Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a man who is nearly 50 years old, but who was a teen when I was serving in my first parish. He was recalling the halloween parties that we hosted for the community at our church many years ago.

The times were different. Some of the members of the community thought that halloween pranks had gotten out of hand. There were virtually no outhouses in use in the community, so the prank of tipping them over was simply a story about the past. There were obstacles set up in the middle of main street. Animals, especially cows, seemed to be found in strange and unusual places, often leaving a certain amount of mess to be cleaned up. Church bells were rung at strange times of the night. The day after halloween seemed to involve having to clean up enormous amounts of toilet paper spread in trees, across houses and lawns, and in a place with as much wind as was common much of the paper ended up in places where it couldn’t be picked up.

So, we devised a plan to host community parties that drew the teens and young adults of the community together for fun, games, refreshments and activities that were alternatives to the pranks that were seen as problematic.

One year we took the entire group out to the cemetery. Their task was to collect the names and dates of saints by making gravestone rubbings. We taught them how to make the rubbings and gave them a list, like a scavenger hunt, of specific names and dates to collect. Unknown by the youth exploring the cemetery in the dark hours of the evening the group of young adults, who had been meeting in a different location had been charged with “haunting” the cemetery. We had other adults on hand because we didn’t know if things might get out of control and parked a couple of cars as safe places where the youth knew they could come to get away from the activities in the cemetery.

It was all good fun. There was a bit of screaming and a few startled youth, but no one was harmed, and we had plenty of time to talk about the experience over refreshments back at the church afterward.

What I still remember about that event so long ago is the respect with which the youth approached the cemetery. They were quiet and careful about where they walked. They spoke of loved ones and visited graves that were not on the list. There was no liter dropped by the youth that night, no flowers tipped over, no carelessness around the cemetery.

I think the experience would be entirely different today.

I wouldn’t suggest it as an appropriate experience for a church youth group in our community at this time. We might do the gravestone rubbing part of the project, but not at night and not with others to try to startle the youth. Were we to do such an exercise at night, the cemetery would be lit up with the light from cell phones as the youth walk around.

The church has an uneasy relationship with halloween. The holiday has religious origins. In the Western Church, All Saint’s Day is observed on the first of November each year. In the Eastern Orthodox church, the same festival is observed on the first Sunday after Pentecost. The festival, also known as All Hallows, Solemnity of All Saints and The Feast of All Saints, is a time to remember those who have died and recognize the powerful connections that remain between those who are living and those who have died. It is a day in which many congregations read a necrology or list of those who have died.

The day before All Saints Day gets its name by combining hallow, meaning holy, with evening: halloween. The Christian festival of halloween is heavily influenced by more ancient harvest festival traditions. The tradition of wearing costumes probably does not have its roots in Christian observances, but in other festivals that are pre-Christian.

The resulting contemporary holiday is really not very Christian in most of its observances. The memories of those who have died is suppressed in the midst of trick or treat and costumes. As such it is not all negative in its impact. The holiday encourages creativity and ingenuity, boosts self-confidence and allows children to engage in safe pretend activities. Later today we will marvel at the delightful costumes worn by the preschoolers at church. The holiday can also be a way of building community. Children and teens who rarely have contact with neighbors, will come by our home and as we offer a small treat we will make connections with the folks who live in our neighborhood.

Some of our neighbors really get into decorating their homes for the occasion. It is second only to Christmas in terms of the displays of lights, decorations and ornaments. I once read that it is second only to Christmas in terms of spending on such items as well. That doesn’t surprise me looking around my neighborhood. There are a lot of fancy displays that took a significant amount of time and labor to produce.

The observance of halloween in contemporary America seems to be focused on costumes and trick or treat. The custom of trick or treat is not known to today’s children. Sometimes I will ask the children about it when the come. Displaying a bowl so that they know I have treats to offer, I ask, “What if I choose trick? Do you have a trick that you can do?” Some children will do a little trick for me. Most just look at me like I’ve lost my mind. For them the words “trick or treat” are the way you ask for candy on halloween. They are supposed to yield a treat. The trick part doesn’t seem to be included in the formula at all.

Then there is the strange notion in youth culture with the popularity of zombies and the undead. The culture seems to avoid the finality of death and wants to foster belief in some kind of in between state. It is often hard to have serious conversations with teens about the reality of death and its deeper meanings.

Still it is an interesting holiday and we’ll observe it with our neighbors once again. Perhaps there is a small opportunity to express our faith simply by offering love and compassion and a small treat to our neighbors.

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 Hotel Alex Johnson in downtown Rapid City is celebrating it’s 85th anniversary. It is a remarkable feat these days around here for a building to have the same use for 85 years. There are hotel chains who are throwing up motels with business plans that call for a complete return on investment within 20 years and the construction in some of those buildings is such that it almost guarantees that they won’t be in use 50 years from their construction date. We see many things in our society as disposable. There are places in the world where the people shake their heads in disbelief at the way we tear down and build up and then tear down and build up again. When we were visiting in France, we stayed in a home that had been in the same family for more than 200 years. You won’t find any of those in Rapid City.

As our church begins preparations for our 135th annual meeting, we are in the midst of a season of capital investment in our 54-year-old building as we seek to provide a building for future generations that will serve our community for decades to come. It is the longest our congregation has occupied a building.

It did occur to me as I read the article ini the newspaper about the hotel’s anniversary, that the church at 715 Kansas City Street which was home to our congregation for more than four decades, will be 100 years old next year. Celebrating the centennial of the building will be Faith Temple Church of God in Christ. The congregation isn’t as old as its building, but the building has been in continuous use as a church for a century.

Buildings are always challenges for churches. There have been many occasions in the history of the church when the focus on the building has been central. The great cathedrals of Europe were massive building projects. Some took more than a century to be completed. The cost of some of those buildings was incredibly high compared to the means of the people who worshiped in them.

For many of us, the building is not as important as other aspects of church life. Faith, fellowship, study and service take precedence over the places where we engage in those activities. Our congregation has tried to maintain balance, always focusing on serving the community. But providing that service has required a home and that home is expressed in a building. We have tried to have a balance of purely utilitarian structure with artistic expression that inspires the people and lifts our spirits. I think we’ve done a pretty good job for the most part.

The challenge of investing the church’s funds wisely remains. We are in the process of putting the finishing touches on a new and expensive sound system. After deciding that communication is a core business of the church and wanting to provide a system that enables all of our members to hear clearly, we developed specifications, advertised for bids, selected a contractor and had the system installed. Like all modern electronic systems, there are a few glitches, but we expect that we can resolve those problems easily.

In the process, we have been left with a large pile of electronic components from the old sound system. They will be carefully sorted to see if there are any things that can be sold, recycled, or reused in other places. Several of those components were purchased new in the time that I have been pastor of the congregation. As I looked at the old parts and pieces I wondered if there would be any components of our current sound system that would still be in use 20 years from now. With the rapid rate of change in electronic technologies, is there anything in the investment we just made that will be usable a few decades from now.

We throw away a lot of used electronic components each year in our society. We replace things that work well simply because there is something new available. In our office a computer is considered to be old at 5 years, in need of replacement at 7 years. When we buy such devices we don’t expect to be using them 10 years from now. It bothers me to be investing the church’s funds in things that we know won’t last. On the other hand, we need computers to do our job. We need to keep in touch with our members, provide a reasonable Internet presence, and produce our printed documents in an efficient manner. We have become dependent upon computers to keep our records.

I suppose that one might make a similar argument about our mission and outreach projects. We respond to a disaster and soon there is a new disaster. We feed hungry people, and there are more hungry people to be fed. We work with our partners to help our neighbors, but have done little to eliminate poverty in our own neighborhood. In Matthew 26, Jesus says, “The poor you will always have with you.” His statement was in no way an invitation to pretend that poverty doesn’t exist or to ignore the call to serve others. But he was making it clear to his disciples that serving others is a continual process, not a task that can be completed and then abandoned.

So much of life in a church is about balancing divergent concerns and demands. We don’t want to be about building an institution that demands ever more resources just to sustain its self. But we need some structure to continue to grow our capacity to serve others. We don’t want to spend all of our funds on our building, but we don’t want to be borrowing from future generations by allowing our building to deteriorate.

So as we wish “happy birthday” to the Alex Johnson, we are seeking to make wise investments in our own building with a prayer that it will be around to serve the people of our community for more generations.

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.

A few years ago I was speaking with another college parent, who would later become our son’s father-in-law. We spoke about the usual things parents talk about as we moved boxes into dorm rooms for another year of college. We talked about the transition into independence for our children, about our worries and concerns, about the high cost of education and a dozen other topics in a broken conversation style as we went back and forth to our cars and took short breaks from hauling boxes up the stairs. He was telling me that his daughter waited to obtain her drivers license and that she had little experience with driving. She was going to be taking classes in downtown Portland, Oregon and commuting by car from Forest Grove. He said he was comfortable with her driving on the freeways and in the city traffic. He thought, however, that she wasn’t ready for the open road and rural areas. He didn’t want her to drive alone from Oregon to their California home because there were “too many miles of empty road.”

I thought at the time that he and I had a different perspective. I had driven from Oregon to California and I didn’t find any “empty road” by my standards. Interstate 5 is a freeway filled with cars all the way. And even US 101 often has enough traffic to keep things moving slower than you’d drive without all the other cars.

A few weeks later, I was visiting with a friend from North Dakota as his father was in the hospital in Rapid City recovering from surgery. Suddenly he looked at his watch and announced that he had to go. I casually asked him where he was going and he reported that he had to go to Sturgis to meet his sons. His two sons, ages 14 and 16 both had drivers licenses and they were driving from their home to Rapid City. He had made them wait in Sturgis for him. They were, in his opinion, safe to drive the 135 miles of South Dakota Highway 79 down to Sturgis. However, he didn’t want them getting on that busy Interstate highway and driving in Rapid City traffic.

I thought at the time that it sure would be fun to arrange a conversation between these two fathers. One saw rural and isolated areas as dangerous. The other saw cities and traffic as dangerous.

When our kids took drivers’ education, both reported that the instructor commented that they were very good at driving on gravel roads. Though the bulk of the course took place in Rapid City and on area roads, there was one day when they headed to the country and drove on gravel roads. I had been driving with our kids, but we had restricted our travels to rural roads where there was little traffic as they learned to drive. I thought that was the way all kids learned to drive. When we learned, our father started us out in a large open field with nothing to run into.

We think about space in different ways.

I enjoy living in Rapid City very much. I am comfortable driving its streets and know my way around town. I use the Interstate highway to get from one end of town to the other and to travel across the state as well. I have lived and driven in cities enough to be comfortable in city traffic. On our recent trip to the west coast we drove in heavy traffic in Tacoma Washington and in Portland Oregon. I’ve learned to read the signs and choose the correct lane. I’ve learned appropriate spacing and how to look for brake lights several cars ahead of me. I’ve learned to stay in my lane and to look for other cars before changing lanes.

But there was nothing in the urban driving that I did that feels as refreshing as driving in the open country. Yesterday we drove north on SD highway 79 on the route taken by my friend’s sons. Heading north from Newell it takes an hour to get to Reva, which is not a big enough town to warrant a decrease in the speed limit. From there, we headed east on SD 20 past Prairie City, which if you’ve been there you’d know that they have a different definition of “city” than other places - say Los Angeles or Chicago. From there we caught the road up through Lodgepole to Hettinger. It was fun to watch our GPS which showed a highway running across an empty screen. It didn’t seem to know that the south and north forks of the Grand even exist. It didn’t show the town of Lodgepole, which is big enough for its own Zip Code. It is 57640. Don’t ask me why I remember that detail.

The ground is saturated with all of the precipitation that has fallen in the past few weeks and there are places where the fences have sagged. There were a number of cows who found themselves on the wrong side of the fence. They did, however, present a bit more challenge to driving than other cars. The road wasn’t exactly crowded.

I love driving in the open country. I can let my mind wander a bit more than I would be able to do were I driving in the city. I can appreciate the scenery. I can see the view. In the open country you can see a prominent feature like the slim buttes for dozens of miles.

The drive has a restorative effect on me. I relaxed after a hectic morning when not everything went according to plan.

What I did not feel was any sense of fear. Unlike those who have lived in cities all of their lives, I know that the country that seems empty isn’t really so. If we were to break down we would only have to wait a few minutes for another car to come by. And that car would stop and help. There is nothing at all dangerous about driving through the empty country.

The Bible reports that Jesus would get up in the early hours and go off to a lonely place to pray. I find the places other people call lonely to be wonderful places to listen to God. I am indeed fortunate to be able to go to the lonely places often.

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 hard to say how many dreams have grown and died in any small town. It seems that you can almost always find someone in a small town who has visions of the town becoming bigger. More people, more business, more success--the promoters are always around somewhere. But across the plains there are plenty of small towns that are simply getting smaller. People have been moving to urban areas throughout history and that motion continues on the plains.

The twentieth century dawned with much of the land of the continental United States claimed. The homestead act had made land in the American West available for many people in the last half of the 19th century.The dream of owning land had become a reality in many places. But there were a few rural and isolated areas that had not yet been settled as the new century dawned. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad was pushing a new route to the west coast that opened up land not yet easily accessible from the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroad routes. The Milwaukee Road made its way across northern South Dakota and entered the southwest corner of North Dakota after crossing the Missouri River heading toward a route across the center of Montana. By 1907 it had nearly reached the Montana line. The railroad was running out of names for the towns it platted along the route. Reeder, North Dakota, founded in 1907, got its name from E. O. Reeder, assistant to the chief engineer of the railroad. The railroad made it possible for homesteaders to access the land.They came. They settled.

