Yesterday I split wood with the Woodchucks in the morning and I mowed my lawn in the afternoon. There’s nothing very special about that except for the fact that it is a bit unusual for us to still be mowing our lawns as September approaches. We’ve had a lot of moisture this summer and it has kept the hills green. A thundershower deposited a few rain drops on the freshly-mown grass last evening, so this may not be the end of mowing yet. For me it was good to spend the day doing physical work. My back was complaining a bit after an hour’s work in the morning. The bending and lifting was using muscles that I haven’t exercised enough. A change of job in the splitting crew addressed that problem and mowing the lawn stretched different muscles. I ended the day a bit tired, but it was a good kind of tired and I slept well.

I’m far better at exercise when the exercise is accomplishing work than when it is exercise just for the sake of exercise. I know that my body needs the workout and I have plenty of friends who remain fit and trim with regular trips to the gym. But I have never been one for stationary bicycles and treadmills. I know the activity is good for me, but when I have undone work, which is all of the time, it seems like a bit of a waste to go to a gym to pamper myself.

I know all of the arguments. Exercise builds endurance. If I exercise more I will be able to accomplish more. Good health means fewer sick days and more work accomplished. And in my line of work, it is how much you accomplish, not how many hours that you put in that makes the difference. Were I to become disciplined about exercise, it likely would increase my efficiency and result in more work accomplished.

But for me, with my particular personality, there is no substitute for just plain physical work. It is the best form of exercise for me. And we have a large pile of wood at the church. Perhaps I should think of the woodpile as my gym and head out there every day for my workout.

What keeps me involved in the wood splitting however, isn’t just the firewood and knowing that there are people who need it for heat and energy. What keeps me involved are the people. It is good to get together with others to do meaningful work. We had a crew of 14 yesterday - that is pretty impressive when you consider that it is a holiday weekend and there are plenty of other things to invite our members away from volunteer work at the church.

I think I come about my attitude toward the gym naturally. I can’t remember my father or grandfather ever going to a gym for a workout. There were plenty of things that needed to be accomplished and there was plenty of work to be done. Physical exertion was a part of their work. I, however, have a job that rarely demands physical exertion. I sit and talk and listen and work at a computer and sit at a desk. The one exception, I suppose, is moving furniture. There is always furniture that needs to be moved in the church. These tables need to be taken down and others set up. These chairs are in the wrong room. The piano needs to be turned and more chairs placed here. The joy of the architecture of our building is that things are flexible. We can set our fellowship hall with long banquet tables, with square tables for four, and with round tables. But each different setting means moving furniture. I got started moving church furniture early, just being a member of a church. Later, in seminary, when I served a stint as a church janitor, I discovered that there was more moving furniture than actual cleaning most weeks. I did my share of scrubbing and mopping and dusting, but I also moved a lot of tables and chairs. At our church, volunteers do an amazing amount of the physical work that needs to be done. Rummage sales involve moving every table that the church owns and when a rummage sale is finished everything is put back in the right order for worship the next day. There are plenty of other things in the church that involve moving furniture. If I occasionally participate in that chore, there are others who have moved a whole lot more furniture than I.

As I have grown older, I have had to re-learn how to make food choices. There are plenty of opportunities to eat more than I should. There are certain foods that need to be avoided most of the time. Controlling the size of my portions is critical to maintaining weight and health. But the main reason why I am overweight is that I am not getting enough exercise. I know how important it is for me to keep moving and to use the muscles I have. An hour of bending and lifting reminded me that I’ve been a bit negligent in my back exercises.

Like a broken record, I come back to the same theme over and over again. I resolve to be more disciplined about exercise. I try to find more opportunities to walk and work out.

But I haven’t yet broken down and paid for a membership at the gym. I guess for now I’ll leave the treadmills and stationary bikes for others. After all I have a real bicycle and there are plenty of places to walk and run right outside my door. This afternoon I’ll load a canoe on to the roof of my car so that I can head to the lake first thing Monday morning. The right degree of play in my life also opens me to the movement of the spirit and gives me additional resources to be more efficient in the work I have been called to do.

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.

There was a time in my life when I was a huge fan of the radio show “A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor. As soon as we were able to hear public radio in the small town in North Dakota where we lived, I began to try to make time on Saturday afternoons to listen to the program. I loved the storytelling style of “The News from Lake Wobegone.” I enjoyed the musical acts. I bought cassette tapes of Keillor’s stories and listened to them over and over again, mostly as I was driving the long distances of a rural pastorate in North Dakota. I resonated with the stories of Pastor Inkfest.

Sometime after we had moved to Boise, it was announced that Keillor was retiring and that the show would be shutting down. He was going to get married again and move to one of the scandinavian countries. They had a huge farewell show. One of the things that I remember from that show was a poem by Roy Blount, Jr. that had the line, “It’s better to have been good and over than rotten and gone on too long.”

The show went off the air for a little while. Then, before long at all, Keillor started up the American Radio Company of the Air in New York. It was a lot like Prairie Home Companion - so much so that the show quickly morphed back into Prairie Home Companion. One of its features was an “Annual Farewell Performance,” in which they made fun of the fact that Keillor had retired and then returned.

And it is still going on. It’s been going on since 1974, with that little burble of a retirement and return along the way. Performers have come and gone in that time. Pianist Butch Thompson performed on the second program of A Prairie Home Companion and became the house pianist until the farewell performance. Thompson appears on the show from time to time as he pursues a varied career. He has performed in our church a couple of times and is scheduled for a concert there next April.

I will occasionally listen to A Prairie Home Companion these days. If it happens to be on when I am driving or while I am doing some work around the house I’m likely to turn on the radio and listen to part of the show. The days of being glued to the radio at that time of the day are over for me, however. Unlike other radio programs that I like, I have not subscribed to the podcast. I don’t need to hear every show. Most of the time I don’t even listen to the whole show.

There will be an audience for the show as long as it continues, in part because new listeners discover the show. There is plenty of room for nostalgia in our lives. But for me, and I suspect for some others, who have been listening for four decades, the show is a little bit worn around the edges and Keillor’s stories are a little bit repetitious. He’s predictable to me and I am rarely surprised by the endings of the stories.

Which has me wondering about my style of preaching. Although my style continues to evolve, there was a time, back in the 1980’s, when there was more than a small amount of imitation of Keillor in of my storytelling. Unlike Keillor, who has a national audience, I have a rather small crowd and I’ve changed congregations. No single congregation has had to put up with me for 40 years.

However, I did just pass my 19th anniversary in this congregation. Although the congregation has changed a lot over the years, there are some folks who were here when I arrived and who will be here next year when we pass the 20-year mark. Of course there are others who have drifted away. I often don’t know the reason why people are no longer worshiping with our congregation. Unless a person dies or moves away it is rare for me to know the reasons for their departure. Perhaps, like Keillor, I have become repetitious.

I work hard at my preaching. I often preach without notes, but such a sermon takes longer to prepare than a manuscript. When I preach from a manuscript, I can write a sermon in an hour or less. With my current style, it takes all week for a sermon to come together, starting with reading the texts months in advance, selecting hymns and other worship elements a season in advance, and then intensifying my study a week out, with group study of the texts, discussing my ideas with the church staff, and finally starting run-throughs in the empty church on Friday. Some weeks I feel ready by Sunday morning when I run though the entire sermon once or twice before unlocking the door. Some weeks, I don’t feel ready when I stand up to preach.

The funny thing for me is that how I feel about a sermon often isn’t the way the congregation feels. It is common for me to be full of criticisms of a particular sermon and to stand int he fellowship hall hearing praise for an especially good sermon when I can’t quite figure out what was good about it. Conversely there are times when I feel I’ve “nailed” a sermon just right and there is little comment or conversation about it after the worship service is finished.

Still, I think I’d like to have “been good an over than rotten and gone on too long.”

I don’t know the shelf life of a preacher. It might be more clear to me if there was a large group of eager new ministers clamoring for my job. But we have a bit of a shortage of leadership in the church today. There aren’t enough preachers to fill all of the pulpits. It isn’t exactly as if I need to step aside to make room for others.

So, like Keillor, I just keep going on. After all, he’s more than a decade older than I am. Maybe he’ll retire for good before I do.

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.

As the Protestant reformation spread throughout Europe and began to give rise to new communions of Christians the practices of many Christians changed. One can argue that the reformation was about theology, and certainly there were intense theological arguments and differences began to appear in various corners of the church. But there is also a sense in which the reformation was about practice and the behaviors of Christians. Some corners of the church changed their approach to music and the use of instruments in worship. Some questioned the elaborate buildings and opted for simpler architecture. Some examined the complex calendar of feasts and fasts and opted for a different attitude towards the calendar.

Among the practices that was questioned was the veneration of saints. There has long been disagreement among Christians about the specifics of individuals who have been named saints. Clearly the church has experienced exceptional leadership and there have been great persons who have gone before this generation. But the complex arguments of who did or did not perform miracles, who did or did not experience death, who left a body behind and who took their earthly body with them were left behind in some parts of Protestant Christianity in favor of a broader understanding of the nature of saints.

Some view the position of some Protestant churches as simply leaving behind all of the talk of saints. Some Protestants claim that rather we have expanded the notion to include many more people. It isn’t that we don’t believe in saints, rather we believe that every Christian has the ability to be a saint. Lesbia Scott’s hymn, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” expresses well the idea that saints not only lived in the distant past but also live and work in everyday lives in our time. The hymn has become a favorite of many congregations for the observance of All Saints’ Day. The tradition of All Saints’ Day on the first of November has become a time to recognize and remember those who have died. In most Protestant congregations the observance of individual saints’ days is down played.

So we don’t keep a regular calendar of the feast and fast days for saints in our part of the church. Much of what we know about saints comes from the theologies and books of worship of other communions of Christians.

In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions the day for a saint is the day of her or his death. Saints are recognized on that day rather than on their birth days. Both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox celebrate August 15 as the day for Mary, the mother of Jesus. They have different stories and traditions surrounding the day. In the Roman Catholic tradition there is a difference of opinion. Some Catholics believe that Mary died, was resurrected and then ascended into heaven in much the same way as Jesus. Others believe that Mary was directly assumed into heaven without experiencing an earthly death. Regardless of the differences of belief, August 15 is recognized as the Assumption of Mary and celebrated as the day that she entered into heaven. In the Orthodox tradition, the death, resurrection and bodily assumption of Mary into heaven is firmly entrenched in centuries of tradition. August 15 is celebrated as the Dormition of the Theodokos - the falling asleep of the Mother of God. There are many other differences. Roman Catholics rest authority in dogma and official statements whereas Orthodox Christians tend to place more authority in tradition and liturgy.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the first 14 days of August are fast days in anticipation of the dormition of Mary and then August 15 is a day of feasting and celebration.

Of course we don’t play up the holidays for Mary in the same way as do those in other parts of the church. August 15. August 15 in our church this year was the beginning of a relatively calm weekend between the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and our summer rummage sale. We didn’t host any feasts.

But one of the saints of our church did come to the end of her life on that day. Marge had been very active in our congregation and was especially beloved by my family. She chaired the committee that called me to be pastor of this congregation. She served as confirmation mentor for our daughter when she joined the church. She welcomed our parents when they moved into this community and became a special friend of my mother in her aging years.

Like Mary, we might not all agree on the specifics surrounding Marge’s death. We didn’t lose her all at once. Marge developed the symptoms of dementia several years before her death. As the disease in her brain spread to the areas that control language, she began to experience dysphasia. The words wouldn’t come out right and the wrong words came out when she had a different meaning in her mind. Over the months as the disease progressed she lost more and more of her ability to communicate with others. By the end of her life, facial expressions and the gentle squeeze of her hand were the only tools she had left to express her thoughts and ideas. It wasn’t a gentle disease for a teacher and excellent communicator. A shrinking vocabulary and incomprehensible speech must have been terribly frustrating for her.

But the day of her death was August 15, the same day that tradition gives to the death of Mary. Marge’s daughter Liz thinks that her mother would have been amused at the coincidence. I agree. There is a kind of gentle poetry in the sense that two different mothers of our faith shared something in common.

I’m not likely to get swept up into the traditions of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches. I’m quite at home in our little corner of Christianity. But I won’t have trouble remembering the feast of the Assumption (or Dormition) of Mary.

She isn’t the only saint worthy of remembering on that 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.

Life at the church is always busy and full. We always have lots of projects going at the same time and the end of summer is a time intense with planning and gearing up for fall programs. We don’t really take a break in the summer, but we do cut back on meetings a little bit and some of our programs take summer breaks. But school has resumed, labor day is just around the corner, and there are a lot of things going on at the church. This fall, we will begin our choir season with an interim choir director as we look for someone to assume the permanent position. Transitions of staff are always filled with a bit of getting to know one another and coordination of efforts, but I have seen several such transitions. I think this is transition six or seven of choir directors since I have been pastor in this congregation. In 2011, we transitioned all of the church staff except for Susan’s and mine. The church is a bit like a river. It keeps flowing with new streams being added from time to time.

Yesterday was a day of focusing on people. I met with a family whose teenager was seeking directions following high school, a couple planning a wedding, and a suicide survivor. There were phone conversations about a different wedding and a funeral. Some of the phone conversations were setting up additional meetings for today and tomorrow. It is what we do. And the face-to-face meeting with people is some of what we do best in a congregation like ours.

Around the edges there is plenty of paperwork that needs attention. There are e-mails to answer, notices to send out, worship bulletins and the monthly newsletter that need our attention, and plans for the fall to put in motion. We work ahead season by season in our worship planning, so even though it seems a long ways off, it is time to buckle down with Advent, Christmas and Epiphany plans so that musicians and others in the church can see the flow of the season.

In other words, it is business as usual, which means that there is no “usual” to our work. It is always filled with interruptions and surprises. I used to have a little card with the saying, “The interruption IS my work.” I don’t need a placard to remind me of that simple truth.

On the one hand, the lack of routine keeps the work so far away from boring that such a thought never comes around. On the other hand, the lack of routine means that we invest considerable energy reinventing our schedules every day. And, to be truthful, there are times with fewer interruptions when our work does flow into routines. If it weren’t the case, we’d never get some of our tasks completed.

