the law, the parents are held responsible. After a child comes “under the bar” or “under the law” that child is held personally responsible for adherence to the law.

The choice of the age 13 has to do with an approximate age of the onset of puberty. That was, for many generations, a reasonable age to consider someone an adult. But things are changing. Research indicates that boys and girls are reaching puberty at earlier ages. In the U.S. signs of puberty have been found at an average age of 9 for African American boys, 10 for whites and Hispanics. That is up to two years earlier than previous studies. Last October a study published in Pediatrics to coincide with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ national conference, reported on over 4,000 boys who were followed from age 6 to 16 with regular check-ups. The group was racially mixed. The study found strong evidence that boys are maturing earlier.

Currently doctors generally consider puberty to be early if it begins before age 8 in girls and before age 9 in boys. The age of puberty isn’t really the topic of today’s reflection, but it does affect how we look at the distinction between a child and an adult. At what age does a boy become a man? At what age does a girl become a woman?

Our contemporary society has quite a few different rituals that mark a gradual transition from childhood to adulthood. In South Dakota, the usual age for a driver’s license is 16, but a restricted minor’s permit is available for those who are 14 and meet certain requirements. Obtaining a driver’s license is seen as one transition into the world of adults.

We also name high school graduation as a transition point. In our state a person can purchase lottery tickets and cigarettes when that person turns 18. 21 is the minimum age for the legal purchase of alcohol. We also note college graduation, the obtaining of a first job and even marriage as points of entry into adult life.

It is not uncommon to call the entire period between the onset of puberty and marriage adolescence and see it as a time of transition. With the age of puberty getting younger and the age of first marriage getting older, that period of transition is stretching out in our society. 2010 is the most recent year in which we have accurate statistics. In 2010 the median age for a man’s first marriage was 28.2 years. The median age for women was 26.1. We are approaching two decades of adolescence in our society.

All of this has relevance in this time of the year for Christians, because the Bible is very short of stories about Jesus’ childhood and adolescence. It simply is not the subject of Biblical reporting. There is just one story about Jesus from this part of his life and it appears in only one of the Gospels. Luke 2:41-52 reports that the twelve-year-old Jesus goes with his family to the temple. On their return trip it is discovered that the boy is missing. After some panicked searching he is found in the temple. After a brief conversation, he is obedient to his parents and returns to his home. In the very next verse of the gospel, Jesus is 30 years old. We simply don’t have any reports of his adolescence.

There are some ancient extrabiblical texts that do include stories of Jesus’ childhood. The Gospel of Thomas has several stories, including miracle stories about the infant and child. But for readers of the Bible, stories about Jesus’ childhood are missing and in the one story that we do have Jesus is missing, at least for a little while.

This means that ministries to and with youth and children have to be based on principles extracted from stories about Jesus’ adulthood. We do have stories about Jesus welcoming children. We have a story about a young boy offering his lunch that is blessed and used to feed a multitude. But there is very little direct Biblical teaching about children and youth and their role in the community. These we have drawn from traditions, from educational theory, from developmental psychology and a host of other sources.

Those of us who are actively engaged in ministry, however, know how important children and youth are in the evaluation of a community. We regularly hear that the choice of a particular congregation is based on the programs for children and youth. Increasingly in the last couple of decades we hear reports of families that allow youth and children to lead the decisions about family participation in churches. “Our kids are happier at this or that church,” we hear. Families change churches based on the size of youth groups, the perceived popularity of the church’s programs among youth and the personality of the ministers. The call to ministry is a great leap of faith. Later we find out we are being judged not so much on our faith as on our marketing skills.

As a result, the tendency to over analyze this simple story from Luke is very understandable. But the story is really simple. The boy Jesus, as he made his transition from childhood to adulthood was at home in the temple. He was comfortable with an adult faith and the adults who lived lives of faith from an early age. The stories of his childhood report that his parents had faith.

Perhaps we, too, would do well to concentrate a bit more effort on helping adults to grow into mature faith.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I guess that I have seen too many instances where they are undertaken in a somewhat less than serious manner. I believe in setting goals. I believe in making commitments. I just don’t see anything particularly meaningful about connecting the process with a particular day of the year. According to the Statistic Brain website about 45% of Americans usually make New Year’s Resolutions. Only 8% are successful in achieving their resolutions. The problem isn’t initial commitment, but keeping the commitment over time. About 75% keep their resolution for a week, but after that the commitments begin to fade. Less than half are keeping their resolution at six months and less than 10% by the end of a year. Making New Year’s Resolutions are not an effective way to make permanent life changes.

According to the USA.gov website, the most popular New Year’s Resolutions are these:

• Drink Less Alcohol
  • Eat Healthy Food
  • Get a Better Education
  • Get a Better Job
  • Get Fit
  • Lose Weight
  • Manage Debt
  • Manage Stress
  • Quit Smoking
  • Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
  • Save Money
  • Take a Trip
  • Volunteer to Help Others
  

They are all worthy goals. It seems to me that they could contribute to making people live lives that are happier and more meaningful. So I don’t want to encourage people to stop making New Year’s Resolutions. I just want to find and promote ways in which people can make more meaningful commitments. I’d like to see them succeed in their resolutions instead of expressing good intentions, but failing to make meaningful changes in their lives.

The roots of New Year’s Resolutions don’t like in Christianity. In the early church they were seen as vestiges of Roman polytheism. Janus was the Roman god of beginnings. The month January gets its name from the god. Janus was also the god of gates and doors. In most depictions, Janus is pictured with two faces: one looking forward, the other looking back. Such a feature was probably handy in guarding gates and doors where the traffic goes both ways. Janus was believed to represent beginnings. People saw passing through a gate or a door as a symbolic action. It could represent a new beginning – the coming into a new place in one’s life. In ancient days, Janus was honored on the first day of each month. Temples around Rome were dedicated to Janus, the most well-known of which was the Ianus Geminus, a double-gated structure. The temple had one door facing the rising sun and another facing the setting sun. When the gates of the temple were closed, it meant that Rome was at peace. When the gates were open, it meant that Rome was at war. Between the reigns of Numa and Augustus, the gates were shut only once.

The Romans had a tradition of dedicating their intentions to change to the god Janus. They would make sacrifices to Janus. Such sacrifices could be offered at any temple, but were commonly offered in special temples dedicated to the god. It was believed that such a sacrifice was an expression of a deeper commitment and those who made such sacrifices were more likely to be able to make their changes permanent. It was traditional to offer sacrifices at the opening of new phases of life such as marriage and at the birth of a child.

New Year’s Resolutions are remnants of ancient traditions that have their roots in Roman religious practice. There is no corresponding god to Janus in Greek mythology, but some of the practices, such as offering a sacrifice to indicate a desire to change were inherited by the Romans from even more ancient religious traditions.

Some parts of the Christian church have made a practice of renewing covenants and commitments at the first of the New Year. It is common for congregations to read their covenants as a part of New Year’s celebrations.

With New Year’s approaching there will be plenty of people who are thinking about making resolutions. John Norcross, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton, has been studying how people change addictive behaviors for more than three decades. He has noted some things that enable success in keeping resolutions.
The first key to success is believing that it can be done. There is plenty of cynicism surrounding change. Those who genuinely believe that they can change are the most likely to succeed.

The second key is being realistic. Fantasy doesn’t make for a better life. Resolutions that can be kept are specific, realistic, and measurable. In his book, Norcross uses the acronym SMART, which comes from business: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time sensitive.

After believing and being realistic, keeping resolutions is all about hard work. You have to actually change your behavior. Perseverance over the long run means not giving up because you make a slip or get off track. You have to get back on track and go back to the desired behavior.

Community can be a big help in making change. That is why Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers work. People engage their peers in helping. A phone call from a friend can be a big support. Someone else who is making the same resolution can be a big help when it comes to keeping one on track. Talking about the resolution and how it is going can lead to changes in behavior.

I also believe that there is something important about timing. We can only handle so much change at one time. I really wanted to lose weight for our daughter’s wedding. I did not achieve that weight loss until a year later. The stresses of losing parents, changing our lifestyle and preparing for the wedding were all the changes I was able to absorb that year. My health took a back seat for a while and I struggled to survive all of the changes and stresses. The next year when things calmed down, I was more successful.

So make those New Year’s Resolutions. But make it more than an idle process. Don’t adopt a long list. Choose one or two goals that are realistic and go to work to achieve them.

There is no need to make a sacrifice at a temple. But a little prayer doesn’t hurt.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

My thermometer is hovering around -1 F, which is the first time it has been below zero since last winter. It is officially cold out. And for some folks today is the last day of work for 2012. We, of course, have quite a bit left to accomplish before we close out the year. We have a firewood delivery on Saturday, worship on Sunday and some end-of-the-year bookkeeping to complete on Monday before we celebrate the coming of the new year.

But it is a good day for thinking about the year that is passing and anticipate the year that is to come. I’m not too big on all of the predictions that are popular in the press. I’m content to allow the future to unfold at its own pace without a need to have some kind of an inside view about what is coming. I’ve seen too many predictions turn out to be inaccurate. Just recently we noticed that the world did not end on the day predicted by some pundits. In my understanding, Biblical prophecy is more about drawing people closer to God than it is about predicting future events.

Still, it is fun to think about what changes will come with the future. The world is such a fast paced place that it is likely that the coming year will bring surprises. Things that we did not anticipate will come to pass. So, just for the fun of it this morning, here are some trends that seem to be emerging without any thought to order or relevance. They’re just some end of the year observations.

It hasn’t been too many years since our church invested in a relatively expensive telephone upgrade. Our old system could only handle two incoming lines and we had no provisions for fax. We were using an old style answering machine to attend to the phone when we were out of the office. The new phone system had lots of features that we haven’t yet fully utilized, but one of the things that was important to us at the time was that we have a good state-of-the-art voicemail system that allowed for customized messages and inboxes for each of the church’s employees, a changing message for different times of the day and different seasons of the year and the ability to check voicemail messages from any telephone. We got all of those features, but we have been noticing that the number of voicemail messages is declining.

We have already learned that leaving voicemail messages doesn’t work for some of our younger members. When asked if they got our voicemail, they will respond that they never listen to their voicemail. If we want to communicate with them, they ask us to send them a text message. We’re learning to send text from our cell phones and remembering to check for our text messages. JWT, a New-York based world-wide marketing firm predicts that voicemail will fade away in the coming year because nobody can be bothered with listening. I suspect that it will take longer than a year, but I do sense that leaving phone messages is not the trend of the future. The problem with a church is that we have members at lots of different places in the communications spectrum and we have to reach out to all of them. We have to be competent in paper mail and letters, in electronic mail, in voice messaging and text messaging and lots of other technologies to reach our people. We even used a “robo” call earlier this year to remind people of our new photo directory. Whatever else happens, I am sure that there will continue to be changes in the technologies of communication. There will continue to be people who don’t seem to get the message no matter what technique we employ. There will continue to be people who are a bit self-absorbed and even rude in their communications. Maybe there really isn’t much that is new.

One thing that I hope will happen this year is that we find alternatives to all of the usernames and passwords that are required to keep up with a digital lifestyle. All of the different PINs don’t really give that much security because we are unable to remember different passwords for all of the different accounts. Some users refer to keeping lists, which is a less-than-secure method. Others are continually asking for password prompts, and other way to demonstrate that the system isn’t completely secure. I recently read a report that was analyzing a new super-secure computer system for use in hospitals. The system issues random passwords on a regular basis and users have to keep up with regular password changes. The problem with the system is that users couldn’t remember passwords and so they tended to keep sticky notes on their monitors with the passwords written on them. In one hospital, more than a third of the monitors had paper notes with passwords attached to them. It turned out to be a less-than-secure system. I know that there are biometric identification technologies on the way. I have read predictions of bank machines and smart phones that recognize the user. They can’t come soon enough for me. I spend way too much time remembering authentication codes.

Here is a trend that I’d like to see, though I wouldn’t take it as a prediction. I’m probably wrong. I’d like to see it become more popular for people to get exercise from their everyday living. It seems like every strip mall has to have an exercise club. Places to work out are springing up all over town. With each new one I wonder how many the market could absorb. I’ve never been a health club kind of person in the first place. I see no reason to walk on a treadmill when you can go for a walk in the woods. I’m not a fan of riding a bicycle in place. I have finally become one of the consumers of exercise machines. I have a rowing machine in my library for days when the ice is too thick for rowing on the lake. And I have found that I use the machine a lot. But at least I wish that people would substitute walking for driving to get to and from their neighborhood health club.

And now my essay has exceeded its usual length and I haven’t begun to make predictions. Don’t get me started on fake foods. I hear that they even have vegetarian bacon these days. I haven’t got a clue as to what the hot toy will be next Christmas. I’d be a poor person to get to predict the next hot marketing trend.

For now I’ll stick with the prediction that 2013 will bring at least a few days that are warmer than today.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Here is your political trivia question for today. Which country has the highest percentage of women in its legislature? OK, we know it isn’t the United States. The United States Senate will, for the first time, be 20% female when the new class is seated. That is the highest percentage in the history of the deliberative body. Only 39 women have ever served in the senate, so 20 at once is a significant number. Still the percentage is far short of the world’s leader.

Women hold 56% of the seats in Rwanda’s parliament, by far the highest percentage any where in the world.

Twenty years ago we watched in horror as one of the most horrific genocides of the 20th Century unfolded, leaving the country decimated by the slaughter. Part of the reason for the high percentage of women in parliament is the simple fact that so many men were killed. It is a tragic legacy from one perspective. From another point of view, it is nothing short of a miracle.

The women of Rwanda are rebuilding Rwanda. It can’t be an easy task. Imagine coming to work and having to sit next to the wife of the man who killed your husband or the woman whose partner is living in exile after murdering your brother. It happens every day in Rwanda. The pain of the past is undeniable. The trauma with which the citizens of the country live daily is unimaginable. And yet they are rebuilding. Bit by bit, chore by chore, decision by decision, Rwanda is emerging as a new and different place. In the past five years, more than one million Rwandans have emerged from poverty.

There is much that remains to be done. The average wage still hovers in the $1 per day range. Life expectancy is only 50. Domestic violence still affects a huge number of women. The market streets are still muddy pathways with little infrastructure. The majority of the citizens of the nation struggle to find sufficient clean water. Sanitary sewer systems are virtually non-existent. The country has a distinct lack of engineers and teachers.

But there is a new definition for Rwanda these days. The country whose very name has become synonymous with genocide is gaining a new identity. The place where the tribes Tutsi and Hutu were so bitterly and murderously engaged is becoming a tourist destination.

The “land of a thousand hills” is being returned to the gardens and tea plantations that once dotted the landscape. Rwanda is home to a third of the remaining mountain gorillas of the world, a variety of other primates, and many brilliantly colored birds. It is a land of volcanoes, games reserves, and resorts. It is once again becoming known for its graceful dancers, artistic crafts and friendly people. Located in the heart of Central Africa, it shares borders with Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nearly 11 million people live in Rwanda today. And they are working to bring their country back from the horrors of its history. And they are being led by men and women working together.

Still, it is an undeniably difficult place to visit if one takes a moment to consider its history. A visit to the country would be incomplete without at least a visit to the exhibition at the Kigali Memorial Centre. There are other, less known, museums and memorials also dedicated to the memory of those who died. There is a church in the small town of Kibuye where 11,000 were murdered in a single day. Nearly 10,000 more were killed the following day in a nearby football stadium. None of these visits is an easy emotional trip. The weight of what has happened hangs heavily on the country.

