This morning we conclude a four-week series of stories about the prophet Elijah. I enjoy doing sermon series from time to time. Being a lectionary preacher, however, means that I do series less often than many of my colleagues. For almost two decades I have not only allowed the texts of the lectionary lead me, but I have also preached on the text that has been selected by editors and denominational leaders as the focus text for the week. My choice is a reaction to what I have experienced as lazy preaching. Too many preachers have a preconceived notion of what they want to say and then go searching for a text to illustrate their idea or concept. I try to be led by the scripture – to start with the scriptures themselves and not with my ideas.

I suppose that means that some of my sermons are a bit of a stretch. Biblical texts come from specific times in the history of our people and not every historical moment has obvious contemporary parallels. For example, the Elijah stories that have been the focus of our worship for the past few weeks are, in part, stories of how power corrupts people. The unjust king Ahab and his scheming wife Jezebel are behind the corruption of the nation and the issues that Elijah seeks to address. It isn’t as if God hadn’t warned the people. When the begged for a king, God reminded them that human kings become power hungry, corrupt and take away freedom from their subjects. Everything that God warned about seems to have come true with an exaggeration in the reign of Ahab. Our contemporary political situation isn’t quite the same. Life in a democracy isn’t the same as life in a kingdom. Our relatively affluent community bears little connection to the poverty suffered by many in ancient Israel. We have freedom of religion in ways that were not imagined by people in those times. The separation of religion and government means that our government isn’t actively engaged in promoting religious ideas with which we intensely disagree.

But there is much more to the story of the prophet Elijah than the obvious facts of his political situation.

And there is much to be learned and taught from the ancient texts that have suffered from generations of being ignored by preachers and misinterpreted by those who haven’t taken the time to really understand the texts. Too many preachers and religious leaders don’t read the entire Bible. They focus their studies on the parts that agree with their theology and refuse to be challenged by the parts of the Bible that raise questions with their neat patterns of faith and religious structure.

As a result, prophets have often been interpreted as predictors of the future. In the minds of many Christians all prophecy is about what will happen at some point in the future. Biblical prophets, however, rarely predict the future. Their mission is to call the people back into relationship with God. They speak of the need for change in the future and rarely describe a distant future. When Isaiah or Jeremiah get going with their descriptions of the restoration of Israel they are speaking of an imminent future, not about the end times of all history. The Bible is far less focused on the end of time than many contemporary preachers. Outside of a few apocalyptic texts that come from times of intense persecution or of the fear of persecution, the Bible is remarkably silent about future judgment and reward. There is enough of God’s justice in the present moment for a lifetime of faith.

So today, when we wrestle with the story of the transition of power from Elijah to Elisha, there is plenty of dramatic imagery. There is a fiery chariot and fiery horses and a whirlwind that takes Elijah up into heaven. There are dramatic moments when the river Jordan is struck by a prophet and opens up a dry pathway for crossing. There are lots of symbols and signs.

But at the core of the message is a challenge that occurs for every generation of faithful people. There comes a time when it is appropriate for authority and responsibility to be passed from one generation to another. And this is not something that we humans do well. We are jealous of our power and often wait far too long before sharing it. Sometimes this is simply because the previous generation did the same things. Since we had to wait for authority, we speculate that the next generation should wait as well. And in the story, Elijah does wait until the last possible moment before passing on his mantle.

Elisha, on the other hand, seems a bit too eager for power. He asks for a double share of Elijah’s spirit – a request that seems impossible to grant. In effect he is saying he wants to be more powerful than his predecessor and teacher. A double share of the legacy seems hardly fair.

These are dynamics that are being played out around the world in a wide variety of different settings. As Nelson Mandela lies on what appears to be his deathbed, we wonder who will take his place and be not only a leader in the practical politics of the diverse culture of South Africa, but also a symbol for the aspirations of oppressed people around the globe. As our own president struggles with a congress that seems to be incapable of agreement or even compromise, we wonder where this generation will find the kind of statesmen that are required to forge new legislation and solve difficult problems. As we witness the difference in style between the current Secretary of State and his predecessor we wonder if it makes any difference at all who is seated at the negotiating table in the worlds most recalcitrant and entrenched conflicts.

And in the church, with a dramatic shortage of clergy and little to attract new candidates into the ordained ministry, we wonder where the church will find leadership for its next generation.

Like Elijah in the cave, the answer doesn’t come from then drama. It comes from the patience to listen to God’s call. The source of the solution is not our own strength or will or character but our willingness to turn to God.

The message for us today is not different than it was in the time of the Kings. True authority comes from God. God calls us to a future that is different than our present. The path ahead is not what we forge for ourselves, but what happens when we listen carefully to God’s call.

This blog is practically a sermon – and it isn’t the sermon I will preach this morning. It is clear that these texts provide us with more than one week’s material. A lifetime of study will be too short to discern all of the meaning of the sacred words.

Copyright © 2013 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’ve never lived on the shore of a lake, even a pond, like Thoreau. It isn’t as if he spent his life at the shore of the pond. His book is the report of an experiment in living that he undertook for two years, two months and two days in a cabin that he built himself. Then he compresses the time in the book into one year. The book isn’t, in my opinion, Thoreau’s best. He’s got a little bit of philosophy, a little bit of satire, a little bit of introspection and a little bit of commentary on society. I guess it is a little bit like this blog on its better days. I don’t find Walden to be a book to which I return from time to time. My favorite of Thoreau’s works is a little volume called “The Maine Woods” that contains the reports of three separate canoe journeys that he took, assisted by a guide who was an expert in canoe expeditions, hunting, and wilderness survival.

It is unlikely that I will ever live year-round on the shores of a lake. Lakefront property isn’t, for the most part, consistent with my income bracket and I’m not inclined to change professions in search of additional money at this point in my life.

So I don’t have the intimate, every-day relationship with any lake that enables me to know its every mood. I don’t even have a lake that I know in the same way I know the river of my youth.

But I do know that lakes have more than seasons. They have moods that change with the hour and vary day by day.

These days I know Sheridan Lake better than others. It is a reservoir. The hills don’t really have natural lakes. The name of the lake comes from the town that once was located alongside the small creek that wandered through the valley. It was originally known as “Golden City,” though I don’t think it ever made it to the size most associate with a city. It was a mining town, founded in 1874 and renamed in honor of General Phillip Sheridan at some point. At its peak it has churches, schools, stores, saloons and a red light district. By the turn of the 20th century, it was in decline as the mines proved to be less productive than the imaginations of the miners and the railroad changed the travel patterns in the hills. The town was largely extinct by the time the Civilian Conservation Corps began building the dam in the 1930’s. The Second World War distracted attention from the project, but the dam was completed in 1942 and the lake has been there ever since.

These days it is a bit clogged with excessive vegetation, but it remains a beautiful little lake that is perfect for canoeing and other forms of recreation. Last year there was a fire along its shores that blackened quite a few trees, but the area had recently been thinned and a lot of the trees survived the blaze.

We live a dozen miles from the lake. Since we live 10 miles from the church, I like to say that when I get home I’m half way to the lake. There are lots of other places to put a canoe into the water in the hills, but Sheridan Lake is by far the closest. In a good week, and this has been a good week, I can put a canoe into the water on several different days. Despite the 12-hour days that are required during Vacation Bible School week, there are a few quiet hours each morning and several mornings I have headed to the lake for an hour’s paddle.

It continues to surprise me how many different moods the lake has. One day will be a very quiet day. The shore birds are never really quiet, but they have soft voices and although they can be heard across the lake, they don’t dominate the sense of the place. Early in the morning the water can be glassy smooth and everything is doubled in the reflections. My wooden canoe with a narrow maple paddle makes little noise as I breathe in the fresh air and stretch my shoulders for a bit of exercise. On the calmest days, the water birds are quiet. The ducks seem to be capable of paddling around and herding their chicks without their usual grumbling chatter. The geese, normally the noisiest of the birds at the lake somehow understand the silence of the morning and glide quietly without vocal commentary. Even the great blue herons rise from their standing places along the shore into flight without the pre-historic squawk that has echoed off of the hills for at least as long as the lake has existed.

Then, just a day later, the lake will have an entirely different mood. Some days, it is a place that vibrates with life. Even with no wind an insect hatch will draw the fish to the areas along the shore and they will penetrate the water with frequent risings and cause a gentle ripple. The texture in the water is mesmerizing and the visual effect is entirely different that the glassy smooth surface that occurs on some days. On those days, the lake can take on a chattering quality, with all of the creatures adding to the sounds. The beaver, usually hidden up the inlet, working silently and mostly underwater might make an excursion onto the main lake and make a show of slapping his tail on the water as a warning to me that I am not alone. He rarely has the effect of making me alter my course, and often doesn’t even surprise me because I see him before he gives the big slap. The geese can be in a mood to complain about everything and the chatter will be strong between the ducks as they paddle along the shore. On those days the herons have to squawk as they take to flight and the echoes of all of the noises make it seem as if it there are twice as many creatures as is the case. On the noisy days, if I have gone to the lake for solitude and quiet, a frequent quest of mine, I am reminded that I’m not the only one who frequents the lake and I never will have it entirely to myself, even when there are no other boaters who rise at 4 to get their craft onto the water by 6.

There are many other moods that the lake takes on. A little breeze can stir up some chop. A dark cloud can make the lake seem ominous. And these are just summer moods. The lake has many other moods that I have witnessed. A lifetime is too short to take it all in.

So I return to the same lake over an over again. There is no chance that I will discover all of its moods or learn all of its nuances. One lake is probably enough for one person. I know I’ll never be bored with this lake.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

It is easy to think that the great people – leaders who changed the course of history, artists whose creations fill museums, musicians who composed songs for all centuries, and religious leaders who took a stand for their faith – that all of those people are relegated to history. We tend to think that the great ones came along before our time.

There are great people whose lives influenced us. Of course we can list the names of Biblical ancestors of faith whose stories our people have been telling thousands of years: Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Elijah and Elisha, Jeremiah and Isaiah, Amos and Micah, Jesus and Paul and so many others. But we have also been taught about the incredible period of history in which the great founding documents of our nation were forged. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution came from an amazing time in the history of the world. Greatness emerged in so many characters of those days: Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hancock and so many others. And their way was paved buy the religious pioneers who came to this land: Robinson and Bradford and Smith. They followed in the footsteps of the great reformers: Luther and Calvin and Zwingli.

In the world of music we wonder what it might have been like to hear Bach at the console of a mighty pipe organ or Mozart at the keyboard of a pianoforte. We imagine Schumann at the keyboard or Strauss conducting a waltz in front of an orchestra in Vienna. We are grateful for the classical music that has survived the test of time and wonder about the times that produced the artists who gave us these great gifts of music.

In visual art, we have heard stories of Michaelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And we have seen the greatness of the sketches of da Vinci, the paintings of Monet and Degas and van Gough. And there are so many other great artists whose work lasted much longer than a lifetime, well beyond a generation.

Because we came into this world after many millennia of human habitation, it makes sense that we might witness greatness when we look back at our history. The times through which our people have lived have demanded greatness. And in each generation there have been a few great leaders who changed the course of history and left their mark for all time.

But greatness is not only relegated to the dark pages of history books. The span of my life is relatively short, but I have lived in the presence of greatness. The romantic pianist, Vladimir Horowitz’ famous Soviet recitals in Moscow and Leningrad were occasions of greatness. One human being rose to such a level of artistic excellence that may never before have been achieved. It was amazing to watch the television program of the Moscow concert and then to watch it again on VHS and later on DVD. I still have a recording of that concert and when I listen to it, it seems to me to be enough to have simply been alive when such an event took place. I may not be much, but I lived in a time of unparalleled artistic excellence.

I remember being a student in Chicago in the late 1970’s. Our South African colleagues had to give away their libraries before they returned to their homes because the books we read were banned in the repressive apartheid regime. I heard their stories and wondered when the bloody revolution would begin and how many innocents would be killed in the cause of majority rule and simple freedom for all. We were not able to see the path of peaceful change. But the transition of power in South Africa and the process of truth and reconciliation was one of the most dramatic moments in all of human history. And we watched it unfold before our very eyes. And we saw human greatness that rivaled the greatness of any generation that ever lived. Steve Biko inspired millions. His death in police custody may be a genuine case of martyrdom in our time. Nelson Mandela’ self sacrifice, endurance of the Robben Island prison and emergence into leadership of the transition movement is one of the great stories of the human spirit that will be told for generations and generations. His election as president of the new South Africa was a moment that brought the world to tears of joy. I may not be much, but I have witnessed greatness and great things have occurred in my time.

And now, as Mandela comes to the end of his earthly journey and as we join in prayers for a peaceful transition for the great man, we once again realize that none of us is exempt from the passage of time. Our moment is brief in the vastness of history. But death cannot erase the story of Nelson Mandela. The world will never forget what he did. And his name will forever be associated with justice, truth, peace and reconciliation.

I could write pages about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the contributions he made to all people that will continue long beyond our time.

And there are so many others.

The truth is that we often do not recognize true greatness in the moment. Our human differences often find the real greats of our time immersed on controversy. Opinions about them vary in the present moment. But true greatness rises above the pettiness of the moment. True greatness rises above the conflicts of the contemporary.

It is entirely possible that I will live longer than the religious experiment that we call the United Church of Christ. Our church will be reconfigured. New forms will emerge. New ways of working with other Christians will take precedence. Christianity cannot be confined in an institution. But some of what we have done together in this wonderful church will last forever. As our church begins its 29th General Synod today, there will be great preachers and passionate speeches. There will be wonderful music and meaningful worship. But we all know the decline in membership and decrease in budget that mark this moment in our story. It is easy to think that the greatness of our denomination has faded.

But I suspect that history will tell the story in another manner. The Statement of Faith of the United Church of Christ may well be remembered as the most important words written in the 20th century. The historic and courageous stands taken by leaders of the United Church of Christ may well be the foundation for the new church that is emerging from the confusion of multi-denominationalism.

I have no doubt that I am living in the midst of greatness in dramatic times. Sometimes, however, it takes a while for the greatness to be known and identified and celebrated.

Even though our time is short, we can afford to be patient. For the times in which we live are times of greatness.

Copyright © 2013 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 think I would describe myself as a private person. Yes, I have a public side. I address a congregation in public every Sunday and often invite others to come to our church. Yes, I have a web site and write a daily blog. But there are parts of my life I keep to myself and I prefer for it to be that way. When I see how public figures are treated by the media, it makes me shudder. I can’t imagine putting my family through the things that routinely happen to the families of politicians. I prefer for my family life to be private.

I prefer for my consultations with my physician to be private, too. I have little interest in media doctors. I don’t watch too much television, so I know very little about Dr. Oz, but I guess he is quite a media sensation. I hear from the people I serve all sorts of things about his advice on diet and exercise. “Dr. Oz says that green coffee bean extract will help every one lose weight.” “Dr. Oz says there is arsenic in apple juice.” “Dr. Oz says you should fill out a questionnaire for RealAge.” “Dr. Oz says that if you take the right supplements, you can reverse the effects of aging.”

As I said, I prefer to get my medical advice in the privacy of a medical office and not from the television, so I don’t have anything significant to say about the medical advice that comes from people talking about a media doctor.

Here is what I do know. I can think of two friends who are cardiovascular surgeons. Both were very serious people, intently engaged in their medical practices. One once said, “To be a cardiac surgeon means that you have to decide that it is the most important thing in the world. It requires such intense concentration and focus that everything else must be secondary to the practice of surgery. There can be no distractions.”

Dr. Oz seems to have a different approach. He is trained and certified as a Cardiothoracic surgeon. But for the past decade, he seems to be more focused on his television career than on the practice of surgery. I don’t mean to question his medical credentials. As far as I know he is a genuine expert. He is a professor in surgery at Columbia University and the director of the Cardiovascular Institute at New York Presbyterian Hospital. But the guy has a lot going on and singular focus on surgery doesn’t seem to be his number one priority.