It is interesting to me how the roles continue to shift in a church office. When I began working as a pastor, I didn’t have an administrative colleague or a secretary. I did the typing and ran the copy machine and handled my own correspondence. A few years later I had a secretary whose primary responsibilities involved typing and copying. Correspondence, worship bulletins and the newsletter were the primary responsibilities. These days, with office computers, we are back to managing our own correspondence. The administrative colleague still works on publications such as bulletins and the newsletter, but I manage the web site and my own electronic communications. The administrative colleagues do much more general administration, handling calendaring and scheduling and keeping track of minor building and office machine maintenance. Everyone in the church office has to be aware of the flow of church life and the needs of members to stay in touch. We all find ourselves investing time in listening, offering comfort, praying and woking with our members. We all spend a little time providing assistance and referral to people who come to the church with needs and sometimes expect the church to be a full-blown social service agency. Our church is tucked away in neighborhood, so we get far fewer requests for assistance with day-to-day needs than downtown congregations.

With all of the activity, it shouldn’t surprise me that things like lunch breaks are often passed up and that we get to the end of the day feeling tired. Some days stretch into the evenings and there are many days that even though there are only two of us, we don’t manage to have any of our meals together in our home. In a way we probably arranged for more meals as a family when our children were at home and later when we were caring for parents in our home. At this empty nest phase of our lives, we have a tendency to just keep working. That makes the days when we do get to share a meal a special treat and sometimes we get ourselves into each other’s calendars just to get time for a simple family meal together.

Much of the intensity of our schedule is not unique to the church. However, I do often run into other people with equally busy schedules who seem surprised at how busy the church is. For most of our members, their church experience involves only part of the church’s life. They attend worship and perhaps one or two meetings a month and think of the church as only having those specific activities. When they stop by during the day or even on a Saturday they are often surprised at all of the activity. Because we have lots of small group events and activities, people tend to see only part of the life of the church. They imagine that the pace is slower and the activities fewer when they aren’t around. It doesn’t really work that way.

So a new day starts. My first meeting begins at 8 a.m. There is another at 10 a.m. and a third in the afternoon. Around the edges I need to put the finishing touches on Sunday’s worship bulletin, prepare worship notes for our Interim Choir Director and write a funeral service.

It won’t be boring. I never have to worry about boring.

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.

We like to think of the ground beneath our feet as solid. Here in the hills, there is a lot of very hard granite in the center of our little island of hills. Around that granite upthrust are sedimentary stones. If you dig anywhere around our home, you will run into lots of limestone. The pieces can be as big as three or four feet across and present a challenge when setting a fence post or laying a cable. In my neighbor’s back yard, there were a few huge pieces of rock so large that the gas company had to route their pipe around them and the people laying television cable tried for days unsuccessfully to dig a trench to bary their fiber optic cable. They eventually found another path as well.

If one looks at the story of our earth from the perspective of geological history, however, the land we experience as solid is actually in motion. The hills were once plains and the area arose under tremendous forces. Of course that was long ago - perhaps as much as 2 billion years ago. I am no geologist, but I imagine a boiling pool of magma deep beneath the surface of the earth with the hard rocks above cooling when exposed to the air. The core of the hills were at the top of the bubble and they hardened in place as the surface cooled and the hardened rock formed a very thick layer on top of the earth’s hot core.

The hills are dramatic because they are surrounded by prairies. We live on a little island in the midst of the prairie that offers a unique place of cool and shelter for its own little circles of animals.

It is easier to imagine the geology of the region when one visits Yellowstone National Park. Recently our daughter and son-in law made a visit to the park and brought back pictures that reminded me of the many times I have visited. I remember marveling at the colors of the various hot pools. The colors are mostly caused by different kinds of bacteria that are able to thrive in the warm temperatures. The heat of the water comes from the magma deep beneath the surface. There are fissures in the rocks that allow the water to descend close enough to the heat to turn into steam and rise under pressure to form geysers. I like the mud pots, where the water is cool enough to be liquid, but hot enough for bubbles of steam to rise from the bottom. The mud boils and bubbles like thick soup in a pot.

The changes in Yellowstone are a bit easier to see than in other places because they occur on a somewhat quicker timescale than in other places. Between 2004 and 2010 the ground beneath Yellowstone was rising at a fast pace for geology, sometimes at a rate of over 2 inches per year. That’s motion too slow to feel if you are standing on the ground, but enough to measure if you are a geologist. The rate of rising has slowed in recent years, but there is plenty of evidence that great forces continue to shape the park.

The uprise created a bit of a fervor among geologists and others and there has been a lot of talk and a lot of media attention to the possibility of a Yellowstone super eruption. National Geographic Magazine devoted an entire issue to the topic and there was also a National Geographic television special on the subject. I didn’t see the television program, but I read the article with interest and saved the issue of the magazine in part because of the gorgeous pictures.

In human terms, the times between eruptions of the Yellowstone volcano are very long. It has been 70,000 years since the most recent small eruption and over 600,000 years since the last super eruption. I’m not sure how volcanologists and geologists discover the evidence of the timing of eruptions, but if Yellowstone follows its pattern, there could be another super eruption sometime in the next 100,000 years give or take a few hundred thousand years.

In other words, prediction of the precise time of the eruption is not possible with the knowledge we currently have.

A super eruption would be dramatic, burying the hills in ash,altering the climate of the planet for decades, burying the hills in ash, and rearranging the geology of the entire region.

The biggest geological event of my lifetime was the Hebgen Lake earthquake that occurred in August of 1959. The side of a mountain slid into a river and created a new lake. More than 50 million tons of rock and dirt were moved in a matter of minutes. Cracks opened in the earth, A campground was buried. New steam vents formed and the rhythm of some of the existing geysers was altered. It was dramatic and there were deaths and injuries from the shaking. But in geological terms, it was a very minor event when compared with the potential for even more massive earthquakes and eruptions.

Here in the shadow of Yellowstone, life goes on as usual. In fact, life on the surface of Yellowstone is quite normal as well. Tourists come and go. Buffalo and Elk graze. Wolves howl and hunt the edges of the herds. Beaver chew down trees and build dams. And the prairie dogs burrow under the earth with no knowledge of the molten rock that lis miles beneath their tunnels.

Our lives take place in the flow of a history that is much grander and of much longer duration that the moments we occupy. Every once in a while we git a glimpse of the grandeur of the universe when we gaze into a starry night or a deep colored pool in the Yellowstone mountains. Scientists discover a bit wider perspective through their studies and share that perspective with the rest of us.

And life goes on. Ours is but a tiny piece of a much bigger story.

That little piece, however, is filled with meaning and significance. For from our tiny place ein the big stream of history we are able to peer out and get a small view of the big picture. In us the universe has a degree of self awareness.

I won’t, however, be losing any sleep over the next big Yellowstone eruption.

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 first place I lived after moving out of the home of my parent was a college dormitory in Billings, Montana. I thought of myself as being terribly mature, but I really was short on general living skills. I knew the basics of how to cook, but I was getting my meals from the college food service. I had some of the skills of being a student, but the learning curve was steep. I had a part-time job in the college library that was helping to cover some of my expenses, but I wasn’t earning my living yet. I was fiercely determined to make it in college, but it was hard work for me and I would crawl into my bed at night exhausted from the day. It took me a while to make friends. Fortunately, I already had some friends at the college. My sister and a high school friends were students and there were several other students who I had met at church camp.

I lived in Billings during the school year for four years. Between the third and fourth year, I stayed in Billings and worked at a bakery instead of going home as I had the other years. During my years in Billings I got married and made plans to attend theological seminary. They were formative years. Since those days I have returned to Billings several times a year. Until 2005, Susan’s parents lived in Billings and we visited as often as we were able. Since then I have been through Billings on my way to other places, come to town for meetings, to visit friends, and for other reasons. I have watched the city grow and am often amazed at how much it has changed over the years.

But I don’t know this place. It isn’t my home. I am a visitor. The license plates on my car identify me as an out-of-stater. That is an interesting feeling to me because Montana, like many other states, has county identifiers on license plates. When I was a kid growing up, we always looked at license plates. When we saw the number 3, which is Yellowstone County, where Billings is located, we knew the driver was a “city” person, unaccustomed to rural ways. We had heard our parents and others warn about drivers with license plates with 3 on them. They wouldn’t know about rural gravel roads, and might become lost in the mountains.

Now I’m the outsider. I haven’t had Montana license plates on my car for nearly four decades. I guess that you always think of the state of your birth as home in some sense, but I haven’t made Montana my home since I graduated from college 40 years ago.

Still,there are familiar things about this place. I don’t need a map or GPS to find the airport or a grocery store. There are some restaurants and coffee houses that I recognize and can find. I understand the basic layout of the city and can get from one part to another with ease. I don’t feel like a total outsider when I come here to visit.

Over the years I have thought about place a lot. In 2006, we focused our sabbatical on the study of sacred places. We have made it a practice to visit sacred places of our faith and of the faiths of others when we have traveled. We have friends who live in many different places all around the world. In fact, we are in Billings today because of a visit of friends from Australia. Our adult children live in different states than we. I have siblings in other states. We are a spread-out people.

The Bible is filled with the names and descriptions of many different places. Our grandfather Jacob named many places during his years of traveling. Subsequent generations considered certain places to be holy. The exodus of our people from slavery in Egypt created a trail of places that had been left behind on our journey.

But at our core, we have never been people of a place. Although Israel is the name of a modern political country, it got its name not from a place, but from a people. Jacob was named Israel by God after wrestling with an angel and seeking reconciliation with his brother. The name Israel first of all refers to Jacob and secondly to the descendants of Jacob and only much much later to a place. And by the time there was a place named Israel, the people of Israel were scattered across the globe.

What holds us together is not a place, but a story. We are a people of history. We have chosen to remember the path that brought the present generation to this moment and we understand that ours is not the last generation of the people of God on this planet. Here in the time that is ours, it is our vocation to pass on the stories of the past to new generations.

Our identity comes from our history, and not from any single place.

Still, places have become significant to us. Some of them are significant because of the history that took place there. We remember where we were when certain things take place.

Billings is the place where I went to college. It was the home of my wife. It is the place where we were married. It is the city where we were ordained. There have been many significant events that in our lives that have taken place in this location. Our story and this place have become so intertwined that we can’t tell the whole story without mentioning this place.

It is always the people that make the place significant, but because we live our lives in places, the locations bring to mind the people with whom we have shared the journey. There are hundreds, and perhaps more, of names that I recall and associate with this place. There are now over a hundred thousand people who are making new stories in this place.

What is sacred is the story, not the place. But the place can remind us of the story. It is good to visit and to remember from time to 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.

We seem to have the ability to live in a beautiful place without always taking time to look at the beauty that surrounds us. We get swept up in the busy activities of our lives and sometimes fail to stop and take a look at what is right around us. One of the gifts that guests bring to us is the opportunity to show them the hills and the place where we live. In the process we slow down enough to take a look ourselves. It is always a joy.


Yesterday afternoon we took a short drive through Custer State Park, stopping at Legion Lake for a cup of coffee and then driving the game loop with a dinner stop at Blue Bell Lodge and returning home. This isn’t the season of the thundering herds of buffalo that we see at some times of the year. We can count on seeing one or two old bulls, but the main herd wasn’t along the game loop road. Of course there are plenty of other animals to see. You can count on pronghorn antelope, wild burros and prairie dogs all year round.

I like to watch the swallows at Legion Lake. They nest under the eves and in the cupola of the lodge and they like to sweep over the lake to gather insects. Swallows are natural aerobats, with lots of sudden turns, dives, and areal maneuvers.


The potted petunias near the outdoor table where we sat sipping our coffee attracted a hummingbird moth and gave us a chance marvel at the intricacies of the world of insects. I know that hummingbird moths are common in the hills, but we haven’t had the flowers that attract the deep pollinators in our yard for the simple fact that they require some protection from the deer and so the things most common to our yard are things that seem less appealing to the deer to eat. Seeing the moth yesterday, however, reminded me that a pot of petunias on the deck might be an easy and joyful addition to our home.


When I was growing up, we liked to show the wild animals to our visitors and although deer, elk and moose were more occasional and more difficult to show off, we knew where we could find antelope. The herd that lived just off the end of the airport in my home town was usually visible from the road. These magnificent animals can run at 50 to 60 mph for long distances and are a challenge to hunt, but yesterday wasn’t a day for chasing. The bucks were lying down in the afternoon sun and posting for pictures for the passing tourists. We saw a few females as well, but they chose a hillside a bit farther from the car and all of the cameras of the tourists.


The donkeys and prairie dogs are used to the tourists and make sure that they stay close to the road. It doesn’t take any effort to get a begging burro to put his nose up to the window of the car and there is usually at least one praire dog that will sit up for pictures.


When we visited Australia, looking at the unique animals of that continent was part of the joy of our visit. And when our Australian guests come to visit us, showing of our neighborhood and the animals with whom we share the hills seems to be a natural activity.

We are so fortunate to live in a place of such incredible beauty and we are doubly fortunate to have good friends with whom to share that beauty.

Each week we sing a doxology and praise God from whom all blessings flow. In addition to the song, it is good for us to pause once in a while to look closely and appreciate those blessings.

Indeed we are 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.

We want to live in a world of heroes, where one life can make a difference. The stories of our people are filled with heros who take amazing risks;and make amazing differences in the course of history. Abraham and Sarah set off from the land of their parents and set our story in motion. The future of our people hangs in the balance as Isaac is nearly sacrificed. Jacob’s choice of a bride and his father-in-law’s sense of propriety sets in motion the conflict that ends with the dreamer Joseph in Egypt in time to save our people from starvation and to set up the extended stay that turns into slavery. Moses’ decision to follow God’s call becomes a way out of slavery that turns to a 40-year wander in the wilderness. Again and again the future of our people rests on the shoulders of amazing individuals who rise to the occasion and propel our story into a new generation.

And we know, from the experiences of our own lives, that one life can make a huge difference. The story of South Africa without Nelson Mandela is tragically different.

But we also live in a world where there are plenty of tasks that cannot be accomplished by a single individual. It takes teamwork, cooperation and community to do many of the really big tasks. Neil Armstrong’s step onto the surface of the moon is dependent upon thousands of engineers and visionary planners, and a huge commitment of public funds. Without a nation of taxpayers, the feat would never have occurred.