It is especially difficult for citizens of the United States. The simple truth is that our government did not intervene when we could have. We watched passively as the Hutu extremist regime oversaw the murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Government officials in the United States were well informed about the killings, but they refused to even utter the word genocide for fear it would oblige the US to intervene. The failure to act when we had the power to save lives is now part of our heritage and history as surely as murder and genocide is part of the history of the people of Rwanda.

It is not all sweetness and light as Rwanda emerges from the horrors of its past. The government, under President Paul Kagame has the backing of the United States and other governments. It is natural, and perhaps fueled by more than a little bit of guilt on our part. But that government has overreached by sending forces into neighboring Congo where they have become directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The intervention of Rwanda in Congo is contributing to political instability and suffering. And the motive isn’t purely political. The plunder of Congo’s valuable minerals is extremely lucrative. In the long term it can’t be in the best interests of Rwanda to create political instability in the region for the sake of profit.

Determining an appropriate role for the United States in Central Africa is extremely complex. There are voices that say that any intervention on our behalf is misguided policy. The people of Africa should be determining the future of Africa. But we carry with us the memory of the horrors that resulted when we didn’t intervene.

It remains to be seen whether Rwanda will continue to pull itself up from the tragedies of its past or will once again become a failed state as its government collapses under the weight of abuses of power by those in the highest positions.

A couple of weeks ago a coalition of campaign groups and think tanks wrote to President Barak Obama asking him to reconsider US policy toward the Kagame administration in Rwanda. US policy plays a big role in the future of the people of Central Africa. The news here in the United States is focused on domestic policy these days. But our foreign policies are life and death matters to millions of people around the world. The people of Rwanda are counting on us to do the right thing. I hope and pray that we will consider our actions carefully. Ignoring the situation once again will only lead to tragedy.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

There are parts of our history that have become so ingrained in the story of our people that we use them to define ourselves. For those of us who grew up in the heritage of the Congregational Church and its successor denomination, The United Church of Christ, the stories of our New England heritage form part of our identity. It was our predecessors who crossed the ocean in the tiny ship Mayflower and lived the stories that are celebrated at Thanksgiving. It was our church that founded the first press in America and published the first book printed on this continent, the Bay Psalms Book in 1640. It was a church of our denomination from which the lantern hung in the famous poem about Paul Revere’s Ride. It was our forebears who, when embroiled in a dispute over church rules about the necessity of a second baptism experience in order to be full members of the church, started a new church in Boston in 1669. That church, now known as Old South Church, started with just 28 lay members from 1st Church in Boston. They understood themselves to be a priesthood of believers and asserted the right of all Christians to relate directly to God without the need of formally authorized priests.

It was Old South where Benjamin Franklin was baptized. Old South was the meeting place of the Sons of Liberty and the planning of what has become known as the Boston Tea Party. In many ways the congregation has a role in our story that reaches far beyond the city of Boston. It is a part of our shared history.

So we took notice when a friend and colleague with whom we had shared ministries in Boise, became the Senior Minister of the iconic congregation. Rev. Nancy Taylor has had a stellar career in the ministry and came to Old South from the position of the Conference Minister of the Massachusetts Conference.

Old South gains its name from its meetinghouse. The congregation’s first building was known as the Cedar Meeting House. The current home of the congregation is sometimes known as the “New” Old South Church. It is an unusually ornate building for a Congregational Church. Completed in 1875, it has a tall bell tower, a roof of red and black slate tiles, and a copper cupola. It is filled with carvings and ornamentations.

Old South is a stable landmark in the story of our church. But it is also a growing and exciting congregation, often identified as one of the places of “best practices” among the ministries of our denomination.

Recently the congregation made a gut-wrenching decision that got my attention. I don’t know whether or not it is the right decision for the congregation, but it wasn’t mine to make. The vote was not particularly close. 271 members voted “yes” while only 34 voted “no.” What they voted to do was to sell one of the two copies of the Bay Psalm Book that the congregation owns. There are only 11 copies of the book in existence. Old South owns two copies. The book is expected to bring between 10 and 20 million dollars at auction.

The congregation does need money. The building is now more than 135 years old and there is about $7 million in deferred maintenance that needs to be done. Despite a growing membership, the costs of maintaining the old building are extremely high and beyond the means of the congregation. In the past, a congregation like Old South would abandon the old building and start over. But that is not easily done. The building is on the National Register of Historic Buildings. Some changes are subject to approval by governmental authorities. Razing the building and starting over is out of the question.

So do you sell your history in order to support the history that remains? To put the question in another context, what right does any generation have to cash in on its legacy? The things inherited from previous generations do belong to the current generation, but which things should be passed on to the next generation? I know it isn’t an easy question.

The books belong in a museum. They are rare treasures of our history. The decision to sell one of the books is particularly noticeable to me because at the same time, we are struggling to keep the doors open of Pilgrim Press, the publisher of those books. The first press founded in America is on the verge of disappearing in our generation. Pilgrim Press no longer has a full-time editor. It is primarily a re-printer of the books of other presses and a marketing tool for denominational publications. Although it does manage to bring out a few net titles each year, it is far from the landmark, trend-setting publishing house that it once was.

I mourn the decline of the press. I mourn the decision to sell the book. But that does not mean that it wasn’t the right decision.

Rev. Taylor, at least in her public statements, seems to have little or no hesitation about selling the book. “I adore and cherish this congregation’s history. We collect up these stories and carry them with us, but we don’t have to carry the book with us . . . in order to learn from it, to be inspired by it, to be made brave by it.” I’ll grant her that much – it takes courage to sell historical artifacts to fund current operations. On the other hand a decision to refuse to sell artifacts would have been no less courageous. The church’s historian, Jeff Makholm spoke for the minority when he said, “We think it is disgusting. It’s breaking faith with the people who poured their energies into keeping them safe as a representation of history.”

The controversy will continue. It may be one of the marks of the ministry of Rev. Taylor. It will be part of the story of our generation. Each generation is faced with the dilemma of sorting the artifacts of the past.

There is much of the past that is being lost. I hope and pray that we will never become cavalier with our decisions about what to keep and what to release. I’ve never been a member of Old South Church. I have no say in the decisions of the congregation. Still, it feels like they’re putting our family treasures up for sale. I, for one, have no intention of watching the auction. Even if it is the right decision it will be a sad day.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Hope is not easy to come by. There are always people who will make a compelling argument that the future will be grim. The fiscal cliff is looming. Higher taxes are just around the corner. We could be plunged into recession. The markets will weaken. The world is warming. Ocean levels are rising. Population is growing. Fuel reserves are dwindling. Prices are rising. You know the routine. You have read the headlines. Some days I think that the character Eeyore from A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh might be the patron saint of some of the people I meet. It was Eeyore who said, “When someone says How-do-you-do, just say you didn’t.” and then added, “After all, one cant complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said Bother!”

I know people with Eeyore personalities. They are slow to express the hope that is in their lives.

After all, it is pretty easy to list all sorts of reasons to be sad.

Some people express hopelessness because they suffer from a terrible, chronic disease. Depression is not a joke and it isn’t a character in a children’s story. It is a persistent and devastating disease that has proven in the past to be fatal in some cases. You can’t think your way out of depression. You can’t treat it all by yourself.

Some people express hopelessness because they are overwhelmed by grief. Loss is real in this world. And grief is a tricky emotion. It catches one by surprise. You never know what is going to trigger powerful emotions that make the grieving person feel out of control.

There are thousands of reasons to express hopelessness.

Hope is not easy.

Peace is not easy. Today Pope Benedict XVI called for a political solution to the violence in Syria during his Christmas message in front of thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square. “I appeal for an end to the bloodshed, easier access for the relief of refugees and the displaced,” he said. Popes have prayed for peace for millennia. They have urged governments to seek peaceful solutions. And they have witnessed the deaths of innocent victims and the ravages of unchecked wars.

It isn’t just Syria. From Afghanistan to Somalia, from Sudan to North Korea, this world is filled with human conflict. War’s devastation mounts, the number of victims increase, the weapons become more destructive.

Peace isn’t easy in this world.

Joy isn’t easy. Ask anyone in the vicinity of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Marking the birth of Jesus has tangled uncomfortably with the sorrow of a community that lost 20 small children and six people who worked at the school when unimaginable violence between a mother and a son erupted into the community claiming innocent victims. The Methodist Church has a sign that says, “No Media.” Christmas lights on an office building are strung into the shape of the words, “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Love.” It seems as if there is no “Joy” to post in New Town.

Joy isn’t easy in this world.

Love isn’t easy. All you have to do is to read the statistics about divorce. The hopes of thousands of eager couples who believe that they are in love are dashed when they come face to face with the reality of the dedication and hard work that are involved in really living with another human being. Sometimes the task becomes daunting. Sometimes it becomes overwhelming. Sometimes the only option that people can see is to walk away.

Love isn’t easy in this world.

The gift of Christmas isn’t about ease. Being a disciple of Jesus is a road that leads to sacrifice and hard work and sometimes pain. If you want easy recognition, a life of service isn’t the most direct path.

Our people have often prayed for easy answers. There have been many who read the words of the prophets and long for a sudden, dramatic intervention by God. We have long carried a strain of an apocalyptic vision of God shaking up the world in an end-of-time punishment for those who disagree with us. Before the birth of Jesus our people thought that the solution to the oppression of the Romans was the direct intervention of God into human history. Sure, we had made a mess of this world. Now we wanted an easy solution. “You fix it, God.”

The messiah didn’t come the way people expected.

A decree went forth from the Roman Emperor. And the parents didn’t disobey the law. Joseph went up from Nazareth, in Galilee, to Bethlehem, in Judea, because he was of the house and the line of David. He took his engaged who was “great with child.” It couldn’t have been an easy trip. Joseph was, after all, heading directly into the region where his relatives were gathering. I suppose that there were more than a few awkward introductions: “Uh, this is Mary . . . we’re going to get married.” It couldn’t have been easy for Mary. She hadn’t met all of these people before. Traveling was an uncomfortable chore. She had never had a baby before.

And while they were there she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger. There wasn’t even room for them in the guest area of the home. The place was packed. They made do. There were a few gawkers. Shepherds with strange tales of angel choirs came by to have a look. There wasn’t much for them to see; just a mother and a father and a tiny baby.

But you can’t look into the face of a newborn baby and fail to see hope. You cannot hold such a child and fail to know peace. You cannot be present in that moment and fail to know joy. You cannot share the moment and fail to see love.

It isn’t easy.

But it is undeniable. Faith, hope, joy and love are present. Emmanuel! God is with us.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

From time to time I run into someone to whom the virgin birth is somewhat of a test of faith. That person will try to examine my specific beliefs on what happened in Mary’s life before Jesus was born as if examining me to make sure that I am somehow Christian enough to meet some set of standards. I’ve seen it happen at ecclesiastical councils. The candidate presents a theological statement that has been carefully thought through and then the council turns to questions and answers. Someone in the gathered congregation wants to grill the candidate on the specifics of the virgin birth. Both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed address the issue of Jesus’ conception as a union of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. It is very important to some people.

I confess that it is not a big issue for me. I have no doubt that God is capable of miracles. I do not have any question in my mind that there are mysteries in God’s creation that are beyond our understanding. I am not troubled by unique circumstances in history that have not been replicated. On the other hand, however, I have no desire to know the specifics of the private lives of other people. As a pastor, people trust me to hold their infants. When I hold a baby in my arms, there is no question in my mind that each child is a miracle. I don’t need to know the specifics of the behaviors of the child’s parents in order to understand that the love of God is at the core and essence of this child’s being.

I find the discussion of a virgin birth to be distracting and, frankly, boring. The life and ministry of Jesus is so deeply fascinating that there is more than a lifetime of study in his parables and actions. Luke is the only Gospel that spends much time exploring the personality of Mary. Matthew makes mention that she was “engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Mark and John have other stories to tell. Luke’s exploration of Mary focuses much more on her faith, her relationship with Elizabeth, and the remarkable vision of her song than on the specifics of Jesus’ conception.

That said, the topic comes up from time to time in the church. And so we have come to my 59th Christmas Eve. It is my 34th Christmas Eve as an ordained pastor. Like other celebrations of the Christian year the occasion lends itself well to repetition. There is much in the stories and liturgies of this day that is worthy of deepening exploration. I understand things in a different way now that I have the perspective of age. Certain stories gain meaning through repetition. After they become memorized they can become internalized.

I can remember years of dreading the big service of Christmas Eve. The large attendance, the pressure to perform, the drive for repetition and tradition all create pressures on a pastor that are uncomfortable. The church is filled with people who don’t spend much time in church and who seem to be looking for an excuse to criticize and explain why they don’t come to church all that often. There is an expectation that traditions and events from the childhood of worshipers be repeated again and again. In the church I serve there is a tradition of using a shape projector to project the image of the star. It is to move across the walls of the sanctuary as the wise men enter and end with the star focused on the center of the cross. It has been happening in this church for many years. When the star doesn’t work perfectly, the critics are quick to point it out to me. I, of course, have no control over the star. It is operated from the balcony and I am not in the balcony. But I have endured more minutes of criticism over that star than I wish to recall. There is a high expectation that children will be involved in the pageant, but we have to produce the pageant without a rehearsal because we cannot get the support of parents for children to participate in the rehearsals. There was supposed to be a few minutes of instruction for shepherds and angels after church yesterday. Three children appeared. I gave them the instruction under the watchful eye of one of the critics. People want the traditions to be maintained, but they seem not to be willing to do the work of maintaining them. The pastor is hired to make everything perfect. The problem is that they won’t even tell the pastor what “perfect” means until after the event when they are quick with their criticism.

But my attitude has changed. I have matured enough to understand that there is deep mystery in this day. I don’t expect that I will ever approach perfection. I try to serve the people who come to our church. I try to craft liturgy that is meaningful. I work with musicians to share beauty. And I absorb a bit of anger that has little to do with the church and a lot to do with the accumulation of disappointments in the lives of people who are sometimes lonely, sometimes depressed, sometimes grieving in this season that seems to not have much space for negative emotions.

At 11:30 there is a different service – a beloved service – a holy service. A few dozen gather in the quiet of the night. We recall the story. We celebrate communion. We sing a few carols. We toll the Christmas bell at midnight. Each year the service carries the memories of each previous year. Each year the moment becomes deeper and richer for me. Each year I anticipate it with great eagerness. This year is no exception.

Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote in a notebook of the moment when poetry comes forth. His words seem appropriate for this day:

“. . . And to think of all these things is still not enough. One must remember many nights of love, of which none was like another. One must remember the cries of women in labor and the pale, distracted sleep of those who have just given birth and begin to close again. But one must also have been with the dying and sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful sounds of life. An it is still not enough to have memories: one must be able to forget them when they crowd the mind and one must have the immense patience to wait until they come again. For it is not the memories themselves. Only when they become our blood, our glance, our gesture, nameless and indistinguishable from who we are – only then can it happen that in a very rare hour the first word of a poem rises from their midst and goes forth.”

Tonight is the night of the first word of the poem. An the word is “Glory!”

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

I didn’t write about St. Nicholas Day this year. Saint Nicholas Day fell on a Thursday this year. December 6 is the traditional day to celebrate the life of Saint Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century bishop best known as the model for the contemporary traditions of Santa Claus. Not much is known about Nicholas, really. He lived some between 260 and 333. He was bishop of the church in Myra, in the Roman province of Lycia in Asia Minor. He attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 with the other bishops of the Christian empire. At the Council he would have met Emperor Constantine. Those were the days when Christianity was making a radical shift from an obscure religion, whose practitioners were often persecuted to a mainstream religion accepted by people of power and influence. The events of that time changed the face of Christianity forever and speculation abounds about what was lost in the transition.

