As the sun rose after a night with all too little sleep, I found myself sitting in the back seat of a police cruiser as it drove through the hills on winding roads. It was my first time in the back seat of a cruiser. The seat is plastic and very hard with no springs or padding. Even though I had my seat belt fastened, I had trouble sitting still. I was sliding around more than I wanted. And I was feeling every bump. More than that, I was well aware that I could not get out of that back seat by myself. The doors would not open from the inside. There were no controls to lower the windows. There was a welded steel cage between the front seat occupants and me. The entire back of the car is designed so that it can be easily hosed out and sanitized in the event an occupant becomes sick. I was cold and the knees of my pants were wet from spending quite a bit of time outdoors, some of it kneeling and squatting next to a car.

I was trying to think of something to say. The deputy was busy driving and didn’t seem inclined to address me at all. It wasn’t a place I expected to find myself and so, as I rode I recounted the events that led me to be locked in the back of a police cruiser.

I have never been arrested, and I wasn’t being arrested that morning, either. I was riding in the back seat of the cruiser because we had another passenger for the front seat and it made more sense for me to climb in back than for our passenger. Whatever discomfort I had felt was nothing compared to what he had gone through.

The story is really his to tell, and not mine, but I think that enough years have gone by and enough details can be omitted that readers of the blog will not be able to make an identification of the people in the story. Actually I do not know all of the details. What I do know is that we were transporting our passenger to his parents’ home. Sometime in the night before he had been with his girlfriend at a cabin in the hills. She was suffering from multiple mental illnesses. They had argued. She had gone outside. He went out after her. She turned and he saw she had a handgun. It was his pistol. He asked her to put it down. Instead she raised it to her ear and discharged the weapon. She died instantly.

After he called 911, it took some time for the ambulance and coroner to arrive. The roads were slippery and the hill was steep. And they were quite a ways from town. I was in a third sheriff’s car to leave town heading for the site. By the time we arrived, we had been listening to radio chatter about the slippery hill and the adventures of the ambulance crew. We also knew that the woman had died and that the evidence was pointing toward suicide.

I spent my time at the site squatting and kneeling next to a patrol car in which the boyfriend sat. His emotions were raw. His grief was extreme. He didn’t know it yet, but he was headed for post-traumatic stress from what he had just witnessed. I had already seen a few too many bodies and had no desire to look at the wider scene. There were plenty of officers to take care of that part of the process. I even thought to invite the boyfriend to turn away and not look as they took the body bag to the ambulance.

Then we were on our way – heading through the hills to transport the boyfriend to a place where he could be safe and supported. After a few minutes visiting with his parents and sharing resources and information we were back in the car again. This time I got to ride in the front seat. We used the radio to find the coroner who was heading to the home of the mother of the deceased to make the official notification.

In a textbook case these events go smoothly. The coroner makes an official notification and stays with the bereaved until the LOSS team arrives, hopefully within 15 minutes. In this case, there was more than a little bit of confusion over family notifications and we ended up leaving their home and going to two different places of work to contact a sister and the mother. By that time we were all together. And, since I was traveling in the marked patrol car, we were careful to park it around the corner each time so that it wasn’t visible to the family. The coroner had an unmarked car.

Again, if the morning was hectic and confused for me and for law enforcement officers, it was much worse for the family. The news we had to deliver is news that no family wants to receive.

The reason for writing this in a blog, however, is not to focus on the tragedy, shock, and depth of loss. Those are real to be sure. What I need to say is that there was real hope visible throughout the adventure. We delivered a young man who had experienced great trauma into the arms of loving parents who were there to comfort him, to hear his story and to make sure he got the care that he needed including counseling when the time was right. As soon as we delivered our tragic news to the survivors of the woman who died we saw the community begin to gather. Co-workers offered words of comfort and offers of food and other assistance. Friends began to arrive with condolences and support. The community was showing its best that day.

And the officer and I have gained a story. The years have passed. The seriousness of our work hasn’t abated. But both of us have learned that telling the story of me being strapped in to the backseat of the deputy’s cruiser with a few key details left out raises eyebrows and eventually will get a laugh. We have become much closer friends through sharing the experience and telling the story. I may have even gained a bit of sympathy for those who ride in the backseat of that car unwillingly.

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.

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” The question, translated in different ways, appears both in Matthew (6:27) and Luke (12:25). The point is clear: worry and fear are non-productive and, in many cases, unnecessary. I know this in my head. I have studied and sought to heed the advice of these words for most of my adult life.

And it is more than just a cerebral commitment for me. I have tried to incorporate these teachings into the deepest places in my life. For decades I have practiced centering prayer as a discipline and a lifestyle. I engage in a daily practice of releasing my fears and anxieties. And, in some moments of my life, I can be quite effective. Three weeks ago I had a dental procedure that is usually reserved for patients under general anesthesia. For more than an hour and a half, the surgeon worked, opening the tissue of my gum, cutting apart the last molar back on one side of my mouth and extracting it in two pieces. After the roots were removed, he packed the sockets with bone chips in a bone graft, covered the area with a special film and then drilled into the bone and installed an implant pin before carefully stitching up the tissue over the area. I was awake and alert for the entire procedure, though I had received sufficient local anesthesia to keep me from feeling pain. I simply went into my practice of deep and careful breathing, relaxing, and centering my thought. The time passed quickly for me without any worries or anxieties. The oral surgeon and his assistants kept remarking on how calm I was and how easy it was for them to do their work.

A number of years ago, when I was accidentally burned, I used centering prayer as a technique for pain control. When the dermatologist had to do a procedure, sometimes as painful as debriding the area to remove unhealthy tissue and sometimes as simple as changing a dressing, it caused quite a bit of pain. I would use my faith practice to divert my attention away from the pain. Sometimes I used visualization techniques. Often I focused on my breathing. Such techniques work, in part, because they are regularly practiced. After I had healed and was undergoing my final check-up with that particular dermatologist, he commented that he was impressed with how I could go into my “Zen” state and allow them to work on my burns. I responded that I didn’t know much about Zen, and that I would describe the practice as prayer, but that it really helped me cope with the discomfort.

What I am trying to say is that I have practiced relaxation and centering prayer carefully and diligently for decades and I know its power.

So why is it that I get inordinately anxious about certain things in my life?

Yesterday was the annual meeting of our congregation. It was a very routine annual meeting. The Department of Stewardship and Budget had worked long and diligently to produce a balanced budget that is realistic and well crafted. The nominations committee had a full slate of candidates for all of the positions. The moderator was well prepared and had a well-organized agenda. The Department of Hospitality had prepared the space and was serving fresh rolls and fruit. The congregation was seated comfortably at round tables and the attendance was good.

But I was uptight – really uptight. I didn’t even realize until it was all over how anxious I had been. I fretted and worried about possible dissention in the congregation. I thought of every possibility for one member to say angry words to another. I considered all kinds of parliamentary maneuvering that might hang up the meeting. I didn’t mean to think these things. I just did.

I care deeply about congregational processes. I believe, in the core of my being, that the ministry of the church belongs to the whole church. It is my duty as a pastor to listen carefully to the congregation and to reflect its priorities, wishes and concerns. I see every congregational meeting as an avenue of communication with me. I take all of them personally because I am personally responsible to the congregation. My calling is not just a job. The congregation doesn’t just evaluate adherence to a job description. I am called to be a pastor – to live the life of faithfulness in the midst of the congregation. It isn’t just what I do. It is who I am.

In a congregation the size of ours there is no moment when everyone is happy. We are a diverse and wondrously complex collection of individuals who see things differently, have different priorities and differing levels of commitment. I know some of the complaints that have been said about how things are going in our church. I have gone face-to-face with some of those who disagree with elements of my style as a pastor. I have sought to listen to those who are upset. It is possible that what I know is not the whole picture. By the time the meeting started yesterday, my head told me that things are going well with the church and that it is a good time to keep moving forward in the directions that we have set. But elsewhere, inside of me, I knew that there was room for surprises. It wasn’t that I feared a personal attack. It was that I feared that someone might inadvertently say something mean to another member of the congregation. Feelings can be hurt. Damage can be done. And I really care about these people.

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”

My fears were for naught. The Holy Spirit still blows through God’s people when they gather. I am not in control and I should not be in control.

Shakespeare got it right. When we allow our minds to wander off into all sorts of gossip, rumor and overhearing the best thing to do is to make a comedy of the entire situation and get us to laugh at ourselves. In addition to continuing practice of centering prayer I need another piece of advice: lighten up.

Although I couldn’t do it yesterday, this morning I am laughing at myself.

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.

Each year the U.S. Census Bureau releases a variety of different statistics. In January, they release the list of the counties in the country with the highest poverty rates. There are no real surprises on the list this year. Once again Ziebach County, South Dakota is the county in the nation with the highest poverty rate. That has been the case every year since it first topped the list in 2004. South Dakota has plenty of poverty, with four counties making the nation’s top ten: Ziebach, Todd, Shannon, and Corson. Ziebach, Todd and Shannon are the three most impoverished counties in the nation. Corson comes in at 9th.

There are a couple of surprises in the statistics, however, at least for me. The first surprise is just the arbitrary nature of the number chosen by the statisticians to determine the poverty rate. That number is $22,314 for a family of four. With a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, it takes 62 hours a week to earn enough for a family of four to rise above the poverty level. That means that there is no way that a single person can support a family. It takes a minimum of two wage earners for a household if workers earn only minimum wage. I do not know how the number is determined, but I know that there are plenty of families with hard working breadwinners who aren’t making it.

The second surprise is actually a positive one. Ziebach County has a poverty rate of 50.1 percent. That means that just over half of the residents of the county have incomes that are below the official government poverty rate. It is an alarming number, but it is down from the 62 percent rate of 2009. If we can sustain the programs and projects that work to reduce poverty, it is possible that by next year we will have achieved the goal of no county in the nation with more than half of its citizens living below the poverty rate.

That is an admirable goal, but far from the elimination of poverty. All of the counties on the list of the ten most impoverished counties have poverty rates above 40 percent. And there are really eleven counties on the list this year because Lake County, Tenn. And Allendale County, S.C. tied for 10th place on the list.

There is nothing new about poverty in Indian country. It has been the story ever since the reservation system was established and tribes were forced to abandon their traditional ways and occupy much smaller territories than had been the case prior to European settlement of the continent.

My wife’s mother grew up in Isabel, in Dewey County. Dewey is to the east of Ziebach and south of Corson County. It isn’t on the list of the ten most impoverished counties this year, but it has made the list in the past. In the Great Depression of the 1930’s her father, who ran a drug store and supplemented it with a wide variety of other services, including working as the town’s funeral director, died. He left his family with barely the means to survive. They took in laundry and did whatever work was possible. There was no money for any extras and there were more than a few hungry times. In later years, her husband would say, “We didn’t really notice poverty in the ‘30’s. Everyone was poor. But their family wasn’t just poor, they were REALLY poor.

The entire northwest quarter of South Dakota is comprised of land where it is hard to earn a living. The soil and weather will support a little small grain production, primarily wheat, barley and a few sunflowers, but the land really isn’t much for traditional farming. Ranchers do a bit better, raising sheep and cattle if they have access to sufficient pasture. Ranching is a tough game in those areas as well, with tiny margins favoring larger operations, and larger operations struggling with shortages of labor because they cannot support enough families to cover the miles and get the work done.

The solutions to poverty are not simple. The reality is that there are not enough jobs in these counties to provide for the population. There are more people than there are jobs. Add to that the simple fact that in Ziebach County, for example, more than half of the population is under the age of 18. Either the youth who are becoming adults right now have to leave the county or the poverty rate will increase simply because the number of people competing for too few jobs will increase.

Another dynamic to consider is that compared to many counties, these counties have small populations. The 2010 Census recorded 2801 people in Ziebach County. That is up from 2542 in 2008. The birth rate is relatively high, but the totals remain relatively low. That means that statistical variations are common. The decrease in the poverty rate between 2009 and 2011 may not indicate a trend. It will take time to know the impact for sure.

The poverty in our state raises some serious concerns for those of us who live in more affluent conditions. Our County, Pennington, has a poverty rate of only 15.2%. And there are plenty of us who are in the remaining 84.8% who have the means to share. Economies are complex and there are plenty of people who will give plenty of arguments as to why sharing is not the solution to the problem of poverty. But the vision of the Biblical prophets is clear. We are called to work towards the day when sharing by all will mean scarcity for none.

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” It is recorded in three of the Gospels. I am drawn to Mark’s version in which Jesus goes on to say, “and you can help them anytime you want.” The pervasiveness of poverty is not given as an excuse to ignore it or to refrain from helping those who are impoverished.

So we do what we can. And we know our efforts are inadequate. And some of us look at the statistics each year, longing for some signs of hope. So I am going to take the decrease of poverty in Ziebach County for what it is and not spend too much time trying to over analyze the numbers.

Our neighbors continue to suffer under the weight of poverty. We can do some things to help. That is enough information for today. Now it is time to get back to work to do what we can.

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.

When I was a kid, the rodeo was a big deal. Our town had a one-day rodeo each summer. Rodeo day started with a parade and my folks always came up with a float for the parade. When I was five years old, my dad landed a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane on a road at the edge of town, rigged up a tow bar, put a saddle on the tail and adjusted the nose gear shock so the tail would “buck” up and down. I rode the plane down Main Street to promote my parents’ business.

Later, when my folks went into the business of selling farm equipment, the grand marshal led the parade driving a shiny new John Deere from our shop.

The Big Timber Rodeo is a NRA/NWRA sanctioned event. There is calf roping, steer wrestling, bronc and bull riding and barrel racing. It used to be known as the biggest one day rodeo in the west, though I suspect other small-town rodeos might have made the same claim.

Rodeo week was good for business. Farm and ranch folks came to town. Tourists filled up the motels and campgrounds. And at our house it always meant some new clothes. We each got a new pair of jeans and a new western shirt for rodeo week. I still have a liking for western clothes. Shirts with grippers instead of buttons have always appealed to me. And although the closest I’ve ever come to being a cowboy is helping move cattle on my cousin’s ranch, you can see me wearing a hat and boots quite often.

This week is our annual stock show and rodeo here in Rapid City. We have a large Civic Center, so there is room for an indoor rodeo. Actually with the events center at the fairgrounds, Rapid City can host multiple indoor stock events at the same time. The transformation of the civic center is dramatic. They haul in a lot of dirt to create a rodeo arena. I try to make it to the stock show at least once each year. My favorite part is just wandering around the displays looking at all of the things that vendors have to offer. I have no need of a $2,000 saddle or a $40,000 horse trailer. I won’t be buying any tractors in the coming year or portable corral panels or squeeze chutes. But it is interesting to see all of the things that they have for sale.

I love to wander through the show animals. It seems to me that a real tough bull might be a bit embarrassed to be shown all gussied up with its coat shampooed and brushed out, but there are some beautiful animals displayed each year.

Many years, I don’t get to the events, though there is always a good show going on everyday during the week. I think my favorite show is the sheep dog trials. The display of partnership between dog and owner, the speed and skill of the dog, and the ways the owners signal the dogs are fascinating to me. And I grew up in sheep country. Being around the wooly critters brings back memories of my growing up years.

Once again this year I won’t be attending the Xtreme Bulls Tour. The show kicked off last night and continues tonight with 70 of the world’s top bull riders competing for a $52,000 purse. 35 riders compete each night with the one with the most points being crowned champion at the conclusion of tonight’s show.

There is a lot of hype as a part of the show. They start out with fireworks and introductions of the riders before they get down to the action. Bull riding has been called the most dangerous eight seconds in sports. It might be true.

Humans have long been fascinated with bulls. They are big animals and essential to the process of producing beef. Although humans have long domesticated cattle as a food source, the process of controlling the animals is always tenuous at best. Fences and pens can contain a bull, but there are plenty of stories of the big critters making their way through human-built barriers to do what they want. And there are lots of stories of people getting hurt by bulls. The weight of a bull is enough for a bone crushing experience if you get stepped on. And the horns can rip a person open.

I’m not sure where bull fighting began, but we often associate it with Spain and Mexico. It is a popular sport throughout Central America. I’ve never fully understood why people find it entertaining to watch such an event. I know that since I eat meat I cannot claim innocence in the killing of animals, but torture and agonizing death for public spectacle is not my preferred form of entertainment. Somewhere along the line bull fighting evolved into various forms of bull riding. In one form of the sport, matadors with capes tired the bull and eventually one would be able to mount the bull and ride it until it died. That practice gave way to a practice of riding the bull until it stopped bucking. In modern bull riding, the animal is kept tightly constrained in a pen and the rider mounts in the pen with the animal at its peak strength. One hand of the rider is wrapped in a braided rope that stretches around the animal. When the chute is opened the animal explodes from it bucking and turning in tight circles, trying to throw of the rider. If the rider stays on for eight seconds, a horn sounds and the rider dismounts or is thrown from the animal. The audience gets to see the toughest bucking and the bull is kept and well cared-for for the next rodeo.

There are plenty of injuries. The bulls step on cowboys. Occasionally one doesn’t get out of the way of the horns and is gored. In many ways the stars of the show are the clowns and barrel men who distract the bull so the cowboy can get out of the ring and up on the gates.

It is entertainment and a lot of people love to watch. It is just not my cup of tea. I don’t like the idea of watching another person getting injured. It seems to me that the animals don’t have a very good life, either, constantly being trucked from show to show. They are kept healthy and well fed, but they belong out in a pasture enjoying the open country, not being cooped up for entertainment.

