Today is the last day of September. The first of the presidential debates is coming up this week and the election is just over a month away. It is interesting to live in a state that is not considered to be a “swing state” this year. The candidates are, for the most part, ignoring us. Their election strategies are focusing on other states. That is really all right with me, in a way. I don’t think that we need millions and millions of dollars worth of advertising to make up our minds how to vote. On the other hand, it is hard to get excited about an election when you are being told that your vote doesn’t matter.

Leadership is continually a difficult issue for this country. Our nation grew up with a distinct notion that we didn’t want a king. The separation from England had a lot to do with authority and abuses of power. The freedom that people sought and experienced as they left Europe had them chafing at the taxes and regulations imposed by the far-away government. The establishment of a new government, however, resulted in new taxes and regulations. Great care was taken, at the time of the forming of the government of the United States, to create a balance of powers and keep the executive branch of government in check. The balance of power has shifted in different generations and we are experiencing a series of increasingly weak and ineffective legislatures while the executive and judicial branches remain much stronger. The situation is not caused by a flaw in the constitution, but rather by intense partisanship and the huge role of money in election politics.

I am no expert on government or politics. And I doubt that I have any information that might add to the public debate. What I do know is that the struggle over leadership is much more ancient than our nation.

It wasn’t long after Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery that our people began to have issues with leadership. They knew that they didn’t want to return to slavery, though there were voices that argued that even slavery was preferable to wandering in the wilderness. Moses was a gift from God, and there had been no election or popular say in his becoming a leader. The demands of leadership were too much for him to keep on top of everything. When he went away to consult with God, the people lost their faith and sense of direction. When he tried to focus his attention on being attentive to the people, there were too many disputes for him to handle. A system of judges seemed to be the solution, and for a few generations there were many judges, some good and some corrupt, who served to provide leadership for the people.

Influenced by their neighbors, the people began to desire a king. They were warned repeatedly of the dangers of an earthly king. Too much power in one place results in humans who abuse that power. Still the people begged for a king.

They got what they asked for. The experiment with a monarchy didn’t work out all that well for Israel. Kings tended to be human with all sorts of human failings. The best of the kings were guilty of huge crimes against the people. The most successful of the kings left behind a wake of people who had been disenfranchised by their consolidation of power. The monarchy resulted in divisions of the people into different factions and finally Israel was overrun by other governments and lost self-governance. For most of their history, the people of Israel have been governed by others.

Faithful leadership is difficult to establish and maintain.

It is, in fact, difficult to imagine.

Jesus spoke frequently about God’s realm and the distinction between the failings of temporal government and the promise of the eternal. The funders of the King James version of the Bible – the most popular of English translations – made sure that the bible reflected the norms of English monarchy and insisted on the translation of many biblical words into the titles of their political structure. Thus the name of God in the Hebrew Bible is frequently translated “Lord.” Jesus’ parables about God’s realm end up being about “the Kingdom of God.” The result was a masterpiece of literature. The bible is poetic and beautiful to read and clearly picks up on the major themes in ways that people can understand.

It also makes unrealistic comparisons between God and earthly rulers. You can only think of God as a king if you are willing to understand that the examples of king that we have in human governments are all much different from God. Kings who convince themselves that they are gods rarely act in the best interests of the people they serve.

The struggle for fair leadership among humans continues and I don’t expect to see a perfect model in this generation. What we can do is to look to some of the biggest mistakes of the past and try to avoid them. This world has had enough experience with benevolent dictatorships to have learned that dictatorships are never benevolent. We have learned that over centralization of power to know that power is best when authority is spread out.

Jesus’ model of servant leadership remains the best human example of leadership, but it is one that is difficult to follow. Whoever wants to be first must become last and servant of all. True leadership is modeled by service, not by consolidation of power and wealth.

I don’t expect to hear the candidates speak of their role as servants in the debate. But then, I think there are plenty of leaders in our world who never receive recognition and whose faces don’t appear on television with any regularity. That, I am sure, is perfectly fine with those people. They have other things in their lives that are more important than gaining attention.

No matter who the winners and losers are in our upcoming election, I suspect that we still have much to learn about governing ourselves.

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 forecast is calling for highs in the eighties over the weekend. Right now the prediction is that Tuesday could top 90. There is no two ways about it – the temperatures are warm for this time of year in South Dakota. We’ve had a warm year all the way around. I am starting to long for cooler days. We do get relief at night, but even there it isn’t as cool as one would expect. It is about 55 degrees out right now – that is a long way from frost on the pumpkin. The nice part of it is that the garden is still producing tomatoes. The bad part is that there is a lot of dry and dormant grass in the yard. And beyond the yard the woods are tinder dry and we hear reports of fires almost every day. The fire crews are very good and so far we haven’t experienced any major disasters in the hills, but everyone is a bit nervous, knowing that we still have conditions for a really big fire.

The debate over global warming is pretty much behind us. There is little doubt that we are experiencing rising temperatures. This particular summer isn’t as much of a demonstration of the phenomenon as it is of the large swings in temperature that can occur in the natural cycles, but things are warming up. There are still a few, mostly outside of the scientific community, who argue that the warming is not caused by humans, but even they acknowledge that humans do have an impact on the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere.

I have no expertise, and I have nothing to add to the debate. I am unlikely to convince anyone to changer his or her beliefs about global warming.

I would, however, caution all of us that thinking of ourselves as somehow separate from the environment is contrary to our observations of the way the planet functions and contrary to the traditions of our faith. We are a part of the world. The decisions we make are not somehow outside of the connections we share with other creatures and with the whole planet. When some people speak of the environment, whether they are debating the reintroduction of wolves, or the size of vehicles we drive, they describe the system as if humans are somehow above the rest of the creatures – as if we aren’t part of the ecosystem, but rather inherently different from other creatures.

In this perspective, the Bible and the theories of evolution are remarkably similar. Both proclaim that humans are made of the same elements as the other creatures. Both place humans in the midst of the world. Although critics of Biblical thinking cite Genesis 1:28 as sign of arrogance of humans, I think their criticism is not based in a complete understanding of the verse and its context. The verse can be translated, “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” The choice of the words “rule over” probably does reflect the structure of medieval hierarchical social structures. The King James Version says, “have dominion over,” which may be a bit more faithful to the Hebrew. The concept does include a sense that humans have power over other creatures. But it also calls the humans to account for the use of that power. From a religious perspective, we are granted power from God and will be held responsible for our use of that power. It plays into on-going Old Testament themes about the dynamics of freedom and responsibility.

The bottom line is that from both a scientific and a religious point of view, our decisions do make a difference. Regardless of our perspective on the complexities of global warming, we have to admit that we humans have power on this planet and our decisions affect the lives and futures of other creatures.

We even have the power to destroy ourselves.

The dynamic of power and responsibility plays itself out on a thousand different stages every day. It is likely that most of us are responsible for more fuel consumption by the decisions we make about what to eat than by our decisions about what vehicles to drive. The consumption of fossil fuels is built into every aspect of food production from agricultural practices to modern distribution systems that move huge amounts of food over vast distances.

When we make choices, we often are less aware of our impact on others than is healthy. We seem to have a tendency to place our individual desires over the good of the community. Even cultures that are far more community centered than contemporary American culture tend to be parochial, and favor those closer to home over those living in other parts of the world.

Our faith calls us to look at the bigger picture. We often call it a relationship with God. We are connected not just to all of the other parts of the ecosystem of our planet. We are connected to the Creator of the whole universe. What we do has an impact on God. God cares about the decisions we make.

The stories of our people are filled with moments when the decision of a single individual changes the course of history. Abram leaves his home. Moses listens at the burning bush. Ruth casts her lot with her mother-in-law. Esther intervenes to save her people. Disciples leave their occupations and follow Jesus. It is probably impossible to know what impact our individual decisions have on others – or upon the course of history – but just as it is arrogant to assume that the universe revolves around us, it is irresponsible to assume that our decisions don’t have impact on those in different times and places.

Thinking of ourselves as either more or less important than we are is to miss the point. What we are is connected. We are not separate. We are a part of a whole. And when we pay attention to the connections, we are not left alone with our choices, but rather see our decisions in the light of the decisions of others.

There is much more to ponder as we feel the warmth of this day.

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

One of the pleasures of this phase of my life is that I have been able to return to thinking a bit about philosophy. I enjoyed studying philosophy in college and took enough courses for a philosophy major, but my seminary studies led me in another direction. Graduation from seminary filled my life with practical needs. Earning a living and raising a family meant that my mind needed to be occupied with the concerns of everyday living.

Nonetheless, I have always been a bit of a philosophical thinker and I applied some of the things I have learned from philosophy to the tasks I had in my life. I have long woven bits of the philosophy of religion into my sermons and professional writings.

What is different about this life phase is that I seem to have a bit more time for reading. My reading these days is a bit random. I read a fair number of novels and I enjoy reading personal essays when I can find well-written ones. I always have a volume of poetry and lately I’ve been Emily Dickinson, which inspires philosophical thinking.

I suppose the basic question is about the meaning of life, but that leads to questions about what it means to have a life that is well lived. Why do some lives have more impact than others? Why are some people more joyful than others? What are the things that foster contentment? Philosophy always yields more questions than answers.

Recently I was a part of a group of people who were concluding a project that we have shared for many years. The event was primarily focused on the joys and possibilities of the new things that are emerging to take the place of the work that is completed, but there were moments for nostalgia and a few moments for confession and reconciliation. We acknowledged that we are human, that our work had been imperfect. We had made mistakes and we had learned from our mistakes.

At some point, a phrase came to my mind, but I couldn’t remember its source. I knew it went something like this: “I am confident that I am not quite forlorn.” I didn’t have the quote quite right, and I didn’t remember the source. But it seemed to speak a bit to the sense that I may not be perfect, but I have had a good life and have been a part of some good things.

The real quote is from Kafka: “I too can live in the confidence that I am not quite forlorn.” Like many other Kafka quotes, it is a gem that is situated in a strange place in a strange story. It comes from “Investigations of a Dog,” a story in which the narrator is a dog that has an incredibly large vocabulary as he describes his own point of view on life.

Kafka was an early 20th century writer of short stories and novels, born to a German-speaking family in Prague. During his life, only a few of his works were published: a couple of collections of short stories and stories that were printed in magazines. With the rise of existentialist philosophies in the period between the first and second World Wars, his work gained more attention. Both Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre are said to have been heavily influenced by Kafka’s works. Many American college students know his 1912 story, “The Metamorphosis,” as it is a common assignment in college literature classes.

“Investigations of a Dog” comes from about a decade later, close to the end of Kafka’s life. He was only 40 when he died, but his death came after a long struggle with tuberculosis, so he had quite a bit of time to contemplate both the reality of dying and the meaning of life as he faced the end. One has to believe that “Investigations of a Dog” came, in part, from his own wrestling with the meaning of life and his place in it. Kafka wouldn’t have known, at the time he wrote the story, that he would become famous after his death and that his writings would be celebrated a century after he penned them. He might well have considered himself to be an average or perhaps even mediocre writer.

The same is true of us. We really do not know the impact we have had on the lives of others. Many of the results of the work we are doing appear only decades later. Many are never reported or fully known. We do what we do because we are called to do it. And, for the most part, we do our best, without knowing how good our best really is. Most of us are not destined for fame or recognition. It is enough to live our lives and do our work.

Still, we feel called to excellence. The abundance of God is so great that we are inspired to want to do great things and to offer our best to this world. We don’t want to just get by – we don’t want to be humdrum or average. We strive to excel. Most of us can think of others who are better than we at the things we love to do. We try to learn from them, be inspired by them, and strive to become, in some ways like them.

On Monday, I was privileged to hear an outstanding sermon. I like to call some of the people I hear “preacher’s preachers.” By that I mean someone who is so good at the craft of preaching that she can inspire a room full of preachers. This was one of those sermons. I was amazed at how our preacher opened up the texts to both show us how we fit into a larger picture of God’s continuing creating in this world and inspire hope in the future that lies ahead. Afterwards, I remember thinking to myself, “I wish I could do as well with my preaching.”

Along the way, however, it is good to know that even though I often fall short of my own expectations, all is not lost. I still have value and meaning and purpose in this life.

“I can live in the confidence that I am not quite forlorn.”

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 is your captain speaking. We are going to return to the gate so maintenance can come aboard and solve a minor maintenance issue. It shouldn’t take very long and we’ll be on our way shortly. I thank you for your patience.”

That is the way my trip home began yesterday. The “patience” for which we had just been thanked had not yet been demonstrated, but it was about to be tested. The captain was right, the crew was aboard and the problem corrected quickly. We left Cleveland about 25 minutes late – plenty of time to make my connection in Denver.

The 2½ hour flight went smoothly and soon we got our instructions to prepare for landing. I could see a few dark clouds out the window, even though I had an aisle seat. The woman sitting near the window said, that must be the gear, good. But I noticed it wasn’t the gear. The captain had added power, we had started to climb and the sound the woman heard was the flaps retracting. A couple of minutes later.

“This is your captain speaking. We’ve just had to interrupt our final descent due to a storm. It is currently hailing and they have temporarily closed the airport in Denver. So you’ll see us making a few turns. We’re going to circle here south of the airport for a few minutes until the hailstorm passes. It shouldn’t be more than 15 minutes. We’ll have you on the ground shortly. I thank you for your patience.”

Patience would definitely be the order of the day, but I reassured myself that I could still make my connection because if the airport was closed, outbound flights would be delayed as well.

It wasn’t too long before we were on a short final approach with the flaps and gear down and made a landing in relatively heavy rain. We pulled off of the runway and I turned on my phone and tried to check my connecting flight. The computer was still showing it on time, but I knew that couldn’t be right. I checked the departure gate: B71.

“This is your captain speaking. We’re going to be holding here short of the terminal for a little while. There is lightning in the area and the ground crews have been pulled off of the ramp. We’ll wait until things clear up and then we’ll get you to the gate as soon as they open the ramp up. In the meantime, please remain seated with your seatbelt securely fastened. We appreciate your patience.”

It’s going to be one of those days, I sighed. I also noted that some of my fellow passengers weren’t exactly demonstrating patience. The flight attendant made an announcement that they didn’t have information on connecting flights. I glanced at my phone. It said, “United data services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

We pulled into our gate a few minutes later – just over an hour later than our scheduled time. Still I was hopeful that my Rapid City flight might also be delayed and I could make my connection. I glanced out the window to see if I could see our arrival gate: B6. I know the Denver airport, or at least the B concourse at Denver. I was going to get to use all of the pedestrian walkways that night – I was going to make the trip from one end of the concourse to the other. At least my departure gate wasn’t in the commuter annex off the far end of the concourse.

It took a few minutes for passengers to grab their bags and deplane. There was a crush of bodies in the jetway and I had to be patient. The terminal was full – that was a good sign. As I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a jog, I heard a couple of announcements about delays. That was a good sign.

I arrived at my out-going gate in time to hear an announcement that our aircraft was on the ground, but the crew was on another in-bound flight so there would be a delay. I said a quick prayer of thanks. I hadn’t missed the connection. I even had time to go to the bathroom.

It turned out that I also had time to get a cup of tea and drink it at a leisurely pace, though not in a leisurely place because the seating area was full and so I had to stand.

The announcements kept coming: “The ramp has closed once again.” “The aircraft needs to be inspected for hail damage. We don’t know how long that will take, as there are other aircraft that also need to be inspected.”

I listened to the announcements about other flights. Several had gate change announcements. A couple had announcements for passengers to remain in the gate area. A few were boarded. From time to time, I checked my phone to read: “United data services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

Flight tracker had our flight listed as delayed by an hour. Then it added more time. And it updated with new, later departure times again and again. I heard a couple of cancellation announcements. It wasn’t sounding good.

On the other hand, I was making friends in the waiting area. A man waiting for the Rapid City flight was cousin of the wife of the son of a good friend of ours. You don’t find those things out until you’ve been together for a little while. I made a game of checking to see if flight tracker would give me information before they came over the pa. The crowd got larger and a bit more frazzled. The woman who had been standing at the boarding kiosk for a long time fainted. The terminal EMTs were quick to respond and soon she was seated and sipping water. It didn’t appear that she was seriously injured.