I go back and forth in my own desires. Sometimes i want to be the up front leader who provides the vision for a congregation to move forward and build their future. Sometimes I prefer to simply be a worker in God’s realm where everyone has a purpose and everyone works together. I am well aware that there is a big difference between what I want and what God is calling me to do, but I am not able to completely leave what I want behind. I know that the genuine prophets of our people are few and far between - that sometimes there are hundreds of years between those chosen for that unique role. Some are called to do really big things for God. For some doing the small tasks is sufficient.

It may well be that doing the little things is my vocation.

I can listen and share the grief of families. I can interpret a verse of scripture in a time of transition. I can remember a tradition when others have forgotten. I can tell the stories of our people to those who have not heard them and to those who need to hear them again. I am no Moses or Jeremiah or Paul. But I don’t need to be. It is enough to just be me.

Of course it isn’t an easy job to be a hero.

Moses had to give up a lot to walk away from his flocks and become God’s spokesman. Isaiah had to taste burning coals on his lips to find the words to speak on God’s behalf. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to subject his family to terror and the death of their father in order to be a voice for justice. The costs are as high as possible. The price paid by God’s genuine heroes is complete. Some days I wonder if I have the energy to just keep on going.

But there is more to our people than just the actions of the big heroes. Our heroes are heroes only as long as we remember their stories. It isn’t just that Moses led our people out of the land of slavery into the adventures of freedom. It is that our people remembered God’s command to teach the story to every generation - to make sure that our children heard the story when they were going to bed and when they were getting up and at mealtime and between meals as well. The commandment to never forget our story is as critical to our identity as are the events of our history.

And ours isn’t a time that is particularly fond of keeping tradition alive. It is not particularly a time of honoring history. Our memories tend to be short and our vision narrow. We often live our lives as if it all came down to a single generation instead of as a people who understand that we have a past and a future that stretches out for millennia.

Perhaps there is a bit of a hero in anyone who commits her or his life to simply telling the stories - to keeping the traditions alive for one more generation. Certainly it is an honor to be asked to tell the stories of our people. Certainly it is an honor to be asked to uphold the traditions whether the occasion be a wedding or the celebration of the sacraments or officiating at a proper funeral for one of God’s faithful people.

Living in a time where new technology is redefining the ways we communicate our message simply focusing on the integrity of the message in the face of the temptation to focus on the media is a job of significance.

I often remark to couples getting married that their promises open up to them the possibility of communicating with all of their lives - heard and mind and body and soul. Then I admonish them to never forget to talk - that words are as critical to communication as any other form. Talking about the big things and the little things is the way to create a bridge between two souls that can bring forth futures.

So too it is with our story. We have been given all sorts of ways of communicating. We can make movies and sent text messages. We can tweet and Skype and instagram. But we must never forget the simple art of telling the stories of our people. Our story is more than the record of where we have been. It is also the key to our future.

It may not make me a hero, but it is an honor to be a teller of our stories.

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.

There is a light rain falling as I rise this morning. The forecast is for more rain today and according to my weather radio, there is a general warning for possible flooding in the area. It really isn’t that cold, but something in the air makes it feel just a little bit like autumn. Everybody around here has been saying all year long that the weather is a bit unusual this year. I’m thinking that I just haven’t gotten in the paddling that I wanted to do. Not that I can blame it on the weather. There have been plenty of glorious paddling days when I have stayed at home. A slightly over-committed lifestyle means that I often make other choices on how to use my time.

But we had a summertime menu last night with brats and small steaks and corn cooked on the grill. And, as usual, the thing that made the evening was the company. Our daughter and son in law are visiting and will leave for their home this morning. We have guests from Australia with whom it seems as if we have been pursuing the same conversation for four decades. We are always able to pick up where we left off whenever we get together. And close friends from here in Rapid City filled out the chairs at the table. The laughter was contagious and the silliness was delightful. It was an evening to remember.

I once read an article that spoke of how scientists attempt to measure happiness. It isn’t exactly an easy thing to study. People generally know when they are happy, but the elements that create happiness are complex and vary from person to person. I wasn’t too impressed with the article. I remember thinking that it would be just as good for the purposes of their study to simply ask people whether or not they were happy. Those who said, “yes,” go in the happy column; those who said, “no,” in the other one. At any rate, the one thing that I got out of the article was that there is a big difference between what the society labels as success and what people perceive as happiness. Wealth seems to be a big factor in success, but not such a big factor in happiness. As long as basic needs for food and shelter and clothing are met, people are able to be happy with very few financial resources. What seems to be most important for happiness is meaningful personal relationships.

When it comes to that, we are exceptionally blessed.

I spend a fair amount of time working with families that have strained relationships. I’ve witnessed scores of divorces in the community, in the church, and among my brothers and sisters. I hear lots of stories of family dysfunction, of parents who don’t speak to children or siblings who can’t get along. I know how miserable people can be when relationships with others don’t work out.

We are fortunate to be blessed with a wonderful marriage, incredible children who genuinely like each other and a circle of friends around the world who long to get together and deeply enjoy our time when we do. And yes, if asked by some scientist, I would report that I am a happy person.

One of my friends, who has since passed away, used to like to respond, when asked how he was, “Let’s see . . . I had breakfast and prospects look good for lunch. Yup, I think I’m doing pretty good.”

I don’ know how much unhappiness is caused by excessive worry, but it seems to me that one of the antidotes to worry is the assurance that you have people in your life that you can count on. I don’t have to worry about being lonely in this life because I am surrounded by people who care about me. I have a lot of friends who are younger than me and who will outlive me. When I get to the point in my life where I am old and feeble, there will be plenty of friends to keep me from loneliness as long as I treasure and nurture those relationships and don’t force people out of my life.

The old hymn by John Fawcett seems to sum it all up pretty well.

Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above.

Before our Father’s throne, We pour our ardent prayers; Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, Our comforts, and our cares.

We share our mutual woes, Our mutual burdens bear; And often for each other flows The sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part, It gives us inward pain; But we shall still be joined in heart, And hope to meet again.

Indeed I am blessed. Thanks be to God!

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.

“How big is your church?” It is a question that I often get. Usually I answer by giving an estimate of the number of members. It is one way of measuring the size of a congregation, I suppose, though I suspect it isn’t as accurate a measurement as it once was. There are people who are members of the congregation who are infrequent worshipers. There are people who are actively involved in the life of the church who haven’t taken the step of official membership. There are some who have moved on to other congregations without transferring their membership. The levels of activity and involvement mean that it is hard to get an accurate count of members.

By that method of counting, however, our congregation is remarkably stable. The official count of members goes up and down year by year but it has been in a rather narrow range for the last 50 years.

Another way of measuring the size of a congregation is to take a look at the annual budget. How much money do we handle in a year. That, too, is pretty difficult to grasp. If you just take our operating budget, we’ve been growing steadily, and rather remarkably over the last 20 years. With a stable membership, it might mean that our people are becoming more deeply committed and picking making larger and large donations. It might also mean that inflation keeps raising the prices or the amount of money people have to donate. It might mean that our congregation is growing older. Donations to charities and causes tends to go up with age. But even that is a poor measurement because we actually do more mission and ministry than is reported in the budget figures. There are lots of special funds and projects. There are significant ministries that don’t cost money from the church’s budget. There are many other ways to give than just the contribution of money.

Sometimes we think of our church in terms of the number of people in worship. That number is also quite steady, though it goes through dramatic swings in a week-by-week basis. On average, our worship attendance has been fairly stable over the years. The problem with using that number as a measurement of the size of the congregation is that every time we gather to worship, we can all name dozens of people who are active and important in our congregation who aren’t present at that particular service.

So I am not sure how to answer the question about the size of our congregation. Perhaps the best answer is, “Come and visit. Get involved. You’ll discover there is a whole lot more to this congregation than initially meets the eye.”

The volunteers who have been working on the rummage sale this week are reporting to me that this is the biggest rummage sale ever. My colleagues in other congregations tell me that our rummage sales are the biggest and best in the community. I don’t know that having a big rummage sale is a particularly valid way of evaluating a congregation, but I know that the volunteers who get involved work very hard and put in long days of service. I know that the conjugation is very generous in donating items to be sold. I know that the proceeds from the sales fund many important ministries and support a lot of community organizations.

I am inclined to look at depth of commitment and path of discipleship when I think about the value of our congregation. There are congregations that gather bigger crowds. And to a certain degree nothing gathers a crowd like a crowd. There are always folks who drift towards the place with the biggest parking lot and follow the crowds to see what the fuss is all about. More interesting to me is how deeply people become involved. There are quite a few volunteers in our congregation who have given the majority of their waking hours to the church this week. There are people in our congregation who have worked hard to understand the stories of our people. We’ve got a lot of of folk who aren’t contented to skim across the surface of their faith, but who dive deeply for the wonderful resources of multi-generational commitment to God.

How big is our congregation? Big enough to produce disciples of Christ who carry the gospel into the world in the form of compassion and care for others. Big enough to engage hundreds of people in delivering firewood to warm cold homes and keep people healthy in harsh Dakota winters. Big enough to support one another in journeys of grief and in celebrations of new life. Big enough to remember the past and invest in the future.

Maybe that is the real answer to the question: “How big is your church?” “Big enough.”

I know that there are those who want to quantify everything. There are some who think that if we don’t have more members and more money each year we are somehow a failure. Our culture is full of the urge to make everything bigger and bigger and bigger. But not all growth is sustainable. There have been many churches that have come and gone from our community in the 135 years of our history. The titles of fastest growing and largest church change all the time. It’s pretty hard to stay “king of the hill.” And in that game you only get to be king of the hill, you don’t gain authority to engage in meaningful leadership.

So we will continue to work at inviting new people to become involved in our congregation. And we will continue to work to accomplish meaningful ministry. And we will continue to grow in depth of commitment and to follow the path of discipleship.

And maybe we won’t ever know the answer to the question about size. I’m pretty sure it isn’t the most important question of life after all.

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.

In the first few days after the resurrection of Jesus, our people struggled to understand the meaning of resurrection. That is still an intellectual challenge for us and we often don’t fully grasp its meaning. From those days emerged the story of two disciples walking along the road to Emmaus when they are approached by a stranger who walks with them. Their conversation begins with the stranger asking them about their lives and their journey. Amazed that the stranger doesn’t seem to know their story of grief and loss, they tell it one more time. After listening carefully to their story, the stranger begins to discuss the sacred words of scripture with them. When they reach their destination, the urge the stranger to stay with them and they eat a meal. As the meal is shared they are finally able to recognize who had been with them for the entire journey. It was the resurrected Christ. After Christ departed the two discussed what had happened to them and one raised this question of the other: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?”

The deepest mysteries of life and death and resurrection are still a bit beyond our comprehension. We catch glimpses of the deepest meanings and we experience moments of connection with the resurrected one, but there is still much that we don’t understand.

But I have experienced part of the Emmaus journey: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?”

Yesterday was a long day for this aging pastor. I was in the office very early, working on the liturgy and worship notes for Sunday. Later I went to a regular Bible Study where the other pastors have become my friends. The warm feeling of seeing each other after a brief absence was evident as we discussed the scriptures and explored directions for the task of leading worship in our community. Then it was back to the church to catch up on e-mail, make telephone calls, speak with volunteers hard at work in the church, and meet with a wedding party to go over a service. I grabbed a quick sandwich at noon and was able to stop by a local shop for a few minutes to greet our guests from Australia. In the afternoon I officiated at the wedding, attended the wedding reception and returned to the church for a meeting of the Department of Stewardship and Budget. When I locked up the church for the evening it was a little more than 13 hours since I arrived. I came home, hung up my jacket and removed my tie. Soon the conversation was flowing freely. We and our Australian friends seem to always be able to pick up where we left off and there were many stories to share and our conversation flowed freely. One by one the others headed off to bed until there were just two of us. Tony was telling me a little bit about his recent travels in China, his visit to the Nanjing Theological Seminary, and his sessions with members of the Chinese Christian Council. The dynamic Christian church that has emerged in post cultural-revolution China is nothing short of amazing. A new congregation every three days, people who literally walk all night to attend a worship service and then turn around and walk into the next night to get home for work the next day, congregations that burst at the seams with thousands at worship, and a vibrant, life-transforming faith emerging from a post-denominational, post-missionary church with powerful leaders arising from its midst.

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?”

As I lay in bed waiting for sleep which came quickly I couldn’t help but revel in the joy of the excitement of our conversation.

In the terms of Luke’s report of the disciples’ journey to Emmaus, I had experienced the resurrected Christ multiple times in one day. In my conversations with my colleagues as we met for our weekly Bible study and in my late night conversations with our Australian guest, I experienced that burning heart sensation of knowing that our conversations are a part of something much bigger than ourselves. And maybe, just maybe, as I reached out to the congregation assembled for the wedding, as I tried to make connections between the sacred words of our scriptures and the family and friends gathered for the wedding, I was able to be like the stranger on the road and help others to see the resurrected Christ in our midst.

Our experiences of resurrection come to us in the midst of our everyday lives. In the real pain and struggle of grief and loss, in the telling of our stories and finding ways to see the connections between our stories and the great stories of our people, in the sharing of simple refreshment and food, we come face-to-face with the amazing and powerful truth that death is not the end. Life triumphs even when it seems that death has caused the ultimate separation. Love transcends that vast distances that sometimes seem to separate us.

Four decades ago we were drawn to Chicago in part because of a truly great teacher. Together we studied with that teacher and together we were inspired and challenged by our lessons. Our lives led us to very different lives on different continents and our families unfolded in different ways. But last evening as we talked it was as if our teacher, Ross Snyder, was a part of our conversations. We still use a particular poetic style when we speak that we learned in our studies with Ross. We know how excited and interested he would have been at the experiences we have had.

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?”

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.

When we got married, our first apartment was a rather funny little place. We had three rooms. You entered into the living room, which was also our study, with a desk and shelves for our books. It was also our bedroom, with a hide-a-bed sofa that we pulled out for sleeping. There was a short hallway connecting the living room to the kitchen with a bathroom on one side of the hall. The kitchen wasn’t very big, but it had room for a small table with four chairs. The apartment had been the space for the “dorm mother” when the building had been a dormitory. When we lived there, it had been converted to offices. The Montana Association of Churches, the Montana-Northern Wyoming Conference of the United Church of Christ, and a couple of other church organizations occupied the rest of the first floor. There was a commons area and bathrooms on the first floor. In the half-buried basement was a mechanical room and a large room that was used as the meeting place for a new Presbyterian Church that was being formed. Upstairs the dorm rooms remained and were used for visiting guests. We traded janitorial services for our rent.