To be sure, he didn’t really write the six New York Times bestsellers that bear his name. It’s pretty clear that his co-author Michael Roizen, did the hard work of writing the books. But they wouldn’t have made it to any bestseller list without Dr. Oz’s name and media presence.

What I do know is that Dr. Oz isn’t focused on any one area of medicine these days. He has stirred the pots with his advice on not just cardiovascular health, but also psychology, finance and life in general. He seems to believe that his expertise qualifies him to give advice on any topic, including those in which he has little formal training.

So, for the most part, I ignore the guy. If I were to need chest surgery, I’m pretty sure the guy wouldn’t be available and that’s just fine for me. If I have surgery, I think I would prefer a surgeon who focuses on surgery every day rather than one who has daily sessions with a makeup artist to prepare him for his television show.

But, somehow, I read a little blurb that appeared a couple of days ago in our local newspaper. It was a little three-sentence article about a new magazine that Dr. Oz is launching. The last sentence is a gem: “In a statement, Oz said the magazine ‘will provide women with everything they need to feel inspired and live a long, healthy, joyful life.’”

Everything they need to feel inspired? Everything? That’s quite a claim.

Let me get this right. A child of a very wealthy Istanbul family does well in school and earns scholarships that allow him to become a medical resident in the US. He graduates from Harvard University and then Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He does surgical residencies. And what in that background qualifies him as an expert in the spiritual health of women?

Oh, I forgot, he used to be a regular on the Oprah Winfrey show. Of course he is an expert on women’s spirituality.

Something tells me that no magazine “will provide women with everything they need to feel inspired and live a long, healthy, joyful life.”

It is probably unfair of me to criticize. I’m sure you could find all kinds of mistakes, false claims and poor advise in my blogs and other things that I have done. And, as I said, I know almost nothing about Dr. Oz. But it does seem to me that intense media attention tends to distort personalities and shape people in ways that are not always the best.

I wonder if any of Dr. Oz’s colleagues would claim that being on television has made him a more skilled surgeon. I wonder if the patients who undergo surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital find his monthly column in Esquire magazine to be meaningful for their recovery.

Our people have a history of over 4,000 years of struggle with a tendency toward idolatry. It seems that we are continually getting confused about the distinction between God and human beings. We want to believe that some humans are somehow better than others. We forget the basic tenet of our faith: there is only one God. The consequences of our confusion are always disastrous. Whenever we turn our worship from God to a king or another human, our spiritual health suffers. Based on that experience, I’m skeptical of a magazine that claims to offer everything women need to feel inspired.

But then I don’t watch that much television. I don’t know that much about Dr. Oz.

At the moment that seems to be a good thing.

Copyright © 2013 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.

fe·ral

adjective

\ˈfir-əl, ˈfer-; ˈfe-rəl\

1: of, relating to, or suggestive of a wild beast 2 a : not domesticated or cultivated : wild b : having escaped from domestication and become wild

When using the word “feral,” people often use cats as an example. It seems that there is a common understanding of what happens when domesticated cats are left to fend for themselves and continue to populate an area without the benefit of being fed, given veterinarian services, and sheltered. They become wild. That might be a good thing for rodent control in a barn, but it isn’t particularly useful for the relationship between cats and humans. Feral cats aren’t known for their cuddliness.

At the church, we have some experience with feral children. OK, I know that I’m not using the term completely correctly here. These children are not left to raise themselves in the wild. They aren’t even raised by bears or wolves after being abandoned by their parents. Still, they do lack some of the common courtesy that is associated with society in general. They often lack the skills to participate in group activities. They often are not accomplished at getting along with other children. They frequently raise the ire of the adults who volunteer to work with children in our church’s programs.

Sometimes the feral children come to us from outside of our church. Programs like Vacation Bible School are offered to the general public. It is part of our outreach into the community as a congregation. We have discovered that there are some families in our community who enroll their children in as many VBS programs as possible throughout the summer. It isn’t uncommon for us to see a child who has already been to a couple of programs and who has plans for a half dozen more throughout the summer. Sometimes the feral children come from our own congregation. I suppose that like with cats, there are degrees of wildness when it comes to children.

Another term for these children might be “institution raised” children. We can spot them easily when they come into our building. Last night was an example. The parents of a child came into our building, went to the fellowship hall and sat down to wait for supper. Their child wasn’t with them when they entered our building. A few minutes later he came into the building with his skateboard. It was obvious that he had been using it in our parking lot as parents and family members were bringing children. There were probably 40 cars in the lot. It was a dangerous place for skateboards at that time. No one was supervising the child. I guess the assumption of the parents was that once they got him onto church property, he was no longer their responsibility. They expect the institution to take over as soon as they get to it.

Another example is when a child clearly misbehaves in front of a parent. Typically when that happens, the parents respond and help the child learn an alternative behavior. But, from time to time, we experience such an incident in the church where the parents make no response to the behavior at all. It is rare that the lack of response is an intentional ignoring of behavior as part of a specific plan. It is more likely that parents expect the institution to provide the structure and discipline when the child is inside our building. The fact that our church doesn’t work that way seems to escape the notice of those parents.

The majority of the parents in our program are involved and engaged. We see lots of great parenting every day. In fact, we hope that the parents of feral children are paying attention, because our building is filled with great examples for them to follow. Our parents volunteer to staff our programs, provide for their children while giving loving support to the children of others, and teach their children the culture and appropriate behavior of our church.

Every child who comes into our program deserves to be warmly welcomed, provided with a safe environment for learning and growing, receive our loving and prayerful support, and given individualized and personalized care while he or she is part of our church programs. But it is a bigger challenge with feral children. It is hard to get to know a child and understand his or her unique needs and gifts when we see the child only for one week’s program. It is equally challenging for the child to get to know our church, its culture and expectations, when they participate only one week each year.

I’ve heard parents say that they want to give their children exposure to different congregations so that the child will be able to choose her or his own religious affiliations as an adult. What those parents don’t see is that the gift they fail to give the child is the gift of parents who are able to make commitments, become involved, and participate in a church. Too often the choice that is being demonstrated by the parents – that of not making a commitment – is the one made by the child. True choices for children occur in and environment where the commitments of the parents are clearly demonstrated.

For us, however, the words, “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here” are more than just an advertising slogan. They are a description of the kind of church we strive to be. They represent a commitment that we have made. As a result we do not reject the feral children who come our way. We try to provide them the nurturing and loving environment that we seek to provide for all of the children of our church. We try to work with them to teach them the language, culture and faith of the church. We treat them with dignity and respect and expect them to return some of that respect as well.

We are an imperfect group of people. We make mistakes. But we seek to confess our mistakes, ask for forgiveness and move in new directions as we learn from each experience. We confess that our church is not the right place for everyone. We support other congregations in their mission and ministry.

Perhaps, when it comes to the feral children of our community, it takes more than one church to communicate God’s love.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Hey guys! I hope you have been paying attention. Last week was Men’s Fashion Week in London. Were you in London, you’d have had a chance to take in some of the shows to see what is hottest (or coolest) in men’s’ apparel. It is important to keep up, because things keep changing. For example, the ruffled shorts that JW Anderson brought out for men last year are so, well, 2013! If you really want to be with it this year, you need to get your hands on one of his backless, semi-sheer halter tops for men. You’ll really raise eyebrows wearing one of those. How about yellow? It’s a great color for the androgynous look.

Shaun Sampson, an up and coming London designer showed pale pink organza board shorts and ‘skirts’ made to look like beach towels. It is a look that is turning heads in London. Imagine what it would do in downtown Rapid City.

And, for those formal occasions, how about Sarah Buton’s suit of white lace? I’m wondering if it would look good with my white Stetson.

I’m pretty sure that people are not looking to me for the latest in fashion trends. It is Vacation Bible School week at the church. I’m planning on jeans and t-shirts for the whole week. VBS involves moving a fair amount of furniture, getting down on the floor with the kids and being ready for a bit of rough and tumble. I’m pretty sure it isn’t occasion for lace. I’m pretty sure there is no occasion for lace when it comes to my lifestyle.

I guess I do have a couple of wardrobe feature that makes me stand out a bit. I’m aware that I’m a pretty short guy. I’m shorter than my wife. After 40 years of marriage, that doesn’t seem to be a significant problem. Still I like the extra height that a pair of cowboy boots gives me and I used to wear them every day. These days, I’ve found that my feet get a bit tired in the boots and so I’ve taken to wearing regular shoes some days. But when I dress up, the boots come back out.

My second fashion statement is a bit quirkier. When I wear a tie, I prefer to wear a bow tie. Bow tie wearers tend to be a bit vain and perhaps a bit elitist. They affect an air of people who are proud of their education. But I’ll let you in on a little-known secret: bow ties are way easier to tie than traditional neckties. With a necktie, you have to decide whether you’re going for a four in hand, a Windsor, a half Windsor or a shell knot. If you want to get fancy, there’s the cross knot and the Prince Albert as well. Then you have to remember left and right (remember you’re looking in a mirror). And it is a hassle getting the ends to come out right. The knot for a bow tie is the same knot as your shoes. Most of us had that one mastered by the time we got into Kindergarten.

Another argument in favor of the bow tie is that when you are shaped the way I am, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to have a strip of brightly-colored cloth pointing at your least attractive feature.

So, it is true, vanity has prevailed and I do pay some attention to what clothes I am wearing.

I am aware of how much the culture has shifted and how things are quite different in men’s fashion than they were a few years ago. There was a time when I wore dress slacks, a white shirt with a tie and a blazer to work every day. On Sunday, I’d wear a suit. The white shirt was pretty much a standard, with the only variation being that I’d wear short sleeves in the summer and long sleeves in the winter. Then I acquired a few shirts with narrow stripes and colored shirts started becoming common for professional men. It was harder to pick the correct tie once the colored shirts became common. Not every tie went with every shirt anymore, but I adjusted.

As the years went by, it became more and more common for men to wear their shirts open collared without ties. You could add a blazer to dress up your appearance. I started leaving the ties at home during the week.

A few years later and I was wearing jeans and mock turtle necks with a sports coat from time to time.

And now I often wear jeans and a polo shirt or jeans and a t shirt to work.

I’m not the only one. Bankers, who always used to wear a suit and tie to work, now wear polo shirts with the bank logo stitched over the pocket. Doctors wear surgical scrubs when visiting patients. Lawyers still dress up for court, at least in our town. And nobody has ever known what judges wear beneath those robes. I, for one, don’t want to know.

So I guess we are affected by fashion. The styles of clothing that we wear change with the times. I noticed the first time I saw a video of Steve Jobs delivering a keynote address to an Apple Developers Conference wearing a black mock turtleneck and jeans. Then it became his standard uniform. Now, a long time later, I dress that way. I don’t wear the expensive shirts, he chose, but cheap imitations are easy to find at any of the leading fashion stores. I prefer the ones that end in “T.” You know: K-Mart, Target, Wal-Mart.

I’m lucky to live in a place that is not seen as a fashion trendsetter. We tend not to lead and what is fashionable on the coasts takes quite a few years before it shows up in our town.

I’m hoping that some of the fashion elements shown at the London show next week stay in London or Paris or New York or Los Angeles or other cities that are a long way from here. I’m just not ready to wear lace and fancy florals.

Copyright © 2013 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 suppose that it is just a sign of aging, but lately I have been thinking about some of the changes in our culture that have taken place in my lifetime. When I was growing up, most of the families in our town were single=income families. Mothers stayed at home with children and fathers had jobs that provided sufficient income for the family. Our family was a little different because our mother kept the accounts and did other work in the family business, but her hours were carefully arranged so that she was at home and available whenever we were at home. In the summer that meant that she got up very early to do the bookwork.

Compared to today’s children, our summers were gloriously unstructured. When school got out, we quickly shifted into days of exploring the riverbank, a little fishing, a lot of playing in the water, building tree houses and inventing our own games. I can remember going to the library at least once a week and checking out the maximum number of books that they would loan on a child’s library card. I’d read all of the books and then be back at the library for more.

There were a few structured summer activities in our town. We have Vacation Bible School at our church each summer. It was one week long and I think we usually had a half-day program. It was based on a school model with graded classes. We had opening exercises and then went to our classes. There was a recess and a snack break in the schedule. I don’t remember too much else about it, except that the teachers were all parents of kids in the program. Our mother helped every year.

Some years I played little league baseball. I don’t really remember how often we practiced or how many games we had, but it certainly wasn’t as intense as the youth sporting programs that are common these days. We had a few practices with a couple of coaches. We’d ride our bikes to the practices. Our parents came to the games. It certainly didn’t take up too many hours from our week.

When I got older there were a few summer jobs. I delivered newspapers year round, but that was completed by 7 a.m., so the whole day was available for other activities. For several years, I mowed lawns to earn pocket money. I swept a feed warehouse once a week for a few coins.

What I remember is having free time – lots of free time.

So when I observe children today, what I notice is that they don’t have much free time. They are signed up for lessons and group activities and sports and library programs and dozens of other activities. I know children who attend as many Vacation Bible School programs as their parents can schedule. One little boy was signed up for six different VBS programs one summer. He knew all of the songs, and had experienced the repeat of the same curriculum several times. His parents didn’t have any loyalty to a particular congregation or denomination and he didn’t see much difference between the different churches.

All of the structure, of course, is a reflection of a major shift in the culture. Parents have less time to spend with their children. Although our time was unstructured when I was a child, it was not unsupervised. We didn’t just have the eyes of our mother looking out for us. The eyes of all of the mothers in town were trained to look for trouble. Today, most homes require two incomes and both parents are working full time. That means that a family must have a carefully designed plan of activities to make sure that the children are fully supervised. Families have complex schedules of who is providing rides to which activities. It is common for one parent to drop of a child and another to pick that child up. There are a few families who coordinate their efforts and provide some ride sharing with other families, but when we run programs at the church, the dominant pattern is that each child is picked up by a parent, grandparent or other family member.

The parents look tired. They’ve been running from event to event and activity to activity and somewhere in the midst of all of that running around they are trying to keep a job, manage a home, and take care of their own recreational needs as well.

It is easy to become nostalgic and to say that people need to go back, but that isn’t the way a society works. The system of families needing more income is self-perpetuating. More income means more money to purchase more things and more things create a demand for more money. Our lifestyle when I was a child was pretty modest compared to the lives of most contemporary families. Today’s families have larger homes, more cars, more appliances, more recreational equipment and all of that requires more money. So they work harder and have less time to use all of the things that they are purchasing.

I don’t expect things to change very quickly. There is a movement among educators and parents to advocate for more unstructured time for children. There have been some good studies that demonstrate that natural learning requires less structure and more free time. It isn’t just creative learning that flourishes in unstructured time. Mathematics, music, biology, reading and many other fields of traditional instruction can also take place in unstructured environments. In fact many children learn more quickly and retain what they have learned better when their learning is unstructured. Perhaps, as we learn more of this dynamic there will be more unstructured time for children.

My guess is that it will be carefully planned and scheduled. Unlike the summers of my youth, children will have specific times for “unstructured learning” in “controlled environments.” Time doesn’t go backwards and each generation forges its own way.

Still, there is something very attractive about the unstructured summers of my youth. I wonder if I could find a job where I would only work 9 months each year.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Long time residents of the hills tell me that our recent weather is typical – at least it is closer to the way they remember late spring and early summer from the years before the drought cycle took hold and we suffered several years of early and dry summers. We’ve been seeing quite a bit of rain. Actually the first couple of weeks of June were relatively dry without too much rain. We had one shower with about half an inch and a few with just a trace. But we made up for it all the last couple of days. On Friday, the day started with showers. We got more than an inch that day. Then we had nearly a half an inch last evening. Susan and I had taken a drive in the hills and drove through a real downpour on our way back into town.

The rain really refreshes the hills. The streams gush for a little while, but quickly recede to normal. The trees smell wonderful when they are wet and the grass is green and lush. Of course all of that grass will provide more fuel for ground fires by the end of the summer. We know that the rains won’t continue. In the meantime we are enjoying it. You can almost watch the sunflowers growing in the garden. The weeds are looking healthy, too.

