Rev. Ted Huffman

Listening

I think of myself as an amateur writer - that is I write mostly for the love of writing.My primary motivation isn’t the income that I derive from writing, but rather the love of the process of writing. On the other hand, I make my living by speaking. Of course I do other things, but key to my vocation is my ability to communicate orally. Throughout my career, I have made a careful practice of studying the differences between oral and written language. I have worked hard to become an effective communicator when I speak.

As I was pursuing my education, I became intensely aware that there are many in the academic environment who are excellent writers, but not effective speakers. There is much more to being an effective oral communicator than writing a cogent manuscript and then reading it out loud. There are many differences between effective writing and effective speaking. Speaking demands more repetition, a carefully measured rhythm and precise intonation. Vocal variety is achieved through rate, rhythm, pitch and volume. There are many phrases and turns of speech that do not come across well in writing. Because of the repetition and variation in rhythm for emphasis, I use sentence fragments when I speak that would edit out of a manuscript if I were writing.

From time to time I get requests for written manuscripts of my sermons or other oral communications. It is difficult for me to comply with those requests. If I give someone my notes for a sermon or a lecture, all they receive is an outline with copious notes. If I record and then transcribe an oral presentation, it often does not read well, and requires significant editing before it is a cogent written document.

Oral communication is its own distinct medium. In some arenas, it is becoming a lost art. While contemporary schools place a huge emphasis on reading and writing, much less is taught about speaking and listening. As schools turn more and more to technologically delivered educational media, less and less actual listening is demanded of students, and the art of speaking is devalued as a method of demonstrating knowledge and understanding.

This is a radical departure from the way teaching and learning is practiced in some traditional cultures. In the indigenous tribes of North America, for example, traditional teaching techniques emphasized learning to listen. In many tribal cultures the ability to reproduce stories with word-for-word accuracy is taught from an early age. In some cultures listening is the primary focus of early education. Speaking is allowed only after the mastery of listening is demonstrated.

The challenge for our generation is that there are certain critical concepts and ideas that are best communicated orally, but increasingly we have audiences who are not practiced as listeners. Speakers have always had to adapt oral presentations to the needs of their listeners, but as listeners become more and more accustomed to highly produced video and audio, they lose their skills at learning from more conventional speech. There are plenty of congregations where the ability to listen is barely required. The ideas and concepts presented are elementary at best and the point of the worship tends so heavily to entertainment that the entire production more resembles a product that is sold to an audience than worship that is offered to God. The shift in emphasis often includes a shift in language as well, with the congregation referred to as an audience, the chancel referred to as a stage, and salaried church staff include production managers, lighting and sound professionals and, increasingly, videographers and video editors.

A concept from Indian culture provides an acronym for listening that I have found meaningful and helpful in teaching the skill of listening. In Hindi, rasa is a fairly complex concept. When used in reference to theatre or the performing arts, it is a concept that addresses the evocation of emotions. Rasa is the emotional theme of a performance. In Hindu theology, rasa is a glimpse or taste of the transcendental nature of God. In some translations of the Christian Bible into Hindi, the word is used to describe the good ness of God: “Taste and see that the Lord is rasa.” (Ps. 34:8)

The word is used in teaching oral language in English as an acronym:
Receive
Appreciate
Summarize
Ask
Listening is an active skill that demands practice and work. One can improve one’s ability to listen and strengthen the skill. Receiving an oral communication demands focus. This isn’t something that can be incorporated into “multi-tasking.” There are plenty of scientific studies that demonstrate that people have the capacity to listen fully only if they are not distracted by other tasks and activities. If the television is playing in the background, the individual is partially distracted. If there are side conversations going on, the primary content of the presenter is not received.

Incorporating the ideas of the presenter requires appreciation. We also know from research that people who approach a presentation looking for things to criticize or points to argue, are less capable of retaining the information communicated. Fully hearing an oral presentation requires developing an appreciation of the skills of the speaker and of the content being presented.

Summarizing what has been heard is also critical to retaining content. Counselors are taught specific skills of summarization to both communicate to their clients that they are truly listening and to check the accuracy of their listening skills. When summarization is included in conversation, both parties have a way of determining whether or not communication has taken place.

It is only after receiving, appreciating and summarizing that communication enters the appropriate place to ask. Asking questions for clarification and deeper understanding is critical to oral communication, but asking only works if the questioner is willing and able to listen to the answer. As a teacher, I often find it difficult to answer questions that demonstrate that the student hasn’t been listening to what has already been said. How do I know that the answer will communicate more than the original presentation?

Listening is essential to the continuation of culture. It is at the core of the practice of Christianity. And, I fear, it is a skill that we too often fail to carefully teach.

When, like me, one’s profession is speaking, it is nice to know that at least a few of the people are listening.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Essays

I sometimes refer to myself as an essayist, thinking that the word essay comes the closest to describing what I do in my blog. I am sure that some of my pieces come close to editorials and others are commentary. Still others are theological reflections and more than a few are sermons, but in general, the style of writing that I do fits into the category of essay. Sometimes you will hear of Michel de Montaigne as the inventor of the genre of the essay. I doubt if any one individual invented a form of writing, but it is clear that the French Renaissance writer contributed greatly to the popularity of the essay as a literary genre. What Montaigne did so well in his writing was to merge serious intellectual exercises with casual anecdotes and autobiographical details.

These days, Montaigne is known mostly as an author, most notably for his massive volume, “Essais.” During his lifetime, he was known as a statesman. Literary critics of his time found his digressions into anecdotes and personal reflections as deviations from proper literary style. There are critics to this day who would agree that an essay is not truly a proper form of writing.

I am not practiced in many other forms of writing. I, of course, wrote academic papers during my education and even succeeded in publishing a few academic articles in journals. I have written quite a bit of educational resources or curricula to precise specifications set by the editors and developers of the resources. I’ve started a few novels, but never finished one. I’ve written a few professional documents, but most remain unpublished. The thing I do is write essays.

The word essay comes from the french. It means “to try.” In my thinking, all of my essays are attempts or trials. I am aiming at a connection between intellectual knowledge and personal story-telling. That point of connection is, it seems, a bit of a balancing act and I have a tendency to write many essays that lean one direction or another. So thinking of my offerings as trials suits me well. Each morning I get up and I write and I put forth a trial. My blogs are not finished products. They are rarely finished ideas. They are a way of recording what I am thinking at the time and are a part of the process of forming ideas.

Frequently I return to topics that I have previously visited. I am occasionally asked how I come up with the topics for my essays, and I am not completely sure. Most of the time they are at least partially inspired by the books I am reading. Sometimes they are inspired by the news headlines that I scan before writing each morning. Other times they are inspired by the experiences of the previous day. Among the most popular of my topics for my readers are descriptions of paddling adventures. Perhaps I am better at the storytelling side of the balance than the intellectual ideas. Today’s topic came directly from one of the books I am currently reading. Jennifer Michael Hecht’s “Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It,” has a chapter about the renaissance and the rise of modernism. The chapter focuses on many writers, most notably Shakespeare, but has a couple of pages of reflection on the writings of Montaigne. In her introduction to Montaigne, she refers to him as the inventor of the essay and I reacted to reading it by thinking, “no one invented the essay and there were essays around before Montaigne.” The idea was still stirring in my mind this morning as I gazed out at the falling snow, a fitting response to yesterday’s blog. The news headlines didn’t particularly give rise to a blog topic, so I got to thinking about Montaigne. I first read Montaigne in a college French class. The essays were short enough for a relatively elementary reader and contained ideas worth discussing. I was enamored with philosophy at the time and Montaigne’s style of blending serious philosophical thought with personal experiences resonated with me.

I haven’t come close to Montagne’s mastery of the genre. It seems unlikely that I will. But then I don’t write to become like someone else. I don’t write to master the genre. I write because it seems useful for me to get some of the ideas dancing around in my mind out and express them in some form. There was a time when I thought that I might invest the time to go back through my blogs, select the best ones, edit them and turn them into a book. I suspect that will never happen. It requires a discipline and a focus that I presently lack. I suppose it could be a retirement project, but I doubt that I will ever run out of new ideas and new shapes for the thoughts that come to my mind. A blog seems to be a reasonable form for my ideas. I toss them out, a few people read them, and then we go on to the next one. Some folks read my blogs nearly every day. Some folks let several of them go by and then read them in batches. Some folks stop by and read one or tow on occasion. My audience is considerably smaller than would ber practical for a printed book.And that is fine with me. It seems to be a useful exercise to write even if no one reads what I write. I publish as a blog because it is inexpensive and easy and allows a few folks to read and react to my ideas. Occasionally my blogs provide topics for conversation with family and friends. They also provide the seeds of ideas for sermons and other expressions of my thinking.

So, if you’ve followed this blog post this far, please think of my entries as essays in the sense of trials or attempts. They aren’t finished ideas, but rather trial balloons that I’m floating out. Not every idea is a good one. Not every blog is a hit. But I’ll keep trying. It seems like a worthy investment of time.

Copyright © 2014 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 path of the storm

I’ve never lived where tornadoes are common. There was an occasional sighting of a funnel cloud in the southwest corner of North Dakota when we lived there and I got a good view of a tornado that did touch down while we were living there. That particular storm ripped through some fields and destroyed a few highway signs, but there were no buildings in its path. There have been some sightings of tornadoes in Western South Dakota but there is no record of the storms reaching quite as far into the hills as our home. There was severe destruction in the town of Oglala, about 75 miles south and 25 miles east of Rapid City, a few years ago. But I have spent my life outside of tornado alley, the wide swath from Nebraska to Texas where tornadoes are most frequent and where the destruction is most severe.

I do, however, pay attention to the weather in those states, especially western Missouri, where our daughter lives. So far, we’ve had a pretty good tornado season in the US. Severe storms have been less frequent and less destructive than has been the case some years. But it is early in the season and the tornado sirens were going off as we visited with our daughter yesterday. I could see the large pattern of severe storms off to the west of Kansas City on the radar application on my phone and I kept track of it as the worst of the storms were pushed to the southeast. The worst of the storms were passing south of where our daughter lives. Our daughter and son-in-law do have a secure shelter int he basement of their home, but I couldn’t help worrying a little.

The region is populous and though the storms missed our daughter and son-in-law’s town, there was plenty of destruction from the storms last night. The reports I have read this morning indicate that alt least 17 people have died, most of them in towns close to Little Rock, Arkansas. A big twister, estimated to be a half-mile wide swept through the northwest suburbs of Little Rock, destroying homes and other buildings and tossing vehicles about. In the town of Victoria and $14million school was destroyed. Fortunately there was no one in the school at the time, but it gives one pause to think of the destructive power of the storm and the potential for even worse casualty numbers from such events.

In contrast, the most destructive storms in our area seem to be blizzards. They can bring down trees and cause a lot of destruction, but we generally don’t have our cars tossed about by the storms. Locals can remember the intense destruction and loss of life that occurred in 1972 when intense rain caused flash flooding that tore through Rapid City. The creation of a floodway in the city, advanced flood warning systems throughout the county and changes in building codes and locations of homes should help to keep casualties and destruction down should we experience a similar flash flood in the future.

There are plenty of forces in this world that are more mighty than we. Severe weather reminds us that while we can plan and prepare, there are risks involved wherever humans live.

A Temple University physics professor has proposed building a series of great walls - barriers nearly a thousand feet high and 100 miles long to act like hills to break up the wind patterns before twisters can form. Apparently the most destructive tornadoes need open and relatively flat country in order to develop. The incredibly high price tag of the project - $16 billion - would be offset by storm damage that would be prevented according to Professor Rongjia Tao. I confess I’m a bit skeptical about the plan. Something tells me that the plan might not work and even if it did work, there are quite a few possible unintended consequences of structures that are a thousand feet tall and a hundred miles long. Imagine the destruction that would result if one of those walls fell down! I’m not sure that the people living next to the walls would feel safer the first time a storm came bearing down on them. And the walls would pretty much prevent you from seeing the sunset. Agricultural production would decrease in the shade of the giant walls. I’m pretty sure we should think this one through a bit before we start construction.

We like to believe that we are invincible - that with enough money we can solve any problem - that we can live wherever we want and do what we want. We humans are, in fact, a very capable lot. We have solved some pretty big problems and we have discovered how to extend the span of human life and how to protect ourselves from some kinds of risk and danger.

But we will not live forever.

Each of us will one day die. And most of us will face the grief and sorrow of the loss of a loved one as we travel through the journey of this life. As terrible as some events such as a destructive tornado are, they are never the whole story of our human lives. Arising out of the destruction of last night’s storms will be tales of heroism, survival amidst incredible odds, strength renewed, and the trump of the human spirit in the midst of destruction and grief. God doesn’t send storms into our lives that we might demonstrate what we are made of, but God gives us strength and courage in the midst of terrible events.

I keep my eye on the weather forecasts. I even worry a little bit. I contribute regularly to disaster relief funds and participate in preparedness training. We’ve got our storm kit in our home and in our vehicles. But there is much in this life that is beyond our control and sometimes in this life you have to roll up your sleeves and go to work with the cleanup after the storm that you could do nothing to prevent.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Signs of spring

We had some thundershowers overnight: nothing violent, just the rumble of thunder in the hills and a brief rain shower. I didn’t get up to look out, but I woke up enough to feel snug and secure in my bed and appreciate the sound of the rain outside of the windows. Thundershowers in the hills have the ability to stir a lot of different emotions. There are stil plenty of people who can remember 1972 when a big storm parked over the hills and dumped rain until the creek overflowed, the dam burst and a wall of water drove a devastating path through the middle of the city. Some years, especially later into the summer, each thunderstorm brings the threat of wildfire to tinder dry forests. And most of us have been through the routine of having to get new roofs and car repairs when the thunderheads build and become hail factories that leave an impression not soon forgotten.

But there was something in last night’s showers that evoked a feeling of the joy of spring instead of a fear of severe weather. Perhaps it was the simple fact that it wasn’t snowing. We are beginning to believe that spring has arrived in the hills. The grass is green and the trees are budding out. Now, this morning, the air smells fresh and sweet. Those who have lived in the hills long enough can remember the springs that have tricked us and the spring blizzards that have left us snowed in one last time before winter releases its grip, but we’re getting to the point where people are thinking of planting gardens and getting on with the business of coaxing what we can from a relatively short growing season.

One sure sign of spring were all of the prom night activities last night. The limousine companies were busy, the streets and parks were filled with couples in fancy dress, the restaurants were booked and folks were taking pictures all around town. I went to my junior prom. It was a nice affair, I guess. But times have changed. There were no rented suits for guys at our prom. And we didn’t worry about color coordination with the dresses that our dates wore. I think that the dress was supposed to be a bit of a surprise. It was considered acceptable to ask a general question to aid the selection of the corsage, but there wasn’t an attempt to make a vest (I didn’t wear one) or tie coordinate with the dress. I didn’t own a suit in those days. A sport coat and dress slacks with a white shirt and a tie pretty much made up my outfit. I probably took time to polish my dress shoes for the occasion.

We didn’t have facebook or instagram. My father had a polaroid camera so we did have at least one picture on the night of the prom. I don’t remember those particular details.

One of the differences between then and now is that couples tended to marry earlier. I’ve been married to my prom date for more than 4 decades now, and I have a fair number of friends who married within the first few years after high school graduation. The average age for first marriage now is ten years beyond high school graduation. I suppose that a few of these young couples will remain connected and will become married, but it certainly isn’t the norm in our society any more.

These days, now that I am old enough to be the grandfather of the kids going to prom, I worry a bit about their safety. There are so many potentials for injury out there in the next decade for these young people. Obvious dangers such as car accidents and drug and alcohol abuse are easy to imagine. As real, and potentially as dangerous is the minefield of emotional ups and downs that lie ahead for today’s young adults. There are a lot of different ways for those young people to experience pain.

It is not uncommon for me to counsel couples in the planning of their first marriage where one or both of the partners have had significant long-term live-in relationships with painful breakups. Because they did not go through the formality of marriage, there is no formal divorce, but these people have the complex feelings and emotional tenderness of ones who have been married and divorced. It is not at all unusual for couples to have had multiple experiences of relationships that broke up by the time they go through a marriage. Their lives seem a great deal more complex than was the case for us.