Sometimes, when nothing else was scheduled, we were allowed to use the commons area to entertain guests. The reception following our wedding rehearsal was held in that space.

We also would invite individuals and couples to our apartment for simple meals. I think spaghetti was a common menu item when we entertained guests.

It was our home for the nine months of our senior year of college. After living in Kimball Hall, we moved to half of a small cabin at my folks’ summer place and from there to a one bedroom apartment in Chicago.

One of the important tasks of every home that we have had is hospitality. Home is not just a retreat from the world, it is also a gathering place where friends meet. Our teacher Ross Snyder described it this way: “a meeting place for the gathering of friends from around the world for the interplay of mind upon mind, living toward world humanity.”

Today our home will be a place for our daughter and son-in-law to come after their adventures in Montana and Yellowstone National Park on their way towards their home. And we also will have guests from Australia. The Rev. Dr. Tony Floyd is the director of Multicultural and Cross Cultural Ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia. He is at the center of producing resources, hosting conferences and workshops, meeting with congregations and helping the church to live its faith in the diverse and multicultural setting that is Australia. The Uniting Church has congregations from all over the world. Immigrants from Indonesia, Vietnam, Samoa, and other Pacific Islands as well as other places have come to Australia and formed congregations that are a vital part of the Uniting Church.

Tony is also a seminary classmate and friend of 40 years. He, his wife Shirley and children Leanne and Michael were among the first people we met when we moved to Chicago. During the two years that we studied together, we formed close bonds by discussing theology late into the night, sharing meals and numerous cups of tea, and more than a few meals. We traveled together during school breaks and their family spent one Christmas break with our families in Montana. After Tony completed his doctoral program and they returned to Australia we kept in touch with letters and later e-mail and occasional phone conversations. Tony and Shirley have traveled to the United States several times and we have been able to host them in each of the homes we have had since graduating from seminary. They were visiting when we moved to South Dakota and helped us move into this house. They came again for a visit a decade later and now are making their third visit to our home here. We were able to spend a month together touring Australia including a trip to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Alice Springs.

Receiving guests is one of the reasons we have a home and we are joyful and excited to have everyone arriving later today. The next few days will be a great time of showing our church and the area to our guests. It will also be a time to renew friendship, to share stories and to exchange ideas.

It is simplistic to say that we speak the same language. Of course our accents are different. There are even a few vocabulary differences between Australia and the Midwest of the United States. But we shared the same teachers and studied the same subjects in Seminary. We followed the same degree paths, though our educational focuses were different. We shared a deep admiration and garnered inspiration from a common teacher whose life and work has been a constant companion through four decades of ministry not just on our two continents, but also in Africa, Europe, South America and Asia as well. Perhaps we are participating in that “living toward world humanity” about which our teacher wrote.

I have a busy day ahead. There is a wedding rehearsal and a wedding. There are worship bulletins to prepare. There is a meeting of the Department of Stewardship and Budget in the early evening. But when I get to the end of the day, I know that there will be a pot of tea and perhaps some “biscuits” waiting. More than the refreshment of food, however, will be the refreshment of hearing stories of life and ministry in Australia and seeing the connections between our churches and our lives.

The gospel of Matthew ends with these words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

This great commission has empowered the church for millennia. Tonight we will taste the fruit of its fulfillment when we share good conversation and faith with friends from another nation, whose discipleship journey crosses with ours again and again.

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.

Yesterday our son and his family had a very early flight from Billings, Montana to Seattle, Washington. He got his crew up and to the airport by 4:30 and their flight departed shortly after 6:00. That got them to their hom in Olympia by the time that people were heading to work. Although he had planned to take the day off, he ended up needing to go into his office to take care of some things while his family readjusted to being at home after a long weekend of visiting family in Montana. As I read his brief text message about the day I couldn’t help but feeling that one of the things that we have passed down from generation to generation in our family is a sense of engagement with our work. My father was definitely like that and I have found the same thing. None of the three generations has been prone to just work by the clock and walk away from work. We have all been people who have had softer boundaries between work and home life. They aren’t rigidly separated, but all are part of our identity. When there is work to be done the thing to do is to get to it.

Reentry to work will be similar for me today. There is a Church Board meeting this evening and finding a place for the meeting will be a challenge with the rummage sale set up. Knowing the things that need to be done, I planned a short trip for today. I have just over 200 miles to drive this morning and then it will back to work. One thing that I did differently on this vacation is that I stayed away from my e-mail. That means that there will be hundreds of messages to sort through.

Achieving the right balance between work and recreation has been a struggle for our people from the very beginning. The commandment about Sabbath is, in part, a response to our tendency to think that we can go without taking time off from work. I know my father wrestled with that issue. Our place by the Boulder River was a bit of a retreat for him. When he went down to the river to fish, he was beyond the reach of the telephone. Of course in today’s world, we don’t go beyond the reach of the telephone very often. We carry phones with us wherever we go.

And my phone can be used to check my e-mail and keep in touch with other messages. But, from time to time, it is good to unplug just a little bit. We are so used to being on call 24/7 that we go around being a bit distracted from the moment because we know that at any time we might be interrupted by a phone call.

Learning to be present in the moment is one of the great gifts of this life. Sometimes one just needs to focus on what is going on where one finds oneself. It is one of the gifts our grandchildren give us. They simply enjoy the moment and invite us to enter into that moment without worrying about the next phone call, the mail piling up on the desk, or the coming meetings and challenges.

Of course it is a balancing act. To just live in the present with no thought or concern for the future can result in all kinds of problems. Our lives need structure and we need to be able to look at the big picture from time to time. Our ability to remember the past and anticipate the future keeps us connected with other people and to accomplish really big projects. Without planning and dedication little can be done.

In our hyper-connected world, the temptation is to be distracted by so many interruptions that one responds to the most recent or most urgent demand on our time. There are plenty of people who become so swept up in the busyness of their lives that they don’t develop the commitment and dedication to accomplish major projects. They simply flit from one thing to another and never develop deep commitments and connections.

What seems to work best for me is to devise blocks of time when I focus my attention in different places. I have just completed a week in which I paid attention to my extended family. I have connected with three of my four nieces on one side of the family and all of my nieces and nephews on the other side. I have visited with cousins and gathered together all of our children and grandchildren. I have celebrated a birthday with my sisters and paid some attention to a piece of family property that needs a little work. This time it was best to simply focus on family for a week.

Now I need to focus on work for a couple of days. There is much to be done, with a wedding tomorrow in the midst of the rummage sale. People will be coming and going from the church with lots of needs and I will have to be ready to listen carefully. Then, later this week, I will be doing a balancing act as we play host to friends from Australia. Our friend is the national director of intercultural ministries for the Uniting Church of Australia, which means that his visit is both personal and church-related. Hosting the visit requires that we not make rigid boundaries between work and personal life. Our conversations about the church and its future will stitch into the evenings and even our times of driving around to show them the Black Hills.

We are complex beings and we lead complex lives. The ability to establish priorities is critical. The first priority of our people is our relationship with God. When that one is straight the other things fall into place. And when we forget, we fall into idolatry - making some false object into a god.

May God grant us the grace to remember our priorities and put God first in every decision.

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.

Yesterday afternoon I walked down to the river with my son and grandson. The river has changed a lot since I was a kid. Our family’s place is on the inside of a curve and the river keeps stretching out and moving farther away from the cabins. Some day the river might decide to move back and dig a new channel closer to the place. But it is still the same river. The rushing water flows over river rocks and boulders that share their name with the river.

We were only down by the river for a half hour or so, but it was a wonderful time for me. Sunday afternoons were often time for fishing for my father. He’d stand on the bank or wade into the stream and float a few grasshoppers down the river to catch a few trout for supper or the next morning’s breakfast. My grandson spent the time throwing rocks into the water and enjoying the splash. My son and I skipped rocks across the water. The trick is to find the right rock that will skip all the way across the water and land on the opposite bank. Interestingly, it isn’t always the roundest stone that makes it. One with a bit of a notch so that you can get a really good spin works well.

I couldn’t help thinking how much my dad would have enjoyed my grandson. My father died before my son was born, so they never met face to face. There have, however, been a lot of stories. Standing there on the riverbank at the edge of the property for which my father worked so hard, a deep joy came over me. How fortunate I am to be able to share this place and some of its stories with my grandson. How fortunate I am to have a son who takes a few days out of his busy life to bring his children to meet us here.

It has been glorious to have our children and grandchildren together for three days. Of course, it seems short and it is a bit sad that we have to go our separate ways, but it really has been wonderful. One of the joys of being an elder is the way that memories stack on top of each other. Walking to the river, carrying my grandson whose three-year-old feet stumble and get stuck in the rocks, I could remember so many other times of going down to the river. It was our play place, our fishing hole, and one of the places our father could find some peace and get away from the relentless pace of his work. It was the place I would go for some peace and contemplation when I was a student. Susan and I spent the summer here after our first year of marriage and we’ve come back again and again to share the place with our children and now our grandchildren.

We are people of many stories. Some have called our people “The people of the Book.” For hundreds of generations, we have honored and kept the sacred stories of our people. We turn to them for guidance when we feel lost and for meaning when we are struggling to make sense of life. We read the stories at weddings and funerals in part to remind ourselves that ours isn’t the first generation to know the deep joys and sorrows of life. We read the stories to remind ourselves that God is always calling us towards a future and that our people will be walking with God long after our time on this earth has reached its conclusion.

There are a lot of special places in the stories of our people. I have never been to many of those places. I haven’t climbed Mt. Nebo to look across the Jordan to the promised land. I haven’t gone up Horeb or touched my toes in the Sea of Galilee. I know those places only through the stories. One day I may travel to those places, but if I never go there, they will still have a certain familiarity to me because the places play a role in the stories.

And there are places in the less-ancient stories as well. I often think of my life’s journey in terms of the churches where I have worshiped. The church where I was baptized is still standing a short walk from the house where I grew up. The church I attended in college and where Susan and I were married has added a new sanctuary and is a bigger building than it was when we were there. When we went to seminary, there were several churches, but prominent in m memory is Union Church in Hinsdale where I interned. Then there are the two churches in North Dakota 16 miles apart and Wright Church in Boise, Idaho. And now our home church is a beautiful structure in the Black Hills. These are all special places of my spiritual journey.

And it is good to go back to the old places. The past week has been a journey of places of my childhood and growing-up years. Being in the places reminds me of the stories and of the people with whom we shared the journey. Those who were my elders have come to the ends of their lives. There have been a lot of funerals and memorial services in these places. But they continue to be present in my life and in the stories I tell to my children and grandchildren.

It is time to turn my attention towards home and the work that still lies before me in the church I serve. But it has been good to take a break and pause for a few moments to visit the places and tell the stories of the journey and to remember the people who have filled it with richness and meaning.

Who knows, perhaps one day our grandson will take his son to the river to toss in a few rocks and tell a few stories.

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.

One of the roles played by he church is to be a keeper of tradition and memory. You can see carefully preserved history in museums, but just keeping the archives and putting them on display is not the same thing as keeping traditions. Traditions are changing and growing entities that weave their way through the generations reminding us of our connections with other times. In the church we take seriously the role of honoring the past by not forgetting the journey that led our people to the present generation.

There are a few other keepers of tradition in our society. One such place is the court system. It evolves and changes, but it remains rooted in the history of our people.

But there aren’t too many keepers of tradition in our society. Most public media, such as television, are terrible at keeping tradition. Watch a wedding on television, and you get a silly mishmash of old words that have been separated from their meaning. There is some sense that a formal occasion like a wedding needs to have some of the beautiful old words from the past, but there is no connection with the living and growing tradition. Often a television wedding will have words and symbols that you wouldn’t see in a contemporary church wedding, but those words and symbols are used out of context, without an understanding of the meanings behind the traditions.

Sometimes when a couple comes to me to help plan their wedding, they say that they want a “traditional” wedding. But they don’t know what that means. They are longing for a connection with the past and the heritage of our people, but they have not learned those traditions. Too often, the word “traditional” when used by couples in reference to weddings doesn’t mean traditional at all. It means like they have seen before and that means on television.

Television weddings are rarely even complete in terms of the liturgy. If you remove the advertisements from a television program, the program doesn’t last as long as a genuinely traditional wedding. So television deletes the reading of scripture, for example. Remove the sacred words that have been treasured by our people for millennia and you remove one of our links with the past. Television weddings have some sense that the couple must assent to vows, so they almost always have the words “I do.” Rarely do they display the tradition of the couple exchanging complete wedding vows by repeating them after the pastor. In the liturgy of our church the vows of intention, which are not the same as the wedding vows, are answered with the words, “I will,” not “I do.” That change was made a half a century ago when the words at the beginning of the vows were changed from “Do you take . . .” to “Will you have . . .” There have been many other changes in words in the liturgies of the church. Liturgy is not static. But the changes are forged in the context of a deep awareness of the history and a deep respect for the past.

Playing “pick and choose” with old words is hardly honoring the past.

There is a definite trend toward the secularization of weddings. Wedding “venues” away from churches are popular and market their services aggressively. They offer “complete” services, including providing officiants. The officiants rarely are educated and rarely possess any knowledge of the history and traditions of marriage. At their best they are well-meaning people who are trying to provide a service to couples. At their worst they are charlatans and hucksters who are simply trying to make a buck off of a couple at a vulnerable point in their lives whose parents are willing to spend a lot of money on a single day. The wedding industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and people aren’t spending much of that money on the services of churches. In the average church wedding the bride’s dress cost two to four times the cost of all of the services of the church, including honoraria for musicians, ministers and church wedding coordinators. People can spent up to 10 times the cost of church services on the photographer. And receptions are where they really unleash the wallet.

These secular officiants simply want to get a bit of all of that spending. And they are willing to do so by not consuming too much money or too much time. They can’t personalize their services because they don’t know the couple. In many cases they haven’t even met the couple more than a simple interview before the wedding. They don’t know the traditions, they don’t know the couple, they don’t have authority granted by any societal institutions. But they usually find a robe to wear. And they are quick to say, “by the power invested in me by the state of . . ., I pronounce.” That power invested in them comes only through the liberalization of the laws of the state that allow anyone to officiate at a wedding. It isn’t like they did anything to earn that “power.” And, quite frankly, it isn’t much power.