Some made it. By 1910 there were 198 people on the census. By 1930, the census counted 395. By that time the Yellowstone Highway, the nation’s first transcontinental road, had been built and it ran right through Reeder.

The Great Depression was hard on the town. In the decade of the 1930’s over a third of the population pulled up stakes and moved away. Along with the rest of the nation, the community experienced a baby boom after the Second World War and the population nearly recovered, making it back up to 339 for the 1950 census.A couple of decades of slow decline followed but there was a brief boom in the 1970’s with the development of a coal mine nearby. When we arrived in the late ’70’s the population was up to 355.

The farm crisis of the 1980’s was nearly as hard on the town as had been the Great Depression. Just shy of 30% of the community had moved away by 1990. That decline has continued, with another 30% moving away by 2000. There are only 158 people left in town today. As the numbers get smaller, it is easier to count.

Businesses have been boarded up. The school has closed. There just aren’t enough children to make it feasible to keep it. The three churches in town are hanging on by a thread. None have full time resident pastoral leadership. It’s hard to say which will have one too many funerals and be forced to suspend regular services first. But the locals know that the day is coming when it will no longer be practical for the churches to remain open. A common phrase that you hear around town is, “I just hope it is around for my funeral.”

Life on the plains is changing. It has happened before. The territory of Southwestern North Dakota and Northwestern South Dakota was the area of the last of the great buffalo hunts. The near extinction of American Bison eliminated a way of life for natives. The influx of settlers and ranchers displaced the historic populations and the economy and nature of life on the plains changed.

These days the farm and ranch economy is such that it takes a lot of acres to support a single family. The population density on the plains has to decrease because there simply aren’t enough jobs in the rural areas for the people. Children grow up and move away. Elders die. The towns get smaller.

So it is with a bit of a heavy heart that we head up to Reeder this afternoon for a family service this evening and a funeral tomorrow morning. As I said before, the church is too small for resident pastoral leadership. Some of the services require pastors from out of town to come in and serve. Since we served that church for seven years and know many of the people and since we live relatively close at just 160 miles away, we try to serve when we are able. Monday is a day when we don’t have other things scheduled in our church.

This funeral is, for us, another sign of a community that is slowly fading from the plains. Before the crisis of the ’80’s, when things were going pretty well, one of our first stops when we came to town was the grocery store on main street. There was a cafe next door, where folks gathered for coffee. Downtown was a bustle of activity with the post office, a bank, the co-op, a bar and a couple of other businesses. Off of main street a machine shop, an auto body repair shop, a construction company and a couple of gas stations were doing good business. But we often made a stop at the grocery store. The owner was clerk at our church and always had a smile and a bit of news about what was going on in town. She was a matriarch of the church and of the community. Everyone called her “Sis.”

The years went by. We moved out of state and then a decade later moved to South Dakota. We kept up with the folks. We’d see Sis and Elwyn in our Rapid City church from time to time when they’d come to town to see their son or for shopping or medical care.

And now the time has come for her funeral. She’ll take her place in Rose Hill Cemetery next to neighbors and family members. She managed to live her whole life in the small town. And as we leave the cemetery tomorrow we will be aware that there is plenty of room for the few who remain in town.

The town is dying and none of us can say how long that will take. In the meantime, the folks who remain are good folks. There will be a good lunch and real signs of community as a part of this event. It is not over yet.

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 has been more than a month since the United Nations released the World Happiness Report. The report measured the wellbeing of people in more than 150 countries based on per capita GDP, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, freedom from corruption, and generosity. I’m not sure how they came up with the criteria for their measure of happiness, but it seems suspect to me that they equated financial success with happiness. While there are some very nice things about having enough financial resources to be free from hunger and other obvious problems of poverty, to project that into making wealth one of the measures of happiness seems to me to be a stretch.

I haven’t read the entire report and I probably won’t do so, but from the news reports I have read about it, it seems to be a simple case of cultural bias. The people who made up the report measured the things that are important to them and came up with the result that the happiest people are the people most like the authors of the report.

The entire project was probably doomed from the start. Happiness is so subjective that it can’t be quantified. Is a child kicking a soccer ball around with others in a refugee camp inherently less happy than one playing on an organized teem in a U.S. suburb? Is the joy of receiving food when one is really hungry somehow less than the pleasure of fine dining for those who have never known hunger? It is all a matter of perspective.

Among other things that makes the report suspect is the simple fact that all of the report’s top 5 happiest countries are in northern Europe. Three of them are in Scandinavia. The top five are Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In all fairness, it is important to note that Canada came in sixth and missed out on the top five by only a few thousands of a point.

The report doesn’t cite any tropical countries as being tops in happiness. Maybe the fact that the report was released in September, at the beginning of the tropical storm season influenced the results. More likely, people who embrace recreation and are less productive financially are somehow judged to be less happy. I’m not too sure that everyone living in Tahiti would see it that way.

My father used to comment that cold weather builds character and when we lived in North Dakota there were several local sayings like, “30 below keeps the crime rate low.” That bias seems to be reflected in the report that ranks Iceland (#9) higher than Costa Rica (#12). Maybe their is just too much good weather in Costa Rica for people to be truly happy. I’m thinking that there are more than a few Ticos who don’t plan to move to Iceland in order to improve their happiness rating.

I guess it doesn’t surprise me that both New Zealand (#13) and Australia (#10) were rated higher than the United States (#17). I’m not sure that I would describe our country as unhappy, but I did encounter plenty of happy people when I visited Australia. Then again if you applied the criteria of the report, you might conclude that the wealthy people in Australia’s coastal cities were some how happier than the Anangu people living in the continent’s center. They certainly have more wealth and a longer life expectancy. But to describe the city-dwellers as happier than the folks who live in the rural and isolate areas seems to me to be a mistake.

I’ve never visited Africa, but I wonder how it feels to the people of Togo to be listed as the least happy of the 156 countries listed in the report. Neighboring Ghana made it to 86. Do you suppose that reading the report will result in the migration of people from Togo to Ghana? Something tells me that the report isn’t going to be taken too seriously in either country.

Israel is ranked number 11 in the report, which makes me wonder who they surveyed. Overall happiness might be judged higher to a landowner in Jerusalem than to a refugee in the occupied territories or Gaza strip.In fairness to the report, it does rank the Palestinian Territories separately at 113. That’s a big difference in happiness depending on which side of the border you occupy. No wonder they are building a wall in an attempt to maintain separation.

The Irish are famous for their sad songs, but at number 18 they ranked higher than their English cousins at 22.

I could go on and on making comments about where individual countries end up in the rankings. Iraq (105) is rated as happier than Afghanistan (143). The list goes on and on. There is even a section in the report that compares happiness in 2010-2012 to that of 2005-2007 by region. IN that report it looks like Latin America and the Caribbean are making the largest improvements in happiness while the Middle East and North Africa are showing declines in their happiness index. That part of the report puts the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all in the same category, but it shows us as having less happiness in 2012 than in 2005. I’m not experiencing that difference myself. My pension took a pretty good hit in the 2008 economic downturn but since my friends are mostly in the same boat, I don’t seem to be any less happy. And, since I became a grandfather in 2011, I think that I would definitely rate myself as having a higher happiness now than I did before. In fact, if they had me list the criteria for a happiness index, I would definitely include grandchildren as one of the marks of happiness.

The framers of our Declaration of Independence saw the pursuit of happiness as an inalienable right. They didn’t mention the attainment of happiness as a guarantee for all citizens. Perhaps it is best not to be at the top of the World Happiness Report. Being ranked a bit lower means that there is still more happiness to pursue.

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 been reading Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories. I guess it would be more accurate to say re-reading, as I had read most of them before. The stories are short and semi-autobiographical. Having read a lot of Hemingway and a lot about Hemingway they reveal a significant amount about the character of the man. I don’t intend to explore the complex personality of Hemingway in today’s blog, but he was a complex and troubled man and his story says some things about the times in which he lived as well as his own personal struggles and adventures.

In the Nick Adams stories, Hemingway captures the experience of fishing for trout with grasshoppers and a fly rod as well as anything I have ever read. There is something metaphysical about fishing in general and the experience of hooking and landing a trout with a fly rod is a sublime and somewhat addictive adventure.There is a connection with the natural world, an experience of beauty, a sense of a deeper intelligence in the universe, a connection between mind and body and spirit and so much more in the process.

Hemingway isn’t the only one to speak of fishing with near-religious reverence. David James Duncan weaves together love and fly fishing in a delightful story in his book, “The River Why.” Norman Maclean does a good job of describing the religion of fly fishing in the opening of “A River Runs Through It.”

Hang out with those who love fishing enough and you will hear them use some of the same phrases and expressions that we use in church when talking about the art, science, and spirituality of fishing.

He doesn’t do quite as good a job with skiing, but in the Nick Adams stories, Hemingway achieves a few descriptions of skiing that present the sport as a passion, if not a conviction.

These books interest me in part because I have pursued fly fishing and skiing as passions over the years. There were times in my life when I invested considerable time and financial resources in both of those sports. It is accurate to say, however, that my passion for both sports is less intense than it once was. The truth is that I don’t fish much any more. It takes a certain focus and commitment and these days I haven’t been fishing much at all. There was a time when I couldn’t imagine not having a season pass to a downhill ski resort. I didn’t even go skiing once last winter. There are good things in life that we pursue for a time and then we move on to other things. Neither fishing nor skiing are unavailable to me. I could do either if I turned my attention to those activities. But there are things in life that come and go with the seasons of our lives.

Near the end of his life, Hemingway lived in Sun Valley, Idaho, a place with ready access to both some of the best fly fishing and some of the best skiing in the world. But he, too, didn’t pursue those activities with the passion that he had invested earlier in his life.

In my life, there have, however been passions that are constant. There are things for which I can’t imagine losing the intensity of my feelings. For Hemingway the love of the women in his life seemed to come and go. My experience has been very different. After 40 years of marriage, my passion and the intensity of my feelings for my wife have only deepened and grown more strong. I have little understanding of those for whom love dies. I witness the coming and going of the marriages of friends and colleagues, but I can never understand them. I can’t imagine not wanting to be married.

It is that way with our children as well. From the very beginning I have always wanted to be a father. I can’t imagine not wanting to be a father. It is not just a passion that I pursue, it is a core identity. It is who I am, not just what I do.

For me Christianity is in that category of life-long commitment and not just a passion for one season of my life. My understanding of the nature of faith has matured over the years, but my desire to know more and to plumb the depths of faith and relationship with God grows greater with the passage of time. I don’t seem to have much time or energy for what I take to be silly arguments about whether or not God exists or the way most science vs. religion debates are framed. But I love to study the scriptures with friends. I love to think about the depths of faith with others. I am moved by worship and find great meaning in times of meditation and contemplation.

I can imagine moving on to different ministries, but I can’t imagine stopping being a minister. I will be engaged in this process for all of my life.

As appealing as Hemingway’s descriptions of fishing and skiing are, his life seems to me to be tragically hollow. He found small passions worth pursuing: writing, fishing, skiing, four wives and several lovers. But he never found deep commitments. Knowing that the Nick Adams stories were published after his death makes them even more bittersweet. They tell part of the story of the man, but they are incomplete.

The real tragedy is that the life of Hemingway was incomplete. Hemingway was buried with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church when he died, after the church determined that he was not in his right mind at the time of his suicide. Outside of what seems to me to be obvious - no one could be in his or her right mind if he or she dies by suicide - his life ended incomplete.
Depression, alcoholism, and a host of physical ailments don’t tell the story of Ernest Hemingway. They aren’t a fitting epitaph. In a way the Nick Adams stories reveal more of the character of the man.

But if all one does is chase after passions, one runs the risk of never finding the love to which you can be true. One of the deep paradoxes of life is that freedom is found in commitment.

Still, Hemingway came close. In the Nick Adams Stories he almost got the perfect description of floating a hopper down the creek and under the bank to where the big fish strike. For an instant he was connected with the universe and all that is in it. I hope that his connection is as deep in eternity as it was in that instant.

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.

After a safe journey home, I had a somewhat harrowing afternoon. While doing a routine system upgrade on my computer after our return, my computer discovered some problems with its files. For quite a while I thought that it might not re-boot. I was having trouble remembering the password to the backup drive, which would be needed in order to restore the contents of my hard drive. I keep an encrypted file of passwords. With nearly 90 applications and online sources to which I am registered, it is impossible to keep track of all of the passwords. And I try to change them often, but that means that memorization is beyond me. Unfortunately, however, while I have that file on my computer and backed up on my hard drive, I could not access it with my computer refusing to reboot.

The good news is that I was able to use some disk utilities to restore the hard drive, re-boot my computer and make both a hard copy of my password directory for my fireproof file and create a cloud document that I can use to retrieve passwords in the event that I have the problem in the future.

The fright that my computer might be dysfunctional was brief, but long enough to remind me that I need to be diligent about back up and about keeping my computer files organized.

It was also a reminder of how dependent we have become on these machines. I knew that if this particular computer were to fail it would be several days before I could get up and running with a new one. And during those days the blog wouldn’t get published. There would be some work at church that would be much harder to do as well if my computer were to be down. A similar set of events would occur if the computer were to be stolen. I’m good about backups and data wouldn’t be lost in the long run, but it sure would be a hassle in the short run.

It is good to have everything back up and running and a little scare was just right to remind me that I need to keep up the discipline of care for the computer and its files.

This laptop is seven years old now and it is probably the last computer I will have with a hard drive. Solid state or flash memory is replacing hard drives. This improvement will mean faster computers and ones that are more reliable and less prone to failure. The danger of such machines, of course is that we become so dependent upon them and then get careless.

I guess I need the occasional power failure or computer scare just to remind me that I can live without a computer for a few days at least.