Young people feel a need to have settled into their careers before they marry these days. I don’t remember thinking that things had to go in that order. We accepted that marrying meant that we’d be going through some lean years while we finished our educations and launched our careers. We had a sense that we didn’t know where life would lead us at the point of marriage - simply that we’d be facing those decisions together.

Times change. People change. It isn’t possible to go back to the way things were and if we did, we’d discover that the “good old days” probably weren’t all that good in the first place. I just worry a bit about these young people as they start their journeys into adulthood. I pray that they won’t be hurt too severely or too often. I pray that they will find their way in this life. I pray that they will discover the difference between the dream night of prom and the joy of a long-term marriage. I guess I’d wish both for them.

But, of course, it isn’t up to me. Part of what adulthood means is that they need to make their own decisions and find their own way.

Spring is always filled with a mixture of fantasy and genuine hope. May the rain fall gently and new life emerge as we travel this season together.

Copyright © 2014 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

And the horse you rode in on

I have never owned a horse. We didn’t’ grow up with horses, except for an occasional mare who was brought in to breed with Johnny, our Jack donkey who was the father of occasional mules, usually sold to the Forest Service for trail work in the high country. But we grew up in horse country in a time when there were still plenty of working horses in the country. Our father thought it was important for us to learn to ride and we did, aided in part by a summer of “lessons” on a very calm and quiet horse owned by a family on the edge of town. I probably learned more about horses from adventures with my friends who lived on working ranches with horses and several adventures riding with classmates whose parents ran dude ranches int he area. I did not become a good rider, but learned enough to be comfortable around horses and can still ride when the occasion presents itself.

For the people in the churches we served in North Dakota, there is a story about me and a horse that is still occasionally retold. For the eight years prior to being called as their pastor, I had focused on my academic work, the last four of those years in Chicago. I hadn’t ridden a horse since my high school days. The tradition in our county, however, was to have an annual trail ride to raise funds for CROP. The original CROP walk to end hunger was held in North Dakota, in Bismarck. People walked the same distance as folks in an African community had to walk to obtain water. The walk raised money to dig a new well to provide safe water for that community. The program evolved into an annual walk to raise funds to combat hunger, sponsored by Church World Service. In North Dakota, in the years we served there, the walk was reserved for Bismarck. Other communities varied their fundraisers so as not to detract from the walk. In our area the trail ride was the annual event.

As an eager young pastor committed to mission and outreach, I immediately signed up for the walk, arranged to borrow a horse and saddle, and hit up the members of my congregation for donations. They were very generous and more than a few giggled as they made their pledges. When the day came, I was prepared and swung up into the saddle. As I remember the ride wasn’t really a day-long affair. I think we rode for a couple of hours, had lunch and then rode back.

That was on a Saturday. I dismounted from the ride just a little bit stiff, but feeling no particular distress, happy to have had such a successful adventure. The next day, Sunday, I had to be in the pulpit of our Reeder Church at 9 am. By then I was pretty much stove up and stiff as they say. Not having ridden for eight years or more and then spending part of a day on an unfamiliar horse resulted in using a few muscles that were a bit out of shape. I hobbled up to the pulpit and led worship, sometimes hanging onto the pulpit for strength. The show was repeated two hours later in the other church we served.

My, oh my! That was about as amusing a thing that those western North Dakota folks had seen from a preacher in decades. They loved it. They thought it was the funniest thing they had seen in years. The preacher who got so stiff that he couldn’t walk straight from riding a horse.

My credentials as a dude firmly established, both communities embraced me and our ministry and we always felt at home among those people. I rode a couple more times during our North Dakota years, finding that while I was good for a couple of hours, much more than that was too much for a guy who didn’t spend much time with a horse underneath.

I’ve gone longer without riding a horse in the years since that time. I suspect that a couple of hours would leave me stiff and hobbling.

I can’t remember when I first heard the phrase, “and the horse you rode in on,” but it seems to me as if it has always been a part of the culture in which I live. “Curse you and the horse you rode in on!” is a polite version of the phrase that sometimes is used with words that I choose not to repeat. The basis of the phrase is the sense that you can insult someone directly and in addition attack his means of transportation. I don’t remember ever hearing the phrase when the person receiving the curse was actually riding a horse. It has sort of become a euphemism for criticizing everything about a person. I’m told the phrase is still used in urban slang - perhaps it is a criticism of the car that someone drives.

I know plenty of people who have close connections with their horses. Horse people often see their animals as part of the family and become very attached to their horses, studying their personalities and developing deep bonds. A good horse can get a poor rider out of quite a bit of trouble and horses used for specialty work such as barrel racing or cutting develop abilities to do their work with minimal input from their riders.

Today I will officiate at the second funeral in a month of someone whose horse outlived he rider. in the time of Genghis Kahn, a horse was sacrificed to serve a fallen warrior in the next world. We’ve come a little ways since those days and, gratefully, we no longer sacrifice the horse. The tradition that has been developed of a caparisoned horse or riderless horse is to saddle up the horse and parade it without a rider and the boots of the deceased inserted backwards into the stirrups. There is a famous and memorable photo of the riderless horse at the funeral for President Ronald Reagan.That has been occurring for presidents at least since Old Bob was draped in a mourning blanket and led mourners to President Lincoln’s burial spot.

Today we’ll observe all of the ceremony, with the casket loaded onto a buckboard, the riderless horse and the slow procession to the cemetery for our final farewells. Jokingly I asked the funeral director if they’d have a horse for me to ride. He was thrown by my question and sputtered, asking if the ceremony required that I have a horse to ride.

Actually, I’m not at all disappointed that I’ll be riding in a car to the cemetery.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Complex calendars

Over the years, faithful people have come up with all kinds of ways of marking the passage of days and seasons. Because we have different ways of counting and measuring, not all of our calendars line up the same way every year. Holidays like Lent and Easter move around the calendar, occurring on different days of the year and even in different months, depending on the lunar calendar as well as the solar calendar in the determination of dates. Sometimes the absurdity of alignment of the various days and dates helps us to remember that all of our ways of counting time are a bit arbitrary in the big picture of the universe. The common ways of measuring time have to do with the motion of the earth in relationship to other bodies in the universe. The ancients liked the phases of the moon as a way of counting the passage of the seasons. They were not, however unaware of the sun and how it appears to rise and set each day when one is on the surface of the earth.

20th century physics, including the work of Albert Einstein, helped us to begin to understand that time is not a fixed reality, but relative and appears to be different from different perspectives.

Given the long history of the church and the evolution of calendars and the understanding of ways to count days and years and the passage of time, it should not be surprising that the calendar of feast days and causes for celebrations can become convoluted and confused at times.

Today is a good example. April 25, 2014. In some Christian calendars it is noted as the feast day of Mark, the author of the gospel that is the second book in the order of most contemporary New Testaments, though scholars generally agree that it was the first of the four gospels to appear in written form. Very little is known of the author Mark. Tradition holds that the gospel was written for the faithful of Rome, but soon taken to Alexandra where a new church was founded by Mark before he was subsequently tortured and imprisoned. He died in prison.

The calendar of saints is, however, disrupted during the first eight days of Easter, also known as the Octave of Easter. In some traditions the feast of Easter is observed for eight days. Because Easter occurs at different days on the calendar various other festivals, such as the feast of the evangelist Mark are preempted some years and not in other years. Like I said, it is all very confusing. It seems to me that it isn’t that much of a stretch for a faithful person to observe both holidays on the same day. If we are celebrating the resurrection, why not celebrate one of the authors of resurrection stories at the same time?

In the Roman Catholic Church, the big talk this week is the canonization of popes John Paul II and John XXIII. The actual ceremonies naming the two popes as saints is set for this coming Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter. Millions of people are expected to travel to Rome for the celebrations and events are planned for other locations as well.

Celebrations will be muted in the alpine village of Cevo, Italy, where a 100-foot-tall cross collapsed during a ceremony being held in early celebration of Sunday’s celebrations. The cross had been erected to honor John Paul II. It was designed by sculptor Enrico Job and created for John Paul II’s visit to northern Italy in 1998. The cross was moved and installed in Cevo in 2005. The unusually-shaped cross cracked and fell to the ground yesterday crushing to death a 21-year-old man and injuring another. Authorities are still investigating the accident to determined the cause of the collapse and whether or not the fact that the victim had a mobility disorder might have been a factor in the tragedy.

The investigations can offer little consolation to the grieving family. For them, a grim new reality marks this season of the year and the memory of their son’s death will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Maybe that is how our calendars become so complex. We have a tendency to remember significant events. Over the generations the events stack up and align in different ways until our memories are so complex that no single individual can hold all of the memories and prayers in her or his consciousness.

For one family in our community today will be remembered as the day of the funeral of a bright young woman killed in a rock climbing accident. For another, it is the day of the family service for a middle-aged man who died of a sudden heart attack - the eve of his funeral service to be held tomorrow.The day will gain additional meanings for other families as it unfolds.
We all know that time has different qualities depending on the experiences we have had. Not all time has the same rate of passage from our perspective. An hour rocking a baby is qualitatively different than an hour waiting in a hospital emergency room. An hour with a beloved teacher is different than an hour sweating out a job interview. Time appears to pass at different rates depending on the activities in which we are engaged and the emotions we are experiencing.

So today, April 25, 2014, will have different meanings to different people. For the faithful it stands at the beginning of the season of Easter. We are only just beginning to comprehend the meaning of resurrection. It is a difficult concept to grasp and it takes time to come to grips with all that it entails.

One of the benefits of a few years of age and experience is that I have more patience with things that take more time. I don’t expect for the fullness of the resurrection to become completely clear. It takes years of practice and still new meanings emerge as we explore the depth-on-depth nature of the meanings of the triumph of life.

May we be open to God’s teaching as the season continues.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Learning to listen

I’ve been working on a funeral off and on all week. It isn’t common for me to have so much time to work on a funeral service. Usually I have to write the entire service in a short amount of time. Families often like to plan funerals within a few days of the death of their loved ones. This particular situation, however, involves a relatively large and spread-out family, people who have jobs and find it difficult to take time off from work, and other factors, so there was a week’s delay. This may be difficult for some family members, but it is a good thing for the pastor. I’ve been able to have four relatively long conversations with family members.

Back in 2011, when I was working on a project titled, “Blessing and Letting God,” I wrote a manuscript that is still unpublished about the process of planning and executing funerals. The manuscript is rough and needs some significant work, but it contains the seeds of some pretty good ideas. The genesis of the project was a series of conversations that i had with people about their experience with funerals. While we routinely hear that our church does a really good job with funerals, I also routinely hear people tell stories of funeral services that lack personal connection and that do not speak well of God’s hope in difficult situations. My initial reaction is that we are no ways experts in funerals and that while we try our best, we make plenty of mistakes. Later, when I was collecting the stories I had been told for the manuscript, I decided that really poorly-handled funeral services are more common than I had originally thought.

From the perspective of grieving family members, a funeral is not judged by the quality of the preaching or by the amount of theological reflection that goes into the preparation of the service. It is not judged by the number of ancient prayers that are intoned or the order of the liturgy. Grieving people come to funerals in search of meaning. They want to know that their loved one was known and loved, that her or his life had meaning, and that the pain and grief that they experience has been acknowledged and shared.

The quality of a funeral service is directly related to the quality of listening.

I am a natural story teller. Often, in conversation with others their stories remind me of stories that I know. The temptation is to go ahead with my story that has been triggered by something that the other says. There are plenty of places where such exchanges of stories is appropriate. But planning a funeral is not a matter of what experiences i have had or what parts of my story have been shared. It is about the person who has died and his or her relationship with those who have survived. However, sometimes it is necessary for me to tell parts of my story in order to make connections with the people to whom I am listening. In the case of the funeral we are currently planning, the deceased died suddenly of a heart attack in his van while completing his duties as a courier driver. At some point in the conversation I let the family know that I had a brother who was, at the time near in age to the man who had died. My brother, too, died suddenly of a heart attack in his van while making deliveries. The point of the story wasn’t my brother, or even my process of grief. It was simply to make a connection. “I can’t know fully what you are experiencing, but I have some experiences that make it possible for me to understand your grief and sadness.” My sharing a bit of my story made it easier for the family to tell their stories.

I have officiated at funerals where I don’t have very much information about the person who has died. Sometimes I haven’t had adequate opportunities to get to know the grieving family. In our complex world, families are spread out over large distances. We may not always have the opportunity to meet face to face prior to the funeral. Phone conversations tend to focus on logistics: who arrives where and when; what music; how many pallbearers; where the committal will take place; and the like. I favor worship that is well-planned and I have little patience for worship where the logistics are not in place, but getting those things right is far from having a funeral service that is personal, connected, and assists grieving people to move forward from their journey from despair to hope.

The luxury of being able to listen is a wonderful gift. Large families often allow me to lurk at the edges of conversation while they tell stories. I can gather quotes and quips and the kinds of things that can be used in the funeral to stir those memories. I don’t have to be able to tell the whole story, but I can gather enough bits of it that I can set off the memories in the minds of those who knew the deceased. Sometimes I can ask questions that spark storytelling. I might how qualities and personality traits are part of the legacies we inherit and ask how someone in the room is like the person who had died. Sometimes I ask for single words that might be used to describe the person: honest, energetic, caring, etc. There have been more than one funeral where just reading that list as recorded in my notebook has sparked powerful memories for those who are grieving.

People often confuse listening with hearing. Hearing is a biological process that can be scientifically explained. It is, for the most part, a passive process. When I sit quietly in my boat on the surface of the lake, I don’t have to do anything to hear all kinds of sounds. Listening, in contrast, is an active process that is working to connect with the other at a deep level. Sometimes listening involves knowing how to ask the right question. Listening involves being open to a different way of thinking - a fresh perspective on the world.

Learning to officiate at funerals is probably less a process of learning about bible and theology and the history of liturgy, though those skills are important. The most critical skill an officiant needs to learn to minister through the funeral service is the skill of listening.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Perseverance

The first two verses of Hebrews 12 are ones that I have memorized. I often quote them in worship or in a lecture when I am teaching licensed ministry students. The verses are preceded by the marvelous 11th chapter of the letter. It, too, begins with familiar words: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The chapter then proceeds to go through an overview of the history of Israel and the things that our forebears did by faith. We heard stories of the deeds of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and a long list of other Heroes of the story of our people. The chapter could be used as the curriculum for an introduction to Biblical history. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets—so many of the heroes of our faith are mentioned in a poetic description of the things that our ancestors have done because of their faith. They have endured great hardships, known deep grief, survived living in marginal conditions, wandered in deserts, and survived in the face of conditions under which lesser people would have succumbed.

Then we get to the 12th chapter which begins: “Therefore since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside very weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I use this verse in my classes, because it points toward the foundations of Christian teaching. It provides a summary and introduction to the history of our people and it speaks not only of the future that beckons, but also of the work to which we are called in the present.

I probably also quote the verse in my classes because it contains the word “curriculum” in the Latin. Often, when I begin to speak of Christian education, people quickly ask about “which curriculum should we use?” By the question they are asking about the teaching resources that they should use and often they are looking for some kind of packaged product that can be purchased and presented with minimal preparation and yet will produce huge results, often believing that if they bought just the right product then children would flock to their church.

Of course it is never that simple. There are no magic curricula available and the number of children in a church is more a product of sociology than the choices of educational resources. But it takes hours to teach those things.

I like to begin that process by seeking a Biblical answer. Since the word “curriculum” is used only once in the Latin Bible, we end up with Hebrews 12. Once there, we get a great Biblical image and begin the process of understanding that curriculum is the course that lies ahead, not a specific set of teaching resources. Discerning the course to which we are called by God is a process that requires deep commitment, careful study and extensive prayer. It is also a process for the entire community, not just one individual. If my students learn nothing else in their time with me, they learn that Christian Education is a difficult and complex process with no easy answers or magic formulas.

The word from that verse that has been playing in my mind for the past few days, however, is not curriculum, but rather “perseverance.” That is the translation of the word int he Revised Standard Version, which is what I memorized. In the King James, it is translated “patience.” In the Good News Bible it is “determination.” The Message simply says, “never quit!” The Greek could easily be translated “endurance,” as in the New English Version, but I like the concept of “perseverance.” It describes well my experiences of what is often called for in our spiritual journeys.