The church has something entirely different to offer. We have a connection with the traditions and past of our people. We have educated clergy who are willing to spend enough time with a couple to really get to know them and to personalize their service to the unique circumstances of their wedding. The church offers an on-going community of support to a couple and their families as they travel through the difficult times of their lives. Unlike the wedding venues and officiants, the church will be there for the couple when they face grief and loss.

In an increasingly secular world, the church has a unique and wonderful covenant and ceremony. It will likely be chosen by a small minority of couples, but those who do will appreciate the depth and beauty of a real church wedding and the connections it offers with both the past and the future.

After all, marriage is a sacred covenant.

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.

Scientists are rarely poetic or philosophical, but when they talk about water, they can sometimes sound a bit like the way I write. The intimate relationship between life and water has led scientists to invest incredible resources in searching for water on the Moon and Mars. They know that without water there can be no life as we know it.

Our planet is rich in this precious resource. The pictures of the earth taken from space reveal the blue of oceans and the huge percentage of the earth’s surface that is covered with water.

We are mostly water. The cells of our bodies are awash in the stuff. Without water, we don’t exist.

So it makes sense that we are fascinated by water.

I awoke this morning to the sound of water. Camped here next to Rock Creek on the outskirts of Red Lodge, Montana, the sound of the water rushing over the rocks is deeply familiar to me. It sounds like home. The sound is very similar to the rush of the Boulder River near my childhood home. The Boulder is a bit larger, but our campsite is a bit closer to the river.

Our campsite is just a few miles up stream from where we used to throw rocks into the creek behind my grandfather’s service station. Last evening when our grandson was tossing rocks into the creek, we were within sight of that place, though the building is now gone and the town has changed.

Rock Creek and the Boulder are close to their mountain sources. Follow either river upstream and you will watch other creeks flowing into the main stream. As you go up the river becomes a creek and the creek becomes a stream. The land rises steeply in both cases. Before long you’ll find yourself at 7,000 and then 10,000 feet above sea level. Up in the high country the stream becomes a trickle and if you follow it far enough you will find yourself next to the drip, drip, drip of melting snow and ice at the top of the mountains.

We are near to the low point of the snowfields at the source of the rivers in this part of the world. The days are near their hottest of the year and the snow is quickly fading. But it won’t be long - less than a month - before the snows begin to fall again. For now the creeks and rivers are supplemented by nearly daily thundershowers in the high country. The rain and snow mix to keep the water flowing.

Some of those raindrops and snowflakes have traveled a long ways before falling on the Montana mountains. They travel as groups of water droplets suspended in the air. Scientists use radar to track the movement of the clouds. We know that some of those droplets were once part of the Pacific Ocean before they moved to the surface and were evaporated in the bright warmth of a sunny day. In the ocean they flowed and swirled with the currents, some brushing on the shores of distant lands and mixing with the waters of a thousand rivers that rush to the sea.

I grew up next to the clear mountain streams. It is no longer true, but when I was a child, you could safely drink the water of Rock Creek and the Boulder without filtering it. The cold water was refreshing and wonderful. We took a bit of it and made it a part of us. And, like the riverbeds, the water flows through us, coming and going.

If you follow Rock Creek or the Boulder the other direction, they both run into the Yellowstone, the longest unaltered riverbed in the United States. The Yellowstone comes out of Yellowstone Lake in the Park and makes its way across Montana and flows into the Missouri just over the North Dakota border. There are a few irrigation diversions in the river, but no dams interrupt its flow. The explorers Lewis and Clark were aware that the Yellowstone was a great waterway. On their way upstream the entire party followed the Missouri but on the return trip, Clark took a portion of the Corps of Discovery over the pass to explore the Yellowstone while Lewis headed north on the Missouri. Near the place where the Boulder empties into the Yellowstone, they came upon cottonwood trees that were large enough to make dugout canoes and from there they were able to journey by water back to Missouri. The journey of the Corps was by water on the Missouri all the way to the headwaters where the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin rivers come together. They only had to leave the water briefly to portage the Great Falls of the Missouri. But from that point, it was overland until they reached the Columbia Basin where the waters flow west to the Pacific.

For our family get together, our Daughter and Son in Law followed the Missouri upstream from Independence, Missouri before leaving it about half way across South Dakota to take a more westerly course and eventually come into the Yellowstone basin near Billings Montana. Earlier this week I was upstream and stopped for a while to watch the mighty Missouri flow over the portion of the Great Falls that remains after the dam crossed the river just above the falls. The falls are still and impressive sight and it is easy to see why Lewis and Clark had to portage.

The rivers feel like old friends to me. It is as if I have known the Boulder and Rock Creek and the Yellowstone and the Missouri all of my life. I have floated down them on inner tubes and in canoes and drift boats and rafts. I have felt the coolness of their waters on my skin and I have dipped into them and drunk of their flow.

I have followed the Missouri all the way to where it flows into the Mississippi, but I have yet to go to the Delta where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico. That trip is being saved for another time.

But today I listen to the water rushing over the boulders a few feet from our campsite and can imagine that drops of water are rushing by on their way from the Pacific to the Gulf and on to the Atlantic. Some of them may even make their way around the southern tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Some may flow all the way to the Pacific and start their trip all over again.

We come from water and are shaped by water and to water we return. The sound of the river is the sound of life itself. And it is a glorious lullaby at night and a delightful greeting in the morning.

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.

When we were young adults, my father used to put together these grand family gatherings. Often they were around Christmas because winter was a slower season in his business than summer, but he would go in for a summer event from time to time as well. He would touch base with each of his children and see if we could come. One of his favorite places to get us together was Chico Hot Springs. He would invite cousins and their families and plan adventures such as a winter drive into Yellowstone Park. But the whole point of the event was just to get the gang together. This was in the days before Chico got discovered by lots of people with money from out of state. I remember one December evening when we pulled together a bunch of tables in the dining hall for our family. There was this one huge table attended by most of the waitstaff in the place and then just one other table with four people at it. The ratio of family to others was about the same in the swimming pool as well.

We liked the family get togethers. We enjoyed seeing everybody and it didn’t hurt that we were able to have a nice room in a resort without it costing us any money.

I don’t think I understood my father until now, though. There is somewhere inside of me this deep longing to get my family together. We had our children and our grandson together last summer for a glorious time, so it hasn’t been that long. But this weekend is a real treat for me. Everyone is here. And we have a new granddaughter so there are two in that generation now. Yesterday as we were all getting toward the same location I found myself aching to see our daughter and to have her see her niece and nephew.

We aren’t as big of a splash in a restaurant. Our family is smaller than the bunch of kids and grownups that my dad used to convene. But it felt really grand to sit at the end of a table with our children, their spouses and our grandchildren last night. I think I know what contented is. Some of the family were getting pretty tired. Michael has been working nights and he and Rachel had come from one time zone to the east. Our grandchildren were from one time zone to the west, so they had more energy. Our grandson was pretty excited to see everybody and to be in a new environment.

I was simply happy. It seemed for the moment that i have everything that I want in this life.

Today we will be getting together our family with quite a few of the relatives on Susan’s side as we prepare for the wedding of our niece. On Sunday afternoon, we’ll be introducing our grandchildren to relatives on my side of the family at a birthday party for my sister.

It is a kind of a new thing for me to feel quite this way. For most of my professional life I have wanted to sort of get away from people when I had a little vacation. I would plan a trip to a lonely campsite and just sit and watch the creek flow by. Or I would get up early and take my canoe out by myself. Other family members would be flowing to big family get togethers. And I would come, but it seemed to me that getting together with all of my cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters was a lot like what I do for a living. There are about the same number of personality differences and potential for hurt feelings in my family as in a mid-sized church. Getting together with my siblings and their families was something that I tolerated.

But getting our family together seems like the best of ideas.

Maybe I like being a patriarch. I’m the old man now. No one cares if I get down on the floor to play with my grandson and even though his parents don’t want to encourage too many splashes in puddles on the way to supper, they are very tolerant of wet pant legs when grandpa has been a part of the splashing.

People smile when I carry my infant granddaughter down the street. They even step aside for us in a narrow crosswalk. My daughter’s smile can light up the room for me and I am amazed at my son’s competent intelligence and ability to solve problems.

I’m pretty sure that the motorcyclists polishing their fancy bikes covered with a lot of added chrome and the old men smoking their cigars and the drivers of the million-dollar RVs and the couples in their fancy convertibles don’t even notice me. But it feels like I’m the luckiest guy in the world when I walk down the street with my family - like I wouldn’t trade places with any of them.

I remember being very happy when we had two small children. I remember being proud of them when we would go out in public. But I also remember being worried about whether or not they were making too much noise, and fretting a bit about how the money would work out and the logistics of getting our family from one point to another. I suppose I was a bit more tired in the evening and a bit more frayed around the edges. These days I spend less time and energy on the worries and more on the joy.

I guess that when I am surrounded by so many beautiful people no one expects me to be good looking. When I am surrounded by so many intelligent people, it is OK for me to be the silly one.

My kids laugh at my dumb jokes a lot more than they did 10 or 20 years ago.

Looking back, every phase of being a father has been very good for me. I have enjoyed that part of my life very much. I liked our children when they were preschoolers and when they were teenagers. Being the dad of adults, however, is also a very wonderful part of life. This particular phase is one of the best.

I don’t mean to brag, but today feels like Thanksgiving.

God is good all the time.
All the time God is good.

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.

I have been thinking about settlers and wanderers. Much of what we call the Old Testament are stories about our people as wanderers. One of the most ancient stories of our people begins, “A wandering Aramean was my father. He went down to Egypt and sojourned there, he and just a handful of his brothers at first, but soon they became a great nation, mighty and many.” (Deuteronomy 26:10) This version of our origin story from Deuteronomy, is actually more ancient than the more detailed stories that we read in Genesis. It has never been a problem for our people because the stories line up. If you imagine that one of the descendants of Joseph first told the Deuteronomy text, it is accurate to describe Joseph - and in fact all of his brothers and his parents, grandparents and great grandparents as wanderers. And our people kept wandering for a long time after the time in Egypt. Moses led the people as we wandered in the desert for 40 years. Joshua is celebrated as the one who brought us into the promised land, but even as we became settlers, there was a fair amount of wandering that occurred.

On my father’s side of our family The generation of his grandparents would have called themselves settlers and they would have been called settlers by the indigenous Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Siouan people who had lived in the Spirit Lake region of North Dakota before it was opened to homesteading. But by the third generation, our family had moved west again. If you trace the movement of our people from Germany to Russia to Pennsylvania to Dakota Territory to Montana we roamed around quite a bit.

On my Mother’s side of the family, they seemed a little bit more settled, often living for three or four generations in a location, but there is a fair amount of wandering between England and Fort Benton, Montana. And when our mother and father married they made their home in a new town. We grew up with our grandparents in two different directions from the place we called home.

Now, just one generation later, my brothers and sisters are spread from Oregon to South Dakota. Three of my siblings live relatively close to our home place these days, but our house and the buildings at the airport and the shop where our father sold farm machinery and feeds all belong to others. I can go into any business on main street and not be recognized. I have lived in Billings, Chicago, North Dakota, Idaho and South Dakota since I left there. The 19 years we have lived in our South Dakota home is the longest I’ve ever stayed put in my life.

I guess we are more wanderers than settlers.

Even the grandchildren of my cousin (on my mother’s side) who live in the house of their great grandmother and great grandfather, are seasoned wanderers. They have now come to roost in the place where our family has lived for many generations, but they were born in Belize where my cousin and his wife ended up after journeying from the farm to Oregon, California and finally going to Belize to “settle,” but really forming their life around the construction and operation of a sailboat - hardly a “settled” lifestyle. Now their grandchildren have grown up on the farm, the oldest has been there half of her life, the others larger percentages.

And some of our talk, while we were there, centered on the “launching” of their daughter, who has completed high school and who will be moving to Billings soon to pursue her education and discover the next phase of her life.

50 years ago our parents bought a small vacation property on the edge of the town where we lived. It is the only piece of land our family owns int he county of my birth. But the land and the cabins are a bit of a conundrum for our generation. Susan and I have found a camper that we can pull with our pickup to be a better vacation home than one with a fixed address. We are drawn to the places where our children and grandchildren live and our children live a day’s drive or more away in two different directions. My other brothers and sisters have all spent some time at the river place, but not enough to justify continuing to own it. Still, it seems a bit strange to think of selling it. Sometimes it feels like a place of stability - a “home” to which we can return from the wanderings of our lives. Sometimes it seems like an anchor, holding us back when we are in the mood to go sailing on life’s other adventures.

I guess we need more time to figure out what is the right thing to do. But the truth is that none of us can imagine our children or grandchildren as choosing the river place as their home. We expect them to be scattered around the world pursuing their lives in many different places.

Maybe we are just wanderers at heart, born to explore and find new places.

Once, when a group of us were discussing the conflict between the modern nation of Israel and Palestine, one of our teachers admonished us, “It is a mistake to talk of Israel as a place. Israel is a people, not a place. Israel is the name God gave to our grandfather Jacob and all of his descendants. We can never be reduced to a piece of real estate.”

Even the Anganu, the aboriginal people of central Australia, who have occupied the same region for more than 10,000 years, are wanderers who move around the land dwelling in temporary structures. They didn’t define their place on earth with boundaries, but rather with paths that they walked and journey they took from one place to another.

At this phase of my life, I’ve pretty much ceased calling myself a Montanan. I’ve invested four decades of my life dwelling in other states. I suppose it might be as accurate to call myself a South Dakotan. That state has been a very good home for us.

But I think of where we might go next. I like taking our camper to new places. In the end I may just be more of a wanderer than a settler.

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.

I stayed up later than usual last night. There were people with whom I needed to talk and the opportunities to be with family are rare enough to be very precious. As I lay on my bed a chorus of coyotes are serenading. I never can tell how many coyotes there are. A friend once told me that generally there are fewer than you think. There were, however distinct voices in last night’s performance for me to believe that there were several in at least two different locations - perhaps more. The location of the coyotes is also difficult to judge unless they are very close, which they weren’t. Close coyotes would have brought a response from the dog of the farm.

Yesterday was a wonderful, full day. The wedding was at 2 in the afternoon and there was a fair gathering of folk. I spent most of the morning in conversation and adjusting my plans for the ceremony. There was, of course, a big dinner with cake and ice cream and lots more conversation. Some of us talked long after dark.