One of the fun things about yesterday was watching the parade of empty cattle semis returning to Montana. We didn’t start counting soon enough, but we began to notice that there were a lot of trucks with cattle trailers heading west in Southwestern Montana yesterday. From Broadus to the South Dakota line we must have passed more than 50. Part of the parade is the incredible support and generosity of Montana ranchers. Many donated cattle to help South Dakota cattlemen who had experienced deep losses during the blizzard of a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure that there were also cattle that had been brought into South Dakota for sale. The bottom line is that you can’t count out the cattle ranchers of South Dakota. The storm was severe. The losses were great. But they are a hardy and tough lot. They’ve gotten back to work and it takes more than a blizzard to get the best of them.

We also passed a convoy of six trucks hauling round bales headed west in the same stretch of highway. It is early in the season. We often don’t have much winter weather at all before January or February. Big blizzards and severe storms, however, are the stuff of stories and we love to have a few good stories to tell as we go through this life’s journey. The great blizzard of ’13 will give us things to talk about for years. Along with the tales of loss and of inconvenience, I hope we remember to tell the stories of helpful neighbors and resilient ranchers.

While we were on our trip, I was talking about the storm with a friend who is a Montana rancher. He commented that the old timers were a lot tougher than our generation. They weathered the big winters without help from the outside. They often went weeks and more without any contact with other folks. They didn’t have electricity to lose. They lived in tiny homes that were poorly heated and had to feed cattle in sub-zero conditions and white-out blizzards. Perhaps they complained at the time. We don’t really know. What we do know is that by the time we had come along and they were telling the stories about the hard times in the past, they spoke of founding churches and gathering toi support neighbors. They told stories about growing strong, surviving, and making a life for themselves in a new place.

Having to spend a few hours sorting out a computer problem seems rather tame by comparison - hardly worth mentioning. At any rate, I’m back up and running and ready to publish this blog and get on with my day.

For the rest of the week I’ll be thinking and preparing for a funeral in Reeder, North Dakota on Monday. The church up there is small and struggling and from time to time we go up to help with a funeral. It has been 35 years since we moved up there to serve two small churches and 28 years since we moved away. But the friendships and bonds that we made in our years there are strong enough to last a lifetime. It is an honor to be invited to return and to share the goodness of the folk in that place.

We’re back home, back at work, and ready for new adventures.

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’ll be home before noon today and back at work right away. There is a lot of work on my plate already. That is one thing that the ministry shares with many other jobs: the work must be done whether or not I am on vacation. A vacation is partly doing work ahead before leaving and partly catching up on work upon return. People’s lives go on while I travel. So there is a funeral to plan for Monday, youth group to meet tonight, a bulletin to go to press tomorrow, a newsletter to get out next week, our annual fall stewardship drive to manage and a long list of other things that must be done.

For a one-week trip, we have been pretty successful with this adventure. Susan has two sisters that live in two different states. We visited both of them in their homes on this trip. I have two brothers and two sisters. We visited both sisters in their homes and one of my brothers at the wedding and events around the wedding. We were able to make face-face contact with two nephews and a niece. We had substantial visits with a variety of family friends. And, of course, there were some glorious days visiting with our son, daughter-in-law and grandson. We even arranged a sleepover with our grandson so our son and daughter-in-law could go out for their wedding anniversary. We spent time in six different states, saw some glorious autumn scenery and got some good driving time, which is always productive in terms of conversation and planning for us. We stayed in motels about half of the time and in the homes of family members the other half.

And, in this day of electronic communication, we have stayed in touch daily with our work. I have been exchanging daily e-mails with colleagues in the sheriff’s chaplaincy about issues in that setting. We have been texting with our administrative colleague about everything from plans for Advent to the installation of the new sound system to pastoral concerns. We have been in touch with our minister of Christian Nurture about worship and events in November and December. And we have been in direct touch with two families in the congregation who experienced the death of loved ones during the time we were gone.

I frequently will comment that it is difficult for a casual observer to tell when I am working and when I am not. The two activities look very similar. A good example is that I ran the wedding rehearsal for my niece. Although I ask family members to form their own relationships and find their own pastors for family events, I do try to help where I am able. In this case, the minister charged more for the rehearsal than I do for a wedding, so my niece opted out of that expense. I stepped in and ran the rehearsal, something that is easy for me to do. Although it was a vacation activity it was exactly what I might have done had I been home and there had been a wedding. We don’t charge for rehearsals at our church. And certainly this vacation was filled with listening to other people and being available for emotional support in some times of transition and stress for others. I do that when I am not on vacation.

There are times when we need to step back and simply spend time away from people in order to recharge our energies and reconnect with some of our spiritual disciplines. Vacations are one way of doing that and we have often chosen to go to isolated locations on vacation in place of intense visiting with other people. But this wasn’t that kind of vacation. There wasn’t much rest. We had long days with fewer breaks than might be the case had we stayed at home. We were in intense contact with others from early in the morning until late at night.

Some of the members of the congregation will ask me if I rested on my vacation. It is a legitimate question. But I guess the answer is, “not really.” I just kept going. This is much more likely when we break our vacation into parts instead of taking it all at once. On the other hand, there is a lot that can happen if we take four weeks of vacation in a row. It is hard for people who attend church and live with only two weeks of vacation each year to understand the need for four weeks of vacation. Although I’ve had four weeks for all of my career and it is the standard for ministers, there are always critics of the practice. They don’t stop to think that ministers typically work six days a week and are on call on the seventh. I once asked one of the critics of the minister’s four weeks of vacation whether or not he would trade all of his weekends for another two weeks of vacation. “No way!” was his quick response.

Still, like others who are responsible for complex organizations, taking vacation is never easy. There are a lot of things that need to be managed whether or not the minister is present. There are plenty of people who can step in and do parts of the job, but no one who can maintain the big picture and keep all of the elements going at once. And after more than 18 years in this position, there are things that I do automatically that others don’t even think of doing. There are far too many things that I am the only one who knows how they are done. When I am around, I just don’t think of tasks that are easier to do myself than to have someone else do them. Then, when I am gone, there is no one who knows how to do those tasks. There are written instructions for programming the door codes, but no one else has ever don that since I became pastor of the church. There is a protocol for managing the security system. It is written down as well, but again no one else has ever done that. Ditto for programming the voice mail system. It has never failed during a vacation before and though it was repaired in our absence, new outgoing messages need to be recorded and individual phones need to be set up for voicemail.

So we return to work and it will seem as though we hadn’t had a vacation except for the extra tasks and extra hours demanded in the next few days. Still, it has all been worth it, and we were blessed with a wonderful trip.

Now it is time to get back to work.

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 tamaracks were in full color as we drove over the pass yesterday. I know that the Western larch is not a true tamarack, but tamarack is the name that locals have used for the trees for as long as I can remember. They turn a beautiful bright yellow in the late fall and the hillsides burst with color from the yellow aspens and larch trees. The contrast with the dark green pines and firs of the mountains gives a beautiful variation to the scenery. Western larch is harvested for turpentine and it is a favorite firewood of locals. The trees can grow to over 100 feet in height. Over by Seeley Lake there are a few that are bigger than 150 feet. That rivals the cedars, hemlock and Douglas fir of the temperate rainforests of the cascades and coastal regions. They are magnificent trees.

We don’t have anything like them in the hills. Of course the hills are mostly forested with ponderosa pines. There are some great groves of Black Hills spruce and if you know where to look you can find birch and oak throughout the hills as well. We can get some beautiful fall color. But there is nothing that I have ever seen that matches the explosion of color provided by the tamaracks in the high country. It makes the mountains of Western Montana and northern Idaho a treat every time I am able to make the drive in October.

After saying goodbye to family in Hood River yesterday morning we made good time, stopping for the night at St. Regis in Western Montana. That gives us a day and a half for the remaining 725 miles back home – a relatively easy bit of travel for us. The forecast is for dry roads all of the way.

Having been raised in the mountains, I love driving on the winding mountain roads and over the passes. It is interesting to observe other drivers and I often point out drivers that I call “flatlanders” to others riding with me. They tend to avoid the edge of the road when there are steep drop offs. They ride their brakes on downhill slopes. The have trouble maintaining their lane on winding roads. They often slow far more than is necessary for curves. Most of them make a safe trip through the passes, but I suspect that they tell their stories of the adventure with a bit more drama than we experience. Interstate 90 is a very good road all the way across the northern Rockies. There are a few places where the surface is a bit rough. There is a lot of road to maintain in places where the ground underneath is not very stable. There are a few sections with some sharp curves necessitated by narrow canyons. But for the most part the road is a place where you can set your cruise control and go with a car. The truckers don’t have too much of a work out as long as they slow it down for the curves and use appropriate gears for the downslopes.

We didn’t have any huckleberry ice cream last night and even didn’t give into the temptation of huckleberry pie at the restaurant where we ate dinner last night. But I did have as fine a rainbow trout dinner as I have ever had in a restaurant last night. They served me two whole trout, expertly filleted, and pan fried to perfection. I don’t think the fish would have tasted any better had I cooked them myself. And they would only have tasted a very small amount better if I had caught them myself. One of the treats of driving roads that are familiar is the knowledge of the good places to stop. Jasper’s in St. Regis is a great café for basic home-cooked meals. Their pork chops and pot roast are far closer to what you’d have at home than a typical restaurant meal. They do a great job with Montana beef and serve excellent steaks. But the trout last night were a really special treat. I’m not sure how they get their hands on enough trout to serve all of their customers with tight limits set by the Fish and Game people, but they probably have some connection to a private fish pond somewhere. At any rate the meal was excellent and we headed to bed with full bellies and smiles on our faces last night.

Yesterday was our time zone change day as well, so today we rise at the same time as we would at home. That doesn’t make much difference in our travel since we pretty much are driving daylight hours on this trip, but it helps us adjust to the transition that we need to make to be geared up for returning to work for Wednesday evening programs and the usual rush of end-of-the-week duties at church.

Today we pass the town where I grew up and some of the country that is most familiar to me. Actually I have lived in the Black Hills more years than I lived in Montana, so it is hard to know which place deserves the name “home” for me. I certainly haven’t kept up with all of the changes in the community of my birth as the working ranches have been sold to very wealthy out of state folks and the economy has changed from small town ranch supply to supporting the people who fly in and out with their Lear jets to play cowboy on the weekends. I’m pretty sure that I could walk down Main Street in my hometown and not know any of the folks that I meet. I probably don’t know any of the merchants in the stores and I certainly can’t get my mind wrapped around the names of the new businesses. “The Thirsty Turtle,” is not what one would have expected from the Moose Bar and our town wasn’t much for galleries and decorators when I was a kid. The Grand Hotel, restaurant and bar is still in operation, but the Court is long gone.

The years go by. Times change. We change too. Home is a different place for me now, though I treasure the memories and opportunities to visit my old haunts. Today we’re homeward bound as we turn our sights toward South Dakota.

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.

Our route home from the wedding is taking us up the Columbia Gorge on the border between Oregon and Washington. Susan’s sister lives in Hood River and we are visiting her. Hood River is the heart of the 80-mile-long canyon that stretches from the Portland metropolitan area to the confluence of the Deschutes River and the Columbia. The gorge is a truly unique feature. The water has cared a canyon that is as deep as 4,000 feet in places. It seems even deeper because of the dramatic mountains that rise around the river. Mt. Hood rises 11,250 feet. With the river nearly at sea level, it is a very dramatic and beautiful mountain.

This is a beautiful time of the year to drive the gorge, as the fall colors are dramatic. The weather has been beautiful and the blue sky and big water enhance the view at every turn. My photographs are a disappointment compared to the beauty that we have witnessed. Today we will exit the gorge and watch the scenery change from pacific rainforest to high plains desert in about 25 miles. By the time we cross the river near Umatilla, we will be in an entirely different ecosystem.

The Columbia is the only route through the cascades navigable by large barges. It has been a hub of transportation since people have inhabited the area. Indigenous peoples use the river both as a source of food, fishing for salmon, and a way to travel through the mountains. The Lewis and Clark expedition used the river as their route to the Pacific. Travelers along the Oregon Trail loaded their wagons onto barges and rafts for the final part of the journey to the rich Willamette River Valley.

Today an Interstate highway runs along the southern shore and good two-lane highways run on the northern shore and higher up the gorge on the southern shore. Rail line run along both shores with several major grain terminals along the way where the grain is loaded into barges for transport to the coast.

The gorge is a great place to watch trains. There is a lot of freight that is transported through the corridor. There are several major railroad bridges across the Columbia that are themselves engineering masterpieces.

Perhaps we are paying more attention to the trains this trip because we have had the joy of visiting with our grandson. He is really into trains these days. Yesterday morning as we walked in downtown Portland, we paused to watch the Max, a commuter train, make its way through the city streets. Our grandson informed us that it was an electric city train. It is not a diesel train. It is not a steam train. It is not a freight train. It is not an Amtrak train.

At his home he has a good collection of wooden track and quite a bit of rolling stock to move along the track. The Swedish company Brio has been making wooden train sets since 1958. They still make quality components, but these days there are lots of other companies who make compatible products. Brio licenses its toys for manufacture by other companies in some places and other companies also make tracks and rolling stock that are very similar. Nuchi train sets retain the classic simplicity of the Brio sets and are compatible so that the tracks can all be interconnected for play. In the United States the Fisher Price company has obtained the license for the popular Thomas the Tank Engine series and makes their trains so that the run on the tracks, though they are a bit taller than the Brio and Nuchi trains, so they don’t fit into all of the tunnels and underpasses of the other sets.