Nicholas probably would have slipped into obscurity as nothing more than a minor saint were it not for a story that circulated about him shortly after his death. He once was known as the patron saint of sailors and I might have encountered him in my reading about boats and sailors, but instead Nicholas is a household name around the world for different reasons. There are several variations on the story, but the general outline is as follows:

There was a citizen of Patara in what is today Turkey, who had once been an important and wealthy man in the city but who had fallen on hard times and into poverty. The man grew so desperate that he lacked sufficient resources to care for his family. In their poverty, the family had few options for the marriages of three daughters because they did not have dowries. Dowries were required in order for young women to marry into the homes of noblemen. In one version of the story, the father is fearful that his daughters will turn to prostitution in order to support themselves.

Nicholas heard the story and decided to do something about it. He bagged up an amount of gold and, in the dead of night, tossed it through the man’s window. The money was used as a dowry for the first daughter. Later Nicholas made a second visit. This time he found the windows latched, so he dropped the bag of gold down the chimney where it fell into the girl’s stocking, which was hung from the mantle to dry. This enabled the second marriage. When Nicholas returned to leave funds for the third daughter, the father was ready. When the bag of gold hit the floor, he leapt from bed and chased down Nicholas. Thus the father found out who the benefactor was. Nicholas, however, made the father swear never to tell anyone what he had done. He did not want praise or recognition for his generosity.

I’m sure that the story has been changed and embellished over the years. One thing stands out. The father must not have kept his promise to Nicholas about not telling, because we all know the story – and the name of the benefactor. Someone told.

The tales of Nicholas are interesting in part because of the way they make him stand out from other saints of the church. There are plenty of saint stories that end in gruesome martyrdoms. Other saint stories tell of miracles – often dramatic healings of hopeless cases. Some tell of courageous confessions of faith.

Nicholas’ story is of a man who apparently had the means to give away large sums of money and who carried out acts of generous charity. I guess the vow of poverty hadn’t quite taken hold for bishops in those days. The fact that Nicholas had the ability to give away enough gold for a daughter’s dowry not just once but three times means that he had access to some serious funds. The traditions surrounding Nicholas tell that he inherited his wealth from his parents and began giving it away only after their deaths. It has been a long time since those days and the stories are well worn. No one is certain of the facts.

Some say that the tradition of a fat Santa Claus date back to the stories of Nicholas. In those days only people of wealth could afford to be fat. In contrast to the types of food eaten by poor people in contemporary America, only wealthy people could afford rich and fat-filled foods in the time of Nicholas. Girth was seen as a sign of success. I’m not sure how much that is a factor in the way that we think of Santa Claus these days. Santa is pictured in different ways in different places. In Europe, you are more likely to see a Santa who is thinner with more squared-off features than our Coca-Cola Santa with his round face, round nose, and round stomach.

A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2009 suggested that Santa could very well be a “public health pariah.” Nathan Grills of Monash University in Australia found a correlation between countries that recognize Santa and a high rate of childhood obesity.

It is probably a miracle that the old guy is as slim as he is. Think of all of the cookies that are left out for Sana each year. If he has to take a taste of a cookie at each house, no wonder he’s carrying a few extra pounds around the middle. I have plenty of sympathy for the old elf. As I slipped into my ‘50’s I started to exercise a bit less and eat a bit more. The result was a gain in girth. I added a few inches to my waist and my beard turned white. Up on the Cheyenne, the kids took to calling me “Waziya.” I suppose it might be considered an honor to have a Lakota nickname, but it is more of a joke. Waziya is the Lakota name for Santa Claus. The kids were simply describing my appearance.

Some careful dieting and a commitment to exercise have enabled me to enter this holiday season more than 40 pounds lighter than last year and I’ve cut 5 inches off of my belt.

It’s probably a good thing because after being given the blessing of one daughter who had a beautiful wedding, I might find it hard to fund the weddings of the daughters of others. I may have to leave the role of Santa to others.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

I have friends and colleagues who believe that it is impossible to separate politics and religion. They point out that Jesus was constantly challenging the authority of political leaders and that one of the roles of religion is to challenge and question political power. There are plenty of preachers who use their pulpits to encourage people to political action in support of one cause or another. There are plenty of bloggers who use the Internet as a vehicle to convince people to agree with their point of view.

I have tended to take a slightly different approach. I have been honored and privileged to serve congregations that are not of one mind when it comes to political issues. We have people who vote in different ways, who envision different solutions to problems, and who are capable of arguing with each other. I have watched good people of faith come to different conclusions as to the best political solutions to problems.

I see Jesus as one who ministered to a wide variety of people, meeting each in the place where that person was. He didn’t inquire into the political positions of the sick people who were healed. He fed all of the 5,000 without regard to party affiliation. He probably could have become a leader in the Zealot political movement, but instead he simply lived his witness. He couldn’t and didn’t try to avoid the inevitable conflict with Roman authority. He was executed by order of a Roman governor. In his trial as well as in the rest of the living of his life, he placed little confidence in political authority. He simply answered to God and placed his trust in God.

So what is to follow is probably atypical of me. It is a brief political rant. Feel free to disagree. I’m not very practiced at politics and I have no desire for the life of a politician.

It nearly made me sick yesterday to listen to part of the press conference held by Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association. I guess he was trying to participate in the national discussion about gun violence following the massacre of innocent school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Quite frankly, the man sounded frightening. He said the killings were the fault of the media, songwriters and singers and the people who listen to them. He blamed movie and TV scriptwriters and the people who watch their work. He even placed the advocates of gun control in the same category as video game makers and players. I’m no fan of video games and I think the media made a lot of mistakes in their coverage of the tragedy, but I can’t agree with Mr. LaPierre when he claims that everyone involved in the manufacture and sale of firearms is without blame.

I don’t buy his argument for more and more guns. Volunteer and professional firefighters, who risk their lives every day to protect our communities don’t need to have the job of thwarting assault by carrying guns. Neither do paramedics, security guards, veterans, or retired police officers. I can’t imagine asking the principals and teachers who care for our children to turn into an armed mob. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Mr. LaPierre said. I guess he never thought about the possibility of preventing the bad guy from having so many guns. I guess he thinks that unscrupulous and unlicensed dealers who sell guns to criminals are not a problem.

Maybe Mr. LaPierre likes the scenario that played out in Rural Pennsylvania yesterday better. A man, for reasons unknown, shot and killed Kenneth Lynn and his son-in-law William Rhodes. Then the gunman went to the Junita Valley Gospel Church, where he entered the building and shot and killed Kimberly Scott. He got back in his truck and was driving when the state police caught up with him. He was killed in the ensuing gun battle. The gunman died, but not before three Pennsylvania State Troopers were injured by gunfire.

Australia used to have a huge problem with gun violence and mass shootings. The 1984 Milperra massacre was the outgrowth of conflicts between motorcycle gangs. In 1987 the Hoddie Street Massacre and the Queen Street Massacre took place in Melbourne. In 1991 the Strathfield massacre took place in New South Wales. And in 1996, 35 people were killed and 21 wounded when a man with a history of violent and erratic behavior opened fire on shop owners and tourists at the historic Port Arthur former convict prison.

The people of Australia banned together and got their legislators to reform gun laws in their nation. The restricted some weapons. They classified others into categories with rules about who could buy and sell the guns. The required those who use guns to state how they will be used. Sport shooters still have access to all except machine guns, rocket launchers, assault rifles, flame throwers, anti tank guns, howitzers and artillery. Private collectors can possess those items, but they must be deactivated if owned by anyone other than the military.

Port Arthur was the end of mass killings in Australia. That was 16 years ago. There was an incident in 2002 at Monash University where an international student killed two fellow students with pistols he acquired as a member of a shooting club. Today a person is 15 times more likely to die of gun violence in the United States than in Australia. The people of Australia are a freedom-loving people. They are independent and wouldn’t allow the government to oppress them any more than would the people of the United States. The laws of Australia weren’t imposed by the enemies of freedom. They were the result of Australian citizens working together to build a society that was safe for all of the people.

Australia is not a perfect society. The people of Australia have many problems to solve and their government doesn’t always act in the best interests of its people. I am privileged to live in the United States and have no desire for our country to imitate another country. But we do have the power to make changes for the betterment of our people. We do have the ability to protect our children.

On my way home last evening I followed a vehicle with a pro-life bumper sticker and a sticker proclaiming membership in the NRA. I wonder if there is an internal argument going on in the mind of the person who placed those stickers. I’d like to see a respectful public debate in our community.

In the meantime, we have a sanctuary on a hill in our town. We don’t allow any weapons in our building. And we are installing new glass doors next week at the preschool entrance, replacing steel doors that have been in place for more than half a century. We won’t be hiring armed guards.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

OK first of all, I want to state simply that the world did not end. That may be an obvious fact, but according to a global Reuters poll one in seven people believe that the end is near, and one in ten believe that it would occur today. It is December 21, which is the last day on the Mayan Long Count calendar.

Ah, but you say, the day is not yet over. In fact it has only just begun. Well that is true, here in South Dakota. And, I guess, it is also true in Central America, where the Mayan culture and civilization blossomed. But the Mayan Long Count calendar is an interesting blend of proto-science and superstition. Here is the science part. The Mayans were keen observers of the natural world. They were aware of the movement of some of the heavenly bodies. Among their observations were observations of the Sun. Although the Mayan culture flourished relatively near to the equator, they did notice that the position of the sun relative to the earth made a big difference. For half of the year the days get incrementally longer until they reached the longest day of the year. For the other half, they become shorter and shorter until they reach the shortest day of the year. The Mayans may not have understood that it is a matter of location on the globe. The shortest day of the year her in North America is the longest day of the year in Australia.

Solstices have a long history in spiritual beliefs, as do all of the movements of the Earth, moon and stars. Solstices gave information about when to sow crops, when to harvest, when to hunt. The movements of planets and stars were used for navigation and for understanding the time of the year and what seasonal changes were coming.

The ancients didn’t stray far from the campfire in the evenings because there were serious dangers. You could become food for a nocturnal animal if you weren’t careful. Instead, they sat around the fire, looked up into the night sky, and told stories.

Modern science, however, has made it possible to measure the exact moment of the solstice. Instead of it being a particular night, it is a specific moment. The movements of the sun and earth mean that it reached its precise location at its most southern point in the earth sky at a specific moment. You’ll notice that I put that in its past tense. Although tonight is the night we call solstice here in the northern hemisphere, the precise moment when the sun was at its most southern point relative to the planet earth was 10:12 and 43 seconds pm AEDST (Australian Eastern Daylight Standard Time). As I write, it is 10:29 AEDST. The moment has passed. Communications are still flowing freely from Australia. News.com.au is streaming live Internet feeds. Their web site is updating normally. The world did not end. I didn’t think it would.

But I do know that the movement of the earth, planets, sun and stars does have an effect upon us. Although I’ve traveled to Central America and spent some time near the equator and I’ve traveled to Australia and spent some time on the other side of it, I am essentially a northern person. I think in terms of Christmas coming in the winter, near the winter solstice. I imagine the birth of the Christ Child on a clear winter’s night. I am not offended or startled by nativity scenes with a little snow.

I know that the effects of short days are real. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that occurs during the winter. Short days leave some people with a sense of hopelessness, increased sleep, less energy, less ability to concentrate, loss of interest in work and other activities, sluggish movements, social withdrawal, unhappiness and irritability. It can become long-term, chronic depression if it is not properly treated.

Even though I have not experienced SAD personally, I do know that there is a part of me each year that gets a bit weary of winter. And I don’t live up north where the days get really short and the nights get really long. Up above the Arctic Circle the sun won’t rise today. Although the bulk of our winter weather is still ahead of us, I get a twinge of spring fever right after Christmas each year. I can endure a few more months, but one of my techniques is to think about warmer weather, gardening, and getting out in my canoe on the lake. The Internet makes this easy. I just Google “freestyle canoeing” and I can watch YouTube for a few minutes and imagine myself out on the lake. Some years I am building a boat at this time of the year, but there is no boat project in my garage at the moment. Home repairs are the theme of my project time this year.

But I am deeply aware of friends and members of our congregation for whom these holidays are especially tough. We’ve had the death of one of our members this week. Another member just lost her mother. The news “the cancer is back and it is far more serious this time” has been delivered to a member of our church. A 16-year-old died in Pierre from a shotgun blast delivered by another 16-year-old. The suicide rate in our community is double the national average. And we are all reeling from grief and horror following the mass murder of innocent schoolchildren in Connecticut. We know that this is not a season of joy for all.

But we are not without hope. The world did not end. We will continue to deal with the struggles and grief, the tragedies and triumphs of this life. Pain and sorrow and loss are still part of the reality of our existence, but so also is community and love and faith. We are not alone.

In the midst of the messiness of this world, Christ comes to us. A child is born. God demonstrates in a way that cannot be ignored that ours is not the last generation of humans.

Still, the world also did not end for the superstitious wackos who predicted that it would. We will continue to live with them. I suppose they’ll find another date on which to hang their apocalyptic ranting. They will continue to be our neighbors. We will continue to love them – even beyond the end of time as we know it.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

The great theologian and Biblical Scholar Walter Brueggemann is repeatedly calling our attention to Biblical poets. The poets, he teaches, find the words to speak truth to power and to call the people back to justice and a meaningful relationship with God.

Walter Brueggemann must love the Gospel of Luke. The opening of the Gospel reads like a musical. Everyone is bursting into song. Zechariah sings. Elizabeth sings. Mary sings. The angels sing. Joseph must not have auditioned well for a singing part. He doesn’t have a song, only a speaking part, and darn few words at that. Like other Biblical prophets, the songs of the opening of Luke don’t pull any punches. They are tough stuff.

Mary sings:

"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

A few of my colleagues and I were speculating about what might happen if people just started sending Mary’s song to the members of congress and the President as they negotiate their way on the brink of a fiscal cliff. What are the tax implications of filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty? I suspect that some of the Tea Party members would find such notions as “communist” and drive poor Mary right out of town.

But I have had the wonderful gift of more time to think about such things this week. I took an extra day off and went for a walk in the woods. I blogged about that experience yesterday.

So I have a new take on Mary’s song – at least a new-to-me way of interpreting the poem.

I have mostly thought of the Song of Mary as a story of rewards and punishments in the past. The proud get punished. They are scattered in the thoughts of their hearts. The powerful get punished. They are brought down from their thrones. The lowly get rewarded. They get lifted up. The hungry get rewarded. They are filled with good things. The rich are punished. They are sent away empty.

Then I was given a rare gift in the midst of a very busy season. My truck broke down eight miles from the nearest phone on a day when no one else decided to drive up the road. Without ever being in danger, we were given the gift of a beautiful day to take a long walk. We got to examine the tracks of the deer and rabbits and a bobcat. We got to sing songs as we walked alongside a bubbling creek. We got to watch the sunlight creep down the mountainsides and finally shine on us in the bottom of the valley. We got to know the warmth of caring friends who came to rescue us. It is entirely possible that what seemed to be a curse was really a blessing. Maybe what a late-middle-aged, overweight pastor who is used to having multiple reliable vehicles and an over-scheduled life most needs is an invitation to get out of the truck and take a walk. Maybe he needs to discover that he has the resources to spend a night safely without electricity and entertainment systems and a house full of comforts. Maybe he needs to feel just a twinge of emptiness in his stomach and taste the joy of a sip of cool water. What if what happened to us wasn’t a punishment, but rather a reward?