Our family is being swept up in a big wave of culture an civilization that is affecting so many other families. The shift from family farming to large scale production agriculture was dramatically swift. In a single generation the scale of farming doubled and then tripled. The number of arable acres required to support a family became enormous. The costs of equipment skyrocketed at many times the inflation rate for other items. Most family farms operate on an incredibly small margin. There isn’t much profit. Farmers and ranchers handle a lot of money, but the amount they are allowed to keep is very small.

If you add to that the normal tensions of passing a business from one generation to the next, the picture is enormously complex. The question of how to allow younger generations the ability to make mistakes and do things differently is a real challenge. Elders keep their health longer and generally find it difficult to give up control. And there is always the question of what to do next as one moves out of the day to day operaton of any business.

So we have much to discuss when we get together. Opinions are easy to come by. Solutions require more time.

But perspective is valuable. Thinking about the issues that surround the River Ranch helps me to see the issues that surround the decisions facing me in this phase of my life. The operation of a church is in some ways different than running a ranch. In other ways, it is remarkably similar. The question of leadership and how to effect transitions in leadership is often as big a challenge in the church as it is on a farm. The new generation likely had different goals, methods, and ways of doing things. Often the elder generation will see these differences and judge the young as lacking in commitment or willingness to work. Tensions arise and what has seemed to be so strong and stable suddenly appears more vulnerable than we thought it would be.

I’ve made comments about the ways of young ministers that sound remarkably like the comments that I have heard about young farmers and ranchers.

Looking at things from a different point of view can make it easier to understand what is going on. I suspect that this week of vacation will turn out to be a pretty good investment in the future of the church I serve at home.

Our family has no more living members of the World War II generation. The church has fewer each year and we can see the time coming when we will have no more. Theirs was a generation of builders that gave a unique contribution to our nation and to most of the institutions of our culture. They assumed leadership at a very young age and retained it for a longer time than many previous generations. They shaped our institutions and ways of doing things more than other generations.

They probably weren't the most gracious at the transfer of authority and control. But that transfer occurs whether or not we bring grace into the picture.

The stories of our people are filled with transfers of authority that are less than gracious. The book of Judges alone has enough stories of failures of grace in the transfer of leadership. Our story is one of God showing incredible grace even when we humans make really big mistakes.

There is no reason to believe that God has ceased being gracious.

Just as the farm give me perspective, so do the stories of our people. Ours is not the enterprise of a single generation. We are reminded of those who have come before and of those who come after us. Having just re-read the cycle of Jacob stories I am reminded how incredible our people changed in just four generations. The trip from Abraham to Joseph is incredible. Abraham was in no way able to envision the giant cast of characters that were involved in Joseph’s trip to Egypt. Joseph is too caught up in the struggles of control with his brothers to begin to think forward to the generation of Moses - and he probably would have been incapable of envisioning what happened as was his great grandfather of imagining his life.

In farming and in the life of the church, it is important to understand that there are plenty of things that last longer than we do. The land and the river endure through hundreds of generations of farmers. The faith endures through faithful and faithless generations.

We are involved in enterprises that are much bigger than we can even imagine.

Our time is short and the timing seems to us to be critical.

But as I am reminded this morning. one wakeful rooster doesn’t make it morning. The sun rises and sets on its own schedule and all of our crowing doesn’t change that one bit.

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 rooster started crowing just afte 4 am this morning. I think that his personality is a bit like mine. He is up before daylight and it doesn’t sound like any of the other chickens are stirring yet. He just has to make a little noise to remind himself that he is not all alone.

My cousin’s daughter, her husband and her three children live in the house where my aunt and uncle raised their two boys. There have been a few changes to the house. The added on a large carport. The old detached garage isn’t big enough for much and these days garages house more than just a car. But, for the most part, the place looks very much like it did when I was a kid. The chicken coop is in the same place and the area fenced off for the chickens is roughly the same size. And they have a similar number of chickens. My aunt and uncle raised chickens for the eggs, like the present generation. My family, on the other hand, only had what we called “friers.” We got chicks in the spring and raised them for eating. One day in the fall they were all butchered, feathered and made ready for the freezer. That way we didn’t have chickens year round like my aunt and uncle. And our roosters never got old enough to discover their vocation as farmyard alarm clocks.

I don’t think anyone is paying any attention to the rooster this morning. I don’t hear folks stirring.

I’m camped next to the quonset that doubles as a shop for making repairs and a storage area for some of the equipment. Although there are granaries for most of the winter wheat storage behind the shop, the shop can double as a grain storage area in a good year. I am not around to participate in the process, but the farm is much more diverse now than it was when I was a kid. I don’t remember other crops than hard red winter wheat - the best kind for bread flour. There was a little alfalfa raised and some years a bit of barley, but that was about it. These days the farm rotates quite a few different crops and some are raised for the field, not combined, but plowed back into the soil to add nutrition to the farm. This year they have both winter and spring wheat. The spring wheat is durham - the strain that is used for making noodles. Bread and spaghetti - from the same farm. The durham is not ready to combine yet, but a week or so and they’ll be back on the combine. The diverse crops mean that they need to keep their own combine running. It just isn’t practical for custom cutters to come in to do the combining. And, compared to the big production farms around here the family operation isn’t very big at all. There is a place, not far from here, where the strips are 3 miles long. It has been a while since I worked summer fallow, but even with the monstrous tractors they use these days, I know that there mile strips make for a boring job working them. You get on the tractor and drive three miles, where you get to make two corners and then you drive three more miles - all day long. The big event is switching from one strip to the next one.

The rooster, of course, knows nothing of production farming. He doesn’t even know much of the work of the ranch. His domain is a little patch fenced off with chicken wire. He’s big stuff inside of that area, but that is pretty much all of his territory. Just look at a chicken some day. Not much room in that head for a brain.

I never was a fan of raising chickens. It’s just the way I am.

One thing that is different about the farm these days is the large vegetable garden. Three kids living at home means for ample labor to grow a lot of good food. When we were growing up the farm didn’t have a well. All of the water had to be hauled in and there was a large cistern with a pump to provide the domestic water. Nonetheless, water conservation was a big deal and other than a few house plants, there was no domestic garden.

These days the community has gone together to develop a water system and there is abundant water for all of the houses in the area and there is plenty of water for a large home garden.

There is a second rooster crowing now. I think he might be a bit younger. At least his sound isn’t as confident and clear as the first on that I heard.

I’m not a farmer. I was called to a different vocation for my life. But I have deep admiration for those who live and work much closer to the source of our food. I like knowing where my food is coming from and I like knowing that this farm has been in the business of producing food for others for more than a century. Through trial and error and no small amount of mistakes this corner of my family has figured out how to get to the sixth generation on this land.

According ot local lore, seven generations makes you a native instead of a newcomer. One more to go.

I am old enough to have watched some of those generations come and go. My uncle and aunt, who lived on the place all of their married lives, came to the end of their earthly lives years ago. Their two boys are now in their seventies. Their oldest grandchild is now twenty and will be moving to a city to continue her education at the end of this week. No one knows if there is someone in the next generation who will work the farm.

What we do know is that we are stewards of the land for a little while only. Our time is considerably longer than that of the chicken, but it is pretty short compared to the mountains on the horizon.

And while we are here it becomes our task to see what we can share with others. There will be plenty of hungry people in years to come. Raising food to fee folks will be a worthy occupation for generations to come.

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.

From time to time life gives me surprises that I didn’t really see coming. When our niece set her wedding date for August, we thought that it might be a good opportunity to get our family together and to introduce our new granddaughter to that side of the family. We began to make plans for our children and grandchildren to travel to Montana for the wedding. Because the wedding is on a Saturday, we made plans to take a week of vacation. I noticed that the day after the wedding is my sister’s birthday, so I thought it might be fun to put together a gathering of my side of the family so that they could meet our grandchildren as well. Most of my siblings and their children have not yet met our grandson who is now three years old. It seemed like a nice weekend plan.

Then I realized that there was some work that needed to be done and that I needed to take some responsibility for things at a small piece of family property in Montana, so I planned to come out early. And there was the matter of needing a car for our son to drive as their family is flying and so we decided that Susan and I would bring two different vehicles and that we would travel on separate days.

And I have a cousin that I need to visit who has had a few health challenges in the past year.

And, before I knew it, the weekend had turned into a week and a kind of personal pilgrimage for me.

This morning I am camped at the place that was our family’s summer cabin during my growing up years. When our family obtained the place, it had been operated as a motor court, with small cabins and a common shower house. Over the years there were a few improvements made. Our father put in a new well, septic system and new bathrooms. After he died, a new log home was built for our mother. We then added a shop building to store the tractor and other equipment. Over the years the cabins have had roofs replaced and new siding installed and some have had foundation work done. A few were torn down. It isn’t fancy, but it is a nice place. Our mother set up a trust to keep the property in the family, but the trust has no source of income and so decisions about how to manage the property are challenging. For now we try to make it available to family members who are spending time in the area.

Spending the night alone at the place brought back all kinds of memories. It was a marvelous place to grow up with the river running next to the place carrying its music to all who stop. The willows and cottonwoods grow up and change the appearance of the place from time to time. Many of the huge old cottonwoods have died and been replaced by other trees. There have been som big storms over the years. But there is much that is the same. The place always was a gathering place for kids from all around the area and it still is a fun place for kids to visit. The river is still a blue ribbon trout stream and a good place for water play for those who respect its fast currents. If I get the time I hope to get the kayak in the water for a couple of miles, but we’ll see.

Today I will be heading up to Floweree, a small village between Fort Benton and Great Falls. Two of my high school summers were spent on the ranch there, working summer fallow and the harvest and doing a wide variety of jobs. One that I always remember (and so do the folks who live on the ranch) is sanding a combine. My uncle purchased a combine that had been dropped off the edge of a truck. He and my cousin re-built the combine and after the mechanical work was finished it had to be painted. Before it was painted, it had to be sanded. A combine is a big machine to sand. It seemed like it took weeks of sanding all day long every day. I was so glad when that job was finally finished!

After I leave the ranch, I’ll be coming back to our place on the river for one night before heading to Red Lodge for the wedding. Red Lodge is filled with memories for me as well. It is where my father’s parents lived when I was growing up. We visited there often and there were many family gatherings in the big house there.

One thing that I have learned by experience is that you can never return to the past. After I moved from Montana, there was never a real opportunity to return. It is partly the nature of my vocation. Ministers need to go where God calls and that isn’t always where we might otherwise have gone. Part of it is that we all change. I’m not the same person who left Montana for seminary in 1974. And the town definitely is not the same place. Many of the elders have now died. Other folks moved away. New folks came to town. Many of working ranches really couldn’t produce enough to make them feasible and the beautiful country was a good place for wealthy people to have hobby ranches and vacation properties. Artists came to the town and figured out how to earn their living by selling their work to the people who come and go. The town which used to boast three machinery dealers now has none. But it has several galleries where once there were none. Hardware stores have become home improvement centers and carry distinctly different stock. Even the grocery store carries a different selection of food.

Times change. People change. But it is good to come back to visit even if I spend more time with my memories than with the folks who live here.

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 Black Hills are a great place for sudden downpours. It isn’t that we don’t have warning. We can see the clouds building and know that we may be in for rain. But there are plenty of showers that we can see that fall around us and leave us dry. When it is our turn, however, we can really get quite a bit of rain in a short amount of time. Sometimes the storms just sort of “park” over and area and dump a lot of water. With all of the steep hillsides, the hills are a great place for flash flooding. Last Tuesday there were areas of the hills that got a couple of inches of rain in about a half hour and the water rushed through the valley with quite a bit of short term flooding. We live on a hill and were in an area that got considerably less rain, but it rained hard for a short amount of time.

Again last night, there was a good downpour. We got about .4 of an inch of rain in about 15 minutes. The problem for me was that those particular 15 minutes were when I had to drive to the church. I was going to the church to meet a young man who is in town and found himself with no place to stay. He is taking a cross country motorcycle tour - a sort of low budget Jack Kerouac summer adventure. He started in California and is driving across the U.S. We knew he was coming sometime, but didn’t know when. Had we had more warning, we could have arranged a place for him to stay. But young people don’t always plan ahead as much we would like. He didn’t know a thing about the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally until he got to the hills last night. So he called us from Wal-Mart where he was taking shelter from the rain. As I said, we knew someone was coming, but we didn’t know when.

Saturday night isn’t our most flexible time in the week, and I am planning to leave on a trip this afternoon and we are expecting a house full of company the day we return. And our home was a long ways from where he was on a motorcycle in a downpour. I arranged to meet him at the church and allowed him to sleep on the floor in one of our classrooms.

I got to the church before he did and when he arrived, he was one wet kid. He said he had driven his motorcycle through some pretty deep water running down the road. I don’t ride a motorcycle, but I imagine that it doesn’t take too much of a puddle for the splash to be able to get you really wet. I know that if he had been riding alongside me when I was driving, my car would certainly have splashed him head to toe.

He comes to us with good references. The pastor who gave him our name is a long-time, trusted friend. Still, it was a rather unusual set of circumstances. Re-thinking things this morning, I guess we probably should have invited him to stay in our home. But last night in the midst of our surprise at finding him here at that particular time, we made a different decision. He plans to worship with our conjugation this morning and will meet some of our people.

And he will return from his trip sometime this fall filled with stories. The sudden downpour in Rapid City will be one of the great adventure stories that ends well. He didn’t get into an accident. He had a good place to change into dry clothes and a warm place to sleep. As they say, “All’s well that ends well.”

By the time I drove home the rain was sill falling, but it wasn’t the heavy downpour that we had seen earlier. I know that we always think that the weather we are experiencing is unusual, but I can’t help feeling that this year is unique. It is August 10 and our grass is green and lush and we have yet to water it with the hose. I’ve only watered the garden a couple of times. The weather still holds surprises for us.