We love to see our grandson play with the trains in part because they are basic toys. They don’t require any batteries. There are no flashing lights or artificial sounds, just a good basic toy with lots of room for a developing child’s imagination. Our grandson often tells stories about the trains as he plays with the set. The many possible variations in layout afforded by the tracks means that they are interesting for adults and our grandson often engages his parents and grandparents in constructing track layouts. Each time the toys are put away and then come out again affords a new opportunity for a fresh layout.

Thomas the Tank Engine is a character in a series of stories by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry and his son, Christopher Awdry originally published in Britain under the name “The Railway Series.” The stories were picked up by British television and produced as a series, “Thomas and Friends.” The stories were wildly popular and have been imported into the United States as movies, television programs, video games and a wide variety of other products. There is a line of children’s clothing and lots of other licensed products available.

The stories are based on real railroad engines that operated in England. Thomas is a light engine with tanks to hold extra water for more range without having to fill with water. Other characters are based on other famous trains. Spencer is based on the engine that holds the record for the fasted steam-powered train. The flying Scotsman is a large and very fast engine that pulls both a coal tender and a water take for a range of over 400 miles with speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. There are light, medium and large engines in the series. Our grandson knows more about the classes of British steam engines than we.

The toys are also used to teach basic skills such as counting and color identification. There are even intentional tools for teaching emotional intelligence in the stories. Well-designed toys combine learning and play in a seamless way that takes advantage of the natural joy of learning and discovery.

So we think of our grandson as we travel and enjoy the dramatic scenery of the trip. Even though our journey leads us far from his home, we continue to revel in the miracle of love that transcends all boundaries and distances.

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 made this trip for a family wedding. Last night’s event was a wonderful celebration of commitment and a delightful opportunity to express our joy at the wonderful young people in our family and the community of friends they have formed. There was a delicious dinner and toasts to the bride and groom and dancing and all of the trappings of a celebration. I have reached the age where I don’t mind being an elder of the family and retiring a bit earlier than some of the celebrants. It was also a family gathering of sorts for my family of origin. Not all of the brothers and sisters could make it, but three of us were together and that doesn’t happen too often. We had time for some catching up and after a season of funerals a few years ago it is good to gather for a celebration of new beginnings.

There were lots of new people to meet. This is part of the process at weddings. Those getting married gather a unique community. Those who know the couple don’t all know one another. And, as is true of many other occasions, the time goes by quickly and there are lots of conversations that are incomplete. So I know little bits about people without knowing their full stories.

So here is a silly observation from last night. A common topic of conversation is what we do for a living. As we are getting to know others, we ask about their vocations. On finding that I am a minister, some people asked why I wasn’t officiating at the occasion. I tried to explain that there are times in my life when I enjoy the role of family member. I wanted very much to come to this wedding as Julia’s uncle – not as an officiant. I wanted to be part of the family, not the one in charge of signing the paperwork. But that is a bit difficult to explain in a few sentences in a partial conversation in a crowd of people. I found myself saying, “I like being part of Julia’s family.” That’s true.

But somehow in the course of conversation, several times last night, I discovered that the ability to lead a wedding ceremony and sign a license isn’t all that unique a skill. In the course of the evening I spoke to at least three people, including the officiant at the evening’s ceremony who officiate at weddings, but who have never served as pastors of congregations. The officiant now performs weddings as a full time job, having transitioned from being a wedding musician several years ago. His wife was also ordained to do weddings to expand the family business. Portland, Oregon is a large city and apparently there is no lack of business for the couple. He is so busy that he didn’t come to the rehearsal. I assume that he was performing a different wedding ceremony the night before.

Another person with whom I spoke pursued a credential that could be used to qualify to perform weddings as a sort of rebellion against the church. This person is not exactly anti-religious, but has problems with organized religion and wanted to offer services to those who don’t want to become involved in churches.

A third person seemed to have gotten into the business of doing weddings to perform ceremonies for family members. He was very pleased to have officiated at both his son’s wedding and the wedding of his father. Presumably it wasn’t the first wedding for his father, but I never got the whole story.

I’m sure that I am as much of a mystery to those officiants as they are to me. They probably think it a bit strange that someone would rather be in the congregation than up in front at a family wedding. They probably don’t understand how hard I work to connect couples with communities of faith. They probably don’t know what I do with the larger part of my time working in a church. They probably can’t fathom why I would be so passionate about the history and theology of liturgy in general, or why I have such a strong sense of an appropriate order for a ceremony or my commitment to each word of the vows that are exchanged. I probably seem strange to them.

But I also don’t understand what would attract someone to officiate at weddings without also leading baptisms and communion and confirmations and funerals and regular worship of a community. I can’t even think of the special ceremonies in which I participate apart from the journey of a faith community.

This world is filled with many different people and we don’t all see the world from the same perspective.

Sometimes when I am speaking with colleagues in the ministry we will talk about the parts of our job that we find more or less appealing. I have several friends who would say that they prefer to officiate at a funeral over a wedding because the opportunity to make connections with the family and form lasting bonds with the church are more present in a funeral than a wedding. I’ve heard my colleagues complain about the couples that come to them for a wedding because they like the building as a background for the pictures or the church’s price is lower than other venues. While I try hard not to be a complainer, I guess that I have, in the past, shared some of the things that I don’t like about some weddings as well.

But the truth is that I like weddings. I enjoy seeing people making lasting promises to one another. I have been so blessed by being married that I want that blessing for others. But I also like being an uncle and I like being a father. I appreciate the ministers who officiated at the weddings of our children and allowed me to participate fully with the rest of my family in the ceremonies. I don’t always have to be in charge in order to worship and sometimes it is a treat not to be the one in charge.

This morning, however, I am missing my congregation. It is good to have a vacation and it is good to be with family, but I am also eager to return home to a community of people who are there for each other in all of life’s occasions and who are aware of belonging to a deep and long tradition and an emerging future.

I’m betting that the wedding officiants with whom I spoke last night never get to deliver firewood with the woodchucks or serve a meal at the mission alongside people whose faith they admire. It is good being an uncle at my niece’s wedding. And it is good to have a church to go home to again and again.

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 niece has had a long time to think about her wedding. She has always been a person of very strong opinions and has had a keen sense of what she wants, but this event is unique. Of course, I’m an uncle and I live a long ways away, so I have been a rather distant witness to the process and I don’t know all of the details, but I do know that today was a long day coming.

She and her fiancé have known each other for a decade. They were teens and neighbors when they met. They have seen each other through a lot of different life experiences. They have grown up together. I don’t think the announcement of the engagement was a big surprise to many in the family. And I doubt if it was a big surprise to either of them. In a way it seemed to be natural.

Since she was little, I have suspected that there would be some big events in her life. I was able to be around for a couple of her birthday parties when she was a child. She liked big productions. She learned to shine when she was the center of attention. She learned to get the things that were important to her.

Like all people, however, her growing up has had some surprises for those of us who know her. She has matured in delightful ways. Some of the traits that I didn’t understand about her childhood and teenage years have been softened and changed by the challenges and realities of adolescence and young adulthood. There was a time when we worried about teens. They have such intelligence and capability and they are able to make the biggest mistakes. By the mid teens they gain drivers’ licenses and are exposed to the possibility of alcohol and drug use. The culture pressures them into expressing their sexuality. There are so many possibilities for a bad choice to have life-altering consequences. These days, however, it seems as if the vulnerability has extended and deepened. Navigating their twenties is as challenging and difficult as it gets in some ways. The lives of today’s twenty-somethings are filled with options and challenges that we didn’t really consider when we were their age.

My niece and the young man she will marry today have successfully and for the most part graciously negotiated half of their third decade of life. They have moved through experiences where a wrong choice could have changed everything. I think that it is fair to say that they are ready for the commitments they are making today. Except you can never be ready. The consequences of the promises we make are not all visible from the place where we make our commitments. Life takes us in unexpected directions and offers unanticipated challenges and choices.

Last night, at the rehearsal dinner, I shared a brief moment of rolling our eyes at the antics of some of the relatives with my niece and her husband to be. I reminded them of the obvious: they bring together a unique gathering of people. Their families are large and complex. There have been some divorces and re-configurations in the lives of relatives. Some of the relatives have had lives that are very different from others. Their families span a wide spectrum. When you gather those families together with their friends you get a crowd that has never before existed and will probably never again gather in the same configuration.

People make trite statements about the wedding being the bride’s day. Any bride knows that a wedding is far from one person’s day. It is about a complex set of relationships. And people can get upset about a lot of little things. Who stands next to whom, who is seated in what row, what order the families enter the room – all of these shouldn’t make any difference at all. All of these are potentially emotional minefields. Someone is bound to get upset. Someone is bound to have his or her feelings hurt. Someone is bound to behave in an unpredictable manner. There are simply too many variables to control.

All of that complexity is not without reward. Drawing together a unique group of people has its own wonder and energy. New relationships are formed. New contacts are made. There is much to learn in what appears to outsiders to be a loud and wild party.

As a minister, I attend a lot of weddings. But most of the time, my role is clear and I know what to do. I have been party to many of the preparations and plans and my part is familiar to me. At the rehearsal, I move things along so that people get the information they need and then can get about a dinner and getting to know one another. At the wedding, I lift up a few of the important parts of entering into a new relationship and perform the ceremonial functions. I say the prayers, I offer the blessings, I sign the paperwork. At the reception, I make a polite appearance and exit early.

It is different being the uncle. I am delighted with my role in this wedding. My sister and I have been through a lot of life experiences together. We’ve attended a lot of weddings and had different roles in each one. We have traveled together and watched our children grow up. We have been partners through our parents’ aging and deaths. We continue to make joint decisions as custodians of a family trust. I enjoy being part of her support team. And I am delighted to share my niece’s day of celebration.

There is an important lesson in the day. A marriage is not about one day – it is far more than a ceremony and a big dinner. A marriage is forged across the span of a lifetime. And the things one does in a marriage have broad-reaching consequences. The decision of this couple to marry affects a large number of people. We all become party to some pretty serious promises today.

And life is not predictable. There are many surprises ahead for this couple and for the rest of us who have gathered to witness their vows.

It is a day to remember.

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.

Susan and I were managers and cooks at Camp Mimanagish, the camp of the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference of the United Church of Christ, during the summers of 1975 and 1976. It was a wonderful summer job for a couple of seminary students. It allowed us to return to our home state and a place that we loved and to use some of the skills of ministry that we were learning. Near the end of the second summer, I happened to mention to a junior high student that we would not be coming back to camp the next summer as I would need to stay in Chicago to complete all of my internship requirements for my doctoral program. The student responded, “You can’t leave Mimanagish. You’ve always been here.”

Wow! In two summers, I had become a forever tradition. Not bad for a young guy, I thought.

Since those years I have learned that it is relatively easy to establish new traditions in youth ministry. Repeat an event a few times and all of a sudden it has become a tradition. The same is true with events for the wider congregation, although sometimes it takes a bit longer to establish the tradition. Once established, however, it is not that easy to lose or alter a tradition.

Our family has its own traditions as well. Some strike me as deeply meaningful. Others are a bit silly. Some are nice, but not absolutely necessary. And some things may not really be traditions, but rather just things that we have done several times. Of course, like other families, we have traditions around holidays and birthdays and anniversaries and other special occasions.

I’m not sure if yesterday was a day of traditions, or just repetition of some familiar things. First of all, we have taken a lot of road trips. Susan and I went off to graduate school in Chicago from our home in Montana when we had been married just over one year. We made several trips back and forth over the next four years. When we settled in North Dakota, we traveled to visit family in Montana, Washington and Oregon on a fairly regular basis. We have continued to make at least one trip to the West Coast most years. Some years we make several trips. When my mother was living in Oregon, I used to drive her from her summer home in Montana to her winter home in Oregon each fall and make the trip the other direction in the spring.

Yesterday’s drive from Red Lodge, Montana to Moses Lake, Washington spanned 672 miles, and the roads were very familiar all of the way. It is a long way across Montana, and we often drive across the state in a nearly diagonal manner, entering in the southeast corner at Alzada and crossing into North Idaho on US 12, Interstate 90, or US 2. Yesterday we stayed with the Interstate from Columbus, Montana. It is a familiar route and the stops were familiar to us as well.

Stop number one: Wheat Montana to pick up almond bear claws and coconut macaroons. They are good at making both of those items, and a lot of other things. Wheat Montana is just west of Three Forks, Montana. Years ago a wheat farming family who had land alongside the Interstate decided that they needed to figure out how to increase their profit and gain some control of their markets. They started by converting their farm to all organic produce to garner the higher price for organic wheat. Then they opened a bakery to sell some products made from their wheat. Soon they had a deli and a thriving business alongside the Interstate. The business grew until they had to purchase wheat from other farmers. Then a gas station and later a motel were added to the operation. It has become a regular stop for us each time we drive across Montana. Yesterday we arrived at about 11:30 a.m., so we had lunch: good homemade sandwiches on fresh bread. We got our bear claws and macaroons to go. There are some of each in our car this morning.

Stop number two: St. Regis Travel Stop for huckleberry ice cream cones. Our timing was just perfect – mid afternoon. After sitting in the car for a long drive, we got out and walked a few blocks licking our ice cream cones before turning around and getting back into the car. Huckleberries are a big deal in the mountains of Western Montana. There are people who wouldn’t tell you their favorite spot to gather huckleberries for anything. There have been feuds and even some weapons displayed over favorite huckleberry patches. The ice cream at St. Regis Travel Stop is always really good and they are generous with the huckleberries. In the summer it is so fresh and good that it seems almost worth the drive just for the ice cream cone. OK 732 miles one-way for an ice cream cone is probably a bit far. But we were passing through. It is a little bit past prime season for huckleberries and they had ice cream made from berries that had been frozen before the ice cream was made. This makes for a wonderful and unique frozen crunch in the midst of the ice cream. It is nearly impossible to describe, but it is wonderful to eat.