When they finally called our flight, we walked downstairs to the place where you walk across the ramp to the plane to be told that the ramp had once again closed and that we’d have to wait. This time, the ramp crew was waiting with us. Most of them stood, some sat on the floor. They’d been doing this all evening. The crew sprung into action as soon as they got their radio message. Soon we were jogging across the ramp in driving rain to our plane, where we waited for one more ramp closure before departing.

Still, I thought, my ancestors would be amazed that I could have a lunch meeting in Cleveland and still make it home to sleep in my own bed in Rapid City the same night – well, not technically the same night since it was past midnight when we finally got off the plane. I had hoped Rapid City might get some of the rain, but it was perfectly dry.

I left the airport feeling lucky. I’d be home in less than a half hour. The folks I was talking to in Denver still had a three-hour drive to Bison and the woman had a 7:30 a.m. meeting this morning. I hope they didn’t see too many deer.

This morning my cell phone is still reading: “United data services are temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

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.

Church House, the home of the United Church of Christ’s national offices, is located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Connected to the 9-story office building is the UCC Hotel, managed by Radisson as the Radisson Gateway. The church owns the hotel and operates it as a separate corporation, with directors elected by the other corporations of the church. When we go to meetings at Church House, we are usually housed at the hotel, which constitutes a significant savings for the church as the rates the hotel charges the church are substantially less than those charged to the general public.

I suppose that on rainy days or the coldest and most blustery days in the winter, those who work in the building and those attending meetings at Church House appreciate the heated and enclosed passageway between the hotel and Church House. However, for some of us it can mean that we literally do not have the opportunity to go outside during meetings that last for several days.

I know that I wasn’t made for staying indoors all of the time.

One of the ways that I cope with the situation is to avoid the elevators. I have no problem riding elevators, but I need exercise and one way to get it is to take the stairs instead of the elevator. I guess I should mention that the hotel does have a fitness room and in that area are a number of machines that can be used for exercise. But I choose the stairs.

Church House is an older building that was headquarters to Ohio Bell for more than a half century before it became home to the United Church of Christ. There is a central staircase in the middle of the building with finished floors and iron grillwork on the hardwood railings. One walks through a couple of fire doors to enter the space and the stairs go around an open area, so you walk in a rectangle as you ascend or descend. There is also an external stairway for emergencies, but it is not available for daily use.

The Hotel was built in the 1990’s and has a very modern and decorated look, but the stairways were designed to be used as fire escapes, and are in no way decorated. They are steel stairways that go back and forth in a concrete chamber where sounds echo. The walls are mostly gray with the steel railings painted orange.

This trip all of our meetings have been on the 9th floor of Church House, so I get a good workout going from the ground level hotel connector or chapel to the meeting room. I am on the second floor of the hotel – the first time I’ve had a room this low in the building, so there is just one flight of stairs for me in the hotel.

Comparing the two buildings one might conclude that in the past people used the stairs more often than they do these days. Or perhaps that people are more likely to use the elevators in a hotel than in an office building. I suppose there are plenty of folks who fit a trip to the fitness room into their schedule and work out on the machines. Those who work in Church House every day probably are used to getting their exercise in enclosed spaces.

Most of the time I get the stairways to myself. Occasionally, I can hear one or two people in the stairwells as I go up or down, but the majority of the people use the elevators to get up and down. Being a person who likes a bit of time to myself, I enjoy the relatively empty space after spending hours in meetings.

I have tried, but I just can’t imagine what it would be like to work in Church House. The city has few housing options within walking distance, so virtually all of those who work at Church House commute by car and pay dearly for parking in a garage, or by public transportation and occasionally have to pay dearly for a cab when coming or going late at night or early in the morning. They say it is not safe to ride the train alone in Cleveland after dark. I have a couple of friends who work in Church House who are from the west, but their jobs involve a great deal of travel, so it wouldn’t be fair to describe them as ones who go to work in the same place every day.

Yesterday Governor Brown of California signed a bill that made it legal for driverless cars to drive on California state roads and highways. He went to Google’s Mountain View headquarters to sign the bill. There are no autonomous vehicles for sale to the general public, yet, but Google has been experimenting with driverless cars for some time now. I guess it is a wave of the future. Vehicles will safely transport their passengers to and from work without requiring input from human beings. With mobile computing, it might be possible for a person to work virtually all of their waking hours – or, presumably, to sleep during their commute.

I didn’t realize what a blessing it is to wake in our home in the hills and walk out to the garden virtually every day. I usually drive to work and many days I can do so with my windows down. Several times during my working day I go out to visit people, attend meetings or check the hospital or nursing homes. If I have some extra time, I can walk from the church to a coffee shop downtown. When I have time for exercise I can walk or bike on the greenbelt or head to the lake to paddle or row. There is ample hiking territory right out my back door or a short drive away.

When I need to go someplace farther away, I enjoy driving my car. The trips that require airline travel are infrequent enough to make that an interesting diversion as well. But even in the airline, I dream of being the pilot instead of just a passenger in that great aluminum tube. To be only another passenger in my own car doesn’t appeal to me at the present.

City life may be just the right thing for some people. But as I walk the hallways and climb the stairs here in Cleveland, I am very grateful that it isn’t my home.

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 most of my life I have been a paddler. In a canoe, a solo paddler kneels or sits near the center of the boat facing forward. If the canoe has much rocker, it will turn much more nimbly with a solo paddler. When there are two paddlers, one sits or kneels in the stern, the other in the bow. The stern paddler steers. The bow paddler simply provides forward motion, except on occasions when sudden maneuvers are required. The one sitting in the front providing the vision is not the one who is really steering, no matter how it looks from the shore. The tool of the stern paddler is the J stroke. It is not too difficult to learn, but it takes a lifetime to master. Once you get it, it feels very natural. I prefer to paddle stern.

Somewhere into my learning about canoes, I discovered the double paddle. I use a double paddle when paddling my lightweight “Wee Lassie” canoe and also when I paddle kayaks. Using a double paddle is a very natural motion. One doesn’t have to think about it much at all, just reach, stretch and pull. Repeat on the other side of the boat. Steering is a subtle bit of how hard you pull and the angle of the paddle combined with a bit of body language and leaning in the boat.

Last winter, I built a rowboat. I built it because I wanted a boat for my grandson. A rowboat is stable and has less feeling that it might tip and capsize. And it has more room for an active explorer.

I really didn’t know much about rowing, except that the rower faces the stern. It is a technique that is basedon looking where you have been with only an occasional glance over the shoulder to see where you are going. It isn’t a technique for white water. Drift boats and rafts are rowed facing ahead – downstream or into the surf. But most other rowboats are rowed from the opposite perspective. The position enables a much stronger stroke with the oars. A good rower can put most of her or his weight into the pull of the oars, bending and straightening the knees and bending from the waste to use the entire body to pull.

I imagine that the Native Americans who greeted the sailors who arrived from Europe must have found it very silly to see the boats launched with the rowers facing rearward as they raced out in their sleek and fast canoes. Talk about inferior technology! How could people who could craft an ocean-going ship that carried many tons and was powered by the wind not know how to build a simple canoe?

Now, however, I have a summer of rowing under my belt. I am more skilled at rowing now. I can make my craft go wherever I want. I don’t run into the dock. I don’t row a crooked course. I have learned how to pull strongly and go must faster. My beamy little rowboat travels at the speed of a slender canoe that is a couple of feet longer.

I have been refreshed by the change of perspective. I am grateful for the rowboat. Contrary to what you might think, it is easy to go where you want without always having to look in the direction of travel. In fact, I find that I notice more and see more when I row than when I paddle.

It is a lesson for me. It might be a lesson for the church as well: You don’t always have to be looking forward to make progress.

The future is not as disconnected from the past as some might believe. Those of us with a clear view of where we have been need not be an impediment to moving forward. Sometimes we do more to move things forward than those in the bow of the boat shouting out orders.

Sometimes I take a couple of others for a ride in my rowboat. They look forward, but I provide all of the energy for motion. The only one looking backward in the boat is responsible not only for propulsion, but also for steering. All this is accomplished with just an occasional glance over my shoulder.

I can clearly see myself in the report on Christian Faith Formation and Education in the United Church of Christ. There is a direct reference to me on page 70. Yes, I’m one of those who are named by the report as “in their final years of ministry before retirement.” It doesn’t take a genius to know that there are some in the church of Jesus Christ who are just waiting until the day I and other colleagues my age are put out to pasture.

I’m comfortable with that. I don’t know if I ever aspired to be one of the ones in charge. I can remember thinking, at one time, that I’d like to be a Conference Minister. But things have changed. I know that I am much happier as a local church pastor. I don’t need to be the one who is center stage in the national setting of the church. I’m happy with others taking the lead.

Still, it seems some days like I’m the only one in the boat who knows where we have been. Some days it seems like I’m the only one who remembers our story. I’ve been traveling this road for several generations of curricula and several generations of ministers in the offices at Church House.

And, contrary to those who see themselves as the visionary leaders of the church of the future, I’m still doing all of the rowing, which mean’s I’m still doing the steering as well.

I don’t really want that much control. I don’t mind if others row. But in order to do so, they’re going to have to look at where we have been. You can’t steer the boat while standing in the bow with your finger pointed at the horizon. The rower knows that there is more than one horizon. The rower knows that you can know where you are going without ignoring where you have been.

If I got my way, everyone who serves our church in its national setting would have to spend a bit of time rowing a boat. Read any of the Gospels. Jesus’ first disciples spent quite a bit of time rowing across the Sea of Galilee.

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.

Insomnia is a medical disorder. At least it is listed in medical journals and studied by medical researchers. It can be the inability to fall asleep or the inability to stay asleep or both. There has been increasing research into a wide variety of sleep disorders in recent decades because of links between sleep disorders and a wide variety of other medical conditions and illnesses. Treating sleep disorders can help prevent other major illnesses.

Diagnosis of sleep disorders is, however, an inexact science. Sleep patterns can be disrupted by a wide variety of situations and conditions. Individuals vary dramatically in terms of the amount of sleep that they need. A general rule of thumb is that most adults need seven to eight hours of sleep each night in order to maintain optimal health.

I’ve never been among the best sleepers. When I was a child there were great rewards for being able to wake up and get going first thing in the morning. Our father was an early riser. Flying in the mountains in light aircraft is a tricky adventure, and the cool, calm air of daybreak presents the best conditions. There were plenty of opportunities to go flying with Dad, if you could get up in the pre-dawn hours and get out to the car before he left for the airport. I taught myself to listen for the sound of his boots on the stairway. I could get up, get dressed and follow him out the door.

When we were first married, I used to drive my wife up the wall because as soon as I woke, I jumped out of bed and got dressed. No lying around for me. I had to teach myself a calmer method of getting up in the morning, but I still rise before she gets up, even when we both are awake. I have, however, learned to make a little less noise as I get up.

I have generally felt that the best cure for insomnia is simply to work hard and get tired. But I know that there are times when one cannot sleep, even when one is tired.

So I am writing today’s blog at a little after midnight at home. It is after 2 a.m. here in Cleveland. I’ve had a long day. My flight from Denver arrived in Cleveland at 12:30 local time. It was nearly 1:30 by the time I got to the hotel. I put away my things, got ready and crawled into bed.

No sleep.

I read a book. Not even remotely sleepy.

I have a very busy day tomorrow with some major presentations and the need to be alert and open to people. And it will be a long day, with meetings starting at 8 a.m. and going well into the evening. I need to sleep.

I have a list of tricks that I haven’t tried: warm bath, relaxation exercises, and visualization. I just decided that writing the blog would save me some time in the morning and l would be able to sleep in a little bit once I get to sleep.

As far as I know the condition isn’t chronic with me. I’m probably a person who can get on with just a little less sleep than average. And I’m pretty good at taking a nap when the occasion presents itself, so some days I get in an extra hour in the middle of the day instead of taking all of my sleep at night. I don’t have any of the other symptoms associated with insomnia: depression, stress, heart condition or breathing disorders.

It is what I think is called transient insomnia – that is the inability to fall asleep that comes and goes, but doesn’t persist for multiple nights. I already know that I will not have trouble falling asleep tonight after a night that was short on sleep and a long day of working and trying to stay focused. I can’t really imagine what it would be like to have the condition persist for weeks or even months as happens to some people.

Travel is a well-understood disrupter of sleep. In our modern age, we can transit several time zones in a short amount of time and find ourselves in a place that operates on a different schedule than our own. Even though I have traveled to a place where it is later than it is at home, it is different. Furthermore the activities of travel, including the need to be alert for a taxi ride after several hours in airplanes and airports, keep me from sleeping at times when I normally would.

When I taught stress management classes, I worked with students on developing rituals and routines for their bedtime that signaled to their bodies that it was time to be asleep. Obviously whatever routines I practice are disrupted by the simple fact that I’m in a different place with a different schedule.

The sounds of the hotel are different than the sounds of home as well. I am used to a place that gets pretty quiet at night. The heart of downtown Cleveland never really gets quiet. There are activities and sounds that carry on though out the night. There is a steady stream of cars going by on the street. I guess all of those cars mean that people have somewhere to go. The bed is different. The pillows are different. The heating unit in the room is noisy.

On the other hand, it must be relatively boring to read my “rant” about insomnia. There isn’t much news for those of you who were expecting some pithy thoughts or deep reflections when you read my blog of the day. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening traveling. I haven’t got things from Church House and our meetings to report yet.

I suppose it depends what time of day you are used to reading the blog. A few pages of rambling about sleep disruption might not be the best way to begin the day. However, it might be used as a sleep aid at the end of the day.

Maybe I just need to read my own 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.

I went out to do a few chores after supper last night and ended up putting on a jacket. It shouldn’t surprise me. After all it is late September. Chilly evenings are normal this time of the year. It is about 39 degrees outside at the moment, a fine temperature for this time of the year. The days, however, remain warm, with highs in the upper seventies. And it remains dry – brittle dry, with conditions ripe for a fire all around.

We’re still getting plenty of tomatoes out of our garden. The tomatoes like the warm days and we don’t have to put too much water on the garden to keep them growing. We’ll have tomatoes until frost. I doubt if I will bother covering the plants this year. Usually when we make it to October without frost, I just harvest what is left on the first chilly night and call it good for the year.

I’ve never been much of a gardener. I’ve worked more or less at gardening, depending on the year. We have a nice location in the back yard and over the years I have hauled in a lot of fresh topsoil. In addition, we have a small composting area that provides additional soil for the garden. The truth is that the main thing that keeps us from having much of a garden is laziness. I don’t particularly like to weed and some years I let the weeds get ahead of me. But we always seem to have a few tomato plants and, in recent years, I have been planting sunflowers. I just grow them as natural bird feeders and for the joy of the bright blossoms. They have to be in the fenced garden area. Whenever I’ve tried to grow them in other parts of the lawn, the deer eat them before they produce flowers. Even in the garden, they will poke their noses in as far as they can and much whatever they can reach.

I’d rather have the deer than beds of manicured flowers, I guess, because I don’t do much to try to deter the deer from eating what they please in my yard. I’ve fenced off the vegetable garden and a couple of young trees that need a little break to get started, but the rest of the yard is open to sharing. We plant lots of marigolds. The deer don’t seem to like them. But every now and then, we can see where a deer, perhaps a young fawn, has given even the marigolds a try.

If we had to survive, or even grow a significant portion of our food in our garden, I would have to put a lot more energy into gardening. I know it is possible to produce a garden that contributes significantly to a family’s nourishment. I’ve seen some of the great vegetables grown locally. But I seem to always find plenty of other things to do with my time.

I’m heading for Cleveland this afternoon. It will be the final meeting of the United Church of Christ Educational Consultants team. I’ve been a part of the team since the beginning. I can’t remember the exact year of the development of the team but it was at least eighteen years ago. Over the years, we have provided connections between the church’s national setting and conferences and associations for the purpose of providing resources for education. For some folks in the church, we have been the face of the church’s national setting and the “go to” for ideas, information and resources for Christian Education.

Things are changing in the national setting of the church. There have been plenty of budget cuts over the years as the denomination has lost membership and local churches have changed patterns of giving. We have always been pretty good at living within our means, but we have fewer means these days than was the case a few decades ago. One of the reactions to the circumstances has been restructuring. Some of the restructuring has been good, giving increased efficiency in the way we do ministry. But attempts at making the church run in a more businesslike fashion fail to understand that the church isn’t a business. We have to be responsible with our funds and fair to our employees and we have many other features that are like businesses, but there is a fundamental difference. We don’t exist to make money. We exist to do ministry together.