My opinion, however, is not the only one out there. The stands will be full tonight at the Civic Center. There will be plenty of excited people who go away having enjoyed the show. There will be winners and losers among the riders. And even the biggest prize winner won’t go away with enough cash to pay for the $62,000 pickup truck that is on display at the entryway of the building.

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.

Life in the hills yields a treasure of neighbors. We enjoy our human neighbors and feel supported to live in a place where people know each other by name and by sight. But we also enjoy living in a place where the houses are far apart enough to grant a bit of privacy. And we get a lot of joy out of our non-human neighbors. Every day we have deer and turkeys that cross our lawn and pause for a bit of eating. I know that there are problems with the critters. There have been winters when the deer killed young trees in our yard when the snow covered the grass and finding forage was more difficult. Turkeys are messy creatures and when they decide to come up on the deck to raid the bird feeders, a power washer is needed to clean up after them. People have been living in this area for many years. Enough generations of critters have passed that we are a normal part of their environment.

We’ve noticed the changes in the animals over the years. When we moved into this house 16 years ago, the whitetail deer were skitterish and wild. If there were deer in the yard and we turned on a porch light or came out onto the deck they would lift their tails and run away. These days they are used to us. They don’t run when the porch light comes on. In the morning when I go out after the paper they scarcely lift their heads from eating. It is not uncommon for me to approach within 50 feet of a deer without the deer doing anything more dramatic than staring at me.

There are simply more turkeys around these days than there were 15 years ago. Last spring’s chicks are as big as the adult birds, so the gangs roaming the neighborhood are large enough to challenge cars on the street and circle around a neighborhood cat who things, if even only briefly, that stalking such a bird would be a fascination. Turkeys are creatures of habit and they cruise through our yard at the same time day after day, taking the same route as the day before. In the late summer and fall there are insects in the yard. As far as I am concerned, they are welcome to eat all of the grasshoppers they want. But our yard isn’t much for seeds. Because I mow the grass it doesn’t go to seed. The turkeys will occasionally find something the like in our compost pile. I think that they travel through our yard on some ancient memory that is passed down from generations. A few years ago, when my mother was living with us, she really enjoyed watching the turkeys. A couple of times, I threw some corn on the deck to attract them closer for her to watch. It took a long time before they stopped coming up on the deck every day, even after the free food had long since stopped.

Basically, I don’t believe that it is in the best interests of the wild critters for us to feed them. The hills are rich in food sources and artificial feeding interferes with the natural cycles of abundance and scarcity and alters population patterns. So if a few handfuls of corn have messed up the turkey population, I’m sorry. I quit doing it several years ago.

It is a strange year around here, however. When we walk through the woods our steps are mostly accompanied by the crackle of dry grass. Yesterday, there were a few muddy spots as the snow that had been lying in the shady areas was melting. What was absent, however, was the crunch of snow underfoot. There just hasn’t been much snow out there. The winter has been unseasonably mild.

There are parts of a mild winter that I don’t mind. Lower snowplowing bills at the church help us invest more money in mission and ministry. Using less energy to heat our home and church are appreciated savings. But in general, I like winter. I love the look of snow on the trees and the adventure of an environment that challenges us. The light is dramatically different when the ground is covered with snow. Bright days are brilliantly so with all of the sunlight bouncing off of the snow and the stark white contrasting with the deep blue of the sky. Morning and evening colors reflect off of the snow extending the sunrise glow to an entire vista of land and sky right out my window.

This curiously open winter, even in the high country, has its impact on the critters as well. Food is easy to get, right where they are. The deer that occupy the higher country in the central hills have no incentive to move down, which in turn allows other populations to stay where they are. In some winters, some of the deer from our area make there way into town to feast on the fare at the city parks and other places where lots of fertilizer means there is sweet grass under the snow, where snowplows clearing walks leave bits of grass exposed, and the city’s use of salt to melt ice on streets provides a huge salt lick for the animals. The critters are enjoying a life of relative ease this winter. I wake to find them sleeping in the neighbor’s yard instead of foraging in the wee hours. They have plenty to eat and there is no need to exert energy. They can stay down, much a few stalks of nearby grass and chew their cud as they wait for the warmth of the sun.

I know that the hills can offer plenty of snow in the form of spring blizzards. We’ve lived here long enough for us to have more stories of being snowed in during April or May than other months of the year. But it wouldn’t make me upset if we got a few more flakes and even a cold spell that lasted for more than a day or two. I know it would be harder for our animal neighbors, but this incredible mildness seems quite unnatural.

One thing about it, I’ve begun to get to know my neighbors better. I recognize several individual deer and there are some that I can remember from the days when they were spotted fawns taking their first steps.

If I start recognizing individual turkeys, however, I think it is time to worry . . .

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.

When I am working with families who are experiencing a traumatic loss, they often ask me questions about what is going to happen. For the most part, I do not know what is going to happen. I am no predictor of the future. But I do recognize some patterns. Often the family wants some information about what to expect in terms of ongoing investigations by law enforcement, when the body of their loved one will be released to the funeral home and other details about which I may have quite a bit of information. Other times they want to know about the process of grief, the response of the community and other things about which I can only make broad generalizations. Every experience of grief is unique. There is no way to tell someone how she or he will feel at a particular moment. The loss of a loved one is not something that one gets over. It is something that you get through.

One observation I have made of those going through loss is that it is not uncommon for friendships to change. Some friends become even closer as they rally around the grieving person to offer support, care and love. Some friends seem to become more distant, as they struggle with how to behave and what to say. Some people just don’t know how to respond and withdraw. This is especially true when social stigma comes into play. There are still a lot of people in our society who are afraid of mental illness and do not know how to respond. A death by suicide may involve judgment from people who do not understand. Some friendships may be lost.

Realignments of friendships in the process of grief are not limited to sudden and traumatic loss, however. The loss of a loved one to a slow, chronic disease or to the effects of old age also can mean that friendships change. If you think about it, it makes sense. When you lose someone whom you have loved, your entire life is affected. Many things change. Some friendships change because grief changes the individual. Priorities and activities shift. A friendship that is based on a common interest can be lost when the interest is lost.

Joseph Marshall III is one of the best interpreters of Lakota Culture in contemporary America. His many books give non-Lakota persons a view of the history and values of Lakota people. By drawing on the stories of pre-reservation life, he is able to identify enduring values that are carried forward in the vastly altered social structures of contemporary Native American society. A couple of years ago, he wrote a small book on leadership called The Power of Four. In it he uses Crazy Horse as an example to explore four qualities of leadership: Know Yourself, Know Your Friends, Know the Enemy, and Take the Lead.

I have been reflecting on leadership lately as we prepare for our annual meeting as a congregation. The annual meeting is always a good time for a pastor to take stock, do a little self-evaluation, determine what changes might be required, and rededicate him or her self to the calling of the church. All people need regular evaluation and self-evaluation is important. In our congregation we also have a Pastoral Relations and Personnel committee who assist with periodic review of the relationship between the pastor and the congregation. So I have been trying to take Marshall’s advice about knowing oneself seriously. Knowing oneself requires honesty and integrity. It is of no use to be deluded by a fantasy of what one wants to be. Although dreams and goals for change are important, there is no substitute for an honest evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, abilities and disabilities, successes and failures. If nothing else, honesty encourages humility. None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes.

This year, however, just past the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death, with the second birthday of my brother since he died just past and anticipating the anniversary of the death of my father-in-law in a few weeks, I am aware of how much grief is a part of my journey. Because I lost a sister just before I entered college and my father in the second year after my ordination, grief has always been a dynamic in my ministry. As painful as the process of grieving can be, it is essentially a good process and understanding grief, at least in part, can be very helpful to a minister walking through grief with people served.

What seems different to me at this phase of my life is that I am more aware than I was in the past of the realignment of friends in this particular journey of grief. It is not just a phenomenon of my personal life. It is also a dynamic in my professional life in the church. Perhaps Marshall has it right. Friendship and knowing one’s friends are important aspects of leadership. The shift in friends is not numerically dramatic. There are a couple of people that I have experienced as friends in the past who seem more distant right now. There are some new friends whose support has come to be very meaningful to me in this particular phase of my life. I don’t really think in this way very often, but if I were to make a list of friends of the projects and priorities that are most important to the congregation as it moves forward, there are some names that would be prominent in previous years that probably wouldn’t make this year’s list. This doesn’t mean that people have turned against me or against the ministries of the church. It just means that for whatever reasons we find ourselves less closely aligned than in the past.

It isn’t easy to have your minister going through grief. The grief of a leader reminds one of your own grief. Sometimes people don’t want to think of sadness and loss. Sometimes they are at different stages with their own grief.

I miss former friends. It is worth some time and effort to pursue these relationships, but I find myself a bit short of energy at times and don’t always find the strength to put forth the effort required.

Life in the church, like life in general, is constantly changing. A leader responds to the changes in the congregation as well as personal changes in him or her self. Henri Nouwen reminds pastors that we are all “wounded healers.” The things that appear to be our weaknesses can be our greatest strengths for ministry. My prayer for this time in my ministry is that I can set aside my fear of change and become open to the power of transformation.

There is more that is yet to be revealed.

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.

A new class of confirmands begins their journey at our church this evening. Preparation for the rite of confirmation will be more compact and intense this year than in some previous years. Meetings are set for Wednesdays and Sundays, with confirmands responsible for participation in worship as well as regular sessions of instruction. Our program is team-taught, with all three of our ordained ministers and a lay minister sharing the presentation duties. It is a small class this year with only five students. You can do the math. The ratio of teachers to students is nearly one-to-one. This is important for our congregation.

For us, preparation for the rite of confirmation is not primarily about the maintenance or future of our congregation. It is mission work. While we would be delighted should one or more of this year’s students choose to remain in our community and remain active in our congregation, we know that we will soon be sending most of these youth out into the world. The rite of confirmation prepares them for their membership in the universal church, not just our congregation. Their spiritual journeys will likely lead them to other places and other congregations. Our goal is discipleship, not building our own future.

The four of us who will be doing the primary content presentation are not the only adults involved. At the heart of our program of preparation for confirmation are mentors. Each person preparing for the rite of confirmation has been carefully matched with an adult mentor, who is not a member of his or her immediate family, who will make the journey alongside the confirmand.

Part of tonight’s activities will be a process of confirmands and mentors getting to know each other better. There is a guided interview process that helps them to find out the basics of vocation and family. They also find out things like favorite hymn and favorite Bible passage or story. In the past these interviews have provided a depth of meaning for all involved. On one occasion, I met with a family to plan a funeral. When I asked if the family knew if there was a favorite passage of scripture or hymn that we wanted to include, they were uncertain. I commented that I knew someone who did know the answer to the question. When the service was held, a newly confirmed member of the congregation who had gotten to know the deceased as a confirmation mentor delivered one of the readings from scripture.

Our current society and culture is a bit short of mentors for young people. In a congregation of 575 members, it is a struggle to find 5 matches. Our congregation is an older one, with many distinguished people and an amazing well of wisdom and faith. But identifying people who will make a big and consistent investment in the youth is still a struggle for us. Outside of the church, mentors are difficult to find as well.

In an age of mass media, there are plenty of idols. Idols are people who show us what we will never become. Common among the idols of youth are entertainers and sports stars. Kim Kardashian may make headlines, but she shows youth more of what they will not be than what they can become. Fame and wealth are elusive, and dangerous. Kobe Bryant may be the highest paid player in the NBA, but he has cut a path that cannot be followed. Idols are visible and surround us daily, but they teach us more about what we cannot be than about what we can become.

Heroes lead by demonstrating what we can become. Genuine heroes usually achieve less fame. They are willing to do the work, invest the time, and serve others. They are often noticed by the size of their sacrifice. Gabrielle Giffords, who represents southern Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives will be stepping down this week to focus on her recovery, but her journey from the brutal attack that left her with a gunshot wound to the head has been inspirational and she has publicly shown the journey through adversity through hard work and setting an example that can be followed. In our city police officer Tim Doyle serves as a liaison officer in our schools. His heroism this past summer when a routine traffic stop turned into a shootout demonstrated the ability of a human being to put the safety of others ahead of his own health and safety. He is a hero who demonstrates a path than can be followed by others.

Mentors take the process a step further. Mentors walk alongside others and share the journey. The primary example for Christians is the story of Jesus appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus reported in Luke 24:13-35. Jesus meets the disciples who are confused and uncertain about their future. He doesn’t lecture them. He walks alongside them in their journey, listens to their concerns, and then opens up the stories of our people to them in a fresh way. Like Jesus walking alongside the disciples, confirmation mentors walk alongside youth as they take a look at their faith, at the stories of our people and of our church, as they engage in hands on mission, and as they step into the lectern of the church to lead the congregation in worship.

In our congregation we believe that preparation for confirmation is a task that is too difficult to undertake alone. We become Christians by walking together with other Christians. We believe that we are called into community. You cannot be the Body of Christ all by yourself.

There will always be a few people who measure success or failure by counting numbers. They will decry a program that is so inefficient in terms of cost per student. The amount of staff time should, in their opinion, be reserved for much bigger classes and much higher numbers. But we have not been called to be efficient. We have been called to be faithful.

And personally, when I look back, my faith has not been forged by participation in large groups and being a member of the crowd. It has been forged by caring individuals who took the time to guide and encourage me and then challenge me to become more than I thought would be possible. When Jesus gathered his disciples, he knew them all by name.

I’ll leave the counting and statistics to others. For this group of five who begin their confirmation journey this evening, I intend to be fully present and willing to pay the cost of service. Idols come and go. Heroes are called by God and forged by circumstances. Mentors answer the call to service and walk alongside others. This world needs more mentors.

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.

About the time I graduated from seminary, Walter Brueggemann, then professor of Old Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, published a book entitled, “The Prophetic Imagination.” The book traces the development of the theology of Israel from Moses to Jesus in broad brush strokes. Moses’ radical vision gets translated into the centralization of power under Solomon and gives rise to a generation of critics of the centralization of wealth and power. These prophets, who spoke more in poetry than in political rhetoric, provided the context into which Jesus came into this world.

What Brueggemann makes clear in his book is that Biblical faith involves a counter cultural movement. To be faithful to the Bible involves being critical of the cultural status quo. This criticism, however, is far from “doom and gloom,” that is often associated with some readings of the prophetic literature. The prophets do not present a vision of an accelerated end of the world. On the contrary they say that the way things are now is not the only way that things can be. The result is a vision of the future that is genuinely hopeful.

For my whole career as a pastor, I have kept coming back to Brueggemann. He is faithful to the Biblical text and neither conservative nor liberal. He doesn’t take sides in many of the discussions and disagreements between Christians. He simply calls us to be faithful to the text. He has a way of challenging all Christians and inviting us to move away from our comfort zones into a faith that is deeper and more genuinely Biblical. He can be disruptive and beautiful, critical and hopeful, challenging and comforting all at the same time without any of those qualities coming into conflict with each other. He has a deep sense of humor and a feel for the artistic in the poetry of the Bible.

I have met him only on a couple of occasions, but I have had the opportunity to hear him preach and teach and to experience the power of his presence. Through these contacts and through his books, he has become a mentor for me. His prayers and preaching inspire me. I know that I will never be as gifted in either area as he, but reading his prayers and sermons does not show me what I cannot become, but rather challenges me to become more than I currently am.

So I have tried to learn the art of prophetic imagination.

I have tried to learn the poetry of challenging God’s people.

There is no question that in our time we need prophetic voices. We have become too attached to our wealth and too unwilling to share. We have become too self-righteous in our positions and too unwilling to listen. We have become too self-absorbed and too unwilling to follow God’s call. This is true of us as individuals and it is true of us as congregations.

Too often our congregation chooses safety over service. And ours is a genuinely caring and faithful congregation. It is not some character flaw in the members of the church, it is a failing of the prophetic voice to communicate.

To listen to the prophetic voice is to engage in the hard, life-long work of letting go of what is comfortable for the sake of what is important.

I take Brueggemann’s challenge to preachers very seriously. He pulls no punches when he addresses us. He calls us to proclaim that our well-being is intimately bound up in the well-being of others. He reminds us to rediscover the meaning and the practice of mercy. Brueggemann speaks of the “mangled prose” of too many preachers and calls us to transcend it with meaningful and life-giving poetry that speaks to the people in the midst of their lives and calls them to a new way of living.

It is not that easy to be a poet in the pulpit. For the past month, I have been mixing things up with my sermons. Whereas I have often employed a storytelling style and spoken from my heard in the midst of the sanctuary, I have returned to carefully crafted manuscripts and practiced delivery from the pulpit. I don’t intend to give up other styles, but rather to put more effort, more energy and more commitment into my preaching. I look at the videos and I understand that I have not yet achieved the right mix. I have focused a bit too much on what I wanted to say and a bit too little on the call of the Biblical text. I don’t want to just be a teacher, but it wouldn’t hurt for me to be a bit more careful in my research and to invite worshipers to enter a bit more deeply into the text.

The reality is that the Gospel shakes up the status quo and I have become a part of the status quo. I am associated not only with the institution of the church, but also with its stability. I am a keeper of traditions and a maintainer of the building. And change makes me as nervous as it does others. Change might mean that I don’t have as much security. Change might mean that I have to set aside my dreams of a comfortable retirement and replace them with a call to justice and a commandment to share all that I have.