Even though we have learned to never complain about the rain, we know that it is at least a bit of an inconvenience for some. This weekend is grand camp at Placerville and I’m sure that the leaders are scrambling to substitute indoor activities for ones that were planned for outdoors. The rain did wait until evening yesterday, so most of the day was pretty nice. They probably were able to get in their hike and other things they do outdoors for fun.

It certainly seems like there are a lot of places around the world where the rains have been especially heavy this year. I can’t remember stories of floods in Calgary from my growing up years, but they’ve sure got a lot of water right now. You know it is wet in Calgary when they have to evacuate the animals from the zoo and use the jail for temporary holding pens. You know it is wet in Calgary when there is room in the jail for any new residents, but that is another story all together. The high water is heading down the streams and other communities in Alberta are bracing as the waters recede in Calgary. They are reporting that it will be several days before people will be allowed to return to downtown Calgary. Right now they are keeping folks back from the river. When they do get back into the flood areas, they’ll be facing a muddy mess that will take the rest of the summer to clean up. The report is that as many as 100,000 people are temporarily out of their homes.

The Trans-Canada highway is closed in places. The resort areas of Banff and Lake Louise are without electricity after a substation was flooded and transformers failed. Roads in the area are closed. That is a big deal in a place where the entire economy revolves around tourism.

There are some mighty forces that shape our world. We marvel at the capacities of engineers and builders. We place dams in rivers and streams and harness their power to provide light for our homes. We build buildings that seem to be secure and permanent. But natural events remind us that there are some mighty powers in this universe. The emergency spillway in the power station near Banff was designed to handle floodwaters. The waters were bigger than anticipated. The water decided not to follow the spillway. It wasn’t some gigantic engineering failure. It was simply that they didn’t imagine the quantity of rain that they got combining with rapidly melting snowfall in the mountains. We see it around here on a regular basis. When there is enough water, it seeks its own path and doesn’t always follow the creek bed. Hail can turn a 50-year roof into a roof needing replacement. Fancy cars sport fancy dents when the hailstones get big. There can be a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

Part of the story of people on this planet is that we plan for big events. We try to place our homes in safe places and we build extra capacity into our bridges and other structures. But our planning will take us only so far. Unanticipated events are a regular part of our lives. The unthinkable becomes reality. And that is the point where another human quality emerges. We are resilient beings. We adapt more than we think possible. We learn to survive in conditions that we wouldn’t have chosen. The people of Calgary who have been evacuated are having their skills of adaptation tested. The counselors and leaders at camp are learning to adapt. These are probably small adaptations when compared to real disasters. However, the ability to adapt to new situations and conditions is one of the great tests of human character. Those who have to have everything go just as they planned are often disappointed.

Last summer there was only one day in the months of July and August when it rained more than a trace in the pothole region south of Minot, North Dakota. That day, however, turned into a day of showers with nearly a half-inch of rain falling. Rainfall was pretty intense in the early afternoon. I remember it well. We were outside, in the rain, celebrating a wedding. Any other day that summer would have given them a sunny venue. An alternate site would have resulted in fewer people getting wet. The wedding pictures might have been very different than the way things turned out.

Now, nearly a year later, the rainy wedding has become a pleasant family story to share. Starting out with a little adversity isn’t a bad thing for those facing a lifetime of adapting and learning to live together. The day didn’t turn out as planned, but it wasn’t a disaster, either. We adapted. I held an umbrella over the bride. The wedding proceeded. And, in the big picture it is just one day in a lifetime spent together.

We will never be powerful enough to control the weather, but so far we have proven resilient enough to live with it.

Copyright © 2013 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.

So here is your trivia for the day. How many spaces are there on a Monopoly board? The answer is 40. I’m not sure what knowing that information will do for you unless you want to mention it in a blog post someday, but that has already been done. I’m doing it right now.

Forty is a number that comes up in the Bible over and over again. Rain fell for 40 days and 40 nights during the flood. Spies explored the land of Israel for 40 days. The Hebrew people wandered in the desert for 40 years. Eli, Saul, David and Solomon each ruled for 40 years. Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on Mount Sinai three different times. Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness. There were 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension. Lent is 40 days long.

40 lashes is said to be enough to kill a person. That is why the most severe punishment is 39 lashes – one short of the final blow.

40 years is often used as the length of a generation in the Bible. 40 weeks is the length of a pregnancy.

40 years ago today I made a promise. And it has made all of the difference in the world.

Actually, the promise was part of a wider agreement – a covenant. I wasn’t the only one making promises that day. Susan and I exchanged our vows before God and in the presence of a community of family and friends in the midst of the church that was a very special place for both of us.

I didn’t know what 40 years were in those days - unless it meant two lifetimes. I was 20 years old. Promising my lifetime was an interesting concept, but I didn’t know what a lifetime was.

There was a lot that I didn’t know in those days.

There is a lot that I don’t know today.

But today we celebrate 40 years – not bad for someone who didn’t know what he was doing.

The quality of a relationship cannot be measured in the length of time. As Roy Blount Jr. once said, “It is better to have been good and over than rotten and gone on too long.” My parents didn’t get 40 years together. My father didn’t live long enough. But they had a wonderful marriage – enough for a lifetime and then some. But somehow, through the grace of God today is the day that we celebrate 40 years. It doesn’t seem like it took long at all.

The week after we were married, we went to the celebration of a 50th wedding anniversary. It seemed that those who were celebrating were really old and that such an event was somehow a long way in the future. I have thought of us as “newly weds” for most of our married life. That’s the way that the aging process goes. It sort of sneaks up on you and occurs when you don’t realize that it is happening. And now it has been 40 years.

And the years have been good to us – very good. We have been blessed with friendships that have endured over the decades. We have been blessed with family that has been supportive of our marriage. We have ben blessed with children and church and so much more.

For a few years, now, I have been trying to tell young couples, when they come to the church to be married, of how wonderful it is to grow old together. Marriage continues to grow in meaning and beauty and worth as the years go by. But I don’t think that there is really any way for me to tell someone else how wonderful it is.

But it is wonderful.

It is even more fun to be married for 40 years than it was for 25 or for 5 or for one. Though each of those anniversaries had a special sweetness. Each year the depth of love continues to grow – layer upon layer. The memories and the stories and the shared experiences add to the richness of each moment.

Our friend and teachers Ross and Martha Snyder wrote, “A lifetime together will be all too short to explore all of the meanings of your love.” It is true. There is more meaning than there is time. And a lifetime is all too short – no matter how many years one is granted.

I suppose that the odds have been in our favor all along. The divorce rate was nearing 50% when we were married, which means that 50% of marriages succeed. Given the fact that we both came from families where our parents’ marriages were successful improved our odds a bit. We have been fortunate to have many friends who have happy marriages.

The bottom line is that the decision to marry was absolutely the right one for us. I suppose that I thought that I wanted to be married for many years before I was married. For the last forty years I have never not wanted to be married. My wish has come true.

We humans are capable of making promises that can be kept. And commitments can define us in very positive ways. It is one of the paradoxes that our people have known for thousands of years. True freedom doesn’t come from the absence of commitments. True freedom comes from the ability to make and keep commitments. No one can be truly free until that person discovers to what and with whom he or she can be faithful.

Although we prefer for our celebrations to be low key and private, today is a day worthy of a celebration. It is an occasion worth note. 40 years is a good number for now. And with the blessing of good health 40 is a small enough number to give us the feeling that we have many more yet to come. No one can predict the future and no one knows the number of years that will be granted, but we are very fortunate. Whatever lies ahead, we have had 40 years to lay the foundation of a relationship that can be trusted.

Who knows? She may be willing to put up with me for a few more.

Copyright © 2013 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 lived in Chicago from 1974 to 1978. That was almost 40 years ago. Chicago has changed. We have changed. The world has changed. One of the transformative experiences of living in Chicago was afforded by the scale of the city. There were some incredible institutions that we were allowed to visit that simply could not exist in my home town – even in my home state. Early in our time in Chicago, I began to familiarize myself with Regenstein Library. It is the library of the University of Chicago and it is truly one of the world’s great collections of books. It seemed, when I first started to explore, that there was no book that the library didn’t have. This wasn’t true, but it is an amazing research institution. This was in the early days of interlibrary loan, when it could take weeks to obtain a book. It was also in the days before computers. The card catalogue was composed of cards. The stacks were filled with real books. The collection of journals was printed on paper.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was considered to be one of the “Big Five” top orchestras in the world. In those days Sir Georg Solti was the artistic director and conductor. I was initially surprised to discover that Orchestra Hall, in downtown Chicago was smaller than I expected. The small hall, however, has magnificent acoustics and affords the orchestra the opportunity to play more often. There were multiple concerts each week. And on Thursdays, a University of Chicago ID card got a student an incredible discount on the ticket price.

There were many other great institutions and places in the city. We visited Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs; Soldier Field, home of the Bears; watched a Bears game in the Stadium; wandered through the Zoo and the botanical gardens; marveled at the size of Marshall Fields Department Store; explored the Museum of Science and Industry; and saw the treasures of King Tut at the Field Museum.

And there was the Art Institute of Chicago. I guess I knew that there was a category of paintings called “impressionism” before I went to the Art Institute, but there was nothing in my life prior to standing there that could prepare me for the impact of standing in front of a painting by Claude Monet. The Art Institute has several of the paintings from the famous “Water Lilies” series and there is a painting of a field of Iris that is more than 6 feet by 6 feet. The impact of those paintings is beyond the power of words to convey. The Art Institute has paintings by many famous artists in its collections. Its rather modest van Gogh collection is mostly drawings, sketches and charcoals, but there are a few paintings and mixed-media works in the collection.

Since those days I have been able to visit great museums in other cities, but the impact of my first visit to the Art Institute of Chicago and the experience of standing in front of that painting of iris is one that I will never forget. I suppose that the museum was crowded. My memories of Chicago are often memories of crowds. We waited in line for nearly two hours to see the Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. But in my memory, we saw the Monet in a nearly empty gallery. It was as if we had the room to ourselves. I don’t know if that memory is accurate, however. It seems to me that it is unlikely that the museum was lightly attended. I think that the memory may be affected by the simple fact that it was a hushed place. People were respectful of the paintings and subdued in their conversations. And the painting does inspire awe. There is nothing that needs to be said when you are in the presence of such a work of art.

The world is radically different these days. That may be merely the observation of an old man, but it is nonetheless true. I joke every year that I grow sunflowers in my garden because I can’t afford to own a van Gogh to hang in my home. It is true, I suppose. At any rate I recently was looking through the catalogue of paintings at the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I have been to Amsterdam once in my life, but did not make it to the museum. I would love to visit someday. At any rate, I was enjoying the newly redesigned website and the ease to looking at the paintings on my computer.

Before I go farther with my story, let me simply state that I know the difference between actually seeing a painting and looking at a photograph on a computer screen. I have a few poster prints of famous works of art. The posters are not the paintings and there is no comparison between the experience of seeing the actual painting and looking at a photograph. It is just that a trip to Amsterdam really is out of the question at this point of my life. I have other priorities. And I have already paid for the Internet access, so I occasionally find entertainment at looking at the pictures and imagining what it would be like to someday visit the museum and look at the paintings. But that isn’t the point of my story.

I was looking at the web site and I found these words: “You are allowed to take photographs, film, or make audio or video recordings in designated areas for personal use.” I nearly gasped as I looked at the computer. They allow photographs at the van Gogh museum? Yes, they do. Furthermore, there is free wi-fi throughout the museum. The image that came to my mind was horrifying. I can see rooms full of great paintings and full of people who are not looking at the paintings. They all have smartphones or tablets or cameras in front of their faces and they are looking at the paintings through their digital devices. It was a horrible thought, and, I fear, close to the reality. Imagine going to a great museum, standing in front of great works of art, and experiencing them through the small screen of a smartphone. It is a tragedy of our times.

I never needed my camera to visit the Art Institute. I don’t think they allowed photographs in those days. I would rather have my memory than a photograph anyway.

And so, until I can go to Amsterdam and visit the museum, I think I’ll be contented with just growing my own sunflowers. I’m not ready to live all of my life through the screen of a smartphone.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Since biblical times, people of faith have engaged in pilgrimages to places where others have experienced the closeness of God. There are places that have been deemed to be holy because of the history that occurred on that site. Horeb is the holy Mountain of God. On that Mountain Moses received the Ten Commandments, Elijah hid in a cave and many other events in the story of faithful people occurred. Jerusalem is a city filled with shrines for Christian, Jewish and Muslim believers. Making a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime is one of the pillars of Islam.

The Middle East and Europe are filled with destinations for pilgrims. Corinth, in Greece was one of the destinations of Paul’s travels and people still travel to the ancient city in faith. Kylemore Abbey in Ireland, the Iona community in Scotland and Taize in France are all destinations for pilgrims. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin receives tens of thousands of visitors each year. Greece and Turkey are filled with shrines and sites. The Metora Rocks in Greece attract many faithful visitors. Great cathedrals are often the destination of pilgrims. Notre Dame in Paris, France is among the places where people travel on spiritual journeys. The Vatican, especially the Sistine Chapel is more than just another tourist destination for many who go there.

At its essence, a spiritual pilgrimage is different from other forms of travel. A pilgrimage is travel that is undertaken for the purpose of spiritual growth and transformation. The faithful believe that the process of undertaking a journey is a way of focusing attention and growing in faith. I have had the privilege of traveling with youth on many occasions and witnessing the process of growth in faith. Sometimes our destinations have been work sites, where youth engage in hands-on mission and ministry. Sometimes the destinations have been rallies or gatherings of youth where the relationships take precedence over the destination. The process of travel affords the opportunity for preparation for the event and for processing the experiences afterward as the return trip is undertaken.

A pilgrimage can be transformative not only for the one who travels, but also for those who wait at home. The process of prayer in preparation, during the time of travel and afterward can be a time of spiritual growth for those who wait at home. The experience of separation and return can provide perspective on relationships.

The destination, however, does provide meaning for the trip. Celtic Christians have long used the term “thin places” to describe destinations where there is a special experience of intimacy with God. There is something particularly mesmerizing about some destinations. The Celtic saying goes: “Heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter.” A thin place is not necessarily tranquil, or fun, or beautiful, but it may be all of those things. I have never been there, but I don’t expect Disney World is a thin place, even though it receives millions of visitors each year. Thin places are more likely to offer the opportunity for a little separation from the crowd and the ability for one to unmask and come face to face with essential reality.

I have never been particularly attracted to established shrines. I prefer for my pilgrimages to be for more lonely destinations. But I do have a deep sense of having visited sacred places. Right here in the hills we have Mato Tipi, sometimes called “Devil’s Tower.” There are also Paha Mato (Bear Butte), Wind Cave and Hot Springs. All are places where unique geographical features combine with the stories of the people to provide a destination worth visiting. Not much farther are Wounded Knee and Takini, sites made holy by the sacrifice and suffering of people. Susan and I have also been transformed by visits to more distant sties such as Athabaska Falls in Canada and Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia.

The high country of the Beartooth-Absaroka wilderness in Montana is a special destination for me and definitely thin space. It is important to me personally because of the parts of my life that have unfolded in that location.

I could go on and on about special places and destinations that I have visited. There are also many other sites that I would enjoy visiting if the opportunity presents itself. Not high on my list of possible destinations, but still a remarkable place is the small community of Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, in southern France, near the Spanish border. It was at Lourdes where, in 1858, Bernadette Soubirous had a series of visions of visits by Mary, the mother of Jesus. The story is that Mary appeared a total of eighteen times and established Lourdes as a special place of healing. There are countless accounts of miraculous healings that have taken place on that site. The village of about 15,000 residents receives about 6 million pilgrims each year. It is said that the village is one of the places on earth the densest concentration of hotels. There are 270 hotels in the community. Each pilgrim wants to see the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in a grotto, a small cave.

But this week isn’t a good time for a visit to Lourdes. Residents of the town are cleaning up after severe flash floods forced the closure of the holy shrine. The exact damage is still not known, but it is estimated that the cost of repairing Massabielle cave, where the shrine is located will run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The waters around the shrine are usually tranquil and many have dipped into the waters for their healing powers. But the water was far from tranquil this week. Hundreds, who came as pilgrims to the shrine, had to be evacuated and spend the night in temporary shelters when the river burst its banks, threatening to flood campsites and hotels.