When we were pastors in small, rural congregations there might be seasons when we had several funerals all at once. There would be times when had multiple families facing crisis at once. There was a national farm crisis brewing during those years and the families we served were facing hard times. It was one of the first times that there was any attention paid to the stress that is heaped upon agricultural producers in an economy where they have no control over the price they are paid for the food that they grow. I am not saying that it is an easy job to be a pastor in such a setting. It is not.

But our current setting is much different. In those other churches we did occasionally have to be prepared to tap high energy for short periods of time. There were a few “all-nighters.” There were occasional times when we would become tired.

Here in this congregation, in this community, it is a way of life. The energy of a sprinter is insufficient for the course taken by our congregation. Endurance is demanded. Perseverance is demanded. We just got through a difficult Lent with one week with four deaths in the congregation. We walked together with several families in times of particular distress and need. We had an unusually high number of people who needed special attention. We had to coordinate and prioritize our work.

And it continues. The pace has not let up one little bit. There are still several families in the congregation in need of daily contact and support. There are still pockets of deep grief and loss among our people. There is much to be done. It becomes clear that the pastoral ministry is not a sprint, but a marathon and it will take all of the spiritual training and conditioning that we have done in the past to find our way through this particular “curriculum.”

Shedding the weight of sin, we run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

These days I haver been praying for perseverance more than ever.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Restoration

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It seemed as if the busy actives of Lent and the weather were conspiring to keep me from paddling. When I did have a little free time it was snowing and so although the ice has been off of the lake for several weeks, I wasn’t getting on it. However, yesterday, the opposite occurred. I had a day off in celebration of Easter and the weather was perfect. A lazy start to the day meant that I didn’t get on the lake until about 8 a.m., but with the exception of one boat with fishermen who spent most of their time near the south beach area and one shore fisherman, I had the lake to myself.

As is typical for this time of the year, the loudest noises at the lake come from the geese. They complained about my presence from the moment I arrived, loudly protesting my walking from the car to the lake and launching my little boat upon its surface. I’m not sure that the noise had very much to do with me, really. I suspect that they are as loud when there is no one around as well. I think that these geese winter in the area, but I didn’t think to ask them they are the ones who hang around, or snow birds returned early from a winter down south or tourists stopping by on their way north. I think we have all types. Had I thought to ask them, I probably couldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise - they’re too busy honking and snorting and making their own noise.

Paddling away from one group of geese, I soon was struck with the beautiful quiet of the lake. There was almost no wind and the surface of the lake was glassy. I like to paddle toward the mirrored reflection of the opposite shore. I get to see everything twice: once extending up and again extending downward. When the lake is flat, the reflection is as clear and colorful as the land above the horizon.

My first stop after launching my boat and paddling across the lake, was to pay a visit to the beaver. I hadn’t announced my coming and although I think he was at home, he didn’t bother to show himself. The lodge had fresh mud just over where I believe the entrance to be, and there were a few other signs that he is still around, but I didn’t get to see him at all. I sat as quietly as I could for quite a while listening for any sounds from the beaver, but all I could hear was the raucous chatter of a squirrel on shore, the red-winged blackbirds in the pussy willows along the shore, and the echoes of the geese on the other side of the lake. I left the little cove where the beaver has his lodge without seeing him. I did flush one great blue heron. This bird wasn’t especially big and may be one of last year’s chicks.

Mostly my paddle was about stretching my muscles and getting a little physical exercise after a few too many sedentary days. The sun was warm and I soon was aware that I was dressed a bit too warmly for the adventure. I had on only a t-shirt and a paddling jacket on the top. I wore just a cap as I paddled, so the top half was just right. But below my spray skirt, I was wearing dry pants and a pair of insulated booties. The gear is probably necessary because the water temperature is too cold to give much time for a self rescue in the event of a capsize, but there was little risk of such an event on the calm waters yesterday. I began to wish I had brought a canoe instead of the kayak. Canoes are cooler since there is no deck and spray skirt to trap body-warmed air. Regardless of the fact that I was warm, the day felt wonderful and paddling on the lake was a great Easter gift. The lake has a way of renewing my spirit and giving me a fresh perspective on all of the other things in life. Being able to paddle in a boat that I built myself with my own two hands is a special reward.

After I paddled, I left the boat on the roof rack on the car. I’m hoping that I might get another opportunity to sneak out to the lake later this week, and I want to be ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Later in the day, I went to the store to get a few groceries and after doing my shopping, I went out to the parking lot. As I exited the store I saw this beautiful wooden kayak in the parking lot and thought, “someone has a really pretty boat.” Then I recognized that the boat was my boat on my car. Someone has a really pretty boat and that someone is me. I am blessed.

Our Celebration of the second day of Easter continued with time for a little nap, a few deferred home maintenance chores, a bit of cleaning and rearranging. I keep the snowblower in the garage during the winter to keep it easily accessible. This winter, it moved into the garage in October. I moved it to the shed yesterday. I know that I could still need it. The forecast calls for snow Saturday, Sunday and Monday next week, but I can always get it out of the shed if I need it, and it seemed to warm and wonderful yesterday to be thinking about blowing snow out of the driveway.

I cooked dinner outside. It was a perfect day for banking a slow fire under the grill with a liberal sprinkling of soaked hickory chips to fill the chamber with smoke. I baked beans and cooked a couple of pork chops on the grill. A little potato salad rounded out the menu for a great Easter feast. It was a beautiful day and a day of refreshment and relaxation.

Sometimes I have to slow down and take my time to remember how good God is.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Footprints

Recently I was at a table where the conversation was about the various trails in the Black Hills and what kinds of vehicles can travel in various places. I have no knowledge of the criteria used, but it seems that the Forest Service has trails that can be used by all terrain vehicles. There are other trails that can be used only by human-powered vehicles, such as bicycles. Other trails can be traveled only by horses and people walking. It wasn’t clear to me whether or not there are human-only trails where horses are not allowed, but it seems like that might be the case. Various modes of transportation cause different amounts of erosion and trail destruction. I have noticed the scars that ATV’;s leave in the earth, a condition made worse when the ground is soft and muddy. The group whose conversation I was witnessing was arguing the comparative damage caused by bicycles vs horses. The general consensus around the table was that horses cause erosion and that bicycles have a lower impact ont he trails than do horses. Of course most of the people at the table were avid bicyclists who love to go out on the trails and who want access to as much of the forest as possible.

I don’t know which mode of travel has the largest impact. I’m not sure that anyone has studied the topic in depth. I do own a bicycle, but I’m pretty much stick to paved or gravel surfaces. I’m not that good a cyclist to keep things under control on narrow paths. I tend to just walk when I go out into the hills. In my journeys, I haven’t encountered problems with either horses or bicycles. It seems like there is enough room to share the forest with both.

Management of public lands is a challenge and we humans do have an impact. I suspect our logging roads and other modes of access might pose bigger problems for the forest than a few folks on bicycles or horses.

Many years ago my father and a friend drove a Jeep up the main Boulder Road in Montana to the ghost mining area of Independence. From there they drove to the top of the Slew Creek divide and down along Slew creek to the end of the road and into Yellowstone Park. They were trying to demonstrate to their friends that another possible entrance to Yellowstone Park could go through our home town. I don’t know all of the details of their adventure, but I think that in order to complete the trip they had to drive in the creek part of the way and that they may have cut down a couple of trees to allow their passage. At any rate, years later when I walked to the top of the divide, there was no evidence I could find of their passage. A single trip with an old jeep didn’t leave much of a a mark.

I’m drawn to modes of travel that don’t leave any sign of passage. I think there are plenty of places that don’t need roads. I’m grateful that they never built that road down our valley into Yellowstone Park and that to do so today would mean crossing the Beartooth-Absaroka Wilderness, something that is unlikely to occur. Some places are fine for access by simply walking.

Even better, for me, are the trips I take in my canoes or kayaks. Paddling on mountain streams or lakes leaves not footprint at all. Once I have passed there is no sign that I was ever there. The pristine nature of the area is preserved for the next traveler, who, if he or she is careful, can also pass without leaving any marks behind.

I do seem to leave footprints in other areas, however. I think that my carbon footprint is rather large. Although I try to be careful about my use of energy, there are times when I drive a pickup that gets terrible gas mileage. We haul some big loads, but still, I’m hardly carbon neutral. The primary heat source in my home is electricity that comes from a coal-fired generator. Sure there are people who make a bigger mark on the planet than I, but there are also a lot who consume less and live closer to the land.

I seem to be leaving a somewhat larger than usual digital footprint as well. Although I don’t post many pictures on facebook and I rarely tweet on twitter, my daily blots continue to consume bytes of digital storage and if you Google Rev. Ted Huffman you’ll come up with quite a few web pages, images and related other digital material. It isn’t hard for someone with a bit of technological knowledge to follow my digital footprints through the cloud.

The problem with digital footprints is a bit like the problem with traipsing through the forest. There was a time when people weren’t careful with their garbage. They left behind fire rings and tin cans and other items that they had carried into the forest. Much of what they left behind was unsightly and just plain messy. We’ve learned to travel in the woods with less impact. I’ve always practiced “pack it in - pack it out” when I have camped in the forest, but I see the litter that others leave behind. I try to pick up after others when I can and it isn’t uncommon for me to have a small collection of items left by others in my pack or canoe when I return from a trip. I think that I may not be anywhere near as careful in my digital adventures. I suspect that I am leaving a significant amount of digital garbage behind as I travel around the Internet. And there are various ways of dealing with garbage. Sometimes it is just all thrown out without much attention paid to what is being discarded. Other times it is sorted for the things of value that are mixed in with the garbage. I like to think that someone will one day sort through my digital footprints and keep the few gems that are worth saving. But so far that task of sorting is one that I haven’t attempted and I suspect that there might not be much interest for others to sift and sort.

For now, my digital footprints are a bit too large and I’m easy to find as I wander around the Internet.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Easter, 2014

I don’t spend much time worrying about what others think or believe. I am not the world’s greatest evangelist. I am much more comfortable practicing my faith in the midst of a people of faith. I have to push myself to say much about my faith to those whose beliefs are different than mine. In the many situations where I find myself speaking to those who have different beliefs, my usual reaction is to ask them to tell me about what they believe rather than boldly declare what I believe. I have a sense that my actions speak louder than words and that I am called to share the love of God expressed in Jesus Christ through acts of loving kindness to others.

There are things that others say that puzzle me. One is the tendency of some Christians to create a kind of polarity where the opposite of faith is doubt. They characterize doubt as some kind of a lack of faith. I don’t see it that way at all. As we traveled together through Holy Week, we see all kinds of doubt from people of faith. Peter denies Jesus. The disciples desert him. Jesus himself quotes a haunting scripture of doubt, “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me?” The scriptures and the stories of our people are filled with stunning moments of doubt from great people of faith.

Much more threatening to faith in my opinion is a lack of commitment. And there all kinds of low-commitment and low-investment Christian churches around. There are congregations in our community who throw lavish Easter Celebrations and don’t even observe Lent. I can’t even conceive of the meaning of resurrection without death. There is a church in our town who is making a big deal of their drive-through Easter Services. Imagine! Worship God and you don’t even have to get out of the car.

We’ll be plodding away with a crowd of people who not only get out of their cars, but some of whom come to church pushing walkers. Others come to church defying medical diagnoses that would keep some in bed. Others will be coming to church after having pulled an all-night work shift at the hospital or the firehouse or the police department. And all of this is after a grueling Holy Week with services every day and talk of grief, death and loss at every turn. We don’t do no commitment or low buy-in faith very well at our church.

Lack of commitment seems to me to be a much more serious threat to a religious lifestyle than doubt.

Doubt means you are taking your faith seriously enough to raise serious questions. And there are plenty of questions to which I do not have an answer: “Why did this person die and another survive?” “What is the best way to care for a loved one - in an institution or by bringing that person into our home?” “How do I respond when the coach says ‘No practice, no play’ and practice conflicts with church activities?”

Here is one that I get often that I do have an answer for: “How do I get my children to be involved in the church.” The answer is: show them how involved you are and tell them why it is important to you?” I cringe when parents allow middle school children to call the shots when it comes to church attendance - it looks like church isn’t important enough to the parents to stand up for what they believe. I cringe when parents place all sorts of other events higher on the priority list than church. It sets such a poor example for the children.

Easter isn’t a magic day. The realization of the power of resurrection doesn’t come easily. Mary, at the tomb, has to look in and wonder, question the angels, question the other disciples, even question Jesus himself before she can believe. Thomas has to touch to believe. The disciples on the road to Emmaus don’t recognize Jesus for the better part of a day.

Faithful Christians might need to go through the cycle of the seasons of the church year over and over again to really understand the intimate relationship of faith and death and resurrection. I know that I discover new things each year. Perhaps that is why we follow the six-week season of Lent with a seven-week season of Easter. Coming face to face with death and grief and loss and sorrow and sadness takes some practice. Accepting love that never dies takes even longer. 40 days works for Lent. Easter takes 50.

This morning we come to the joyful conclusion of one journey and immediately begin another. Easter isn’t the season of rational arguments and developing dogma or sets of beliefs. It is the season of experiencing love that is stronger than death - life that is triumphant in the face of grief and loss. It is the season of coming to faith that isn’t threatened by doubt. It is the season of making lifelong commitments.

In 1981, our son Isaac was baptized at the sunrise service on Easter morning. Some of my family members thought that I was a bit touched. “Imagine! Getting us up for a 6:00 service! Why can’t they have the baptism at a more normal hour? 11:00 was good enough for our parents and it’s good enough for us.” But I love the statement of a baptism in the season of resurrection. Easter is a great season for making promises. I have never regretted the promises I made on that morning.

There is a gospel song in my mind as I prepare for this day in the wee hours between Easter Vigil and the sunrise service: “On that great getting up mornin’ (fare thee well, fair thee well).” The song is about some day in the future when all of the saints of God will be reunited in God’s realm. I love the image. Of course I’m a morning person. I like getting up early in the morning. I made my family get up for our son’s baptism.

It seems like it is good practice for the resurrection that is yet to come.

May your Easter be blessed!

Copyright © 2014 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.

Great Vigil, 2014

As my mother lay dying I kept vigil with her the first night while my sister ;was trying to figure out how to get from her home to ours. It was a lonely vigil in part because it seemed such a momentous time and I needed to be there with my mother while the rest of the family needed to be elsewhere. It was definitely no burden. There was no place else that I wanted to be more than where I was. I was comfortable with my mother, even comfortable with her being sick. Sometime in the night, in the midst of singing songs and reciting psalms and even reading to her from my book, I recalled other times of sitting vigil.

There was a time, once, when I sat vigil with a woman from the first church we served as she lay dying. She had outlived her most immediate relatives. A niece from some other city was reported to be coming, but there was no one to be with the woman as she lay in the hospital, struggling to breathe, living the last hours of her life. I had already experienced death. I had seen dead bodies. I was not afraid of death. But I had no clue how long this process of dying would take. I know a bit more about what signs to look for, but even now after many years have passed and I have attended the deaths of so many people, the final moments and final breaths are unpredictable to me. When a family asks me what is going to happen and when I do not pretend to possess special knowledge. I speak, rather, of how God’s time and our time are different. I quote the 90the Psalm: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as a watch in the night.”

I remembered sitting vigil with an old Dakota cowboy who, had he been able to choose would not have been in the hospital. Had they asked his opinion, he would have asked them to leave him to die out on the prairie where the hip was broken along with several ribs and probably some internal damage when he was thrown or fell from a horse that proceeded to step on him. He never wanted to be in a hospital, let alone die in a hospital. It was something that he had announced to me when I first arrived before he slipped into a morpheme-induced sleep. I couldn’t help but think of the other ranchers I had known, all of whom were of the opinion that the best way to die is out on the open prairie with their boots on. He didn’t have his boots on. They probably had cut them from his swollen feet. He didn’t have his jeans or his vest or his hat, either. Those had been traded for the indignity of a hospital gown. I thought it was better that he was unconscious, rather than aware of his surroundings. I prayed that he was dreaming of riding into the sunset on a perfect Dakota autumn evening.

I have sat vigil many times over the years. It is, of course, different, sitting with one’s mother. You only have one of those and the experience is unique.