IN THE NEXT WEEK MY PUBLICATION OF THE BLOG WILL LIKELY BE IRREGULAR. I take off this afternoon an an adventure that involves two weddings in the next week. Both are in rural and isolated locations in Montana. I’ll be staying in my camper in places that do not have Internet connections. While I am able to use my cell phone to upload the blog, I will be in places where cell phone service is marginal and I may not be able to get a connection that allows data transmission. I’ll continue to write, but I don’t know when I will get things posted. Part of my adventure will take me to the land where my great grandparents and grandparents homesteaded alongside the Missouri River between Great Falls and Fort Benton, Montana. It was the place where I worked summers during some of my teenage years and I’m looking forward to a short visit and making connections with cousins. Susan and our children and grandchildren will be joining me at the end of the week for another family wedding in Red Lodge. It is always a special time when we get our family together.

Life is good despite an occasional downpour.

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.

We have a lot of youth groups that come and spend a night in our church, sleeping on the floor, eating a simple breakfast and washing up as best as they are able in the bathrooms. Most are on mission trips, often service projects with Re-Member or YouthWorks in Pine Ridge. One of the things about living next door to the most impoverished county in the nation is that we see a regular parade of persons who come to provide some sense of service. I probably could write a dozen blogs on this particular topic. I have led a lot of youth mission trips over the years and I am a firm believer in teaching the concept of service as a part of passing on our faith. But as an observer of the youth groups that come and go all summer long, I have a different perspective than many. Most youth groups come to the reservation, are shocked by what they see, meet a few people, spend two or three days working on a project and leave never to return. I don’t know how many young people I have met who say, “My life has been changed by this experience.”

Most of those young lives aren’t really changed by the experience.

They go back to their lives in their own homes never to return to Pine Ridge. They continue to keep their thumbs busy on their cell phones and head off to the shopping mall in cars their parents have paid for and write about their week in South Dakota in their college application essays.

It is a rare young person who can form life-long relationships with the people who live on the reservations. Actually, it is a rare young person who can remember the name of anyone they met on the trip a year later. They come face to face with poverty and secretly think, “Thank God I’m not like those people.”

I don’t mean to be cynical, but the Indian Reservations in South Dakota weren’t formed for the personal transformation of rich young people from other parts of the United States. And the house they painted in their service project will be painted by another youth group a few years down the road. And grinding poverty, high unemployment, record suicide rates, rampant alcoholism and drug abuse, and high infant mortality will still mark the lives of those who live in the communities of rural South Dakota.

Last night’s group was from Cedar Hills, a suburb of Portland, Oregon. They made the trip in two days with 17 people and all their gear in two vans. Yesterday was their long day, covering about 660 miles after having drive about 550 on the first day. They arrived about 10:30 pm and were pretty road weary. They’ll sleep on the floor of the church and be off by 9 am this morning. Like many of the visiting youth groups, they will hear someone in Pine Ridge speak about the sacred Black Hills and the treaty violations that ended up with the seizure of the land and the moving of the Oglala Lakota to their present rural and isolated location where there are no jobs. But they won’t actually spend much time in the Black Hills. They won’t visit the sacred sites of Paha Sapa. They won’t feel the warm waters of Hot Springs or stand on top of Bear Butte (Paha Mato) or walk around the base of Devil’s Tower (Mato Tipi). They are in too much of a hurry.

When I got the call that they were in Rapid City, I drove into the church and showed them how to get in and out of the building, where they could sleep, and tried to be a gracious host and make them feel welcome. I joked with the youth about their long ride in the van and answered their questions about our church, about the hills, about where they are going today and other topics. I explained that most weeks we don’t have 450,000 or so guests in the hills riding motorcycles and the they wouldn’t see so many motorcycles if they visited in November.

Because Susan and I served for 10 years in the Central Pacific Conference of the United Church of Christ, I was able to speak to the youth about their church camp which I have visited on many occasions and about a few people that I know who are still serving in their area. I happen to know the minister of their church and have been in their church to visit and worship.

One of the young women traveling with the group introduced herself to me. I realized that I know her grandparents well. I remember the stories of her birth and the pictures we used to see of her infancy and preschool years. In fact there are a flood of memories that come to me. In her “prehistory” back in 1986, I traveled with youth from the Conference to Colorado for a Regional Youth Event. Among our delegation was her uncle, who was a creative, guitar-playing, song-singing, young man who met others easily and needed more than a little bit of encouragement to observe the schedule of the event and get into his cabin at “lights out.” By then I had considerable experience at finding the “lost” youth in the evening and making the necessary cabin checks before going to sleep myself. Her mother is just a little bit older than her uncle, so I didn’t know her mother as well, but because we are such good friends with her grandparents, we know a lot of stories of her life. To meet her face to face for the first time was a special joy of my evening.

I’ve never been to Disneyland or Disney World. Those attractions just haven’t seemed too inviting to me. But I am told that there is a ride at both of those parks where you get on a boat and float past scenes of large animated dolls from around the world who sing. The song is known by all of us who haven’t ever visited the place: “It’s a small world . . .” For those who have ridden the ride, the song is unforgettable. It has been played over and over again so many times that it is hard to get it out of your head once you think of it.

I’m not a big fan of the song, but there is a truth in it. We are all connected in this world and no matter where you go you can run into people with whom you are connected.

It might not have been a big deal to the young woman last night. After all, I’ve lived in South Dakota all of her life. But it was a special treat for me to meet her and feel once again the friendships and connections that have nurtured and sustained my ministry for nearly three decades. It really is a small world.

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.

As my father was in the process of selling his business, I would make fairly regular trips back home and we would have conversations about the ups and downs of his life as a person who always had lots of interests going at the same time. He was a pilot and an airplane mechanic and a farm machinery dealer who sold a few vehicles and formed a rental and leasing company for heavy equipment. He ran trucks and transported good for others and held a thousand other interests. One of the things that he shared with me was that one of the hardest parts of his life in business was dealing with employees. It wasn’t the people. He liked the people who worked for him over the years. He admired their skills. But he could never figure out the right balance when it came to the details of being an employer: vacation and days off, breaks and scheduling, motivating workers and dealing with the complexities of their personal lives, supporting their independent interests and sometimes even helping them launch their own businesses. He was a hard worker who put in way more hours than any of his employees. Most days he was hard at work when they arrived and still working when they headed for home. He didn’t understand how someone would not want to put in the extra hours.

Coffee breaks drove him up the wall. For several years he experimented with a plan that gave extra vacation days to employees who voluntarily worked through the assigned breaks. He never smoked and he couldn’t undersand an employee who took a break to smoke a cigarette. From his point of view, why wouldn’t they want to just work straight through until the job was completed. The satisfaction of a completed job was very high in his motivation and he couldn’t figure out why that wasn’t the same for all of the people who worked for him.

At the time, I could understand some of his frustration with his employees, but I also had worked for him and knew how he could be a bit of a frustrating boss. He seemed to always expect us to know how to do a job and if we didn’t know to figure out on our own what to do. If you asked him how to do a particular job he was as likely to just do it himself as to really teach you how to do it. He was always thinking about the next job and the next challenge and rarely paused to celebrate accomplishments. It always felt a little bit like we couldn’t quite produce up to his expectations.

I do, however, have more empathy and understanding of him now that I have reached this phase of my life. Last night at a meeting we were discussing the process of searching for a new choir director for our church. For many different reasons, I’ve been through a lot of searches for new choir directors in my journey with this congregation. We have had some very good choirs and some very good choir directors. And we have had some fairly high levels of conflict up in our choir loft. We have had choir directors who have been overcome with frustration and others who have handled the tensions quite well. But choir directors, whether they have come to us from within our congregation or from outside of our congregation, have tended to show enthusiasm and energy for the job for a while and then fade. The turnover has been higher than I expected.

Our current vacancy is due to a tragic illness that resulted in the early death of our choir director. We all have been struggling with grief and perhaps have had less enthusiasm for the search than might have been the case had things turned out differently.

The bottom line is that we are getting ready to begin a new program year for the choir without the leadership in place that we had hoped to have. We will have a choir and our choir will contribute greatly to worship this fall, but it probably won’t be the way that we’ve done it before and it probably will take a comparatively large amount of my time to nurture the process. I will be working with interim and temporary leadership as we continue the search for permanent leadership. And we may need to redefine both the job and our sense of the meaning of “permanent” in order to find the employee that our church needs.

I know that it is all just part of the job. I know that all churches struggle with music leadership. But there are days when I wish it wasn’t my job to find the employees and keep them happy in their jobs. Of course, on paper it isn’t my job. But in reality there are things that need to happen and I’m the “buck stops here” person in our system.

I appreciate very much my father’s struggles to find and keep good employees.

Theologically, however, this isn’t just another job. It is a vocation - a calling. When I stop to think I know that in every generation God has provided the leadership for the future of our people. When Abraham and Sarah were old and it didn’t seem like they had any chance of producing an heir, things changed rather dramatically. By the time the story gets to Abraham’s great-grandson Jacob the family is so large and the family dynamics are so complex that it is hard to remember when we were worried whether or not there would be a next generation. I know that God will provide what we need to move forward as a congregation. I know that I have to trust the process and allow the timing to be what it becomes.

The bottom line is that I am extremely fortunate to serve in a congregation with such excellent music. The depth of talent in our congregation is amazing. The quality of the music that comes from our people and instruments is outstanding. There are lots of pastors who wish they had a fraction of the talent we enjoy.

The music will go on. We will have a choir. And we will continue to worship God in new and exciting ways.

And doing that will require a little more patience than I expected - and occasionally a little more than I think I have. God will supply that, 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.

When I was a young teenager, my cousin had an old Cushman motor scooter that he got running and I rode it around the yard at the ranch. It was an early experience of driving for me and I can remember that it was fun riding around and around. My cousin also had a used Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was much bigger. I can remember him riding it a couple of times.

in high school my family came into a used 90cvc Honda trail bike. It was a significant upgrade from the tote goat bikes that a few hunters were using to pack out game and the forest service was beginning to use for some trail maintenance jobs. I rode the Honda around town a little bit for one summer. I had a friend with a larger 350cc Honda and I rode his motorcycle around town a little bit. In fact there was a stage, when he was dating my sister, when he’d loan me his motorcycle to get rid of me. You know, “two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

That’s it. That’s the sum total of my motorcycle experience. I never got into riding motorcycles as an adult and have never owned one. I have quite a few friends who really like motorcycles, however. That high school friend who used to loan me his motorcycle has owned a lot of different motorcycles over the years, sometimes owning two or three Harley Davidson bikes at the same time. He is just one of my friends who makes the pilgrimage to Sturgis and the Black Hills a regular part of many of his summers. I think that my cousin’s son is somewhere in the hills this week, but we probably won’t see him during the rally.

For a lot of people, the rally is a big deal. I kind of get a kick out of talking to the people who come to the hills to visit, so I’ve had dozens of pickup conversations with some of the folks who are here for this year’s rally.

There was the man who saw me buying a couple of quarts of local honey and stopped to ask me how much I paid for the honey. Local honey is going for $14 a quart around here. It turns out that the guy who stopped to ask is a beekeeper and was curious how his prices compared. He charges the same for a quart of honey. He said he was “just in town to ride motorcycles.”

The guy drying out in the coffee shop yesterday had to give me a complete weather report (“It’s solid rain all the way from Deadwood.”) before telling me that he comes to rally every year. He doesn’t go to many of the concerts, he just likes to ride around the hills.

When I stopped by the gas station to fill up a gas can for my mower, I was the only customer who wasn’t riding a motorcycle. No worries, They saw my “Rev Ted” vanity plates on my pickup and one yelled, “Hey guys, clean it up, there’s a reverend here!” They all asked me about my church. I invited them to come, but it didn’t really seem like that was their plan for Sunday morning.

One man, driving a beautiful all-white motorcycle with whitewall tires and lots of chrome signaled for me to roll down my window as we stopped side by side at a traffic light so that he could compliment me on my wooden canoe on the roof of my car. I complimented him on his motorcycle.

One of my friends reported last week that they don’t drive their motorcycle too much, only about 1,200 miles a year, but they always put on 800-900 miles during the rally.

Some locals complain a bit about all the motorcycles. You add that many guests into an area as small as the hills and there are some traffic issues. I figure it takes me an extra five minutes to get almost anywhere during the rally and, frankly, I try to avoid going to the VA Medical Center in Sturgis during rally week. That can add an hour or more to my day, though there is nothing boring about that hour for someone who likes to observe human nature. In the town of Sturgis the people don’t just go in for motorcycles - they go for costumes, too.

I’m not a big fan of traffic, but it is only a week and a couple of weekends. It is soon over and we go back to normal. Normal, of course around here is a lot of tourists, plenty of RV’s and quite a few folks who don’t know where they are going and tend to make sudden turns from the wrong lane when they see the destination they have in mind.

I think it is interesting that I get to live in a place that others only get to visit. I can understand what attracts them to the hills. We have wonderful, scenic, winding roads. We have cooler temperatures than the surrounding plains. We have lots to see and do.

On the other hand, I kind of like being able to roll up the window and turn on the wipers when it rains. And these days I prefer not to be sleeping in a tent when there are flash flood warnings in the hills. And there are some parts of the motorcycle culture about which I’m not too excited.

I’ve never had an urge to get a tattoo or a piercing. I tend to avoid t shirts with crude language. I’ve never been much of a party-hardy-all-night-long kind of guy.

So be careful out there. We’ve got lots of guests. And they are good people. Most of them we’d like to have come back and visit us again. And those bikes do involve a bit more risk than other modes of transportation. We hate to have folks get hurt.

Once again the good folks at Black Hills Harley Davidson have to look elsewhere for customers. I’m just not ion the market for a motorcycle this year.

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.

It appears that 2014 will be a record year for our congregation. It is a record that no conjugation would seek. If things keep up the way they have gone so far, 2014 will be a year with a record number of deaths in our congregation. Our losses have been of many different causes. There have been several notable deaths to cancer, with the attendant struggles to provide care, make treatment decisions and say good bye on an uncertain timetable. There have been deaths that we anticipated in other ways. Members who have lived long and meaningful lives have reached the end of their life’s journeys in natural ways. Several of the deaths have taken us by surprise. Death has come sooner than we expected in some cases.

It took a little more than a day this week for news of yet another death to circulate in the congregation. A tragic car accident resulted in the death of a grandmother, mother and son. The grandmother has been a member of our congregation for several years. Her life was a story of many struggles. Twice widowed she lost a son to suicide. Another son lives with multiple disabilities. In recent years the grandson who died in the accident has been the subject of many prayers as she struggled to find ways to help him with the challenges of becoming an adult in a world filled with danger and temptations to make bad choices.