Flash floods have covered extensive parts of southwestern France over the past week. Two people have died because of the extreme weather. Officials do not know how soon regular pilgrimages to the grotto can be resumed. For now, as the waters recede, there is a lot of clean up that needs to be done.

For millions of pilgrims it is a good thing that there are many different destinations for spiritual travel. I’ve heard that there are a lot of hotels in Paris. As for me, I think I’ll head for destinations with fewer accommodations and smaller crowds.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Growing up, I thought that we were a very close family. We did a lot of things together and our parents always made family a high priority. Our parents had a strong marriage and genuinely enjoyed spending time together. They shared the work of running a family business as well as the work of running a household and raising a family.

We were encouraged to go out into the world and to find our own directions in life. As such, I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised that we each found a different path and that those paths led us away from each other. It is not that we have conflict. We just lead different lives in different places and don’t get together as often as our parents did with their siblings. There have been marriages and the births of children. Over the years five of the seven experienced divorce. One sister and one brother have died. We have learned to say “hello” and “goodbye” as our family has been reconfigured over and over again.

Still, sometimes it surprises me that we aren’t closer than we are. It’s not one of the great tragedies of this life, simply a reality. We see the world differently. We have different experiences. We have become members of different communities. And there is space between us.

My brother, bless his heart, called me on my birthday recently. It was a pleasant conversation and I appreciated his reaching out to me. We talked in some vague ways about the things we are doing and the projects that are important to us. After speaking with him I sat for a moment with the telephone in my hands. I don’t really understand how he thinks, not that he needs me to understand. We are really quite different. I have been a full-time minister for 35 years. The shortest pastorate of my career was 7 years. I don’t think that he has ever had the same job for seven years in a row. And there have been many years - perhaps most of them - when he has not had the kind of job that means going to the same place to pursue the same projects day after day. He has tended to tackle a project for a while and then switch to another. He has moved more often than I, traveled a bit more and been in and out of many different relationships.

It isn’t fair for me to try to describe him in my blog. He is more complex and wonderful than the words I write. And he probably wouldn’t agree with my interpretation of his life. I am not writing to describe him as much as I am trying to figure out who I am. Part of who I am is “not him.”

For much of his life he has been trying to change the world. He has an eye for injustice and is not afraid to speak out. He has been politically active and has even run for office. He has participated in protests and demonstrations. He sees things with which he disagrees and sets out to convince others to change.

More often than not, I agree with his observations and his goals. Where we disagree is in our approach to bringing about change in the world. I’m not much for confrontations. I haven’t found it useful to tell other people what to do or what to believe. I know that conversion occasionally occurs, but I’m not much for trying to convert others. I think that it is far more important to get other people to speak to each other than it is to get them to listen to me.

And that is what is so strange about the paths our lives have taken. I have an audience. I get up in front of more than a hundred people every week and they listen to what I say. Sometimes when I speak a hush falls over the room as if everyone is straining to hear my words. He seems so confident that he knows exactly what people should think and believe and is so sure that he could tell them what to do. I have none of that confidence. I struggle and sweat over every sermon. I wonder if I have anything meaningful to say. I hope and pray that I might occasionally inspire, but know that it is probably sufficient to simply do no harm. I don’t have the answers.

He, on the other hand, seems to have lots of answers. But he has no audience. Sometimes he can get a few people to listen. He mostly speaks to very small groups and often it is a collection of people who already agree with him.

Life is strange that way.

I think I understand one of the differences between us, but I am not sure that he would accept my analysis. It seems to me that he owns his message. He has come up with his ideas and interpretations and they belong to him. I, on the other hand, did not create the ideas I try to communicate. The message I have does not belong to me alone. My job is to give voice to truths that existed long before I was born and that will exist long after my voice is stilled. The stories I have to tell are stories that our people have been telling for generations – for millennia. And I struggle to get them right because I believe deeply in the power of words. The words we use are important and language is a changing entity. It takes new words to speak to a new generation, but the truth is much bigger than my choice of words. It is much bigger than my life.

I once read that it is not difficult to choose between right and wrong. The difficult choice is between what is right and what is best. Maybe that is one of the differences between us. He is struggling to proclaim what is right in a world that has much wrong. I, on the other hand, live among people who know right from wrong and who are trying to figure out what is best.

So we are both making our way in the world. It is not that one life is better or more meaningful than another. We are just different.

And speaking with him is a blessing if for no other reason that it encourages me to take a fresh look at myself. I’m still trying to figure out how to do the work to which I have been called.

Copyright © 2013 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 think that one of the hardest things for people to understand is how their life fits into a bigger picture. We each carry our own memories and experiences and the things that we have known first hand by experiencing them seem more real and connected to us than the things we have learned by hearing or reading the stories of others. The result is that we often define the world in our own terms. We begin to believe that our perspective is somehow more valid than that of someone else.

There are thousands of examples from politics to religion to popular culture where people re-interpret historic events from their own perspective. The past is described as if it supports a particular point of view. I suppose that there is no way to avoid interpretations as we tell the stories of events from another time, but when we put our own “spin” on history, we often stray from the truth. People have always been complex. Our motives are always a bit mixed. There is more than one way to interpret events of the past.

One example of this phenomenon is the contemporary Tea Party movement in the United States. The have laid claim to a particular event in the history of our nation and claim that the people who participated in that event shared their contemporary political beliefs. They imagine that the people who participated in the original event shared their political perspective, were motivated by the same things that animate the contemporary claimants of the title. From another point of view, it seems highly unlikely that the predominantly Congregationalist Massachusetts Bay Colonists had much in common with the contemporary anti-tax, anti-government movement that is using big money, primarily from corporate sources, to influence primaries and elections to elect candidates who vote against regulations on corporate growth.

The original Tea Party protestors were protesting government support of big business, not taking money from big business to urge government to decrease regulation of business. They protested an import tax on tea that not only was unpopular in the colonies, but also unpopular in Great Britain. The illegal import of Dutch teas, which were not taxed at the same level was common and the Townshed duty was an attempt to help the East India Company better compete for the tea trade in the colonies. The resulting increase in the price of tea was cause for protest.

Contemporary members of the Tea Party Movement, however, prefer their own version of the Boston Tea Party – namely that it was a protest against all taxes and government regulations.

The truth, however, is that we are shaped by all of history whether or not we are aware of it. However, we often tell the story of our past as if it was simple and the people who came before us were all in agreement.

Sometimes a group of people will take one piece of history as if it were the whole story.

I have often been amused at people who have recently “discovered” Christianity. Recent converts or people who have recently returned to the church often take a small piece of Christianity as if it were the whole story. They discover some passage of scripture that is meaningful and proclaim it is if their interpretation were the whole truth. It is very common to take a sentence or two from the Bible and claim that it contains the whole truth without even considering its place in the text, the historical context of the scripture or even other passages of scripture that interpret that text. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard one sentence from Leviticus proclaimed by someone who doesn’t know all of the other legal rules listed in that book and who doesn’t acknowledge the active debate about the role of law and legalism that dominates Jesus’ encounters with Pharisees and Levites in the New Testament and Paul’s conversion to Christianity.

So it seems to me that the recent attention being paid to “A New New Testament, edited by Hal Taussig” is a bit overblown. The book is interesting and I have purchased a copy. Hall Taussig convened a panel of scholars and ministers to compare and contrast documents from the Nag Hammadi collection with existing books of the New Testament. They selected ten of the Nag Hammadi documents and present them with the existing books of the New Testament to be read together for a different perspective on the Christian Faith.

What surprises me is the claim to the title “New.” The Nag Hammadi collection consists of over fifty texts discovered in Egypt in 1945. It contains a number of “Gnostic Gospels.” These texts circulated in the early church and were once thought to have been destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define “orthodoxy.” The creation of the New Testament was intensely political and there was much disagreement among early church leaders. As some texts became more popular among church leaders, others were suppressed. The texts that were retained were often edited and altered. It took a long time for the New Testament to be developed and the books we now take as scripture to be accepted by the majority of the church.

The discovery of the ancient texts back in the 1940’s gave a fresh understanding on history that some in the church had tried to ignore. By the early 1970’s all of these texts were available in English translation. Seminary students who pursued an academic study of Christianity were given opportunities to read the texts and compare them with the texts embraced by mainstream Christianity. This was a part of my education. There is nothing “new” in conversations about early Christian writings that are not a part of the New Testament for me. But it is a conversation that is worthy of continuation in a wider community. “A New New Testament” provides a vehicle for such conversations and a group in our congregation will be discussing the book this fall.

Human beings are complex. Human institutions are also complex. There are many different perspectives. This has been true from the beginning. Those who claim that there is only one way to understand faith or history are simply uninformed.

It is, however, fun to see debates that have been mostly held among scholars to be opened to the participation of laypersons. It is always good to widen the circle of conversation. How much of the conversation will be “new” remains to be seen.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I won’t have to tell her that she can grow up to be anything that she wants. The women in her life are strong and independent and have pursued varied careers with grace and dignity. I won’t have to tell her that love is the most powerful force in this life. She will be surrounded by love from the very beginning. I won’t have to tell her of the importance of family. She will be surrounded by family from the moment she arrives.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will tell her stories of her great-great-great grandmother Mary who made lovely bonbons for the ladies’ aid society of the church, dipping coconut balls in chocolate and occasionally slipping in a cotton ball because it was so much fun to watch those ladies the in awkward position of having a mouth full of cotton at a formal affair. She also delighted in setting out a rubber donut coated with powdered sugar on the plate with the fresh donuts for the delight of watching field hands struggle with an inedible item in a kitchen filled with such good smells of cooking.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will teach her to pass the butter with just the right twist and shove to make the recipient’s thumb go into it. Humor is a legacy in this family and she has a right to learn that in our world practical jokes are not the exclusive provinces of men.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will tell her stories of her great-great-great grandmother Hattie who got thrown out of a saloon for her political opinions and refused to accept that politics was the realm of men even though she lived before this nation granted the vote to women. I will tell her of the sacrifices that Hattie and her husband Roy went through to bring a piano into the wilds of Montana when steamships plied the Missouri River because music is worth the effort every time.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will sing silly songs and political songs and songs of other generations because music is larger than life itself. Sometimes a song is a better teacher than a lecture.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I won’t have to teach her that family is bigger than genetics. She will know it from life in a family that people have entered by adoption and birth and marriage and are all treated equally and fairly. Belonging is stronger than biology.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will tell her about her great-great grandmother Amy who once dropped a prized tea cup while preparing for a formal tea at the church. Once she realized that the cup was shattered beyond repair she said, “Oh Hell!” and threw down the saucer shattering it. Had she not done so, the teacup would have been long lost and forgotten by now. Instead she created a story worth telling for many more generations. Loss comes to everyone in this life. Forgetting is not required.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will tell her stories of her great grandmother Charlotte who grew up in the midst of the deepest poverty imaginable in Ziebach County, South Dakota and who forged a family against all odds, even when everything around her was going a bit crazy. I will tell her how she raised three daughters and when the eldest fell in love, she fell in love with her and became the best mother-in-law that could be imagined.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will tell her stories of here great grandmother Meg who wanted to be a mother with all of her heart and when she was unable to conceive adopted two daughters, then gave birth to three children and adopted two more. I will report how she got up at 5 am every morning to do the books for the family business before preparing breakfast for that great big family. I will report the patience with which she could untangle a fishing reel or spackle in another new windowpane when one was broken. I will tell her about Meg’s bike trips in China and Sri Lanka and the Philippines after she was 60 years of age because she refused to let being a widow stop her from having adventures.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I won’t have to teach her about courage and character. She will know them in the attitude of her parents towards the world and the everyday ways they incorporate them into making their way in the world. I won’t have to teach her to learn to take risks but also to show reasonable caution. Adventures can be had without compromising safety. There are enough real risks iin life that there is no shame in avoiding them when they are unnecessary. She will learn these things by participating in this family.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will tell her stories of Ruth and Esther and Mary Magdalene and other grandmothers of our faith whose names may have been forgotten, but whose leadership and faithfulness made us the people that we are today. I will remind her how much her life affects so many other lives and that each person can play a key role in the unfolding history of our people.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will dance with her every opportunity I get. I won’t worry that I am old and clumsy and have never been much of a dancer. I will tell her that dancing has never come naturally to me and that even thought I studied dance in college, I had to become the father of a daughter before I learned the power of dance.

If someday I have a granddaughter, I will feed her ice cream before it occurs to her parents that this is a good idea and then take her out for ice cream again and again. I will play as many hands of Go Fish as she wants – even if it is a hundred more than anyone else would have patience to play. And when she is older I will teach her to play spoons and laugh past her bedtime.

But if, for some reason I never have a granddaughter, I will do all these things with my grandson – because the lessons are no less powerful for boys than for girls.

Copyright © 2013 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 know all of the details, but I believe I am descended from a line of really good fathers. I barely knew my maternal grandfather, but he raised five daughters, loosing one to heart disease when she was a teenager. The other four remained very close all of their lives. I think that part of what made for the quality of family life we knew is that our mother was careful in choosing a husband and had reasonable expectations of our father.

I got to observe my father with his father a little more. I was just 20 when grandpa died. Much of what I saw was after grandpa had retired and I even witness the kind of role reversal that occurs when a son begins to take care of his father. They were a bit more formal in their relationship than would be the case today. Grandpa had raised five sons and a daughter. He had seen the family farm though the Great Depression and then made the move to a gas station in a tourist area as a way of embracing the future. There were plenty of struggles, but there were also plenty of good times. The children all remained close in their adult years, which is a testament to the quality of family life that they enjoyed as they were growing up.

My time with my father was short but sweet. Looking back, I am sure that I enjoyed some privileges because I was the oldest son. I always spent a lot of time with my father and some of the best of those times involved going with him as he worked. There were always things to do at the airport and I enjoyed just being with him and hanging out around airplanes. I got more airplane rides than my siblings simply because I was around the airport a lot. Later, when our father went into the farm machinery business, I worked at the store from the time I was old enough to sweep out the feed warehouse until the days I drove truck delivering machinery.

One of my fondest memories of growing up was the year that my father served as my flight instructor. We would go to the airport early in the morning whenever the weather was good. He was a consummate teacher, never riled or panicking, simply giving the information and instruction needed for me to do whatever maneuver we were practicing. He shared not only the technical skills to fly an airplane, but also his love of flying. We often would spend a significant amount of time flying without exchanging many words. There is a great deal that is shared through presence.

When my father became ill, I lived 300 miles away, but I was able to make fairly regular trips to visit him. There were good and bad days during that adventure, but the fact that I was coming from a distance gave me more of a taste of the good days. My youngest brother, who was living at home, got to see more of the everyday progression of his illness. Dad would sense that there was something special when I cam to visit and made an effort to be on his best. We had some very memorable conversations during that time. We talked about his business and I learned some new stories about the time before I was born. But mostly we talked quite frankly about death and about the meaning of his life even though he knew that it would be cut short by death. He was fascinated by the human brain and tried to learn as much as he could about the cancer that was disabling him. He enjoyed talking with the doctors and learning about their treatment plans. He was fascinated by medical technology and wanted to know how things worked. He read books about the brain until the illness left him unable to read.

The are thousands of other stories I have about time with my father.

Our son was born a few months after my father died. He knew that we were expecting but he didn’t live long enough for the birth. Our family seems to be that way. Births and deaths often occur in close proximity. The tears of joy and the tears of sadness often mingle on our cheeks. Later, after my father had died, I would often sense that he was talking to me. It wasn’t some kind of mystical, supernatural experience. I simply would think a thought and it would come to me in his voice. When I was flying an airplane, I’d hear his voice reminding me of items on my checklist. When I faced a challenge I would think, “What would Dad have done?” I found that his teachings and examples were very present in the process of raising our children. He had taught me well and his wisdom was part of the way that our children grew up.