Today is the day of our great vigil. Today we remember those faithful few who stayed with Jesus until the end - even after the disciples abandoned the one they called Lord. Our vigil, however, is different than it was for those first disciples - and it is different from other vigils that we keep when we sit with loved ones and friends.

We know where this journey is leading.

In the midst of the vigil we are preparing for Easter morning. Loads of Easter lilies will be delivered to the church this morning, we’ll pick up the hot cross buns for breakfast tomorrow sometime this afternoon. We’ll be laying the fire for the new light celebration this evening. A new paschal candle will be fitted into the stand. And the morning will be occupied with folding and stapeling worship bulletins with bright and cheerful covers. After six weeks of black-and-white printing, we are ready for color bulletins.

It has been a long and hard Lent for our congregation, with a few too many funerals and a few too many deep losses. Perhaps it is a function of age, or perhaps it is a product of experience. Whatever the reason, I find myself longing for Easter these years with more intensity than ever before. I can remember being a child and having a certain longing for the day when I would wake to a basked with candy, the promise of heading off to church with new clothes, and a big family dinner to follow. I liked the holiday. These days, I am intensely aware that I need the holiday.

There are plenty in our congregation for whom his Easter seems to be of poor timing. They are stil dreading their days. For the widow who is between the news of the death of her husband and his funeral, the full celebration of Easter will have to wait. Her vigil will not end with sunset this evening. For the couple who received a devastating cancer diagnosis just yesterday celebrations will be forced and the clouds of an uncertain future that they had not before contemplated will overshadow the sunny skies forecast for the day. Easter is, after all, a symbolic holiday.

For those of us who live in the rhythm of the church year, Easter is a big deal. I can hardly wait until tomorrow morning when I know a man who just a few weeks ago was at hospice house awaiting his death will be walking into the church with his family after having survived an illness that had doctors predicting that he could not live this long. Death-defying is only one of the gifts of Easter. I know that this man doesn’t have many days left in his life, but every day seems like a bonus now and for those who know him there is no sermon necessary for us to understand the triumph of life even in the face of death.

We’ll be keeping ourselves busy with the vigil. We’ve a long list of tasks to accomplish. But they are happy preparations - there is much joy that lies ahead.

PLEASE NOTE: Easter is a very busy time. We have evening services tonight and a 6 am sunrise service tomorrow. I may not post my daily blog entry in the morning tomorrow. I’ll be writing, but I am unsure of when I will upload.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Good Friday, 2014

There are events and days that burn themselves into your memory. Yesterday was one of those days for a woman in our community. A frantic search had begun the evening before when her husband did not return from work. His joy involves traveling around the hills in a van making deliveries, so people didn’t know where to start looking. The usual places turned up nothing. Then, yesterday morning, the van was spotted in the parking lot of an area business. Everything looked normal until a closer examination revealed that the driver’s seat was reclined. Laying on the seat. looking peaceful, with a small medicine kit in his lap was her husband. He was dead.

An unattended death in South Dakota requires a careful examination and investigators from the Sheriff’s office were soon on the scene. Photographs were taken. The body was transported to the hospital for a blood draw. The woman was kept informed about what was happening, but there was a delay before she could see her hospital. In the midst of that delay, I entered the scene. I visited and had a prayer with the woman, made sure she had a glass of water and some tissues and got some information on the status of the investigation. I explained some of the procedures and the reasons for the careful investigation. Before too long we were able to go to the hospital morgue for an initial viewing. As we were still waiting for the paperwork to catch up with the coroner, she was not allowed to touch her husband until later in the afternoon when his body was released to the funeral home.

It was a day that she will never forget.

I suspect that the telling of the story of the day has already begun as her closest family members make phone calls to more distant relatives and friends are notified. My writing of a couple of paragraphs in today’s blog is part of that process of telling the story. I have been careful to write a somewhat generic description in those paragraphs, however. The man and his widow deserve to be remembered for much more than the events of a couple of hours.

It was that way with our people. The events of the last week of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem were dramatic and the pace seemed to rush along toward a very tragic ending. As his friends and disciples witnessed the awful events they spoke to their friends and the process of telling the story began. By the time we came into the picture the stories had been told over and over again until a few key details and a few dramatic descriptions had become formulas for telling the story. The events of the day that has become known as Good Friday were filtered down to a few paragraphs in the Bible and a few rituals and church practices. Most Christians can tell you that Good Friday is the day that the son of God was flogged, ordered to carry the cross on which he would be crucified and then put to death.

We don’t have a clear memory of why we call the day “Good.”

Some scholars see the origins of the name of the day in the term “God’s Friday” or “Gottes Freitag.” Others maintain it comes from the German Gute Freitag. Still others say that the name refers to the way that the death of Jesus shows God’s great love for humans, and sacrificed in order to purchase for humans every blessing.

It probably isn’t important that we know the reasons for the name of the day. In some places, perhaps most notably Denmark, the common term for the day is Long Friday. It is also known as Holy and Great Friday and Chartfreitag (Sorrowful Friday).

For the new widow, yesterday may have seemed like a long day. There were periods of waiting and longing to see her husband even though she knew that what she was going ot see was only part of what she had loved. The reality of his death was sinking in deeply even as the sometimes ponderous process of investigation and paperwork seemed to grind on and on without any definite resolution.

No one counted the number of tissues used to wipe away the tears. No one kept track of the time, though we looked often at the clock that seemed for a while to have been stopped as our conversation drifted into silence because none of us had words for the depth of the experience.

It was too soon to offer comfort. All we could give was our presence.

Now, a couple of millennia later, our people haven’t forgotten the day of Jesus death. Our memories are incomplete. There are details that once were clear to the disciples, but that no one remembers any longer. We’re never quite sure how to commemorate the day. Should we have a sermon? Should we invite in the neighbors? Should we join with other congregations? Should we read the story again and again? Should we light candles? Should we follow the stations of the cross? How should we mark a day that we cannot forget, but which none of us wants to be the only memory we have of Jesus?

It is another day in the story of our life as a community of faith where our words fail us. The gift that we have to offer to each other is our presence.

So we come together. Part of the time we simply sit in silence together. We read some familiar texts, we say a few prayers, we recall other times of loss and grief in our lives. Our conversations are limited. There are no words to fully capture the meaning of the day.

And we wait. The vigil continues. Like the widow who cannot imagine how her life will unfold in the midst of this new reality of a husband whose funeral must be planned, we have some sense of what comes next, but there is much that is yet to be revealed.

Long Friday is not a bad name for the day.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Maundy Thursday, 2014

Maundy Thursday is the day of Holy Week that is most recognizable to most of the members of our congregation. The tradition of observing Maundy Thursday with a communion service is longer-standing and more deeply entrenched in our congregation’s life. This is my 19th Maundy Thursday with the congregation and over the years we have had simple observances with the reading of scripture, the sharing of communion and some form of tenebrae, where candles are extinguished. Some years we have had actors portray the roles of the disciples as we acted out the last supper remembrance. Some years we have offered the practice of foot washing. We have had years when the choir sang and years when they did not. There have been a lot of different shapes to our services over the years.

Over the course of the history of the church the day has had several different names: Holy Thursday, Covenant Thursday, Sheer Thursday and Thursday of Mysteries among others. A strong emphasis on the serving of Holy Communion is the focus of the service.

Here in the Black Hills, we have a strong tradition of a passion play. The Black Hills Passion play was performed every summer from 1932 until its last performances in 2008. The nearly 70-year run of the play provided dramatic and musical training for a large number of people throughout the hills. Over the years a large percentage of the people of the hills were among the millions who saw the play presented. Seventh-generation passion player Josef Meier, who founded the Black Hills Passion Play, said that the production was directly rooted in the Lunen Passion Play that has been in production since 1242.

We have tried to present a partial passion play as part of our Maundy Thursday services. One year we commissioned a new musical drama that was presented in our summer Music, Arts, Dance and Drama camp and then produced for Maundy Thursday at our church with a troop of actors from the congregation. The weeks of rehearsals were challenging and although the production was well received, we haven’t found the energy to produce such a program every year.

Although music and drama are key elements in worship, the heart of Maundy Thursday remains the celebration of communion. The sacrament transcends all of the other elements with which we surround it.

Since adding a third minister to our staff in 2010, Rev. Kathleen Batchelder has assumed the central lead in planning and conducting the service. I am very comfortable to just worship with the congregation but often am assigned a minor leadership role in the celebration.

A congregation like ours is very diverse in the traditions of the people. With a significant portion of members who have belonged for 10 years or less combining with members who have belonged for 50 years or more and all sorts of others in between, the expectations for how we observe Holy Week are many and varied.In more traditional German congregations, it was the practice to make a very special occasion of first communion. Children were not served communion until after they had been confirmed. In many congregations the tradition of confirming on Palm Sunday so that the new congregants could have their first communion on Maundy Thursday was observed. Some of our members remember that tradition from their upbringing. Even though we practice open communion, serve all ages when we celebrate, and usually have confirmation on Pentecost, Maundy Thursday brings special memories to those who grew up in the tradition of the day as a time of first communion.

Like many words and names, the term “Maundy” probably took an obscure route through the languages of Europe in the middle ages, starting with the Latin “Mandatum” to become the name we apply to the day. After using the term “Holy Thursday” as the primary designation of the day, I have returned to the practice of calling the day “Maundy Thursday.” Two years of high school Latin hardly make me an expert, but I love the connection with Jesus instructions to his disciples: "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" ("A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another as I have loved you.”)

A day named for the reminder that we love one another seems most appropriate for all congregations. Like any other human institution, we are capable of discovering differences and allowing our emotions to run strong. In the heat of disagreement we have been known to say things that were less than kind of one another. That is why we building the passing of the peace into each of our worship services. We acknowledge that we are dependent upon God for the power to share peace. Peace is not our invention, but God’s intention for us as a way to live together. We need to be reminded of Jesus’ instruction to love one another over and over again.

In our congregation we serve communion in several different ways. We have a long tradition of receiving communion in the pews and own specialized communion ware to facilitate the delivery of bread and small cups of juice to worshipers where they sit. But we also practice communion by intinction and invite worshipers to come forward for communion. Tonight worshipers will be invited to come forward in groups, to be seated at the table, and to be served as they sit.

No matter how we serve, the act of serving gives me the opportunity to look at and think about the lives of the people who participate in our services. There are so many different stories that we gather together in any worship service. There are those who are grieving, those who struggle with disease, those who live with disability, and those who suffer from emotional and mental illnesses. There are worshipers who are facing major life challenges, those who face bankruptcy, those who stubble to make ends meet, and those who are in the midst of moving their household from one place to another. There are folk who come to share the meal who are struggling just to make it through one more day. These and others are the people we are invited to love.

It is good to be reminded of the invitation.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Holy Wednesday, 2014

Most cultures have some form of a wake tradition. The concept is simple. After a person dies, there is a delay between the event of the death and the final disposition of the body. Although embalming practices are ancient, for much of human history, embalming was reserved for the very wealthy. Common folks needed to be buried within a relatively short amount of time before decomposition of the body became too advanced. A day or two was all that separated the death from the funeral. During that delay, it quickly became a tradition for someone to sit with the body. In many cultures, the closest family members took turns staying awake and sitting with the body. In many cases, the body was brought into a home and family and friends gathered to wait with the body.

Modern funeral customs have resulted in the adaptation of many wake traditions. In our part of the country, Lakota and Dakota people continue the tradition in a modified form. An all night wake is held the night before the funeral. The body has already been prepared and placed in a casket by a licensed funeral director. It is rare for family members to participate in the bathing and dressing of the body. The evening before the funeral, the wake starts, usually in a community center or a public hall. Although our congregation still allows for all night wakes, most do not. A gymnasium or community center is a more likely location for a wake. The wake lasts from 12 to 15 hours and consists of people coming and going. There is usually a meal served and snacks and beverages are available throughout the wake. A time of formal story telling and prayers is often a part of the wake sometime in the evening.

The traditions of a funeral give away among plains tribes have also shifted with the times. The give away at the funeral was, in most cases, modest. A warrior owned only his clothing, his weapons and his horses. Often clothing was minimal. When a warrior died in battle, it was not uncommon for his weapons and horses to be lost in the battle. When a person died after an illness or of old age, there was often time for the individual to give away possessions prior to death. Whatever possessions remained at the time of death were quickly given away so that the spirit would not be encumbered by possessions as it made its transition from this world to the next. A larger give away was common after a year had passed. Given away on this occasion were the possessions and handwork of the mourners.

The wake has an important role in the process of grieving. Because it usually involves a viewing of the body it offers an opportunity for the reality of the death to be absorbed by the mourners. The time of intense remembering and storytelling reinforce memories and make it easier to tell the stories and to remember at a later date. The wake also provides an opportunity for mourners to meditate on the simple fact that we are all mortal. We will all one day die from this life. Shared grief and tears provide an alternative to the sense of loneliness and isolation that are often a part of grief in our modern society.

Tonight is the night of our wake service that is a part of our Holy Week observances. The format is relatively simple. We have a good meal together, and share songs and stories about Jesus’ life. People re-tell the ancient stories as reported in the Gospels and also tell of their own experiences of encounters with the resurrected Jesus. We put up a display of artwork and show slides of paintings and drawings that depict Jesus.

We spend an evening in which we allow the reality of death to be apparent as we think of our own mortality.

One of the deepest mysteries of our relationship with God is also one of its greatest miracles. In Jesus, God shared the totality of human experience. Unlike the gods of Roman and Greek mythology, Jesus wasn't a temporary experiment in human living. Rather, Jesus shared the entire experience from birth to death. Jesus was born a human birth and he died a human death with all of the pain and suffering that can be involved in those events. We live with the knowledge that there is nothing in life or death that God has not experienced and that God does not share as we journey through our lives.

In a few days, the attention of our congregation will turn to the glory and surprise of Jesus’ resurrection. But for a while this week, it seems appropriate to sit for a while with the reality of his death. Because we will all experience both the death of loved ones and our own deaths, it seems appropriate that we practice the process of grieving and remembering. Because the promises of God are not only given to us, but also to our children and grandchildren, it seems appropriate that we carefully craft opportunities to speak of death, loss and grief with our children as we pass on the traditions of our people from generation to generation.

The transition from last night’s blues concert to tonight’s wake service is fairly dramatic. The stage and lighting need to be taken down and stored. The tables and displays need to be set up in a new pattern to make the room ready and welcoming for people as they arrive for a meal and the opportunity to share stories. The piano has to be moved. Food must be prepared. Just as is the case when a loved one dies, there is much that needs to be done in a short time table.

Last night, after the blues concert, one of the members of our congregation was commenting on the long hours that are a part of this week. The person was rightly noting that I get tired. Grieving is exhausting. Getting tired isn’t the worst thing that can happen. When a loved one dies, sleep patterns are disrupted, exhaustion comes close. Getting tired is part of the process. Having tasks to complete in the midst of the disruption can be a part of the healing. Just getting up and brushing your teeth can be a reminder that life goes on.

Our Holy Week journey continues and it is indeed a journey. We will pray for strength and endurance. Rest will come soon enough. For now we stay awake and watch.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Holy Tuesday, 2014

Some people called them work songs. Others called them field hollers. During the days of slavery in America, there were organized shouts and chants that arose from many sources. Rhythm helped to make the work go faster. Singing broke up the monotony of repetitious hand work. The songs gave expression to the groans of an oppressed people. Sometimes the slave masters demanded that that the slaves sing for the entertainment of the masters. In a similar time frame spirituals arose as a way to give expression to faith, to remember the biblical stories and promises and to teach faith to others. The blending of the spirituals and the field songs gave rise to a unique musical genre that has come to be known as the blues. It is music born of oppression, sorrow, sadness and misfortune. It is music that speaks of the triumph of the human soul over the power of human cruelty.

Perhaps no other art form more eloquently expresses sorrow, sadness and grief.

Of course there are those who say that the blues have been corrupted by their popularity. The blues gave rise to jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and role. Country blues prompted urban blues and regional flavors developed such as the Texas blues and Chicago blues and West Coast blues. As acoustic instruments gave way to electronic instruments, electric blues began to be heard in clubs from New Orleans to Chicago, Blues-rock was heard on the radio and television.