Now, I don’t think that God has any reason to manipulate the functioning of a seven-year-old Chevy pickup truck. The laws of physics work well enough to cause occasional mechanical failure of parts that have been used over and over again. And I don’t think that God has any reason to manipulate my thinking so that I would make some rather silly and immature mistakes in planning a day’s outing.

But I have no doubt that God has been watching over us all the days of our lives. I have no question in my mind about God’s love or care for us. God loves everyone.

God even loves the proud and the powerful and the rich.

Mary is singing God’s praise because God not only gives the lowly and the hungry the things they need. God gives everyone the things they need. Her song is not a song of curses or punishments. The proud need to be scattered in the thoughts of their hearts. The powerful need to be brought down a notch. The rich need to feel what it means to be sent away empty. They need these things as much as the lowly need to be lifted up and the hungry need to be filled with good things. God’s gift to each person named in Mary’s song is exactly what is best for that particular individual.

John Rutter has crafted a magnificent setting for Mary’s Song. I have a recording of the choir of King’s College Chapel singing it. Though I’m not a very good singer, the song has been ringing in my mind for a couple of days, now:

“Magnifcat anima mea Dominum, et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo. Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae. Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generations.”

“Magnify the Lord, O my soul, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, from now on all generations shall call me blessed.”

Magnificat! Magnificat!

It is just the right medicine for this weary world in this often-too-busy season.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

My family knows that I love to drive on back roads. I don’t mind a trip down the highway and I’m not afraid to drive in cities, but my favorite place to drive is on roads with a lot less traffic. It doesn’t bother me at all to drive in a place where no one else has been that day.

I think I come by this naturally. Back in the early 1950’s my father and a friend drove a jeep from Big Timber, Montana up the Boulder Valley to the mining ghost town of Independence. There, where the road ended, they cut up over the top of the divide and down into Yellowstone National Park. The jeep was narrow and they had scouted the route before and knew that they could make the drive. This was before the designation of the Beartooth-Absarokee Wilderness Area. They believed that a third entrance to Yellowstone National Park in Montana would be a good idea and thought that their route would someday become a highway. But at the time, they were mostly interested in an adventure. They got one.

Our children learned at relatively early ages that dad’s “shortcuts” often took more time. By the time they were teens we had changed to calling them adventures instead of shortcuts. When they took driver’s education, both kids had their teachers remark that they were especially capable driving on gravel roads. At that point I hadn’t taken them practice driving in any place with paved roads. I learned to drive in the open space of an airport. I thought that places with less traffic were good places to teach our children to drive.

Susan has always been supportive of my adventures. She got an early introduction to my style. When we were dating I took her up to Bray’s Lake, high in the backcountry. I had an older Ford Pickup and as we rumbled over the rocks a weld on the bracket for the rear axle broke. I was able to jerry rig things so that we could drive home, but the rear end had shifted and I couldn’t get the angle for the U-joint quite right. We had to drive below 30 mph all the way home. Sometimes it takes a bit longer when you travel with me.

So we had a bit of an adventure Monday and yesterday. Some even noticed that I didn’t write a blog yesterday – the first time in more than 7 years I have skipped. Our adventure started out in our normal way on Monday. We wanted to go cut a Christmas tree so I gassed up the pickup and ran a couple of errands and we threw a few jackets and a little lunch in the pickup and we headed out. The weather was good and the hills were beautiful, so we didn’t get in a hurry to cut a tree. I knew that we had gone farther than other cars that day, but there had been some traffic in the area over the weekend, so we weren’t making the first set of tracks in the snow.

There is a campground on Castle Creek that has Forest Service pit toilets so we stopped to use them. When we were ready to go again the truck wouldn’t start. In retrospect there were several mistakes made. We could have had more food and survival gear with us when we left home. We will next time. Perhaps the biggest mistake was that it took me a long time to admit that I couldn’t get the truck running. I tried everything I could think of. I checked the battery, cleaned the terminals, tightened the cables, I got out a large screwdriver and used the handle to tap on the starter and the bendix as Susan turned the key. I rocked the truck back and forth and tried it again. Working outside and lying on the ground under the truck, it took quite a while.

But we were OK and there wasn’t much of a risk and I kept thinking I could get the truck going again. Finally I took out a map and studied it. It would be an eight-mile walk out in country where I didn’t know about mountain lions. We discussed our options and decided to spend the night in the truck and walk out the next morning. We knew that we would be safe and that we had enough resources to survive. So I built a fire and we waited.

It wasn’t the most comfortable night we had ever spent, but we were not afraid. We did know that our children would discover that we weren’t answering our phones and would start to worry. But we had no way to contact them, so we settled in. To entertain ourselves, we tried to remember verses of songs and hymns. We went through the 50 states and named the capitols. For some reason neither of us could remember Jackson for Mississippi, but we got through the rest after thinking for a while. We named countries and capitols around the world. We did pretty well with North and Central America and Europe but we got bogged down in the Balkans and missed a lot of Asian countries. It used to be easier when the Soviet Union could be counted as a single country. There were a lot of countries in Africa that we missed as well.

The weather was beautiful for out eight-mile walk the next morning. By noon our friends had figured out where we likely had gone and they were already on their way when we called in. They helped us tow the truck to a repair shop and although we missed a few meetings during the day, I made my afternoon and evening meetings without a problem.

When we were married one of the things I liked about Susan was her sense of adventure. It hasn’t dimmed. Winter camping without quite enough resources suited her just fine and I didn’t hear a word of complaint about our eight-mile hike with short rations. We have wonderful friends who would have found us yesterday even if we hadn’t been able to walk out. One night in the truck was enough.

We are safe and sound and happy and healthy and ready for the next adventure. If it ever happens again, I’m going to have our backpack stove and some coffee along. A few packets of freeze dried food might be nice, and a couple of sleeping bags, and . . . and . . .

There are still some wonderful adventures ahead. And I reckon some of them will involve driving on the back roads.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

One of the joys of my life is working in a building where there is a preschool. The halls will be silent this week because the children are taking their Christmas break, but they still show plenty of signs of the children who come each day. On Thursday and Friday our parking lot was filled with the cars of parents and grandparents who filled our fellowship hall to hear the Christmas programs put on by the children. There was no small amount of excitement, possibly fueled in part by no small amount of cookies, candy and other goodies shared with the children in anticipation of the Christmas holiday.

I have always worked in close proximity to children. The congregations we serve have been intentional about their programs for children and church school and youth group have been important parts of our shared ministries. Yesterday’s worship was led by our children, who presented songs, readings and skits to lead us all in growing in our faith.

But there are some things about working in close proximity to children that puzzle me from time to time. One of the mysteries that I have never figured out is how parents choose the names they give to their children. Early in the fall each year, when the first artwork by the children in the preschool is posted, I wander through the displays after the children have left the building, reading the names. Each year there are a few names that are repeated, so it is easy to tell what is popular. But each year there are a few names that are unique – and usually one or two that are very strange spellings leaving doubt about how they are pronounced.

It seems that there is no small amount of desire to give children names that are unique. Somehow choosing a name that reflects the ways this child is different from all other children becomes a priority for some parents. Because our children were given names from the Bible – names that have been used over and over again for thousands of years – we obviously took a different approach. There can be some debate about the English spelling for names that were originally Hebrew, but our children have names with common spelling.

Each year the Baby Center conducts a survey of baby’s names. About a half million parents submit their baby’s names as a part of a larger survey conducted by the center. The Center then compiles a list of names. To make the list a name has to be used at least twice so that it is not considered to be a fluke. Still, each year they come up with names that make my shake my head.

This year, parents taken a close look at their beautiful baby daughters and bestowed upon them the names of Ace, Admire, Americus, California, Couture, Deva, Excel, Fedora, Gilmore, Hallo, Inny, J’Adore, Jagger, Jazzy, Jeevika, Joshitha, Juju, Jury, Kaixin, Kirshelle, Leeloo, Mclean, Monalisa, Oasis, Orchid, Queenie, Rilo, Rogue, Samanda, Sanidy, Sesame, Shoog, Starlit, Thinn, Tigerlily, Twisha, Ummi, Vanille, Vinique, Yoga and Zealand.

For their precious little boys, they chose names like Aero, Alpha, Ball, Bond, Burger, Cajun, Cassanova, Cello, Cobain, Crusoe, Devid, Donathan, Drifter, Elite, Espn, Exodus, Four, Goodluck, Google, Haven’T, Hippo, Htoo, Hurricane, Jedi, Kix, Legacy, Mango, Mowgli, Navaryous, Neon, Pate, Pawk, Popeye, Rogue, Rysk, Savior, Shimon, Thunder, Tron, Turbo, Vice, Villiam, Xenon, and Zaniel.

Yes, I did have to turn off the auto correct feature of my word processor to copy the lists. No, I don’t think that the name Thinn was chosen by the same parents who chose Hippo. No, I don’t know how they pronounce Espn.

Years ago I was having a conversation about children’s name with a member of a congregation that I served. There was a lot of press about Chastity Sun Bono, child of Sonny and Cher at the time. This was before the person now named Chaz Salvatore Bono had undergone female to male transgender surgery, but there may have been some tabloid stories outing Chastity as a gay woman. At any rate the person with whom I was talking told me that the parents did the child no favor with the choice of name. Picking a name that means purity with a direct reference to sexual abstention is a poor label to hang on a child, this person argued. I mostly listened, but finally couldn’t refrain from responding, “Yes, Virginia, any child is going to figure out the meaning of a name and other children might tease.”

In all fairness, a woman named Virginia has been technically named after a state. The name Virginia was coined for the naming of the U.S. State. The state was named in honor of Elizabeth, “The Virgin Queen,” and the name Virginia was coined as a place name before it became popular as a name for female children.

Names are, however, important. They carry elements of identity. There are many cultures in which new names are granted in relationship to significant life events. The name by which a child is called might not be the name that is employed when that child becomes an adult. Lame Deer, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and other famous leaders of people in this part of the world were not given the names by which we know them at their births. Those names came about as a result of other experiences they encountered in life.

We have passed the stage in life where we are responsible for choosing names. We now just learn the names of the children in our school and try to offer them as much love as possible. We’ve found that children can grow into productive leaders in society with all sorts of names. Still, one wonders what might happen if Savior and Vice ended up applying for the same job. Would their names affect which one got hired? How about Rogue and Excel writing their college admission essays? Would one name garner preference?

I guess that Fedora might wear well as the years go by.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

The traditional Latin mass for today begins with these words:

“Gauydete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete.”

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”—Philippians 4:4


In the traditions of our people today is called Gaudete Sunday for the first word. The traditions have evolved to enable this Sunday to stand out from the other Sundays of Advent. In our church, the candles of the Advent wreath for the other Sundays of Advent are purple, but today’s candle is pink or rose colored. While the rest of the world has been playing and singing Christmas carols for weeks, now, we have been waiting and singing Advent carols. But today we will sing some of the songs of Christmas.

In our congregation our children will lead the service of worship. There will be a skit that resembles a traditional Christmas pageant, with Mary and Joseph and the baby. There will be a remembrance of angels and shepherds. It is not that we don’t want to teach our children the traditions of waiting and anticipation. It is that we understand that telling our stories is one of the best ways of learning them. Sometimes our children tell the stories of our people better than we.

In today’s world, there are challenges involved in working with children that we did not anticipate earlier in our careers. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago we noticed that we needed to make room in children’s Christmas programs for children and youth who would not be at rehearsals, but who would show up for the program expecting to have a place. Children whose lives (or the lives of whose parents) are too busy to participate in regular church school classes, come to church in this season expecting to be placed up front and to appear in a pageant. They love the costumes and the positions in the front of the church. And their parents can be insistent.

The scriptures for today are clear, however. We are not to complain, but rather to rejoice.

In previous generations the cycles of fasting and feasting were more intense. The season of Advent was once six weeks long instead of the modern four. The focus was on repentance. More than a few preachers spoke harsh words to congregants who were expected to approach the season with prayer and fasting. In parts of Northern Europe, hard times with scarce food often came during winter. In days before central heating churches were cold places and the people endured a great deal in their preparations for the coming of Christmas.

Times have changed. We don’t speak of fasting much. There is little talk of sacrifice. Churches seem to be so desperate for members these days that there is little mention of the costs of discipleship. The first mention that there are things that need to be changed will send some people heading for the doors. There is no question that there are many who expect us to entertain children and adults alike. There is no shortage of churches with theatre seating, surround-sound and huge projection screens where members are allowed to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

But all of this is close to complaining on my part and complaining is not the mood of this day. In the midst of a season of repentance and preparation we set aside one day for the joy of the day. Anticipation is not all grim. Waiting can be joyful. That for which we are preparing is worthy of joyous anticipation.

The readings for today include the harsh words of John the Baptist. He calls some of his listeners a “brood of vipers.” We think of John as a rather fierce character, living out in the desert, eating a strange diet and preaching his call to repent. But, as usual, there is more to the story.

We hear of John’s first encounter with joy early in the narrative of Luke. The gospel reports that the leapt for joy in his mother’s womb at the presence of Mary, who was expecting Jesus. (Luke 1:44) And the same sermon that begins, “You brood of vipers!” includes joyful advice on how to live: “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has one; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Right in the midst of John’s exhortations in Luke 3:7-18 is a description of the lives we are called to live.

In a little while we will be plunged into chaos as we prepare for worship. My usual quiet time of prayer and quiet before worship will not be there today. There will be youth who couldn’t attend a rehearsal who need to read through their parts. There will be children who arrive and don’t know where they are to go to get their costumes. There will be busy hands playing with expensive microphones and props that have to be put in their place over and over again. There will be parents who are a bit frantic trying to get the best place to make a video recording of their children. There will be ushers who are trying to sort things out but who don’t know the answers to the questions. Chaos will reign. I will spend the entire service going back and forth from the front of the sanctuary to help children and the back to adjust the controls on the sound system. I’ll make a lot of trips up and down the stairs.

It will be close to noon before I can take a deep breath and relax.

But one of the things that we learned again this week is that these children are precious. They are vulnerable. They are worthy of our time and our attention and our sacrifice. Whatever minor inconveniences I endure today are meaningless if we are able to teach the children that God loves them and that there is always a place for them in the heart of the church.

It is as the prophet foretold. As we journey through Advent, “a little child shall lead . . .”

It is a day of joy! Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!”

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Oh God,

The prayers we say at funeral include the line, “Your thoughts are not our thoughts and your ways are not our ways.” Today, however, we have a bit of a sense of how you have felt.

We think we might know what it must have been like for you when Pharaoh killed the sons of the children of Israel and the wailing reached from the camps of the captives up to heaven.

We think we might have a sense of how hard it was for you to listen when the hard-heartedness of Pharaoh caused the death of the firstborns and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.

We think we might know a bit of how you felt when you had to witness Herod’s killing of the infants.

We might even sense what it must have been for you to witness the crucifixion of your son.

Because we are weeping for the children today.

We are crying out for the innocents.

We are trying to make sense of the senseless, straining to understand the unfathomable.

On this grim day when there are no words for our prayers, we are grateful that we are not the only ones praying. In our anguish, we thank you that we are not alone.

Oh dear God, be with the grieving parents and grandparents and sisters and brothers and friends. May they never forget your abiding presence especially in the depths of these dark days.

Inspire us to greater acts of love and compassion, even though just looking at your people must this day bring a tear to your eye.

We do not weep alone.

We know you are with the victims and their families.