This father’s day, I am very grateful for my father and for all that he taught me. But these days there are new prayers of gratitude to be offered on father’s day. I am so delighted with watching our son as a father. When we are able to be together and even when we are sharing a video chat over Skype, I get plenty of opportunities to see him relate to his son. He is a very active, “hands on” father who listens carefully to his son and teaches by gentle example, patient instruction and consistent response. Now that our grandson has developed a large vocabulary, I delight in listening to their conversations. I like to watch them play together, knowing that the bond they are forming is deep and meaningful. I can see a bit of my father in our son, especially when he gets down on the floor to play with his son.

Last evening we were sharing a video chat when our grandson began to say things for which he was thankful. First of all, I was completely amazed that he knew the world “thankful.” He not only could say it, he knew what it meant. Some of the things on his list wouldn’t have made mine: “I am thankful for elephants. Elephants live in the zoo.” What is deeply meaningful to me is that our grandson is engaging in the practice of thinking of the things for which he is grateful. He shows the signs of having a good father in his life. It is a most meaningful tribute to my father.

Happy Father’s Day!

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

I am not one to talk about my clergy colleagues very much, but there is a pastor who is an acquaintance of mine who lives in an unnamed state that happens to be directly north of the state where I live. This pastor has had what I think most might call an “unconventional career.” He grew up in Connecticut and somehow ended up in the Dakotas. He has served congregations in both of the Dakotas as well as a church in Montana. Along the way, he studied the Lakota language with some of the elders on the Rosebud and became fluent enough to have done some translation, including the Lakota words to “Amazing Grace” that appear in the New Century Hymnal. Not that I would want to drop any names, but his appears in the hymnal as the author of those lyrics.

He has established a bit of a reputation for his hobbies, which include hunting, fishing, motorcycle riding and the 27-foot Hunter sailboat that he keeps moored at the marina on Lake Sacajawea. The boat is large enough to sleep four and has a full galley. He has been known to take groups of kids out for their first introduction to sailing and he and his wife go on sailing/camping adventures around the lake.

Yesterday, after officiating at a memorial service, this pastor was eager to get out on the lake. There was a stiff breeze, a common condition in North Dakota, not that I would identify the location of this particular incident. He joined the congregation in the church basement for lunch and visited with a few of the people, but left the church in the care of the women who served the luncheon. They probably remembered to check things and blow out the candles in the sanctuary and tidy up after the funeral. It is a small town and it isn’t always necessary to have the church locked, so there was no big concern over who would handle those duties.

Meanwhile, the family of the deceased gathered at a lakeshore cabin, loaned to the family by a friend. It was a chance for some more conversation, sharing memories, looking at pictures and visiting before everyone had to head to their homes the next day. The cabin had a barbecue and the family had stopped by the grocery store for hamburger, bratwurst and a few containers of salad from the deli for supper. The burgers were on the grill when the sailboat appeared in the inlet. Soon the sail was struck and it gracefully motored up to the dock. Being interested in boats and not being occupied with the cooking, I thought about walking down to have a closer look at the boat, but thought I should probably wait because supper was nearly ready.

Now preachers have a well-honed sense of a meal about to be served. Over the years, those of us who practice the profession can sense an extra serving available from a long distance. This particular preacher, a colleague whom I won’t name, walked up to the cabin at precisely the right moment to be invited to dinner. He was eager to accept, but he also needed to get his sailboat back into its slip before darkness fell. Although there is plenty of evening this time of year in North Dakota, he suggested that he give some of the family a ride on his sailboat. They would just take a quick sail around the point and then he’d bring them back for supper in his car. I enjoy sailing, but declined the invitation because I felt it was more appropriate to spend time with the family, not that I would need to identify the family in order to tell this story. A couple of family members accepted the invitation. I walked them all down to the boat, took a quick look at it and watched as they motored away from the dock and hoisted sail.

An hour later, slightly irritated because the family super had been disrupted, I walked down to the shore to take a picture of the sunset over the lake. There was the sailboat, right where I had last seen it, tilted over a bit, obviously run aground on a sandbar. Knowing that I would have no chance of pulling a boat with a 1500-pound keel off of a sandbar with my rowboat, we found a neighbor with a 18-foot Lund fishing boat equipped with a 115-horsepower motor and headed out to attempt a rescue. The sailboat didn’t have much for a line and the wind made it difficult to get the pull angles just right. There was no way we were going to move that sailboat with that particular craft.

By the time we returned to shore, calls had gone out to various organizations. The fire department doesn’t really handle lake rescues. The search and rescue had the ability to take the people off of the boat, but no way to get the boat off of the sandbar. And, since there was no real risk of injury to anyone, they were reluctant to get involved in the incident. Finally the state department of fish and game agreed to make a trip out in their Boston Whaler with twin outboards. Once they arrived, it only took a few minutes to secure a towline and pull the boat out into deeper water.

As the sun set over the lake, more than three hours after the short sail began, we watched the sailboat disappear around the bend as we said our farewells to the family and headed back to our camper and made it to bed about an hour later than planned.

During the adventure while I sat with one of the members of the congregation on shore waiting for the fish and game people to arrive, the member of the church commented, “Well, there’s probably at least three good sermons in that adventure.” I responded, “At least five. If pastor Steve (whose name I won’t mention) gets three, I should get at least two.”

No one was injured. No harm was done to the boat. And there are several stories to be told. The local newspaper will probably include a bit of a report. And the pastor will endure quite a bit of ribbing around town for a few weeks. Not bad for a Friday afternoon. Not that I would tell stories on my colleagues.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

It is easy for me to get a little disoriented about time these days. I think that mostly it is simply the fact that I am in the Central Time Zone instead of Western. One hour without going very far east and west means that it stays light later at night and the sun comes up later in the morning – that is if you are going by the clock. The time zones in our part of the world are a bit skewed. Because the point of change through most of the Dakotas is the Missouri River, there are places in Central Time that are actually west of other places in Mountain Time. It can get confusing. Our travel yesterday was mostly north, with a few jogs east and west.

This planet has a tilted axis and that means that there is more daylight the farther north you travel at this time of the year. Above the Arctic Circle they are nearing the season of 24-hour daylight. At any rate, the night seemed a bit short, but it is no problem for the birds. They are raising quite a chorus outside of our camper.

We are parked at Fort Stevenson State Park on the north shore of Lake Sacajawea. Here in North Dakota, the name of the Shoshoni woman who served as a guide to Lewis and Clark is pronounced with an emphasis on the hard “k” sound. It sounds a bit like “sa-cock-a-we-a.” In most of the other places I have lived, including Montana and Idaho, where she spend a lot of her time, it is pronounced “sack-a-ja-we-a.” I have no idea which pronunciation is more faithful to the original Shoshoni. Probably neither is very close.

The waters began collecting behind the Garrison Dam around the time I was born. That means that there are a few old timers who can remember what the Missouri Valley looked like before the giant lake began to fill up the coulees and breaks. For most of the folks, however, the giant lake is how they remember this area. There is a lot of water stored in that reservoir. And since the lake was built, there have been a lot of trees that have come to maturity. Here in the state park what was once a treeless bluff at the top of the Missouri breaks is now a lovely lakeside resort with plenty of trees to shelter from the wind and provide habitat for the birds. Being on the national flyway, there are a lot of birds in this part of the country. Just a few miles away the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge is that stopping place for tens of thousands of waterfowl on annual migration.

The dam was not just a feat of civil engineering, though it set all kinds of records for earthen-filled dams when it was built. It was part of the great effort to tame the Missouri River and the series of dams that were built have worked, for the most part, to alleviate some of the more dramatic effects of annual floods. The dams also store water for irrigation and recreation and provide a steady stream flow for downstream navigation. Even with all of this water, it is not an unlimited amount and in drought years we see the controversy that has always been a part of the project. Different water users have competing claims for the water. And, a few years ago, the system became saturated with excessive runoff and the releases from the dams caused extensive downstream flooding. There were lots of complaints that year.

Garrison Dam was also a significant work of social engineering. It lies at the intersection of the reservations of four tribes: Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Dakota. The tribe had been enemies at various times during their history and had very different ways of life. The Dakota were travelers, following the buffalo herds. The Mandan had settled in the same region for many generations. At any rate, the construction of the dam meant that much of the original reservation land was under water and new reservation boundaries had to be drawn. The result was the combination of reservations. These days the so-called “United Tribes” is an attempt at combined government for the bands of all four tribes that live along the shores of Lake Sacajawea. It sort of works. There is a lot of politicking and frequent changes of leadership mark the organization. Two of the successes of the United Tribes are the United Tribes Technical College and the annual International Powwow. Both the college and the powwow are in Bismarck a few miles downriver.

Years ago, when we lied in North Dakota, I had contacts and friends in most of the reservation congregations, but many years have passed since those days and I haven’t kept up with most of the folks.

This morning it is barely light out as I write and I can hear the occasional rumble of thunder from distant showers that are moving through the area. Here it is partly cloudy, but the forecast calls for more thunderstorms as the day progresses. I brought our rowboat and I may go for a brief row this morning, but I’ll have to see how the weather goes. We need to be showered and ready for a funeral at 11 a.m. and the rest of the day will be taken up with visiting with family and friends. The funeral will be held at the Congregational Church here in Garrison. We ‘ve gathered in that church for many family occasions, including several funerals. The pastor has been serving this church for quite a few years and also served congregations in Montana and South Dakota so he is an acquaintance whose career I have watched from a distance. We only know each other from a distance, but there is a comfortable feel to knowing that he will be caring for the family.

After the funeral, we will all be packing up and leaving. We are now a scattered family and no one lives here in this part of the country. But it is a beautiful land and a place to which we know we will return whenever we are able.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

My parents weren’t the oldest of their siblings and I have always had lots of cousins on both sides of my family. We had seven children in our family and there were plenty of children in the families of my parents’ siblings. When we got together as a family, we were among the youngest bunch of children, with plenty of older cousins.

Susan’s father, on the other hand, was the older of only two children in his family. He had a few cousins and even a few double cousins. I think that is the right term for the children of sibling pairs that marry. He had one aunt who never had children who remained close to his family throughout his life. His mother lived to be 100 years old and his father to 92, so I got to know his parents quite well. His sister had two children who were younger than Keith’s daughters, so I have known those folks since they were kids.

Time passes and families change. Susan’s dad was retired before his parents passed away, but one by one the family funerals occurred and the generation passed. Keith became the oldest of his line of the family. Then, a couple of years ago, he too came to the end of his life. Susan and I both lost our remaining parent within a few months of each other. We found out that the passing of generations involves some important responsibilities and one of those responsibilities is sifting and sorting through the possessions of our elders.

Today we head back to North Dakota, the place where her father was born and raised, for the funeral of his younger sister. She was the last of the siblings of our parents. The generations have now passed once again. Somehow, though we didn’t notice it happening, we have become elders. In the case of her father’s side of the family, Susan has now become the matriarch: the oldest of the remaining cousins. Since all of those cousins are living it isn’t a mark of longevity, simply the product of birth order. Still it seems like a significant moment in family history.

There are things that you imagine when you are younger. This isn’t one of them. I have had a sense that one is never the “right” age. For the first few years of life you are “too young” for so many things. I can remember being told that I was too young for a two wheeled bicycle, too young to go down to the river by myself, too young to start hunting, too young to drive a car, too young to fly an airplane, too young to move out of the house, too young to drink alcohol. And all of those dates passed within what now seems like a very short amount of time. In the early years of my career I was too young for a few of the jobs in the church. Now, I am aware that there are a few things for which I am “too old.” I don’t ever remember being just the right age. We went from being the kids in the family to being the elders without any time in between, or so it seems.

But here we are. We have become custodians of the memories. We also seem to be custodians of the photographs and quite a bit of the family heirlooms. There isn’t much. We’re not a family that hangs on to too many items, but there are a couple of pieces of furniture and two clocks that come from that side of Susan’s family that now live in our house. One of the clocks had an honored place in the kitchen of Susan’s grandparents and I remember her grandmother speaking of how her father had brought it to her childhood home on horseback. That clock is now in our living room, somewhat less reliable than it once was, but still capable of chiming the hour when it has been properly cleaned and adjusted.

The photographs could use a bit more organization. Throughout the generations there have been a few who created albums and organized the pictures. But there have also been a lot of photographs that were simply passed from one generation to the next in boxes. I have begun the process of scanning and organizing some of the photos, but at the rate at which I am going, there will only be a small number that are transferred to that media. And organizing digital photographs is almost as daunting a task as organizing printed photographs.

Despite the organizational challenges, we are fortunate to have come from families where there were some photographers. We have good records of preceding generations. There are plenty of folks who do not have their heritage recorded in such a complete fashion. At times like this, when we are drawn together and invited to think back, it is good to have all of the old photos to remind us of the people and the times that brought us to this moment.

I suppose that one of the roles that is appropriately given to elders is the task of keeper of the stories and along with the stories in our time are the photographs, for they tell the stories of our people in ways that ought to be preserved for future generations. It falls to us not only to keep those stories and photographs, but also to find ways to share them. It seems to be a suitable role for an elder.

But there is one change that comes with this funeral of which we are now aware. As the cousins clean out the apartment, it is the last home of a member of the family located in the old hometown. Everyone has moved away and there will no longer be any home to visit when we go back to that town. Once there was a farm and multiple houses. Now those things are either gone or the dwelling place of other families and other stories.

Time passes. And when you become an elder, you become aware of how quickly it goes. But we’ve got a lot of sorting and organizing to do before we pass these treasures to the next generation.

Copyright © 2013 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 know that there are people who sleep in climate-controlled rooms with the windows closed so that the temperature and humidity can be precisely regulated. That seems sad to me this morning as I awoke to the songs of birds outside my window and the lush smell of the forest that was dampened by a shower as I went to bed. For a few minutes last night the bedroom curtains blew into the room with the winds of the advancing storm, but it was brief, as showers sometimes are and I soon received the gift of glorious sleep. I somewhere read that it is healthy to sleep in a a warm bed in a cool room. Under our quilt, I slept in what must have been perfect conditions.

Of course, we live with the luxury of modern conveniences. We have heat in our home that can be adjusted with the touch of a thermostat. Our house is equipped with double-paned windows and we have storm windows in addition to keep out winter’s cold. But we have been blessed to live in a place where most nights we can sleep with the windows open.

I know that there are people who have beautifully manicured lawns and who find the presence of deer who eat flowers and turkeys who leave behind their messes to be an annoyance. That too seems sad to me this morning. I love to watch the deer and turkeys who share their neighborhood with us. I can sometimes get annoyed with the mess and I did put up a tall fence to keep the deer out of my vegetable garden, but it is a gift to live in the midst of things that are wild and not subject to complete control. I would be poorer were it not for the joys of watching the critters in my yard.

Of course there are problems with the wild creatures. We have hit deer on the road when we didn’t expect to. We have watched little ones born only to die crossing the road before they grow up. I’ve never hit a turkey with my car, but I’ve seen the damage that occurs when others do. One day right behind our house a car lost its grill and had its radiator punctured by a turkey that lost the race to cross the road.

I know that there are people who have become emotionally isolated so that the death of a friend becomes, for them, a routine event. It is a sad thing, I think. I read, yesterday, of Monday’s death of my friend Jim Kuehn. The glowing reports in the newspaper are what one would expect of a retired newspaper editor. There are many who remember his editorials following the 1972 Rapid City Flood and the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee. I didn’t meet Jim until after he had retired. I remember his love of language and storytelling. I remember his interest in life and learning. I remember his ceaseless promotion of Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills. I know that the parking lot at Calvary Lutheran Church will be full on Friday. I would be there were it not for a family funeral that takes me out of town.

I have met people who are so devastated by grief and loss that they are unable to form close friendships and unwilling to expose themselves to additional grief. It is a sad thing when it happens. I don’t like the sorrow that comes into my life, but I know it is a blessing to be able to feel it. I think that the sadness of grief is one of the treasures of life. Life is sweet in part because it has limits. Were it to go on forever, we might never learn to appreciate how precious it is.