Then one night in the late seventies Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi did a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live. That was so popular that they brought on Elwood Blues on harmonica and other respected musicians to participate in a real band. The group made an appearance on Saturday Night live. That gave rise to a musical tour, other television appearances and the hit movie, The Blues Brothers in 1980. After Blushi died in 1982, the Blues Brothers continued to perform with a rotation of singers and band members. Blues Brothers 2000 came out in 1998.

The musical form that started among African-American slaves had hit the mainstream and found a decidedly privileged audience. Tom Robbins wrote a book, “Even Cowgirls get the Blues.” The Blues had entered popular culture in ways from which it was impossible to turn back.

These days it is a moot point whether or not privileged people of other cultural and ethnic backgrounds can sing the blues. They are doing it. The blues have become a part of the cultural identity of a large part of the world.

Still it is a pretty long stretch from the parable of the ten maidens in Matthew 25 to a blues concert. Perhaps the five foolish maidens were singing the blues after their lamps ran out of oil and they sat in the dark while the other five, who had extra oil trimmed their wicks and headed with the bridegroom into the marriage.

The story, a parable about being prepared and not knowing when God’s realm will arrive is the traditional text for Holy Tuesday. Faithful Christians are admonished to remember that the timing of our lives is beyond our control. Part of the process of living and dying is understanding that there are many things in life that we cannot manipulate. The time of our own death is one of those things. It is particularly dramatic in our congregation as a member, who was predicted to die a couple of weeks ago goes home from hospice house for whatever period of recovery he has been granted. Not only can we not control the timing, we can’t predict what will happen, either.

In traditional congregations the Matins service for Monday through Wednesday of Holy Week is known as the bridegroom service because of a traditional prayer that speaks of Christ as the Bridegroom of the church. In the Orthodox Church, Holy Tuesday is the day for reading the second half of Mark and the Gospel of Luke, although only about two-thirds of Luke’s Gospel is actually read in most congregations. In the western church the focus is more often on Jesus’ predictions of Peter’s denial.

In our congregation, Holy Tuesday is the night of the blues. Last year we had our blues concert on Holy Wednesday and a wake service on Tuesday, but those two events were switched in part due to the popularity of the blues concert and the desire to make Wednesday events centered around families and children with the school’s early release and a partial acceptance of Wednesday as church night.

So our fellowship hall is set up with a stage and a coffeehouse setting for an evening of blues.

Part of what we have recognized is that there are many in our community who are not familiar with the ways of grief. When loss overtakes them they are emotionally and spiritually unprepared for the trials of their lives. Holy Week gives us the opportunity to practice our faith and experience the power of music as a companion in spiritual journeys. It also gives us an outlet to express the grief that arises from the many losses that have occurred which we do not adequately express. The blues concert also gives our congregation an opportunity to practice the spiritual discipline of extravagant hospitality as we throw open our doors to the community and invite our friends and neighbors to join us in an evening of music, refreshment and fellowship.

James Van Nuys is one of the Black Hills best acoustic guitar finiger-pickers. He plays a wide range of traditional music from folk, to Irish to ragtime to blues. His niece Maya is a classical violinist who has a special feel for the fiddle. Together with other hills musicians such as singer and guitarist Bob Fahey, the Van Nuys have provided contemporary blues music to our region. James is heading up the bill of artists for our night of blues this evening.

We may have drifted a long way from the roots of the historic church in our holy week observances. We may have drifted a long way from the field songs and chants of African-American slaves. But we are aware of our roots and sometimes the music reaches farther than our intellect is able.

Talking and writing are inadequate. The blues have to be experienced.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Holy Monday, 2014

Our corner of the church isn’t real big on recognizing Holy Monday as a holiday. It isn’t common for Protestant congregations to have worship services on Holy Monday. In the Roman Catholic Church, the reading for the mass is John 12:12-19, a kind of reprise of Palm Sunday. John’s report of the day is short and reminds readers of the raising of Lazarus. It also speaks to Jesus’ popularity as arising from that event. In Eastern Orthodox congregations, Holy Monday is sometimes referred to as Great Monday or even Great and Holy Monday. In their calendar it is the third day of Holy Week, which begins on the Saturday before Palm Sunday with the readings of Lazarus’ raising. In churches that follow Byzantine Rite, the Gospel is the story of the fig tree that doesn’t produce fruit from Matthew 21:19-22. In some congregations the day begins with sunset the night before an an all night vigil focus on reminding the faithful of the judgment that will come to those who do not bring forth the fruits of repentance.

In some Eastern Christian churches, all four gospels are read during the first three days of holy week, with the first half of Matthew read at the third hour on Monday, the second half of Matthew read at the sixth hour of Monday and the first half of Mark read at the ninth hour.

These practices date from the Middle ages and were less common in the earliest history of the Christian church.

The service that we have in our congregation today doesn’t arise from the holy Monday traditions of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches, but rather from Protestant traditions. In the Protestant experience, emphasis was made on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. By the middle of the 20th century, these traditions had slipped slightly. Many Protestant congregations had only one mid-week service during Holy Week choosing Maundy Thursday or Good Friday as fit the schedule of the congregation. As time passed, attendance at midweek services ion Protestant congregations slipped. By the 1970’s attendance was low enough that many church leaders were afraid that church members would not be familiar with all of the events of Holy Week, going directly from Palm Sunday to Easter in their religious observances and missing the pain, grief, sorrow and anguish of the week. It was feared by some that emphasis on only the feast days and celebrations might decrease the fullness of spiritual experience for church members.

Some congregations, predominantly non-denominational ones, dropped the observance of Lent and Holy Week altogether, focusing their attention only on Easter.

Mainline Protestant congregations began to embrace the concept of Palm and Passion Sunday. The United Church of Christ Book of Worship produced in 1978 has both a liturgy of the Palms and a liturgy of the Passion. The two liturgies can be combined into a single service beginning with the Palm Sunday story and ending with a complete reading of the events of the last week of Jesus life from one of the Gospels. The Revised Common Lectionary reflects these liturgies, providing readings for both services in the usual three-year cycle. For many years our congregation observed this combined Palm and Passion Sunday service on Palm Sunday.

Last year, however, we decided to divide the two liturgies to increase the number of opportunities for people to worship and to allow for more special music and pageantry to reflect the Palm Sunday story and allow increased participation by children and youth in the service. It was natural for us, in our Holy Week schedule, to move the liturgy of the passion to Monday.

So this evening we will gather in our sanctuary for the reading of the story of the last week in Jesus life. This year we read from Matthew and we will have three voices to break up what might become monotonous if read by a single voice. Unlike Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Congregations, we will observe the Protestant tradition of wearing red stoles for the reading. The tradition of red or burgundy instead of purple comes from a focus away from the royal color of purple and the role of Jesus as sovereign and to turn attention to the suffering and pain that Jesus endured in the last week of his earthly life.

For me the service is a kind of preview of the week that is to come. We have two traditional services in Holy Week that employ the organ and the singing of hymns: the Liturgy of the Passion tonight and Maundy Thursday communion. The other services have different musical flavors with blues on Tuesday and jazz on Wednesday. Friday’s service is observed without music. And Saturday’s service, held in the evening is technically the first observance of Easter, following the tradition of beginning the new day with sunset that was common in Jesus time and common throughout many Jewish and Christian communities.

Holy Week provides two important foci for the faithful. The first is Sabbath observance. In our busy and hectic world, we often fail to give enough time to rest, reflection, prayer and the reading of Scripture. During Holy Week we make sure that these disciplines are observed daily as a gift of Sabbath quiet to our congregation. There is at least one hour each day that is offered for recreation and renewal. The second emphasis is upon connecting with loss, grief, sorrow and sadness. Each of us will face the death of loved ones. Each of us will one day need to face our own death. Practicing for these times can help us build the spiritual tools to face them with dignity and grace when our time comes. Of course there is no way to fully prepare for these once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but there re spiritual practices that can be nurtured through discipline and repetition. Each year Holy Week gives us the opportunity and challenge to practice our skills of facing death and grief.

The week can seem long with all of the services. It will demand endurance, another skill that is useful in this life. As we often say to grieving families, hard isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes doing the hard things is the best thing that you can do.

The hard week ahead may indeed be one of the best investments we can make in the lives of the people of our congregation.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Palm Sunday, 2014

I know that there are a lot of people who live lives that are very different from mine. There are plenty of faithful Christians who aren’t quite as immersed into the seasons and cycles of the church year as I. I no longer have the ability to distinguish between the faith disciplines that I do because I am a minister and those that I do for other reasons. My life is all of one piece. I can imagine that if I weren’t a minister, I might not be as involved in the day-to-day operation of the church, but since I am a minister, I don’t exactly know what that would be like.

I’ve been aware of the differences over the past week because of some of the conversations I have had with the workers who are installing new concrete in our entry way and preparing for our new front doors. To me, it was almost unthinkable that we wouldn’t be able to use our front doors on Palm Sunday. To at least some of the workers, there was a sense of “what is the big deal? It’s only one week!” Of course some of the workers have gotten an education by hanging around the church. Those who thought that the church was basically empty and without activity during the week have gotten an education about how many different things happen in the church. And even if they don’t know all of the events that are a part of Holy Week in our congregation, they have discovered how important the week is to me and all of them have acknowledged that Easter is a big deal to us. “That’s kind of your big show, isn’t it?” one worker asked me yesterday morning.

Of course I don’t think of it as a show at all. But Easter is a big deal. We have had a congregation steeped in grief during Lent. Five funerals averages one a week so far during this season. They didn’t line up one per week, however. And we have been dealing with an unusually large number of our congregation who are facing life-changing illness and end of life issues. Moves from homes to retirement communities, making arrangements for home health care, and going through the process of prearrangement at funeral homes have been on the agenda of members of our congregation this season.

Holy Week is, in part, about practicing. Each year we look grief and loss and death straight in the face because we know that death and grief and loss are real parts of human existence and because we want to develop the resources and skills to face those things with dignity when our time comes. So we use the events of Holy Week as a time to practice.

We live in such a fast-paced world that many don’t take time for Sabbath, let alone a week of focusing attention on spiritual disciplines. That is one great privilege that comes with my particular vocation - it is my job to take these things seriously. It is my job to lay aside other concerns and focus my attention on my relationship with God. I am well aware that others have to fit their religious obligations in and around their vocations.

This is the second year that our congregation has decided that more options serve our congregation better. By offering a spiritual discipline each day of Holy Week, we have more options for our congregation. Last year they responded by turning out in larger numbers than ever before. The total attendance at Holy Week services was four or five times what we had experienced in previous years. Most members of the congregation found their way to one or more of the mid-week services. And we aren’t a congregation that is big on mid-week events and services.

Today, as we begin our Holy Week journey, it seems to me that each of the special services is important to me - important enough that I think it would be worth doing even if no one came. Today is the liturgy of the palms. Tomorrow is the liturgy of the passion with the reading of all of the events of the last week of Jesus’ life. Separating the two services has been very meaningful for our congregation. Tuesday is our blues concert. Wednesday we have a wake with good music (jazz of course), good food, and time for telling the stories of Jesus in an informal atmosphere. Thursday is a traditional Maundy Thursday communion service. There is a modified stations of the cross service for Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday. Of course we have a sunrise service, breakfast and a glorious big celebration planned for a week from today when we celebrate Easter.

Along the way there is a service at an area home for persons with disabilities who are unable to get out. There are visits to be made and communion to be shared with those who are home bound or in institutions. There is the normal business of the operation of the church office.

And this year there is the added treat of construction. I have insisted that we need to be able to use the front doors on Easter. I’m pretty sure that the workers do get my passion on that one.

But I need to keep reminding myself that most people don’t live inside of this cycle of Holy Week. Most have to go to their regular jobs and take care of their families and keep up with household chores. Holy Week probably isn’t the biggest item in their lives this week.

I wonder if Jesus had a sense of “here we go” as he rode into Jerusalem on that day so long ago. Certainly he knew that a trying and potentially exhausting and overwhelming week lay ahead. Certainly he knew that what he was facing was something that he had not previously experienced.

I know I have a bit of nervousness about the endurance that will be required of me this week. I hope that I have prepared properly and that I will have the strength that is required.

It promises to be a week to remember.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Juan Santanmaria Day

Costa Rica is a fascinating country in many ways. Part of what makes it fascinating is its unique geography and climate. Sitting near the equator not far north of the connection point between North and South America, there is a lot of diversity in a small area. Pacific and Caribbean coasts, rain forests, desert, volcanoes and more all in an area about half the size of the state of South Dakota.

The country has a unique history as well that shapes its present reality. Costa Rica has had no standing army since 1948. The country is officially neutral in the conflicts between other countries and has played a significant role in negotiating peace in its conflict-ridden neighbors such as Nicaragua.

Costa Rica does, however, have a military past and on April 11 each year, it remembers and celebrates the bravery of one soldier. Juan Santamaria Day is a national festival with parades, bands, and lots of music. To tell the story of the celebration requires a look back at the history of the mid-nineteenth century. Even before large companies began to dominate Central American politics in their quest for bananas and rubber, there were people who sought to exploit the region for personal profit.

William Walker was a US citizen who raised a mercenary army and headed through Central America in hopes of setting up a slave-trade empire. His troops succeeded in overthrowing the government of Nicaragua and, in 1856, had its sights set firmly on Costa Rica. The Costa Rican government sent army troops to Nicaragua to head off the invasion by Walker’s troops.

As the two sides made contact at the Battle of Rivas, it seemed unlikely that the Costa Rican troops could prevail. Walker’s mercenaries were far better equipped and they were battle-hardened. By contrast the Costa Ricans were a bit disorganized and lacked sufficient guns and ammunition. Juan Santamaria, sometimes reported as a very young soldier and sometimes as a drummer boy, snuck into a hostel where Walker’s troops were staying and set fire to the place. The fire worked and many of Walker’s troops were killed in the blaze. Santamaria was also killed in the fire. Some reports are that he was killed by enemy fire, other storytellers report that he expired in the blaze. Most of the stories report that he asked other soldiers to care for his mother if he should die before volunteering for the dangerous mission.


Like many battles, there are differences in the stories that are told, depending on your perspective. The battle did little so slow down the apirations of Walker. He went on to become the president of Nicaragua in a rigged election. It was then that the power went to his head and he made the political mistake that was to bring about his eventual downfall. He nationalized Accessory Transit Company. The company, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, had provided the weapons and cash required by Walker’s army. Vanderbilt responded by providing guns, cash and leaders to the Costa Rican Army. The second battle of Rivas ended in a cholera epidemic, which was carried back to San Jose where thousands died. Estimates are that as many as 10% of the population of the country was killed by the cholera. Walker eventually surrendered to the US after having been president of Nicaragua for about a year. The corporations continued to exercise their power and Central America continued to be exploited by its northern neighbors for natural resources. The slave trade, however, was coming to an end.

In Costa Rica, Santamaria day is celebrated as the end of Walker’s advances, even though it took more than a year after that first battle before Costa Rica’s sovereignty was assured. Every year, on April 11, there is a parade and a celebration in Alajuela, Santamaria’s home town.

Yesterday’s celebrations included drum corps, dancers, stilt walkers, clowns, dancers, guiro players, baton twirlers and jugglers. Costa Rica’s Culture Minister Manuel Obregon played his accordion. Thousands of red, white and blue balloons were released by the gathered crowds, filling the clear sky with the colors of the Costa Rican flag.

A military celebration in a country with no standing army and a very modest military history is different that such a celebration might be here in the States. There are no military bands and no persons in military uniforms. School groups wear their uniforms and schools often have troops of synchronized dancers who march in the parade. The bands sometimes have uniforms and sometimes do not. A white shirt, a yellow scarf and a blue hat often suffices to represent the military uniforms of the past. A few gold braids around the shoulder are added for the flag bearers and others. It is believed that Costa Rican soldiers of the mid-nineteenth century wore uniforms of French design because military officers were trained in France at that time.

Mostly Juan Santamaria day is an excuse for a party and Costa Ricans don’t need much of an excuse to have a good time with music, dancing, and food.

The name of Juan Santamaria lives on in Costa Rica. In addition to the statue and the park with is name in Alajuela, the main international airport in San Jose bears his name. Each time we travel to and from the country, we go through Juan Santamaria International Airport. It would be hard to find much information about Juan Santamaria anywhere in the airport.