Beyond these things, I find myself called to be a pastor to all of the people of the congregation – the old guard and the emerging new community. Often I try to strike some kind of balance between tradition and the future.

In the history of our people, genuine prophets are few and far between. Not every one of us is called to bring the poetic judgment to our generation. A prophet must always give voice to God’s word and not human words.

It is with humility and fear that I continue to approach the task of preaching the Gospel. I keep searching for the right words, listening more carefully and studying the scriptures more closely.

May the prophetic imagination find expression my words.

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.

Like others who read the headlines, I know the name of Vaclav Havel. His fame came from his role in politics. He was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic. His role in the transformation of the republic in the years following the fall of the Soviet Union brought him to the fore of international politics and frequently gave him a spot in the press. Reports often referred to him as a dissident referring to his political activism and his role in resisting the totalitarian regime that existed in his country prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. He was also identified as a playwright, essayist, and poet.

In 2005, he was voted 4th in Prospect magazine’s 2005 global poll of the world’s top 100 intellectuals. But there are a lot of intelligent people who have an impact on history without my really getting to know them.

Last night I had the opportunity to read Politics and Conscience, a speech that Havel wrote in 1984 on the occasion of his acceptance of an honorary degree from the University of Toulouse. At the time he was denied travel privileges, and so was unable to deliver the speech in person. As these things go, it took years before the speech was translated and printed in and English language journal. I found a translation by Roger Scruton and Erazim Kobak in the 39th issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly. The ideas are as fresh today as they were over a quarter of a century ago.

He begins the essay by telling the story of being a boy who regularly walked along a path through the fields and saw a factory smokestack that spread dark smoke across the sky. He said that the sight gave him a sense of “something profoundly wrong, of humans soiling the heavens.” It wouldn’t have surprised me had Havel gone into a discussion of the ecological impact of the smokestack, of the toxic fumes that were a byproduct of some manufacturing process and of the need to make changes in order to protect the lives and health of the forest, the animals and the people. Such arguments are familiar in our day and age. On the other side of those arguments are those who speak of the products produced by the factory and of the need of the jobs the factory produces. A few intellectuals will examine both sides of the argument and attempt to strike a balance.

Havel, however, uses the smokestack as a symbol in his essay. Instead of describing it as a failure of technology that could be corrected by the appropriate scrubber and the addition of ecological considerations in the design and planning of factories, he speaks of the tendency of humans to continually seek to use the discoveries of science to push beyond the boundaries of the natural world. Our rational minds want to reach beyond the natural world and make our desires, our needs, and our abilities the most important values considered. Instead of seeing humans as part of the natural world, we want to view ourselves as somehow above the world. We want to leave it behind while at the same time seeking to dominate it. Our incredible scientific discoveries make us think that we are able to be objective and look at the world as if we were somehow not a part of it.

The essay does not jump to quick conclusions. He does not argue for the abolishing of factories or the prohibition of science or a return to the Middle Ages. Rather, as a secular writer, he seeks to put our scientific advancements in what, it seems to me, is a very theological context. We believe that rational thought and scientific method will somehow lead us to a level of understanding that will overcome all mystery and somehow elevate humans to a position of being above the natural order rather than being a part of it.

As a theologian, it seems to me that he is talking about idolatry. In its essence idolatry is choosing to worship a god that is smaller than God. The only way to eliminate mystery is to view the universe as smaller and less complex than the reality. There is always mystery unless one believes that a small portion is the total.

As a politician, Havel goes forward in his essay to use that smokestack and our flawed ideas about the role of science, technology and rational thought as symbols of the flaws in our political thinking. The assumption that humans are capable of knowing what is right for others or what is best for groups of people results in abuses of power and attempts to manipulate others to bend to the control of a political leader.

The essay provides a window into the very complex thinking of a very smart man. His ability to think clearly in the face of all kinds of pressures combined with his ability to see a larger picture than some thinkers led him to stand up against the abuses of the communist regime. One of the quotes from a different essay that I have seen describes his role as a dissident: “ . . . we never decided to become dissidents. We have been transformed into them, without quite knowing how, sometimes we have ended up in prison without precisely knowing how. We simply went ahead and did certain things that we felt we ought to do, and that seemed to us decent to do, nothing more or less.”

What strikes me about the man is that somehow he was able to maintain his humility even after becoming a world leader. He didn’t let power and position go to his head. He didn’t lose his sense of mystery, or assume that he knew all that needed to be known. He kept exploring. And he kept doing what he felt he ought to do, what was decent to do.

Having read the essay makes me want to read some of his plays and perhaps some other essays. Several have been translated into English. He was not just a good writer, and not just a complex thinker. Both of those are abilities that I admire greatly. He also was a humble human being who never lost his sense of mystery, wonder and a sense of the beyond.

Not did Havel become a dissident without intending to. I think he may have also become a theologian without intending to.

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 was a time when a stay in a hospital meant a bed in a ward with several other patients. There was little privacy, but the hospital was not about privacy. It was about providing the care necessary to get one well enough to return home. However, things began to change. By the 1960’s the industry standard in hospital care was the semi-private room. Usually two beds were in each room with curtains to separate. Ambulatory patients shared a bathroom and there were more than a few awkward moments when sound traveled between the halves of the shared room. Too many visitors to a roommate could challenge optimal conditions for recovery. Snoring or other conditions could lead to loss of sleep and slow healing.

The move to private rooms began in intensive care units. The extra equipment, the need for more stringent infection control and other factors meant that each patient needed a separate space in order for care to be provided. Private rooms, however, are now becoming the standard of care in many hospitals. Here in Rapid City, our regional hospital now has two full floors of private rooms. In competition with that hospital is a private hospital with private rooms called guest suites. Part of the competition is played out in increasing amenities for those who occupy the rooms.

Our community hasn’t quite escalated to the level of hospitals in some urban areas. At New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital there is an elite wing on the penthouse floor with bed linens by Frette, Italian purveyors of high-thread-count sheets. The bathrooms gleam with polished marble. The huge windows display panoramic views of the city. And each patient is assigned a butler dressed in a black vest. The menus are elaborate and if the rooms are too small to accommodate the desires of the patient, they can be combined.

Hospitals are competing for high-end patients who are willing and able to pay $1,000 and more a day for heightened luxury during their recovery. In some cities luxury hospital rooms can go for as much as $4,500 per day.

Hospitals justify these extravagant units because they produce income that can be invested in other areas of the hospital. Not every service provided by a hospital will break even. But luxury rooms can pay big.

It is a world that I will never occupy and one that I do not understand. I’ve never developed a craving for mushroom risotto with heirloom tomatoes as a menu when I’m feeling ill. I’ve never believed that I deserved a higher level of luxury than other people. I think it simply makes sense to choose a hospital because of the quality of the clinical care rather than the amenities. I am capable of getting well without chocolates on my pillow and fresh roses on the table.

Having said that, if I were to need hospital care, I would be taken to our local hospital that would appear to many of the people in the world as a bastion of luxury. There are plenty of people in the world who have to rely on family or friends to bring their food to them when they are in a hospital. There are plenty of doctors and nurses who struggle to provide care in settings of crumbling buildings, unreliable water sources, and limited resources.

Hospital care, like many other things in life, is not evenly distributed among the people of the world.

The name of the institution, hospital, shares its roots with the Christian discipline, hospitality. Most hospitals have roots in people of faith who were motivated to help others because of their need, not because of their ability to pay. The first hospitals were free charitable institutions founded to provide care when no other care was available. The phenomenon of paying patients in hospitals began in the 1890’s and was slow to take hold.

These days, successful hospitals seek paying patients. Even those who provide services to those who cannot pay need income from those who have insurance and private sources of payment in order to stay in business. There are very few hospitals in the United States that are strictly charitable organizations, deriving their income from donations alone.

The result is a building boom for designers and remodelers. The best in hotel amenities are now being built into many modern hospitals.

The communities, and sometimes the boards of directors of hospitals, are left with a conflict. On the one hand, health care professionals are asking for tax dollars and medical charities are canvassing neighborhoods for donations based on their charitable mission to serve those who are suffering. On the other hand they are spending huge amounts of money to create luxury suites to attract wealthy private patients. The two sides of hospitals come into conflict. There are plenty of stories of a patient lying in pain for hours or even days on a gurney without the most basic of care in a hospital emergency room while elsewhere in the facility there is a patient listening to a Bose stereo and watching a flat-screen TV while eating chef-prepared kosher food served on fine china. It is hard to explain an institution that offers minimal care to one patient while offering five-star comfort to another.

I am no expert in the field of health care. I do not have legislation to propose to the government or even policy to offer to hospital boards of directors. Like many others, I can sense that there is something wrong with our health care system. Like generations of faithful people who have gone before, I can see the need for compassionate care to those who have no money to pay. There have been times when I have been persuaded that hospitals need to generate revenue from high-end patients in order to subsidize the care of others. There have been times when I have been persuaded by the argument that non-profit hospitals should sell of their luxury suites to private companies and focus their attention on care of those who cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars a day. I can see both sides of the argument and I suspect that there are additional perspectives on this complex question.

But, for what it is worth, if the time ever comes when I am admitted to the hospital in a moment of illness and pain, I hope that I wake up in an ordinary room. A roommate is fine with me. A little discomfort is OK. The food need not be stunning. I can share a bathroom. Save the luxury for someone else. Because in my case, if I spend less on my own luxury there will be more to share with those who have genuine need.

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.

Our home is filled with clocks. Although Susan and I both wear watches, we hardly have to look at our wrists to tell what time it is. In our bedroom there is a clock with a digital display that is the brightest light in the room at night. In the kitchen, there is a clock on the stove, another on the microwave, one on a radio and a fourth that is just thrown in for the fun of it. We have a wall clock in the living room and a schoolhouse style clock in the basement. I have two clocks in my library. If we want to check the time, there are always the clocks in our phones and on the computer. The web site, www.time.gov will connect you to a clock that is accurate to within 0.2 seconds if you need to know the exact time. One of the clocks in our kitchen connects to a satellite and displays the time accurately.

The clocks in our home fall into different categories. We have clocks with digital displays and clocks with faces. We have clocks that are powered by electricity and those that have to be wound. I don’t try to get all of our clocks so that they are displaying the exact same time. I try to keep them within a couple of minutes or so, but that is close enough to me. We have three clocks that chime and I always figure that if I get them so that they all chime in the same minute or so that is close enough. Though this morning there is probably about two minutes between the time the first one started to chime and the last one finished chiming.

We have had guests who found the chiming and the rather loud ticking of the clocks to disrupt their sleep. When we have guests, I usually ask them and show them how to stop the pendulums so that they can get their rest. The problem with that is that when the clocks don’t chime, it tends to wake me up. I’ve been known to get up in the wee hours of the night to wind a clock because I miss the sound of its chime and that wakes me up. The trick is to remember to wind the clock before going to bed.

Compared to many cultures, ours seems to be obsessed with time. We consider punctuality to be a virtue and are offended if someone is late for an appointment. I have been compulsive enough about time to bother family members by having to leave before it is absolutely necessary. I’d prefer to arrive early rather than late and I like to have a little spare time incase something unforeseen occurs. Since unforeseen things often do not occur, I often arrive early. There are those who see no need to arrive early. I have to admit that my need to arrive early can be silly at times.

Time, however, is a human construct. It is something we have made up in order to explain the flow of days and seasons. We have based our concept of time on things that we can observe. The span between the sun’s highest point one day and its return to that place the next constitutes a day. We’ve divided the day into 12 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into sixty seconds. We could have used different measures. In a metric system, there would be ten hours per day with ten minutes per hour and ten seconds per minute. That would probably give rise for the need for a smaller measurement of time, so we would develop names for the various digital breakdowns. For what it is worth, for scientific purposes seconds are divided into tenths and hundredths for more accurate measurements.

We use the passing of years to measure the span of lifetimes. Most world cultures use the passing of seasons as a way of counting the span of a life, though this seems to be more prevalent in places farther from the equator and a bit less so in places with smaller variations between the seasons. The concept of 40 winters doesn’t make much sense to those who live close to the equator.

In some sense, I suppose, we measure time because our supply of time is finite. We are mortal. Each of us will die in our own time. We do not go on forever. So it might be said that we are trying to count the amount of time we have left. That, of course is an impossible challenge. There are simply too many factors for us to be able to weight all of them. We know that there could be undetected diseases and unforeseen accidents. We know that some people die in sudden and traumatic ways. None of us knows the time of our own death, even those who have been given dire diagnoses by doctors or sentences by the courts. Insurance companies figure the odds and examine the statistics in order to come up with averages that allow their financial operations to succeed, but they know that they will have to pay some claims before the premiums from that particular insured person have covered the cost. There are things that can alter the timing of our lives.

So, in a sense, we count time and try to number days in an impossible task. We cannot succeed in knowing, but that doesn’t keep us from trying. This obsession with time prevents us from being able to grasp the concept of eternity. When we think of the eternal, we often think of something that spans all of time. God existed at the beginning, exists throughout all of time and will exist at the end. But there is a flaw in that image because God is beyond time. God existed before the beginning and will exist after the end. Eternal is literally without time. When we try to think of such a concept, it confuses us.

Perhaps the best way for us to experience eternity is not in trying to grasp every moment, but in trying to be fully present in this moment. Prayer and meditation techniques allow one to focus only on the present. Buddhists call this practice “presentness.” The concept exists in most world religions. Set aside your notions of time and just experience the moment. Really focus your attention so that you are not thinking about the past or the future. It takes practice. We tend to want to allow memory and anticipation to invade our thinking. It is a powerful and useful experience – a practice worthy of daily discipline.

It does, however, take time. Time elapses while one meditates.

Every time I try to write about the concept of time I realize that I really don’t know much about time at all.

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 see life from a religious perspective. I understand humans to be created with a purpose. But even if one has no particular religious perspective, the reality that we are capable of love and compassion bears reflection. If the world is just about survival, then being able to enter into a relationship that puts the other first must be essential to our survival. But as I said, I see it from a religious perspective. I believe that we humans exist to care for one another.

Caring for others, it seems, must start with keeping each other alive. It means going a step farther than “You shall not commit murder.” Keeping each other alive is the reason that millions have received first aid training. Knowing what to do in an emergency can make a big difference when an accident or sudden illness occurs. I was in my twenties back in the 1970’s when I first took a CPR class. Within a few years I had an opportunity to use my skills when a colleague suffered a heart attack and the ambulance was ten of fifteen minutes away. Fortunately in that situation there were others who also were trained and who responded appropriately.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a lifesaving technique useful in many emergencies, including heart attack and near drowning, in which someone’s breathing or heartbeat has stopped. Every hospital in our nation has personnel who are trained in the latest techniques. Every first responder who is dispatched by 911 is trained in CPR. In addition to these professionals, millions of everyday citizens have received training in this lifesaving technique.

The simple truth, however, is that there are other threats to life than just heart disease, drowning or stroke. People die of other preventable causes. The average person is more likely to encounter someone who is thinking of suicide than someone who is having a heart attack. In all 105 countries that report cause of death to the World Health Organization, suicide is one of the top three causes of death among people aged 15-35 years. It just makes sense for communities to have standardized training to enable people to be able to respond effectively to a suicide threat.

That training is available. Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) is widely recognized as effective training that enables caregivers to help prevent the immediate risk of suicide. There is no doubt that millions of lives could be saved if communities could provide ASIST training for emergency responders and everyday citizens.

It takes longer to learn ASIST techniques than CPR. ASIST requires a full two days for initial training. Like CPR, ASIST requires periodic refresher training.

As a citizen in a community where the suicide rate is 2½ times the national average, it just made sense for me to receive ASIST training and to keep current. So receiving the training was the focus of yesterday and today for me. Like other things pastors do, it doesn’t mean that I can totally set aside my other responsibilities. I had to do some chores, like preparing my part of worship bulletins and outlining my sermon, earlier in the week than usual. I had to rearrange my schedule, even moving one meeting to my day off. Unlike some of the other participants in the training, I had to make a hospital call after yesterday’s training concluded. But the training is worth it.

It is not that I had no skills for suicide intervention prior to the workshop. My career and my love for others have already brought me to a place where I needed to intervene on several occasions. Without ASIST training, however, I had to develop my own techniques. I have dubbed my prior style “persistent referral.” When I discovered that someone was thinking of suicide I simply stayed with that person until together we could get more help for that person. I have learned that whenever someone says to me, “Don’t tell anyone else, but . . .” I will be spending whatever time is required to convince that person that we have to tell someone else. As a pastor, we start by telling God. Since God already knows, a prayer can be a good way to practice telling. But it cannot stop there. I keep a page of referral phone numbers and other resources with me whenever I am working with other people. I work to nurture relationships with counselors and other health care professionals so that when help is needed I know where we can go.

ASIST training will provide me with additional skills and techniques that I can use the next time I am with someone who is considering taking active steps to end his or her life. ASIST is research-based. It is the most widely used suicide intervention program in the world and has been proven to be effective. On-going studies are constantly providing additional information and improvements to the training.

In my work as a pastor, I have received strong support from the congregations I serve for my on-going involvement in suicide prevention work. I still encounter people who are not comfortable talking about suicide. I still encounter the stigma that is attached to mental illness and to suicide. I still encounter old religious notions that are judgmental of those who are at risk for suicide. But those things take a back seat to genuine concern and support for suicide-prevention work. I am not the first member of our congregation to receive ASIST training. Our church has already hosted trainings on several occasions.