I know that there are people who have expensive riding lawn mowers and others who hire someone else to mow their lawn. There are perfectly good reasons for doing so. But even though I sometimes complain about having to invest two hours in mowing my lawn, I know that the gift of exercise in a beautiful outdoor setting is a blessing. Even the stiff shoulder I feel the next day is a blessing. It reminds me that I am alive. How sad it would be to not be able to feel. I’ve been mowing the same lawn with the same lawn mower since 1995. I guess that an eighteen-year-old lawn mower couldn’t really be considered to be “new” any more, but it seems new to me It is reliable and easy to operate and it seems to be good for a few more years. Some days it seems like I might wear out before it does.

One of the songs I remember my mother singing is a thanksgiving hymn by Johnson Oatman. The chorus of the hymn came to me as I was waking to the song of the birds this morning:

Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your blessings, see what God hath done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
Count your many blessings, see what God hath done.

I’ve also sung it with an alternate last line: “And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.”

The bottom line is that when I stop to think of the many blessings that are a part of my life, I am indeed a very fortunate person. I have health and family and am constantly surrounded by love. I have a church that is mission-minded and engaged in serving others. I have a job that allows me to earn my way in this world. The list goes on and on.

The last verse of the song (at least the way I learned it) goes like this:

So, amid the conflict whether great or small,
Do not be discouraged, God is over all;
Count you many blessings, angels will attend,
Help; and comfort give you to your journey’s end.

Counting blessings is not a bad way to begin your day. It is hard not to do so when you can breath the fresh air and hear the birds singing right outside your open window.

Copyright © 2013 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 always loved traveling and there are far more places in this world that I would like to visit than there is time and money to make the trips. One of the countries that seems worthy of a visit is Turkey. I once thought that I might put together a trip to Turkey a decade or more ago when I was writing curricula for International Pilgrimages with Youth. The program started with two pilot destinations: China and Turkey and we recruited adult mentors to accompany the youth on their trips. I indicated a desire to be a part of the Turkey travel and then supported the group when it focused its limited financial resources on the single destination, China. The trips that we sponsored to China were deeply meaningful for the participants and created lifelong connections. But we never did expand the program. The timing was wrong. National and International ministries of the church were being cut back in the face of declining donations and loss of church members.

You often hear of people visiting holy sites in Israel. This is appropriate. Most of the places of Jesus life - Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem - are in that country. I would love a trip to that country. But somehow, Turkey has a stronger attraction for me. Paul’s early missionary journeys were mostly to Turkey. Paul’s birthplace, Tarsus, The church at Ephesus, Antioch, Laodicea, Lystra, Pergamum, Philadelphia, Sardis, Smyrna, Thyatira and other cities named in biblical narratives are all located in Turkey. The seven churches mentioned in the Book of Revelation are in ‘Turkey. And there are a host of Old Testament places in Turkey as well. More than have of the places named in the Bible are located in Turkey.

The history and politics of Turkey are also very rich. During the 16th and 17th centuries the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful states in the world. It was multinationa, multilingual, multicultural, and even multireligious, though Islam was the largest religious group. Modern Turkey is a republic, formed in the 1920’s. Mustafa Kemai (Ataturk) was the first president of the modern republic. He is still revered in Turkey for his innovative and visionary leadership. Among the ideas that the Ataturk government promoted was that of secularism in government. Officially, the government did not espouse one religion over another. In contrast to other Midwestern countries where domination in government by one religion caused the faithful of other religions to leave, Turkey maintained strong Christian and Jewish communities in the midst of a population that was primarily Muslim. Our church has a long tradition of mission partnerships with the church in Turkey.

Turkey could hardly be called a democracy under Ataturk, however. The one-party system persisted until after the Second World War, when the Democratic Party was first elected. This gave rise to a multiple party state with no party long able to hold power. The sharing of power through multiple changes in government was unique in the Middle East. Turkey’s economy has not been strong since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and there were major setbacks early in the 21st Century. In 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) was elected. It is the only political party in the history of modern Turkey that has won three successive elections with increasing support in each election.

The minority in Turkey is clearly frustrated. The country has erupted in protests over the last 10 days. Protestors have been occupying Taksim Square in Istanbul. The Square is adjacent to Gezi Park which is also filled with protestors. The park has been threatened with demolition as a part of urban redevelopment. Today riot police stormed Taksim Square with rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas.

But Istanbul is not the only location of protests in Turkey. In Izmir, on the Agean coast, the town’s allegiances are clearly with the protestors. Izmir is of special interest to me because our church has a long standing partnership with a school in Izmir and I have known several missionaries who have served in that school. The Izmir protests have been noisy with drums and whistles, but so far have remained peaceful.

Around the world, people are struggling to deal with differences and disagreements. Turkey has no small number of conservative Muslims who would like to see Islam established as the official state religion and Sharia law imposed on everyone regardless of their faith traditions. It also has its share of fundamentalist Christians who believe that every Muslim and Jew should be converted to Christianity. The vast majority of Turkish citizens, however, resist the notion that religion and government should be united into a “winner take all” kind of government. They are intent on their commitment to majority rule with a strong voice for the minority.

Giving voice to minorities is a challenge in any body. It is an even greater challenge for a government. For years Turkey has been a good example of balance in government and a country with majority rule that took its minorities seriously. But with the dawn of the 21st century it is not as clear that Turkey will continue to honor its minorities. The government of Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially displayed patience with protestors, but has become increasingly authoritarian. It clearly has an agenda of imposing conservative Islamic values on the secular state. He has taken an increasingly harsh stance toward the protestors.

The plan had been for Mr. Erdogan to meet with the protestors tomorrow. It now appears that the plan might not come to fruition. More protests and more violence seem to ge in the future.

So now probably isn’t a good time for a visit to Turkey. But I am watching from a distance as the country struggles with its identity and the way for people of different faiths to live together in peace. I am praying for my Christian friends in Turkey. But more than that, I am praying for all of the people of Turkey. May they learn to live with their neighbors with mutual respect.

Copyright © 2013 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 South Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ has just elected a new Conference Minister. The annual meeting this past weekend was the first opportunity for many members of the conference to get to know the new minister. I was interested that the biography and introductions contained so much information about hobbies. We all have hobbies, and the ability to engage in recreation is an important aspect of clergy self-care, so I would be reluctant to say that hobbies are not important. On the other hand, hobbies come and go and in some ways I was hungry for more information about the core commitments of our new minister. What are the things to which he has made undying commitments? Where are the places where his passions have led to lifelong pursuits?

The same criticism could be made of me and my attempts to share my life with others. This blog often has silly thoughts. My website has as much about my boats as it does about my theology. Somehow that simple fact got me to thinking and remembering. Nearly 18 years ago, when I came to this congregation as its new pastor, I was asked to make a presentation to a men’s breakfast group. When I inquired about the topic, I was asked to speak about one of my hobbies. The men in the group wanted to get to know something about what I did for recreation and were eager to get to know me in an informal setting. I did my presentation on stunt kites. I set up a display of a half dozen control line kites that I own. There was a parafoil, a couple of sport and stunt kites, a delta kite and a four-line revolution kite. The calm early morning meeting time didn’t afford an opportunity for a flying demonstration, so I talked about kite flying and showed my collection of kites.

It wasn’t a very good introduction to who I was becoming as pastor of this congregation. I doubt that I have flown kites a dozen times since I made that presentation. I still have my kite bag, but I haven’t added a new kite since that time. What I didn’t realize was how much coming to this new town would change me. As I became pastor of this congregation, my family was going through a big move, our children were entering new schools, our vacation plans were being changed, and I was growing into my new responsibilities.

We had lived in Boise, Idaho before moving here. Our Conference Office was in Portland, Oregon. We often went to Pacific beaches when we had a little time off. There are large sand dunes in Southern Idaho close to our home. I had time, and places to fly kites. It was an important activity that I shared with our children. In South Dakota we soon discovered that while there is plenty of wind, it is often gusty and unpredictable. The open fields are filled with cactus, sagebrush and other obstacles for kite takeoffs and landings. And our family was entering into a new phase. I needed to spend my “off” time at home. I was doing less traveling. I had space to build a second canoe, and that led to more boatbuilding. My hobbies changed.

I’ve still got that bag of kites. Now I have a grandson. We are heading for a family gathering on the West Coast in July and I’ll be taking both kites and boats. Perhaps our family will find one hobby to be more engaging than the other. I’m not worried. We always have fun when we get together. And we are not limited in our fun by a lack of equipment.

What I won’t be doing is any experiments with lightning and kites. Today is the supposed anniversary of Ben Franklin’s historic experiment. The story that is repeated in many different formats, recalls that on June 10, 1752, Franklin used a key, some twine and a large silk handkerchief attached to sticks to demonstrate that lightning is electricity. We know that Franklin had been doing experiments with static electricity that spring. There are records of his activities in May of that year. The now famous kite experiment, however, is poorly documented. Franklin makes his first notation of it about four months after the event is supposed to have taken place and then only in passing in an article in the Pennsylvania Gazette. The long account of the event, reported by Joseph Priestley did not appear until 15 years afterward.

The History Channel television show “Myth Busters” did a demonstration that the producers claimed to prove that had Franklin actually done the experiment as described, he certainly would have been killed by the jolt of electricity. Their experiment with a dummy, heart monitors and “fake” lightning generated by a power-plant testing facility had enough variances from what might have happened to stir up detractors and defenders.

Historians and modern-day experimenters continue to argue about whether the experiment is a myth or a historical event. And, like many stories, it is possible that there was some real event that was reported inaccurately. Exaggeration was not unknown in Benjamin Franklin’s self-promotion.

In the meantime, I hope that modern-day debaters are careful in their attempts to re-create the experiment. It would be a real tragedy if someone was seriously injured or killed trying to prove or disprove their theories about Ben Franklin’s kite.

And, I hope that we don’t get our new conference minister stuck in an image of hobbies that he used to pursue. In fact, I hope that he finds at least one new hobby here in South Dakota. May he find new recreation and new life in this new phase of his journey of faith and ministry.

His resume didn’t mention canoes at all. I think I ought to invite him to go paddling one of these days. It might be a good way to get to know him better. And if he wants to take up kites, I have some he could borrow.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

In the summer, it is common for our church to host visiting youth groups. Youth from across the United States come to the Black Hills for work trips, primarily focused on activities at the Pine Ridge Reservation. I don’t know how many conversations I have had with young people from other parts of the country who have told me that their visits to Pine Ridge were life-changing experiences. Sadly, I don’t know many residents of Pine Ridge who would report that their lives have been changed by the visit of folks from out of the area. It is a complex situation, and entrenched poverty is a deep challenge for any society. It would be a good topic for a blog on another day.

Having guests in our building is an opportunity for us to tell part of our story. They ask about our congregation, our mission and our projects. One topic of conversation that always comes up is the huge woodpile in the churchyard. We get asked whether or not that wood is ours. We get asked if we heat the church building with wood. We get asked if we sell firewood. Yes, the wood belongs to the church. No we don’t heat the building with wood. No, we don’t sell firewood. But we do get the opportunity to tell part of the story of the Woodchuck Society and how forming partnerships with our neighbors helps to provide firewood for heating homes.

A wedding at the church this weekend has also provided me an opportunity to speak with several young adults who grew up in our church and now have moved to other parts of the country. They ask about how it is going at the church and what new and exciting things we are doing.

I treasure the opportunities to talk about our congregation and its ministries. Decline is not an uncommon mode for churches in contemporary America. The statistics say that the fastest-growing religion in America is “no religious preference.” Often this does not give any information about the beliefs of the individuals polled, but rather speaks to their practices. They don’t belong to churches. The result is that there are plenty of churches in the country that are suffering decline. Sometimes the decline is a sort of slow and gradual process. Other times it is rather sudden and dramatic. So it is a privilege and a joy to be a part of a congregation that is growing and discovering new avenues of mission and ministry.

I don’t have much passion or interest for many kinds of promotion that are common in other churches. I’m skeptical about advertising campaigns. I’m not too much for spending church funds to rent billboards or place advertisements on television. I don’t have much background in advertising and don’t know much about it, but it seems to me that advertisements are often completely ineffective. It seems like the churches that are most likely to advertise in the newspaper, for example, are the ones that are struggling the most. Only a tiny fraction of our community’s congregations place any kind of ads in the newspaper. It isn’t that I don’t believe in reaching out to others. I think that we need to continue to be growing and attracting new members. It is just that I don’t think that traditional advertising is the best way to tell the church’s story.

What works best, in my opinion, is the people who are involved in the church talking about what makes that involvement meaningful to them. Friends inviting friends is probably our most important evangelism tool. I know that visiting with out-=of-town guests doesn’t increase worship attendance or church membership, but it does give me the opportunity to talk about our church with others. And sometimes those stories make rather circuitous trips. Someone who visits our church has another friend who lives in our community and the story is told. Someone decides to move to our community and a friend tells of a visit to our town and our church. It is not at all uncommon for guests to come to visit our church who tell us of a friend or relative who recommended that they check out our congregation.

The good news of the work of the church seems to prefer non-traditional methods of spreading throughout the community. We are not about bragging or self-promotion. But we are about relationships. Our church is a location of intentional community. And we have that sense of supportive and loving community to offer to others. And community is sorely lacking in contemporary culture.

I spend ten minutes or more yesterday talking with an out of town wedding guest about his quest to find a loving and supporting community. He was partly looking for a community for himself, and partly for community for his children. He had all kinds of notions, some mistaken, about Christian theology and the different beliefs of different churches. He was not inclined to embrace someone else’s doctrine and he had experienced the church as being uncompromising about beliefs. These kinds of conversations are always a bit of a challenge because there can be a perception that our church is soft on theology or operates with out core beliefs and convictions. This is definitely not the case. But we do not practice our faith by imposing our beliefs on others or insisting that our way is the only way. I made the comment, as I often do, that our community is not based on agreement. Our church is made up with members who have many different perspectives on life and faith. We are able to argue amongst ourselves about everything from politics to subtle nuances of the doctrine of the trinity. We have discovered that we don’t have to share the same beliefs to worship together. There is plenty of room in the church for different opinions, different interpretations, and different perspectives.

It is a gift to have the opportunity to talk about our church. It is a greater gift to have a church that is worth talking about.

Copyright © 2013 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 question of how to organize churches has been a part of the story of the church from its beginning. The New Testament paints a word picture of the Apostles traveling from congregation to congregation, often writing letters between visits, struggling to help congregations be consistent in issues of faith, practice and doctrine. By the third century or so, a hierarchy had been formed with local congregations under the direction of priests, priests under the direction of bishops, bishops under the direction of cardinals and cardinals answering to the pope. Throughout history there have been many questions over authority, a bit of intrigue over the selection and removal of popes and cardinals. When the Protestant reformation resulted in a major schism in the church, the question of how to organize Protestant congregations arose. There were many who argued that power should be decentralized and some argued against the practice of ordaining bishops. The division of Christians from one another continued in Protestant churches, with many different denominations being formed and difference governance structures in the various denominations. Denominationalism rose to its most divisive forms in North America, were we continue to have more types of Christian churches than other parts of the world.

After a brief flirtation with a centralized structure, New England Pilgrims and Puritans settled on a polity with congregations having a great deal of authority and the associations between congregations being relatively weak. Issues like the ordination of ministers have bounced around within our structure with ministers being ordained by individual congregations, but seeking authorization for ministry for associations so that they have the ability to move from congregation to congregation. The system isn’t the loosest in American Protestantism, nor is it the tightest. The tradition of an educated clergy persisted throughout most of the churches the eventually joined together to form the United Church of Christ and by the time of the union the recognized standard was a graduate degree in theology.

At the time of the union, the constitution of the newly-formed church acknowledged the authority of the local congregation, and associations of congregations formed in specific geographical areas. The associations of the church were organized into Conferences. The general model is for conference boundaries to follow state lines, but there are several Conferences that encompass multiple states and some that are smaller than a state. The General Synod, the national governing body of the church, sets the boundaries of Conferences. Over the years Conferences have been reconfigured in a couple of instances, but the 39 Conferences of the United Church of Christ have been remarkably stable over most of the church’s history.