In both Matthew and Luke Jesus says, “Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” I sometimes put it this way: “When you’re in the business of resurrection, you have to put aside your fear of dying.” My e-mail in-box has been full of notes from friends and colleagues lamenting the ending of the Educational Consultants program. I admit that there is a bit of sadness and nostalgia in me as I pack for this trip. But I am also firmly convinced that God is doing new things in the church and that the ending of one avenue of service means new opportunities for different ways to do the work to which we have been called. If we focus all of our attention on what has been, we fail to see the new things that are occurring.

The church is like any other institution – it has a healthy sense of self-preservation. When times get tough people go to work to save their own programs and positions. I’m not in favor of throwing out everything we have been doing and forgetting our history, but I doubt that my efforts are needed in order to provide continuity between what has been and what is coming.

Like the garden, the church is going through a change of seasons. There are some who are sad as they take in the last harvest of the year. There are others who are eager to get in and dig things up to make room for future plantings.

Me? I’m just enjoying looking at the sunflowers.

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.

September 22 is a date that every American should remember, but it is not one of our famous holidays. We know about July 4 and the link between the Declaration of Independence and the rise of our democracy dedicated to freedom. September 22 is also a freedom day. It was September 22, 1862 when President Abraham issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that set a date for the freedom of more than 3 million black slaves in the United States. The proclamation recast the Civil War. Prior to the proclamation, the war had been seen as a war for the unity of the states or as a war for states rights, depending on which side of the war one was on. History, however, now remembers the war as being about slavery and the eventual victory as a victory over the practice of slavery in our country.

The actual date of remembrance is not important. It actually took months for the process to play out. In July, Lincoln announced to his cabinet that he would issue an emancipation proclamation. He considered exempting the so-called “border states” that had slaveholders but remained loyal to the union. In September, the Union won a major battle at Antietam that has been noted by historians as one of the turning points in the war. It was after that victory, on September 22, that the President announced that slaves in all areas still in rebellion would be free within 100 days. The final order was issued on January 1, 1863. The January order also called for the recruitment and establishment of black military units. Eventually an estimated 180,000 African Americans served in the Army and an additional 18,000 in the Navy during the Civil War.



The order also unified and strengthened the Republican party, helping it stay in power for two decades.

It was a critical moment for our nation in the world scene, as well. After the proclamation, anti-slavery nations such as Great Britain and France, that had previously been friendly to the South in the conflict, aligned with the Union and withdrew support from the South.

It is an important date today not because we fear a return to slavery, but because the journey to true freedom is never over. Just as the Hebrew slaves departing Egypt found that freedom wasn’t a single moment and involved 40 years of wandering and seeking in the desert, our country found that a single declaration about slavery didn’t insure equal rights for the former slaves. It is a struggle that continues today.

Ava Thompson Greenwell is a journalism professor at Medill, Northwestern University. Her family lives in Evanston, Illinois. While sitting in her backyard recently she heard male voices around the side of her house. She opened the gate and saw a white police officer handcuffing her 13-year-old son. The plainclothes officer an his partner did not identify themselves as police. They did not ask the age of the boy or where he lived. The assumed he was guilty and put the handcuffs on him.

Later, they would find out that a call had gone out on police radio about a suspect that had been burglarizing homes in the area. The dispatch description was “a black male wearing cargo shorts.” It had no more detail than that. The description could have applied to hundreds of law-abiding citizens. Greenwell’s son happened to be riding his bicycle home from a friend’s house at the wrong time. He had broken no laws. He was standing next to his own home. He was not resisting or running away in any manner. His mother was standing right there. He could easily have been questioned without the handcuffs, or without parading him in front of the home handcuffed and leaning him against a police car for all the neighbors to see.

After questioning the youth and determining that he was in no way involved in any crime, he was released without an apology for the mistake.

My African American Native American friends say that they try to teach their children that not all police officers are bad, but that they also have to teach their children a lesson that white parents do not need to teach – that not all interactions with the police will be fair. That they will be deemed as a flight risk. That reaching for anything, whether it be a cell phone or a bag of skittles can be interpreted as posing a threat and can result in getting shot.

To be fair, police work is a thankless task. Police officers have a tough and dangerous job. They are vulnerable to injury and the risk of death at a moment’s notice. The officers who handcuffed Greenwell’s son were not the ones who caused an incomplete description to go out over dispatch radio.

But today, on the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, we live in a society that is still struggling to grant equal freedom to all of its citizens. We learn once again that freedom is not a destination, but rather a journey. We move toward freedom, but never arrive in this life. As long as one person is unjustly imprisoned, as long as one person is unfairly profiled, as long as one parent lives in fear for their children, we all remain short of the goal of freedom. Wars have been fought. Lives have been lost. Protests have been staged. Prisons have been filled. Marches have been completed. But the journey toward freedom still lies ahead of us. No matter how far we have come, there is still work to be done.

A sesquicentennial is a special anniversary. One an one-half centuries. Today’s sesquicentennial is an opportunity for a new dedication to the freedom of all of the people of our great nation. It is appropriate to look back at the struggles and honor the heroes who have led us and sacrificed for the freedom of others. It is also a good day to make a fresh dedication to the cause of freedom.



Here in South Dakota we look up at a stone face, carved in a mountain and honor the memory of a great man: Abraham Lincoln. May the surge of emotion that we feel be transformed into a commitment to continue the work he began.

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

OK, here is a job that may interest you. You get to set your own hours, but no one has succeeded in this job that hasn’t put in 60 to 80 hours per week. You get to work outdoors – in fact you have to work outdoors even when the temperatures are extreme and the weather is nasty. You have no control over the prices of the things you have to buy. You have no say in the price of the things you sell. If you do accumulate any assets, they all have to go towards the operation of the business – the amount of your income that you can use for your personal needs will be very close to the poverty line.

Does it sound appealing?



It may explain why the number of sheep ranchers has declined by 40% since the 1970’s.

I can, at times, get a little down over the simple fact that the span of my career has seen significant declines in mainline Protestantism. The family of denominations to which the United Church of Christ belongs has seen steady declines in membership, income, and programs. The path of a minister was a bit simpler and a bit easier a few decades before I was called to the profession. I don’t think it has ever been an easy vocation. There have always been challenges and the level of compensation has always been low. But there were times, during the baby boom of the 1950’s and into the 1960’s when church growth was easy and pastors could expect their careers to have an upward trajectory. Those times have passed.

But the decline in the church is nothing compared to the decline in the sheep business. The sheep business has always been a kind of boom and bust deal. Prices go up some years for reasons that no one explains. They go down other years. The ones who succeed learn not to get too excited when they are making money. They know that the money will be needed to survive when the market goes south. The last couple of years are a good example. Last year, ewes and lambs were bringing well over $2 per pound. There were some who got $2.50. This year, prices are staying below $1.00. That’s a huge variation. And the volatility in the market isn’t just in the prices at the sales barn. The cost of production is wild, too. Last year, most producers had plenty of hay for feed. This year, with the drought, there is a hay shortage and it is running around $300 per ton. The price of gas is hovering around $4 this year. Add it all up, and last year it was possible to make $90 to $100 on a fat lamb. This year an animal that is the same quality and weight represents a loss of $30 or $40.

If you used last year’s prices as a basis for a loan to expand your operation, you are broke this year. It is that simple. And the number of sheep ranchers will continue to decline – not by choice, but by the realities of the economy.



Maybe it has always been that way with sheepherding.

If you understand the realities of the hard life of trying to earn a living by raising sheep, you might read the Christmas story with a slightly different understanding. In that story, the angels go to the sheepherders with the news. They didn’t go to the palaces or places of power. They didn’t visit the homes of the wealthy merchants. They didn’t go to the tax collectors or moneylenders or others labeled by society as successful – at least there is no mention of such visits in the Gospels. The angels go to the sheepherders. I don’t think society valued sheepherders any more in that time than it does today. They were at the bottom of the heap.

But they got to see the angels. And the glory of the Lord shone round them. Frankly, it scared the _____ out of them. The bible says, “They were sore afraid.” They didn’t forget what happened. They told the story over and over again. We can still remember it because it has been told so many times.

The Gospels are filled with stories of the presence of God with those on the margins of society. Jesus touched lepers. People whose illnesses prevented them from earning a living became the centerpieces of stories of miracles. In a culture that didn’t value children, a child becomes the example of how to get into God’s realm. A rag tag band of former fishermen, tax collectors and political misfits become chosen disciples. And just when things are looking good and they enter Jerusalem with a sense of triumph, the leader is brought before the authorities on trumped-up charges of insubordination and treason. He is summarily executed in the most cruel and gruesome manner.

And now, thousands of years later, we are reminded again and again that our calling as Christians has almost nothing to do with what might be called success in the eyes of the world. Being faithful isn’t about having big numbers or large buildings or lots of dollars in the bank. Following Jesus doesn’t lead to a life of ease.

I like the image of Jesus as the good shepherd. But I grew up in sheep country among sheepherders and there is little romance associated with the profession in my mind. The good shepherd gets down in the dust and mire and muck with the flock. The good shepherd suffers in the blizzards and has his skin whipped raw by the wind. The good shepherd works outside in the blazing sun to bring in a marginal crop of hay. The good shepherd goes without fixing up his own house so there will be a few dollars to buy corn to feed his animals. I suspect that the good shepherd wakes up from time to time and wonders how he ever got himself in this mess.



And the good shepherd holds a newborn lamb in his arms and watches the sunrise over the hills and can’t imagine life being any different than this.

We were not born for luxury or power. We were born for service to others. We are the ones who heard the words, “If anyone wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” Knowing the cost, we chose to follow all the same.

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 several versions of the story that go around among ministers. Here is the version that is most familiar to me. A candidate preaching to a prospective new congregation preaches a sermon on John 15:9-17. He speaks eloquently about God’s great gift of love and how that give comes with the obligation to love one another. He gives several clear illustrations. The congregation is impressed. They hire the candidate to be their pastor.

On his first Sunday in the new pulpit, he preaches a sermon on John 15:9-17. It isn’t quite the same sermon as he preached when he was a candidate, but it has similar themes. Not everyone in the congregation notices that it is the same text and those who do are wondering if they remember accurately.

The next Sunday he preaches a sermon on John 15:9-17. This continues week after week. The members of the church start to get upset. Some quit coming to church, saying, “If the sermon is going to be the same every week, I don’t need to come every week.” The leaders of the church get concerned. Finally, they appoint a small contingent to go and speak to the pastor about the repetition in the sermon.

He welcomes them cordially and listens to their concern. Finally one of the group asks him directly, “Why do you keep preaching on the same passage of scripture week after week after week?” “Well,” he replied thoughtfully, “I figured that when you got the commandment about loving one another as Jesus has loved you – and everyone was following that commandment – we could move on to another.”

The story usually gets appreciative glances from pastors. It frequently doesn’t seem all that interesting to lay people.

Here’s what I don’t like about the story: It assumes that the people who “don’t get it” are all lay people and that ministers somehow understand things better than those who are not ordained. In my experience, ministers have as much trouble living the gospel as any other Christians.

Here’s what I do like about the story: The core of scripture bears repetition. There are some Biblical lessons that are worthy of constant repetition, as we discover depth upon depth of meaning. And, we often fail to follow the simplest of Christian instructions.

I have some colleagues who seem to make it a continual practice to complain about their congregations. When I am together with other clergy, whether all of the United Church of Christ, or a group from different denominations, there always seems to be one or more “complainers” whose congregations are difficult and whose pastors need to tell someone about the trials of trying to serve that congregation. It isn’t a pleasant experience to listen to the complaints. I have made it a practice to avoid complaining about the congregation I serve. There are a couple of reasons. The first, and most important, is that I have been blessed to be called to congregations of wonderful, loving and caring people. The horror stories that are told about clergy abuse, about former pastors who cannot respect boundaries, about unfair or unsafe working conditions – I know none of those from personal experience. I have served congregations that have been faithful and fair.

Another reason that I am careful to avoid complaining about the congregation I serve is that I was taught, early in my career that we are defined not by our complaints but by our commitments. “When someone comes to me with a complaint,” a wise teacher once told me, “I talk to that person about commitment. I ask them if they are willing to make a commitment to doing what is required to solve the problem. If they aren’t then I know that they want to be complainers.

It does seem that there are some people who would rather complain than solve problems. Lay people have no corner on this type of personality. There are plenty of complainers among the ranks of clergy.

It seems little short of a miracle, then, that there are still some really good sermons preached on John 15:9-17. In spite of our rather contrary personalities, we keep telling the simple story: Jesus loves his disciples in the same way God loves Jesus. Jesus calls his followers friends and asks us to love one another. With all of the other changes in the history of the church, with generation after generation of church politics, with times of failed leadership and internal corruption, with all of the things that have marred the story of the Christian church, this story has not yet been lost. Preachers and congregations can find the message to be as fresh and meaningful in our generation as it was when Jesus was giving his farewell instructions and prayers to his first disciples.

I confess that there are some people who drive me up the wall. There are individuals who seem to be placed in my life for the purpose of making my life miserable. There are folks who make me cringe every time I see them. These are people I have been called to love. And the love that I have been called to offer isn’t some kind of reciprocal relationship. It is unconditional love. It is pure sacrificial love. I have been asked to be willing to lay down my life for these people. I have been led by example to call them my friends.

It is a tall order for a person like me with a sometimes too quick temper. It isn’t an easy journey. There are times when I am tempted to pray that a particular individual might find a meaningful home in another church. There have been plenty of times when I have prayed for the health, safety and long life of a particular person in part because I don’t know if I could be gracious enough to be the appropriate person to speak that that individual’s funeral. I suspect that every pastor has one or two individuals that they hope will live longer than the pastor’s term of service in that congregation.

But the bottom line remains the same. This love business isn’t optional. It applies to pastors as well as laypersons. It is a commandment.

“This is my command: Love each other.”

I guess I should meet the pastor in the story that opened this blog. I haven’t gotten that one down all the way yet, either.

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 wasn’t living in Rapid City back in 1988. I was living in Idaho. But I remember the feeling that there were fires all around. Yellowstone Park - a region near where I grew up and a part of the country that I love - was on fire. It took winter storms to put that one out. Perhaps worse, the television crews that were filming the fires were forced to use powerful telephoto lenses to capture their images in order to stay a safe distance from the blazes. The result was dramatic footage that made things look closer than they are in reality. One evening I watched what looked like towering flames threatening Old Faithful lodge. Later I learned that the flames were a significant distance from the building.

That was the year of the Westbury Trails Fire here in the hills. Locals who lived her at the time remember the blaze that took more than a dozen homes along with dozens of other buildings and vehicles. The fire scar is still clearly visible from Highway 44 and from Nemo Road.



So we weren’t too happy to see a fire burning in that area last night. I was heading home from a meeting at the church just at sunset and the smoke plume was clearly visible from Main Street as I approached Baken Park. From the vantage of the hills as I drove home I got occasional glimpses of the glow. When I turned off of Sheridan Lake road to go to our house, there was a pretty clear view of the fire. Fires always look closer than they are, especially at night. Knowing that I needed to stay far away to keep out of the way of fire fighters, I drove up to the top of Meadowlark Lane where there was a clear view across the hills and watched for a couple of moments.

Back at the house I couldn’t find any details about the fire. By 9 p.m. there was a story about the fire on the evening news and I could at least figure out where it was burning. The report said that the fire was burning in grassland and so far the fire fighters had prevented it from going into the trees. This morning there is not much new news about the fire, which is good news.

It was a busy day for firefighters with a fire northeast of town that destroyed a building and several vehicles and sent two people to the hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation. Another fire on Pine Hills Drive also brought out firefighters.

We’ve had some cooler temperatures, but the fire season isn’t over yet. The woods are crackly dry when we walk through them and there is a lot of fuel out there.

It seems like every few years we get a bad fire year. Then, if we are lucky, we get a few years that are less volatile with fewer fires. There is probably a pattern out there, but it isn’t easy to predict where the next fire will appear.