We’ve stopped for bear claws, macaroons and huckleberry ice cream a lot of times. We made those stops going both ways when we went out to the coast for our wedding anniversary. And chances are fairly good that we will make the same stops on our way back to South Dakota. I guess it has become a family tradition.

One does, however, have to be a bit careful with the timing. Although huckleberry ice cream is good any time of the day, it is best in the mid afternoon, or perhaps for a bedtime snack. And if you don’t make it to Wheat Montana in the morning, chances are pretty good they’ll run out of almond bear claws before you get there.

They’ve never run out of macaroons that I know of, however. And that reminds me of another tradition. As we buy the bear claws, macaroons and huckleberry ice cream, I make a point of telling the clerk who is waiting on us that I drove all the way from South Dakota just for the treats we are purchasing.

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.

From time to time the subject of advertising comes up in our church. We do almost no paid advertising. We don’t have billboards. We don’t have television commercials. We don’t run spots on the radio. We don’t have display ads in the newspaper. We don’t even have expanded listings in the yellow pages. The reason for this lack of advertising is twofold. First of all we don’t have the funds to run ad campaigns the way that businesses do. An effective campaign can cost thousands of dollars in a few days. We spend hundreds per year. For the most part we don’t seem to need advertising. The most effective way to get the word out about our church is through the friendships and associations of our members. We do have a web site and some people find us through the Internet, but most of our visitors find us because someone associated with the church invited them to come.

Still, there are members that would like to see us advertise. They see ads placed by other churches in the paper and wish that their church had an ad. They see other churches featured on electronic billboards and wish their church were so featured.

Around the first of November we will solicit donations for Advent and Christmas advertisements in the newspaper. The ads that receive sponsors will be run. Those that have no sponsor will be skipped. I have been working to come up with a good design for the advertisements, but I confess that I am skeptical. I don’t believe that there is much benefit to advertising in the newspaper. The target audience for new members for our church mostly doesn’t subscribe to the newspaper and will never see the ads. Were we to add online advertising in the newspaper’s electronic version, we might have a few of our ads viewed by the people we are trying to reach, but it seems unlikely that there is a benefit that offsets the cost of simple newspaper display ads.

But that is just my opinion. And I don’t really know much about advertising at all. I have worked in radio and at a newspaper. I have written and read scripts for radio ads and I have designed newspaper advertising. I understand the basics of production. But I know nothing of what really works.

There are people who study the effectiveness of various forms of advertising, but the results vary. People do respond to ads. Advertising does have an impact, but how it all works is rather complex. Sometimes it is more effective to simply have more advertising instead of better advertising. Sometimes having just the right advertisement leaves a lasting impression.

Recently, I caught a story about a study that was done at Cologne University in Germany on the Internet recently. The study found that advertisements shown in movie theaters are less effective if people are eating popcorn while they are watching the ads. Previous studies about eating and memory are mixed. Chewing improves blood flow to the brain and does raise alertness. However a study at Cardiff University demonstrated that people’s ability to recall lists in a specific order was impaired by chewing gum. In the Cologne study people were invited to watch a movie preceded by a series of advertisements. Half of the people in the study were given popcorn, half had none. They were shown commercials that were already in use in movie houses, but which were for products that were unfamiliar to the particular audience. A week later study participants were asked to rate a series of products. The people who had no popcorn showed preferences for the products advertised. The people who ate popcorn did not. The study was repeated with similar results.

I don’t know what this has to do with churches and whether or not it is effective to invest our limited resources in advertising, but it might suggest that we shouldn’t serve popcorn while the Scriptures are being read.

On the other hand, eating a small piece of bread in the context of worship can be a memorable experience.

We have started a practice that is new to our congregation. When we serve communion at a time that the children are in church school, we take the leftover bread from communion and share it with the children. Yesterday the preschool children were sitting in a circle. They had a prayer together and passed the plate. The pieces of bread are very small, so one of the children asked if they could have a second piece. The answer was affirmative. They began to comment on how good the bread was and soon they were grabbing handfuls of the bread. It was plain bread that normally wouldn’t have appealed to the children, but the context and the tiny cubes somehow make it seem very good to them. I wasn’t there to witness the children and the bread, but I heard the story and it immediately made me think of Psalm 34: “Taste and see that the Lord is good!”

The reality is that church is not a product to sell. It is the experience of community. Sometimes it takes a lot of different experiences at church to form a lasting impression. It takes repetition to develop spiritual disciplines. It takes an investment of one’s self to become known. The commitment to participation in a religious community is inherently different than the decision to purchase a product or service.

Furthermore, I don’t see religion as a competitive business. We know that there are many different churches in town. While we work hard to make ours a faithful community, we know that other churches are also faithful. Our prayer for people is that they would find the church that is right for them for a particular part of their faith journey, not that our church would somehow become the right community for everyone. There is no “one size fits all” in religion.

So we will probably receive donations for the advertisements. We will probably run them. Some people will likely be happy with how we look in the paper. Others might not notice. I’m content to let others put their energy into the advertising. My goal is to have a good and meaningful experience for folks when they come to our church.

Wow! I’m really hungry for some popcorn . . .

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’ve got a busy day ahead of us and my mind is a bit of a jumble of a lot of different thoughts today. So, instead of a blog about a single topic, here are a few smaller reflections about various unrelated topics.

It might have been fun to be present yesterday when they re-opened the Grand Canyon. The thought of the canyon being closed and then re-opened brings to mind an almost cartoon-like thought of the walls coming together and only flat land in sight. Then suddenly someone pushes a button and a crack begins to form, which is followed by the entire canyon re-opening. Of course that isn’t what happened. What happened was that the gates were opened and staff members began to collect entrance fees. The concessionaires went back to work and began selling their wares, the rangers came back and began giving tours and the park was open for business as usual. It was a case of simple math. The state of Arizona agreed to pay the National Park Service $651,000 to operate the park for 7 days. Since the park produces well over $1,000,000 in revenue for Arizona each week, Governor Jan Brewer decided it was a good investment. They will assess on an on-going basis if the federal government shutdown continues more than a week more.

The Statue of Liberty is open once again through a similar agreement and Mount Rushmore is slated to be operating with state funds instead of federal dollars for the rest of the week.

We live in a season of great skepticism about the federal government. The fact that our elected representatives seem to be either unwilling or unable to do their jobs doesn’t help that skepticism. Public opinion polls are indicating that the U.S. House of Representatives is slightly less popular than a colonoscopy. But the bottom line is that when the federal government works, there are things that the government does that bring benefit to the people. The parks are just one example of where we get more benefit from having a government than the cost. It is becoming clear, however, that bull-headedness and brinkmanship aren’t the best qualities when it comes to working with others. We may need to reassess the qualifications required of our legislators at the next election. I’m thinking we need a report card like the ones we used to get in kindergarten. There were five choices in the category “plays well with others.” We need people who have at least a kindergarten understanding of cooperation in those positions.

On another topic, we’re launching a new worship service this afternoon. I’m anticipating only about 4 or 5 people to attend. It will be held in one of the residences of Black Hills Works’ Intensive Training and Supervision (ITS) program. Small group worship is nothing new for our congregation. We offer it in the women’s section of the Pennington County Jail, at area nursing homes and in other places where we need to go to serve people because they cannot come to us. The short devotional services are designed to emphasize Christian unity and downplay the differences between denominations so that participants are encouraged to continue connections with their own congregations. Most of the people in the ITS program have no church home at all. They participate in part because they don’t have many activities available to them. We share scripture and prayers and trust the scripture and liturgy that is so important in nurturing our spiritual lives to be of value to others.

One of the unique features to this particular new worship service is that I have been working with Pastor Wilbur Holtz of Trinity Lutheran Church to develop and deliver the program. Wilbur won’t be involved this week, because we are alternating leadership and small group worship doesn’t need to have participants overwhelmed by leaders, but it seems to be exactly the right thing for us to work together and understand that the work of the Church of Jesus Christ is much bigger than any one congregation or an individual denomination. Working with others gives us a taste of God’s realm in the here and now.

Maybe we ought to start some small group worship with members of congress. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that dig.

We’ve had some good talks with our sister church in Keystone this week. They are between pastors and it doesn’t work for the Conference Office to try to feed them supply pastors out of Sioux Falls. Our congregation has an abundance of ordained ministers and we are able to share with our neighbors on occasion. It turned out that worship in Keystone was cancelled for this week due to the flooding and the need of members to be working on flood recovery, but we will continue to work with an resource the congregation in the weeks to come. I’m looking forward to being able to strengthen our relationships with our sister church.

People are in good spirits about the blizzard of 2013 now that we’re dug out and most of us have our electricity back. The survivors of the blizzard of 1949 are quick to remind us that a storm that is over in a week or so isn’t much compared to the storm that started on the second of January and continued well into February with winds over 70 mph, lots of snow and below zero temperatures. Although the snowfall was only about two feet, it drifted to depths of 35 feet in the high winds. There were entire buildings that were buried and people who were stranded for a month or more. The roads were closed. The trains couldn’t run. People would dig out and then the winds would drift the snow back in. Most of the rural areas didn’t have electricity in the first place, so they were used to canned food, coal stoves, and long dark nights in the winter already.

Our stories are connected in many different and unique ways and those of us who went through this storm together, like others who survived other storms, will look back and find strength and meaning in the fact that we survived. In our particular case we experienced only minor inconveniences. It’s good to get snowed in from time to time.

Maybe that’s what we need a blizzard that traps congress in the capitol for a few days. . . .

I just can’t get off of that subject. I promise not to mention it in my sermon 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.

Early in my life I experienced a transition in terms of my attitude toward formal academic education. I think it would be fair to say that I enjoyed school for the most part when I was an early elementary student. But somewhere around the fifth grade or so, as I began the awkwardness of early adolescence, I began to lose my interest in the school. It seemed to me that the most interesting things in life were happening in places other than the school and that formal education was simply not very interesting. This detachment and distraction from school didn’t stop me from learning. Our home was filled with opportunities to learn. We had ready access to books and strong support for our own experiments, building projects, and other activities. Our home was a gathering place for all sorts of interesting adults and there were lots of ways to learn lessons that don’t fit into a formal curriculum. By the time I reached high school, I was largely disconnected from many of my classes. I went to school, I earned passing grades, but I had lost respect for some of the teachers and grew distrustful of the administration of the school. Part of my situation was the product of turbulent times. The late sixties did not engender a lot of support for respect of elders and formal institutions. Part of my situation was a product of a small town school system that probably was underfunded and unable to compete when it came to salaries and support for its employees. It seemed to me that most successful people sought careers in places far away from schools.

My attitude underwent a dramatic transition, however, when I entered college. College was academically challenging for me. I discovered that I had to work hard to learn the materials presented and to keep up with the workload. I was exposed to teachers that I admired as individuals as well as educators. I was drawn to the professors at the college and even imagined that teaching was a career that I might pursue. As I gained academic skills, I discovered real joy in learning and was excited and delighted to continue my education by entering graduate school upon graduation.

I have continued my respect for and love of academic education throughout my adult life. I enjoy visiting college campuses. I enjoy opportunities to take classes and I have continued to find opportunities for continuing education within the academy. The few opportunities I have had to teach at the college level have been challenging and joyful for me. I take great delight in the young adults in our church and enjoy hearing about their college experiences.

That said, however, it is clear that there are many other ways to learn. Not all people learn best in formal academic settings. Not all life lessons come from classrooms. Textbooks don’t have all of the answers. Within the academic community there are centers of excellence and innovation that are well aware of these facts. There are dedicated teachers who are exploring creative ways for teaching and learning that are outside of the normal lecture-and-reading approach of many college courses. Our experience at the Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Center for Aboriginal Theological and Ministry Training in Canada has allowed us to participate in a unique learning program that is based on traditional native methods of teaching and learning where the content is consistent with the coursework presented at universities.

The program features a five-year community based ministry program. Students who complete the program become eligible for ordination in the United Church of Canada. There is also a three-year program for designated lay ministers. It is a rigorous educational program, but it doesn’t involve much listening to lectures. Most of the classes are taught in listening circles with elders, teachers and students all participating in seeking additional education and knowledge.

Ministry, however, is a vocation and not a simple set of skills that need to be mastered. Over the years I have learned that no academy, however innovative in its approach to teaching can fully prepare a student for the realities of ministry. Good ministers have learned their academic lessons well, but continue to learn after graduation. As I said earlier, there are lessons that are not best learned in the classroom.

Life experience and imagination are excellent teachers if you continue to listen to their lessons after completing your formal education.

Upon graduation, we began our ministry in a rural and isolated setting. Some times during those early years, we became lonely and felt that there were few in our community who could understand the challenges we were facing. One of the most accepted models in those days was a kind of sink or swim exposure to ministry without access to mentors and others. Ministers who survived four or five years in a small congregation were usually rewarded by a call to a larger congregation and a larger salary.

The world doesn’t work that way any more. Students graduating from theological seminary typically have such large debts that smaller congregations cannot afford to pay them a living wage. Ministers who have more experience and who have paid back their debt can afford to work for smaller salaries than those just beginning their careers. The result from my point of view is an even more risky practice of congregations with substantial size hiring ministers fresh out of school. The congregations are seeking youth and vigor and are willing to accept a pastor with little or no experience because they want to attract younger members to their congregations. The ministers accept the positions because of a perceived prestige to particular pulpits and sometimes are unaware of the complex dynamics and pressures of larger congregations. The result is that far too many ministers leave the ministry in search of other vocations early in what might have been promising careers if there had been sufficient support and perhaps less challenging problems in the initial years of ministry.