Sadly, however, there aren’t enough people who have received the training. Too few of my colleagues are willing to take the time for the training. Some of them don’t think they need the training. They feel that the general pastoral counseling training they received in seminary is sufficient.

So I am likely to spend more time on my soapbox in the coming years. I think it is as important to have ASIST trained people at church camps and conferences, as it is to have folks trained in CPR.

But until that day, there is another thing that anyone can do. Everyday people can save lives by just showing that they care. Asking the question, “Are you OK?” and listening to the answer can make a huge difference in another person’s life. For several years we have participated in the RU OK program for youth and we have posters and stickers up all around our church building.

So my question for each reader of today’s blog is this: “Are you OK?” If not, please get some help. If so, please ask someone else, “Are you OK?”

I really believe we were created to care for one another.

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.

Back in 1996, Richard Carlson wrote a little book of advice in managing stress. The title was “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – and it’s all small stuff.” The book became the first in a series of best selling books. There was Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff at Work, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Love, for Teens, for Women, for Men, with your Family, about money . . . you get the picture.

The book invites readers to look at things a little differently. My initial reaction is that not many people need to read the book. The title says it all.

Everyone who has been in a long-term relationship knows that there are little things that can drive you up the wall if you let them. I can give a couple of examples, but first an important disclaimer. These are NOT the little things in my relationship with my wife. Those are for us to talk with each other about, not for me to blurt to strangers in the blog. But there are couples where one leaves the cap off the toothpaste or another rolls the tube the wrong way. There are couples that argue about the “proper” way to load dishes in the dishwasher or how to decide which items in the refrigerator have been kept too long. There are couples for whom dirty socks on the floor or shoes left by the front door are an issue.

I don’t mean to be silly, but all of the little things in life end up sounding really silly when you take a step back and look at them. I know couples that had successful and happy marriages even though one of them would always lay a book face down letting gravity break the spine and the other couldn’t stand to see a book treated that way. I know couples that adored each other and enjoyed living together even though one enjoyed watching television in bed and the other hated to even have a television in the bedroom.

A wise teacher once told me, “If you’re going to pick a fight, at least do it over something that matters. Which way the top sheet faces doesn’t seem worthy of a marital argument. Neither, for that matter, does who takes the garbage to the curb.

Another thing that Carlson got right in his book is that that little things can cause stress in other places than just in marriage and home life.

I know a congregation that ended up asking a minister to leave and find another church. One of the complaints that came up at a meeting was that he wore loafers instead of dress shoes in the pulpit. Seriously – are you going to fire a minister for the kind of shoes he wears? Wouldn’t you think that perhaps theology or pastoral care or preaching style or some other issue might be the thing that caused disapproval of the minister?

As a pastor, I have had outraged parishioners come to me with complaints about how the kitchen is cleaned or the parlor dusted. I have listened to people who have become stressed over the fonts chosen for the newsletter and the choice of storage places for items waiting for a rummage sale. I have watched church finance committees spend 45 minutes choosing between CD rates with a difference of less than 1% and then turn around and vote a $10,000 expense without debate.

Let me be clear about the above-reported discussions of “little things.” The people involved in these things are all committed, caring Christians who read their Bibles, try to be faithful disciples and love their church. One of the reasons that we become upset over things is that we care. Passions flare because it matters to people how their church functions. Tiny details of interest rates matter because every penny donated to the church is a free gift and an expression of faith. How the church uses the precious gifts entrusted to it is an expression of its faith. No gift of God should ever be wasted.

But too often we get caught up in the tiny details and forget to look at the big picture. The Bible’s answer to this comes early in the book and is repeated many times. It is a concept called Sabbath. Don’t focus your attention on the little things seven days in a row. Even God rested on the seventh day. Don’t think you are more important than God. Observing Sabbath is essential to the creative process. New ideas don’t come from staring at the problem until it drives you up the wall. New ideas come from relaxing and allowing your mind to wander.

Sabbaticals have become common in education and the ministry. In professions where professional writing and creative thinking are expected, occasional breaks from everyday activities produce changes in thinking that benefit both the employee and the employer. The concept is now spreading in high tech industries such as computer manufacturers, Internet businesses and communications companies. Research shows that creativity rises when people take a break.

Our people knew this long before there were any studies or research projects. Taking a Sabbath is the fourth of the Ten Commandments. One of my teachers once said, “We don’t have a chance with murder, adultery and stealing if we can’t get people to take a day off.”

Our commandments grew out of real life experience with slavery and the tendency of people to make decisions that restrict their own freedom. In Exodus the people are liberated, but keep running the risk of falling into new and different kinds of slavery. The formula in which the Commandments are presented is this: “If you want to be free, here is what you should do.”

When you find yourself obsessing with and stressing over the little things, take a break. Go for a long walk. Count to ten. Recite the 10 Commandments or the 23rd Psalm. Read the Gospel of Mark. Let your mind wander. Say a prayer. Learn to meditate.

Don’t allow little things to keep you from seeing the big wonderful things that are happening in this world. Check out a sunrise or a sunset. Gaze into a starry sky. If you have to deal with little things at least remind yourself that they are indeed little. Don’t make the little things be the big things in your life.

That’s why thinking about God is so important. If you are really thinking about God, everything else is a little thing.

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 plenty of volcanoes throughout Central America. Most tourists who spend time in Costa Rica find an opportunity to visit one of the six active volcanoes in the country. Poas Volcano National Park is close to San Jose and a popular destination. Unless it is raining and foggy, tourists can view the sulfuric pool and smoke rising. Sometimes a geyser will explode into the air sending steam and ash up above the caldera.

Although it seems to have begun a quieter phase in 2010, Arenal remains one of the most active volcanoes in Costa Rica. The government has installed a web camera that allows anyone with access to the Internet to take a look at the mountain. Most of the time there is a steam cloud around the top of the mountain.

A week ago, Turrialba got the attention of people in the area by emitting a large ash plume. A new vent opened in the southwest flank of the west crater. An alert was issued last Thursday, but has since been lifted because scientists do not consider the mountain to be at risk for an imminent eruption. At the moment the volcano seems to have returned to its normal levels of activity. The park remains closed to visitors as scientists continue to assess risks to humans and animals.

One of the realities of Costa Rica is that in mountain areas roads tend to be narrow and full of curves. In the best of conditions, traffic cannot move quickly. If there is need of an evacuation a single landslide or other event can result in people being unable to escape.

It seems like there is some kind of volcanic event almost every year in January. We always pay more attention to activities in Costa Rica at this time of the year because this is the week of Vacation Bible School at our sister church in Los Guido. Sybil and Chuck Rounds, members of our congregation, are in Costa Rica to assist with the program as they have done for many years. Prior to their service George and Mae Louise Zeise helped to establish the link between the Costa Rica congregation and our own. We’ve been exchanging members and ideas and providing mutual support since 1988. I have been fortunate to make four trips to visit our sister church and their pastor has been to South Dakota to bring prayers, greetings and to experience our area and congregation.

News and pictures of Vacation Bible School are being posted on our church’s Facebook™ page. Vacation Bible School in Costa Rica occurs at a time when it is very difficult for me to be away from our congregation here. Annual meeting and its preparations consume much of January for me. Compiling an annual report, developing a budget and other preparations take a lot more time and effort than initially appear. People who become involved in our Church Board who have no prior experience with congregational administration are often surprised at how many extra meetings and long days are built into the month of January in the church.

No matter how busy we get, however, we know that it is even busier in our sister church. Vacation Bible School is a massive effort for the congregation. Over the past decade, we have watched as our sister church worked to improve its facility. A new roof with independent support beams rose over the church and parsonage, providing some much-needed attic storage space. Kitchen improvements have resulted in a commercial kitchen that is vastly different from the space some of use remember first seeing in 2001. Modern appliances and a new range hood provide for safety and convenience in food preparation. The sanctuary now has a higher ceiling, better lighting and brand-new tile floors that make it easier to accommodate a wide variety of activities from worship to classes to feeding children. Whenever I tire of having to move furniture for changing programs in our church, I am reminded that moving furniture has to occur multiple times each day to support the programs of our sister church.

With all of these improvements, however, our sister church building has not grown any larger. When 90 to 110 children show up for Vacation Bible School it is crowded. And the excitement of the children can also mean that it gets noisy. Still, the church has developed good ways of dealing with the crowds of children. Activities are held in the parish house across the street and in every nook and cranny of the church building including the front porch.

Christian education in both countries has its roots in serving the community. There are a few people in our congregations who think of Christian Education as something that we do for “our” children. We occasionally hear comments about “building our future,” or “attracting younger members,” but we know that at our core Christian Education is not about ourselves. It is not about institutional stability or making our congregation bigger or richer. Christian Education is about mission. We serve the children of our community so that they might go forth and share the love of Christ with others. We don’t keep our children for ourselves, we send them into the world equipped with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

At the core of the Gospel is love. Jesus commands us as disciples to love one another. And we are sent forth into the world. In the words of the great commission from Matthew, we go forth into all the world. One of the expressions of that commission is that a congregation in Rapid City South Dakota invests in Vacation Bible School in a sister congregation in Costa Rica. Such an action does nothing for our bottom line. It does not build up our worship statistics or balance our budget. It does something far more important. It expresses our faith. We believe that the love of God should be shared with all. We believe that the joys of discipleship go hand in hand with costs.

It truly is a wonderful thing to have a sister church sharing Vacation Bible School this week. Otherwise I might be tempted to focus all of my attention and prayers on the process of maintaining and strengthening our congregation for the year to come. There is a great danger to focusing on our selves too much. One of the gifts we receive from our Costa Rica partners is the gift of broadening our vision. The Good News of Jesus is not about keeping the doors open or building a legacy in Rapid City. The Good News of Jesus is about feeding hungry children, supporting widows and working for justice and peace.

There is steam rising from the volcanoes in Costa Rica. But that isn’t the big news. The big news is that our walk with Christ always leads us away from ourselves into paths of service. It is a journey worth taking.

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 weather outside is typical for this time of year. It is down to zero and there is a dusting of snow. The snow was light and powdery and fell little by little throughout the day yesterday. It hasn’t however, been a typical winter. Some people are calling 2011-12 the year that winter forgot. Across the United States, December and the beginning of January have brought unseasonably mild temperatures. We were enjoying temperatures in the sixties last week – even close to 70 some days. Even in Fargo, North Dakota, a place that we like to use as the example of the coldest place in the region, was having temperatures in the mid-fifties last week.

Warm weather has been the news across Europe as well. And warm weather means less snow. Of course there are places where this is not happening. The news from Alaska has had lots of information about record snowfalls.

But here the winter has been so mild that we really shiver when it gets cold. Yesterday I headed out to run some errands and found myself facing into the wind for a block or so of walking with a jacket that was too light for spending much time outside. Now, I have lived in places where winter comes all of my life, so I have a heavy parka with a good hood and warm gloves in my pickup. I could have gone back for it, but in other years walking a block into the wind wouldn’t have bothered me by mid-January. It is just the fact that we have had so many warm days in the past month that makes it feel so cold to me right now.

I grew up in windy country. And we had some winters. I own clothing that is good enough to walk a mile in -20 weather with the wind blowing. I usually don’t wear that clothing, but I’ve got it in the pickup when I need it. And I have the sense to know better than to take off walking if I’m out in really cold weather.

My father believed that there was no harm in getting a little bit cold. He used to say that “cold is mostly in your head.” That made no sense to me when where I felt the cold was in my toes and the tips of my fingers and my ears. As an adult I know that feeling cold is in part due to attitude. And I know that getting cold isn’t the worst thing that can happen. I’m not advocating frostbite, but a little wind in the face and a little tingle in the toes or fingers doesn’t really do any harm.

What I do know is that my father taught me to walk into the wind and keep going. He taught me that when we went hunting. He taught me that when we had animals that needed to be fed or just checked. He taught me that in a symbolic sense as well as in a literal sense.

Life is going to throw each of us some storms. Many of those storms are not of our own choosing or even the result of our own actions. Sometimes in this life you have to experience a little cold and a little resistance. Sometimes you have to walk at night as well as day. There are days when you have to do things that you don’t want to do. Sometimes you have to be willing to experience a little pain.

When that happens, you turn your face into the wind and keep going.

The Lakota word is Kahuá – Keep On. Sometimes that is all you can do, just keep on.

I guess that is one of the things my father taught me: “Don’t give up.” It has proven to be sage advice.

I don’t know exactly why I thought that it would get easier when I got older, but I have long had that opinion. When I was a kid walking alongside my dad, I thought that it would be easier when I got taller and my legs got longer. When I was a teenager, I thought that it would get easier when I became an adult and got out on my own. When I was a student, I thought it would get easier when I graduated. When I was a novice in my first parish, I thought it would get easier when I became pastor of a larger church. When our children were tiny I thought it would get easier when they started to sleep all the way through the night. When they were teens, I thought it would get easier when they were out on their own. I’ve even been known to think, from time to time these days, that when I retire it will get easier.

I know better. I know that is faulty thinking.

The truth is that I wasn’t put on this earth for a life of ease. The truth is that having it easy wouldn’t be what I wanted anyway.

I like walking into the wind. I was born to keep on going. And I know that when the day comes that I can’t keep on it will be a sad day.

A little pain reminds you that you are still alive. A little resistance reminds you that you have strength left.

I didn’t know that a person could miss the wind until I moved to Boise, Idaho. I had never lived where the wind doesn’t blow before. When the wind does blow, it doesn’t blow hard. 25 miles per hour will take branches off of the trees there because they aren’t used to it. I could lie in bed at night, especially in the summer with the windows open, and the silence was so deep I couldn’t sleep. Not even a leaf on the bushes outside the window would twitch. Dead calm will make you miss the wind. After a decade in that place I was relieved to get back to a place where the wind blows.

So I was grateful yesterday to walk in the wind and feel the cold. I hope today is like that too. I haven’t had too much winter yet. When I go out and do a little bit of work and come in with my cheeks tingling and my glasses fogged I know that I am alive. And if I meet resistance somewhere else in my day I know that I have the strength to keep on.

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 sure how I will recognize Martin Luther King Day today. It seems to be a bit of a struggle for me each year. I know that the late Coretta Scott King challenged us to make this observance a national day of service. Rather than take the day off as is the case with so many public holidays, she envisioned a day that we all set aside to work for justice and to serve one another. It is an appropriate vision and it makes sense.

Our community observance will be a one-hour event at noon. There will be some good music and U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Viken will be the keynote speaker. The community observances, while meaningful, have lost some of their flavor in recent years. When I moved to Rapid City, the services were held at Faith Temple, a multi-racial, multi-cultural congregation that carries on many of the traditions of African-American congregations. I’m not sure why the location was moved, but it may have been that the crowds outgrew the location. Another factor may have been the normal aging of some of the key players. A few years ago Bishop Lorenzo Kelley had a very serious illness and was disabled for some time. When he came back after facing death squarely in the eye, some of his priorities and passions had shifted.

Whatever the history or reasons, it isn’t the same to gather at a ballroom in a hotel. I don’t fault the organizers of the observance, however. At least they are doing something and planning a meaningful program.

The issue, however, is bigger than what is the content or perspective of a public service or ceremony. The issue is how we continue to confront racism and work for justice in our world.

For much of my growing up years, the struggle for racial equality was something that seemed far away. The attention of the nation was focused on events in Southern states. Dr. King’s speeches were something that we watched on television. My parents were involved in a variety of programs and projects through our church and through their pioneering membership in the NAACP and other organizations, but often we were talking about things in other places. During the summer for a couple of years we participated in “Friendly Town,” a program where children from inner city Chicago came to host homes in other parts of the country for a couple of weeks in the summer. We had some interesting and eye-opening experiences hosting African-American children in our home. One year we were able to arrange for a visit of the mother of some of the children as well.

I grew up thinking that racism was something that other people had and was about how people with black and brown skin were treated in the places where they lived. There simply weren’t many people of African descent in small town rural Montana. It sounds absurd to me now, but I think I was a teenager or a young adult before I thought of Native American people in our community and state as a different race. I still am a bit mystified about the concept of race, but I do understand that there are huge differences in culture.

Whether you call it race or culture, there are some significant injustices in the community where I live. Most visible is the way poverty divides along those lines. There are people of other heritages who live in poverty in our town, but the vast majority of those folk are Native. The high school drop out rate is radically different between native and non-native youth in our town. It is clear that we have enough problems in need of addressing right here to free us from any sense we may have that issues of race and culture are for people who live in big cities or those who live in parts of the country with larger African American populations.

About four years ago now, the United Church of Christ invited all of its members to engage in “Sacred Conversations on Race.” The challenge was to use the power of face-to-face conversation to discuss difficult and challenging issues. Preachers were invited to deliver sermons on race and a resource guide was developed to continue a process of reflection and introspection about who we are and how we treat those with whom we are called to live. The initiative has sparked many opportunities for me to participate. I have been privileged to be a part of conversations as a part of meetings at Church House in Cleveland, at General Synod, at meetings of the South Dakota Conference and at Placerville Camp. Our own congregation placed increasing conversations and connections with Native American congregations in its goals during our most recent planning process. We have redoubled our efforts to increase relationships with people and congregations on the Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge Reservations as well as with others in our community.