Another thing that seems to come around every few years is another story claiming that Jesus was married. The church has historically maintained Jesus’ celibacy, but there just isn’t much evidence about the details of the life of the historical Jesus. There have been novels and movies that speculated that Jesus was married. Some have been controversial and raised the ire of church leaders. Then the controversy will pass and again a few years later someone else will make some claim and the arguments will start over again.

There isn’t any new evidence about the historical Jesus, but Harvard Divinity historian Karen King make a presentation yesterday to Coptic scholars that might point to the fact that the church has been arguing about Jesus’ marital status for a much longer period of time than we previously thought.

At the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies, King presented the results of her study of a papyrus fragment that had been provided to her by a private collector for analysis. King wrote, “If the second century date of composition is correct, the fragment does provide direct evidence that claims about Jesus’ marital status first arose over a century after the death of Jesus in the context of intra-Christian controversies over sexuality, marriage, and discipleship.” In other words, the 33-word fragment seems to suggest that Christians have been arguing about whether or not Jesus was married for nearly two millennia now.

This type of research is continually a part of academic theology and history. A new scrap of writing is found and studied. There are relatively accurate methods for dating ancient writings and scholars who are able to make accurate translations of ancient languages. But what has been preserved are not complete documents or secret texts that have been suppressed by some conspiracy as the novels suggest. Instead what survive are scraps with a few words here and there. Conclusive proof really doesn’t exist.

The fragment outlined in Dr. King’s paper will provide scholars with another tidbit to discuss and analyze for years to come. It does not prove anything one way or another about Jesus. It might prove that we have been arguing about Jesus for as long as we have believed in Jesus.

I don’t expect the arguments to be resolved in my lifetime.

And, quite frankly, I don’t have much energy to join in the arguments. Several of the blogs that I read are filling up with excited comments intended to promote beliefs that the writers already held. I don’t see much evidence that anyone has changed his or her mind.

I am grateful that my work is in a corner of the church where the contributions and leadership of both men and women are honored and respected. Over the centuries, the church has in some times and places been more wasteful of leadership and talent than it has been of financial resources. And we haven’t always been frugal with money.

There are practical steps we can take to make our homes safer from fires.

I don’t think there are any easy steps to follow when trying to keep the church away from controversy. I expect to witness some fiery tempers as we continue to grow in our faith.

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

It seems that the seasons change at different paces in different years. Some years fall comes suddenly, with a sense of surprise and wonder as the hills break forth into color, a chill comes into the air and the animals change their behavior suddenly. This year, however, we seem to be easing into fall at a slow and measured pace. The temperatures are still warm. It’s 47 degrees by my thermometer as I rise this morning. The high temperatures have been reaching into the seventies or eighties most days. That is a relief from the 100+ days we experienced in August, but hardly could be described as chilly.

But in the higher country, the changes are evident. Fall is coming. The trees and bushes are showing a lot of color just a few miles farther up the road. The deer are definitely moving about and the bucks are strutting with their heads held high, full of themselves and their bigger-than-last-year antlers.

Yesterday I had a bit of extra time and took the opportunity to paddle in Pactola Lake. I launched early, before 7 a.m. at Jenny Gulch. The lake has been drawn down to satisfy the water needs downstream, so there was a field of mud between where I parked the car and the water. I scouted a couple of routes around the mud, but it looked like it might hold me, so I headed out. Of course, I sunk in and had muddy feet before I got to the water, which meant that I had to rinse off my feet before sticking them into the boat. Wet and chilly feet aren’t the best way to start a morning paddle.

I had a paddling jacket and gloves and a spray skirt, so soon I was tucked into my little boat and my body heat warmed up the interior of the boat and I soon forgot my chilly toes.

It has been a dry year, so the inlet isn’t running like a stream, but rather a trickle here and there oozing though the mud. I couldn’t paddle in areas that I had enjoyed exploring in the spring, but it is a big lake and there was plenty to see.

The loud thwack of a beaver tail hitting the water has a distinctive sound. Often I hear it before I know where to look. There is the initial splash, which is quite a bit for an animal the size of a beaver. Then there is a deeper sound as the tail pulls into the water. The beaver waits until you have paddled into what it considers to be its territory. It will watch a paddler for quite a while before sounding its warning. There have been some times when I have been startled by a beaver. Once, when paddling in Ontario, I nearly rolled my kayak as I leaned away from the splash. Yesterday, however, I could see the beavers swimming before they splashed, so I was ready. And I saw four beavers in a single paddle, an unusual occurrence for me. They could have been concentrated in a smaller area because some of them were this year’s kits. The kits stay with their parents for a couple of years, so there could be kits from last year as well as this year’s kits hanging around. It is also possible that they were all together because they are in the process of relocating to a new lodge. The places where the lodges were located last spring are mostly dry now and not the kinds of homes beavers prefer. Most of the time there are more beavers than I see, with some inside the lodge and others out and about scouting for food.

I paddled around and watched the beavers for a while until all of them got tired of me and headed beneath the water for a while. Soon the sun was warming me as I enjoyed another beautiful day in the hills. Lists of undone tasks were calling me as I took the boat out of the water, but I decided that the onset of fall merited taking the “long cut” to get home, so I circled around the hills instead of taking a direct route to my house. By then it was warm enough to drive with the window down. The smoke had cleared a bit and though it still is definitely present, it wasn’t bothering me as I took a look at the changing colors and dodged the deer and turkeys feeding in the ditches alongside the road.

The changing of the seasons is one of life’s sweet treasures. I enjoy watching to see what will be coming next. Autumn is one of my favorite seasons. I’m not too much for the hottest of days. I prefer my nights cool and am happy even when I need to wear a light jacket. Falls are generally dry around here, so we don’t get wet when going for a walk. However, I’d take rain or snow or moisture any way we could get it. Yesterday’s cloudy skies didn’t produce any rain. The clouds blew off to the east. Hopefully someone is enjoying the moisture they were carrying.

The stages of life are often compared to the seasons. I read somewhere that with extended life expectancies, the onset of middle age is now around 55 rather than 40. I think that is probably true, but at 55, I didn’t have time to notice such things. I was busy with launching children, caring for parents, earning a living and facing new challenges in my work.

But it does feel like we are changing seasons in our lives. Yesterday was the final meeting with the lawyer to settle Susan’s father’s estate. Our children are on their own in their own marriages and homes and we discover that we have been living in this house longer than any home we’ve ever had. The house that we bought knowing that we needed room for our children and space for our parents to make extended visits is now a bit empty with just two of us.

It is a good time to remind myself that the changing of seasons is natural. It is also beautiful and filled with surprises. Maybe it takes an occasional slap of a beaver’s tail to wake me up and get me to open my eyes to the beauty that surrounds me.

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.

Just about everyone in town is feeling it. We have scratchy eyes and runny noses. We’re sneezing a lot and generally feel like allergy sufferers in the springtime. It isn’t springtime, and folks who normally don’t have much problem with allergies are feeling it as much as anyone else. We’ve been breathing too much smoke. And we’ve been breathing it for weeks, now.

Probably the main contributor to our smoky skies is the Sheepherder fire, burning in steep country outside of Casper, Wyoming. Fire officials are reporting that the 15,556-acre fire is now 90% contained and they hope to be able to announce full containment at the public meeting scheduled for 5 this afternoon. The winds are causing flare-ups and putting pressure on the fire lines in some places. Red flag conditions continue. There are still some structures that are threatened and crews are working to improve protection.

It has been a bad fire. 37 homes have been destroyed along with 23 outbuildings. An additional two homes were damaged by the fire. And there are an additional 850 homes that are still threatened. A lot of anxious residents are waiting for news. Hundreds have been evacuated.

We’re a long ways from the fire. Our only problem is the smoke.

The smoke does give us the gift of beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

There are some other big blazes across the west. Outside of Hamilton, Montana, there are 400 houses evacuated. In eastern Washington a 60,000-acre blaze has destroyed three homes near Grand Coulee. There is another fire in the hills west of Wenatchee and a 1,000-acre burn east of Seattle. As many as 80 fires have been sparked by lightning in the Cascades in western Washington. The Millie Fire south of Bozeman, Montana continues to burn and the Horsethief Canyon Fire south of Jackson, Wyoming is threatening communications towers and other structures.

Hunting season is just beginning. The continued red flag conditions promise the possibility of human-caused fires for a couple of months. 2012 is going to go into the history books as a year with a lot of fires.

So we shouldn’t be complaining about smoky skies. But the itchy eyes are uncomfortable. It would be interesting to know how many more bottles of eye trops area stores are selling. I know we’re going through more than usual.

Smoke is made up of a complex mixture of gasses and fine particles. The irritation is caused by those particles. The microscopic particles get into eyes and respiratory systems. It isn’t much of a health threat for those who are already healthy, but it is a danger to those who have heart or lung diseases. Shortness of breath and fatigue are the main symptoms for those who suffer from such conditions. It is possible that some angina patients may even feel chest pain or palpitations. Older adults and young children are more susceptible to smoke-related health problems.

The air quality forecast for our area for today remains at the level that is unhealthy for sensitive groups. It has been at that level for several days, now. The thing about long-term exposure to smoky conditions is that we lose our sensitivity to the odor of the smoke. When the smoke first started to settle into the hills, we could smell it. It alarmed us and we wondered if there were fires much closer than was the case. As the days passed, we adjusted to the smoke and we aren’t noticing the smell the way we did in those early days.

But life goes on. We have our routines and activities and most of us haven’t limited what we do. Even the brilliant red-orange sunrise doesn’t surprise me as much as it did a couple of weeks ago. When you stop to think about it, we humans are pretty capable of adjusting to changes. We can live with minor irritations and learn to cope with stresses much better than one might think. Life goes on.

I have been wondering, however, about the ways I add to the smoke in the air. I have, so far, not gone to propane for my barbecue. I burn charcoal in my outdoor cooker and I use hickory and apple wood for smoking meats and vegetables. I like the smoky flavor and I have learned to use charcoal for Dutch oven cooking. A month ago there was an ornamental crab tree at the church that died and had to be removed. I’ve been chunking the wood from that tree for use in the smoker and the other night I used the apple wood as I cooked a couple of small steaks for our supper. I’ve been looking forward to smoking a chicken on the apple wood.

But it does get smoky in the back yard when I’m using the wood that way. I soak the wood in water so the steam combines with the smoke and the wood burns slowly on the bed of coals. It makes for good flavor, but it does contribute to the overall smokiness of the air.

My little fires are small in comparison with the main source of smoke around here. But I can choose not to burn. We don’t have a similar control over the wildfires in the mountains and hills of the American West. We are going to see out-of-control fire for the rest of our lives and there are still some more severe fire seasons ahead as the forests deal with the excess of beetle-infested trees and high fuel build-ups caused by a generation of effective firefighting. More and more people have built their homes in the forests in search of the tranquility, solitude and other gifts that the woods have to offer.

So we’re hoping for calm conditions to help the firefighters and a gentle breeze over here to help clear the air. That’s a tall order. It is likely that we’ll be breathing the smoke for a few days yet.

The stores should continue to do a banner business in eye drops.

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 phrase “stream of consciousness” is attributed to the psychologist Williams James, who published the term toward the end of the 19th century. Most people know the term, not from psychology, however, but from novels. The concept became quite popular in American fiction in the 1960’s and 1970’s. But the idea is much older than the novels, and even much older than William James. Although they didn’t use the term, philosophers have pondered the concept from ancient times.

The ancient philosopher Heraclitus’ famous line that you can’t step into the same river twice has spawned many a night of contemplation and lots of discussion among philosophers for centuries. There is an obvious truth to his observation. Because the water is moving, the actual fluid that surrounds the wader is different than that which was there before. A river is constantly in motion and constantly changing.

We knew that because we grew up alongside a river. In the spring, when the waters ran high, we could hear the boulders rolling and bouncing off one another. The river widened and each year it took out a few trees that had been growing along the banks. Sometimes we were amazed to see giant cottonwoods that had withstood 50 or 60 years of flooding finally giving way and falling into the river. As the years went by, we noticed islands forming and being reshaped. Our place was on the inside of a curve in the river and the river kept moving away from the buildings. At first what was left behind was a field of boulders, but with time silt filled in the space between the rocks, trees took root and the land began to be transformed while the river roared by and kept inching away.

It isn’t just a river that is constantly in motion. Life is constantly in motion. The constantly changing nature of life makes it difficult for those who wish to discover universal truths. Religions and philosophies seek to identify absolutes upon which to base systems of belief and understanding. The famous declaration of the Book of Hebrews that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” is one such statement of a constant and absolute truth. For some this absolute results in a system of other absolutes – laws and rules that are not to be challenged or changed. For others, and I find myself in that group, Jesus’ “sameness” involves constant relationship with an ever changing world. The disciples as portrayed by all of the gospels, and especially in Mark, are constantly surprised by Jesus. They think they know him, but what he does and what he says is not predictable to the disciples. I share their sense of wonder and amazement.

From my point of view, it is the nature of God to be continually creating. Creation isn’t just some ancient event that set the universe in motion, it is a reality that is as powerful and as present in our moments of history as in any other time. The Creator that moved over the face of the waters and called forth light continues to create new people, new situations, new ways of understanding.

Still, in that world of constant change there are themes that show up again and again. The quote, “the only constant is change,” is sometimes attributed to Isaac Asimov. The full Asimov quote, printed in many different places is: “The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”

The problem with the Asimov quote is that the idea didn’t originate with Asimov. Heraclitus wrote a very similar concept in 500 BC. Heraclitus, of course didn’t write in English, so the quotes from him that have survived have gone through generations of translators and interpreters. It might be fair to say that even the quote “the only constant is change” has itself changed.

All of this is probably an arena of idle speculation, reserved for philosophers, who have the luxury of time to contemplate such nuances of life. Most people are so swept up in the demands of day to day living that they don’t have much time to ponder the technical nuances of philosophy.

I am, in many ways, a “stream of consciousness” writer. Each morning I chose a topic and ramble on for a thousand words or so and then the next day I write about whatever topic strikes me as I begin that day. I rarely write “series” in my blog. I rarely go back and refine an idea. I throw out an idea and then go on to the next one. I think that this writing is quite different from the preaching that I do. When I preach, I try to point out not what has changed, but the similarities we experience. While Heraclitus is technically right that stepping into the stream means coming into contact with new water, he fails to point out that water is always the same combination of hydrogen and oxygen. Water is a basic requirement of life. The water that makes up the majority of our bodies is interchangeable with the water in the river. When I preach, I look for the truth in the gospel that we share with other generations. Love of neighbor and care for one another were not only essential to humans in long ago times, they are essential in our time.

Disciples experiencing the presence of the resurrected Christ is not just the story of Emmaus Road in the gospel of Luke, it is an experience we share each time we come to the table. Jesus’ parables don’t just reveal a way of life for those who heard them thousands of years ago – they also reveal a way of life for us and will continue to reveal a way of life for generations who come after us.

Perhaps wading isn’t the best way to experience the stream. Sometimes you have to dive in and travel with the flow of the river. Sometimes you allow the water to wash over you and other times you allow yourself to be moved. Sometimes repeating the ancient words over and over again doesn’t bring understanding.

There are truths that need to be lived in order to be known. It is the search for those truths that brings us together again and again.

May we discover depth upon depth as we explore together.

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.

Elon College was founded by the Christian Church, one of the four main predecessor denominations of the United Church of Christ. It is no longer one of the full members of the United Church of Christ Council for Higher Education, but is on the list of historically related colleges and universities. The list of historically related colleges and universities includes many well-known institutions of higher education including Beloit, Carleton, Fisk, Grinnell, and Franklin & Marshall. Elon underwent a dramatic shift beginning in the 1970’s from a small, local college to a nationally-recognized top tier university. U.S. News and World Report named Elon the nation’s top “school to watch.” It is the subject of a study by George Keller that is well-known among academics titled “Transforming a College: The Story of a Little Known College’s Strategic Climb to National Distinction.”

There are a lot of world leaders who have visited and spoken at Elon, including U.S. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. They’ve had Colin Powell and Madelaine Albright on their stage as well as Margaret Thatcher, Ehud Barak, Elie Wiesel, Muhammad Yunus, John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper. On October 4 Maya Angelou is the speaker for the ElonFall Convocation.

Graduates of Elon College or its Graduate Schools of Business, Communications, Education, Health Sciences or Law consistently garner top employment positions. It is an impressive small university. The school has 5,225 students enrolled in undergraduate programs and 691 postgraduate students and boasts a faculty of 364.