Officially Roman Catholic, religious celebrations and holidays figure prominently in Costa Rican life. This year Juan Santamaria day marked the beginning of several weeks of festivals and celebrations as Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week tomorrow and Easter is commonly marked by at least a week of feasts and celebrations.

It is another unique feature of a unique country that there is a military holiday each spring in a nation with no military. The hero who is celebrated may or may not have been a hero. The battle may or may not have been decisive. it all depends on whose stories you believe.

The celebration, however, is genuine and the people are enjoying good times in Costa Rica.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Under construction

I have accepted the fact that the construction project at our church means that we won’t be able to use our front door on Palm Sunday. I’m not happy with that reality, but it is simply the way it is. We had the flagstone removed before 9 am on Monday. The weather has cooperated. The contractor didn’t have any equipment breakdowns. There were enough workers on the project each day. The work we planned simply took more than a week. They will pour the sidewalk today, but the main pad at the center where the doors open is the last bit of concrete to be poured.

I am pretty sure that it won’t affect church attendance. By the time people have made the effort to get to the church, they are unlikely to be deterred by having to use a different door to get into the building. We’ll have some parking lot attendants and guides inside the building to keep the traffic flowing. I’m less anxious about that part of the process after we were able to have a funeral without major problems on Wednesday.

There are plenty of things in life that don’t work out the way you plan. Life is full of setbacks. Some days you have to make a conscious choice about whether to complain about what isn’t working out or celebrate the things that are working just fine.

Chances are in coming years the work will give us a few stories to tell. Sometimes those stories can bind us together as a people and contribute to the formation of the community. I remember the Easter Sunday when we were serving a church in Boise. The street in front of the church was excavated down more than two feet for the installation of new storm sewers and the only way to access the parking lot was through a side street. The problem was that one end of that side street was blocked by the construction so people had to take a round-about trek through a residential neighborhood to get to our church even though it was located on a major urban through street.

We set a record for church attendance that Easter.

I guess we’ll never know if the record was because we had planned and promoted and worked with our people hone their skills at invitation or because people like a challenge and they didn’t want to think that a little construction could keep them from getting to church. It is even possible that the construction helped visitors to find the church. Because traffic was moving so slowly in the construction zones folks who otherwise might not have noticed the church found themselves looking at it while they were waiting for traffic.

I don’t think we can get a “traffic” effect from an entryway under construction. But those who visit our church will surely see the project as a sign of vitality. The fact that we are making improvements and working toward increased accessibility at our building’s main entrance can easily be viewed as a sign of a congregation that is looking toward the future and taking action.

From the descriptions in the Gospels, Jesus entry into Jerusalem was a bit of an impromptu affair. As parades go, it probably wasn’t the most spectacular. The Roman authorities knew how to make an impression with their large war horses and chariots and legions of soldiers in armored uniforms. Jesus’ rag-tag band of disciples escorting a donkey colt and throwing their outer garnets on the street with a few hastily-cut palm branches probably didn’t rank with the biggest of parades.

But it gave us a story that we continue to tell millennia afterwards. Long after the entrances of Roman governors and other official parades have been forgotten we tell the story of Jesus confronting the power and might of the rulers of the world with a quiet spiritual strength. Asked to quiet down his crowd of supporters, Jesus confesses that they are beyond his control: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

The expectation of many at the time, of course, was for a political upheaval. They thought and prayed that the messiah coming to Jerusalem would mean that the Roman governor would be displaced and that Jerusalem would once again become the capitol of a Jewish state that would rise to prominence and even domination in the region. The stories of the time of Solomon, when Jerusalem was a center of power, wealth and learning, were still remembered. Although the monarchy was long gone, there were still those who thought that God’s power was best displayed by intervention in human politics and governmental systems.

If what they expected was an overthrow of the government, they were disappointed. Jesus entry into Jerusalem did spark a bit of controversy among the religious hierarchy in the temple, and he did raise the attention and perhaps the ire of the Roman authorities, but there were no armies. There was no coup.

So if we don’t get everything perfect for this Palm Sunday, it isn’t going to be the end of the world. The story has real staying power among our people. We aren’t going to stop telling the story just because there is a week when it takes a bit more effort to get into the church. We won’t lose the importance of the story to our faith while we are walking down the hall to exit the building through the west door.

Holy Week is, in part, an opportunity for us to practice for much bigger challenges that will enter our lives. The services of the week are carefully crafted to remind us that Jesus is God’s presence with us in the hard times of life as well as the good. God doesn’t come to us in Jesus to remove pain or loss or grief, but rather to share with us the tears and sorrow and loss.

Jesus gave his life for us. We can probably afford to give a few minutes to use a different door to get to church.

Copyright © 2014 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 busy place

I have been saying that things are busy at the church lately, but busy is a way of life with us. In some sense, it is no busier than other times in the life of our community. I arrived at the church a bit early yesterday to make sure that things were in place for a morning funeral. The day had a special challenge because of construction work at our front door meant that we had to be prepared to direct people to enter the building through the West door. That door is narrow, but wide enough for the casket to be brought through. There was a bit of juggling as the construction vehicles and funeral coach competed for space with parents dropping off their children for preschool. All of us using the same door made for some congestion in the hallway, but people were attentive to one another and all went well. The volunteers who were directing traffic in the parking lot made a big difference and really helped with the flow of people and vehicles.

Prior to the funeral there were several centers of activity as volunteers prepared lunch in the kitchen, the family gathered in the parlor, musicians rehearsed in the choir loft and we completed final preparations in the church office. Down the hall six teachers and 40 children were preparing for the annual preschool open house that will be today and tomorrow. Outside the crew was spreading and compacting gravel and building forms to pour concrete.

There was plenty of activity throughout the day. In the evening I was sitting with members of our youth group who were meeting with a representative of Big Brothers Big Sisters to plan our participation in this year’s Bowl for Kids Sake. I could hear one of our teens practicing the piano in the fellowship hall while the bell choir rehearsed in the choir loft. Earlier another member of our youth group had gotten in a half hour of violin practice and then worked on her homework as she waited for the meeting. Members of our adult choir were preparing for their rehearsal and visiting in the hallway.

For what it is worth, it isn’t nearly as busy as it gets next week. We have Holy Week worship every day, with special services planned to offer a wide variety of different experiences for people of all ages. Those extra services are “add ons.” We go on with life as usual. Fellowship groups meet, choirs rehearse, craft and spiritual practices groups will meet, bible studies gather their participants, and the preschool will continue to serve 40 children in the two-day program and an additional 40 in the three-day class.

Sometimes I find it interesting that some of the people who are active in our church know about activities and events that they participate in but are largely unaware of other events. Every once in a while someone will schedule a meeting or come to the church expecting it to be empty and be surprised at all of the things that are going on. I take a bit of delight in those kinds of surprises. I treasure the activity and the coming and going of people in and out of our church. Sometimes I marvel at all of the things that are going on, and I try to keep track of things. The truth is, however, that there are lots of things that happen at the church in which I do not participate. It isn’t possible for any one individual to be a part of all of the activities.

People who are not involved in churches often have mistaken notions about the job of a pastor. I do sit in my study, read books, do research and write sermons. But most of that is done before 9 am in the morning. I do make visits in the hospital, nursing homes and homes of our members, but those are sandwiched between meetings and appointments. I officiate at weddings and funerals, but it takes more than just showing up and reading from a book of worship. A typical funeral involves three or four hours of meeting with family members, a dozen phone calls to arrange for the music, luncheon, ushers, bulletin, and coordinate with the funeral home and a few more hours to actually write the service. We custom design each service and I always work from a manuscript at funerals. The words are simply too important to leave anything to chance. A wedding requires a similar amount of preparation, though weddings usually give us a bit more warning to plan and space our work. Couples wishing to marry, however, often don’t realize the amount of time they need to invest. When marrying couples are active in the church we know them and it actually takes less time to prepare than when we are asked to officiate with people we hadn’t met before they started to plan their wedding.

At the same time, we work hard to make things look easy. We do a lot of thinking about the flow of people. We try to be prepared for every service of worship. We manage the building with consideration of what zones need to be heated and how best to utilize the energy it takes to keep things going. I am always more relaxed with my worship leadership when I am well prepared.

Managing the activities of the church is always a balancing act. There is a certain amount of physical labor that must be accomplished. We move a lot of furniture. Despite occasional failings of our cleaning staff, they work hard and often have to work unusual hours to keep ahead of all of the activity.

Once in a while it is good to just sit or stand at the intersection of the hallways and listen. God’s spirit is alive and active. The energy of an exciting and constantly changing community is easy to feel.

And when we go to bed tired at the end of a long day it is a good tired. Today is another opportunity for a busy church to serve our community.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Serching for the origins of ideas

Chances are you don’t read my blog out of a love of the history of philosophy, but from time to time I find myself thinking about how certain ideas became prominent in our culture. When we in the west refer to ancient times, we often are referring to Greek and Roman history. Those two empires dominated much of thought and civilization for many centuries and gave rise to many ideas that persist to this day. Of course there are other ancient traditions, many of which gave rise to significant philosophical concepts, in other parts of the world.

The problem is that we don’t really know much of anything of those ancients by direct record. It isn’t as if our libraries are filled with the books that they wrote. Socrates, for example, is often referred to as the originator of some of the foundational ideas of democracy and is credited with a specific form of teaching and learning. Socrates, however, believe that the dynamic nature of thought and ideas was inhibited by writing. He himself didn’t leave behind a collection of writings. We know most of what we know about Socrates and his way of thinking from the writings of his student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle. The ideas were well-worn and, one might presume, edited, by the time they were put into the form in which they have been preserved for the historical record.

One of the sources of our knowledge of the nature of the thought and ideas of the ancients is Cicero. Cicero lived from 106 to 43 B.C.E. He was a brilliant Roman orator, philosopher, and statesman. He wrote many works, but his “On the Nature of Gods.” is perhaps his most well-known work. In it he presents a debate among an Epicurean, a Stoic, and a Skeptic. It is Cicero’s presentations of the thoughts of these three schools of philosophy that is the source of much of what we know about how these ideas emerged in ancient times. Of course there are other sources and direct ideas have survived in the writings of adherents to the individual philosophies, but often what we know comes second or third hand and some of the most accessible statements of the ideas of the ancients come from those who commented on the thoughts of others. This is true of Cicero’s writing.

The point I am trying to make here is that we often don’t know exactly what the ancients thought. We have an idea of an idea - a memory of a memory. Still our thoughts and even our language are influenced by thoughts that embargoed long before we came into this world and whose origins are often obscured in the past.

Cicero didn’t start out as a fan of Julius Caesar, but he learned to accommodate Caesar once it became clear that he had prevailed against the Republic. The transition of the republic founded by Greek-influenced ideas of democracy into an empire with a huge regional reach influenced much of the history of our part of the world. Our language and culture have been shaped by Roman thoughts and ideas.

It all started with the crossing of the Rubicon. OK, that wasn’t the real beginning, but in Suetonius’s record of the event. It was a dramatic moment. In those days, Governors of Roman provinces were allowed to be military commanders in their provinces. They were, in effect, the generals of the Roman army in their area. However, provincial governors didn’t hold the same power within Italy proper. In Italy, only elected magistrates could stand at the head of a contingent of troops, a position known as holding imperium. The law was so strict that any regional governor who tried to hold imperium within Italy was sentenced to death.

In 49 B.C.E. Caesar broke the law with intention. He led his legion south over the Rubicon river from Cisaipine Gual into Italy, heading for Rome. The Rubocon river marked the boundary. It isn’t one of the major rivers in the region, and its course is likely to have changed over the years, so no one is completely sure where the crossing took place, but Seutonius wrote that Caesar uttered the words, “alea lacta est” (the die has been cast). In Seutonius’ account Caesar is hesitant as he approaches the river, but once he has crossed and military conflict is inevitable he seems to have become set and hardened in his choice. Had Casear’s troops been defeated, he would have been put to death and history would have turned out much differently. It is likely that the course of Christianity might have been much different were it not for the Roman empire.

Today, there isn’t much to see if one visits except for one of the most polluted rivers in Italy. The river was minor during Roman times and is even smalleer these days with all of the pumping of underground waters for agricultural irrigation.

The phrase, “crossing the Rubicon,” has entered the lectionary of our language. It is generally used to indicate passing a point of no return. Michael Ruppert used the phase as the tile for his book about the attacks of September 11, 2001. He isn’t the first to use the phrase in reference to a different historical event than Caesar’s march toward Rome.

If you do a quick Internet search on the word Rubicon the first sites toward which you will be directed are commercial sites selling the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. The Rubicon is the name selected by Jeep for its most rugged off-road vehicle. It’s name doesn’t come directly from Julius Caesar or Roman history. It is a reference to an extremely challenging 22-mile jeep trail in Colorado. It is especially challenging because of the size of the rocks and other obstacles that are a part of the trail.

Now the trail probably got its name from someone who understood the reference to Caesar and the river in Italy, but common usage has transported us far from the ancient roots of the meaning of the term.

We are shaped by the past even when we don’t take time to recognize the influence of the ancients on our present lives. Taking a journey through the history of philosophy in search of the roots of the ideas that we hold dear can be as challenging and adventurous as taking a jeep on the Rubicon trail.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Rwanda 20 years later

It has been twenty years, but the time is far too short for the pain to be ended. In those days I was distracted by the events of my everyday life and not keeping up with all of the news from Africa. Our congregation had a small refugee resettlement ministry and when one family got settled, we would notify the agency that we could sponsor another refugee. Two single men were recommended to us. They were from Rwanda. I had to get out a map to find out where Rwanda is. The basic story that we were told was that there was ethnic tension in the region and that the two young men who had come to the United States had both been employees at the US embassy and therefore had received some assistance expediting their move to this country. We were told that one was Tutsi and the other Hutu. We didn’t know what that meant. We rented a small apartment and furnished it and prepared for their arrival. When they arrived, one of the most difficult hurdles of refugee resettlement was already overcome. Their English language skills were excellent. Before long they had jobs and were on their way to self sufficiency.

It was only after they arrived and I began to pay attention that I became aware of the horror that was taking place in their country. It was April 6, 1994 when President Habyarimana was killed when his plane crashed. There were reports that the plane had been shot down. The very next day Rwandan armed forces began the killings. Tutsis and moderate Hutus were targeted. The rate of killings was incredible. Entire villages were rounded up and slaughtered, many killed with a machete to the throat. By the time we heard of the events a week had passed and the Red Cross said that tens of thousands may have died.

We wondered why some other country didn’t intervene. Where was the United Nations? Why didn’t someone go and stop the killing. The reports became more and more fantastic about the numbers who were being killed. Stories emerged of entire extended family systems hunted down and slaughtered. villages were surrounded and everyone killed. So called “safe places” were announced and when the people came, they were far from save at all - on the contrary they were traps.

Soon it wasn’t clear who were members of official military groups and who were simply extremists stirred up by hate radio which encouraged the killing in nation-wide broadcasts every day.

At least 800,000 people died at the hands of the extremists over a period of about 100 days. The killings finally ended in early July when Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels finally took control of Kigali. More than 6 million people were displaced during the killings.

We can say whatever we want about what should have happened. The bottom line is that one of the most devastating genocides of a century marked by incredible violence and genocide left a nation torn and millions grieving the senseless slaughter of human beings over some kind of supposed ethnicity. It was racism at its worst and most of the world couldn’t tell the difference between the two sides.

I have never been to Africa. I have never visited Rwanda. But I have heard the stories of those who have. It is an experience that forever changes those who undertake the pilgrimage.

Solemn and intensely emotional ceremonies have marked the anniversary of the killings each year since 1994.

Ten years after the genocide, in 2004 the movie Hotel Rwanda, based on real events, told the story of Paul Rusesabagina who attempted to rescue fellow citizens from the genocide. His actions saved the lives of at least a thousand people. The movie explores the political corruption and the repercussions of the violence. It isn’t for the faint-hearted. It did help to educate the world, and especially those of us in the United States about the scope of the killings and the failure of the international community to provide what was required to save the lives of hundreds of thousands.

Yesterday it was 20 years. A week of mourning began with a wreath laying at the national genocide memorial and the lighting of a flame at Amahoro Stadium in Kigali. UN peacekeepers did manage to protect thousands of people in that stadium during the killings.