Progress has been made, but progress is slow. It takes years for trust to emerge. It takes lots of repetition to nurture relationships. We still find ourselves, at times, studying issues rather than engaging in conversation. Five years after one group in which I participated used Joseph Marshall’s books as a springboard for interracial dialogue, another book club in which I participate is reading Marshall’s biography of Crazy Horse. This group, however, is composed of participants of European descent. In fact, one member suggested that we bring in as an “expert” another person of European descent who has spent a lot of time at Pine Ridge and speaks Lakota. I bit my tongue, but I wanted to say, “Are you suggesting that we should avoid inviting a real Native American to our conversation?”

We have a long way to go in our conversations. We lack basic understanding of our neighbors and the dynamics of their culture and their participation in the wider community.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an important leader and a prophetic voice in our nation. A day to remember and rededicate is appropriate. I pray that it can be for us not just a time of looking back, but also an invitation to continue the conversations, continue the journey and continue the struggle for justice for all in our community and in our land.

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 island of Giglio is one of seven in what is called the Tuscan archipelago. It is located 18 km from the Tuscan coast and is reached by a 30-minute ferry from Porto Santo Stefano. There is a port, beaches, and an ancient hilltop village. This morning at its Catholic Church there was an unusual procession. In addition to the usual items carried forward for the celebration of mass, altar boys and girls brought forward a life vest, a rope, a rescue helmet, and a plastic tarp as well as a loaf of bread. Don Lorenzo, the parish priest told those gathered together that each one was endowed with symbolic meaning in the little church that on Friday night opened its doors to the survivors of the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia after it ran aground off of the shore of the island. Father Lorenzo spoke of the bread that multiplied to feed the survivors, the rope that pulled people to safety, the life vest and helmet that protected them, and the plastic tarp that kept cold bodies warm. “Our community, our island will never be the same.”

The parish church is not a grand cathedral. It is not brimming with members. Most of the time only a dozen or so local people gather to celebrate mass, with a few tourists visiting from time to time.

This weekend, however, things are very different on the island and at the church. The eyes of the world are upon them and the island is full of reporters, camera crews and others trying to get interviews and stories and find out just what happened. More than 36 hours after the accident occurred, it still isn’t clear just what has happened. With nearly 40 people still unaccounted for, energies are rightly focused on rescue and recovery efforts. With the ship listing and nearly half of it submerged, the process of searching is difficult and dangerous. It is a big ship. Over 4,200 people were aboard when it set off on a routine cruise over a well-charted route that it had taken many times.

No one knows for sure why the ship was nearly 50 nautical miles off course when it struck a reef and the hull was breached with a huge gash. What followed is also not completely clear. It appears that the captain, knowing that the ship was badly damaged and that rescue efforts would be difficult at night, ordered the ship to be intentionally grounded as close as possible to the island. Nearly 45 minutes after the initial impact, with the main lights of the ship off, passengers panicked as the ship rolled onto its side. Chaos ensued. Some of the lifeboats could not be launched due to the angle of the ship. Water was rising in many interior areas. Some passengers, seeing the lights of the island, opted to jump into the water. The process that appears orderly in a lifeboat drill fell apart and no one could keep track of all of the people.

All in all the tragedy is not as severe as it might have been. So far only three fatalities have been confirmed. The Internet is full of rumors. There have been reports of as many as eight fatalities and it is likely that the death count will go up as the search of the ship is completed.

I have several books about rescues at sea. I didn’t get caught up in the craze over the Titanic movies a few years ago. The lovely Irish music, the romantic love story, and the investment of millions of dollars in models to simulate the crash didn’t seem to me to tell enough of the story. I was far more interested in the underwater explorations that brought back video footage of the giant ship resting on the bottom of the ocean. Even more interesting that stories told a century later are the stories I have of dramatic ocean rescues. I have spent many hours at the National Maritime Hall of Fame in Baltimore and the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. There are some grainy black and white photographs of heroic rescues as ships founder in high seas in windy and stormy conditions and rescue crews battle currents, waves and other dangers to rescue people from ships that are being lost at sea.

The scene off of Giglio Island was much different. The blue waters of the Mediterranean were calm. It wasn’t grey and angry with small boats tossed up and down and threatening capsize in waves looming higher than the tiny craft with their heroic crews. No doubt many of the crewmembers of the Costa Concordia were well-disciplined seamen and responded to the crisis honorably, but the media is now portraying the captain as an incompetent who fled the ship long before the rescue was complete. It is hard to get an accurate picture from the media coverage.

Since the first sailors took to the sea, we have been fascinated with the ocean and with the building of boats. Each generation, it seems, develops technologies to construct larger and larger vessels capable of carrying more, doing more, and weathering heavier storms. Modern cruise ships like the Costa Concordia are floating cities. The Costa Concordia had a casino, a movie theatre, multiple restaurants and theatres. It had a bridge that was loaded with the latest navigational equipment. It was designed with luxury and safety in mind. The ship was designed to take the hugest of waves on the open ocean. But it wasn’t designed to have its hull scraped across a rocky reef in water too shallow to support the flotation of such a giant craft.

I’m willing to wait for the reports. I’m willing to let the experts ask the questions about why this accident occurred. This morning, I’m just adding my prayers to those of Don Lorenzo as he serves his tiny parish. We give thanks to God for the many who were rescued and that so many were able to make it to safety. We pray for those who are missing and for their families as the anxiety mounts. We know God is with those who suffer and we would stand in communion with God in these moments.

And while we’re at it, we hope that investigators will find some clue that might help prevent such an event in the future. In the back of my head, I’m singing the hymn:

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

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.

Guitar sales were strong when I was in high school. There were a lot of us who started by learning a dozen chords and the rhythms to popular songs. We would get together and play. Sometimes there were other instruments such as drums and maybe a bass guitar. The first generation of chord organs was coming out, but there were no truly portable keyboards available yet. Everything that was lightweight sounded terrible. Still we all had dreams of being in a rock band or a folk act and appearing on a big stage.

I still have that Yamaha 6-string guitar and play it for myself from time to time. In college, I picked up a 12-string guitar that I played for years before trading up to a used Gibson about 20 years ago. A guitar is a good instrument for a youth minister and my guitars have been to a lot of camps and youth rallies over the years. Not too long ago I began to notice that I was often the oldest one at youth events. Some of the youth leaders are the age of our children these days. Now I notice, from time to time, that the second oldest at the event is my guitar. No worries, there are plenty of old coots playing the guitar. Some of them sound fantastic.

I never practiced enough and I don’t have the raw talent to make my living by singing and playing the guitar. It is just a fun way to sing some fun songs and a pleasant entertainment to share with friends.

From time to time I do get to witness real talent, however. I never have lost the joy of hanging out with people who make music. Since moving to South Dakota, I have made friends with fiddle and banjo and bass and piano players. I have found myself hanging out with musicians and attending their performances. We have a wonderful combination of world-class talent and people who just enjoy making music. Our community is small enough that the musicians get to know one another and play in various combinations. Our church has a strong musical legacy and we have been able to attract many local musicians to sing and play on various occasions.

Early last evening we headed down to the Dahl Arts Center. Part of the remodeled facility is a room called the Bruce Lien Cultural Café. A week ago they started what is hoped to be an on-going series of performances they’re dubbing the “Emerging Artists Program.” The vision is fairly simple. The Dahl is providing a performance space for youth. There are plenty of bars and other places where older musicians can perform, but there are fewer opportunities for younger musicians. One night each month there will be an open mic and auditions. In the middle of the month, a local artist or group will be selected to perform. On the fourth Friday each month older artists will team up with younger musicians for mentoring and just having fun playing together. The folks they have lined up for the first month are all people I know and last ‘s artists as well as the one for next week are folks from our church.

Not only did we know the musicians, we also knew most of the folks in the audience.

I happened to be present the first time Siri Palm and Layne Putnam played and sang together. We had a gathering of our youth in the home of one of our members and after lunch we persuaded Layne to pull out her guitar and sing us a song. That was so much fun that soon Siri’s brother was dispatched to go get another guitar from home. I remember that part of the day because the cars were all backed up in the driveway of the home and we sent Jorgen, the brother, off in our car instead of having to move other cars to get his out of the driveway. Since we drive the same make and model of car that seemed the easy way to get the guitar. We all enjoyed hearing the girls play and sing together.

Soon they were hanging out at each other’s homes playing the guitar, singing, and writing songs. It turns out that Layne has written enough songs for a whole CD of original pieces.

So last night I was really enjoying their playing and singing and as we sat in the audience I was once again amazed at the talent of young artists.

They sang songs about growing up and family as well as songs about romance and breaking up about anguish and questing and a variety of other topics. Now I have to put all of this into context from my point of view. Both of these girls were babies when we moved to South Dakota. Both were born within a year of the time we moved. They both grew up in loving and supporting families. They are both high school students in our community. Although they have drawn on the well of personal experience to come up with their songs – that well isn’t all that deep. They haven’t loved and lost and loved again. They haven’t seen the dark side of the world. They know school and church and families of talented and creative people. They have moms and dads who have, until the last couple of years, driven them everywhere they needed to go. Both have taken some big trips with their families, but they haven’t been out on their own and that is a good thing. Life still has a lot of experiences to add to their lives.

Our friend Scott Grote, in the introduction of the duo, commented that he’s been playing music with Layne for at least 15 years. That made me laugh because Layne is only 16 years old. Scott has definitely been playing with Layne’s dad since before she was born. She grew up in a house where musicians gather and sing and play together. We’ve been over there many times to enjoy the fun and artistry of the people who gather at their home.

If their music is this rich and touching at 16 and 17 years of age, just imagine what might emerge in the next couple of decades. The power of music in our lives is great.

I am certainly glad that our local arts center has found the vision to open this performance space and is allowing our community to celebrate the talents of emerging artists. There is a lot of good music 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.

This week is the time of the most intense work that I do on the annual church budget. In our congregation, the budget is developed by the Department of Stewardship and Budget. Then it goes to the Church Board and from the Board to the Congregation for approval at the annual meeting. The Department has a special meeting scheduled for Saturday to iron out the details. My job in preparation for that meeting is to research numbers from previous annual reports, estimate expenses and make sure that individuals have the information they need.

There is a more important role that I need to assume at the meeting on Saturday, however. I am pastor to the congregation. As so, I have multiple responsibilities. A minor role is that I serve as the operations officer of the congregation. I say minor, because technically, the Moderator of the congregation is the CEO. My role as an operations officer is to carry out the will of the congregation as expressed through its various elected officials. I do not determine policy, establish the budget, or try to influence the work of the Department, Board or Congregation. However, as an operations officer, it is my responsibility to encourage members to think seriously about money. Often people want to say, “money and religion don’t mix,” or “I don’t want to belong to a church where all they talk about is money.” But the truth is that it takes money to run the institution. Churches often avoid talking about the essence of their budgets when they use euphemisms such as “gifts,” “tithes,” “offerings,” and other terms to avoid talking about money. I have a responsibility to work with others to make sure that accounting is complete and accurate and that the budget is followed. I do have to talk about money. That is the easy side of my job.

The difficult side of my job is that I need to be pastor to the whole congregation. With regards to money, that means that I need to enable official groups to remember that every penny that we have is an article of faith. No one has to contribute to our church. What we have is the result of a free choice and an expression of generosity. As such it is a sacred trust. The Holy Spirit has inspired generosity in our people. The money we have is an expression of faith and the result of God’s work in our midst. Even though paying utility bills, buying janitorial supplies and running an office seem earthly and not theological, I need to keep interpreting our decisions from a theological perspective. Beyond that I have a responsibility to care for all of the people involved in the process from the smallest donor to the biggest power broker. It is not acceptable for the will of a few to override the intentions of many. When disagreements arise my role is to listen carefully and seek the unity that is at the heart of our life in Christ. Jesus’ prayer, “That they all may be one,” is my prayer for my congregation in this time.

Budgets are serious matters. People really care. Tempers flare. And I am a member of the congregation. I filled out my pledge card. I make my regular donations. After more than three decades of serving as a pastor, I have learned how important it is for me to be minister to all people, especially those with whom I disagree. The four most important words for pastors in situations like this are: “Don’t take it personally.” That is easier said than done. I am personally involved. Feelings rise in me just like they do in others. And, to switch to my operations officer mode for a moment, the decisions affect my salary and the salaries of the people with whom I work most closely. The programs that are funded by the church budget are programs on which we have together worked, for which we have together prayed, and with which we will be working in the year to come.

There is much good news in all of this. Our congregation is wondrously generous. We ended 2011 with a healthy surplus. Donations outpaced projections in all categories. In addition to our regular budget, there was strong and consistent support for three major special projects – needed building improvements in our Costa Rica sister church, a new shade structure for our church patio, and the Mission: 1 campaign to reduce hunger. Our grass roots mission projects such as the Woodchucks, Card Group, Quilters, Prayer Shawls, Rummage Sales and other events were all supported by hours of volunteer labor and much love. All of the statistical indicators are up in our congregation – increased worship attendance, increased church school attendance, increased visitors, new members, and expanding ministries. We added a new ordained minister to our staff in 2010, fully supported that position in 2011 and are prepared to continue our growth and expansion in the year to come. We are debt free and carry generous reserves. Ours is a cash operation. What we have, we invest in mission and ministry. What we don’t have we live without.

I have opportunities to look at the budgets of other congregations. I have read the studies and the statistics. I know how fortunate we are. I have often said and I really mean it: “I wouldn’t trade our congregation’s budget for the budget of any other congregation in town.” That doesn’t mean that we can’t get complacent. It doesn’t mean that it is easy for us to find agreement about our spending priorities. It doesn’t even mean that we can agree on income projections. On the spectrum from fear to unreasonable optimism, we have members who find themselves in many different positions.

What it does mean is that our struggles are a gift of God. Discipleship is never easy. Discerning God’s call has to be done over an over again.

There was a time when I thought that perhaps the most difficult discernment of my life would be determining that I was called to ordained ministry. I did struggle with that decision and it did not come easily. But being ordained did not ease the requirement that I seriously consider what it means to follow Jesus every day. The struggles of forming a budget are part of the struggles of living in community.

So today I begin with a prayer of thanksgiving for the challenges of the next few weeks. I do not ask for a simple road to the annual meeting. I do not ask for a budget that is easy to meet. I do not ask for nights that are free of worry or days that are stripped from hard work. I do not pray that I will get my own way or that my ideas will prevail. I pray that we will together build a budget and a year of growing in our relationship with God and each other. I do pray that our budget will be faithful to God’s call. And may we never forget to be grateful for all that God has given us – even the diversity of our ideas and opinions.

May my gratitude for God’s goodness override any petty feeling that comes to my mind along the way. May God bless our budget and may our budget be a blessing 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.

It is about ten degrees out there this morning. That is typical for our area this time of the year. But we have had a fall and early winter of abnormally high temperatures. While citizens of Alaska are dealing with record cold and snow, we here on the plains have yet to see much of winter. We’ve had a few snowstorms, but after each the weather has warmed up, the snow melted and we’ve gone back to running around town in our shirtsleeves without jackets. The high on Tuesday was in the sixties. But Tuesday evening the wind started to pick up, the temperature dropped and there were a few snowflakes in the air. We didn’t get much snow, maybe a half inch. It is always harder to measure when the winds are gusting 35 to 50 mph. We noticed the difference right away when we stepped out of the house yesterday morning. The day remained cool and we got out our winter coats and donned hats and gloves as we went about our business.

The forecast predicts that things will begin to warm up tomorrow, with daytime highs in the 50’s by Sunday. Right now, the thing I noticed when I awoke is that the winds have died down. It is calm out there. That alone makes it seem warmer.

Last evening, after a long day of office work, running out and about, and various chores that had to be accomplished, I got back to the house a little after 7 pm. I was tired. It had been more than 12 hours since I left for work in the morning. I had carried my things in from the pickup without putting on my gloves and hat and my cheeks and hands were a bit chilly. What I noticed, however, was that my feet were warm. In fact my feet hadn’t been cold all day. I was wearing my hiking boots. I do so more often these days as a concession to slippery walks and streets.

I’m certainly no cowboy, but I’ve had a pair of cowboy boots as part of my attire since I was a little kid. I remember a couple of occasions when I went out and bought a new pair of boots. When we moved to Chicago, I made sure that I left with a new pair. I was ready to live in Chicago and to be a student, but I needed some things that might mark me as being from the West. A new pair of boots seemed to be a good idea. Once, when we lived in North Dakota, I went to New York City to make a proposal to officers of our denomination. In those days our national offices were located in New York. I made sure that I traveled with cowboy boots. Once again I wanted to make sure that I didn’t look like a local when I was in the big city. In both cases, the boots didn’t make me stand out at all. There are lots and lots of people in Chicago and New York who wear cowboy boots.

I suppose that part of the reason I wear the boots is that I’m not exactly what anyone would call tall. At 5’6”, I find myself looking up at people all of the time. Adding an inch or so to my height still results in being short, but it makes me feel a bit taller. And wearing footwear that comes with bootstraps is symbolic of being someone who believes in hard work and earning one’s way in this world. I’ve been known to say that I’ve been pulling myself up by my own bootstraps since I was a kid. It isn’t very dramatic. People rarely notice. When polished, a pair of boots looks nice and passes for dress shoes in most settings.