The Elon Phoenix was on the t-shirts of the leaders of the group of students and faculty we greeted last night. The group has been on a grand road trip, exploring the American West that has included backpacking, camping, tourism and service. Yesterday they started out in Cody, Wyoming, drove over the Big Horns to Sheridan and then visited Devil’s Tower before arriving in Rapid City at about 8:30 in the evening. Last night they slept on the floors of our church. Today they’ll get a look at a few sights in the Black Hills before heading to Pine Ridge.

Elon believes in the value of travel and service as essential parts of education and the formation of citizens. 71% of the students at Elon study abroad at least once before graduating. May classes involve travel as a part of the curriculum.

Rapid City is a long ways from Elon, North Carolina. I know, I’ve driven the distance a couple of times. And the group is on their way home. They’ve been farther away on this trip. They are traveling in large vans, which weren’t designed form cruising comfort. They were designed as people haulers. You get to sit close to your seatmates when traveling in such vehicles.

It isn’t surprising that top on the list of things for the students to see and do in Rapid City this morning is a visit to a Laundromat. They know they’ve got a lot of miles of sharing the van ahead.

Seeing dramatic sights such as Yellowstone National Park, the Bighorn Mountains, Devil’s Tower, Mount Rushmore and the cemetery at Pine Ridge can be experiences that help young people mature. Learing to live in close quarters with other students, sleeping on the floors of churches and having minimal privacy are also character-forming experiences. The trip will be remembered by the students for all of their lifetimes.

Elon is bucking a trend in American higher education. At a time when college is seen by many as an experience that should be cost-effective, quickly completed, and weighed purely on its impact on earning capacity, Elon has made a commitment to focusing on engaged minds, inspired leaders and global citizens. They understand that character and values are as essential to a healthy society as the ability to earn a salary.

One of the evidences of this commitment is the college’s commitment to having 75% of undergraduates living on campus. The university understands that students learn from the whole of their lives and not just from classes. Learning to live with others is as essential to the formation of engaged citizens as is acquiring academic proficiency. The Global Neighborhood, now under construction will be a six-building addition to the campus which will house 600 students. It will include faculty in residence an several language learning communities that immerse students in learning languages by living among others who are speaking that language. Spanish, French, Japanese, Italian and German language residences will be the start of the community.

As we greeted our guests last night I couldn’t help but wonder about the conversations I have had with parents about their students’ college careers. The high cost of education has gotten the attention of parents. They naturally focus on finding values for the money invested. Too many parents simply never allow their students to consider private colleges and universities assuming that the cost will be too high. There is no question that private higher education is expensive, but universities with adequate endowments provide financial aid to make education affordable to families.

Somehow, the families of the students we met last night have found a way to make an Elon education possible. I have no doubt that it involves sacrifice and struggle. Some things in this life are worth hard work and sacrifice. Education of the leaders for our future certainly is a high priority in my way of thinking. There are plenty of things of worth in this world that cannot be measured in dollars and cents. An inquiring mind, critical thinking ability and the capacity to continue learning well beyond the completion of a formal degree are all critical to our shared future.

The trip is more than a grand adventure. It is a lesson in living with other people and forming a learning community that supports individuals while encouraging sharing and collaboration. By opening our doors and providing a bit of hospitality for weary travelers we are making a small contribution to their education and to the future of our country.

The students staying at our church will live in San Jose, Costa Rica from October 21 to December 3. The full schedule of their trip can be found at the Elon website: http://www.elon.edu/e-web/admissions/gap-semester/schedule.xhtml.

Last night we met students of exceptional promise. It makes me feel good about the future of our country.

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 quite interested in history, but I am not really big on nostalgia. I am fascinated by the moments when big changes occurred in the past. Certain inventions, such as the printing press, coincide with dramatic departures from the way things previously were. I enjoy reading about innovators who came up with ideas that we take for granted. But I have no desire for history to go backward. I don’t buy the arguments that things are getting worse. I have little patience for those who want to re-interpret the past in order to make a particular political point in the present.

History truly is written by the winners. What we know about the history of the place where we live, for example, is the story told from the perspective of the settlers and soldiers and not the version of the story known to the indigenous people and their survivors. One of the things that I appreciate about certain historians is their passion for the truth. It isn’t all that difficult to find errors and outright lies in textbooks and other materials that purport to tell history. Sarah Vowell is one of my favorite historical writers. Like James Loewen, she tells true stories that aren’t reported in history books and corrects things that others got wrong. Vowell does this with an incredible sense of humor and a passion that engages her readers.

Today’s blog, however, isn’t about our collective history. It is more about my personal history. It is a story that I have told in the blog before, but one that bears repeating, because it contains depth upon depth of meaning for me. I keep returning to my memories for clues about the nature of life. I am still learning from an experience that I had nearly 30 years ago.

As you start up the stairs to the two upper bedrooms in our house, there is a frame with individual pictures of our children as preschoolers. Along with the pictures are papers they made in preschool, with their handprints and a poem. There are several different versions of the poem. The ones on our wall read:

My Hands
“Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small,
And always leave my fingerprints
On furniture and walls.
But everyday I’m growing.
I’ll be grown up someday.
And all these tiny handprints
Will simply fade away.
So here’s a final handprint
Just so you can recall,
Exactly how my fingers looked
When I was very small.

I suppose it is mostly nostalgia, but I really like the objects in that frame. It is more than the notion of handprints. I actually liked the handprints and face prints our children left behind. I loved living in a house with little children. I don’t remember being discouraged by their messiness.

But I remember studying those tiny hands. I could look at them with absolute fascination for hours on end.

We went from one child to two children about as quickly as it can be done. There was a phone call one day. We had a baby, just less than a month old the next day. We stopped at the store to pick up diapers, bottles and formula on the way home from picking her up. She wasn’t the world’s best sleeper. My theory was that since she stayed in the hospital a bit longer than usual and because she was healthy, the nurses enjoyed holding her and playing with her and that they had more time in the middle of the night than they did in the day. I really don’t know that part of the story. I do know that she didn’t sleep through the night very many times in the first five years of her life. She remained talented at helping her father lose sleep well into her teenage and young twenties as well, but that is a different story.

But I was too excited to sleep that first night. As she lay in her crib, with her brother and mother asleep, I just sat by the crib and stared at her.

Her mother and I had taken our time with our courting. We may have married young by today’s standards, but it was not a rushed event or a commitment undertaken lightly. It took a long time from our first meeting before we moved on to dating. It took a lot of conversations to get to know one another. Our first child was about as well-planned as they come. We’d been married for eight years when he was born. We had anticipated and studied and prepared as well as we knew how.

So I didn’t believe in love at first sight. I thought that love required preparation and study and really getting to know another person. I was skeptical of those who said that they knew that they were in love the instant they saw the object of their love.

But when the social worker handed that baby to me, it was definitely love at first sight. I was so nervous about the whole procedure that I had to force my hands to stop shaking so I could receive that little bundle of pink blankets. But when I pulled the blanket back and gazed into the face looking up at me I knew for certain that I would never not love that little girl. It turns out that my initial reaction was absolutely right. I’ve been absolutely in love from that moment.

She has, of course, grown up. And today is another one of her birthdays. Like other responsible adults, she’ll soon be getting up and preparing to go to work. She lives almost 800 miles way with her husband in their own home as it should be. But I don’t really need the pictures on the wall or the poem to remind me of her presence in our home and in our lives. I didn’t even look at the frame at the bottom of the stairs to write this blog. It lives inside me along with a host of other memories. The anniversary of her birth will always be a holy day for me, even though I wasn’t even in the same state as her on that day. I hadn’t yet met her.

I know the story and the story is enough to convince me that love is at the core of this universe. We live to love. And God is love.

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 humans certainly create a lot of garbage. Archeologists and anthropologists can make enormous studies out of the garbage that ancient peoples left behind. Even tribal societies, with lives based primarily on biodegradable products gathered from native plants and animals, leave significant clues behind. There are mounds of earth, tipi rings, discarded stone tools, shards of pottery and plenty of other clues to the nature of ancient civilizations for those with the persistence to look and the imagination to envision the lives of those who have gone before.

Our generation in this part of the world is producing record amounts of garbage. We tend to go through things at a pretty rapid pace. Technologies such as cell phones and computers are considered to be obsolete after only a couple of years of use. Our neighborhood has large bins for each house that are emptied weekly into large trash compactor trucks. On garbage day, I am always surprised to see how many homes there are with extra garbage set out in other containers, or the primary container filled to overflowing. We often put out a container that is less than half full. And it seems to me that our household produces a lot of garbage.

What to do with all of that garbage is a significant problem for many communities. When settlers began to move into the prairies, they selected a coulee near their homes or some other place to deposit the items they no longer wanted or needed. As communities formed and people gathered together in urban areas, they developed a variety of different ways of dealing with their garbage. In coastal areas, significant amounts of garbage were just dumped into the ocean. In our area, landfills were developed to bury the garbage. These areas consume significant amounts of territory and require heavy equipment to keep the garbage buried.

After many years of burying the garbage, we move on to new locations. Sometimes the old landfills gain new uses. There are more than a few communities across the Midwest with parks or golf courses over the places where we once buried our garbage. In Brookings, a 135-acre property that once contained a series of gravel pits and the city landfill has now become the Dakota Nature Center. The landfill has been capped, ponds have stocked with fish and a master plan has been adopted to guide future development.

But this is South Dakota. We seem to enjoy the outdoors best when we are inside a building. Both Sioux Falls and Rapid City have “Outdoor Learning Centers” that have striking buildings as their main feature. In that context, it shouldn’t surprise us that construction has begun on a $1.16 million nature center for the Dakota Nature Park in Bookings. What better way to enjoy the great outdoors than from within a 5,300 square foot building?

OK, I know I’m not being fair. The buildings provide space for classrooms and offices and they also provide access to nature for those with physical handicaps that prevent them from doing extensive hiking or biking. Still, it does seem a bit silly that every time we make plans for some kind of nature center, we begin by envisioning the buildings that will be built.

And when the buildings have been used, we tear them down to make more garbage to bury in landfills.

It has been nearly 40 years since famed architect Louis Kahn proposed developing the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island as a memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The site was once a landfill, receiving mountains of garbage from the massive city. It does, however, avoid dramatic views of the city along one of its more picturesque waterfronts. Back in the seventies, when the city was struggling to find new solutions to the growing mountains of garbage, Kahn envisioned a carefully designed outdoor space, rather austere by New York standards, where people could go for retreat from the city and meditation. The proposal was a memorial, simple and understated with outdoor space where visitors could look out over the city and the waters of the East River in the direction of the Statue of Liberty, the ocean and Europe.

What Kahn proposed was little less than a walk-in sculpture – a roofless room that allows visitors to be in direct contact with the elements of the weather, surrounded by linden trees with carefully designed space underfoot, including a 100-foot-wide ceremonial staircase. He envisioned what he described as “the endlessly changing qualities of natural light . . . different every second of the day.”

The memorial is now becoming a reality. It opens October 24. More than $53 million was raised from private sources to fund the project. It is expected that the site will become a state park administered by a conservancy. Preserving the site will be a challenge. Policing graffiti artists and skateboarders will have to be weighed against the park’s freedom theme. The remains of a 19th-century smallpox hospital will serve as an entryway to the park.

Much of the remainder of the island is slated to become a part of a New York campus for Cornell University. Plans are not complete, but some preliminary drawings depict a suburban-style office park. They seem out of place next to the stunning architecture of Four Freedoms Park. I know nothing about the ins and outs and politics of urban planning, but I suspect that there are many impassioned arguments ahead before the plans for the University are approved.

I don’t know what kinds of buildings will be built but I am as intrigued about a college on a garbage heap as I am a place to contemplate freedoms. During the Second World War, President Roosevelt gave a speech that was a call to safeguard the freedoms of speech and worship and the freedoms from want and fear. Now, decades later, there will be a park for people to visit to recall and rededicate themselves to those freedoms. One day there will also be a university campus on the same island.

Maybe we are capable of learning something when we sit on top of a pile of our own garbage. I have high hopes that we might.

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 eleventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 passed without much fanfare around here. There were a few ceremonies and some of us observed a moment of silence and memory. I personally was pleased that the candidates and political parties refrained from making the observance into another stump speech and opportunity for politics. Of course the effects of the attacks continue. You don’t get over something like that. Increased funding for victims of cancer that may be related to the aftermath of the attacks is welcome, but it doesn’t change the diagnosis. The agreement between the Port Authority of New York and the City of New York for funding of the 9-11 museum is welcome, but it is pretty much business as usual. And for the families of the victims the reading of names provides a certain solace knowing that their loved one has not been forgotten, but also a twinge of reminder of the depth of their loss. And the families of the military and civilian personnel who died in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to have a small sense that their loss is somehow related to the tragic attacks.

More alarming to me is the fact that our leaders and citizens continue to make decisions based on fear. When fear triumphs, terror wins. Our neighbors, regardless of their religious beliefs, are not our enemies. Suspending constitutional rights and decreasing freedom is not the solution to challenges to democracy.

The second week of September means that it is time for the Reno Air Races once again. This year, in the wake of the death of Jimmy Leeward at last year’s races, there is a new name: “TravelNevada.com National Championship Air Races and Air Show presented by Breitling.” The additional sponsors and their money were necessary for the races to take place. Specifically, the one time $600,000 sponsorship from the State of Nevada tourism commission was required in order for the races to go on due to the soaring insurance premiums in the wake of last year’s crash that was alarmingly close to the grandstands. The grandstands are also moved another 150 feed farther from the action. The final turn has been made a little bit less steep. The location of the fire trucks has been changed. There have been a host of other changes.

What has not changed is the speed of the unlimited airplanes – over 500 miles per hour. The field is still dominated by highly modified World War II vintage airplanes. And there is still plenty of danger as was demonstrated yesterday when Matt Jackson’s Sea Fury had a landing gear collapse during and emergency landing during qualifying runs. Jackson walked away uninjured, but the cloud of dust that rose from the runway really got everybody’s attention. Steve Hinton, Jr. posted a top speed of 493 mph for the day.

The quote of the day came from biplane pilot Marilyn Dash who said, “We never thought this would happen, but we know it’s not knitting.” She added, “It’s not bowling.” Having grown up with a knitter for a mother, I’m inclined to think of bowling as a less dangerous option than knitting. Those needles look like they could be potentially dangerous. On the other hand TSA officials once confiscated a pencil sharpener from my mother and they allow people to fly with knitting needles, so I might be wrong in my assessment of the danger from the activity. Then again, I don’t watch bowling on TV, so I may be unaware of its dangers.

The point is that life goes on. Sometimes we muddle, sometimes we excel. Continuing to live is a fitting memorial for those who have died. Learning to live in freedom without fear is the memorial that the victims of the 9-11 attacks deserve. More than the monuments that continue to be constructed, more than the speeches that continue to be delivered, more than the lapel pins and other memorabilia that continues to be sold – continuing to live a commitment to the freedom of others is the memorial that the victims deserve.

I didn’t make the pilgrimage to New York. I may never be in New York on 9-11. As a guy who is partial to firefighters and other public servants, I do remember their heroism on that day.

Then, again, I didn’t head to Reno for the air races, either. I love airplanes. I enjoy fast airplanes, but I don’t get a thrill out of them flying so fast so close to one another so close to the ground. It makes me worry too much for me to enjoy the show. I don’t like auto racing for a similar reason, I suspect.

For the people of Pakistan, 9-11 might come to be the day of factory fires. 23 died in a factory fire in Lahore, and they’re still counting the victims of the garment factory fire in Karachi, with the toll soaring above 212. The fire was so sudden and the heat so intense that the only strategy for escaping death in the fire was to leap from the factory windows. At least 65 persons suffered broken bones from leaping from the building. The horror continues to unfold today as the victims’ families learn the fate of their loved ones.

Pakistan has laws in place to protect the safety of workers and to guarantee safe construction, but too often those laws are simply ignored. Enforcement is weak and corruption makes it easy to get around a building inspector. Buildings are often at increased risk because of make-shift power generators installed due to the lack of dependable electricity. A faulty generator is thought to be the cause of the fire. The result is that workers lives are put at risk. The country will compound the tragedy if it does not respond by coming up with new ways of enforcing its building and safety laws. One wonders how many tragedies it will take to produce meaningful change.