Yesterday speeches and performances recalled the genocide and traditional mourning songs were sung.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in the aftermath of the genocide is how children are taught the lessons learned from the awful tragedy. Children in Rwanda attend schools that are literally next door to places of massacre. How are they taught the truth about their history without being destroyed by the weight of the tragedy and devastated by the fear of the horror that is their heritage?

Children in Rwanda are taught that they are now one people - they are just Rwandan, not Tutsi or Hutu. Ethnicities are officially banned in the country these days. But those children are growing up in the shadow of death. They can’t escape the grief of all of their elders at the horrors of 20 years ago. All children are taught about the genocide and its causes as part of the official curriculum in school. Elementary education is free in Rwanda and most children are able to be educated in schools where there are no ethnic distinctions.

I hope they are also taught the stories of those who bravely risked their lives to save others. The story of Paul Rusesabagina and his hotel, and the story of Captain Mbaye Diagne, a United Nations peacekeeper who saved many lives through his courage are stories that need to be preserved and treasured as parts of the national heritage.

Twenty years is all too short for the world to have learned the lessons of this horrible event. But we start by simply remembering. As painful as the memories are, the tragedy would be compounded were we to fail to remember.

As we weep with Rwanda, may we increase our resolve to never again allow such horror to get out of hand.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Reading

I wasn’t the best student in high school. I had plenty of intelligence, but I wasn’t motivated to apply myself to the content of my classes. There were a few classes where I learned some lifelong skills. I have often commented that the two most important classes for me in high school were typing and Latin - both of which I use every day. When I got to college I had to focus and learn new study skills. One of the skills I had to master quickly was that of reading for content. I did a lot of outlining the books I was reading in order to teach my mind to organize the information that I was gaining. Slowly I learned to organize the information without having to keep such copious notes. One of the things that I did when I got to college was to stop reading in bed. I had read myself to sleep for years at that point and it was obvious that I was making an association between reading and sleeping, an association that didn’t work for college reading. I had a job opening the campus library at 6 a.m. each morning. Most mornings there were very few people using the library during the early hours, so I could do a bit of reading myself. Throughout the day, between classes, I would sit at my desk and read.

By the time I got to Seminary, my reading skills had improved. I learned to work through the table of contents and the endnotes of a book to see how the author organized ideas before actually reading the book. Once I understood the structure of the book, it was easier to retain the information presented. About half way through my graduate education I found time to read novels again and I became aware of two different styles of reading. My recreational reading was less systematic. I would read for the story line and the emotional content without as much emphasis on the ability to recall specific content when I was reading for fun. My more serious reading relating to the learning and research I was doing required a more focused approach. I was still taking plenty of notes, but there definitely were two distinct modes of reading.

These days I can read with both of those mindsets, but I have added at leas a third way of reading. The newest form of reading is done online. We still receive a daily newspaper, but most of my news reading is done online these days. When I am reading online, I look at a lot of content that I don’t actually read. I skim the headlines looking for stories that interest me and then click on a few stories. I will occasionally read an online news story carefully, but much of my online reading consists of scanning and skimming. Often I will be unable to recall any particulars of something that I have read online. Most frustrating to me about this style of reading is that I cannot distinguish the source of an idea or thought. It is generally something that I read online, but I didn’t read carefully enough to go back and review what I have read. A quick browser search will often yield a similar article that will give me the content that I need.

I use the Internet for research as well. Many scholarly and journal articles are best accessed online. From time to time when I find a serious bit of research I will print it out to read more in depth. I think I am capable of careful reading with my computer, but I know that for the most part I don’t read very carefully online.

So far I have resisted a digital book reader or tablet computer. I have the software to read books and articles on my phone and my notebook computer and it seems to me that an additional device isn’t needed at the present. What I suspect is that such a device might add a fourth way of reading, somewhere between the scanning and skimming of online reading and the focused reading of a book.

Because of my college and graduate school experiences, I am convinced that we are capable of training our brains. Through practice and discipline I learned to read in-depth and to organize the content of what I was reading for recall and application.

I worry a bit that we aren’t focusing on that kind of discipline in contemporary education. With continual access to the Internet, today’s university students have the ability to access far more content than we could find in conventional libraries or access through interlibrary loan. The incredible increase in the amount of content available to students is impressive and exciting. But I wonder how many students are really reading in this scan and skim environment.

It is wonderful to have access to huge amounts of data. I remember my physical and emotional reaction to the massive Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. At the time, in those pre-Internet days, it seemed as if I could find any book I would ever need. The library boasted five floors of stacks, over 4.5 million bound volumes, thousands and thousands of journals and periodicals, reference collections, and special collections and rare books. The library was then, and I believe still is, weighted towards the humanities and social sciences.In those days the divinity collections were in a separate building - another incredible collection of books. It has always been a fascination that the location of the first sustained nuclear reaction is now the site of one of the world’s great collections of humanities literature.

I never came close to even discovering all of the resources that were in that library. But what I did do in those years was to allow a few great writers and a few great thinkers to get under my skin. I read every book that Elie Wiesel had published to date during those years. I read Bonhoeffer and Barth and Tillich carefully and allowed their ideas and thoughts to penetrate deeply. I believe that my identity was shaped by those great thinkers and their ideas. There were many other writers whose ideas shaped my own. That doesn’t happen if all you do is scan and skim.

I’m grateful that today’s students have access to the Internet and to devices that allow them to access huge volumes of information. But I also hope that they will discover a few great thinkers whose ideas are worth getting to know in depth. They may even discover that there are a few books worth owning and reading more than once.

Copyright © 2014 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.

Jesus wept

There is much of the, pain, sorrow and grief of this world from which we would like to opt out. One of the responses that is often heard when a tragedy or death occurs are statements like, “It’s better this way,” or “God needed another angel.” While such sentiments are well-meant, they demonstrate our tendency to downplay the pain of loss and the deep sorrow that accompanies the death of a loved one. We want to make things better, to restore the grieving individual to a pre-grief state.

We are uncomfortable with death and grief and loss and sorrow and sadness.

There is no small amount of Christian theology that is preached from pulpits and written into books that seems to downplay loss and grief. These theologies promise good things to those who believe. There are even preachers who say that financial success and happiness are the rewards of a life faithfully lived. And there is real joy in a life of faith.

But a life of faith is not a magic ticket that gets you out of the reality of pain.

Perhaps no story in the Bible illustrates this reality more intensely than the raising of Lazarus. The story, reported in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John is part of our preparation for Easter. It is often touted as one of the great examples of the power of God. Lazarus, who has been dead for four days and is wrapped and laid in the tomb is called forth by Jesus and he rises from death to life once again. The witnesses are amazed. It defies the general sense of how things occur. It gives Jesus an opportunity to talk with disciples and disbelievers about the nature of resurrection.

But there is something important in the story that should not be passed over too lightly. After Lazarus dies, family and friends gather around to mourn the death and to support his sisters who have survived him. When Jesus finally comes to the region one of the sisters, Martha, goes to Jesus and the Gospel reports a discussion about the nature of death and the promise of resurrection. Martha is quick to focus her attention on the end of time: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus speaks of himself as the resurrection and the life. It is a theological argument and the kind of discussion that one might have with a grieving person.

Jesus conversation, with her sister Mary, however, is quite different. Mary rushes to Jesus and falls at his feet sobbing. Like many grieving people, her grief comes out in anger: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” The emotion of the outburst is completely understandable. People often express their grief in ways that seems to others like anger. Anger is a real part of the grieving process. Sometimes, when I am working with those who are grieving, I almost long for that angry outburst because it is a sign of the healing process of grief at work. When I get no emotion from those who grieve, I worry because I know that the emotion is working beneath the surface and that we need to discover appropriate ways for it to be expressed.

Jesus’ response, however, is remarkable - and a good lesson for those of us who spend much time with others who grieve. Jesus looks around and sees Mary and the other weeping mourners and asks about the location of the grave and then the shortest verse of the New Testament paints a graphic picture: Jesus wept.

Jesus wept.

It is simple, natural and profoundly human. With Martha, Jesus was able to be rational and to discuss the theology of life and death and resurrection. He was able to talk about theory and faith and the nature of God’s realm which is coming into this world while at the same time not fully realized.

With Mary, he breaks down and weeps.

Those around commented on how much Jesus must have loved Lazarus to be so moved by his death.

For the faithful, it is a critical moment. While we believe that Jesus is both the son of God and the savior of the entire world; while we believe that jesus is God incarnate - God come to us in human form; we also understand that Jesus is fully human and subject to the realities of human existence.

Jesus did not come into this world to rescue us from this world. God did not come to us ini Jesus so that we wouldn’t have to experience the realities of this life.

In Jesus God comes to us and shares our common lot.

In Jesus, God feels our pain, knows our grief, cries our tears.

We don’t get a “get out of death free” card, but rather one who shares our journey even when it takes us to painful places that we might prefer to avoid.

Jesus wept, and it is OK for us to weep too.

The real miracle in this story might not be the raising of Lazarus, though that is a dramatic turn of events. I’m never sure how to interpret that part of the story. Because Lazarus doesn’t become immortal. His raising doesn’t mean that he will never die. It doesn’t even mean that he will outlive his sisters and spare them the grief of his dying sometime in the future. It is a nice turn of events for a little while - another chance to be together and to talk together and to share life together.

But it doesn’t change the reality of death. It doesn’t take away the pain. It doesn’t erase the moment when Jesus has no words, only the emotion of grief and the reality of his tears to share with those who grieve.

That, for me, is the real miracle. When I visit a grieving family and I myself am overcome with grief and I don’t know the right words to say and all that happens is that tears cloud my vision and my emotion shows in ways that i often prefer to avoid - even at those moments I am not alone. God has been there. God is with me.

And my tears are sufficient for the occasion.

Jesus wept. We can too.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Out of the box thinking

One of the podcasts that I have been listening to for several years now is Radiolab, produced by WNYC. The show’s hosts us a good deal of sound editing to produce engaging shows pn a wide variety of subjects. They tend toward slightly geeky science stories, on-air experiments and other interesting topics. Most of my reading doesn’t get too close to science. I read a lot of theology and philosophy and enjoy keeping up with fiction and poetry. I read some books of psychology and other scientific topics, but I rely upon other media to keep me informed about what is going on in the world of science. Another podcast that I check out weekly is The Naked Scientists from BBC. Despite its name that reflects that British sense of humor the show is a careful attempt to take the cutting edge of science and present it in a way that laypersons can understand.

Like my reading, I get behind in the podcasts. I tend to listen to podcasts when I am driving, but also listen when I am doing some mindless tasks such as folding brochures or collating documents. Since I get behind, I will occasionally go several weeks without listening to a particular podcast and then listen to three or four shows at a time, back-to-back.

So I am not sure whether it was Radiolab or The Naked Scientists, but one of the podcasts I was listening to recently had a story about the ways that scientists are working to halt the spread of malaria. This devastating disease seems to travel from human to human by mosquitos who are carriers of the disease. So, in addition to developing strategies to treat malaria and medicines to prevent it, the battle against the disease has focused on getting rid of mosquitoes. Much money and many pesticides have been consumed in the effort to eradicate mosquitoes. The problem is that so far that approach almost works, but the operative word is “almost.” There are parts of the world where the mosquitos persist despite significant efforts at eradicating them. The research into mosquitos has intensified in the fact of tother mosquito borne diseases such as West Nile Virus.

The show presented three possible strategies that seem to me to be pretty far “out of the box.” The first was to work on genetic modifications to the mosquitoes that make them immune to the diseases. Apparently mosquitoes have to become infected with malaria in order to transmit the disease. So if you figure out how to make a mosquito immune to the disease, it will no longer carry it from human to human. It sort of seems to me that if you could make a mosquito immune to the disease, you might also be able to make a human being immune, which might work even better.

The second strategy presented in the program is to figure out how to shorten the lifespan of the mosquito. It seems that after the mosquito bites the infected person, the virus has to incubate in the mosquito for five or six days before it is potent enough to infect a human being. That means that the mosquito bite that transmits the virus comes near the end of the life of the mosquito. Since mosquitos normall live seven or eight days, shortening their lifespan to five or six days means that they cannot transmit the virus. Scientists have discovered a fungus that will do the trick. Mosquitoes that have the fungus can bite someone who has malaria but don’t live long enough to transmit it to another human being. I’m not sure, but I suspect that infecting all of the mosquitoes in the world with the fungus might be more difficult than killing all of the mosquitoes - and so far that strategy hasn’t worked perfectly.

The third strategy was the most out-of-the-box in my opinion. It was to impact the evolution of mosquitos so that they become creatures that never bite humans. The tongue-in-cheek radio show suggested that we need to be vigilant in killing so many for each time that a bite is delivered, they might alter their strategy of survival. If I remember right this strategy requires killing hundreds of mosquitos for every bite and takes about thirty thousand human generations to be successful.

Scientists, of course, operate in a world where there are many ideas that don’t work. They follow a hunch and a hunch becomes a theory and a theory is either disproven or proven. Disproven theories are as valuable to the advancement of science as the ones that work out the way that they were envisioned. One of the things I like about the scientific method is that it values mistakes and celebrates failure. As long as the scientists keep pushing the edges of knowledge and discovery it doesn’t matter if they learn from success or from failure. You don’t have to always be right to be a good scientist.

It is a quality that we theologians might benefit from imitating. We have a tendency to be pretty harsh of those who make errors in judgment or whose understanding of history and heritage is incomplete. We tend to dismiss those whose ideas are too far out of the box.

Out of the box thinking is only one quality about scientists that I admire. I also appreciate the fact that some scientists are able to take a very long-term view of time. We can laugh about a solution to mosquitos and malaria that takes 130 generations, but the truth is that our faith and our relationship with God is a multi-generational process. It took generations for our people to understand the very basics of the nature of God. It will take many more generations for us to unpack the mystery of human nature. A complete Christology requires a complete understanding fo both God and humans. It simply is an intellectual task that is beyond a single generation. We won’t get there in my lifetime.

Even though I don’t fully understand the science programs that I hear, I still have much to learn from the scientists.

It sort of makes me wonder how many scientists listen to religion podcasts. Do you suppose that some of the best out of the box thinking in science comes from scientists who listen to On Being?

Copyright © 2014 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.

Fantasy

When I was young, I had big dreams. I had the capability to imagine things that had not yet come to pass. Sometimes these dreams were empowering - they gave me goals for which to strive. When I was learning to fly, I would imagine the freedom of having my own airplane and being able to travel from place to place at great speed. The fantasy was helpful in that it inspired me to work hard at the real tasks of learning to fly. I knuckled down in my bookwork and prepared for my written test. I practiced diligently and focused my attention when I was taking lessons. And between lessons I thought about flying a lot. Because I could imagine myself doing the tasks of a pilot, I memorized many of the things that I needed to know as I imagined myself being a pilot. The system worked. I passed my written and flying examinations on my first attempt, I earned my pilot’s license as soon as I was old enough to qualify.

In retrospect, it is interesting to me that there are many aspects of private general aviation that I didn’t include in my fantasies. When I imagined myself as an adult pilot, I never imagined how I would earn enough money to own an airplane. I didn’t think at all of the rising costs of fuel and maintenance. In my fantasies, those things just worked themselves out. In real life, flying played out differently than in my fantasies. I have rented airplanes and flown many times. We did own part of an airplane in a successful partnership for a while. I was able to fly my family across several states on some wonderful vacations. I did occasionally use an airplane to travel to and from meetings. But I also decided to quit flying as my family had other financial priorities. I decided that the amount of money required to stay current and safe was more than we could afford among the many priorities of our family.

Other fantasies have been empowering while at the same time illustrating the difference between fantasy and reality. I imagined that I would be a recognized author with many books to my credit. I could imagine being invited to lecture at universities because of the wisdom I put into my books. The fantasy has empowered me to keep on writing and I have a significant list of magazine and journal articles as well as contributions to a few books. In my fantasies of being a famous writer, however, I didn’t dwell on distractions. I didn’t really consider how much time and energy being a husband and father requires. In real life, setting priorities for my time was always a bit of a struggle. There are many things that i want to do and it seems like I always have a half dozen unfinished projects. A quick look at the file director of the laptop computer that I use to write my daily blog reveals at leas a dozen unfinished manuscripts. It would be possible to finish those projects if I were to devote full-time to them. Of course were I to do so, I might have trouble paying my bills and being responsible to my family. In real life, I have not wanted to have writing be the only thing that I do. I have enjoyed being far less focused than I imagine a writer would be.