Amen.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

John Harrison lived from 1693 to 1776. He was a self-educated carpenter and clockmaker. He is credited with the invention of the marine chronometer, a device that could be used to accurately estimate the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea. His chronometer extended the possibility of safe long distance sea travel during the Age of Sail. Essentially Harrison’s chronometer was a clock that was precise enough to be used as a portable time standard. It had to be used in conjunction with a Sextant to measure the angles of a celestial body above the horizon. The navigational device can be used on the sun, the moon, a planet or one of 57 navigational stars whose coordinates are tabulated in the Nautical Almanac.

Most sailors prefer to use the sun for their regular navigational readings. This works, of course, only when the days are clear enough to see the sun. Clouds or fog can hamper the ability to measure the angles with the sextant.

Prior to the invention of the accurate chronometer, sailors measured the angle between the moon and another celestial body. This information was then compared with charts in the Nautical Almanac to calculate Greenwich time. Finding Greenwich time while at sea allowed the computation of longitude.

Harrison’s chronometers were expensive when first invented. It was into the early years of the 19th century before they became commonly accepted.

This is probably way more information than you need to understand that marine navigators made their measurements at night for nearly a century before they had a clock accurate enough to determine their position during the day. And that information is only background to the topic of today’s blog. Sailors, being bound by all sorts of traditions, formed two opposing camps – those who believed that the use of a chronometer was the best way to navigate and those who preferred the Method of Lunar Distances. The proponents of the use of the chronometer called the sailors who measured lunar angles and distances “lunatics.”

According to the United States House of Representatives such name-calling is out of place.

Around the turn of the 19th century, the Lunar Society of Birmingham was a dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures who met regularly. The society fell into the practice of meeting on the nights of the full moon, as the extra light made the journey home safer and easier in the days before streetlights. The members of the club cheerfully called themselves “lunarticks,” a pun on lunatic.

According to the United States House of Representatives, they should find a different name to apply to themselves.

In his autobiography, published in 1913, Theodore Roosevelt wrote: “Then, among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it – the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements.”

It makes good reading, but he would not be able to use that quote in a speech before the United States House of Representatives these days.

The use of the term lunatic to refer to those who are suffering from mental illness probably dates back to the 13th Century, although theories about the relationship of the full moon and certain behavioral issues abounded long before the term was coined. Both Aristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the Moon induced insanity in susceptible individuals. Their theory was that the brain, which is mostly water, was affected by the Moon in a similar manner to that of the tides. If the moon were capable of increasing the sloshing of the water of the ocean, surely it could slosh the fluid in the brain enough to make an individual unbalanced. Their theory has since been discovered to be wrong, but the term persists.

The word probably comes from Old French, “lunatique.” It was commonly known as “moon-sickness” in English, though the word has had other meanings in our language as well. In the 1870’s lunatic was the term for a type of hairstyle worn over the forehead. In the 1930’s in Australia Lunatic soup was slang for an alcoholic drink.

But you won’t be hearing the word in the United States House of Representatives these days.

If you haven’t heard, you probably inferred from my blog so far that Congress has banned the use of the word “lunatic” in federal legislation. In a time of intense partisanship and divided votes, the vote wasn’t even close. A week ago Wednesday, the vote came in at 398-1 to strike the term from all federal legislation. The Senate had previously passed the legislation in May. The bill is on the President’s desk for his signature. He is expected to sign it.

When he does, federal laws governing financial activities of banks can no longer empower a bank to act as a “committee of estates of lunatics.” I’m feeling better already. Each time my bank sends me one of those multiple-page privacy policies or an explanation of the changes in the terms of my credit card, I wonder who writes those documents. I had been imagining that they probably have a “committee of estates of lunatics” who spent their days thinking up obscure language that they could use to prevent people from reading agreements before signing them. No more. Soon there will be no provision for a “committee of estates of lunatics” in federal legislation.

I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved.

Seriously, the legislation is long overdue. Federal legislation should reflect a more enlightened understanding of mental illness and disease. There is no place in our official laws for antiquated and misleading descriptions of the members of our communities. The biases and prejudices and stigma that surround mental illness are a stain on our society and I’m pleased that our legislators took time to clean up the inappropriate language in federal legislation. I have no doubt that I would have voted in favor of the legislation.

President Roosevelt did, however, warn us that “among the wise and high-minded people” who “strive earnestly for peace,” there will always be a foolish fanatic. He was, of course, right. Congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas cast the single vote against the legislation. There’s one in every crowd. However, we will no longer call them the “(word deleted) fringe.”

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Advent is the season of hope. It is not a mistake that the first Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of hope in the traditions of the church. We live with hope the longest in this liturgical season. Peace comes next, followed by joy and love. It is a progression that has been honed through thousands of years of living with our faith. We live in a society that is, in my opinion, sadly short of hope. Not only is hope in rather short supply in a fearful society, Hope is not even understood. You can hear the word a lot on television, but often it is used in contexts that have little to do with the real meaning of hope.

Since the recent election news commentators have been quick to use the word hope in relationship to the budget negotiations in Washington, DC. “There appears to be little hope of compromise.” “Hope grows thin as fiscal cliff looms.”

Dictionary definitions of hope usually reflect an expectation of success in the pursuit of desired goals. An example would be a college freshman stating, “I hope to graduate in four years.” The problem with these definitions is that they equate worldly success with the concept. The public belief seems to be that the most hopeful people are the most successful. “Where there is a will, there is a way,” we say, but we know that it takes more than sheer will to have the ingredients of success. Some people have more opportunities than others. The “way” is easier for some than for others. And success in the eyes of the world is a poor measure of the reality of hope.

In the 1950’s as the study of psychology blossomed in the postwar United States, scientific approaches for examining hope began to appear. Mental health professionals defined hope in terms of expectancies – similar to the way dictionaries define the concept. This led to examinations of how some people appear able to achieve goals and others do not. In the 1990’s “hope theory” was little more than pathways thinking – reflections on how people achieve goals. This research did, however, produce a significant insight that religious teachers have known for millennia. Psychologists “discovered” that hopeful thinking does not appear to be based on genetic inheritance, but instead reflects on learning experiences over the course of childhood. Hope is not a trait that someone either does or does not have. Hope is learned. Hope can be taught.

The Late C.R. Snyder of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, published several works on the topic of hope. Perhaps the most popular of these books was the 2003 volume, “The Psychology of Hope,” subtitled, “You Can Get There from Here.” It is an examination of highly hopeful individuals. In contrast to much of prevailing educational theory, Snyder reminded us of a truth we have always known. Hope is born in adversity. A privileged life produces expectations of privilege and entitlement. A life of struggle produces a hopefulness that cannot be turned back. Hope is a function of struggle.

But we fear the struggles of our children. We seek to shield them from adversity. This has been especially evident in the years since the 911 attacks in 2001. Parents have tried to create protective shields around their children. They have tried to raise them away from the realities and the struggles of this harsh world. Out of the best of motivations, parents try to create a beautiful world for their children and in doing so take struggles away from them. Colleges are reporting that the phenomenon of “helicopter” parents who hover over their children and try to manage every aspect of their lives has now reached university level. Corporate human resources people report that they are regularly receiving calls from the parents of employees wanting to go over performance evaluations of their children to find out why they didn’t get a promotion.

Shielding children from struggle – protecting them from adversity – is to deny them the possibility of hope. In the church, we have known this for many generations. But it appears that we have been less than successful in teaching it well in our generation. It has been there in the Bible all along. In chapter 5 of Romans it is written: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame . . .” (Romans 5:3-5a)

One of the hardest, and most important, tasks of every parent is to allow suffering to enter the lives of our children. It is, perhaps, counter-intuitive. We want to shield them from all pain. We don’t want them to get hurt. But neither do we want them to grow into adults who lose heart at the first sign of struggle.

Imagine if we were to raise children that were so insistent on getting their own way that when they encountered someone who had a different opinion they became incapable of listening, and unable to imagine anything different than simply getting their own way. What if we raised children who were incapable of exploring different pathways and seeking different routes to their goals, but instead gave up at the first discovery of a blocked route?

Oh, that’s right, we already have. And too many of them have been elected to congress. Grandstanding is not hope. Living in fear is not hope.

For we know that courage, like hope, is also born in the face of adversity. And we shudder at the utter lack of courage demonstrated daily by legislators who are too afraid of offending their funding sources to do what is right for their country.

Hope, however, is stronger than these moments in our history. The hope of our people has been through seasons of incompetent and sometimes downright evil leadership. The hope of our people has endured the folly of failures of leadership. Real hope will not die even if we plunge over the fiscal cliff.

We would do well, however, to renew our teaching about hope in this season. It is not a mistake that we have been taught to live with our thoughts and prayers focused on hope for four weeks every year.

Pray for hope!

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

For a decade between 1985 and 1995, I made a lot of trips from Boise, Idaho to Portland Oregon. At least once a year, I’d make the trip with a vanload of youth bound for Camp Adams for a youth retreat of the Central Pacific Conference of the United Church of Christ. A 450-mile trip with a van load of youth sometimes means that you have a bit of extra time, and a common stop, when we had time was the Clackamas Town Center Mall. It is easy to access, right off of Interstate 205, which runs around Portland on the southeast side.

In the late 1980’s Boise still lacked a large indoor shopping mall, and the multi-story Clackamas Town Center was a fascination to our kids. A typical vanload in those days was 12 kids and 2 adults, and we could let the kids wander in pairs around the mall, setting an appointed meeting place, usually the food court. We knew our kids would be safe, that they had limited funds to spend, and that we would soon be on our way to camp and the adventures of the weekend. In those days before any of us had cell phones, I knew that I could trust my kids to arrive at a prearranged location at a preset time. I didn’t worry if there were a few minutes when they were out of my sight. They deserved the chance to explore the mall. The trip home wouldn’t involve any extra time for stopping as we would be trying to get home as soon as possible after a full weekend of youth events.

One of the attractions of the mall in those days was that it featured an ice skating rink. An indoor ice rink was a real novelty in those days and sometimes I would rent a pair of blades and skate around as we waited for our youth. The rink held the additional possibility of getting to watch Tonya Harding practicing her skating. Tonya was the first American woman to complete a triple axel jump in competition. She won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship in 1991 and placed second in the World Championships. She was good.

That was, of course, before 1994, when her ex-husband and her body guard hired Shane Stant to break the leg of her skating competitor Nancy Kerrigan at a practice session during the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. The leg wasn’t broken, but the bruise from the tire iron forced her to withdraw from the national championship. Harding won the championship, but she later admitted to helping cover up the attack. Through a series of legal maneuvers, she managed to remain on the U.S. Olympic Skating team. She finished eighth in Lillehammer. Kerrigan, to the cheers of the crowd won silver in those Olympics.

The incident sort of took the luster out of skating at Clackamas Town Center and in a later remodel, the mall eliminated the skating rink. I moved to South Dakota and haven’t visited the Mall in a long time. When I am in the Portland area these days if I head to a Mall, I usually go to Washington Square, on the other side of the city, where my niece works.

Still, news of a shooting incident at Clackamas Town Center yesterday caught my attention. It was just a bit too close to home. Three people died in the shooting including the gunman, who appeared to have shot himself. No police weapons were discharged in the incident. When I went to bed last night, a 15-year-old was still in surgery following being shot in the chest.

Over the years, I’ve turned quite a few 15-year-olds loose in that mall. Of course that was then and this is now. Some of those then 15-year-olds are now in their 40’s. with children of their own. I haven’t committed to traveling 900 miles in a van with high school students in a single weekend for quite a few years. And the Clackamas Town Center has gotten older and probably the malls in Boise are newer and fancier. I doubt if today’s youth would be impressed by the center any more. They’ve got Macy’s and REI at home these days.

But I am hungry for the days when we didn’t have to worry about someone getting shot when they went to the food court at a shopping mall. I am hungry for the days before we had learned of mass shootings at high schools. I am hungry for the days when we could get dozens of youth to commit multiple weekends during the school year solely to church activities. I am hungry for some of the things that have changed and may never come back.

Maybe I’m just getting old. I know that the world has changed and that all of my nostalgia doesn’t alter reality. I know that the lives of our teens are far busier than they once were. I know that church is much less at the center of the lives of many of our families than previously was the case. I know that the dangers teens face today are very real. I know that we can’t protect them from all of the harsh realities of modern society.

But I cringe when I hear of the violence that has become a present companion in our modern lives. While news of the incident in the mall was readily available on the Internet last night, it isn’t in the headlines of the BBC, The New York Times or the Washington Post this morning. It just isn’t big enough news for those agencies. Only 3 people died. I don’t even know how the word “only” can be used in such a sentence.

Trying to figure out what was going on, I turned to Oregon Live, the newsfeed of the Portland Oregonian last night. Their feed had a collection of updates from Twitter of the shooting at the Mall even before it was known how many had died. There were notes from people huddled in the back of a beauty salon, from employees locked down in store, from someone stuck in the back room at build a bear, and from a person in their car after running out of a restaurant into the parking lot. I had to quit reading the tweets.

We live in a dangerous world. And we are bringing up our grandchildren in a dangerous world. Teaching them to be safe includes thinking of shelter and escape plans in the event of shootings in public places.

The popular Christmas, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” was written during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was said that the songwriters were unable to perform it without crying. 50 years later it still brings tears to eyes. And its message is as clear today as it was then. “Pray for peace, people everywhere.”

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

It has been almost a year since I migrated to my new web addresses. I began preparation in December of 2011 and left my previous host for the current one on January 1. Along with the change came new web addresses. I registered RevTedH.com as my official home on the Internet. A year later, I’m still trying to evaluate how much time and energy to invest in an online presence.

The primary reason to go to the effort of establishing and maintaining a web site is to publish this blog. I have committed to the discipline of writing an essay every day, and like many other writers, I aspire to publish what I have written. The blog gives me a way to put the things I have written in front of readers. Although there are a few successful writers who have published books of their essays, there isn’t a huge market for traditional publication of personal essays. Chances of finding a publisher interested in producing a traditional book of what I have written are pretty slim.

Of course, I wouldn’t have to have my own web site to have a blog. These days there are plenty of options for getting a blog up on the Internet. There are free sites that allow writers to post their blogs. The main advantage to a personal web site is that you have some control over the URL. Having an internet address that is easy to remember instead of a long series of seemingly random letters and slashes is worth a little effort even though much migration across the web these days is done with links instead of addresses that are memorized. If you plant a button to point and click, it doesn’t matter what the URL is, connection is automatic. Few people pay attention to what is displayed in their browser’s address line.

It is interesting to me that I have found time to set up and maintain this web site while I keep falling far behind with social media such as Twitter and Facebook. I opened accounts in both locations and I try to check those sites out from time to time, but I guess I’m really not that much into social media.

We spend so much time with our computers these days that it is nearly impossible to imagine life without them.

The truth, however, is that computer-mediated relationships are not the same as face-to-face contact. This is not to say that computers aren’t wonderful tools for keeping in touch. They are. We live 1175 miles from our grandson in Olympia, WA. Our regular Skype conversations are essential to maintaining our relationship with him. Were we only to have letters and occasional visits, he would not know us as well as he does. I joined Facebook in the first place to view my nephew’s photographs from his travels around the world. I have several people whom I know and in whom I am interested whose lives and activities I can monitor through Facebook. We might not ever get around to writing letters to one another. For many of my relationships, e-mail has nearly replaced postal mail as the primary method for keeping in touch.