Life goes on and so does tragedy of crushing proportions. Tragic fires are not a fitting memorial to fallen firefighters. May the anniversary become an opportunity for us to renew our commitment to preventing tragedies.

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 Christian faith, like Judaism and Islam, grew up in semi-arid territory. Part of the story of the origins of our people is that water was in short supply. Still, one of the pivotal stories shared by all three religions is the story of Noah and the flood. Even a culture that has known the trials of insufficient precipitation also knows that too much water can be destructive. For most of the characters in the story of the great flood, the waters are the end of the world. Only a small remnant survived. We often tell the stories of our people as the tales of survivors. We almost didn’t make it, but somehow we survived.

Still, we have a deep appreciation for water. The water of baptism is the entry into the life of the Christian faith. In the sacrament we acknowledge that we do not control, nor do we fully understand the power and mystery of water as an agent of cleaning, healing and renewal. It becomes a symbol for the larger cycles of life and death in which our lives take their place.

The ancient traditions of our religion grew up in a pre-scientific age. Contemporary attempts at using the Bible as a scientific textbook always fall short in part because it is a way of laying upon the text a type of thinking that wasn’t a part of the original book. The Bible was around a long time before the rise of modern scientific methods. It shouldn’t surprise us that contemporary cosmologies paint a different picture than the book of Genesis.

Still, for the scientists and for those who read our ancient texts, water is at the center of the story. It is there in the second sentence of the book of Genesis: “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” For the scientists, water is an essential element for life. The search for life on distant planets focuses on the search for water. Without water the types of carbon-based life that we know do not exist.

Science and religion aside, we know intuitively that there is something unique and special about water. I have long been drawn to waters. We grew up alongside a river that carried fresh, clear snowmelt from the mountains on a journey that eventually flows with the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico. Up where we lived, in the early years, the water was clear enough to drink. What started as a drop, drop, drop of pure ice melt in the high country had become a rivulet and a brook and combined with other waters to make streams that flowed together to make the river. The rock and gravel beds of the river naturally filtered the water and the trout that came up the stream to spawn found ideal conditions for propagating a new generation of fish.

Our river was cold enough that we didn’t have to be reminded of its source. Its journey from the edges of the glaciers was short enough that it didn’t have much time to absorb energy from the sun. Our lips would turn blue from the cold even in the middle of August.

Water molecules love to travel. Well, “love” is probably an inappropriate quality to assign to a molecule of water, but travel is what water does. It is carried aloft and gathers into clouds that are blown by the winds. A water molecule can literally circle the globe without fallings precipitation anywhere on the journey. But most of the water that makes it to the clouds does fall. It comes down as rain or snow or hail, depending on the temperatures and conditions that occur within the cloud. Some water falls where it is quickly evaporated and drawn back into the atmosphere. Some falls where it combines with other water molecules to form runoff and flow into rivers. Some falls where it is absorbed into the soil and becomes part of the conditions in which plants are formed. We obtain water molecules in the food that we eat as well as the beverages we drink. Some water falls as snow that can remain in the same place for quite a while before it melts. When snow falls on a glacier, it can become part of the glacier and stay on the same mountain for hundreds, even thousands, of years. The journeys of water are fascinating and worthy of the many books that have been written about water.

Sometime in the 1930’s the Civilian Conservation Corps began to build a dam on Spring Creek just a full miles upstream from where we live. The result is that there is a 375-acre lake just ten miles from our home. It is a convenient place to paddle or row a little boat. Yesterday I was on the lake a little after 6 a.m. and I had the lake to myself. Rowing is good exercise and my little boat is sleek and nimble in the water. It doesn’t take long to cross the lake to the far shore and explore the little inlets and areas all around the lake.

I didn’t really have the lake all to myself. I watched a mother duck with her no-longer-tiny ducklings that scattered when I rowed into the area where they were feeding with their bottoms up in the air and their heads below water. Mother took quite a while to get the ducklings all together in a single bunch, never flying, only paddling about on the surface of the water. Apparently my presence wasn’t much of a treat, because soon the ducks resumed their activities as if I were no longer present.

I watched an eagle catch a fish. The big, usually graceful, bird looked a bit awkward as it splashed around in the water and then took off with a somewhat irregular flight pattern with the squirming fish in its talons. By the time the bird had reached treetop height, the powerful flying had resumed and it was clear that the fish would become a meal.

And I watched the sunrise from the surface of the lake. We get beautiful sunrises in our part of the world. They are even more beautiful when one is on the water, where the reflection gives you a double dose of everything.

I am still drawn to the water. I find it a place of rest and renewal. And when I emerge and return to the everyday I continue to think of the water and scan the skies for the sign of a few raindrops.

It isn’t just the water in the baptismal font that is sacred. The truth is that every drop is holy.

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

I have been posting to this blog for over five years now. That probably isn’t much of an achievement, but in that time I haven’t missed a single day. The blog has evolved over the years. It evolved from a practice of daily journal writing. I kept a journal as part of the discipline of learning for our sabbatical I n 2006 and early in 2007 I started blogging. Immediately the journals changed because not every journal entry is written with the possibility that someone else might read it. The blog assumes that most days at least one person will read and some days quite a few people read it. I receive comments from members of our church, from friends in other states and other countries that indicate that it is read, at least occasionally, by a rather wide circle.

A second reason for starting the blog was that I wanted to develop my skills as a writer. I have done a bit of freelance writing and editing over the years. Like many other writers, I have aspirations of producing a book. I’ve started several different volumes over the years and I completed the first draft of a manuscript during our 2011 sabbatical. I seem to have gotten bogged down in the rewriting, but there is at least the possibility that it will someday emerge as something worthy of publication for a small audience. Rewriting is a skill that I haven’t honed at this point. I can produce something relatively short, such as a magazine article with the necessary re-writing, but much of what I write are things that I don’t re-visit once they are out there. The blog certainly is one such adventure. What you read here are first drafts of essays that probably will never have a second draft.

From time to time I think about pulling together a “best of the blog” type volume, but to date no such work has been done.

Along the way, however, I think I am beginning to get better at the art of the personal essay, for that is what the blog has become lately.

The personal essay as a literary form had its beginnings – or at least its rise to popularity – through the writings of Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne lived in the middle of the 16th century in France. He was born into significant wealth and was known as a statesman in his time. After his death his massive volume, Essais, continues to be very popular. It is likely that Shakespeare read at least part of the volume and some of the later works of Shakespeare reflect some of Montaigne’s style. What makes Montaigne unique and fascinating to this day is his ability to combine serious intellectual thought with casual anecdotes and even a bit of autobiography. The title of the volume is probably the origin of the contemporary term, essay. A literal translation of the title would be “Attempts.” That is, the book consists of attempts at writing. His essays are first drafts of ideas that he put on paper, but did not himself consider to be fully formed.

In that sense, this blog has become the place of my “attempts.” In it I speculate about a wide variety of topics in an attempt to put down some of my ideas. It is perhaps more an attempt at sorting out my ideas than the creation of new ideas.

The goal, I think, is to achieve some sort of balance between the pursuit of intellectual knowledge and personal story telling. I enjoy both. The key is balance.

We don’t see too many examples of balance in contemporary culture. We have created such a divide between the academy and the community that there are few people who are at home in both worlds. I think that part of this comes from the structure of education that was prevalent in America during my formative years and still persists today. After the Second World War, there was a perceived “race” for knowledge and understanding. The incredible powers unleashed by scientific explorations and demonstrated by the technology of the war led the nation to embrace intellectual education, especially in mathematics and the sciences. The successful launching of a satellite by the Soviet Union was seen as a direct threat. So we were encouraged to pursue science and math in our schooling.

Early in our high school years, there was the division of the school into two “tracks.” The vocational track was seen as inferior: a place for those who lacked intelligence however that was measured. They were not college bound. The other track was for students that were expected to attend college. This resulted in the division of students based on other criteria than intelligence. The ability to take tests is not the same thing as intelligence. Neither is a strong set of verbal skills. There are plenty of people who are intelligent whose intelligence is not expressed in lots of words. It also resulted in a stratification of society based on racial and financial means. The students in the vocational track were often those whose parents had less money. The simple fact that college would be a luxury that could not be afforded by a family sent a student to the vocational track regardless of their natural skills and abilities.

After decades of dividing students into these groups, the two groups developed a great distrust of one another. Those in the vocational track quickly observed that those in the academic track lacked real world skills and common sense. Universities began to be seen by those outside of them as unrealistic communities that could not survive without the practical skills of those in the vocational track. University types labeled those in the vocational track as uneducated and saw them as not being worthy of high salaries or other benefits.

The truth is that we all need balance. We need intellectual balance and common sense. We need book learning and practical knowledge. We need to think high, lofty and philosophical ideas and we also need to know the basics of surviving in a challenging world.

Yesterday I was called upon to deliver a sermon to a church with full pews. I was also called to offer a blessing to our children. I was also called to lead worship in three different care centers. And, in the midst of all of that, I was called to take a plunger to a plugged toilet in the bathroom. Say what you want about all of the other things I did, had we left the toiled plugged up, the rest of the day would have been miserable and we would have forgotten the real reasons we gathered.

So we continue to seek balance between intellectual and practical – between high ideas and personal stories. I keep telling myself that if I miss the balance in a single essay, I might approach it in a series. After all, my essays are only attempts and tomorrow I’ll make another attempt.

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 don’t often remember my dreams. I think this is due, in part, to the fact that I have little patience for lying in bed when I experience periods of wakefulness. Instead of staying in my bed when I wake in the night, I’m likely to get up, read a book, and return to bed when I feel sleepy. Others are better at simply remaining in bed and quietly waiting for sleep to return. Another reason I do not remember dreams may be that I haven’t put any energy into remembering my dreams. When we were college students, one of our professors had kept a dream journal since his college days. At that time, he had more than a quarter of a century of dreams logged. He said that he learned to remember his dreams. When he began recording his dreams, he might remember one or two dreams a week. After practicing, he learned to remember four and five dreams each night, sometimes even more.

My subconscious doesn’t seem to need to be recorded and my conscious life doesn’t seem to be too interested in probing my dreams.

When I do remember a dream, it generally doesn’t take a psychiatrist to unlock its meaning. Generally it is pretty obvious what problems or issues in my life have given rise to working on them in my dream state. Last night I dreamed that I was preparing for worship. The event was an ecumenical gathering, with colleagues from many different denominations gathering. Our church was hosting the event, but we were somehow ill prepared. The guest musicians didn’t seem to have a clue about worship and were playing music that was not appropriate and playing at the wrong times. I was putting on my robe, but having problems getting it right. There may have been other details that I don’t remember, but the mood of the dream was slightly distressed. I was unhappy with the way things were going in the dream and grateful to wake and discover that it was a dream.

We are hosting an ecumenical gathering this week. It doesn’t involve worship. There are a few details that remain as part of the preparation. It needs to be high on my list of priorities early in the week, but we will be fully prepared when our colleagues arrive. The Association of Christian Churches in South Dakota will present the program for the event, so I have no responsibility for that part of things.

We do have guest musicians scheduled for a week from today. The University of Nebraska Brass Quintet will be playing during our worship service. I have, however, reviewed all of their music and they have an order of worship, so I do not foresee any problems.

And, after 24 years of wearing the same pulpit robe, I do have a new one that is different from the old one. It is not, however, difficult to put on and I have no fears about getting it right when I vest for worship today.

So my brain took three isolated realities from my life and put them together into a single dream narrative. None of them represent major anxieties in my life. They are simply normal parts of the life of a pastor. Maybe the reason I have never gotten into recording my dreams is that I fear that if I did they would, for the most part, be boring. After all, I sleep through all of them.

Exploring dreams and sleep is, however, a fascinating study. Because we lose consciousness each day in the normal rhythms of life, we have a certain curiosity about the difference between being conscious and not. What changes in our brains and awareness when we sleep? I think that another reason we are fascinated by these things is that we have no knowledge of what occurs when we die. We suspect that there is some kind of loss of consciousness or at least an altered state of mind, but we have no real knowledge of what death is like. So we use sleep as an analogy. Both religious and secular writers have referred to death as sleep, though I suspect that on some level we all know that they aren’t the same thing.

There are some people who experience a deep fear of sleeping. Hypnophobia is a recognized medical diagnosis in the general category of anxiety disorders. Some people who suffer from this disorder associate their fear of sleep with a fear of dying. Others simply do not like the loss of control. Others have problems with recurring nightmares and disturbing thought patterns.

I find sleep to be gentle and pleasant.

We humans have a lot of different ways of experiencing the world.

I am, however, quite interested in what happens when our brains put things together in new and unique patterns. I experience time,, for example, as a linear reality. I divide my sense of time into past, present and future. This way of thinking has evolved over millennia in humans. Others see it in a similar way. There have been many books written and records made of how we experience time.

But I know people for whom the barriers between past and present, at least have become murky. They lose the capacity to distinguish between memory and current experience. Once, years ago, when I was paying a visit to a nursing home, a woman greeted me at the door. I did not know the woman. I had come to visit another resident of the home. But she proceeded to take my arm and escort me through the hallways of the building as if she had long been expecting my arrival. She spoke of me taking her to the movies and speculated on what movie we might see. I didn’t know the names of any of the movies she named or the other people mentioned in her narrative. This process repeated on subsequent visits. I came to the conclusion that she was reliving some experience from her past and that I was playing the role of someone not myself in her little drama. The past had invaded the present in such a way that she could not allow me to be myself - or the trip to the movies to be a memory only.

It may be that sleeping is less an experience that reveals the nature of death and more of an experience that reveals the nature of our brains as we age. I don’t know. I suspect that there is no distinction between past, present and future from the perspective of the eternal.

But I’ll reserve future speculation about my dreams for another day. Right now I need to prepare for worship.

And I do need to make sure the musicians have their cues right and that I get that new robe straight before I walk into the sanctuary.

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 grew up in a large and loving family. There was never any doubt in my mind that I was loved. And I learned fairly early in my life that love always has room for more. The more you love, the more you are able to love. Ours was a blended family of adopted and birth children, but there were no favorites. Everyone was treated equally, honored and treasured. It was a great family in which to grow up and I see the marks of my parents in my life every day.

But we were not, in comparison to some other families, particularly physical with our expressions of love and support. I’ve known families of huggers, where everyone hugs everyone else. The people who grow up in those families will give you a hug whether or not you want one.

My great Uncle Ted was a part of our family for many years. He was in our home for all of the holidays, for Sunday dinners, and we all enjoyed having him there. He was creative and imaginative and could build anything out of used parts and things others would have thrown away. He had a great sense of humor and a ready smile. He was warm and personable and a joy. But he was not a hugger. I don’t remember ever seeing him hug anyone except for Aunt Florence and after she died, Uncle Ted was more comfortable with an occasional handshake.

Ours was not an emotionally cold or distant family, we just didn’t go in for open physical displays. My folks loved to hold hands and did so in public. But when dad would give mom a kiss, we kids usually looked away. That was between them and not for us. We got hugs from our parents when we needed them but as we grew into adolescence there were appropriate boundaries.

It was a great environment in which to grow up. People were cautious and careful about touch and we didn’t receive mixed messages.

As I grew up I encountered people whose traditions and ways were different. I remember one customer when I was a paperboy. When I’d go to collect the money for her newspaper each month, she’d give me a great big hug and usually a kiss on my forehead or cheek. She was gushy and effusive and I learned to send my brother to collect. He didn’t seem to mind. She never did anything inappropriate, but I felt uncomfortable all the same.

Somewhere in my teenage years, the closing circles at camp started to evolve into more hugs. Some years everyone hugged everyone else. There was nothing wrong with the practice, but it wasn’t my favorite thing. I sort of felt like there were people I might feel like hugging, but others for whom a handshake would be sufficient.

I’ve grown and changed a lot since those days. We stand at the entryway of our church and greet worshipers after services each week. Most people shake my hand. Some give me a hug. Sometimes hugs are exchanged when significant events occur. There is a woman in our church that I have only hugged twice: when my mother died and when her husband died. We are both comfortable with that and know that we love and care for each other deeply. I feel very close to her and know that we can count on each other.