Much of the authority of the Conferences has had to do with financial resources. Mission funding is channeled from local congregations to the Conferences. Each Conference, in turn, decides how much of that mission money is retained for Conference work and how much is passed on to the Church’s national setting. That meant that Conferences and Conference Ministers have, historically, exercised significant power in the Untied Church of Christ.

The story of our Conferences, however, is a story of decline. The United Church of Christ has been shrinking in members and congregations for virtually all of its history. The decreases have resulted in shrinking budgets for Conferences and the church’s national setting. While individual congregations have remained strong in many places, the church continues to shift away from rural areas to urban centers. This shift in the demographics of the church has resulted in Conferences that have experienced shrinking budgets, decreasing staff and smaller programs than in previous years. Because funding from local churches to the Conference is completely voluntary in our denomination, decreasing programs usually result in decreasing donations. One colleague commented that “each year of my career the Conference has become less and less relevant to the local church.” That probably is an exaggeration, but it is true that contemporary congregations are not particularly dependent upon Conference structure for their mission and ministry.

Here in South Dakota, we still have enough congregations and enough donations from congregations to sustain a viable Conference with a single Conference minister. While there are many people who can remember the days of three Conference ministers, the shrinking to two and then to one is an obvious pattern of decline. Still, the financial base remains for a single minister to function primarily as an administrator of the Conference business, with some time devoted to pastoral care, church celebrations and events, and other ministries.

This weekend our Conference is gathered for its annual meeting in Custer. Even with the close location of the meeting, our congregation does not have all of its delegate positions filled. While we have several members who are active in Conference committees and two who serve on the Conference board of directors, there is little excitement or interest in the ministries of the Conference among the general membership of our congregation. The presence of national church staff and even the election of a new conference minister have failed to generate much excitement or interest in the pews of our church. Although I attend the meetings, I confess that I am not as excited or as involved as was the case a few years ago. It is not that we are opposed to the work of the conference, it is just that the passion and energy for the work of the church is focused more on activities in the local church than statewide mission and ministries.

Still, we are connected to other congregations. We belong to each other. What happens in other churches affects our mission and ministry. We need to gather and to maintain our relationships with each other. We need to share ministry in ways that reach beyond local congregations.

The organization of the wider church continues to be a challenge for the church as we look forward and plan mission and ministries that are relevant and engaging for the future. I suspect that the shape of the Conference and national settings of the church will continue to evolve and change. A clear vision of what is emerging is yet to be revealed.

In the meantime, Christians gathering for worship, shared meals and inspiration is a worthy endeavor.

Copyright © 2013 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.

Among the rare treats of this world is the incredible joy and beauty of watching the sunrise from a canoe on a still lake in the midst of the trees. I am sure that there are those who find a similar beauty in watching a sunset, but being a morning person, I find myself on the lake in the wee hours more often than in the evening. Yesterday, I quickly published my blog and headed to the lake. The mist was rising form the lake, something that doesn’t happen at sunset. The quiet was broken only by the occasional chatter of geese on the other side of the lake. Geese are never ones to appreciate the quiet and have much chatter to share, but they don’t disrupt the experience for those of us who have come to the lake for the stillness of the morning.

Psalm 46 simply says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Sitting in my canoe on the lake as the mist rose from its surface, with the warmth of the sun just beginning to trickle down to the surface of the water and the quiet of the morning surrounding me, it seemed to me that it is enough. I don’t have to prove that God exists. I don’t have to argue with the atheists. I don’t have to proclaim anything to anyone. It is enough to just be still and know that I don’t have to be God. I don’t have to be in charge. I don’t have to have the fate of the world hinge on my actions or ideas.

On calm water a few simple paddle strokes can propel my canoe at a perfect pace. I like to paddle “Canadian” on a calm lake. I place a pad in the middle of my canoe and heel it over to make it easier to reach the water and to shorten the water line of the boat. I don’t have to cross paddle unless there is a lot of wind and then, once I get the boat in motion, no cross paddling is needed.

In the stillness of the morning, however, there is no destination, not schedule, and no rush. I am on the water for the simple pleasure of being on the water. I am there for the stillness. I practice keeping my paddle in the water for the recovery portion of the stroke with just a little “pop” or “splash at the end of the recovery just as I turn the power face of the paddle into the water. The paddle pivots in my right hand as my left hand gently rotates it to keep the power face of the paddle in the correct direction for each part of the stroke.

I used to belong to the American Canoe Association. The ACA is the organization that sets the professional standards for canoe instructors. Their courses are the “gold standard” for canoe safety and instruction technique. If one wants to be considered to be a qualified canoe instructor, ACA certification is the best way to gain recognition and to make sure that the teaching and paddling techniques are the best.

But there is no need for professionalism when I am alone in my canoe. Although I don’t find it to be artful to cross paddle, no one would care if I did. There is no one to evaluate my technique. I occasionally see other canoeists on Sheridan Lake, but few show any signs of much experience. The craft of the canoe is a lifetime passion, not a lesson learned in a class. I know that in part because I have taken the class. I know that safety is my own responsibility. I always wear my PFD and carry my whistle, but early in the morning, it is unlikely that anyone would hear the whistle. I need to have my own self-rescue plan when I paddle alone in the wee hours. My rescue plan usually involves paddling close to shore so I could simply wade out of the lake if necessary. The truth is that there is little danger or risk to the style of paddling that I enjoy most. I place myself in far more danger driving to and from the lake than I do on the lake.

The stillness and the beauty of the morning at the lake are God’s gifts every day. The lake does not need me to be there to be glorious. The water doesn’t need my canoe to be beautiful. The sunrise is not dependent upon my seeing in order to bestow its grandeur. But some days, when I am not too lazy, I go to the lake, carry my boat to the water’s edge and push off into the morning for a rendezvous with stillness. No song is required of me. Nothing but open eyes and mind.

Yesterday I remembered to take my camera. I tried to capture the moment, but the pictures, while pretty, are not at all what the lake felt like. I’m sure that a better photographer might have made images that were better, but no photograph can capture the feeling of the chill in the air, the glide of the canoe over the water, the warmth of the sun or the closeness to God. “Be still and know.”

Just like my camera and photographic technique are inadequate to capture the beauty of the lake at dawn, so too are my words insufficient to express the glory of the moment.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing.” I believe that sometimes going canoeing can lead to knowing something that is worth believing in. Pierre Elliott Trudeau wrote, “What sets canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other travel. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred miles on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.”

I think that perhaps an early morning paddle is a complete form of prayer: invocation, confession, assurance, purification, praise, scripture, sermon and benediction all in one. “Be still and know that I am God.”

I believe I’ll go canoeing again today.

Copyright © 2013 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 enrolled in the frequent customer rewards program at two area hardware stores. Most of the clerks in both stores know me by name. I like to say that I’m not much of a shopper. And that is somewhat true. I don’t like shopping for clothes. I haven’t been to the local mall this year. I don’t know my way around Kohls or Shopko or Target. But I do like to go to the hardware store.

Let’s see. It is Thursday. On Sunday afternoon I went to the hardware store to get a new pad for my buffer. I was waxing our camper. On Monday, I stopped by the store to get three carriage bolts. The ones I had in the garage were too long and I needed shorter ones. Our hardware store still has open stock bolts, which I prefer. I needed three, so if I had gone to a big box store, I would have probably had to buy a package of four to get three. On Tuesday I needed some self-tapping screws for a project. Yesterday I stopped to pick up some polishing compound to rub out a tiny scratch on a car fender. I haven’t been to the hardware store today, but then they haven’t opened for business yet today.

Since I am such a fan of my local hardware store, my heart goes out to the folks in Washington DC, who had to stand by helplessly as a four alarm fire raged through Frager’s hardware store on Capitol Hill. More than 100 firefighters fought to control the fire amidst heavy smoke more than hour after the fire was first reported. The thick black smoke could be seen for miles. They have now established a collapse zone around the building. It is likely to be a total loss.

Old-fashioned hardware stores are getting harder and harder to find. I’ve done my share of wandering around the big box stores. They are impressive. They have lots of stuff. But they don’t have rows of bins of bolts and nuts and screws and washers that can be bought by the piece. They don’t have free popcorn. They don’t know your dog’s name and offer a free dog biscuit. Not that this is a problem for me. I don’t have a dog. But I have to remember to bring a card to the big box store. At my local hardware store they know my name and enter it into the computer so I can get my rewards. The guy knows what kind of charcoal I like to burn and what kind of salt my water softener uses. And when I need a power tool, he’ll always knock a couple of bucks off of the price.

Hardware stores do not make for pretty fires. The varnish and paint can be explosively flammable and dangerous for the firefighters. There are lots of other things sold in hardware stores that can add fuel to a big fire.

Frager’s has been at the same address in Washington D.C. for more than 90 years. The big old brick building with the tall windows was an neighborhood institution. And now it is gone. Maybe there will be enough insurance and community support to rebuild. I hope so. There are other ways of doing business. There are other models of providing home repair and decorating products for folks. But it is a real tragedy to lose a local hardware store.

I’ve never been in Frager’s, but I know how I’d feel if my neighborhood hardware store burned down. My heart breaks for the folks who live in the area. It probably was more significant than anything that took place in the US Capitol Building yesterday. It will probably last longer in the memory of the folks in Washington D.C. than anything our Representatives and Senators did.

There was plenty of building drama in Philadelphia yesterday as well. A four-story building that was being torn down collapsed – and not in the way it was intended. They were going to demolish the big building. They didn’t intend for it to destroy the neighboring two-story building. And that building contained the Salvation Army Thrift Store, which was full of customers at the time. A dozen people were transported to area hospitals with non life-threatening injuries. But it appears also that at least one person was killed in the collapse. Somebody made a really big mistake in the process of demolishing that old building.

Of course any one of us can have a day that ends in a really different way than we expected. It might not take an event as dramatic as a fire or the collapse of a building. We might receive a medical diagnosis, or a phone call from a loved one. Weather can turn from threatening to downright dangerous in just a few minutes. Accidents happen. Those of us who work with people know how quickly things can change and how suddenly a crisis can develop. Buildings are just buildings. Property is just so much stuff. Those things can be replaced, and if they cannot be replaced, a person can learn to live without them.

But we can’t replace people when they are killed. We can’t undo injuries once they have occurred.

One of the most important tasks remaining today is to go through the rubble and try to figure out what happened. What caused the fire? What caused the building to collapse? And, most importantly, what can be done to prevent such an incident in the future.

I sometimes get a bit nervous when the fire department comes to inspect our church building. I know how quickly the price of mandatory repairs can mount. But I always say the same thing to people when talking about the process: “The fire department is not the enemy. We’re on the same side in this struggle. Both the fire department and we want to prevent people from getting hurt. Both of us want to avoid catastrophic loss.”

So my prayers are with those in Philadelphia and Washington DC who have experienced dramatic events. I pray that we can learn from these events some things that will help to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Copyright © 2013 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 often have interesting discussions in a book club that I attend weekly. We have been meeting for several years, so we know each other pretty well, but still, occasionally, things that are said by other members of the group surprise me. I was surprised recently by one member who stated that she thought that we went through the books too quickly. She would prefer to take more time and discuss the nuances and details more. She said that we often go too fast for her to understand all of what is read. The surprising thing to me is that I would have said the opposite. The group has been known to go through books one chapter at a time. A book with a lot of chapters can take months. As one who reads a lot of books, the slow pace of the reading tends to leave me distracted. I don’t see the book as a whole if I only read a few pages each week. I’d rather read the book, have a couple of times to discuss that book and then go on to the next book. I don’t need to dissect the book or to be told what it means. I like to see books in the context of other books and compare and contrast the perspectives of the authors.

This particular book club is composed of professionals. Most members of the group are ordained ministers. I think that all of the members of the group have at least one graduate degree. We ought to be able of graduate reading and should be capable of taking responsibility for understanding what we have read. It is a rare book that we would want to take more than a month to discuss, in my opinion.

But not all of the members of the group see things my way.

I think that I am a bit of a snob when it comes to education. I don’t apologize for having invested 8 years of my life in undergraduate and graduate school. I know that academic learning is only one kind of learning and that those of us who have had the opportunity to get an education are not somehow better or smarter than others. But I also know that we have had the opportunity to hone skills like reading and processing information, writing and expressing our ideas and opinions. I like to think that education helps to increase our skills at critical thinking.

Maybe it just teaches us jargon.

I like knowing a bit of jargon. I like knowing a few big words. I enjoy using them from time to time.

But those of us who speak English don’t really have the corner on long words. German is a great language for compound words. Recently, the German language lost a remarkably long word when it was dropped from the lexicon. Rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz is a compound word that was introduced in 1999 in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It means “law delegating beef label monitoring.” But the European Union recently changed the laws governing the testing of cattle and the result is that the word is no longer necessary. I never did learn how to pronounce it. German is a difficult language for me to speak.

In all fairness, the word never did appear in a dictionary, only in government documents. The longest word to be found in the dictionary is kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung, meaning “automobile liability insurance,” although the Guiness World Records book records lists Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften, meaning “insurance firms providing legal protection.” I’m hoping that some dictionary somewhere will pick up donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe, meaning “widow of a Danube steamboat company captain.” It has a certain flair, don’t you think?

German speakers, however, don’t have the corner on long words. The Oxford English Dictionary’s longest word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which refers to a lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust. The OED does go on to say, however, that the word was “invented [by the] president of the National Puzzler’s League in imitation of polysyllabic medical terms” and tends to be used only as an example of a very long word.

The OED does have some very useful words that I try to work into my conversation from time to time. We all know the Mary Poppins word, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. And you have to admit that it is just more fun to say honorificabilitudinity than honorableness.

To my knowledge the longest place name on the planet is the Welsh village Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. It is pronounced Lien-vire-pooli-guin-gill-go-ger-u-queern-drob-ooil-liandus-lifo-gogo-gouch, I believe.

Now if the books that our group read contained these words, it would take a bit longer to read them. Even looking up a very long word in the dictionary is a bit of a challenge, because it is simply easier to make a spelling mistake with a very long word than it is with one that is a bit shorter.

But then, I like keeping the dictionary handy when I am reading. In fact, through the wonders of inheritance, I now have an unabridged Webster’s in my basement library and an unabridged American Heritage Dictionary upstairs for comparison. It is always good to have a dictionary at the dining table just incase a disagreement about a word or a question about origins arises during the dinnertime conversation. Having grown up in a home where the dictionary was always close at hand, I didn’t know that there was anything strange about this practice until our children started making friends and occasionally sharing a meal at the home of one of their friends and reporting that “they don’t keep a dictionary on the table.” Sigh . . .

Words are simply fun. And it doesn’t take an advanced degree to enjoy them. And I guess it really doesn’t matter how many words you read in a given week. I’m even open to taking a bit longer to discuss the books our group reads. It isn’t as if that is the only book that I read. If I don’t have two or three books going at the same time, I begin to get nervous and start looking for the next books I’m going to read. At this point it doesn’t look like I will run out of things to read in this lifetime.

Personally, sometimes I just enjoy being magniloquent.

Now, don’t you wish you had a dictionary close at hand?

Copyright © 2013 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 to the lake early yesterday morning and had a good paddle for an hour. I was off of the lake by 7:30. It was a tad windy, which made it that much more fun. One of the joys of life is paddling without a destination. I simply enjoy whatever the lake and the weather have to offer. Most of the critters were hunkered down and I didn’t see as many as usual. I did flush one great blue heron and plenty of ducks as I paddled along the shore. I discovered one of the limits of my paddling technique. I prefer to paddle on the right side of the boat, pulling with my right hand and turning the paddle with my left. However, when the wind is coming broadside from my right or even quartering, it can blow hard enough that all of my paddling energy goes to keeping the boat straight. It is far easier in those conditions to switch and paddle on the other side of the boat.