But I am amazed at how much time some people invest in social media. There are several different studies that have discovered that average teens spend upwards of 30 hours online each week. That’s right. There are teens that spend more time online than they do in class. Some of that online time is clearly educational: doing research for papers, checking facts, etc. Some of that time is recreational: Watching YouTube Videos, streaming television shows, etc. But a lot of that time is social: instant-messaging friends, checking out Facebook, tweeting, posting pictures and the like.

At Mountain School in Vermont, 45 students come each term to spend a semester in a residential farm school with no cell phone service and limited access to the Internet. The students are encouraged to go “cold turkey” from all of their electronic devices for a school term. There is a waiting list of students who have applied for the experience. Those who have had the opportunity have recognized that they do not miss the technology and that they discover deep and meaningful relationships with their peers. What they discover is something that is actually already available to them. They could choose to have actual conversations with friends without turning to the phone to text at the same time as they are speaking. They could choose to simply walk away from their computers. They could forego computer games for actual games with real people. But in the fast-paced, technology enhanced world of today’s teens, the thought of putting down a cell phone, even for a few minutes, seems threatening.

I’ve watched teens at church spread their jackets across their laps so that they can continue to text their friends in a way that is less obvious than having their phones out where they can be seen. It seems perfectly obvious to me what they are doing, though I have no knowledge of the subject of their messages. One would hope that they’re telling all their friends about the cool things we do at church, but I suspect that they are not. Teens get visibly panicked when asked to turn off cell phones. The thought of spending an hour disconnected from their devices is threatening. I’ve been told of teens who set their cell phone alarms to wake them in the middle of the night to check out messages and posts from their friends.

So I don’t expect to return to an unplugged world and I don’t expect today’s teens to have to live in my generation. They will need to discover their way as I have to discover my own. But I am intrigued by the concept of a semester’s sabbatical from all of the technology. Like traditional pastoral retreats where one withdrew to the country from the city to experience a slower pace and reconnect with the natural world, there may be times to experience retreats away from the constant pace of technological interconnection.

Finding a place without cell service, however, can be a daunting task. Those towers are reaching more and more remote locations. It is a good thing that these devices are still equipped with a switch to turn them off.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

OK, I will acknowledge that winter has come to South Dakota. We don’t have much snow out there, but it is officially cold: about 7 degrees Fahrenheit right now. The other end of the state got hammered with the precipitation and the cold all at once and there were highways closed in the Eastern part of South Dakota last night. It is below zero in Sioux Falls. There really wasn’t that much snow, so I expect that things will get going relatively soon once daylight shows up in that part of the state. Basically, it is one of those days when it is good to be in Rapid City. Our roads are better than most of the rest of the state. But it is cold outside. It is probably a bit harder to worry about global warming when it is so cold outside.

Sitting inside a warm house with no need to travel, however, is not a bad place to be for a day off. I have plenty of chores to accomplish close to home, though I can’t linger with a cup of coffee over the newspaper until I make it to the end of the driveway to pick up the paper. I’m thinking I’ll slip on a pair of shoes for that journey.

Compared to previous generations, we really have it easy when it comes to weather. It wasn’t that long ago that a night hovering around zero meant that you’d better have your car plugged in. There were even a couple of cold times when I would take the battery out of a vehicle and bring it indoors to keep it warm for maximum cranking power the next morning. We had headbolt heaters on every vehicle we owned before fuel injection was common. Life has changed. Our power systems are reliable. Although we do have a good woodstove as a backup source of heat in case of an interruption of electricity, such interruptions are so rare, that we don’t need to have much wood on hand here at the house.

I do have good clothes just in case I need to go outdoors. A pair of insulated coveralls is nice if one has to spend much time out of doors in the cold. I’ve also got warm boots, good gloves, a heavy parka and other things that make being outdoors bearable. But I don’t have any cattle to feed or other animals to care for except a cat that prefers to have her food delivered to her bowl indoors thank you very much.

So I’m not very worried about the cold. It will pass in its own time. The elders tell us that cold winter days are the best time for telling stories and there are some pretty good stories worth telling. I’ve got a couple of novels and about half a collection of short stories that are waiting for me to read them.

But we won’t have any party balloons around the house today. I don’t have any of that special string. Special string is code for a story that we tell about someone who wanted to have party balloons and didn’t know about helium. So she thought that what kept the balloons up in the air was “special string” that was stiff enough to hold a balloon. We all laugh when we tell the story, but perhaps inventing some special string would be a good idea.

Peter Wothers is a professor at the University of Cambridge and, according to the Daily Telegraph, he intends to begin to lecture against party balloons. Something tells me that this isn’t going to be a very popular topic. I’m not sure how many opportunities Professor Wothers will get to speak once his topic is known.

A quick refresher might be in order. Helium is number 2 on the Periodic Table. It occupies the upper right hand corner of the chart, the first in the column of inert gasses that also includes Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radium. These gasses are elements, which means among other things, they cannot be synthesized. The source of helium is finding pockets of the gas beneath the ground. It can then be captured and held in pressurized tanks. Most of the helium that is in use in the world today is extracted as a byproduct of Natural Gas mining.

There is a worldwide shortage of helium and that means that the price is going up. There are several things that we take for granted that are in limited supply. Taking helium from deep below the surface of the earth and releasing it into the atmosphere makes it much harder to capture the gas. Helium has lots of uses. It is mixed with oxygen to help patients who are suffering from heart and lung diseases to breathe more easily. It is used to cool magnets in MRI scanners used in hospitals. It is also used in high-tech manufacturing and physics research. It is considered to be an essential element for a modern society and the United States government maintains an official helium reserve in Amarillo, Texas. At a remote site, the bureau of Land Management oversees approximately 30% of the world’s known helium reserves.

And now there is a shortage. And in a free market economy that means the price is going up. Currently the amount of helium that it takes to fill a party balloon is worth about $1.00. That’s about 4 times as much as was the case a couple of years ago. It is expected that prices will rise sharply for the next few months. New plants under construction in Wyoming, Russia and Qatar are expected to be online shortly and should temporarily ease the shortage.

Professor Wothers, however, says that party balloons are an unwise use of the gas even if the supply temporarily takes an uptick. The gas is simply too precious to waste he argues: “I can imagine that in 50 years’ time our children will be saying, ‘I can’t believe they used such a precious material to fill balloons.’”

And I can’t find anyone who is seriously arguing for opening the neck of the balloon and inhaling a bit of the gas for the great “Alvin and the Chipmunks” vocal effect.

I suspect, however, that I’m a bit like the Professor. On a cold day when I could be getting lots of things done around the house I’m sitting at my desk writing about helium. 50 years from now my grandkids will have difficulty believing that I used my precious time in such a frivolous manner.

Maybe I should be working on the development special string.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Oh my! There is a television casting crew in town. They are seeking people to play a part in a television reality show. Charisse Simonian of Big Fish Casting says, “The Dakotas are hot now. It’s kind of like the last great frontier of television that no one has really tackled yet. Your part of the country is kind of like the last place that a lot of people in the country aren’t familiar with – its history and its landscapes. That’s where we want to be.”

Of course they are welcome to be in our town. We don’t even mind if they take pictures. For what it is worth we’re not sad that they paid Trinity Lutheran Church to rent a few parking spaces in the corner of their lot while they stay at the Alex Johnson Hotel. We’re used to tourists. We’re even used to people for whom the place where we live is new and exciting.

But I really can’t think of anyone to recommend for their show. According to their advertisement, “If you’re a survivalist, ranger, sheriff, cowboy, rancher, hunter or tracker and you have a big personality & spend your time outdoors in the beautiful South Dakota country, we are looking for you!” It is an interesting list of jobs. We know people who are sheriff’s deputies, and ranchers. I know some people who get to wear the smoky bear hat of the National Park Service. I guess they’re rangers, though maybe not what the casting company has in mind. Most of the survivalists, hunters and trackers we know don’t pursue those interests full-time. They need day jobs as well. As for spending time “outdoors in the beautiful South Dakota country,” maybe they’d like to follow the woodchucks around for a few days. We do see some really beautiful country.

So I’m not much of a television watcher. We do have a new-to-us flat screen TV in our basement. It is great for watching YouTube videos. We don’t have cable, but there are quite a few interesting programs that can be gotten over the Internet. But it takes time to watch TV and I often have other priorities for the use of my time. People who like to live outdoors have less time for being indoors, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that television show casting company has no interest in guys who are pushing sixty and whose jobs involve occasionally tackling a pile of paperwork on a desk that is far too messy to be pleasant to look at. And I wouldn’t describe myself as a survivalist. I learned long ago that I need other people in order to make it in this world. I find my time better invested in building community than in figuring out how I will survive without others.

In fact, I find it a bit intriguing to think that anyone would be interested in the stuff of real life in South Dakota. I am no expert. I don’t watch reality TV. But I think that there isn’t anything on TV that is very much based in reality. The way real people live isn’t the stuff of television. If they want to follow a real South Dakota man, they probably have to get used to getting up before daylight all winter long. They have to be understood that cattle have to be fed regardless of the weather. They have to understand that machines break at inconvenient times, that cleaning diesel filters is stinky and so is the stuff underfoot when it warms up a little. Sometimes when things go wrong there are words that would need to be “bleeped” from television. I’ve been out in “the beautiful South Dakota country,” when it is so muddy that you bring a half pound of the stuff into the car when you get out to open a gate. I’ve been out there when it is so windy that their sound crews wouldn’t be able to record voices. I’ve been out in the middle of the country in the middle of the night when there is nothing very interesting to look at. What we see as reality might not be the stuff of television.

It turns out that the casting director isn’t really in Rapid City at all. There is just a crew sent by the company and a lot of advertising. Simonian, it seems, likes the idea of South Dakota far better than she likes the reality. “I’ve never been to South Dakota. Close, though, I’ve been to Minnesota.” They have no idea what the television companies will be interested in – they’re just trying to come up with ideas at this stage. They probably aren’t interested in riding 2 ½ hours in a car to get up to Eagle Butte or in taking the gravel roads through the reservation. They probably don’t want to take pictures of children who have to ride the bus 2 hours a day or of the folks who have to drive for hours to get to a hospital. They probably don’t understand that sometimes it takes the sheriff a couple of hours to get to the other end of the county.

And they probably don’t understand people like me, who will never watch one of their “reality shows.” Real reality is good enough for me. I don’t seem to crave watching someone else’s image of what reality should be like. Actually, I’m thinking that most real South Dakotans don’t go in for all of that drama all of the time in the first place. We sort of enjoy the peace of this place. We like quiet times and enjoy sitting on a rock watching an eagle circle overhead. We go outside at night just to look at the sky. We can sit by the edge of the creek and watch for the fish for half a day. Sometimes we don’t move very much at all.

Now if they’re interested in lots of Dakota Drama, I think their other project is bound to yield plenty. Watching all of those imported Texans dealing with 30 below is a real spectator sport.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

OK, I actually know the answer to this one. The question is, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” The answer is: “A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.” I know the answer because the dormitory that was my home during my freshman year of college was also the dormitory of the Western College of Auctioneering. The Auctioneering College has since moved, but back in those days it was in an old sandstone building on the northwest corner of the campus of Rocky Mountain College. The Auctioneers who were in town for the resident portion of the course of study stayed in Jorgensen Hall. These days the building where the Auctioneers took their classes is gone. Jorgensen Hall has been remodeled into a series of individual units with private entrances. Back then it was a series of long hallways with rooms for two people per room and large bathrooms at the ends and midway of the halls. The halls and bathrooms echoed with tile floors and concrete block walls. It was a good place for auctioneers to practice.

And practice they did. Using a sing-dong delivery, they would say, “How much would could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could if a woodchuck could chuck wood.” The entire question and answer was delivered with a single breath. Over and over agin. They would vary the syllabic emphasis and say it again. They would mispronounce and then repeat. They would change the emphasis and repeat. When they got it just right, they would say it louder. Over and over again. I’m not sure, but I always assumed that saying the phrase was a part of the final exam for auctioneers. I imagined a large hall in the old building with a couple of teachers at one end and the class lined up at the other. A student would have to repeat the question and answer loud and clearly enough to be heard and understood without a pause for a breath before that student would be allowed to graduate.

Then again there is the possibility that a woodchuck can’t actually chuck wood. They are burrowing animals and they spend most of their time underground. On the other hand, they do have sharp teeth and when they encounter a root when digging, they simply chew through the root and presumably use their claws and that silly backwards waddle to shove the dirt combined with the chewed root right down and out of the tunnel they’re digging. When they reach the entrance, they would then be chucking wood.

Of course the name, like many other names comes from the inability of people to communicate. In the Algonquian language the name for the animal is “wuchak,” The Narragansett name is very similar. The spelling is approximated since neither Algonquian nor Narragansett were written languages. I imagine that in the decades before the arrival of European settlers on this continent, Native linguists used to sit around the campfire at their meetings and try to devise words that people who had grown up speaking English would never be able to pronounce correctly. “Those hordes from across the sea may conquer our people, but they’ll never conquer our language!” they would shout after having a few rounds at the late evening cocktail hour. OK. I made that up. But I do know that at least the Oxford English Dictionary’s online etymology dictionary says that the contemporary name, “woodchuck” is derived from the Algonquain “otchek” and perhaps the Ojibwa “otchig.” I don’t know where the Oxford English Dictionary gets its spelling of indigenous languages, but when my Cree friends say the word, it sounds like “wuchak” to me. And the Cree are the modern descendants of the Algonquains. My Cree friends all live in Canada so that ought to make them experts about something. They’re the ones that told me that the settlers even got the animal wrong. In Cree, the word is the name for the marten. How it got transferred to the animal we now know a woodchuck is a mystery. The Cree believe it comes from the inability of English settlers to understand anything that has to do with the natural world.

What I do know is that the Woodchuck Society at 1st Congregational United Church of Christ in Rapid City, South Dakota can deliver and stack about 50 cords of split firewood each year to our partners on the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River reservations. Today we head out to Wanblee (the word for eagle in Lakota) to deliver firewood. Our distribution partner in Wanblee is the Roman Catholic Church and they will have everything organized. Upon our arrival, teams of locals will begin to deliver the firewood to individual homes. Young tribal members have to deliver to elders before receiving their own firewood. Within a few hours of our delivery all of the wood will have made its way to individual homes. We’ll probably schedule a second delivery for early next year.

You might say that a cord of firewood is worth about $100. If we deliver 50 cords, it is about $5,000 worth of energy assistance to our partners. That is how the people in our national disaster relief office see it when we apply for matching funds when severe weather hits our region. But the firewood is worth more than that to our partners. At about 14.8 million BTU per cord, ponderosa pine is replacing propane as a primary heating source. A cord of pine produces about the same heat as 162 gallons of propane. At $1.44 per gallon, we’re saving families about $235 for each cord of firewood we deliver.

A woodchuck could chuck could chuck $11,750 worth of wood. And they do.

Our woodchucks chuck the wood quite a few times before it gets to our partners. Some of our woodchucks go out into the forests on private land and gather the chunked firewood from the places where the landowners have cut down the trees and cut it into chunks to slow the spread of pine bark beetles. Some woodchucks get whole logs that are donated. Those have to be cut into 5’ pieces to be loaded onto our trailer. However we receive the gift of wood, we haul it from the donor. Then we chuck it into big piles on the churchyard. The pieces that are too long for a stove are cut into smaller pieces. Then the pieces are taken one by one, split and stacked by other woodchucks. We call them splitting parties. There isn’t a lot of party, mostly work.

Then the woodchucks load it into pickups and trailers.

Then we deliver it to our partners, unload and stack it.