A few months ago, after returning from a month of sabbatical, I noticed that my feet seemed to be sore at the end of the day. Being overweight, I resolved to take of a few pounds and sometimes soaked my feet in the tub when they were sore. However, I remembered that I hadn’t experienced sore feet at all during the month of sabbatical. Slowly the truth dawned on me. It wasn’t a truth I was eager to accept. My feet aren’t sore when I don’t wear cowboy boots every day of the week. Whenever I wear sensible shoes for at least a few days each week, I avoid any pain in my feet.

I have known for a long time that you don’t see many pairs of cowboy boots in nursing homes. I always assumed that the ornery old cusses avoided the nursing homes. As my friend Reuben Bareis says, “No matter how nice you make a retirement home, there will always be a few old guys who would rather die out on the prairie with their boots on.” I’ve always been drawn to those guys. I seem to have a lot in common with them.

But it was nice, yesterday, to go around town with no fear of slipping and having my feet toasty warm all day. It was pleasant to come home, slip of my boots and slide into my moccasins without having experienced any foot discomfort all day long. I can imagine that as I continue to grow older a few concessions to make life more pleasant are in order.

I still don’t have any New Balance, Asics Nike or Adidas shoes in my closet. It seems a bit silly for a guy with my body size and shape to spend a hundred dollars on fancy tennis shoes. I won’t be winning any marathons this year. And I have never been able to get excited about running for the sake of running. I’ve not been a fan of the gerbil activities of health clubs. I’d rather go outside for a walk than run on a treadmill. Maybe that is why I have trouble losing weight, but it has always seemed to me that there are lots of other ways to get exercise.

So my current favorite shoes are basic hiking boots.

My mentor, Ross Snyder, once caught my attention with a short reflection on how his shoes were his home. Well into his ‘70’s at the time, he was still aware that God’s call means you need to get up and get moving. Home didn’t have to be a physical place. A good pair of shoes might be the best equipment for being faithful and following God.

Psalm 90 declares, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place (our home) in all generations.” I like that image a lot. My real home isn’t any particular building or any specific location. It is wherever I am with God. And there is no place that I can go that is out of God’s reach.

As long as I’m in motion a comfortable pair of shoes seems in order.

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 began our married life in a stately sandstone manor. You entered by climbing a few steps to the grand front door and once inside, you went up a few more steps into the great room with its dark wooden beams and massive fireplace. There were ten bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second floor. The daylight basement had another large gathering room as well as many smaller rooms for storage and other purposes.

Upkeep was a bit of a challenge, with a dozen toilets to clean and long, carpeted hallways to vacuum. There were plenty of balustrades and a large mantle to gather dust and windows upon windows to wash. Still, the luxury of space was impressive for a newlywed couple in their early twenties.

It was all quite grand even though our portion of the space was a tiny three-room apartment tucked into one corner of the building. We had a kitchen, a bathroom and an everything else room. We slept on a hide-a-bed sofa that had to be folded in order to open the door to our apartment.

But we did have the responsibility of cleaning the rest of the building and caring for the boiler which was at best quirky and at worst downright frustrating. It was a steam system and air would get trapped in the pipes so that I had to go through the entire building room by room bleeding air out of each radiator. I had to be careful, because the steam was hot enough to burn my hands. There were some tricky balancing acts involved in reaching light bulbs when they burned out. The windows leaked cold air and there were all of those toilets to clean.

The building had been constructed as a college dormitory but its current use was as the Montana Interchurch Center. It housed the conference offices of the United Church of Christ, the United Methodists and a newly formed congregation of the Presbyterian Church as well as the offices of the Montana Council of Churches. The dorm rooms upstairs were used to house traveling church members who were in town for meetings, so we also had bedding to change and laundry to do.

But there were times when the building was empty at night and we would make a fire in the fireplace and invite a few friends over for an evening of visiting. Besides we were young and in love and a hide-a-bed was just fine. We were both full-time students and there were plenty of papers to type and classes to attend. Living right on campus meant that we only had to use the car to get groceries and for the 50-mile trip to the church where I served as supply pastor each Sunday. Some weeks there was a second trip and occasionally a third trip for a funeral or church meeting.

Trading janitorial services for rent made the place affordable.

We celebrated our second anniversary at our summer place, high up the Boulder Valley. We had a log cabin with a balcony and access to a huge dining hall, a chapel and a lodge with fireplaces and guest cabins to accommodate at least 150. Of course in exchange for all this luxury, we had to do all of the maintenance, including caring for a shower house, cut and split firewood, purchase and haul groceries and cook for the groups – often three meals a day for groups of more than 100 persons. And we had to stay on top of negotiations with the forest service and live in a place that was, at the time, still 23 miles of dirt road from the nearest telephone and 44 miles from the hospital emergency room. We are NOT talking about 50 mile an hour roads, either. An hour and a half was a quick one-way-trip to town. On the other hand, we were furnished with a vehicle that matched the place: a 1951 Ford F-100 2-wheel-drive pickup with a flat-head V8 that had been overhauled by a minister (no kidding) and burned oil like he might not have actually put new rings into it. As a result it was a bit short on power, so when we were hauling firewood the granny gear was in order.

When you are living in Chicago, a summer job as caretaker of a church camp in the wilds of Montana is a treat. And the bear scratches on the car gave us stories to tell in Chicago.

So we started our marriage with many luxuries, not that we have suffered since.

After five years of marriage, and nine different homes, we were ready to settle down a bit. Our first call out of seminary was to a parish in southwestern North Dakota where we were given use of a Parsonage as part of our compensation. It was a beautiful three-bedroom home with a partially furnished basement and a one-car garage. We moved in, which wasn’t much of a problem because the only furniture we owned at the time was a desk. Some of the members of the church stopped by to welcome us and assumed that our things hadn’t arrived yet. They came back a few weeks later and found out the truth. We had gotten a bed and a washer and a dryer and a kitchen table with four chairs by that time. I made concrete block and board shelves in the living room for our stereo and books.

The place had brand-new carpet. What luxury. Of course we had to buy a vacuum cleaner out of our first paycheck. I made a deal with the church when I realized I would also need a lawn mower. The church bought the mower and I mowed the church lawn for the next seven years. I also shoveled the church walks for the duration.

The years have gone by and somewhere along the line we acquired furniture. There are others whose homes are bigger and whose furniture is more expensive, but from my point of view we’ve always lived with great luxury. Since that first day in the tiny apartment in the big old sandstone house we’ve had enough love to fill up our home and extra to share.

Life is good here in the lap of luxury.

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 several years now, I have been listening to the broadcast of This I Believe. The current version of the show, aired on NPR, is a revival of an idea from the 1950’s. Edward R. Murrow hosted the show in those days. Murrow introduced the show like this:

“This I Believe. By that name, we present the personal philosophies of thoughtful men and women in all walks of life. In this brief space, a banker or a butcher, a painter or a social worker, people of all kinds who need have nothing more in common than integrity, a real honesty, will write about the rules they live by, the things they have found to be the basic values in their lives.”

The 1950’s were a time of significant uncertainty and upheaval. Religious leaders cautioned about the rapid rise of consumerism and the loss of spiritual values. The entire world lived under the threat of atomic warfare that threatened to destroy the planet and all life on it. Still, the original essays were filled with hope. The original essays featured essays by famous people such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Helen Keller and Harry Truman. But it also featured everyday people, corporate leaders, cab drivers, secretaries and scientists.

In 2005, Jay Allison and Dan Gediman revived the series and invited people to write about the core beliefs and values that guide their daily lives. The project has since grown to an exciting movement of people writing and sharing their essays. The website, thisibelieve.org features ways for churches and schools, individuals and communities to participate in the national dialogue. It operates as a non-profit, asking those who listen to make modest donations to keep the project alive.

The essays are remarkably powerful. It seems to me that a person of faith ought to have the ability to say something about that faith. I am well aware that there is a big difference between believing and having language to express that belief. Writing and reading are intellectual skills and talking about one’s beliefs is not the same thing as talking about them. No doubt there are people of great faith who have never written an essay about what they believe. On the other hand, I call myself a writer. Surely a writer ought to be able to put some beliefs into words that can be shared.

The process seems easy, but is deceptively challenging. Over the years, I have started a dozen or more essays, but have very few that I deemed worth saving. I have, however, been inspired by the essays of others that I have heard in the podcast and read in the books published by the project. I think the discipline of writing a short essay about one’s core beliefs is a worthy challenge. So yesterday, as I was recovering from some minor dental surgery, I began to formulate an essay in my mind. When I started to write, I discovered that my initial idea was too complex for the format. A This I Believe essay is only about one third of the length of my usual blog. I am used to writing 1,000 word essays. A 350-word essay is a significant challenge for me. My first instinct was to write long and edit the piece down to the desired length. My skills as an editor were, however, insufficient. My edited essay seemed butchered and lacked the flow that would make for a good essay.

Furthermore, I have spent decades of my life teaching myself the difference between written and spoken language. When I write something to be read, I use different grammar and language than when I am writing a piece to preach or read out loud.

My next attempt was to recall my old radio days and write a script. The result was an essay that was more to my liking. I haven’t submitted it to the This I Believe project yet, but I am considering doing so. Whether or not I do, you get to read the essay. Here is at least one thing that I believe:

I believe in the wisdom of community. When I was younger, I thought that I was capable of discerning the solutions to problems, choosing what is right and planning the course of my life by myself. It was not an easy lesson for me to discover the difference between what I want and what is best. I thought that my educational achievements made me smart and that intelligence was sufficient. A wonderfully successful marriage has taught me that mine is not the only perspective and that the rewards of listening are incalculable. Long before our marriage had stretched to decades, I learned the value of a partner I can trust and who has the courage to be truthful even when the truth is not what I think I want to hear.

The arrival of both of our children left me awestruck. Being awestruck is a good way to learn. I found myself staring at these tiny people and early in their lives I gained the ability to watch, listen and pay close attention - skills that proved to be critical as they grew from infants to adults. There are few things in life that are as effective as a crying baby when it comes to teaching me that I am not the center of the universe. I am not even the most important thing in my own life.

At least twice in my life, I was convinced that I was called to a particular change in my career. At the time I was incapable of believing that there could be anything positive about not getting the job that I wanted completely. Now I know that not getting what I want can be a precious gift. The wisdom of the process and of the community that formed that process was greater than my own.

Now as I slide into the role of elder and revel in the role of grandfather, I have discovered the wisdom of youth in a way that I was not aware when I myself was young. I belong to a group of people who together are far more than I can be alone. I believe in the wisdom of community.

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 holidays that I observe and others that I let slide. If you check around, you can find some sort of holiday for every day of the year – most are pretty obscure. For example, did you know that the second Monday of the year is National Clean Off Your Desk Day? I have now idea of the history of this designation, but suspect that it may be a creation of office supply stores. At least if you do an Internet search, you’ll probably end up at office supply store web sites.

There are people who are organized enough that they don’t need a “Clean off Your Desk” holiday. I know people who never leave a messy desk. I’m not one of them. I remember attending a clergy meeting years ago at which one of the pastors described his practice of dealing with each piece of paper as it came to his desk. The paper was filed, read, paid, or answered as it got to his desk. Each day when the mail came in, he took all of his mail out of the envelopes, made one neat stack on his desk and then dealt with each piece of paper in turn until the desk was bare. This pastor was well organized and probably an efficient administrator. He never developed a reputation for being an exciting preacher and he spent his entire career in entry-level pastorates. To put it another way: he was organized, efficient and boring.

I can’t operate that way. If I am working on a sermon – or even my blog most days – I can have as many as three or four books opened on my desk along with a stack of notes about the topic. In addition there are papers that I have received in the mail and set aside to deal with at another time. I can come up with a lot of reasons to keep a paper on my desk. I once read that more than 80% of filed documents are never retrieved. There is little difference between filing a piece of paper and throwing it away in many cases. I have files. And I have some documents that I keep. Increasingly, I am transferring my files to the computer, but still one does need to have some system of organizing things so that they can be retrieved when needed. The truth is that some documents require thought – and time. Dealing with each piece of mail as it comes in means that some letters are answered without sufficient research or thought, some bills are paid before they are due and some items are dealt with out of order.

So, National Clean Off Your Desk Day isn’t getting much attention at my home. And, since many weeks I take Mondays as my day off, my desk at work won’t be getting any attention today. Still, it is a good idea. Even if you are like me and not organized about your workspace, cleaning up the desk once a year isn’t too much to ask.

Another reason National Clean Off Your Desk Day isn’t getting too much attention from me is that January 8 is also National English Toffee Day. Hmm . . . which would I prefer to do: clean off my desk or eat English Toffee?

There is a semantic problem with celebrating National English Toffee Day in the United States. The stuff is, after all English Toffee. It isn’t United States Toffee. Basic toffee is made by caramelizing sugar or molasses with butter. If you heat it to around 300 degrees it becomes pourable and turns a lovely color. English toffee has crushed almonds in it. The combination of the butter and almonds with the sweetness of the candy and the chewy texture make for a real treat. Think Heath Candy Bar and you pretty much have English Toffee, though I’m sure that a real connoisseur might turn up his nose at the commercial product in favor of home made candy.

I won’t be observing National English Toffee Day this year, however. I have an appointment to be sitting in the Dentist’s chair at 8:45 this morning, so the investment I have made in my teeth will be in my mind throughout the day. I’m pretty sure that English Toffee is not at the top of the foods dentists recommend for their patients to eat to maintain a healthy mouth. So I guess I’ll skip that holiday this year.

Let’s see, no National Clean Off Your Desk Day, no National English Toffee Day. What holiday should I observe today?

Another approach to holidays is to take a look at history. January 8 is the anniversary of the first State of the Union address made by President George Washington to the congress in 1790 in New York City, which was serving as the provisional capital of the country. The State of the Union address isn’t technically required by the constitution, which does require the President to make information available to the congress. Thomas Jefferson refused to read his own reports, considering the practice to be too much like the monarchial practice of a Speech from the Throne. He sent a written report to the Congress to be read by a clerk. Subsequent presidents imitated the practice until Woodrow Wilson re-established the practice of making a speech to a joint session of the congress in 1913. These days, however, Presidents don’t give the speech at the beginning of the month. The currently observed tradition is for the address to be given on the last Wednesday in January.

So I guess it isn’t going to be State of the Union day either. So here is my plan for today’s holiday. I’m going to rest up and prepare for tomorrow. There are plenty of holidays that require preparation. For Christmas, we have four weeks of Advent to prepare ourselves mentally and spiritually for the special holiday. In the case of Easter, we invest six weeks of Lenten preparation. Significant holidays require times of making ourselves ready. So today can be a day of preparation for tomorrow’s holiday. It should be a good day to celebrate.

You may be shocked to learn that tomorrow will be National Static Electricity Day!

Enjoy!

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 often tell people that I don’t watch television. That isn’t quite true. I don’t watch much television. We don’t have cable service in our home and I am not a fan of very many things that are shown on television. But I do occasionally turn on the television and watch a show or two, especially when I am tired or trying to clear my head of other thoughts.

We now have a local broadcaster that plays re-runs of old television shows on one of its digital channels. When I think of it, I can catch an episode of M*A*S*H, or even I Love Lucy, but both of those shows air earlier in the day than I watch television in my normal routine. I like some of the things on public television. In our area, we get three channels from Public TV. One of them used to air lots of cooking and home improvement shows, most of which do not interest me, but I did watch several episodes of “This Old House.” However, they have switched the programming on that channel to air mostly children’s programs at the time I watch television. South Dakota Public Television is good at showing high school events, including concerts, and I sometimes like to watch those.

I sometimes enjoy an episode of the Red Green Show, a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of many things male. Their love of duct tape and wacky inventions bring a smile to my face. But over the years I think I have seen so many episodes that what I catch these days are usually shows I’ve already seen.

On Saturday evenings I have found one thing I like on public television. They show British comedies. These are almost all half-hour shows with limited storylines, good character development, excellent acting and a quirky British sense of humor. They occasionally hint at sexuality, but it is implied, not shown. Our station will often show three shows in a row on a Saturday evening. I’m fairly certain they aren’t among the station’s most popular offerings, if for no other reason, that they will be preempted for something else whenever possible. If the station is fund-raising, they show special concerts in place of the comedies. If there are high school sports tournaments, they will be shown with no apologies for skipping the comedies. Anytime there is something more interesting, the comedies are dropped. My suspicion is that they are shown in part because they are inexpensive and not labor intensive for the stations. They don’t need much staff to simply play re-runs from the BBC.

They are more fun once you get to know the characters and develop a sense for British humor.

I got started watching the shows because friends kept recommending that I watch “The Vicar of Dibley.” In that show, Geraldine Grainger is a jolly and down-to-earth Anglican priest. She is appointed to a small country village that makes no apologies for telling her that they expected, and perhaps wanted, a priest who was a man. The church vestry is full of odd characters and the chair seems to be constantly working to get rid of the priest. Still she succeeds in improving the church and the village. It is evident that she really cares for her parish.

But, after a few years, all of the episodes had been played and our local PBS moved on to other British comedies in its time slot. By then I was “hooked.” Before or after the Vicar was shown, I had watched episodes of “Red Dwarf,” “Are You Being Served,” “Waiting for God,” “To the Manor Born,” “Allo, Allo!,” “One Foot in the Grave” and others.