I most of my fantasies, there are fewer problems and distractions than I have discovered in real life. Still the fantasies have had a positive influence on some of the decisions I have made. Imagination allows us to play out different scenarios. It isn’t the same as real-world experience, but it can contribute to how we live our lives in the real world.

As I age, my fantasies change. I used to imagine being the owner of a shiny new car or truck and having the latest and fanciest vehicle available. I often looked at new cars in showrooms and imagined what it would be like to own them. These days, such fantasies don’t seem to occupy my imagination. We are blessed to have dependable vehicles and when it comes time to make a purchase, I tend to see the process as a chore. I’m quite happy that I don’t often have to be dealing on vehicles. And I don’t think much about those things any more.

When I was in my early twenties, I made a list of goals. The goals were, in retrospect, mostly fantasies. At least I didn’t include in the goals the necessary steps to achieve them. The list had a goal for each five years of my life. I accomplished the early goals, up to about age 30. Most of the goals for the ages beyond that are things that I have not yet accomplished. I think that 35 was have a book accepted for publication. I have contributed to books and I have my name on the cover of a few curriculum pieces that look a bit like books, but I haven’t really even written a real book. There were career goals that now don’t seem desirable to me. I imagined that I would serve in one of the national ministries of the church. Those jobs have never been appealing to me. From where I sit today it seems that a job that would distance me from every week worship and participating in pastoral care to the members of a congregation would not be desirable. And I have no interest in living in a city, which is where one lives when one has that kind of a job.

It is interesting that I didn’t include any family goals on that list - nothing about becoming a father, getting children through college, celebrating anniversaries with my wife, or family milestones such as the death of parents or the weddings of nieces and nephews. In the real world, those things are wonderfully large parts of my life and my sense of meaning.

I guess that I have come to a place where the reality of my life is simply more entertaining and worthy of my thought than the fantasies. I hope that my imagination isn’t getting dull. I still want to be able to dream big dreams. But I guess I just didn’t realize how wonderful it would be to be a husband, a dad, a grandfather and a pastor. Some of the fantasies of my youth are simply not as much fun as the reality of my life today.

Copyright © 2014 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.

Almost too much to bear

I cringed when I read the headlines this morning. Not again! Of course, for those involved, the shootings at Ft. Hood, Texas, were unique - different in many ways from the shootings that took place on the same base in 2009. But there was a strange sense of deja vu as I read the story and looked at the pictures of military police directing traffic and anxious family members waiting for news of loved ones. Details are still coming in, but the toll is devastating. The gunman killed three and wounded sixteen before taking his own life. Three of the wounded are in critical condition.

We used to think of military bases as safe places. The men and women who serve in the U.S. military are called upon to put their lives on the line and to go to places of extreme danger, but we don’t expect the dangerous places to be the home bases dedicated to training and equipping troops.

The tragedy is deeper than those emotions, however. The tragedy is that we are losing far too many young men and women who have served in recent wars to suicide.

Before I go any farther, it must be understood that there is a big difference between most victims of suicide and the very few who kill others before dying themselves. It is not fair or reasonable to place all suicides in the same category.

Having said that, the tragedy is overwhelming. More than 22 veterans die by suicide every day in the United States. More US troops died by suicide than in combat in 2012. I haven’t seen the 2013 statistics yet, but I suspect that they are similar. The rate of military suicides has climbed rather steadily in recent years.

I am on call this week for our LOSS team. That means that I keep my cell phone close at hand 24 hours a day all week long. I have been averaging two weeks of “on call” per month for a long time now. When the phone rings, it is my responsibility to assemble a team of two to four first responders, depending on the circumstances and go directly to the scene of a completed suicide to assist the survivors. The phone rings too often for the relatively small two-county area our team serves. I am getting to know too many of the officers and coroners. The list of funerals I have attended is too long.

I don’t pretend to be an expert. I have read a lot of books. I have visited the scene of too many deaths. I have consoled too many grieving family members. But I don’t understand the dynamics. One of the lines that we often use in discussing suicide is that the victim “wasn’t in his or her right mind.” Those who die by suicide aren’t thinking normally at the point of their death. Of course we don’t really know what that person is thinking. The act of suicide destroys critical evidence that might be used to understand what happened. We try to learn what we can from suicide attempts that are not completed, but the best scientific minds and the most complete research comes up short.

As I write, I have two acquaintances about whom I worry deeply. One is an Afghanistan combat veteran with some PTSD symptoms. Another is not a veteran of war but a victim of many years of addiction. I believe that both are at high risk. I believe that we are doing everything that we know how to do to provide support. I have used my ASIST training in conversation with both persons. I have tried to bring together networks of support. But there is a sense of dread with every phone call. I know that I don’’t have the power to keep everyone alive. I know that I cannot prevent every suicide.

What I want to say is that life can be tough. It can be brutally tough. There are all kinds of pain and grief and tragedy that is almost too much to bear.

The key word, however, is “almost.”

Life, even at its worse is not too much to bear, only almost too much to bear. I have spoken to holocaust survivors. I have listened to more tragedy stories than some. I know that life can be miserable at moments. But I also know a bit of the resilience of the human spirit.

Anguish is not cured by calamity.

The pain doesn’t stop with death.

We can say whatever we want about the gunman who took the lives of others and created permanent damage to still more people before killing himself with the same gun. I’m sure that the grieving loved ones have no shortage of anger. The bottom line, however, is that there is never only one victim when suicide occurs.

Do you know what the best indicator of the possibility of suicide is? Do you know what they train us to look out for? We are trained to learn as much as possible about those who have known others who have died by suicide. Having known and loved someone who has died by suicide doubles the risk of an individual dying by suicide.

In a sense, every suicide is a delayed homicide.

That’s overstating the case, but it isn’t too far from the truth.

The history of the church, even recent history, is murky with rules and laws about suicide. Too often the church put itself in the place of blaming the victim and shaming the survivors. That is just plain wrong and the damage that has been done by such an attitude is immense. The stigma associated with mental illness in general and specifically suicide is unfair. But there is also an element of truth in those sometimes mistaken teachings.

This is what is true: suicide is wrong.

Don’t do it. Don’t die that way. Life can be almost too hard to bear, but only almost. Sometimes one day at a time is too much. Sometimes you have to survive second by second and minute by minute. You are never beyond help. We might not be able to fix all of the problems, but we can share them. Lifelines exist, and you have to reach out and grab them.

I weep with the grieving families of the victims at Ft. Hood. I know it is tough. But you aren’t alone. You will never be left alone. I know it is almost too much to bear, but only almost.

Never forget almost.

Copyright © 2014 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 quake in Chile

The people of the northern coastal regions of Chile are no strangers to earthquakes. In 1960, a massive 9.5 trembler, the strongest earthquake ever recorded, shook the region. Over 5,000 people lost their lives in that quake. In 2010, there was a magnitude 8.8 quake that caused a tsunami and caused extensive damage. More than 500 people died. Small earthquakes are common. Hundreds of quakes have shaken Chile’s far-northern coast in the past two weeks. Almost everyone living in the area has felt the earth shake and knows what to do. Evacuation plans are carefully rehearsed on a regular basis.

Last night’s quake, however, was no ordinary event. About 15 minutes before 9 pm the rumbles began in Iquique Province. The shaking increased and lasted for more than half a minute. The quake registered 8.2 and when the shaking stopped people knew that the worst may be yet to come. Sirens wailed, people spilled outside of buildings. But there was fear in the midst of the organized evacuations - everyone knew that a tsunami might follow the quake. Tsunami warnings were issued for the entire west coast of South America and much of Central America as well. It has only been three years since the massive earthquake and tsunami claimed nary 16,000 lives in Fukushima, Japan. The 2004 Sumatra tsunami killed 230,000.

As the day beings this morning, however, it appears that the worst did not come to pass. Although the coast was pounded by waves over 6 feet high, there was nothing like the massive tsunami that is possible following such an event. Miraculously, there are only 5 confirmed fatalities so far. The news coverage from BBC and other sources shows thousands of people out in the streets. Nearly everyone is talking on a cell phone. One assumes that at least the basic communications system is continuing to operate allowing people to get in touch with loved ones to inform them that they are safe and share their survivor stories.

There were a couple of fires, but they have been extinguished. Evacuated people have gathered in the local soccer stadium. Others are in the open area before the Hospital del Salvador. Blankets have been unfolded and people have gotten through the first night. With communications systems and well-laid plans in place, the government responded quickly. Troops have been dispatched to keep the peace, Hospitals and nursing homes that needed to be evacuated had plans in place for the care of patients. People are remarkably calm on the morning afterward as authorities continue to assess damage. Mudslides triggered by the quake have blocked some roads and some rural areas continue to be isolated. For now it appears that the massive loss of life which might have occurred did not. The combination of well-laid plans and more than a small amount of luck has left the region shaken but feeling very fortunate.

The coastal regions of South America are home to ancient civilizations. People have been living in those areas for more than 7,000 years. People began to congregate in cities because of the resources that were available. The weather along the coast line is less harsh than was the case in the high mountains. There are abundant resources and plentiful seafood available in the ocean. The coastal regions appear to be good places for cities.

When it comes to earthquakes, however, Chile is one of the most volatile places on the planet. The really big ones will continue to occur. This one appears to not have turned out to be a disaster, but it was a dramatic display of the power of nature and the possibility of massive natural disaster.

The world will be watching Chile for a few days, but it won’t take long for our attention to be diverted. The public is easily bored and media are quick to move on to the next event.

Recovery operations are on-going following the massive mudslide in Washington State. Geologists have warned that the area was prone to such events and there are likely to be plenty of fingers pointed before the cleanup is complete.

Although the season isn’t proving to be as devastating as some in recent years, wildfires remain a constant threat in parts of Australia.

The cleanup from November’s Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines is nowhere near finished. It was the most powerful storm of 2013, and one of the most powerful storms ever recorded. And experts warn that the Philippines and Manilla in particular are in grave danger from future storms. There are a lot of people in the path where future storms are likely to develop.

And experts are predicting another early and severe tornado season for parts of the United States this year.

As the population of the planet increases, the potential for more massive loss of life from natural disasters continues to grow.

The ancients were quick to come up with theological explanations for natural disasters. It was obvious to them that there are forces in this world that are beyond the power of humans to control. While their interpretations of the nature of God may be different from ours, they understood that the power of God is far greater than that of mortal human beings.

In our time we prefer scientific explanations. We’ve become very adept at observing and describing some of the great forces of the universe. We can measure and record the strength of earthquakes. We can track the paths of storms and in many cases provide accurate short term forecasts. We can predict the likelihood of certain natural disasters. The scientific perspective is helpful and gives us a framework to understand. Still, it is clear that there is far more that we do not understand than what we can explain.

Some relegate God to the areas that we cannot understand. This so-called “God of the Gaps” is a common, though I believe misplaced, theological understanding. Areas we can explain are the realm of science. Things we don’t understand are the realm of God. There are many problems with this way of looking at the world, not the least of which is that it creates a perception that the realm of God continues to shrink as we become more adept at scientific description and explanation.

The truth is that God is at work in areas that we understand and are able to explain as well as those that are beyond our comprehension.

I see God’s work in Chile this morning and one of my morning prayers is a prayer of thanksgiving for all of the survivors and the relatively small amount of damage in such a large geophysical event.

Copyright © 2014 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.

April Fools

I guess that the weather conditions were pretty nasty out in the country with blowing snow and low visibilities yesterday. But we didn’t feel many ill effects of the blizzard the closed area schools and kept folks inside. We didn’t have anywhere to go and we did have a power outage for an hour or so, but there was no real inconvenience here. We were working on preparing our tax return and had plenty to keep us occupied. We even have a battery backup for our Internet and phone that is good for four hours or so and had uninterrupted access during the power failure. By mid afternoon more than half of the driveway was cleared of snow by the sun and wind and shoveling the other half just took a few minutes.

The problem with a blizzard that wasn’t on March 31, is that I don’t know what to make of April Fool’s Day. The forecast is for snow showers throughout the day with the likelihood of snow increasing to about 80% overnight and continuing through tomorrow. I don’t think the forecasters are playing April Fool’s tricks on us, but I’m not too worried about the weather, either.

The origins of April Fool’s Day are a bit obscure. Most Internet articles cite the Medieval Feast of Fools, held December 28 among the origins of of the day of pranks and jokes. A few articles note the Roman festival of Hilaria, held March 25 as another precursor. I think that seeking a predominantly secular origin for the holiday is a product of people’s reluctance to associate all of the pranks and jokes with religion, but the religious origins of the holiday go back even farther than secular sources.

In the very early centuries of Christianity, the Greeks began a tradition of “Holy Humor Sunday” in the season of Easter. The basic idea was that the resurrection was the ultimate practical joke. Augustine, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom all referred to Risus Paschalis - the Easter laugh. The week following Easter, including “Bright Sunday” (the Sunday after Easter) was observed as a time of joy and laughter with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. It became a time to play practical jokes on pastors, tell jokes, sing songs and dance.

As the liturgies of the church became more formal and standardized, the practical jokes were downplayed and the celebrations centered on feasts, songs and liturgies. Many faithful church members and leaders forgot about the earlier traditions. In the 1980’s the tradition was re-discovered and a small movement of congregations began to revive the tradition and focused their attention on “Holy Humor Sunday” the Sunday following Easter. It is unclear how much of this was motivated by a desire to revive ancient traditions and how much was motivated by a desire to reverse the trend of dramatically falling church attendance after Easter. Whatever the motivations, the idea has received widespread acceptance in Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches around the world.

As a result it is really quite difficult to separate the secular “April Fool’s Day” from the more ancient, but more recently revised traditions of Bright Monday and Holy Humor Sunday.

But Easter is late this year. As it moves around the calendar, April 20 is a rather late day for the celebration of Easter. On the other hand it seems to suit at least the weather around here this year. It is hard telling what the weather will be like nearly three weeks from now, but one can hope that the snow will turn to rain and the ice will come out of the reservoirs and we’ll feel a bit more like spring has arrived.

It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if the weather would give us enough of a break to finish the construction around the entryway of the church. The project has taken weeks longer than we anticipated and we have high hopes of having a front door that is welcoming and inviting by the time Easter rolls around.

Beyond the specifics of pranks and jokes and other methods of celebrating, in the church Easter is much more than a day. It is a season. Easter continues through 50 days until Pentecost is celebrated on June 8 this year. Those weeks offer opportunities to sing the beloved Easter hymns, tell the multiple stories of Jesus’ resurrection and celebrate the triumph of life over death.

My father used to enjoy April Fools day pranks. We had our share of cardboard in the middle of pancakes, food coloring in milk and other breakfast-based pranks. It’s probably too late for this one this year, but the old standby of dissolving the cheese packet from a box of macaroni and cheese in a pitcher of cold water and leaving it in the refrigerator where it looks remarkably like orange juice will get you attention.

As my father struggled with the effects of the cancer that became the cause of his death he didn’t forget about April Fools day. That year he managed to glue down the end of the toilet tissue roll and laugh as my mother batted the roll trying to find an end to pull. I think there were a couple of other pranks that year as well.

For more elaborate pranks, you can always put hand lotion in a shampoo bottle or coat a bar of soap with clear nail polish to prevent lathering.

There are plenty of food jokes. Susan’s great grandmother used to make dipped chocolates and occasionally insert a cotton ball instead of the usual filling. It’s hard to get rid of a cotton ball in the mouth in polite company. A related prank is to make caramel apples and insert a stick into an onion and dip it into the caramel. It gives a pretty good surprise to the unsuspecting.

I’m sure that you will have no problem finding plenty of pranks, and by the time you read this blog, it may be too late. At least in the house where I grew up, all April Fools’ pranks had to be played before noon. Any pranks after noon rendered the prankster as the fool, not the recipient of the joke. I don’t know where that tradition came from.

If you’ve missed the day, there’s always Holy Humor Sunday. In general, however, I’d advise against getting too elaborate with the pranks against the pastor, however. There are quite a few more weeks in Easter and payback can be sweet.

Copyright © 2014 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.