A woodchuck can chuck a lot of wood – enough to really help.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

I am not a follower of the Mayan calendar. I have a calendar app on my smart phone with all of my dates. Theoretically it is synced with my computer and with the church’s calendar on the cloud, but the system is a bit glitch and it is not at all uncommon for there to be duplicate appointments on my cell phone calendar. It is a bit annoying, but hardly the end of the world. It is my understanding that the Mayan calendar is a somewhat older method of marking the passage of time, which although nice because it doesn’t need to have its batteries recharged, is incompatible with Google Calendar on the web.

I recently heard an interview with Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She was recalling that in the late 1970’s before the advent of personal computers, when the “home computer” was first being imagined, a conference of scientists gathered at MIT. They discussed possible uses of computers in home settings. Among the topics discussed was keeping an appointment calendar. The scientists rejected that as a possible use of home computers because there was no problem with a simple notebook computer. If you used a pencil it was easily erased, individual dates could be easily kept. Why use a machine to do something that is so elegantly and efficiently done with a simple pencil and paper? They were certain that calendars on computers would never achieve popular use. OK. They were wrong, but it is hardly the end of the world.

I do understand, however, that for those who do follow the Mayan calendar there is a conclusion of some sort with the end of the 13-baktun cycle at the winter solstice this year. Let’s see, if you don’t know what a Baktun is, you’re not alone. I had to look it up. It is 20 katun cycles of the ancient Maya Long Count Calendar. That makes a baktun 144,000 days or just over 394 years. Again, I’m no expert on the Mayan calendar, but it is my understanding that the end of the 13th Baktun is also the beginning of the 14th Baktun. Then a mere 394 more years and the 15th Baktun will begin. J. Eric S. Thompson claims that there is an error in the Mayan Calendar that goes all the way back to the 9th Baktun, so there is the possibility that the years don’t quite line up the way that they were originally imagined. It is all very confusing and I’m not sure I fully understand it, but it is hardly the end of the world.

Some New Age followers say that the end of the 13th Baktun is all about spiritual awakening. They have found something about the winter solstice that corresponds to a scientific understanding of the current location of the Sun in the Milky Way. Other New Age followers have read something about the alignment of the predictions of Nostradamus and the Mayan calendar. I’m not a New Age follower, and I sometimes have trouble understanding even what is “new” about New Age ideas. They often seem like watered-down versions of spiritual practices and concepts that have been practiced for generations. I don’t really get New Age beliefs, but it is hardly the end of the world.

At the church, we are used to one calendar ending and another beginning. It happens every year for us – in July. I know you are thinking that we ought to get ourselves aligned with the regular calendar, but the secular New Year’s Day comes in the middle of Christmas and we need to have planning that projects a longer distance, so we use 18-month planning calendars that start with the month of July. This allows us to always have a few months into the future and to make our calendar change during the season of Pentecost, which in the church is also known as “ordinary” time because it involves fewer festivals. Theoretically the pace of our work slows down in the summer and we are able to do more planning at that time of the year. It is an imperfect system, but it works pretty well for us. We don’t panic when December 31 comes, because our planning calendars still have a full year of days left and we know we’ll get a new calendar with 18months (and six months of overlap) in July.

But there are still more than a few people who are predicting that the world is going to end. It is my understanding that this belief is more popular among non-Mayans than among the Maya themselves. I only know a few Maya persons myself. I have a cousin whose daughter married a native of Belize who has some Mayan ancestry. They have three children, all adopted, who also have Mayan heritage. They aren’t prepping for the end of the world. Last time I checked they were using calendars that were given away by various merchants in the towns in Montana near where they farm.

I guess you could say that for many Mayans the end of the world has already come. The population is estimated to have been about 22 million at the height of the civilization. Only about 7 million Mayans are alive today, mostly living in Central America. There are lots of theories about the decline of Mayan civilization and population. It is impressive to me that Mayan people continue to survive and thrive after several attempts at genocide.

There seems to never be a shortage of people predicting the end of the world, either. We were supposed to face doom in 2000 and again in 2003 and then again in 2006. There was some preacher predicting that 2011 was going to be the end of the world. When his first date didn’t bring the end, the revised his calculations and predicted a second date for the end of the world a few months later. But when one cycle ends, another begins.

Sir Isaac Newton is said to have famously commented, “I see no reason why the world would end before 2060.” If the world doesn’t end this month, there could always be new predictions surrounding 2060 or some other year.

It is all very fascinating, but it is hardly the end of the world.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Jesus said, “For wherever two or three come together in my name, there I am among them.” (Matthew 18:20) We know this is true, but it is really empty to fall into the temptation of counting numbers and pretending that somehow a bigger gathering is somehow better. We’ve even coined a phrase for the few really big congregations. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion, a megachurch is a congregation that has 2,000 or more in average weekly attendance. Megachurches have large buildings – sometimes campuses of buildings. And they have worship that resembles stadium events, with a huge stage, lots of video monitors, professional sound and lights and music provided by well-rehearsed ensembles.

But I can’t find anything in the Gospels that would lead one to believe that the goal of religion is quantity. There are some stories of large crowds gathering around Jesus. The miracle of the feeding of 5,000 clearly implies that there were that many people who had gathered to hear Jesus. Were it to happen today, people might be more impressed that Jesus taught such a crowd without a sound system. We might call it the miracle of communication.

We seem to be hung up with counting. At our church the ushers make a physical count of the number of people in worship. We also have pew pads that are tallied and entered into a computer each week. And we use printed bulletins for worship. There is a weekly discussion among the members of our staff about how many bulletins we should print each week. We like to be close enough so that there are only a few left over. We celebrate each week when we run out as a sign that somehow we are more successful if more people attend worship. We report our statistics to the yearbook office each year. There are members of our church who demand statistics about church school attendance, youth group participation, and other areas of the life of the church. There is practically nothing that we do that doesn’t involve counting.

We have more than one faithful member whose way of measuring success is completely focused on numbers. I spoke with a long-time member last night and was grilled about budget performance, net gain in members, and a host of other statistical items. I know from years of similar conversations that my success or failure in the eyes of that member is directly related to an expectation of continual growth. Percentage of increase is the most important statistic to that member. I’m grateful that my job doesn’t involve dealing with information about individual donors, but each time I get the list of questions from this particular member, I wonder if he increases his pledge to match the church budget each year. It is a good thing that I don’t know the answer to the question. It does make me sad that this particular member never asks about mission, about people served, or about volunteer hours.

I don’t believe that the church is about numbers. You can’t measure faithfulness with a mathematical formula.

Last night seven of us gathered for an Advent prayer service. I could easily come up with the number of people this morning because I know everyone by name. We took a half hour of our lives, read a simple liturgy, and offered our prayers. We sat in a circle around the communion table and shared heartfelt concerns and celebrations. It was pure joy.

In the midst of a very busy season the days in our office get long. I try to get to the office before 7 am in order to make sure that things are ready when the others arrive. We have been struggling with computer problems this week, so I have spent extra time making sure that other staff members can access the information that they need to do their jobs. There are the usual concerns of a church our size – contact with members who are housebound, visits to hospitals and nursing homes, keeping track of those who come and go from our life together. We have plenty of paper to prepare. We have a budget to follow and one to develop. We have annual reports to prepare, a newsletter to produce, worship resources to be in place, a web site to maintain, phone calls to make, classes to teach and meetings – always there are plenty of meetings. And everyone who works at our church knows that the most important part of our work is relationship with people. We live for working with volunteers, visiting our members, reaching out to our community. The computers and telephones and meetings and budgets are all work that we do to make the real life of the church possible. My days often go until 8 or 9 pm. Sometimes I get home for one meal, but I almost never have two meal breaks in a 12-hour shift. I’m not complaining. I love my work, but it does move at a rapid pace.

So we’re often tired at this time of the year.

Here is a statistic from last night: One prayer service. Total attendance was seven. Three of those attending were officiating ministers. That’s right we invested the staff time of three ordained ministers to lead four members of our congregation in worship. It was a great investment of time and energy.

Ministers need to pray, too. We need to sit quietly in the sanctuary. We need to listen to the words of scripture. We need a place where we can voice our own prayer concerns. We need to allow the quiet to enter into our lives. We need a break from counting and statistics.

We’ll be there all season on Wednesday evenings at 5:30. Praying. Lighting candles. Taking time to be quiet. Maybe there will be six other members of the congregation next week. Maybe there will be twenty. If there were none it would still be a wise investment of staff time.

There is no statistic that will measure the quality of our spiritual lives. And there are moments when we would do well to worship for the glory of God rather than the approval of the bean counters. Hope, peace, joy, love – the gifts of Advent do not require counting. Thanks be to God.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

The Philippines are no stranger to severe storms. It was just a year ago, in December of 2011, when Typhoon Washi roared into the islands bringing death and destruction. Over 1300 people were killed; many of them victims of the flash flooding that occurred after torrential rains battered the islands. The government of the Philippines scrambled to create more storm shelters and to increase the warning given to residents in the wake of that storm. They knew that more storms would be coming and they worked hard to create scenarios where there might be less loss of life.

The people didn’t have to wait long to see their systems tested again. Typhoon Bopha is hammering the Philippines. And it is a much bigger storm than Washi. The storm is now over the western island of Palawan and is expected to move out into the South China Sea by tomorrow. The hardest hit area was Compostela Valley province. Neighboring Davao Oriental province was also badly affected. Early reports say that about 50 people were killed in Davao Oriental province. The stories coming out of Compostela Valley province is worse. At least 156 people have lost their lives. In Andap village, people were huddled in a school and a village hall that were set up as shelters as the winds and rain raged outside. The roofs held and the people seemed safe. Unknown to them, however, catchment basins for farms higher up in the mountains were being overfilled by the rain. The walls of the basins failed and the subsequent rush of water and mud roared down upon Andap village. At least 43 people were killed when the shelters were overrun with the muddy water. They had followed the storm plan, but the storm plan wasn’t adequate for the fury of Bopha.

The recovery effort will need to be a long-term project, because the same waters that wiped out the shelters have also wiped out all of the crops. The main livelihood of those who survive the storm will be destroyed by the storm. Provincial Governor Arturo Uy told Reuters news agency that the typhoon has destroyed 70-80% of the plantations. The main crop of the plantations is bananas for export. As is often the case in severe storms, a full assessment can’t be completed because fallen trees and collapsed bridges make travel to and from the most damaged areas impossible.

The typhoon is causing its most severe damage in southern parts of the island nation, while last year’s storm hammered the north worse than the south.

I have never traveled to the Philippines, but I have paid attention to them for years. Our church has long had a presence and multiple partnerships in the Philippines and agricultural development has been one of the important aspects of work there. One of the stories of my growing up years was the work that we did one year to convert a used pull combine into a stationary harvesting machine. We then applied a fresh coat of rust-resistant paint and crated the machine for shipment to the Philippines. The project was inspired by the visit of a missionary to our church and a subsequent visit by that missionary to our home and my father’s business. Later, when we were serving in North Dakota, we paid specially close attention to the Philippines. Rev. Lloyd Van Vactor who was serving with his wife, Maisie, in the Phillipines, had grown up in a nearby town. The Van Vactors served in the southern Philippines, in Mindanao region, from 1954 until 1981. We had the opportunity to meet them when they returned from the mission field. Lloyd served the church administering One Great Hour of Sharing for another decade after their return from the Philippines. They retired to Washington State, but we saw them again when they were vacationing in the Black Hills after we had moved to Rapid City.

So I notice news from the Philippines, in part because my awareness of the people there has been raised by my relationships within the church. It makes sense to me that One Great Hour of Sharing funds will be among the first relief dollars to go to work as the Philippines struggle to recover. Our church has been forging partnerships in the Philippines for more than a century. Those partnerships will endure despite changes in politics, severe weather, and many other challenges. In a nation that is predominantly Muslim, we have found a way to live our Christian faith with our Christian brothers and sisters. Pioneering work on Christian Muslim relations has grown out of the Philippines – work that has already made a difference in the Middle East and will continue to guide us as we learn to live in an increasingly multi-religious world.

Funds from One Great Hour of Sharing continue to support recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy as fall turns to winter and work continues. Sometimes when we are receiving special offerings like One Great Hour of Sharing in the spring or the Blanket fund in the fall, it seems like we are contributing to things that are far away. We do have a long reach for our mission efforts. Blankets Hygiene Kits and Cleanup Buckets are already available in the Philippines. Our funds are already at work in recovery efforts. But those resources were also available for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. We serve both at home and around the world. Severe storms don’t differentiate between victims. Our assistance also goes to the places of most need.

I used to have a vision that we might repair a broken world. I was out to save all of humanity with my work within the church. Now that I am older I know that we cannot fix all of the ills of the world. I know that there will be more storms next year. I know that there will be more victims, more grief, more suffering. But I still feel the call to do what I can to help. It was a call that was instilled in my at a very young age as I watched my parents figure out how they could support distant missions. It is a call that will remain strong as storms bring destruction to people in distant places. I am grateful to be a member of a church that is so generous. Next year the need will be even greater. Next year our generosity will need to grow as well. Our role is not to fix the world’s problems. But we are called to join with God in acts of compassion.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

The high yesterday was around 65 degrees. There is little snow other than the machine-made snow at the ski resorts in the hills. It is hard to believe that it is December. The main clue to the season is that our shadows are still long at noontime. The sun has shifted farther to the south and it doesn’t rise quite as high in the sky as is the case in the summertime. But our weather remains mild.

There are some advantages to the gentle winter. Yesterday we were able to attend a funeral that was nearly 300 miles away. There have been plenty of winter days in the past when we would have talked ourselves out of that much driving. As we stood on the windy hill for the committal, I know that there were others who were thinking what I was thinking: “It sure is a good thing it isn’t snowing.”

There were other thoughts as well. We were in a tiny cemetery on a hill above Ponca Creek. Right on the Nebraska line between St. Charles, SD and Napier, NE, Ponca Creek drains the small section of land between the Missouri River to the North and the Niobrara to the south. Keya Paha creek flows into the Niobrara, but little Ponca Creek keeps its own course until emptying into the Missouri a bit before the Niobrara flows into the reservoir behind Gaviins Point Dam.

It is empty country. There are no homes at the old Ponca Creek townsite. The only buildings remaining are the Episocpal Church and the old Congregational Church and fellowship hall. The Episcopal Church still has occasional services. The Congregational Church has moved to a newer building alongside the highway between St. Charles and Bonesteel.

For an isolated rural cemetery, there are far too many fresh graves. This community has seen too many deaths. The family with whom we mourned yesterday has gathered for three funerals in the past year. Or friend Rev. Norman Blue Coat, one of the officiants at yesterday’s funeral, will lead three funerals this week. Last week he presided over the funeral of a 12-year-old boy who died by suicide. The pall of grief hangs heavily over Indian country.

While the population of natives in our region is gradually increasing, there are plenty of deaths that can be labeled premature due to the prevalence of a variety of chronic diseases, many of which are not treated as effectively as they might be. For most of enrolled tribal members, health care is a treaty right, promised by representatives of the United States Government in the treaties that resulted in the tribes having far less land and, for the most part being relegated to reservations. The elders who negotiated the treaties were concerned that their people might be plagued by lack of food and illness if they were crammed into the reservations. They were guaranteed that these would not be problems – that the government would provide food and medicine. The promise has been imperfectly kept over the years.