There is another woman in our church who gives me a hug every time she sees me. I feel equally close to her and the hugs seem appropriate in the light of the genuine care that we have for each other. I remember a time when I would have avoided such a person, just like I used to send my brother to collect for my newspaper delivery. I’m pretty good at keeping my distance and standing with someone else in the way. But I have changed. I have learned to think in terms of what the other person needs and have learned to respond without feeling uncomfortable.

People are just different. They are different in the ways they grew up. They are different in how they express their emotions. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

I’ve always felt that my reluctance to touch others was an asset in ministry. When I was doing a lot of youth ministry and working with teens in a variety of settings, I always felt that it was easy to establish boundaries and provide safe space for the teens. I was very judgmental of adults for whom similar boundaries weren’t as natural. We receive regular and recurrent boundary training as ministers and I have never had any problems with the training, except the general sense that the information is obvious to me and I wonder why some people need to be trained to know things that they should already know.

I have chaired a sexual misconduct investigation team for the United Church of Christ for more than a decade. Fortunately, we haven’t had to conduct too many investigations, but I have investigated cases in which the behavior was so wrong that it makes you wonder how a highly educated person could get himself into such a terrible situation. How could someone put his own desires above the best interests of a person he was called to serve? I don’t understand the behavior and I tend to be harsh in my judgment of individuals. Boundaries are obvious to me. I can’t understand how a person could cross them without huge guilt and remorse. But I’ve been around enough to know that they do. Some abusers think that they’ve done nothing wrong.

I try to use gender inclusive language in my writing, but every case in which I have had knowledge of what had happened, the abuser has been male. I have read case reviews of female abusers, but it certainly is more common with men.

If you are a hugger, or if you find yourself in need of a hug, you might have to ask if you want one from me. I’m not the one to initiate such a gesture. But I do know how to respond when someone says, “I need a hug.” It isn’t that I don’t care. It is that I care and respect at the same time. And I have learned that I need to be myself in each situation. I won’t pretend to be different form the person I am.

Like Popeye the Sailor, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” It works for me.

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 has been a long relationship between the church and the arts. From the very beginnings of Christianity, church leaders understood that words alone could not express the glory and beauty of God’s creation. Even the timeless words of the Bible exist to point beyond themselves to a reality that is more than the words themselves. It was natural to channel the creative energies of artists and musicians into creating ways of expressing faith in the Creator of all things.

There have been many phases to the church’s relationship with the arts and some have involved more elaborate use of the arts while other times have been times of austerity. I am amused, from time to time, when someone predicts the end of organ music in churches. While it is true that there are different instruments employed in many congregations and much of what is labeled “contemporary” can be best played with different instruments, people have been predicting the end of pipe organs in churches since Roman times, when pipe organs were little more than a set of pan pipes connected to a hand bellows. The use of certain forms of art, including pipe organs, will rise and fall with different trends in church life, but any predictions that the future will hold no organ music in churches are, in my opinion, a bit premature.

The Renaissance is often cited as an example of the expansion of the arts in the church. The church became a patron of the arts in that period and many beautiful sculptures, paintings and works of music grew out of that time. In addition the church focused on buildings and the architecture of those times continues to inspire and bring awe to worship.

One popular subject for Renaissance sculpture and painting has come to be known as Piedad or the Pieta. Piedad means “compassion.” The traditional Pieta pictures Maryk, the mother of Jesus holding her adult son. As opposed to Madonna sculptures and paintings which depict Jesus as an infant, Pietas attempt to portray Jesus as a perfect human adult. Michelangelo’s famous Marble Sculpture, created in Florence and now residing at the Vatican is an excellent example of the form. A viewer can make out the muscle tone, ankles and tendons. The lines are curved and much more life-like than the art of the Middle Ages. It is a magnificent work of art.

The passion for individual works of art has been intense. People have been attracted to the church for the love of the art and the beauty of the buildings. There have also been some notable disputes in the church as generations of people disagreed over the use of art in the church.

One of the disputes over art that has been going on for a long time began in Spain in the 15th century. There was a particularly stirring Pieda statue in the church of the village of Baza. The residents of the neighboring village of Guadix claimed tha the statue rightfully belonged in their church. These days it depends on who you talk to which church originally possessed the Pieda. At any rate it is in Baza and the people of Guadix believe that it should be in their town. Somewhere along the way, the people of Baza said that the village of Guadix could have the statue if any of their residents could present themselves at the Baza church completely clean and worthy of the iconic statue. Then they set out to make sure that no one arrived at the church without first being drenched in slimy, greasy, dirty oil. Many tried. All arrived filthy and dirty. In five centuries, no on from Guadix has arrived in Baza to recover the statue in a clean state.



The rivalry grew into an annual festival. These days the Cascamorras festival, celebrated in early September each year, is a strange event in which people drench themselves in oil before parading the streets. All of this is in the name of protecting the beloved statue of Mary and Jesus.

I’ve never been to the Cascamorras festival. I’m not sure I would want to go. But from looking at the pictures it seems to me that there are many participants in the festival whose motivations are somewhat less than religious. They are just taking an opportunity to cut loose, drop inhibitions, get dirty and have a good time. It may be that copious amounts of wine have something to do with the behavior of the participants. A huge street party in which everyone is trying to make everyone else as dirty as possible by emptying grease tanks on one another is a long ways from the quiet contemplation of worship, but these days the festival draws more attention to the region than the sculpture itself and the love of God shown in the love of a mother to which it points.

We are like that. We are quick to forget the core of our faith and often focus our attention on more superficial aspects of religion. We argue over the color of paint on the walls or the priorities for building repair when we might instead be exploring the depths of God’s love or the call to serve others in the name of Jesus. There are plenty of trappings that surround life in the church that somehow get more attention than the basics of prayer and service.

There is a genuine desire to share the joys of our congregation with others. Some of our members are good a issuing personal invitations and speaking of the meaning and ministry they have discovered in our church. But there also is a strain of evangelism that seeks additional members so that we could have more money and more recognition in the community. I often hear of how we need more members so we can be more like other congregations.

It’s probably true that if we started stripping of our clothes and pouring dirty oil over on another we’d attract attention. We might even get our images on television. But I have no appetite for fame or attention. We’ll leave Cascamorras to the people of Guadix and Baza.

Quite frankly, I don’t want to play their game. I do, however, enjoy listening to our pipe organ. Others who like the music might enjoy it as well.

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

The Great Depression had a lasting effect on American Society. The historical combination of a depression followed by a World War continues to shape the way we think and act. Tom Brokaw coined the term “The Greatest Generation” to describe those born between 1910 and 1927. They endured significant deprivation at the beginning of their lives and sacrificed deeply during their young adult years. They went on to build up communities and organizations and contribute significantly to society in general. They were, for the most part, very successful. They build businesses and acquired wealth.

But none of us live forever and we are now in the season of the death of the members of that generation. Visit any national cemetery and you will notice a steady stream of World War II veterans being buried.

One of the challenges for every generation is the challenge of passing on wisdom, wealth, values, and faith to succeeding generations. This has been a significant challenge for the members of the generation that came of age during the Great Depression and World War II. For the most part, they were not the recipients of significant inherited wealth. As a group they were vastly more financially successful than their parents’ generation. The Depression meant that there were fewer family businesses and family farms passed from parents to children than in previous generations. Prior to the Great Depression, vocations were frequently handed down from father to son. Professions tended to be grouped by families. Family names often reflected the vocations that were “in the family.” Coopers made barrels. Baxters were bankers. Chandlers were traders. Colliers were coal miners. Jaggers sold fish. Tuckers cleaned clothes. Wrights worked construction. The list went on and on.

That cycle was pretty much history by the time of World War I. For those who came of age during the Depression and World War II, it was practically non-existent. But the memory lingers. The desire to pass a family business from one generation to the next continued.

For the most part, the transition from “The Greatest Generation” to the baby boomers has not been smooth. Only about one third of family businesses are passed to the next generation. The statistics are even worse when it comes to farms. One study by the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State University concludes that the next generation is in danger of having virtually no family farms.

We are quick to assign blame in this difficult transition. Income and estate taxes are blamed. Poor Government programs are blamed. Tight credit is blamed. You can sit around the table in any coffee shop and find no shortage of finger pointing and lamenting over the difficulty of passing a legacy from one generation to another.

The truth is that The Greatest Generation was a generation that did demonstrate greatness in work, sacrifice, contributions to society and a host of other arenas. They didn’t, as a group, demonstrate the best planning for generational transfer. In many ways they lived as if they would always be in control. They lived as if they could continue to make all of the family decisions long after their children had reached middle age. The transitions of family property, businesses, wealth and other assets is not going smoothly.

The problems, of course, do not belong to a single generation. The Baby Boomers have been labeled as being less productive, less responsible and less committed than preceding generations. There is some truth to the labels. The Boomers were much later coming into wealth and power in society than preceding generations in part because of the size of the contributions of the preceding generation, but also in part because they were slow to assume responsibility. I guess I should say “we” instead of “they,” as I am myself a baby boomer.

The Vietnam War has largely been seen as a failure in American Society. That failure, if that is what it was, it was not engineered by the Baby Boomer Generation. The planners, generals, government and military leaders were predominantly members of their parents’ generation. The label has stuck, however.

The Baby Boomers have lived most of their lives with fewer financial resources than their parents. The American dream of each generation having more wealth than the preceding one may never have been fully sustainable, but at least the line of growth is not uninterrupted. There are ups and downs in every growth line. One of the symbols of the difference was illustrated in the Penn State study of family farms. Whereas preceding generations tended to stay in the farm house and build a new house for the younger generation, in the transition from The Greatest Generation to Baby Boomers the trend dramatically shifted. The predominant pattern for this generational shift was for the parents to move into the new house and the children to remain in the old home.

I have no particular knowledge as to whether this is good or bad. As the oldest son, I had some significant and wonderful conversations with my father about the possibilities of passing our family business from one generation to the next. While I knew that this was an option, I was encouraged to explore different vocations. My father was deeply supportive of my education and my pursuit of a career different from his. As it turned out, my father died at a young age and my mother faced three decades of widowhood. Our family had significantly less resources to pass from one generation to the next than would had been the case had my father lived another decade or more. Still, we have not been particularly graceful in our dealings with the transition from one generation to the next. The handling of the estate has not brought the surviving siblings closer to each other.

The dynamics and emotions in my family are mild, however, in comparison to the ones I see in other families. In all too many cases the legacy is significant conflict and estrangement. People my age may not be “the greatest generation,” but we seem to know how to fight over the assets our parents accumulated.

I wish I could end this blog with a pithy conclusion offering solutions to the difficulties of transition from one generation to the next. I can’t. I observe many families with a sense of tragedy.

My prayer is that we can learn from these experiences and somehow be a bit more graceful as we pass our legacy on to the next generation that we are as we receive the legacy from the preceding generation.

Of one thing I am certain: The most important aspects of legacy – the most valuable aspects of inheritance – cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The qualities, abilities, values and faith we inherit from our parents are far more valuable than any material item. Let others have the wealth. I’m blessed by having inherited the faith of preceding generations. I plan to pass it 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 haven’t suffered much from allergies in my life. When I was in my twenties, I went through allergy testing and a series of desensitization treatments. I learned to take the regular shots and my body reacted well to the treatment. Since those days I have not suffered from allergies. But I have been sneezing a lot in the last week or so and my eyes have been watery. There is just a lot of smoke in the air around here.

The news from the big fires in the Nebraska panhandle that spread into South Dakota was good yesterday. Crews were making good progress. With over 120 square miles charred, it shouldn’t surprise us that there has been a bit of smoke in the air. The prevailing winds, however, blow most of that smoke away from us.

I went out to do a few chores last evening and noticed that the sky was filled with smoke and then I heard the distinctive sound of the engines of a heavy air tanker. The plane was heading southwest, but was a ways north of our place, which meant that depending on the distance to the fire, it could be directly west of us.

The smoke last evening was from a new fire that has been named Kinney. According to the incident information system, the fire is at least 100 acres in size and is burning about 7 miles NE of Newcastle, WY. The next update isn’t expected for another 5 hours. It is hard to tell what is going on in the middle of the night.

According to the update posted at about midnight last night, there were two heavy tankers and one Type 3 helicopter working with the ground crews. We’re lucky to have the tankers available. It must mean that crews are gaining confidence with the Nebraska fires.

But it was a night to shut the windows to keep the smoke on the outside of the house. I’m not much for sleeping with the windows closed. Everything sounds different, and I kept one window near the bed open a couple of inches just because I prefer it that way. As the temperatures dropped, the smoke settled down and there is very little, if any, smoke smell in the air this morning.

Those of us who live in and near the forest have to adjust to a new reality. The forest is stressed from years of drought and waves of insects. Years of aggressive fire fighting have resulted in excessive fuel load build up in the forests and no one is sure how many big fires there will be before some sense of balance is restored.

A lot of people enjoy living in the woods and have built houses in places that make them vulnerable to wildfire. I fear that more homes will be lost in the future.

For the most part, we in the hills have been fortunate when it comes to fire. We haven’t had the big fire that takes out a lot of homes like those that have occurred in Colorado and other states. But when I drive through the hills I can see areas where the threat is great and know that such a fire could occur.

Wildfires are not unique to the American West. Firefighters are continuing to mop up pockets of fire in Spain where homes where thousands were evacuated as blazes along the Costa del Sol ravaged, killing one person and leaving many displaced.

And the headlines report that thousands have been left homeless after a fire swept through a slum area in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A fire in a fireworks factory in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has killed at least 31 and sent at least 20 to the hospital.

Fire is a powerful and destructive force.

It is also a part of the natural processes in the forest. Long before humans battled fires in forests, lightning sparked blazes, some of which grew to great sizes. There are reports of the plains being filled with smoke as fires ravaged Rocky Mountain Forests in the years before there was any type of formal fire management. Some years were worse than others. In the early days of the US Forest Service, 1910 was an especially bad year for fires in the west and it caused a shift in Forest Service policies and priorities. The shift, it turns out, was based in a misunderstanding of the role of fire in healthy forests, but it is easy to imagine how fires became such a concern. It is terrifying to see the power and force of fire as it travels through the forest.

I’ve made a sort of informal study of Yellowstone National Park since the big fires in 1988 and 1989. I’ve returned frequently to watch the forest as it recovers. Initially it appeared that the devastation was total, but the fire had really created a mosaic of different burn patterns, sparing some trees while burning so hot that the soil was temporarily sterilized in some places. The recovery was a mosaic as well, with some places showing lush growth within months and other areas taking longer for the hillsides to turn green. Some places that were thick with lodgepole pines are now meadows. Some hillsides that had fewer trees now have clusters of Douglas Fir trees that are taller than I.

The reality is that the recovery of the forest after a fire is a long-term process, and we are short-term witnesses. We are only around to witness a few decades. The life cycles in the forest take centuries. That means that forest management policy has to find a way to transcend partisan political processes, which tend to run in two- and four-year cycles. The management of the Forest Service changes far more frequently than is optimal for a long-term view.

But the forests are resilient. They have endured millennia of weather cycles and they will endure the cycles of human politics. They will even recover from gross mismanagement, but that will take time.

So we watch and we sniff the air frequently and we know that we do not have all of the answers. We are still learning and it is evident that there is yet much to learn.

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, I used to wander down by the river. There was a place where I would sit and watch the river go by where my troubles seemed to melt away. The sound and motion of the river was soothing. I felt like I was sheltered and secluded from the rush of everyday life. It was a good place to formulate ideas, to daydream and to simply enjoy the beauty of nature.

Ever since those days, I have sought out places of solitude. In Billings, I would hike up the rimrocks. In Chicago, I’d stroll along the lakeshore. In North Dakota I enjoyed drives through empty country. In Idaho, I’d head for the mountains. Here, I like to hang out at Sheridan Lake.

The lake is a reservoir, formed by a dam. By the shore of the lake, on highway 385, is a plaque that tells part of the story of the town of Sheridan. The community was formed in 1875 and was originally called “Golden City.” Later it was renamed in honor of General Phillip Sheridan. It was quickly filled with miners seeking to strike it rich in the Black Hills. It had churches, a school, stores and saloons. It was on the main stage line from Denver to Deadwood. When the railroad didn’t come through town and the big mines were located elsewhere, the town emptied out and it was pretty much a ghost town by the 1930’s when the Civilian Conservation Corps began building a dam on Spring Creek. Work on the dam was slowed by World War II, but it was completed in 1942.