Our processes of preparation of leaders for the church continue to produce struggles for the church. The current situation is a shortage of ministers and the need for fresh innovations in education and equipping people for the tasks of ministry. Some of the solutions will come from the academy. Theological Seminaries are responding to new challenges with new programs. But churches must also change their systems of support for emerging leaders. Balance will be required.

There are probably more than a dozen blogs possible on this topic and the subject has not been fully explored in this brief essay. Although I do not expect my career to lead me to work within a college or seminary, I do expect that the next years of my ministry will involve a call to be more actively engaged in assisting with the education of clergy for the next generations of the life of the church.

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 family and the people with whom I work know that I occasionally go on a rant. I will keep talking about a subject that is bothering me until the people who have to listen are tired of the subject and sometimes wondering whether or not I am upset with them. Of the subjects of my rants are things about which I have no immediate control. In fact, one of the triggers of the rant is my losing control. I hope that I am becoming more mature, more aware and less obnoxious as I grow older, but there are times when my conversation is not as balanced as I would like.

Yesterday the topic of my rants was the worship service we are planning for Sunday morning. Here are the simple, non-rant facts: We are a complex and very busy community of Christians. Our church always has a lot going on. There are a lot of people who are attached to individual projects and programs. Their dedication to a specific project is what makes the overall church work. We cancelled worship last week due to the storm. We can’t imagine just skipping Worldwide Communion Sunday, so we will celebrate communion this week. This week’s service was already full with recognition of readers as part of the children’s time, the installation of our associate minister, recognition of ordination anniversaries, and more.

It seems that even after 35 years as an ordained minister and having served as a licensed minister for several years before my ordination I get uptight about worship. I like worship to flow smoothly. I like it to be a meaningful experience for participants. I don’t want worshipers to think that I take their gift of time lightly. I want to treat them with respect. It also seems like the bigger or more complex the service, the more uptight I get. And when I get uptight, I can be less than gentle with the folks around me. In previous years I have dimmed the joy of Christmas Eve for our family by getting so nervous about Christmas Eve services.

There is another important of which I have to remind myself over and over again. Worship is not puppet theatre, with my role being the puppet master who controls every action on a stage. Worship is the people of God gathering before God with the Holy Spirit moving in our midst. We cannot control the movement of the Holy Spirit, nor should we attempt to do so.

God does not expect every worship service to be perfect. Neither do the people we serve. What is expected is that each of us bring our best to God. That is why we prepare. That is why we practice – so that we can offer our highest and best. And doing our best is sufficient.

We often describe faith as belief in things that cannot be directly observed. One of my oft-quoted verses of scripture is Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I know that faith has other dimensions as well. One of those dimensions is releasing control. Back in the 1930’s the acceptance of a higher power or a power greater than ourselves became a very important part of the treatment of alcoholics. Understanding that the individual cannot control every aspect of life is an important part of recovery from alcoholism. The term is a mainstay of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It should be obvious to me, a Christian Minister, that worship isn’t about me. I may hold the tile of senior minister, but that does not make me in charge of God and it does not make me in charge of the people of God. I am a person with a specific role in planning and leading worship. One of my responsibilities is to never forget that it is God who is in charge of our lives. When we bring our best to worship it is sufficient.

My worries and uptightness is less than my best.

My rants about the things I cannot control are less than my best.

It is not uncommon for me on Fridays to tweak a worship service. The staff planning is completed. The bulletins are printed. There are elements that cannot be changed. But there is still time to work on the words of a prayer or revise a section of a sermon. Fridays are usually relatively light traffic days at our church and there are a few moments when I can think and pray. As I do so today I will keep in mind that Sunday’s worship service is longer than usual. That means that I should not waste words and I should not waste time. As a storyteller, I often go in for long narratives. Repetition is part of the storyteller’s art and it is an effective tool for teaching the Gospel. But it is only one way of approaching prayers and preaching. Some of the most powerful words ever spoken are in the form of poetry. It is carefully refined language, taking every word seriously and asking what can be eliminated as well as what can be added.

This week I need to think like a poet and not like a storyteller. Many of the great words of our faith are words of poetry. My rants are never poetic. I often don’t even get my ideas in the right order when I am speaking passionately.

One of the treasures of our congregation is that we are firmly committed to multiple leaders. The sanctuary was designed with 16 chairs in the chancel so there would be room for many worship leaders. We work with three ordained ministers in most services. This Sunday there are additional ordained and lay leaders who have roles. Each has control over choice of words and style of delivery. I need to see my place in this constellation of worship. When my part is well-prepared and my words carefully chosen I can relax and worship with the congregation when others take the lead.

It is a challenge worthy of additional practice. After all these years, I still don’t have it all figured out. I am grateful for God’s patience.

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 Boeing 787 Dreamliner is back in the news for technical glitches. Billed as the world’s most advanced passenger airliner, the plane has been popular and Boing is manufacturing them at full speed and maintains a book of advance orders. But Japan Airlines recently placed an order with rival Airbus, which might be a sign of frustration with troubles with the Dreamliner. JAL had previously flown an all Boeing fleet. The entire Dreamliner fleet was grounded earlier this year after fires and overheating affected the batteries of several of the planes. Those problems were fixed but recently JAL had to turn back a flight after an electrical problem caused six of the seven toilets on the airplane to cease flushing. Another JAL flight had to return to base after a pinched wire leading to the plane’s emergency locater transmitter caused sparks.

Boeing will solve these problems. And the airliner will go on to provide service to passengers for a long time. At some time in the future the plane will be recognized as a major step forward for airline transportation as the advanced composite construction contributed to airliners that offered more passenger comfort alongside greater fuel economy.

I’d like to take a trip on a Dreamliner some day. I’m a big fan of airplanes and pay attention to innovations in the field of flying. Years ago, when Boeing was introducing the 747 as the world’s first jumbo airliner, I got to go aboard the first 747 delivered to Northwest Orient Airlines as it made its publicity tour prior to being placed in service. After its delivery to Northwest, the plane was flown from Seattle to Billings, Montana where we got to see it. From Billings it flew to Minneapolis. Minneapolis-Saint Paul was just being established as a hub for Northwest. It continued around the Northwest system and then entered service on the company’s Pacific runs.

But there is another airliner trip that I would like to take someday. If we drive, we could drive to Hay River in the Northwest Territories of Canada and take the regularly scheduled trip from there to Yellowknife. If we fly, we’d fly into Yellowknife and then take the scheduled flight on to Hay River. Either way we would be able to board a Buffalo Airways DC-3 airliner. The 28-seat airliner makes the 45-minute trip. The youngest airliner in the Buffalo Airlines fleet is eight years older than I am. And these airplanes just keep flying. There are many who believe that the DC-3 can make it to the century mark as an airliner in regularly scheduled service.



Production of civilian DC-3’s stopped in 1943 as the factory turned its attention to full time production of the military version, the C-47. Most of the DC-3’s in service began their life in military service and were later converted to the passenger version.

The story of the DC-3 is a story of innovation born in the midst of intense competition. Boeing had just come out with the 247, the world’s first modern airliner and United Airlines secured a contract for 60 aircraft to be produced before the 247 would be offered to sale to any other airline. That left Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA) and American Airlines at a distinct competitive disadvantage. TWA went directly to Donald Douglas who came up with the design of the DC-1, quickly followed by the DC-2. The DC-2 was a success and TWA was competing well with United. Meanwhile American Airlines was in conversation with Douglas as well and together they came up with a sleeper version of the DC-2 to replace old Curtiss Condor II biplanes that American was flying. American placed an order for 20 of the airplanes, designated the DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport). The first flight of the DST was December 17, 1935, the 32nd anniversary of the Wright Brother’s first flight at Kitty Hawk. After the first 7 DSTs rolled off the production line, an all passenger version was built, also for American. It was named the DC-3.

The rest, as they say, is history. The DC-3 proved to be extremely reliable. The engine mounts were designed so that engines could be replaced in the field with a minimum of basic tools. The Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engines provided long time between overhauls and often would continue to run despite problems delivering the plane to its destination where repairs could be made. The plane went through many different versions, including upgrades from the original 9-cylinder 1820 radials all the way to the 14-cylinder R-2000 engines. In the 1950’s some DC-3 airframes were re-engined with turboprop engines.

Buffalo Airlines, however, operates the original piston engines on their planes. And that is a big attraction for me. I love the sound of those engines.

I’ve ridden on DC-3’s before. Johnson Flying Service in Missoula, Montana operated a couple of them as smoke jumper platforms. There were others around as well.

The DC-3 continues to serve as reliable transportation precisely because its technology is very basic. Other than upgraded avionics and navigation systems the airplanes are devoid of computers and other modern electronics. The panels are still fitted with mechanical instruments and the controls are connected to the flying surfaces with chains and push rods, not wires and servos. Parts that break can be made in conventional machine shops. Engines can be overhauled with new parts. Aluminum skins can be replaced section by section. Hydraulic systems are relatively simple by today’s standards. Leaks can be detected by visual inspection and repairs usually involve the replacement of a hose or a fitting. The airplanes continue to be safe, though passengers may consider the ride to be rough and noisy by today’s standards.

I fully expect the 787 Dreamliner to be a success for Boeing. And chances of me getting to ride on one of them are very good. But I am sure that the Dreamliner will not see a century of service. The DC-3 on the other hand, only needs 22 more years to make that record.

I might even be around in 2035 to witness the century flight.

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 understand it is one of the rare pleasures of a very few select individuals. Here in the United States the phone call comes in the early hours of the morning. In Scotland the hour wouldn’t be quite so early. The caller, speaking with a Swedish accent, determines the identity of the person called and then announces that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize and states the category. Recipients of the prize know that they are in the running, but they do not know whether or not they are winners until the call from Sweden. However yesterday morning, the members of the Academy couldn’t find one of the people that they wished to inform.

Dr. Peter Higgs wasn’t home. He doesn’t use a cellphone. He doesn’t use a computer. He is 84 years old and he told his friends that he was going off by himself for a few days, without telling them where he was going. He has promised to return by Friday. Since he doesn’t use a computer and doesn’t have a cell phone, he may or may not know that he is to split the $1.2 million prize with Francois Englert of the Universite Libre de Buxelles in Belgium. It depends on whether or not he has access to a radio or has watched television from wherever he has gone for a little rest and quiet.

A press release from the University of Edinburgh, where Dr. Higgs continues his research indicated that they probably have been in contact with Dr. Higgs and that he is aware of the award. He is a modest man who likes his own company and wants to be able to continue his work without a fuss. He probably is avoiding all of the press attention that is normally given to Nobel Prize winners on purpose.

The award is hardly a surprise. There have been plenty of suggestions that Higgs and Englert be rewarded for the ground breaking theory of the Higgs boson, a particle that was theorized by a mathematical model and not directly observed until researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland announced that they had discovered a particle matching the description of the Higgs boson. Thousands of particle physicists worked on the project.

It is likely that the young physicists are more excited about the award than the man whose name has been attached to this particle that was theorized in the Standard Model, a group of equations that has ruled particle physics for the last 50 years. According to this model, the universe is filled with energy that gives particles that move through it mass. Based on Einstein’s famous equation that reveals that energy and mass are the same, the equations predict that there are particles with mass obtained by passing through the field of energy. However, it took a lot of investment and many years before the theory could be proven by observation.

Physicists are used to theories that posit things that cannot yet be observed. But the discovery of the Higgs affirmed the fundamental assumption of theoretical physics that the cosmos is ruled by a consistent set of mathematical principles. For physicists the symmetry and elegance of the equations that express these rules or principles is exquisitely beautiful and inspires awe.

Someone started to call the Higgs boson the god particle, and the name stuck, though physicists, especially Dr. Higgs, do not like and do not use that name for the particle.

I think that Dr. Higgs has gotten one thing right. The fundamental beauty of the universe is not best known through prizes and media attention. The deepest joy of research is not the possibility of a prize, even a really big prize. It is the joy of discovery. Observing the beauty of the universe is its own reward.

Of course I have never met Dr. Peter Higgs. But I like him already. Before tackling the press conferences and questions and all of the other things that are going to be a part of his life between now and the December 10 awards ceremony in Stockholm and beyond, he took a little breather and headed off by himself to think. He is more inspired by the beauty of nature than by the accolades of other people.

I suspect that he may even be a bit embarrassed that the particle got named after him. After all, even though the pursuit of mathematics is often done by individuals, the search for the really big breakthroughs in science are hardly individual efforts. There were more than 10,000 physicists involved in the search for the Higgs. Back in 1964, it was Dr. Englert and his colleague Robert Brout, who first published a paper envisioning the process of the mass of the boson coming from energy. Dr. Higgs first attempt to publish his version of the theory was rejected by the journal Physics Letters published at CERN. They said that it has no relevance to physics. The paper was rewritten and eventually published by the journal, Physical Review Letters. As a part of the rewrite he added a paragraph at the end noting that the theory produced a new particle, of indeterminate mass. That particle became known as the Higgs boson. The paper was accepted for publication only with the provision that Dr. Higgs mention Dr. Englert and Dr. Brount’s paper, which was published seven weeks earlier.

Dr. Higgs has long known that the theory he proposed and the work that he did was in the context of a large group of scientists who were thinking similar thoughts and doing similar calculations around the world. Scientists at Imperial College, London, the University of Rochester and Brown University were also working on similar theories and produced similar papers. There has been an ongoing argument for nearly 60 years over who exactly did and said what back then.

Theoretical physicists aren’t used to the limelight. They usually do their work in universities without much public acclaim. Their realm is breathtakingly abstract and drama and public excitement are rare in the field.

It’s good to have the scientists recognized for their work. But the prize pales in comparison to the glory of the universe.

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.