These days one of my favorite shows these days is called “Keeping Up Appearances.” Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced “bouquet”) is totally consumed with trying to keep up the appearance of social status, while driving her husband Richard, her neighbors, the local vicar, and almost everyone else up the wall. Her sisters Rose, Daisy, and Violet make occasional appearances. Patricia Routledge, who plays Hyacinth, Clive Swift, who plays Richard, and Jospehine Tewson, who plays their neighbor Liz all are superb actors, whose exaggerated facial gestures get me laughing every time. Another character, Daisy’s husband Onslow, played by Geoffrey Hughes, is a beer-drinking, overweight and unemployed man who is constantly betting on the horses and smoking cigarettes. However, the character is amazingly well-read, often portrayed with a book and constantly quoting philosophical concepts from The Principles of Condensed Matter Physics, Life Among the Primitives, or A Brief History of Time.

Another show I’ve learned to enjoy is “As Time Goes By.” This gentle comedy has earned higher ratings in the US market than in Britain, perhaps because of its sentimental storyline. The back-story is that Lionel and Jean were lovers when they were young. Jean was a nurse and Lionel a soldier about to leave for Korea. A letter is lost in the mail and they lose touch with each other. Both go on to live their lives. Jean starts a successful business after being widowed and Lionel becomes a coffee grower in Kenya before divorcing and leaving that life behind. They have a chance meeting in their senior years and fall back in love. Like many other British comedies, there are some other quirky characters, notably Alistair Deacon, played by Philip Bretherton. Deacon is a wealthy jet setting publisher who takes a liking to the couple and has on again off again romantic interests in Jean’s daughter and a friend of the daughter. He seems to be able to arrange almost any kind of an event with a few calls on his cell phone.

So I’ve written nearly an entire blog on television – not bad for someone who doesn’t watch television. It does raise the question of why I keep watching the shows. I’ve decided that it may be because there is another British Comedy that shows a religious leader – one that I have yet to catch on South Dakota Public TV. It has just the right name: “Father Ted.” The basic story is that three priests are banished to a remote island with terrible weather. One, Father Jack, is a rambling, inane old drunk. Another, Father Dougal, means well but has no common sense whatever. The only remotely sane member of the crew is Father Ted who tries to keep things in order and deal with the rather strange housekeeper.

Who knows, I may yet become addicted to television. The problem is that the shows I seem to like all were made years and years ago.

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.

Last night was the twelfth night and we have made the transition from the season of Christmas to Epiphany. Epiphany is a season of variable length in the Christian Calendar, lasting from Christmas until Lent. Christmas, of course, is a fixed date on the Gregorian calendar, while Easter’s date is based on the cycles of the moon. There are many different traditions surrounding the celebration of Epiphany. In some churches the celebration is a single day, in others it is observed as an eight-day Feast. In many mainline Protestant churches, the day of Epiphany is observed on the First Sunday after January 6. The Sundays between January 6 and Ash Wednesday are marked by counting the weeks from January 6 (First Sunday after the Epiphany, Second Sunday after the Epiphany, etc.).

Epiphany is the traditional season for blessing houses. In some traditions, chalk is used to mark the letters CMB over the doors of churches and homes. The tradition of marking doors dates back to Jewish times, but the letters CMB come from Christian traditions. Some believe that the letters are the initials of the traditional names of the three wise men, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The names are not found in the Bible, but rather come from traditional stories outside of the Bible. Further, it is unlikely that that is the source of the letters, thought it may be a way to remember them. More likely, the letters are from the Latin phrase Christus mansionem benedicat: May Christ bless this house.

There are lots of traditions that employ symbols of light in connection with Epiphany. The word comes from Greek and means “manifestation” or “striking appearance.” It is the day we celebrate the revelation of Jesus to all the world and not just to a select few persons. Certainly there are traces of ancient pre-Christian traditions that celebrated the return of light in the northern hemisphere.

In many of our homes and traditions, cleaning is part of Epiphany traditions. We take down the Christmas Tree, store the decorations, clean up, put things away and prepare for a new season. At our church, the nativity set is put into storage, the poinsettias are moved from the sanctuary, the tree is taken down and stored, the advent wreath and candles are put away for another year, and we do a general clean up around the place.

Another tradition that we seem to observe around this time is the changing of the hymnals. There is a story around that tradition. It all starts with the simple fact that there is no such thing as a perfect hymnal. All hymnals are finite and have only a certain number of songs. Inevitably, there are songs that are not included. Inevitably, we will want to sing some of the songs that are not in the hymnal. In addition, hymns keep evolving. The words are changed. The melodies and harmonies are rearranged. More than a small amount of arguments go into the choices of words. Some want to change hymns to reflect a different theology than might have been embraced by the hymn writer. Others want to change words to make political or social statements.

I have a small collection of hymnals from other congregations and other times. One of my oldest hymnals, from the nineteenth century, has an introduction in which there is a defense of the then new hymnal. It is clear that the committee who designed the hymnal had felt the sting of criticism even before it was published. There had been controversy about how many new hymns to include and which traditional songs to print. That argument has surrounded every hymnal of which I am aware.

The United Church of Christ invested a great deal of time and energy in the production of the New Century Hymnal that was published in 1995. It was larger and contained many more hymns than the 1974 United Church of Christ hymnal that was not very popular in churches and did not sell well. Many United Church of Christ congregations didn’t purchase the 1974 hymnal, but rather continued to use either the Pilgrim Hymnal, published in 1958 or the Evangelical and Reformed Hymnal, published in 1941.

Our congregation had used the Pilgrim Hymnal since the early ‘60’s, when it replaced an earlier version of the Pilgrim Hymnal. The hymnals were used so many times that the books were falling apart. Sometime in the eighties, the decision was made to have the books re-bound, so there are a couple of different colors of covers in our set. When the decision was made to purchase the New Century Hymnal for our congregation, there was spirited debate over whether or not that was a good choice for the church. I was new to the congregation at the time, so I listened carefully to what was being said. At one point I reflected back to those who were debating the issue the observation that it seemed to me that the problem wasn’t with the new hymnal, but rather with the idea of getting rid of the old hymnal. That thought caught on and before long we set about getting the New Century Hymnal and arranging for a system to keep the Pilgrim Hymnal as well.

Two hymnals in our pew racks just didn’t work. We ended up with a set of attractive library book carts so that we can store one set of hymnals while the other hymnals are in the pews. So far our congregation has a strong preference for the Christmas Carols that are in the Pilgrim Hymnal, so those hymnals are put into the pews at Christmas time every year.

When Epiphany comes, we switch back to the New Century Hymnal. That means rolling the carts into the sanctuary, taking the Pilgrim hymnals out of the pew racks and putting the New Century Hymnals in their place. Then the Pilgrim hymnals need to be put into the carts and rolled into storage.

There is no shortage of volunteers willing to do the task. However, I like the job for some reason. When I have the opportunity, I enjoy making sure that the hymnals are all distributed correctly, all placed in the racks facing the same direction, that the racks are cleaned of old bulletins, envelopes, etc. and that the pew bibles are all in their places. I’m not very picky about a lot of things, but I do seem to like to have the hymnals place out “just so.”

But I think the most important reason that I like the job is that I enjoy walking through every pew in the church, looking at the sanctuary from every angle. As I walk through the pews in the sanctuary where I have served for more than a decade and a half, I know where many of the members of our congregation sit regularly. I can think of them and get a glimpse of how the front of the church looks from that particular place. Putting the hymnals into the pews is a form of reflection and thought about the people I serve.

So I changed the hymnals yesterday. It is a new season. There will be many changes, as is true every year. I think we are ready.

Happy Epiphany!

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.

If you think that things always stay the same, here is one for you: Shares of Kodak stock could be bought for 47 cents yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange. Imagine a hundred shares for less than $50! But at this price, don’t expect them to last. It isn’t that higher share prices are in store for the company. It is that the New York Stock Exchange has warned that it is going to delist Kodak if the price remains below $1 for the next six months.

It is going to take some adjustment to think of a world without the iconic Kodak brand name. It wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t imagine photography without Kodak. Before getting into digital photography, I was purchasing Kodak Tri-x and Ektachrome film in 100’ rolls and transferring it to cartridges for my cameras. In the decades when we had our own darkroom in our basement, I couldn’t have imagined a darkroom without the yellow Kodak boxes of paper and the packets of toners and other chemicals with the Kodak name on them.



Kodak didn’t invent photography. In the late 1830’s Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot captured images using silvered copper plates and later paper coated with silver iodide. But the process was very expensive. It was a hobby for the wealthy for many years until Kodak entered the scene. In 1900 they introduced the ‘box Brownie’ camera. The camera sold for $1 and the film for 15 cents per roll. Those were significant prices in those days, but far less than the larger sheet film cameras that preceded the brownie. Suddenly photography was accessible to ordinary citizens. Kodak continued with the innovations, including the instamatic cameras of my youth and teenage years.



Kodak continued to be a company of innovations. Their Rochester, New York, Research Park was one of the 20th Century’s great centers of scientific discovery and innovation.

The great magazines of the 20th Century, including Time, Newsweek and National Geographic couldn’t have emerged without Kodak film. Kodachrome, the company’s color print film introduced in 1935 was the only film used by National Geographic photographers for decades. Stored properly, Kodachrome didn’t fade. It produced the sharpest, most natural color of any film ever produced.

In the world of digital photography, Kodachrome became a dinosaur. The final extinction occurred just over a year ago when Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas developed the last roll of the film.



There are some who will claim that the fall of Kodak was caused by the development of digital photography, but that is just too simple to tell the whole story. To say that is to ignore the fact that Kodak is the company that started the digital photography revolution. The first digital camera available to the public was a Kodak. The company invested heavily in digital products, including a series of cameras and printers that worked together to enable average citizens to produce quality color prints in their homes for pennies a copy. Kodak digital was a factor in the fall of competitor Polaroid, who prior to digital cameras had held exclusive patents for instant photography processes.

The rate of change in our world makes it hard for any giant company to be responsive enough to stay on top. The current tsunami of change requires a flexibility and adaptability that is rarely possible in a large corporate environment. It is almost as any company that is successful enough to make it to the top is destined to become too inflexible to keep up with the change. It wasn’t the advent of digital photography that did in Kodak, it was its business model. The demise didn’t come from the labs, but from the boardroom.

An excellent example was the offering of 1100 digital imaging patents for sale in July. At the time these patents were believed to be extremely valuable. The estimate was that they could bring between $2 billion and $3 billion. But there were no customers. The competition wasn’t interested in buying Kodak’s patents – they had been forced to come up with their own ideas and their own patents. Upstart companies couldn’t afford the expensive patents – they were forced to bank on innovation, not on existing ideas.

Meanwhile, Kodak corporation couldn’t quite believe that people would quit wanting prints of their photographs. It is hard for us old timers to wrap our heads around the fact that our children share photographs with cell phones and digital frames, on Facebook and other Internet sites. They don’t have boxes and drawers of printed photographs like we do. Their albums are digital and stored in the cloud, not bound and stored on bookshelves.

The world is changing. And though a nostalgic old timer like myself can shake his head and say, “It’ll never be the same,” those sentiments don’t change the reality. My grandchildren will grow up knowing of Kodak only from their grandfather’s ruminations or perhaps a visit to a museum some day – and the museum will, of course, not be a physical place, but an Internet site with digital displays. Maybe there will be an interactive display where a touchscreen or trackpad will be used to simulate the feel of touching the shutter on an old-time film camera.

The downfall of Kodak hits close to home not just because I have enjoyed photography over the decades and have purchased a lot of Kodak products. It hits close to home because it is just one more sign that institutions crumble with time. And I have staked my career on an institution that itself is in decline. The statistics about churches and church participation can be interpreted to project trend lines that are not dissimilar to those at large corporations such as Kodak. There is no guarantee that the United Church of Christ will be a recognizable “brand name” for future generations any more than Kodak.

The church of Jesus Christ, however, is far more than an institution. The corporate entities can fail. The human-built institutions can crumble. But the word of the Lord is forever. Faith, hope and love will not disappear from this world. Still we ignore change at our own peril.

I cannot imagine the future, just like I still cannot imagine a world without Kodak.

The good news is that the future is not in my hands. The future is in God’s hands.

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.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me . . . quick do you remember the verse . . . OK, it’s Lords a leaping. Tomorrow is epiphany and a day of changing seasons for Christians. It is time to put away the Christmas decorations and focus our attention on the gift of the light of God. The tradition of January 6 celebrations comes from the symbolic date attached to the visit of the magi, or kings, to the infant Jesus. Christians assert that the visit was the first acknowledgment of Jesus by people outside of the Jewish community. The gift of the messiah was to the entire world and not just to a circle of believers. There are a lot of different ways to celebrate the occasion.

This year, because Epiphany falls on a Friday, liturgical congregations have to make a bit of a choice. When Epiphany falls at the end of the week, the Sunday closest to the day, traditionally the time to celebrate epiphany is the same day as Baptism of Christ Sunday. Congregations can elect to recognize Epiphany Sunday, with its set of readings or Baptism of Christ Sunday, with another set of readings, or combine the two occasions and either read both sets of readings, or read some readings from each set. If all of this is a bit confusing, join the club. I’ve been a pastor serving local congregations for 33 years and I still am confused.

But all of that is about tomorrow or Sunday. Today is the eleventh day of Christmas and all of that business of leaping lords makes no more sense. What does seem to happen about this time of the year is that I get tired of reading the incessant “top ten,” “best and worst,” “in and out” lists that newspapers, magazines, and web sites love to publish at this time of the year. What made me swear off the lists for another year was the Washington Post’s list of what is in and what is out. Most of the items I simply ignore, because they have to do with fashion, politics and popular culture all of which change week to week so any sense of a year’s predictions seems to be silly at best. And, since I don’t watch much television, I never know the popular shows or the actors.

This year, however, the Washington Post list included that Quinoa is “out” and Amaranth is “in,” stating that there seems to be room for only one “biblical” grain at a time. Somebody didn’t do his or her homework. Neither Quinoa nor Amaranth is a grain. And neither could be classified as biblical.

If you sense one of my “rants” coming on, you might be right. This could be another essay about an obscure subject that no one else cares about. So I’ll try to keep it simple.

Quinoa and Amaranth are both grain-like crops that come from South America. They might be similar enough to substitute in some recipes, but they are really quite different from each other and from traditional grains. The grains we consume today are quite different from the varieties that were grown in the Middle East in Biblical times. Simple, non hybrid varieties of barley, millet and rye were probably the only grains known in Biblical times, along with a wheat variety that is known as Khorasan wheat and sold under the brand name Kamut.

Quinoa

Grains are grasses that are harvested for their seeds. The seeds are ground and usually made into breads or pastas. There are a lot of different varieties of grain. Politicians have debated whether corn is a grain or a vegetable, but botanists come down on the side of grain. OK technically it is a dried fruit, but that argument would be so obscure that even botanists get bored with it.

I reacted to the Washington Post article, because of the flippant use of the word “biblical” rather than the technical botanical definition of grain. Quinoa is a crop grown for its edible seeds. It is not a member of the grass family like barley or wheat, but rather a chenopod, more closely related to beets, spinach and tumbleweeds than to grains. It comes from Central and South America. The Incas held the crop to be sacred and referred to it as the “mother of all grains.” It is NOT mentioned in the Bible, nor would it have been known to any of the persons in the Bible.


Amaranth

Amaranth has a name that at least sounds a bit more Biblical, but it is not so. It is found across Asia and the Americas, but not in Europe or the Middle East. It is a leafy plant and probably fits into the category of herbs. The seeds are dried and ground, and like Quinoa, can be substituted for grain in some recipes. Neither contains gluten, so are options for people with Coeliac disease. Both are relatively exotic, less available, and more expensive than other gluten-free options such as buckwheat, corn, millet, wild rice and oats.

Khorasan wheat, or Kamut, however, may actually be a Biblical grain. Although it is not specifically mentioned in the Bible, it does date to the time and the region of the Bible. Here is the story of that grain: In 1949, a US Airman received 32 grains of the wheat from Egypt. He sent those grains to his father’s farm near Fort Benton, Montana. For the next fifteen years or so, his father maintained a small, but growing plot of the grain and called it “King Tut’s Wheat.” It showed little commercial promise. Bags of the seed were sold as a curiosity at the Choteau County Fair, and perhaps for a few years at the Montana State Fair in Great Falls. A few farmers cultivated small plots. It was a locally known variety and had no commercial value, however, until it was “rediscovered” in the 1980’s and the trademark “Kamut” was registered for the grain in 1990. Kamut does have gluten, but it seems to be more easily digested and some people with Coeliac disease can tolerate limited quantities of the grain. It makes flour that can easily be substituted without otherwise altering recipes.

Kamut

I only know this stuff because members of my family have been raising grain near Fort Benton, Montana for six generations. They don’t grow Quinoa or Amaranth. They do grow Kamut. And they do have a cousin who is a stickler for the misuse of the word “biblical.”

That same cousin knows nothing about leaping lords.

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 guess that I have long been a dreamer. I continue to invest time and energy in thinking about projects that I have not yet begun. I think that this quality serves me well in my profession, as it keeps me open to new ideas, new programs and new ministries for our congregation. I am more of a starter than I am an organizer. In order for my ministry to be effective, I need to surround myself with detail persons who can assist me with follow-up and program administration. Once in a while, those with whom I work need to call me to come back to reality and spend some of my time and energy completing tasks that need to be done instead of stringing out more and more new possibilities.