For most of our neighbors who live on reservations health care involves a lot of travel. There are some medical services available from reservation clinics. Other medical services are provided in hospitals in Rapid City, Sioux Falls and other urban locations. It is not at all uncommon for me to visit people in the hospital who are 200 or more miles from home. Family members who provide transportation and who come to visit their loved ones face the expense of travel and obtaining food and lodging in distant cities. What is often labeled as “free” by outsiders doesn’t seem free at all to those who live with the inefficiencies and expenses of the Indian Health Services System. The price paid in historic reduction of lands as well as the price paid in contemporary inconvenience is high.

Judith, whose funeral we attended yesterday, had been ill for a long time. She spent part of the last months in Milwaukee awaiting a liver transplant that didn’t occur. Her general health could not be stabilized enough for her to undergo the surgery. She struggled to be able to leaver Milwaukee to come home to South Dakota. When she finally got back to South Dakota, she lived out the end of her life in a hospital in Sioux Falls, 150 miles from home. That meant a 300-mile round trip drive for every relative who came to visit her in the hospital, including her aging parents who were already weighed down by grief and hard work and long lives. It was a 300 –mile round trip for her twin sister who was struggling to keep up with work.

It is a typical story in our country.

There was a steady stream of people who visited during the wake and the hall was filled for the funeral. The tributes were heartfelt. The expressions of support for the family were genuine. Life goes on. The children who were playing on the floor during the dinner after the committal brought smiles to faces that had so recently been filled with tears. The good food and good fellowship warmed bodies and nourished souls.

It was a hard day, but it was a good day.

I attend a lot of funerals. I see a lot of families in their times of grief. I believe that one of the strengths of our faith is that we were founded in the events surrounding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The story of our people is forged in grief and loss. And we are born of the conviction that death is not the end. “We are certain that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Furthermore, we practice the cycles of grief and loss and recovery each year with our six-week journey into the depths of Lent in preparation for the celebration of Easter.

We know that death is not the end. It is a truth that fits naturally with the experiences of Indigenous Americans. In battle after battle, through government programs and policies, there were serious attempts to destroy American Indians. Yet they survived. And they continue to survive.

The story is not over. There is more work yet to be done. There are more losses yet to be endured. There is more hope yet to be born. The deepest joy comes when we share the journey with each other.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

The Arikara and Ree people tended to stay pretty close to the river. At one time there were settlements along the Missouri in several locations throughout Dakota Territory. By the time that European settlers had begun to arrive, however, Dakota, Lakota and Nakota peoples had moved into the area and taken up their lifestyle of hunting and following the giant buffalo herds. Some Arikara and Ree remained, but by the time Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery arrived, they encountered Dakota people near the place where the Missouri flows into South Dakota. They were unaware of the tribal distinction between the Arikara and Dakota people until they reached Mandan, where they spent the winter and, among other things, received a more extensive education in the distinctions between the various indigenous tribes.

A century after Lewis and Clark, the territory had changed dramatically. There were now two new states, North Dakota and South Dakota, admitted to the union on the same day. The Dakota, Nakota and Lakota people had been given the popular name “Sioux,” derived from a mispronunciation of the name they were called by other tribes. They had also been forced onto he Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Cheyenne, Standing Rock and Lower Brule reservations.

As the 20th century dawned, an ambitious congressman persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to open remaining lands within the Dakotas for settlement. On May 15, 1904, the land that is now Gregory County was opened for settlement. Gregory county is on the west side of the Missouri River where the river enters South Dakota. The southern line of the county is the border of South Dakota and Nebraska. The eastern boundary is the Missouri River. By July of 1904, 2600 160-acre tracts had been designated for settlement.

The subsequent boom created several communities. The government town site – the place for the registration of homestead claims and publication of proof of claim – was Gregory. Within one year, the town grew from four surveyor’s stakes to a bustling town with over 250 buildings. There were two banks, two hardware stores, a meat market, two lumber companies, three hotels, a restaurant, two newspapers, a drug store, three blacksmith shops, a pool hall and even a furniture store. The town was, as they say, bursting at the seams.

The boom didn’t last long. The city continued to grow for a few years as land claims were proven up and then sold. The price of land rose steadily in the early years. By 1906, land was selling for as much as $3,500 per quarter – a sevenfold return on investment for those who had bought in or settled in just a couple of years earlier. By 1907, the city of Gregory had a public water works and was installing electric lights. An opera house was under construction. By 1908, when Tripp County was opened for settlement, there were 15 passenger trains a day that stopped in Gregory. The population of the county and of the city peaked sometime within the first decade of its life.

Life was different then. The way to travel quickly throughout the region was by train. There were no reliable automobiles yet and the state had yet to develop a modern highway system. People who lived in the county were generally limited in their travel to distances that could be covered by horseback in a day. They came to town for all of their services and did most of their business in the same county where they lived.

For the first 75 years of its existence, Union Congregational Church of Gregory was able to find well-qualified ministers who were among the most educated of the city’s citizens. The church was able to compete with other congregations of the plains to offer pay, housing and other amenities that were attractive to ministers. Nearby Yankton College provided a steady supply of young, educated leaders for the area’s churches.

By the mid-1990’s however, the community of Gregory had declined in population and the church was smaller as well. Young people who grew up in town tended to move away and seek employment in more urban centers. Area farms and ranches began to consolidate as it became possible to farm larger and larger areas with less labor. A modern highway system made it easy to travel to other cities to obtain goods and services. Bridges were built over the Missouri River diminishing the distinction between east river and west river communities. The community and the church both showed signs of decline.

Yesterday, we drove to Gregory in about four hours. Most of our travel was at 75mph on a modern interstate. The drive was pleasant even though the short days of winter meant that it was dark and we couldn’t enjoy much of the scenery. After we turned off of the Interstate, the cloud cover made everything dark and we couldn’t see the beautiful scenery as we drove along the Missouri bluffs. The frequent twists and turns of the highway were the only signals of the interesting country through which we drove.

We are in Gregory because it has a modern motel – a good place to spend the night before attending a funeral this morning in Bonesteel. Bonesteel is about a half hour southeast of Gregory about equal distance from Nebraska and the Missouri River in the little corner of the county where the river enters South Dakota making a diagonal line towards Pierre. South Dakota isn’t really divided into halves by the river. It enters the state near the southeast corner and exits closer to the center of the state. But our population is mostly in the eastern portion of our state, so when we use the term “East River” we are often referring to our more urban neighbors as much as we are to geographical location. The dividing line seems to work well for us. We’ve found that we don’t mind driving as much as do our eastern neighbors, so when we travel three or four hours and they travel one or two they believe that they have come half way. We don’t bother to correct their notions.

As we begin a new day, it is interesting to think of the story of this place and to imagine its future. It is difficult to imagine a scenario that will result in another population boom for Gregory County. This land seems to do best with a lower population. A sense of isolation is part of the charm of the territory. Many people will congregate in the cities on the other side of the river. At least that’s the way I hope it turns out. I like the open space and empty country. It’s worth the drive to attend the funeral of a friend or just to get together with others.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

We live in anticipation. Much of what we do is about preparation and anticipation of what is yet to come. Children play games and practice elements of adult living. Schools are about learning the necessary skills for jobs and life after graduation. We plan and save and think about the future as we go through our everyday lives. Much of the work that we do is preparing for things that are to come. The cycle at our office involves meetings that are essentially planning future events and activities; production of bulletins, which is a preparation for worship collecting data for the newsletter; and lots of visiting people. Often our visitations are conversations about what is going to happen.

We live our lives in preparation.

Advent is a season of preparation. Those of us who are parents remember well the season of preparation for the arrival of a child. There is space that needs to be prepared. Babies require special furniture, appropriately sized clothing, diapers and lots of other things that are not normally found in homes where there are no babies. There is also the psychological preparation for a major change in one’s life. Preparing for a child almost always involves multiple conversations with parents who will say things like, “You have no idea how much your life will change.” There is truth in the statement. There is no way to know what being a parent is all about until you start the process. You can anticipate having your sleep disrupted, but you can’t anticipate what that feels like night after night. You can think about what it means to have another person to love, but love is always a mystery until you are in the midst of it.

Today we begin the journey of Advent. It is a journey that we have taken before. Advent comes every year. And yet there is no way of really predicting what this year’s Advent will bring. Some of the preparation looks like preparing for a holiday. We unpack decorations that have been in storage for a year. Yesterday our church was full of activity as we put up trees, put away fall decorations, changed the sanctuary banners, set up the Advent wreath and did other chores that changed the appearance of our worship space. Years of life as a pastor, however, have taught me that Advent is far more than preparing for a holiday.

We begin Advent this year with a funeral. It isn’t the funeral of a member of our congregation and it won’t occur in our church. After worship today, we’ll drive east to Bonesteel, a tiny community of about 75 families in Gregory County. There will be an all night wake tonight and a funeral tomorrow for the daughter of a colleague who serves our Ponca Creek Church. We have been receiving reports of her health challenges and struggles for months now. We have followed the process of her illness, treatment, and failing. We remember when she and her sister were guests in our home. We recall the meetings we attended together, the projects we shared, and the events we attended. And we have been speaking of the pain of loss that her parents must be feeling. There is nothing in this world that prepares one for the loss of a child. And this family has known far too much grief in the years that we have known them and shared the path of ministry as colleagues.

In a sense our life together in the church is always a little bit about preparation for dying. Facing the transition from this life to eternity is a process of shifting priorities. The transition that death brings means leaving things behind. Some priorities of this life - wealth, success, recognition, and accomplishments – are left behind. Some things that once seemed important no longer are so.

But the funeral, and the season, though begun with the reality of our mortality and a deep sense of the grief and loss are not about dying. This is a time of living. And Advent is about preparing for living. Just as Joseph and Mary anticipated the birth of their child, we anticipate the birth of that which is yet to come. As The Andrews family mourns the loss of a daughter and a sister, they also have to figure out how to live the remainder of their lives with this loss. As we share this journey of grief with our friends and colleagues, we are deeply aware that the way things have been is not the way that they will be. The world is changing. We are all aging. Life doesn’t stop, but goes on. All of our lives are about preparing for what it to come.

I love the season of Advent. I love the candles, the quiet, and the preparation. I love the carols that we sing and the traditions that we observe. I love being in a place where children rehearse for a pageant and arts and crafts are passed from one generation to the next. I love the sense of anticipation. One of my favorite times each year is gathering in the church at 11:30 on Christmas Eve to share communion and toll the Christmas bell at midnight. But we are not there yet. We have to prepare. There is a journey that we need to travel before we once again gather in the dark of a winter’s night to proclaim the coming of God’s gift of light into the world.

There are many who think that religion is about preparing for dying. Because we do not turn away from grief and sorrow and loss and because ours is a faith that has a long tradition of being honest about the death of Jesus, it might be mistakenly interpreted that Christianity is about preparing for death. But it isn’t. It is about preparing for living. We live with a constant promise of new life even in the face of the reality of death and loss.

Advent begins and there is much joy that is yet to come.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

The 19th century dawned with no small amount of intrigue and politics in the courts of Europe. France was agitating to get Spain to declare war against Britain. The French and Spanish entered into a secret agreement that they would pay 72 million francs annually to France until it declared war in Britain. The British learned of the agreement. They understood that Spain did not intend to make the payments to France. They intended to use it as an excuse for building a war chest. The British also knew where the money was coming from. Spain was importing tons of gold and silver from its colonies in South and Central America. Since the Spanish fleet could only land at Cadiz, the British decided to interrupt the cash flow. Without declaring war, a British squadron, under the command of Commodore Graham Moore positioned itself and when the Spanish squadron appeared, they made their attack.

It would have been an evenly balanced fight, were it not for the element of surprise. Both squadrons entered the battle with four frigates. The casualties, however, were very uneven. The British lost 2 and 7 were wounded. The Spanish had 269 killed and 80 wounded. 600 Spanish sailors were captured along with 3 frigates. The fourth frigate, the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, was sunk on the 5th of October 1804. The battle set off another round of active fighting between Britain and Spain in what eventually was dubbed the Anglo-Spanish War of 1796-1808.

Spain called the action an act of piracy. They argued that it was an attack in peace time to a Spanish fleet carrying goods and civilian personnel. The Mercedes, however, was at the bottom of the sea and its treasure considered to be lost. The status remained until March of 2007, when Odyssey Marine Exploration recovered 17 tons of gold and silver from the Mercedes. Before the recovered treasure reached the shores of Florida, Spain was in the courts. After more than 200 years of claiming that the Mercedes was a private ship that had been sunk by pirates, the Spanish government changed its tune and claimed in the courts that it was really a sovereign ship, protected by sovereign immunity. The Mercedes, they claimed, had been the property of the Spanish government all along.

The courts sided with the Spanish government. In 2009 the Federal Court in Tampa found against Odyssey and ordered that the treasure be returned to Spain. The transfer took place last February. It amounted to a large number of plastic buckets filled with gold and silver coins as well as numerous other artifacts – 17 tons in all. The 594,000 silver coins are estimated to be worth as much as $500 million to collectors. It was the largest shipwreck haul in history.

Spanish ambassador to the United States, Jorge Dezcallar de Mazar said, “This is history. We bear witness to that fateful day 200 years ago. This is not money. This is historical heritage.”

The argument is a bit difficult to follow. Under international law of the early 1800’s it was in Spain’s advantage to argue that the ship was a private vessel attacked by ruthless pirates and not in any way a factor in the military operations of Spain or its intended continuation of war with Britain. Under the laws of the United States two hundred years later, it was to Spain’s advantage to argue that the Spanish government had owned the ship and its contents all along and that its recovery was in essence theft of Spanish property.

The first public display of the coins opened in Madrid by the Spanish Culture Ministry. Government officials were quick to point out that the coins were all imprinted with official Spanish Government seals, clearing indicating that the coins belonged to Spain. It was the argument that prevailed in the courts.

It may be convenient to call the coins “history” today. There was a time when they were an important revenue stream for an increasingly costly government that had exceeded the ability of its citizens to pay for its excesses.

No one, I guess, asked or considered how the people of Peru felt in the late 18th and early 19th century about Spanish conquistadors coming to their shores and forcing the indigenous people to work as slaves in mines where the gold and silver were extracted or the mills where the coins were minted, or the shipyards where the coins were loaded into frigates to make the journey to Spain where the Latin American gold was funding a war machine that ultimately proved too expensive for the Spanish to maintain. The requests of the Peruvian government to delay the court decision on ownership while they prepared their arguments for ownership of the treasure were rejected by the courts.

The courts never seriously considered the fact that the way the Spanish got the gold was to steal it.

It seems that there are a lot of people along the way who got greedy when they saw that much gold. The British found ways to spend the gold that they recovered from pirated Spanish vessels. The crews of the British ships found extra pay and earned extra money when they captured valuable cargoes. The Spanish profited richly when the loads of gold and silver reached their intended destinations. It was worth considerable risk in terms of men and equipment to sail from the Americas to Spain with the rich cargo. The Spanish crews were richly rewarded for their efforts if they survived the risks of the open sea.

I have no idea how the courts reached their decision. I have no idea what is right in such a situation. In a way, it seems like Odyssey ought to be able to recover some of the $2.6 million it invested in locating and recovering the treasure. On the other hand oceanic salvage has risks and the risk of losing money is one of those risks. I guess it is a good thing that the Spanish Government has decided that the treasure will be placed in museums. It might be tempting for the cash-strapped government of Spain to sell the treasure in an attempt to balance its books.

One thing is clear. From the day the gold and silver was mined from the ground, the wealth has not produced lasting happiness for anyone.

I’m fortunate. I have no claim to any of the treasure. Not one coin, not one portion is mine. And it appears, from what I can read, I am happier than anyone who thinks they should own the gold and silver. Let them fight over it. I’ve found a way to joy without the wealth.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.