Our community does a really good job of supporting the arts. Rapid City is known for its outdoor sculptures. Of course Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Mountain carving project have received international attention, but our city is filled with other sculptures. The City of Presidents project has placed life-sized sculptures of US presidents on city street corners and the Main Street Square sculpture project, Passage of Wind & Water, is one of the largest public art projects in the world at this time. We have a very good symphony orchestra, an amazing group for a city of our size. The Dahl Fine Arts Center is more than a gallery and museum, it is a hub of community activities and events.

Black Hills Community Theatre is an important part of the arts scene in Rapid City. They mount five productions each year and support the Cherry Street Players, a youth theatre group.

Last night we were delighted to attend the rescheduled performance of Les Miserables. It was held in the recently remodeled historic theatre of Rapid City High School. The venue is great for community events and is home to the symphony as well as the community theatre. We had tickets for the Friday night performance, which was cancelled due to the storm. The plan was for an additional performance to be added for Sunday night, but Saturday and Sunday performances also had to be cancelled due to the weather. Our community is getting dug out and the group pulled off a great production of the musical last night and a final performance is set for this evening. Despite the unscheduled break, the cast was well prepared for the performance and the audience was delighted.

Les Miserables is a huge musical. It requires a cast of fifty characters, a complex set, an orchestra, and a large behind-the-scenes crew. It also has the challenge of being a musical that is well known. It has been performed around the world and is a staple of the theatre scene in large cities. A 2012 movie is now available for viewing in homes on DVD and video streaming. The fame of the musical adds a challenge to any local production simply because the story line and the songs are well known to many who make up the audience. We have all heard professional actors and musicians perform the music. Many in the audience know all of the words to several of the songs.

All of that said, the production was masterful. Director Justin Speck, who directed the Rapid City Central High School production of Les Miserables in 2006, was up for the challenge. He designed a stunning set, choreographed the musical and directed the complex cast. We were delighted to have been able to attend the production.

Before the play began last night, there were the usual introductions and announcements. The Performing Arts Center is in the midst of the capital funds campaign so a brief appeal was an important announcement. There was the introduction of the director, who shared a few brief words. And the chair of the theatre board had a scripted and memorized presentation about the production. Her speech was designed to impress us with the amount of work that the production required. It was unnecessary. The show stood on its own. There was no need to tell us how many people were involved or how hard they worked. We could see that in the production itself.

But what bothered me about the speech was the over-done comparison with professional theatre. She kept making references to Broadway and how Black Hills Community Theatre brings Broadway to Rapid City. In the first place, she was factually incorrect. The Rushmore Plaza Civic Center does sponsor a series of productions by professional theatre groups. The national touring groups are booked into the Civic Center Theatre and they bring the costumes, professional musicians and actors from other places to perform in our city.

We don’t go to our community theatre to see professionals from out of town. We go to see our own friends, church members, and acquaintances put on quality theatre. More impressive than professional theatre in some ways community theatre features people who have other jobs, other commitments and other responsibilities who make time for rehearsals and performances for the entertainment of the community. Black Hills Community Theatre is just that: our community producing theatre for our community. Comparisons with professional theatre in other cities are silly and meaningless.

But before I get too critical it is important for me to remember that the person making the speech is also a volunteer. Serving on the board of directors of a community arts organization is often a thankless task. There is the constant struggle of budgets and fund-raising. There are the differences of personality that always crop up among creative and passionate people. There are different visions for the direction of the organization. And there is the need to provide some structure in the midst of people who have busy lives and little time for meetings. Getting dressed up, greeting the audience and a brief moment in the spotlight at center stage is a small compensation for all of the work of a community arts organization board member.

The production was another symbol of the strength of our community. Our city and county may still be in disaster mode. There were crews out working the restore power to those who had none as we sat in the theatre last night. There are thousands of hours of clean up that remain. It will take us a long time to recover form the effects of the storm. But in the midst of all of that “the show must go on.” We paused for an evening of home grown entertainment and we could hear the people sing. As the lyrics to one of the songs goes, “To love another person is to see the face of God . . .” We may have suffered a major storm. We may have experienced some discomfort and inconvenience. But our cultural heart still beats strongly and within our community is a song that cannot be silenced.

Bravo!

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 ended the last full blog that I posted with a tongue-in-cheek prediction that the blizzard would come, and by Saturday I’d be able to take a kayak to the lake. It didn’t quite work out that way. So here is part of our story.



As the storm began, we were at the church, finishing up some Friday tasks. As the snow intensified, I told everyone that we would be heading home by noon. But we have a bunch of dedicated employees and volunteers, so they wanted to stay and finish the bulletins for Sunday. We finally got everyone on his or her way by 1 p.m. By that time, the snow was coming hard and there were already broken branches in the churchyard. A large branch had fallen on a wire and was threatening to break off a light pole in the parking lot. We decided that there wasn’t much we could do and headed home. Sheridan Lake Road was closed at Catron Boulevard, something that is common in storms. Usually they get the cars that are slipping on the road out of the way and let traffic through, but after waiting 20 minutes we decided to go around by Moon Meadows Road. It was open and we were in a line of cars, so there was no trouble getting to our turn off. There were already two cars stuck in our street and it has a steep hill, so I was a bit uncertain, but there were tracks. I was able to get around the stuck cars, but the snow was too deep and I high centered. After putting the chains on the car, I pulled it into a neighbor’s driveway. I knew the neighbor was not at home and the car would be out of the way of the snowplow, which I thought might come later that day. Trudging home through the deep snow was no problem as we had our winter clothes. I had thought to put coveralls in the car before we left, and we had boots and coats.

We had already heard from a neighbor that the power was out, but we weren’t worried. As the storm whipped into its full frenzy, we could hear the wind whistling and see the trees bent over with the weight of snow and ice. We opened all of the blinds, but the snow was sticking to the windows on all sides of the house and starting to pile up. There wasn’t much to see. Since we had had a late lunch we decided to have a late supper as well. We knew that we had a large amount of soup left over from the previous night. I got out the camp stove and put it up in the garage. We checked to make sure we knew where all the flashlights, spare batteries and other things were and had a pleasant candlelight supper. Later that evening we noticed that the largest tree in our yard had fallen, but there was nothing to be done about it. It had missed the house and deck, so we had no problems. We sent texts to our children that we were OK, made a cup of tea and headed to our warm bed.

I made a joke to Susan about our annual winter camping trip. Since our neighbors have a large motorhome, it was a bit like sleeping in a campground. Between the gusts of wind we could hear the generator of the neighbor’s motorhome running. All else was quiet and very dark.



The storm was mostly blown out by Saturday morning, so I set to work blowing snow. It was heavy going. Just getting the snow blower from the shed in the back hard to the driveway was an adventure. I had to get out the chainsaw and clear a few branches from the fallen tree. But I made some progress. By noon, I had a one-car lane cleared from the garage to the street. I figured that when the snowplows came, I could hand-shovel the neighbor’s driveway and get home with our car. There was no sign of plows. I spent the rest of the day clearing snow from the driveway with a few breaks.

Around 2 p.m. we made phone calls and decided to cancel church. The sheriff still had a complete travel ban for the entire county until 6 a.m. Sunday, which meant that we couldn’t get the church parking lot cleared before time for church. We didn’t know if the church had electricity, but everyone we talked to was still snowed in. Since our landline telephone was out, our cell phone batteries were running low, so I started the pickup and charged the cell phones.



One of the things for which we were imperfectly prepared was the extended power outage. We have battery backups for our main computer, which includes our Internet modem, our phone modem, our server and backup drive. The battery, however only lasted for four or five hours and we still had no electricity. We don’t have a generator. Still not having Internet is just an inconvenience, and with cell phones we could get by without our landline and we could check its voice mail from time to time. Running a car to charge cell phones isn’t efficient, but we had plenty of fuel and it seemed worth it.

It was the first time since we’ve lived in this home that I didn’t finish my shoveling the day after a storm. I went to bed with an eight-foot section of the drive still covered in snow.

Sunday dawned bright and warm with no sign of electricity or the snowplow. The snow had settled so that the snow blower was useless, so I shoveled and carried the remaining snow. I walked down to the neighbors and shoveled that drive, too, so I would be able to easily get the car out when the plow came. Neighbors at the end of the street were working in the street with their 4 wheelers and had gotten an area cleared at the end and a path down to our place. I had to trudge through the deep snow to get down to our car and back, but by that time, the cleared path extended to another house down the hill.



I spent the afternoon cutting up the tree and thinking that we’d have electricity soon because I could see the trucks from the co-op going back and forth. I was tired from the day of hard work and so quit a bit early. Our hot water was running out and I took a mostly cold shower, but got the wood chips out of my hair and we cooked another supper on the camp stove – a big cowboy skillet with beef and sweet potatoes and bits of left over vegetables. Susan had cleaned cupboards and the refrigerator. After supper, I went out to check and the neighbors had cleared enough snow that it looked like we could get out to Sheridan Lake road. It was amazing how much snow they had moved with the little machines. I went down and brought our car up from the neighbors, but we didn’t have anyplace to go. I had just started to charge the cell phones with the car when the yard light went on and I could hear the neighbors yell, “We’ve got power!”

It is amazing how many lights there are in the house when the power comes back on. Every appliance has a little LED on it and after setting all of the clocks our home seemed to be full of light even with the overhead lights turned off. Countryside South, the subdivision across Sheridan Lake Road, got electricity at about 9:30.

We had been without power for more than 55 hours.

The bottom line is that we were never cold, never hungry, and never out of touch with family. We had everything that we needed.

And we’ve got lots of stories to tell.

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 storm that we got yesterday was everything that was predicted and more. We got at least two feet of snow with enough rain preceding to coat everything with ice. We went into the church in the morning, but just getting home at about 1 p.m was an adventure. It took me a couple of hours to get the car safely parked in the neighbor’s driveway. Our hill is impassible until the snow plows come this morning. We have no electricity and the largest tree in our back yard has been blown over. It looked like we were going to lose trees and one light pole at the church as we left, but we’ll wait until later to see. I think I’ve got about a half day of clearing snow from my driveway and I have a neighbor’s drive to clear as well, so it may be afternoon before we can come and go.

The good news is that we are safe, warm and have plenty to eat. The forecast calls for things to warm up quickly. It has stopped snowing, though there is still quite a bit of wind.

I’ll post a more complete blog when I’m not running on battery.

We’ll see you in church on Sunday!

It looks like our west coast relatives will see a bit of sunshine today after having quite a bit of rain earlier in the week. There have been plenty of puddles for our grandson to splash in wearing his new Thomas the Tank Engine boots. The report we got is that the boots do a good job of keeping his feet dry while pretty much the rest of him gets wet. The storms that they saw have headed east and we are getting the precipitation now. There are a couple of inches of wet snow on the ground and the snow should continue throughout the morning. It is just barely cold enough to be snowing, so I’m sure that it will all melt off in a couple of days, but we’ll need to be careful on the drive into work as people forget how to drive on slippery roads. I’m sure that the fender-bender accident patrol will be busy today. Area body shops still haven’t caught up with the backlog from the summer’s hail storms, so it looks like they’ll have plenty of work for the rest of the year.

The web site for Mt. Hood Meadows ski resort in Oregon reads: “It’s a sight not seen since last May: snow covered slopes from Buttercup to Cascade. Beautiful. Exciting. Exhilarating.” Mt. Hood rises beautifully and dramatically over the Columbia Gorge on the northern edge of Oregon and provides gorgeous vistas year round. I’m sure that it is very dramatic and beautiful with a fresh layer of snow. We pay attention to the weather in that part of the country because we have family living in the area.

Our family members in southern Montana are getting the snow as well. 8 to 16 inchers of the wet stuff has fallen along a line from McLeod to Roscoe to Red Lodge. I’m sure that there are some slippery roads in that area as well. Since we plan a trip through Montana to the Portland Oregon for a niece’s wedding in a couple of weeks, the early snow has caught my attention. I’m sure that the weather will warm and won’t be a factor in our trip, but there are plenty of mountain passes between here and there and It is good to have a dependable all wheel drive car for the trip.

I like the snow and it is such a good way for the moisture to get into the ground. Even when it melts quickly as this snow will, it really perks up the trees and meadows. No paddling today. I can get my exercise clearing snow from the driveway. I’d like to paddle tomorrow if things don’t get too bad around here. The lake will be beautiful with snow all around. We’ll see.

Although we get a bit of snow around here, we don’t really live in the cold country. Most of the time that is just fine with me. I don’t need -30 temperatures with howling winds and snow that stays on the ground for months. I like the shorter winters of the hills and the fact that most of our storms are followed by melting before the next one rolls in.

But we seem to live a bit too far south for the Northern Lights. I’ve looked for them many times when they are reported to be putting on a show. Our house faces north and we live on a hill with a good view in that direction, but so far I have failed to see the displays from here. When we lived in North Dakota the lights were a regular treat and those displays were muted compared to what can be seen in northern Montana. I’m sure the folks in Alaska wouldn’t be impressed by the show, but the lights put on a grand show in Northern Montana last week. Folks at Havre reported a gorgeous show. This Tumblr photo was taken the night before last. No wonder the MSU north campus’s sports teams are called the Northern Lights.

The weather will be a topic of conversation wherever we go today. According to one of the web sites where I go for weather news we are likely to set a record for the amount of snowfall this early in the season today. That’s OK by me. I know that one storm doesn’t define the entire winter. And if we do have a more severe winter with more snow than usual, I probably won’t complain much. We’ve lived through enough drought in the hills to be grateful for all of the moisture we get. Perhaps this will be a winter for cross-country skiing. I could use the exercise and there are some great trails that aren’t far from home. Like me, my equipment is a bit old, but sometimes it is fun to be of the “old school.” Younger skiers don’t know much about three-pin bindings and the application of ski wax. Sometimes they find my gear to be fascinating. I’m entertained by the fact that something that I’ve bought new can be considered to be antique. I’m not sure what that says about me. I’m 25 years older than that pair of skis.