As a result, these days I am a bit reluctant to share my dreams in too wide of a circle. It is simply the truth that I will not accomplish all of the things that I am able to initiate. When I was young, I could file some projects for the future, but now that I have entered the waning years of my career, I know that I have dreams that will need to be accomplished by others.

Still, I have been thinking for more than a year now about a little boat. I know that Susan and I do not need any more boats. But our boats are all canoes and kayaks. Nearly 20 years ago, we owned a Sunfish sailboat, rescued from the junk pile at a boat dealer, carefully restored with a used mast and sail from another boat. The restoration left the little boat a tad heavy and though it sailed nicely, it wasn’t the right boat for a family with small children and when the time came for us to move, the time came to sell the boat. I haven’t missed that boat because we have had our canoes, which satisfy my need to get out on the water and I built a sailing rig for one of the canoes that far exceeds my skill as a sailor.

The boat I have been dreaming about, however, is a small rowboat. Small rowboats were used as working craft in the 19th Century. Efficiency was critical in these human-powered boats, so hull shape and boat design were very far advanced 150 years ago. In addition to being efficient, they were beautiful. The most famous of these boats in the United States were the Whitehall boats of New England. In a sense they were the height of their technology: a touchstone of small craft elegance and design. When I dream of a small rowboat, I imagine a beautiful wineglass transom and lap strake planking. The boat of my dreams is not too long, perhaps 15’, a little beamy, but less than 4’, so some speed can be achieved in rowing. It needs to have plenty of freeboard for handling waves, room enough for a couple of passengers, and stability enough that a parent might approve of a grandson going out with his grandfather. Ah, now I have spilled why I have been dreaming of such a boat.

As a boat builder, there is really one way for me to obtain the boat of my dreams. I need to build it. Now, I am no boat designer, so I will purchase plans drawn by a naval architect and use the advantage of others who have built such boats. Designer John Harris has a boat that meets all of my dreams, I think, though I have yet to purchase the study plans.

A few years ago a friend gave me a little book by Richard Bode titled First You have to Row a Little Boat. It is a lightweight book in many aspects, with a set of simple reflections on life. But the reflections ring true. And sometimes the truth isn’t complex. The boat starts with the obvious. Before one can become the master of a yacht, one has to learn how to row a small boat. The starting point has to be something that is achievable. And it is further true that rowing is a skill that is never truly mastered. There is always more to learn about handling any craft. I guess that I agree with the philosophy of the book, though this brief paragraph, of course, does not do justice to the little book.

So, it seems to me, that one of the things that a grandfather can teach a grandson is how to row a boat. It isn’t the kind of skill that is needed to master the Internet. It isn’t the kind of skill that will provide him with a way to earn a living. It is a life skill that will have to be applied in order to have meaning. Of course rowing for recreation is something that one can pursue in a meaningful way for a lifetime, but my aim is much higher than imparting a recreational hobby. As I said, I am a dreamer. I believe that a grandfather might be a part of a child’s discovery of the meaning of life and understanding of how to approach any number of challenges and problems that might arise in living. To the extent that I have achieved wisdom, is it not my responsibility to share it.

Thus a little boat is, in my dreams, a tool for teaching about life. And by sharing the dream in today’s blog, I guess I am moving the dream a notch closer to reality. I know that some of you who read the blog will ask me in a month or two, “Have you started to build that boat yet?” I think there is a part of me that wants that to happen. I know there is a part of me that wants to be able to say, “Why, yes, I have.”

But these things take time. A dreamer needs a support team of realists, who remind him of all of the priorities of a family’s time and financial resources. Some of the best things in life are worth waiting for the timing to be right. And there is a big difference between “I want” and the right thing to do.

Here is the thing. You do have to row a little boat before doing many other things. But it is not first. Before you row the boat, before you ever sit in the boat, you have to dream of the boat. And then, in the right time, you have to build the boat. Then, and only then, can you begin to row.

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 biggest challenges of writing an essay every day is choosing the topic. There are days when I know exactly what I want to write about when I wake. Sometimes I have a few extra blog topics in reserve for those days when nothing seems to be stirring. Then there are days when I wake and sit in front of the computer with no idea what the topic for the day might be. On those days, I usually scan the news. I have a half dozen favorite news web sites from around the world that report stories on topics and in areas that are interesting to me. Some days, like today, I get through my news sites and still don’t have a topic for the blog.

That probably means that the blog will be not as interesting as other days – and this may serve as a warning to you. If you are short of time, today might be a good day to just go on to whatever is next on your list. This isn’t likely to be one of my brilliant days.

A couple of items did catch my attention that may have slipped yours. I don’t know exactly what was going on in my life back on November 17 and 18, but I completely missed the grand opening of the Dan Aslett Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho. The spacious 80,000-square-foot green building highlights more than 5,000 treasures of the history of cleaning including tools, machines, appliances, art, posters, and even some demonstrations.

The museum’s web site bills Don Aslett as America’s #1 Cleaning Expert. I have no reason to doubt the claim. I just wonder how many people are sitting at home this winter planning destination vacations to Pocatello so they can tour the museum. Will the museum draw tourists to Pocatello that might have otherwise never considered a trip to the southeast Idaho City? And the museum has a gift shop! Just imagine how much fun it would be to live in Pocatello. Then, for every occasion, you could just stop by the gift shop – you don’t have to pay the museum entry fee to go to the gift shop – and buy great cleaning products for everyone on your gift list.

What child wouldn’t appreciate having their own quality mop bucket and caddy sized just right for little hands? Or perhaps you could pick up stuffed animals that aren’t the usual cuddly teddy bear, but rather a giant microbe like e-coli and cold viruses – complete with feelers and googly eyes? You could pick up a music-playing washboard tie for that hard to shop for guy on your list. And for the readers, there is a section featuring books and publications that educate and inspire persons to clean more successfully.

Maybe that is what I lack. I still haven’t read the right book to inspire me to clean more successfully.

Well, a trip to the museum of clean might not be the number one destination for every family’s vacation this year, but I think I know of one kid who might enjoy the trip. I found out about four-year-old Dustin Kruse from the Kohler plumbing supply web site.

Photo from www.us.kohler.com.

Dustin, it seems, has had a fascination with toilets for most of his life. He toilet trained himself before he turned two and continued his exploration of toilets. He removed the tank cover and discovered how the appliance works. He is continually asking his parents to let him explore urinals, port-a-potties, and bathrooms wherever they go. For his fourth birthday, he begged his parents to take him to the Kohler Design Center, a three-story showcase of Kohler kitchen and bath products. The Design Center was a 70-mile one-way trip for the family, but he was so insistent that the family decided to make the trip for his birthday. They expected a quick walk-through and then perhaps a meal at a fast-food restaurant.

Dustin loved the place! He spent two and a half hours exploring all of the display toilets and bidets. He was especially interested in dual-flush technology. He quizzed the in-house designers about full-flush and half-flush and before leaving the store, was entertaining other visitors with his explanations of how the toilet works.

He left the store proclaiming, “For Christmas, I’m asking Santa for a full-flush half-flush toilet.”

The device was out of his parents’ budget for Christmas this year. But the boy was persistent and kept insisting that it was the only thing he wanted for Christmas. Finally, the parents made a call to Kohler Customer Service and explained their dilemma. John Bashaw, director of Kohler Customer Service saw an opportunity for the company and, just before Christmas a Kohler truck delivered a Persuade Dual Flush toilet, wrapped in a big red ribbon to the Kruse home. Little Dustin was fairly jumping for joy as the toilet was installed.

“There are no words to describe the happiness of seeing your little boy’s dreams come true,” his mother said. “We’re so grateful and blessed Kohler made this possible.”

The question raised by the story – and unanswered by the Kohler site – is this: If Dustin Kruse has all of his dreams come true at the age of 4, what are the future dreams of the boy? Do you suppose he will grow into a teenager who dreams of sewage transfer stations or complete treatment plants?

And that, my friends, is how it goes for me some days. I don’t have something that is burning to be said. I don’t have a heady topic for a detailed essay. I don’t find things in the news that are topics for my blog. I can’t even offer a theological reflection about life in general. All I can find is a couple of little stories about people who think and act very differently than I.

Thankfully, people are endlessly fascinating. And that is a real gift of this life. There are more ways for people to surprise you than there are moments in a lifetime. I don’t anticipate ever getting bored. Maybe that is part of our purpose in this life – to come up with new and fascinating ways to entertain each other. If you think about it from God’s perspective, these creatures that came into existence for the purpose of relationship with God now provide God with an endless source of creative ideas. Often our ideas aren’t that good, but they are rarely boring. Somehow, after all of these millennia and generations God appears to still be amused with humans.

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 guess I never was one to set out to break records. I have had no particular need to be first or fastest or most in anything. There is a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records in my dentist’s office and I look at it from time to time while I am waiting to have my teeth cleaned. There are some interesting feats reported in the book, but, frankly, after a while I become bored with the various things reported. People will go a long way and make a huge effort to establish a record. The first phase appears to be discovering some new category. Once a category is established, the initial record is set. Then records fall as new people discover the category and attempt the same feat on a grander scale. Some of the things, like world’s largest candy bar, could go on for a long time with a new group just doing a bit more organization and buying a bit more chocolate. The most kids hula hooping or playing each others’ violins seem to be the kind of records that can fall simply by gathering a larger crowd.

There are, however, some records that catch my interest. I like to read about aviation records. Having grown up around airplanes and having a phase of my life when I was a pilot with a share in an airplane, I enjoy things related to flying. When Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew around the world in the Voyager in December of 1986, part of their funding was a $10 donation from me. I liked the idea of a privately-funded effort going for the record for distance unrefueled. The previous record holder had been a United States Air Force Crew piloting a Boeing B-52.

If you take a stroll through the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, you can see the Voyager and a lot of other airplanes that were experimental, home-built, and specially modified by private individuals to go after various records.

So I’ll be paying attention over the next few weeks (and perhaps months) as Matevz Lenarcic heads out to fly around the world in an ultra-light aircraft . He isn’t going for the record to be the first. It has been done before. In fact, he has done it before. After having his 2002 attempt stopped by bureaucratic paperwork – or the lack of paperwork, he added some equipment to his airplane and made it around in 2004.

This time the biologist and environmentalist will take off tomorrow in a two-month journey around the world in the attempt to break records for lightest aircraft and least amount of fuel in a circumnavigation of the globe. It is no small feat, though the airplane will be small. In order to succeed, he will have to spend some of his time on the ground waiting for weather conditions to be just right. He doesn’t have any anti-icing equipment and doesn’t carry radar with him.

The least amount of fuel to fly around the globe – that is quite an interesting goal. The Slovenian adventurer has already caught the world’s attention with previous flights and with a book of gorgeous photographs that he took flying over the Alps. This attempt will be a feat of endurance and ingenuity.

The airplane is a Virus SW914 ultra-light airplane manufactured by the Slovenian company Pipistrel. It is not too heavily modified from the sport airplane produced by the company. The airplane is designed to carry two people on short flights. His version has the extra seat and controls removed, some extra fuel capacity added, and some extra space for survival gear. He also will be flying with GPS navigation and a three-axis autopilot, required by Canadian authorities for attempting to cross the Atlantic from Canada. The lack of the autopilot was what stopped his first attempt after flying west-to east across Ukraine, Siberia, Alaska and Canada.

Power for his flight is the Rotax 914 – a well tested, 4-stroke turbocharged engine developed for recreational aircraft and installed by manufacturers around the world. The four cylinder, horizontally opposed engine has accumulated millions of flight hours and is very reliable. It can operate on automotive fuel, so availability of fuel and repairs should not be a problem for the flight. 115 horsepower isn’t much, but the low power is one of the ways to achieve low fuel consumption.

There is, however, considerable risk involved. He will need to fly near the service ceiling of the airplane for extended periods when crossing mountains. He will need to fly long distances over water, forest, and other inhospitable terrain. He will need to be constantly aware of changing weather and wind conditions. Too much flying into a headwind will result in too much fuel consumption to make the record. The route of the flight covers a part of the world where airports are few and far-between.

My role, however, is just as an armchair observer. I’ll check out his progress on the web from time to time, though even that will be a bit of a problem as I am dependent on the reporting of news sites. Although Lenarcic speaks English and has written in English, I can’t find an English-language site that is tracking the flight.

It is good to begin a new year with a new adventure. And there is a new twist to this record attempt. Instead of going for farthest, fastest, biggest, Lenarcic is trying for the least – the least amount of fuel used to fly around the world.

There are still plenty of records out there for adventurers to seek and challenges that we might think to be impossible that can be accomplished with the application of ingenuity and energy. Despite the prevailing opinion, one person can still make a change in the world.

I hope Lenarcic makes it. And I hope that not long afterward someone breaks the record. Decreasing fuel consumption and becoming more efficient are things that can be shared with others and used in a wide variety of settings.

Fly safely!

All photographs in today’s blog are from Reuters.

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 seems like I should write something significant to begin a new year. 2011 was quite a year for our family. Susan and I each lost a parent. We both became grandparents. Our daughter got married. We had a sort-of-sabbatical. It was a year without equal in our lives – and a year that will never be repeated. Whatever else I can say about 2012 – it won’t be a repeat of 2011. I am grateful for that. Not that I would want to not have lived through the year that just passed. There was simply too much that was too good that occurred. But life is never simply all good with no bad, all joy with no pain, all success with no struggle. It just doesn’t work like that.

New Years Fireworks Display in Sydney, Australia. Photo from www.bbc.co.uk.

After all – there is a 5,125-year-old Mesoamerican calendar that runs out on December 21, 2012. It depends on whom you talk to for opinions on what that means. Some new age interpreters say that the date marks the time when the Earth and its inhabitants will undergo a positive physical and spiritual transformation and that 2012 will mark the beginning of a new era. Others predict the end of the world.
I’m comfortable waiting to see what happens.

I do know that I have a calendar that ran out of days yesterday and the end of the world didn’t come. I just put up a new calendar. I do know that we’ve lived through several predictions of apocalyptic doom. The world didn’t’ end on January 31, 1999. I checked Sydney, Australia, Hong Kong, and even London and New York City before going to bed on that night and sleeping right through midnight in Mountain Standard Time. I was in Oregon on May 21, 2011, the first day that Harold Camping predicted that the Rapture would occur. When nothing happened that day, he revised his prediction to October 21. I was in Missouri when that day came around. He had previously predicted the rapture would occur in 1994. Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) Maybe Harold Camping hadn’t read that verse of the Bible.

Like I said, I have no problem with living my life and seeing events as they come. I don’t need special powers of prediction.

Of course there could be catastrophe around the corner. Bad things do happen to good people – and often they don’t see what is coming. But it is equally true that good things might be coming as well.

I suppose that I should make some sort of a prediction about the year to come, but I really do not have any special insight on the future. My faith is not based on some kind of ability to see the future. I read the prophets not as predictors, but as voices calling us to faithfulness in our relationship with God.

I do, however, have a gut feeling that in 2012, life is not going to get any easier. There won’t be any magic solutions that mean that dreams come true without hard work. I won’t be winning the lottery. You have to buy a ticket to win. I don’t believe in something for nothing. My job won’t suddenly become easy. I won’t have days of leisure in which I don’t go to bed tired. And that is a good thing, because I don’t want life to be that way.

There is something about hard times – something about grief – something about losing loved ones – something about looking death in the face. That something is that death loses its power. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m not afraid of wrinkles. I’m not afraid of white hair. I’m not afraid of getting old. You don’t get that way until you have had enough living to know that you can face hard times without being crushed by them. It takes being a survivor in some sense to look life squarely in the face and understand that we are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves.

I’m pleased that we are starting 2012 on a Sunday. That means that in a few hours we will gather for worship. We are having a covenant renewal service at our church. There will be baptismal remembrance and the sprinkling of water. There will be covenant renewal and speaking out loud once again the promises we made when we joined the church. There will be the celebration of communion. Our holy meal is just a taste – not sufficient to satisfy, but sufficient to meet the need and leave the hunger for more: more communion, more community, more connection.

That’s not a bad way to start a new year.

We live in times of significant change. There are several church historians who say that the church is going through a once-every-500-year transformation. Phyllis Tickle, in her book, The Great Emergence, says that every 500 years the church cleans out its attic and has a rummage sale. Every five centuries or so, the Church rethinks how it is organized, tosses out a bunch of idols, refocuses its energies and emerges transformed. I’m not sure that I buy all of her sweeping statements, but I do have a sense that we are living through an important epoch in history – perhaps as significant as the reformation. In those days, the church didn’t operate in isolation. The printing press was a sweeping technological innovation that gave rise to new methods of communication – literacy began to sweep the masses and modern democracies began to emerge. Our technologies are different, but no less startling. As we watch newspapers go out of business and struggle with the invasiveness of cell phones, we know that the world is changing.

And change is never easy.

2012 is not going to be an easy year. There will be struggles in the church as we seek to be faithful in a changing year. There will be struggles in our family as we discover the newness that is emerging in the change of generations. There will be struggles in our country as we once see our electoral system stretched and pulled by powerful and well-financed forces.

It isn’t going to be boring.

But I am not afraid. Quite the contrary – I’m excited. Lets work together and see what we can create – a new year is upon us, fresh with new possibility and promise.

Happy New Year!

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.