But this is not a blog post about paddling. In fact the only thing I intended to say about paddling is that for the second time in recent weeks, I went paddling and forgot to take my camera with me. Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that there are fewer photographs than once was the case. When I started the blog, my goal was to include one photograph that I took myself in each blog. The photographs were a kind of discipline for me to look more closely at my world and to pay attention. What I quickly found, however, was that even though I take photographs nearly every day, they often are not on the topic about which I decide to write. I often write about events that are far away. In many cases, I will use a picture from the Internet to add to my blog.

I see no need for hard and fast rules, but I have been less inclined to use photographs taken by others in my blog. If the goal of the blog is to observe life more closely and to learn to write about the things I see, the experiences I have, the people I meet and the faith I witness, then illustrating my words with others’ photographs seems to detract from the purpose of my writing. What I do hope to do is to become more disciplined with my photography. In addition to my phone camera, I am back to carrying another camera with me when I head to work, so perhaps I can reconnect with the camera as a device for a spiritual discipline of observation.

Over the years I have used this blog to illustrate my commitment to particular disciplines in my life. As opposed to the style of some other bloggers, I write every day. I get up and I write an essay day after day. I do this because I believe that discipline is necessary to the craft of writing and I want to teach myself to be a better writer. Whether or not I am improving as a writer remains to be seen, but I have been faithful to the discipline. It is part of my general approach to life. I find life to be most meaningful when I make a commitment and stick with that commitment.

Recently we received news of another couple of our friends, who, after many years of marriage, are going through a divorce. I try not to be judgmental of the decisions of others and my role as a friend is to be supportive of my friends, but I find that I simply do not understand the choices that some of my friends make. Maybe it is simply a matter of luck. By some unique set of circumstances I met the love of my life at an early age. After we got to know each other and became married, I have never wanted to be unmarried. Sure there have been times that were more difficult than others, but the shared joy has been wonderful and there really is nothing better in this life than the gift of growing old with someone you love. I know that our circumstances could change. An illness or accident could result in one of us having to live alone, but for now, being married is the path to the future that is most appealing to me.

I am that way about my faith as well. I enjoy some challenging conversations with some friends that seem, to me, to be spiritual tourists. They collect experiences from many different faith traditions and pull them all together, but are constantly on the lookout for something new. I’ve always been a Christian and I am at home in that faith. I do not feel a need to collect other spiritual experiences. I’d rather invest in discovering the depths of my own faith. I have deep respect for those whose religion is different from mine. I believe that Native American spiritual traditions have a lot to offer the world. I have studied and learned from the prayers and faith stories of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus. But I have always looked at these other faiths as an outsider. I am not particularly compelled to adopt the spiritual practices of others. Instead, I am interested in deepening my spiritual practices within my own faith. Ancient traditions of prayer and meditation appeal to me. The study of scriptures and the context from which they arose fascinates me. Understanding traditional liturgies and crafting new ones seem to go hand-in-hand.

I once had a teacher who devoted the core of his academic work to the study and translation of a single book of the Bible. He claimed that any book of the bible would be worthy of a lifetime of study and that such a study, properly done, could not be completed in a single lifetime. I now know what he meant with these words. A lifetime is all to short to explore all of the meanings when you seek the depths of faith. Like our marriage, which seems to me that now, after nearly 40 years has been all to short, I find that a lifetime of commitment to the Christian faith is too little to really get to know all there is to learn.

So some days when you read the blog you just get words. And you get lots of words on familiar subjects as I continue to look for depth upon depth.

Copyright © 2013 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

It is a basic economic concept that my parents taught to me and that we strove to teach to our children. There is a distinction between the things you need and the things you want. When prioritizing spending, needs come first. The basic needs are food, shelter and clothing. Beyond that everything else is pretty much a “want.” Of course, we never lived that close to the line. We had all kinds of luxuries by that definition. We had toys and we had extra space. In our house we each had our own bed and our own chest of drawers. We always had toys and our family had resources for travel and many other adventures. When I married, our family was smaller. Our children each had their own room wherever we lived. In family life, making the distinction between needs and wants is always a bit difficult once you go beyond food, clothing and shelter. I maintain that children need education and sometimes that is worth investment. In our house we believe that we all need spiritual nurture and that supporting the church is a financial priority. We practically place transportation on the list of “needs” believing that we “need” to have a reliable car.

In a similar way, it is not always easy when we try to sort out the distinction between needs and wants when making financial decisions in the church. Some people think it is necessary to replace the flooring in a particular room, others think it can wait. Some people think that we “need” to invest in energy saving technologies, others have different priorities. Those are, however, less complex decisions than some that face a church.

In every congregation there are good and faithful members who see the building as a priorities. In the traditional organization of a Congregational church, the trustees had stewardship both of the building and of the budget. This meant that it was not uncommon for building needs to take precedence over other areas of church life. When funds ran short, maintenance was funded when education was cut short. Over the past few decades, many congregations have replaced that traditional structure with one that places increased budget authority in a council or board that has representatives from all of the different groups within the church.

One of the quotes that is popular in our congregation comes from German theologian Emil Brunner, who wrote: “The Church exists by mission as fire exists by burning.” The activity of serving others is essential to our being. Without serving others we cease to be a church. This viewpoint is certainly embraced by the majority of the members of our congregation. They do not want our church to merely take care of itself. They want it to be actively engaged in serving others. And they demonstrate this engagement through their generosity over and over again. Special offerings support special projects, and the general operating budget shows significant commitment to providing financial support for mission and ministry beyond our walls.

We don’t have the fanciest church building in town and we don’t want to have it either.

At the same time, we see our building as a legacy that we have inherited from the generosity of previous generations. We understand that we need to provide for adequate maintenance so that it can be passed on to those who come after us as an asset and not a liability. I have seen congregations that used their building as a way to borrow from the future. By deferring maintenance, they passed current operating costs off to a future date – one that can only be put off for so long. After a while maintenance needs become so imperative that they cannot be denied.

For the most part, I think we do a pretty good job of maintaining this balance. While utilities and building maintenance consume a healthy slice of our budget, we strongly defend mission and outreach, worship and education as other financial priorities of the congregation. But it is a balancing act.

Next week we will vote on a small capital improvements fund to take care of what the leaders of our congregation have deemed to be necessary maintenance. There is a much larger list of other capital improvements that we have been considering, but we have tried to separate needs and wants and to take into consideration the timing of the items on our list. Some decisions were easier than others. It is easy to see how some maintenance tasks will cost more if deferred. But there are other items on our list that raise different questions. How important is it to have a sound system in the fellowship hall? When your core business is communication, it seems pretty important. Some congregations would add video to the audio, believing that visual communication is an equally high priority. We are unsure. We have a video projector and a large screen, but they have not become items that we use every week. We have talked about installing a large video screen in our fellowship hall, but it seems to belong on the “wants” list more than on the “needs” list. Some members believe that embracing new technologies is essential to attract new members and we all agree that new members are on the “needs” list. We all want to build a community that is made up of all ages and this cross-generational community means that different people have different priorities.

From my point of view the fundraising is not the most important part of the capital improvements process. What is more important, and more interesting, quite frankly, is the process of determining our priorities. I have enjoyed the conversations with church members about what they would like to see accomplished. I have enjoyed getting to look at things from a different perspective. I don’t always agree with what others have to say. I might have different priorities in mind, but the process is one of getting to know the congregation I serve even better than before.

So we will continue to talk. We will continue to sort out our needs and wants. And we will continue to strive to be faithful to God’s call.

Copyright © 2013 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 lived my life inside of the institutional church. I was 25 when I became an ordained minister, but I had been deeply immersed in the church long before I assumed a leadership role. I was baptized as an infant. My parents took me to church camp before I can remember. We always went to church and my parents participated in committees. Our family was quite involved in the church beyond the local congregation. One year, when my father was moderator of our Conference, we visited all of the churches in the Conference. We drove and flew around the state of Montana worshiping in churches of all sizes and shapes.

I say that simply because I am an “insider.” I don’t’ know what the church looks like from the outside, because my life has been in the midst of the institution. There have, however, been many congregations. I transferred my membership from the congregation in which I was confirmed to another congregation when I went to college. While we did not transfer membership, we participated in a couple of different congregations during our seminary years. Since graduation, we have served four congregations. For seven years we served two congregations at the same time.

Even an insider, however, can feel the dramatic shifts in the institution. One term that has been used, with some accuracy, is decline. Although the individual congregations we have served experienced growth during the time that we served them, the overall membership of the United Church of Christ has declined rather precipitously during my active career. Budgets have been cut and staff reduced in the church’s Conference and National settings. There are fewer congregations and fewer members. This decline is not confined to the United Church of Christ. It is true of all denominations, though there are regions of the world where rapid growth, not decline is the present reality.

Another way to describe the changes is a drift away from institutional structures. The rise of non-denominational churches during the last quarter of the 20th century produced some very large congregations who operate without many connections with other congregations. They conduct their own mission. They design their own educational programs. They set their own standards for authorization of ministry. But even the non-denominational churches are experiencing overall decline in the United States in this century. As I have often told my congregation and mentioned frequently in this blog, the polls indicate that the fastest growing religion in America today is “no religious preference.” Among those who profess to have no preference are people who describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.”

Some of the “spiritual, but not religious” folk are essentially anti-institution. They believe that faith is a private matter and they point to abuses and betrayals of institutions. They choose not to participate in the institutional church, but will sometimes come to the church for certain events and functions. We often assist with funerals and walk through grief with persons who had been distant from the institutional church until they experienced the loss of a loved one. It is true that Jesus doesn’t specifically speak of the institutional church anywhere in the Bible. But he does form a group of disciples and advises them against operating alone. The experiences of the resurrected Christ were primarily experiences of groups of people. In our world, Christ takes form in a group of people. You can’t be the body of Christ all by yourself. The communal aspect of religion is directly related to our faith.

I confess that there some of the trappings of the institutional church can occasionally drive me up the wall. My life has a few too many meetings. Petty bureaucrats do not inspire me. The church has its own form of politics for which I’ve never developed a refined taste. I am much more of a hands-on worker than an administrative organizer. And there are far too many arguments and disagreements about things that simply don’t matter for my taste.

The bottom line, however, is that I belong. I am a member. I am not going to head off in my own direction all by myself. I am, after all, an insider.

There are plenty of people of faith within the institution who inspire me. There are moments of worship that are genuine. There are ministries that are meaningful that cannot be undertaken without cooperation The institutional church has a lot to contribute and a role in modern society. Ours is not the last generation of the Christian church.

One of the movements that I enjoy watching is often called the “emerging church.” The emerging church crosses a lot of traditional boundaries in a quest for genuine practices of faith. Participants in the movement proclaim that it resists labels. It is not catholic or protestant but rather both at the same time. It does not preach a single theology, but rather encourages dialogue and discussion. Worship is not structured around formal or traditional liturgies, but rather is an organic, emerging expression of faith in God.

I’m not sure it is even accurate to use the term “congregation” to describe gatherings of emerging churches, but it does seem that the groups start with little of the structures of the institutional church but move towards institutionalization. Meeting times have to be set in order for people to gather. House churches grow to the point where they need larger buildings. A shared building means that there need to be systems of join decision-making. Before long, some of these emerging congregations begin to look a lot like institutional churches. Still they bring freshness to the church that is welcome. The commitment to community and missional living is often deeper than found in some parts of the institutional church. Emerging churches tend to be a bit quicker to adopt the use of new technologies and have much to teach us about setting priorities and reaching out to those who are estranged from the institutional church.

The words to Kenneth Cober’s hymn come to mind this morning as I think of the church that I love:

Renew your church, its ministries restore,
both to serve and adore.
Make it again as salt throughout the land
and as light from a stand.
‘Mid somber shadows of the night
where greed and hatred spread their blight,
O send us forth with power endued.
Help us God, be renewed.

Copyright © 2013 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 fawn that was born in our yard a couple of days ago is still very tiny. You only notice it when it is standing up. When it lies down, you can be looking straight at it and not see it. Nature has done a good job with camouflage on that one. Most years we have one or two fawns that hang around our house. The combination of the tender green grass in your yard, where we mow and the protective taller grass in the neighbor’s place that isn’t mowed makes for a good place for urban deer to gather. We like the deer and enjoy watching them year round but the end of May and the beginning of June, when the fawns are so tiny, is a special time for deer watching from our house.

We don’t see much of the bucks except in the fall when the rut gets going strong. This time of year, they tend toward other parts of the country. Their skills aren’t needed for the care and feeding of the young ones.

That observation makes me glad to be a human. I can’t imagine not being around for the joys of caring for babies. In my role as a father and later as a grandfather, I have been up for as much time with children as possible. It is one of the deepest and most meaningful joys of being alive.

Sadly there are more than a few human fathers who are like the deer – they are absent during the infancy and childhood of their own children. Sometimes this is by necessity. Soldiers go to war, financial realities sometimes require extended travel away from family in order to provide the financial security required to raise children. Not everyone has the luxury of the job flexibility of a minister. When our children were very little, I had the increased flexibility of job sharing with my wife so that I was even more able to take time to be with our children.

The Pew Research Center recently found that four in 10 American households with children under the age of 18 include a mother who is either the primary breadwinner or the sole earner. That is about four times the number in 1966. It would be nice to think that this statistic is caused by pay equality and more mothers being able to out earn their husbands, but sadly this is not the case. The primary reason for the statistics is the surge in single-mother households.

Families in a state of rapid transition in our country and around the world. There are so many different sizes and configurations of family that it no longer makes any sense to say that one particular configuration is dominant. So-called “traditional” families with two parents and children are not infrequently reconfigured during the growing-up years of the children. Our church school is a very small sample, but we have children who come from all kinds of families. To teach that one type of family is somehow superior to another would be to unnecessarily and negatively label the children in the program. Children do not have control over the relationships of their parents. They are not the decision-makers in family configuration. They gain nothing from labels attached to them by those who are judgmental of their parents’ decisions.

Back in 2005, Maureen Dowd published a book entitled, “Are Men Necessary?” The book is a collection of anecdotes and opinions presented sometimes tongue-in-cheek and sometimes in a deeply sarcastic manner. She didn’t win any male fans with the publication of the book. On the other hand, she probably doesn’t care. In the midst of her ruminations about relationships between men and women, however, is the serious question about why men too often fail to be responsible to the most basic tasks of living in family.

Where she misses the boat, however, is by placing all men in the same boat, if you know what she means. There are plenty of us who are quite different than what she describes in her book.

A few years later, in a kind of dueling columnists, Kathleen Parker published “Save the Males,” her attempt at a humorous response to Dowd’s book. Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post, while Dowd’s pieces are most commonly found in the New York Times. Parker makes a good point in her simple observation: “Children need a father. That not all get a good one is no argument against what is true and irrevocable and everlasting.”

To her argument, I would add another observation: Fathers need children. Men who abandon their families, whether willingly or unwillingly, miss out on one of the most important joys and privileges of being male. It isn’t just acted out in the fun moments of vacations and camping trips and visits to Disneyland. Being a father is discovered in everyday chores of picking up toys, changing diapers and washing loads and loads of laundry. It is found in tending scrapes and bruises and reading stories and cooking meals. It is discovered in the midst of the weary tiredness that comes from being awakened in the midst of sleep night after night.

When I visit with couples who are expecting their first child, I will sometimes say to them, “Everyone will tell you that you can’t imagine how having a child will change your life. They are right. Your life is changed forever. I can’t tell you how – you have to learn that on your own.” But then I usually add that it is one of the best things that can possibly happen to a person. Nothing in my life is more wonderful than the privilege and joy of being a father.

And, in the way of the world, patient fathers are frequently rewarded with a new chapter that is as deep and rich and meaningful: becoming a grandfather.

The pundits are getting a lot of mileage out of the latest statistics from Pew Research. They are all drawing their own conclusions. Some are sure that it is evidence that our society is crumbling. Others read hope in the fact that women are able to earn more than previous generations. The study itself doesn’t have an opinion. It merely reports what has been observed. The world is changing.

In the midst of this changing world, fatherhood is still a vocation worth pursuing with a passion.

Copyright © 2013 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.