We don’t suffer from the weather as did those who came generations before us. We have quite a bit of relatively accurate prediction of storms. We usually have plenty of warning. Our homes are well insulated and we sleep in comfort. Our vehicles are reliable and except on the wildest of blizzard days we are free to go where we want when we want. We have plenty of food in the pantry and warm clothing to wear.

And there is one unique feature to the weather we are experiencing. This is the only place I have ever lived that gets thunderblizzards. That’s right we’ve got lightning and thunder and snow all together. I don’t think it is possible to become bored with the weather in the hills.

So if you’re heading out today, drive carefully. There are plenty of folks who don’t have much experience with slippery streets. And who knows? I may be heading to the lake 24 hours from now.

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 we can’t seem to figure out how to do anything about our government, and because the effects of the current shutdown are relatively mild around her so far, our thoughts have turned to the weather. The National Weather Service, which doesn’t appear to be shut down, has issued its first winter storm watch of the year for our area. In Montana, where I grew up, it is snowing this morning and the storm appears to be headed our way. The forecast calls for rain today turning to snow overnight or tomorrow and about a day’s worth of snow with strong winds lasting into Saturday morning. It is possible that we could get up to six inches of snow. These storms are difficult to predict, especially in the hills, where it can be snowing at one elevation and raining at another. A few miles can make a big difference in the weather. The bottom line is that we won’t escape winter. Cold weather is on its way.

The colors are rapidly changing, but if we get enough snow the leaves will fall and we will have had a relatively brief period for the show of autumn color that some years stretches on for several weeks.

I’ve been reading a bit of Rainer Maria Rilke each day this year. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows put together a daily reader that I have been using to get to know the famous German poet better. I also picked up a copy of Rilke’s Book of Hours, which has the German poems on one page with English translations on the facing page. I don’t read German, but I can pronounce a few of the words and sometimes I just look at the pages for the layout of the language and the symmetry of the lines. It is interesting that I can gain enjoyment from words that I don’t understand.

Today’s poem by Rilke makes me think of the weather around here this year:

Premonition

Like a flag, I am surrounded by distances.
I sense the winds that are coming
and must live them
while the things below do not yet stir.
Doors still close gently
and windows don’t shake.
Ashes lie heavy on the hearth.

But I know about gales
and I shudder like the sea.
I unfurl myself and fold in again
and flail back and forth,
all alone in the great storm.

--from the Book of Images

Like me, Rilke lived in the northern hemisphere where the seasons come and go and weather can occupy our consciousness in ways that cannot be ignored. But he had a great capacity to see things that others took for granted and his poems invite the reader to look at the common in a fresh way.

The ancients didn’t have access to scientific method or knowledge of the science of meteorology. They didn’t have Doppler radar or data from thousands of reporting stations upwind. They didn’t have access to the almanacs of records of previous years. But they developed sensitivity to weather and to the subtle signs that indicate change. They learned to live with the weather and to survive. For generations people interpreted sudden changes in the weather to the whims and notions of God. They could see punishment and reward in the hardships and pleasures of weather throughout the seasons. They projected human personality traits to the movements of clouds and variations of precipitation.

We see the world differently. Our understanding of how weather works has expanded. In some ways our image of the nature of God has expanded as well. As we learn more about the size and scope of the universe we discover that God is grander and more expansive than we had previously understood. There are some who form a worldview that does not recognize the presence of God, and others who claim that scientific discovery proves that God does not exist.

The fascinating thing is that God does not require our belief. God does not demand huge amounts of faith. Jesus’ disciples asked him to “Increase our faith!” Jesus replied by stating that a tiny amount of faith is sufficient. He compared faith to a mustard seed. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that we need to have great faith and no doubt in order to garner God’s attention. The reality is that God loves us even when we have little or no faith. God loves us in spite of our unbelief.

We are tempted to ask God to protect us from life’s storms, but sometimes fail to see that God is present in the midst of the storms.

Rilke’s poem invites me to the image of a flag on a pole that senses the movement of air before it is felt at surface level. Just because we don’t notice that God is moving in our midst doesn’t mean that God is absent.

Like my neighbors, I have a short list of tasks that I want to accomplish before the snow flies. I’ve got the storm windows up, and I leave the sunflower stalks in the garden until the seeds are all gone, so I won’t finish the garden before it snows and melts for the first time. But I have a few things that need to be put away and I need to check around to make sure that I haven’t forgotten any major things. We’ll be warm and secure inside of our home and our cars are ready to venture onto slippery roads should the situation demand it. You could sense the coming storm by the flurry of activity all around town as people sought to make their preparations.

Whatever weather comes, it comes to all of us who live in this place. The rain and the snow don’t make distinctions between those who are prepared and those who are not. They aren’t affected by how much money is in the bank or how fancy the landscaping is. There is a justice to the weather that reminds us that the distinctions of class that we make are artificial and meaningless. We’re all in this together.

And today we wait and prepare and anticipate. But we don’t really know what is coming. That is yet to be revealed.

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’m not sure that I’m doing much better than the federal government this morning. I had my blog written and hit the “publish” button before 5 a.m., but then for some reason my computer got hung up. I kept waiting, thinking that the problem would resolve itself, but after 45 minutes I gave up and restarted the computer. Of course I hadn’t saved, so whatever brilliance was contained in the first draft of today’s blog is lost. And I am in a bit of a hurry today because I want to get some work done at the office before the others arrive. “The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get!”

So you don’t need any more information about the government shut down and I don’t have any wisdom to add. I was, however, thinking about our 2½-year-old grandson yesterday. One of the great things about being a grandparent is the absolute joy of watching your children as parents. Our son is an engaged, exciting, connected and creative father. I don’t know if anything in my life has made me feel more pride than watching him and his son together. And our grandson has the added blessing of an exceptional mother. Together they are doing a great job of raising their son and forming a family. Before his third birthday, our grandson knows that temper tantrums don’t work. You don’t always get your own way and yelling louder isn’t the way to accomplish the things that you want. Sometimes life can be very frustrating for a 2-year-old, but he is learning to use language and persuasion and he is also learning that there are other people in this world with thoughts, feelings and intentions that are different from his.

There is a part of me that wants to write to our elected officials in Washington, D.C., and ask if they might, for a few days, act as mature as my grandson.

So there are some things about the government shutdown that I don’t understand. I’m not sure how you can close over 400 National Parks, museums and monuments. I understand that you can lock the doors to the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., but how do you close Yellowstone National Park. Even if the people at the entrance kiosks don’t show up for work, the road continues to go into the park. My memory of the grand arch at Gardiner is that there is no gate to close in that entrance. And if they did put up a temporary fence, what about the people who live in Mammoth? What are they supposed to do, stay locked in the park and adopt a survivalist lifestyle until it is re-opened? Yellowstone is an enormous amount of territory. Without the National Park Service people are bound to go into the park and they might not be as inclined to follow the rules.

You can’t get any information about it from the park’s web site. If you go there, you find that the web is “closed.” There is a redirect to the Department of Interior web page that contains a letter to government employees from President Obama about the shutdown.

One web site that I visited declared that all weddings scheduled for the national mall in Washington D.C. have been cancelled. Now that is a lot of gall! They can’t cancel weddings. Some weddings might have to be postponed. Others might have to find new locations, but shutting down the government isn’t going to stop people from getting married. For what it is worth, we don’t have any weddings scheduled in our church in the next two weeks. We’d be glad to accommodate those who are looking for a place to get married with the mall “closed.” I doubt if they can keep all of the joggers off of the mall.

They didn’t keep people from looking at Mt. Rushmore. The busses went up the road as usual. The parking lot, garage, viewing platform, restaurant and gift shop were closed. I suspect so were the rest rooms. But you can’t exactly stop people from looking at the side of a mountain that has been carved.

I was delighted to see that the Honor Flight veterans from Mississippi and Louisiana who were visiting Washington D.C. were allowed to visit the WWII memorial. When the arrived the area was fenced off and a gate blocked their entrance, but someone found a way to open the gates. Presumably if it was a Park Service employee that person was working for free. At any rate that person did the right thing. If I had been that employee, I would have probably tried to turn on the fountains for the time that the World War II vets were visiting their memorial.

The official Capitol twitter feed is down, but individual twitter accounts of congressmen and women remain active. I think they should shut those down as well. In fact, I favor taking all of their smartphones and tablets away and locking them in their chambers until they come up with a workable plan. If the government is shut down, it ought to be illegal to be fundraising for the next campaign. Such, however, is not the case.

NASA has decided not to furlough the two astronauts who are on the International Space Station. They are to report to work as usual. The Curiosity Rover on Mars, however, is officially de-funded. I don’t know if that means they will park it until the government gets back in business or if they have just turned off the public cameras. The panda cam at the national zoo is also turned off.



I won’t miss much of that, but I do think that it is tragic that WIC has been shut down. The program may continue in some states, but they won’t be reimbursed for their expanses during the shutdown. Because a group of Senators and Representatives insist on behaving like infants, real infants might not get the nutrition and health care that they need to grow into healthy adults. In my opinion, that is a crying shame.

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.

Someone asked me the other day, “What are we going to do if the government shuts down?” My answer was the same as when people asked about Y2k: “The church will be open for business as usual.” It is October, and the sunrise has moved back to around 7 am, which means that I can’t get in a paddle and still have time to shower and make a 8 a.m. meeting. So from now on, my paddling can’t be on workdays until the days begin to stretch out in the spring. We don’t get our hour back from daylight savings for another month, and by then the days will be even shorter, so in terms of sunrise, we’ll only gain about a half hour.

But I still have opportunities to paddle. On Saturday, I snuck up to the lake in the afternoon after meeting with my men’s group and spending the morning splitting wood. And yesterday I didn’t have any morning meetings so I was on the lake about a half hour before sunrise and paddled a bit longer because I wasn’t rushing to make a meeting.

The critters of the lake can sense the change of seasons. Yesterday was the first paddle since last winter that I didn’t see any geese at the lake. I think that it is way too early for them to have left the country, but they are definitely gathering into flocks and the group from Sheridan Lake was probably over at Pactola or up at Sylvan or down in town at Canyon Lake. From now own we’ll see larger flocks of geese. Some of the hardy ones spend the winter in South Dakota, but they seem to prefer Canyon Lake in town. I suspect that they are more accomplished at getting humans to feed them, even though that is supposedly against park rules.

We were told to expect the fall colors to be a their height last weekend. “It will be an early fall,” everyone was saying. But there aren’t too many colors showing. The temperatures have been warm, with overnight lows in the 40s. We have had several mornings with frost at the lake, but it hasn’t gotten below freezing at home yet.

Without the geese, it was very quiet at the lake. I didn’t see ducks, either, but they were probably there, paddling in and out of the cattails. There is plenty of food for the birds at the lake, but it is time for moving on. We have noticed the movement of the birds at home as well. A scarlet tanager stopped for a dip in the birdbath before heading south. And the blue jays are hanging about in the trees scolding me each time I head outdoors. They come for the sunflowers. The blue jays are slow harvesters, and get plenty of seeds, but once the pinion jays descend, the remaining seeds will disappear in a single day. I haven’t seen the pinion jays yet this fall. There is still color on some of the sunflowers and they aren’t all dried yet.

One way to know that the seasons are changing is that the quality and the color of the light changes. Sunrise on the lake in the fall isn’t quite as dramatic as it is in the summer. The sun angle is higher because the highest hills close to the lake are now between the sun and me as this tilted planet makes it seem like the sun is moving south. The lake gets brighter before we see the sun. Before sunrise the water appears dark with reflections of pinks and purples from the sky. Gone are the gold and yellow colors that mark summer sunrises.

Someone who thinks that a sunrise is a sunrise just hasn’t taken the time to look at enough of them. I can look through my pictures and tell what time of the year the picture was taken by the quality of the light and the colors reflected off of the water.

The beavers have been working for several weeks on two new dams in the inlet to the lake. They haven’t really raised the water level much yet, but you can identify that their winter lodges will be fairly close to each other this year. That means that they have determined that there are enough young willows and birch close to the water for them to eat. The abundance of plants probably signals a slight decrease in the deer population, or at least in the number of deer hanging out alongside the creek in that immediate area. I don’t know if the beavers have made a deal with the mountain lions or not, but there are plenty of other explanations. As is typical this time of the year, it seemed like all the deer were hanging out on the road as I drove up to the lake in the dark. I know from experience that even when I’m being careful it is possible to hit a deer on Sheridan Lake Road.

I go to the lake to clear my head and experience solitude. Most of the time I’m not really alone at the lake, there are just fewer humans around because many don’t like to get up as early as I. There are plenty of critters to keep me company. The lake is rarely really silent even in the wee hours of the morning and when the sunrise comes all sorts of critters start to stir and there is plenty of noise. By contrast, the lake was very quiet yesterday. Most of the time the sound of my paddle in the water was the loudest thing I could hear and I use a wooden paddle that is pretty quiet. My paddling jacket is a little noisy. The waterproofing makes the fabric a bit stiff. All summer long I can paddle without a jacket, but these days I need a good jacket and a stocking cap for my morning paddle.

Another day the lake will be entirely different. A few geese will stop by or the osprey will call to its young across the lake. The ducks will clatter as they get ready for their migration and the beavers will slap their tails to warn me about paddling too close to their space.

Yesterday, however, was a good day for a quiet paddle and time to think and sort out my own thoughts. It is a great way to begin the week.

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.