These days the town site is under water and the lake reflects the hills. The 375 acre lake is a favorite place for fishing for trout, northerns, perch, bass and other pan fish. Along the south shore is the largest campground in the Black Hills National Forest. So the place can get busy.

I go there, in part because it is close to home. I like to say that when I get home from work, I’m halfway to the lake, which is practically true in physical distance. I live about ten miles from the church and about ten miles from the north shore boat launch.

What I have discovered is that even on a busy weekend like the one just past, I can find solitude on the lake by arriving early. At 6:30 in the morning there will be a couple of fishermen out on the lake, but there is plenty of room for me in a kayak or rowboat. I’ve been trying to row as much as possible this summer for the exercise. Yesterday was a good day to row, daydream and enjoy the beauty of the place.

The lake was nearly flat with just a few riffles blown by the breeze. The air was warm, so I didn’t need a jacket. My boat is small, so I can walk it down to the lake from the parking lot. There is a dock by the boat ramp, so I can launch without getting wet. A few pulls on the oars and I was headed toward the middle of the lake. I rowed towards the inlet at the northwest corner of the lake. That end of the lake is a “no wake” area for boats and there is some construction being done at the fisherman’s parking lot alongside the highway, so there were no boats in that end of the lake.

It was a lazy morning for me. I didn’t row hard. I didn’t raise a sweat. I simply glided through the water. A wooden boat with wooden oars doesn’t make much sound. I watched an eagle that was apparently sharing my lazy attitude. The bird soared above the lake looking for an easy fish, but soon retreated to a nearby treetop to continue looking.

I didn’t have any experience with rowboats before completing my little Chester Yawl this summer. For a canoeist who believes that the design of the canoe is about perfect for human-powered water travel, I expected the rowboat to feel a bit clunky and slow in the water. However, my little boat is nimble and easy to row at a good clip. The leverage of 7 ½ foot oars, combined with the ability to have two oars in the water at the same time as opposed to a single paddle, results in a smooth and quick trip through the water. This is, no doubt, enhanced by the natural shape of the little boat. It is only about ten inches wider than my beamiest canoe.

Rowing is better whole body exercise than paddling, which strengthens the arms and shoulders, but pretty much ignores the lower half of the body. When I row, I bend and straighten my knees, lean forward from the waist and pull with my whole body. They make fancy and expensive machines for this type of exercise, but I’ve never been much for staying in the same place when it is possible to be moving.

Yesterday, it was just a good way to clear my mind and prepare for the gradual shift in seasons. There will be a lot less people at the lake for the rest of the year – at least until the ice fishermen start arriving. The kids are back in school, the vacations are over and we will focus our attention on all of the activities that accompany the fall.

Still, it is nice to know that this won’t be my last trip to the lake this year. Autumn affords excellent opportunities to paddle and row. Even when it turns cold, I can stay warm in a kayak until the ice appears on the lake. I’d love to have an early winter with lots of snow in October, but that doesn’t appear to be in the forecast for this year. I suspect that I’ll still be able to sneak in a paddle in November.

Early in the morning, when I have a day off, you’ll frequently find me at the lake. It is familiar territory for me. I’ve explored every inch of the shoreline. I know the trees and the rocks. It is a place of peace that gives me an opportunity to gain perspective. The beauty of the place restores my soul.

I wouldn’t trade my little boat for the fastest jet ski or the most expensive yacht. Beauty is not the product of the boat you are in. It is the lake and the hills that surround it. And I’ve enough beauty close at hand to fill my heart and renew my spirit.

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.

Note: I don’t seem to be keeping up with my book blog. I don’t intend to devote this blog to book reviews, but today I do want to write about a book I recently read. I’m not abandoning the notion of keeping a separate blog for books, just allowing temporary mix of topics in this blog.

There are luxuries that come with age. One of those luxuries is freedom from having to stay ahead of all of the changes. By the time someone reaches my age, I am no longer required to be up to date with every technological advance. I am allowed to hang on to a few relics of the past. People will even put up with a bit of nostalgia from me.

I know that traditional publishing is on its way out. Book publishing companies are struggling to break even. Even with massive online sellers such as Amazon.com, the market for books is decreasing. Traditional brick and mortar bookstores are becoming less and less profitable. Libraries are moving away from rows and rows of shelves to sophisticated computers that enable readers to “borrow” electronic media and read books on their electronic readers.

I have been a slow adopter of electronic readers. I don’t own a Kindle or an iPad. I am not opposed to the devices. I just like the feel of a book in my hands. I enjoy being in my study, surrounded by shelves full of books. I’m sure that I will have one of those devices one day. They offer great convenience for travel. They are capable of many other things that I do daily, such as checking e-mail and browsing the Internet. They consume less resources and less space than shelves and shelves of paper books, some of which I have read once and will never read again.

Society, however, allows me to be a “dinosaur” when it comes to books. I don’t get criticism for my love of turning pages. And there are still plenty of sources for good books. One of my favorite imprints these days is a relatively new publisher. McSweeney’s is a publishing house founded by editor and author Dave Eggers. I have read all of Dave Eggers’ books, which isn’t saying much because he is the author of only eight books. A memoir, a children’s book (or perhaps a book for all ages), a nonfiction volume about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and four novels.

McSweeneys publishes books with elegant covers. They aren’t the leather-bound books of old, a few of which grace my shelves. They are, rather, books that bring an imaginative flavor. My copy of Eggers’ “The Wild Things,” for example, is covered in fake fur. I have volumes from McSweeneys with traditional cloth bindings, paper slip covers that themselves are works of art, and carefully designed shapes.

One of my current treasures is a signed copy of Eggers’ latest novel, “A Hologram for the King.” The book features an elaborate foil-stamped cover with a design on the spine that makes it stand out on the shelf. At 312 pages it is just about the right heft for a book with which to curl up in a comfortable chair. It is long enough that one isn’t tempted to read it all in one sitting and compelling enough that it takes less than a week to complete – just right for a novel in my estimation. Eggers’ loopy signature across the title page may not mean much to others, but it is a bit of a personal mark from a man whose career I admire.

It is not the Great American Novel. The story is clearly dated and about our particular moment in history. And it may be a novel that is best appreciated by a man whose career has passed its mid point and who occasionally has thoughts of retirement, while still hoping that there are still a few more contributions that can be made.

I don’t want to ruin the story for those who have not read it, but the opening of the book sets the tone for the entire novel. Alan Clay is a weary businessman. He has been scarred by the recession. He has participated in the export of American jobs. He has been a player on an international stage. But now he is debt-ridden, aware of his failures, divorced and struggling with his relationship with his daughter without much hope of meeting her next semester’s tuition, no longer valued by employers and seen as a relic by younger co-workers. There is a glimmer of hope of one last big deal – a sale that will make all of the previous failings insignificant by comparison. He has the product. He has the customer. He feels close to a breakthrough.

To say more would be to tell too much about the book.

Suffice it to say that it could be depressing for a post-middle aged man who frequently feels that he belongs to the past. But in a way it seems to create a little bond between the author, the character and myself. To be sure, Eggers has wisdom beyond his age. He was born in 1970. I’m technically old enough to be his father. I had been married for three decades when Eggers married. We don’t exactly occupy the same generation. And Eggers is wildly successful for his age. His list of publications and awards stretches for pages. His tongue-in-cheek title of his memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” is actually fairly accurate. He is a man of staggering genius. And I’m not all that similar to Alan Clay, the character Eggers Created for “A Hologram for the King.” I can’t fathom his lack of control with alcohol. I don’t understand his inability to manage a successful relationship with his father or his daughter. I would have plenty of advice to give him. Had I written the novel, he would make better decisions. But I feel a connection with him and with his author.

Keeping hope alive in the face of the reality of our own mortality is a deeply human need. The book may be set in a particular moment of history, but it explores a universal truth.

So, in retrospect, and knowing that I will not live long enough to know what book becomes the Great American Novel, I guess I’d leave this one on the nominations list. It is at least quite a story for an over-the-hill American man to read.

A guy could recognize himself in such a book.

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

In Milan, the body of Cardinal Carol Martini is lying in state in the cathedral church. Tomorrow he will be laid to rest after his funeral mass. He was a very popular as an archbishop in Milan. Ten years ago his health forced him to resign his post. He spent the last decade of his life pursuing Biblical studies in Jerusalem. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published his last interview after his death. The interview surprised many. In it he described the church as “tired” and “200 years behind” the times. He rhetorically asked, “Why doesn’t the church rouse itself?” It has been known that Cardinal Martini dreamed of, worked for, and longed for a third Vatican Council in which the leaders of the church would revise the official dogma of the church.

It seems unlikely that such a council will occur any time soon. Liberal thoughts and calls for change have not been particularly popular in the Roman Catholic Church since the ascension of Pope Benedict. The current pope is staunchly conservative and has resisted calls for dramatic change in doctrine, leadership and other elements of the church.

In a sense, this is a drama that we Protestants watch from the outside. Our split from the Church of Rome was born, in part, over disagreements about how the church makes decisions and chooses leaders. The reformers were distrustful of human leaders and a process that left little room for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They sough a return to what they saw as a more biblical faith. All of these reforms and the split in the church that followed them were the stuff of history books by the time our generation arrived on the scene. The Protestant reformation wasn’t the first great division in the church. The division between the west and the east, known as “The Great Schism” occurred over 500 years earlier.

Jesus prayer for his disciples, “That they might all be one,” is not a description of the Christian church in our time.

Some of the reforms that Cardinal Martini and other faithful Catholics have called for have long since been embraced in the part of the church where I practice my ministry. The United Church of Christ has had ordained women ministers since 1853. If Cardinal Martini is correct and the Roman Church is 200 years behind the times, it means that it could take another 200 years before the church recognizes the wealth of spiritual leaders that are present in that church. It could be another 200 years before they are granted the authority for ministry that would bring a breath of fresh air to the church. That would make it over 350 years after our church opened itself to the leadership of women.

The issue of the leadership of women is only one of the places where we have major disagreements within the church.

Cardinal Martini was able to live gracefully amid the disagreements of the church. He was willing to voice his ideas and opinions without any need to force others to agree. He understood that the hopes and dreams he held for the church might be parts of a process that was much longer than his life. When he died on Friday, at the age of 85, many of the dreams he held for the church were not yet accomplished.

Perhaps one of the gifts of grace that comes with aging is the understanding that not everything that is important needs to be accomplished in your lifetime. The great movements of history often require generations. While it is true that there are pivotal moments and generations in which dramatic changes occur, there are other moments that contribute to the building of the future in a less dramatic way.

As the people in Milan mourn the loss of their former archbishop and prepare for his funeral, half a world away in a small corner of the church far removed from power and the development of doctrine, I take notice of their loss as I prepare for worship this morning. I enjoyed the frank honesty and clear vision that Martini brought to the church even though I am not quite the audience he had in mind when he spoke.

I believe that we are affected by what occurs in distant locations. I believe that despite our human failings and our disagreements that seem to go on and on, we are still one church. The differences that we can enumerate are minor when compared to the agreements that we share. We are on a journey of discipleship that is common even though the particular settings of our ministries are very diverse.

When I pray the prayer of consecration for communion this morning, I will use the same words as will be used in Milan in the cathedral where Martini’s body awaits its burial. When I elevate the bread and the cup, it is the same resurrected Christ who will be present in both places. When we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, we are engaging in the same ministry of service.

This generation will not be remembered in history as a time of great unity within the church. The world sees us as having different opinions, different ministries, and different priorities. Often people fail to acknowledge that we are engaged in a common ministry. Members of one church have been known to question the faithfulness of members of another church. Some church leaders have become so vehement in their attacks of other parts of the church that they have questioned whether or not that part of the church is truly “Christian.”

One thing we hold in common is our Scriptures. In 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you.’” He also wrote, “Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.”

We are the body of Christ and the words we say about other parts of the body do not change the simple fact that each of us belongs to something much bigger than ourselves.

Cardinal Martini has now entered into eternity and gained a new perspective on time. He has discovered peace that cannot be known in this life. For those of us who remain living, we are given the blessing of wrestling with his ideas for a little while. May we open ourselves to the wisdom and vision that he shared.

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.

Getting back to work after a vacation involves going through stacks of mail and notices, catching up on paperwork and the usual things that occur in an office. Actually, there is less mail to deal with than was the case in the past simply because we deal with e-mail while we are traveling, and much of our communications have shifted from regular mail to e-mail. We also have more sophisticated voice mail systems for our telephone messages, so they don’t stack up as they once did. I generated a pretty big “to do” list from e-mails that came during our vacation, and I will get to those things in due time.

The first day back on the job involved spending quite a bit of time in front of the computer. There was liturgy to write for this week and a bulletin to prepare. The paper newsletter that was prepared in our absence needed to be formatted for electronic distribution and sent on its way. The church web site needed attention and updating. There were a few upgrades that had to be made to software and there was some routine maintenance of the computer network that demanded my attention. I don’t think that there was any way for me to anticipate, when I began my career, how much time would be spent keeping an office running. I wasn’t trained to be a network administrator. In fact, there were virtually no computers used in the ministry when I was in seminary. There were no courses in website development or network management in my curriculum.

These days, however, I do spend quite a bit of time keeping the computer system at the church working. And it is becoming more complex, with the migration of our database to cloud computing and other changes in how we manage our information. Churches, unlike some businesses, tend to work with less than state-of-the-art equipment. This generally means that we need to spend more time with maintenance and working around problems that some businesses solve quickly and simply by replacing equipment. I’ve had to learn to take apart computers, replace hard drives, upgrade memory and even replace other components from time to time.

I am also aware that because I do most of this work for the church, the congregation has become dependent upon me to make things work. Returning from my trip I see small bits of evidence that the technology didn’t work perfectly during my absence. The electronic sign in the entryway wasn’t updated to display the messages we planned for the rummage sale and other events. The big screen and projector weren’t used for a funeral that would have employed those pieces of technology had I been present. The regular security update to the cloud computing system involved a default-assigned password that is impossible to remember instead of having one from our rotation. These are small things, but they show that there is too much technology in the congregation that is dependent upon my presence as an operator. I need to keep training other staff members, but we also need to seek other ways of using our technology that makes whatever machines we have more accessible to the congregation.

Like this blog, it took a while to sift through the technology to the real important parts of my job upon my return. Yesterday, however, I got back to the business of being a pastor. I enjoy designing liturgy and planning worship and my day began with putting the final touches on the worship bulletin for Sunday. Soon, however, I was focused on what I was trained to do. I was out and about visiting people.

Three weeks can be a long time and produce dramatic changes in the lives of those living with chronic illnesses or facing life-altering events. Part of my visits with people involved hearing the stories of what had occurred during my absence. There are others, however, whose lives move at a slower pace. One nursing home that I regularly visit felt dramatically different because of the deaths of two residents during my absence. Another resident, however, seemed very much the same as before I left. A less than sharp memory for recent events resulted in very little awareness that I had been gone at all. We simply went back to the way things had been.

There were two visits on my list yesterday to people who are nearing the end of their life’s journeys. One was admitted to the hospital yesterday. The other was at Hospice House. In both cases I was struck by how tiny the individual seemed lying in a hospital bed. Their bodies took up just a small portion of the space and made the bed seem almost comically large for its job. It was as if they had spent the three weeks of my absence becoming smaller and smaller. Both had trouble waking to visit and I spent most of my time visiting with their spouses. What is occurring with them will occur with us all. We may not go through the same kind of lingering towards the end of our lives. We may not lose as much weight or become as small. But we will all one day fade away.

To some it may seem like such visits are difficult, but in reality they are one of the blessings of my job. Unlike many of my peers, I get regular practice with grief and loss. I see people that I have known for years go through the transition from vibrant, healthy and engaged leaders to gentle spirits on the edge of death. I walk through loss and grief with families on a regular basis.

I don’t know if this makes the loss and grief of my own life any easier, but it does make it a bit more familiar. I recognize what is going on in myself more easily than I did at the beginning of my career. I understood grief better when my mother died than I did three decades earlier when my father died.

It all reminds me of what is most important in my job. I am minister to people, not to the institution. I am minister to families, not the technology. Our computers may be considered to be obsolete. Our caring is completely up to date.

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.