There is much of the story that I know and much that I do not know. And it isn’t my story to tell, but it was yet another attempt to provide help to the grandson that had mother and daughter on the roads of rural Wyoming in the wee hours of the night.

I probably will never know why no one was wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident. There are plenty of questions that surround the deaths of people we know and love that don’t have answers. The ones that start with “why” often go unanswered.

I am not particularly interested in dwelling the the depths of grief and loss. What I do know, from personal experience and from years as a pastor, is that our congregation does understand grief and loss and sorrow. The community knows how to gather round and provide support and care for those who are grieving. Our theology does not deny the reality of the pain of loss. It does, however, keep the light of hope strong as we experience the reality of resurrection.

I don’t know how people navigate the journey of loss and grief without the support of a church.

Funerals are occasions when we meet people who have lived much of their lives away from the community of the church. It isn’t at all uncommon for us to meet new persons in the process of planning their parent’s funeral. People who have not been involved in the church since their childhood find our doors open and welcoming when they experience the death of a parent. It can be a point of entry into the community for some. Those who have been well served in a time of need often become servants to others later in their lives.

Sadly I also see children and other family members who don’t know their parents as well as we do. They come to the point of planning a funeral and don’t know what their loved one would have wanted. They are faced with a lot of decisions about which they haven’t thought much. It is not uncommon for me to have a better sense of what scriptures, music and other elements should be used in a particular funereal than family members.

It is a simple fact that we will all one day die from this life. But there are a lot of different ways of dealing with that reality. Some avoid thoughts of death until it becomes painfully unavoidable when a loved one dies. Some avoid talking about death as if speaking of it somehow makes it more real or draws it closer. Some live so fully and completely that their death catches others (and perhaps even themselves) by surprise. Some enter a long and slow decline with death apparently close for years and years. A second fact is similar to the first one: none of us can control the time or method of our dying. I know that some believe that suicide is a choice where the person who dies chooses the day, the place and the method of death. But in my observation suicide is the opposite of being in control of choices. Although the person engages in behavior that results in their death, the loss of control seems complete before death occurs.

In the face of all of this it is my sincere hope that our church can continue to be a place where we are open to talking about the reality of death, the pain of grief, the sorrow of loss, and the hope of new life that are all part of this world. I don’t want to ever become a place where doubt is not welcome, where sad thoughts are shoved under the carpet, or where people think that faith is only about sunny days and good feelings. We have shown that we can be a community that is able to talk about the realities of life in the context of faith. We don’t always have the answers, but we are a community that welcomes the questions and struggles to support one another as we seek meaning in the midst of sometimes painful experiences.

It isn’t that 2014 may be a record year for the number of deaths in our conjugation. It is that 2014 may be a record year for the opportunities we have to provide love, care and support to one another and we travel the journey of grief together.

Each step of the journey is an opportunity to grow in faith.

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.

It happens that I am working on three weddings at the same time right now. It is not unusual for us to be working on multiple weddings in this congregation. They tend to come in batches - we’ll have a season of weddings and then a period when we don’t have so many. It used to be that June was a big month for weddings, but these days that is not so much the case. This year August and September have more weddings than June. We don’t do all that many weddings each year. With three ministers, we each do a few, I think that the most I have ever officiated in a single year is 15 or 16 and there are plenty of years when the number is five or six. Still, if you consider the fact that I’ve been performing weddings for more than 35 years the number adds up. Over the years there have been marriages that were successful and those that ended in divorce. I guess the divorce rate of weddings at which I officiated is somewhere near that of the area where we live, but perhaps it is a little lower simply because people tend to be a bit more intentional about church weddings than those held in other venues. There’s probably more impulsiveness related to wedding chapels in Las Vegas than those in our church.

There have been a lot of changes in the weddings I perform over the years. Society is changing. Couples tend to wait quite a bit longer before marrying. The average age of first wedding has gone up dramatically over the span of my career. There are many couples who come to us for first marriages where one or both of the members of the couple has experienced a relationship that involved living together and the break up of that relationship before meeting the person they are marrying. These events are not recognized by the wider community as divorce, but they often leave pain and scars that can have an effect on future relationships.

The fascinating thing about the three weddings that are currently on my desk is the age of the couples. One couple is in their twenties, another in their forties and the third in their seventies. In each case it is a first marriage for one of the partners. It seems to me that each is an occasion for choosing my words carefully.

It is my custom to work from a complete manuscript at weddings and funerals. Although I leave my notes behind in much of the preaching that I do, weddings and funerals are once-in-a-lifetime occasions and every word that I speak is important. I want to make sure that I get the words right. Of course it isn’t the words I say that makes a couple married - it is the commitment that they make. Still, I would like to choose words that give expression to that commitment, encourages the couple to go deeper in their relationship and acknowledges the support community that is important in their ongoing life together. Sometimes it is important just to point out the unique community that the couple has gathered together. It is often the case that a couple marrying brings together folks who would not have otherwise met. The diversity of congregations that gather for weddings is pretty unique. Sometimes it is important for me to speak of the role of faith in a relationship. Common values and beliefs are critical to a successful marriage. Sometimes, when a couple is young - and most couples seem young to me these days, even if they are a decade or more older than I was when we were married - I will reflect on the joys of growing old together. It is, after all, one of the sweetest experiences of life. I think that it is often difficult for people who are young and beautiful and at the height of their intellectual powers to imagine the day when the face begins to wrinkle, the chest begins to sag, the pace begins to slow and the mind has a pace of its own. I’m not sure that it does much good to remind them that this will happen to all of us - even them - and that if they haven’t become a pair of old fools by that time, they will appreciate the beauty that deepens with age and the spiritual connection that doesn’t always demand words to to be expressed. It is, however, a common theme in weddings at which I officiate.

What I do know is that counting days is only one way of measuring time and that quality is more important than quantity. I have officiated at weddings where one member of the couple had a progressive illness and the prognosis of a short lifespan. In one case one of the partners died before a year had passed. Of course that could happen to any couple - we can’t predict accidents and illnesses. None of us can see the future. But we are not fools. We know that the couple in their seventies are unlikely to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Our people have known for many generations the power of promises that are kept. Covenants form the foundation of our faith. God’s’ simple promise to our forebears made all the difference for our people; “I will be your God and you will be my people.”

i’m aware that each of these ceremonies is a holy moment - a time from which God will bring forth futures. Each is unique and deserving of time and thoughtfulness. And yet there is also a common thread. Much hinges on the question, “Will you have ____ to be your wife/husband, and will you love her/him faithfully for as long as you both shall live?

I know that question and its answer have made all the difference in my life.

The keys to the land of freedom lie in our ability to make lasting commitments.

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.

For many years of his life my father earned his living by flying small airplanes in high mountains. This meant that he always wanted to be in the air at first light. Aircraft performance degrades with altitude and with temperature. The warmer the air, the less efficient the propellor and wing. In addition, as the air warms with the day, the currents begin to get stronger and stronger. Mountain wave winds and convection currents can make the ride in a small airplane pretty rough. So it is best to operate at the edges of the day. In those days before the advent of GPS systems, navigation was purely visual. Being able to see was critical. Although there were some evening operations and search and rescue operations occurred whenever needed, flying in the evening was not the best choice. The diminishing light combined with a bit of natural fatigue didn’t make for the safest of conditions.

So we grew up with a father whose boots hit the ground at 4:30 am all summer long. And I learned at a very early age that if I conditioned myself to wak and be ready there were times when I could ride along. And I loved to ride along. Practice operations, when dad was honing skills made a bit rusty by winter; fire patrol, which took us over Yellowstone National Park; game counts, unless the F&G man had to ride along - there were plenty of times when the ability to get up, get dressed and get out the door while it is still dark outside was rewarded by a gorgeous and wonderful morning.

Of course I couldn’t ride along on every trip and so I learned the skills of an “airport bum.” I could check the oil and preflight an airplane. I could pull out the heavy ladder and fill up fuel tanks. I learned to drive the jeep and check the field lights. I climbed up the beacon tower and changed bulbs. I checked with the flight service station and made weather notes. I learned to polish a plexiglass windshield without scratching it. At one time I was spending three or four hours washing airplanes for every hour that I got to fly. It takes a couple of days to wax the belly and wing bottoms of a Beech 18 - most of a week to get the entire airplane to shine. I learned how to pull and reinstall seats in every king of airplane that we flew.

And I grew up thinking that morning was the best time of the day. In the early years of our marriage I would startle my wife with how quickly I would hop out of bed and get dressed when the alarm sounded. These days I use a gentle tone on my cell phone as a reminder of the time and she doesn’t even wake up. And I’ve slowed down a bit on the morning rush. I have learned how to linger over a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Sometimes I can just sit on the deck and enjoy th morning.

There is, however, a big difference between my lifestyle and that of my father. I have a life that is filled with evening meetings and other things that mean that I need to be alert and effective at both ends of the day on many days. I don’t remember my father as much of a napper, though he could sit down in his recliner and be asleep before the footrest was all the way up. He would fall asleep in front of the television many evenings. So I think he would have napped if his life gave him the opportunity. I will frequently nap in the middle of the day as a way of keeping my energy going for the tasks ahead. I’m pretty sure that it isn’t the most healthful thing to sleep after a meal, but I have been known to lie down for as much as an hour after lunch. And I really go to sleep. The mid-day break gives me energy for the rest of the day. I think that I come close to the typical eight hours of sleep out of each day, but I don’t often sleep eight hours at a stretch. It is probably just a matter of practice. I think I could teach myself to sleep eight hours at night, but I’ve never really put much effort into doing so.

The thing about rising before the sun is that each day starts with hope and promise. Even if it s a gray day with lots of clouds, the coming of the light in its increasing fashion is always beautiful. The view to the east and south reveals an increasing ability to see and make out detail. It is hard to be sad when the day is moving towards more light and more beauty. I could watch ten thousand sunrises from a canoe on the surface of ten thousand lakes and never get bored with the view. My collection of digital photographs has so many sunrise shots that I’ve been known to us sunrise pictures for both ends of the day when I am showing slides of a trip.

Beginning each day with a sense of possibility and being reminded each day that today is unique and different from all other days is a genuine gift.

There is another gift of the morning: the gift of solitude. I usually get the morning to myself. It seems that most of our neighbors like to sleep later in the morning than I do. It is common for me to be the first boat on the lake in the morning and others will be launching as I’m taking out. Mornings are time of thinking and preparing for the day to come for me. And when I realize that simple fact, I realize what a gift it was that my father allowed me to invade his mornings, though come to think of it, we didn’t often talk all that much. People who only see me in church or at meetings often don’t know how much I enjoy just being quiet and listening.

It may be that my most appealing quality, like my favorite time of day, shines best when there is no one else around.

One thing for sure. When I say, “Good morning!” I really mean it. The morning really is good.

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.

Two conversations yesterday have been replaying in my mind. The first occurred in the grocery store. I was speaking with a repairman who had been working on the machine that dispenses filtered water. The bottles that I was refilling had “Rev Ted” written on them. I often use those words to label various things. I have a vanity license plate on my pickup with those words and some of my tools and other possessions have the words on them to identify them as mine.

“So you’re a reverend, are you?” he asked. “Yes, I am,” I replied. His response was, “I guess that’s OK.” I wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement. I’m not sure what he thought about clergy persons. I guess we are OK to him, perhaps kind of neutral - neither good nor bad. As I was carrying my bottles of wear to the car I decided that he probably knew almost nothing of what it means for me to be a pastor.

Later, in an e-mail exchange with a pastor at an evangelical fundamentalist congregation in our area wrote, “I’m pleased to see that you use biblically-based counseling materials.” Now I have to confess that I have a bit of an elitist attitude toward some of my pastoral colleagues. My denomination considers a four-year undergraduate degree plus a three-year masters degree as the basic requirement for ordination. I have a doctorate in addition to the basic educational requirements. There are plenty of pastors in other denominations who have one or two years at an unaccredited bible college and meet the educational requirements of their denominations. Sometimes it is hard to even have an intelligent conversation about the Bible with some of my colleagues because their biblical knowledge is limited to their own personal reading and a few opinions. They don’t have any knowledge of the original languages and context of the Bible. They don’t know Biblical history. They haven’t studied academic theology. There are people who have participated in Kerygma Bible studies in our congregation who have more basic biblical education that some people who call themselves ministers. This particular colleague has virtually no experience or education in counseling and I was trying to feed him resources that might help him in a very difficult pastoral care situation.

I concluded that my colleague was as ignorant of what kind of pastor I am as was the repairman working on the water filter.

People often don’t know what they’re talking about. And I have found that there are a lot of misperceptions about what I do and what I believe. I remember the first time I walked into the city cafe after coming to be the minister in Hettinger, North Dakota. The cafe had been abuzz with conversations. Ranchers and townspeople were discussing crops and weather and politics and countless other topics. When I walked in, someone said, “There’s the new minister of the Congregational Church,” and the place went silent. No one knew what to say. It was an awkward moment. I grabbed a cup of coffee and looked for someone I had previously met, sat down and asked about his wheat. It didn’t take long before conversations resumed. Within a short time people weren’t even censoring the cuss words out of their conversations, though there wasn’t a lot of cussing in the cafe in the first place. They got to know me. They found out that I wasn’t constantly judging them. They let down their guard and relaxed and got on with their lives.

I have relatives who think that what I do for a living is similar to the televangelists that they see on television. The imagine that I dispense advice to a congregation of people who all dress the same and all behave the same. Preaching seems to be the one thing that they can identify with being a minister. And I do preach. But I rarely dispense advice. I don’t try to tell people what to think, how to vote, or how to act.

And unlike the image of some kind of secular humanist that my colleague thinks is what a minister of the United Church of Christ represents, I have a regular discipline of prayer and study and work hard to apply biblical principles to all that I do. My weekly bible study with other colleagues is academically rigorous and we often exchange books and the names of authors to challenge each other to dig deeper and gain more understanding. My clergy book club stays near to the cutting edge of current theology and biblical interpretation.

The risk, of course, is that I turn around the comments that I heard. It is easy for me to judge the repairman and my colleague. It is easy for me to imagine the realities of their lives in ways that are inaccurate. I had only one conversation with the repairman. Perhaps he is a regular member of a congregation and simply didn’t know what else to say at the moment. Perhaps he was fearful that I might launch into an evangelical diatribe if he said too much. There are a few street evangelists in our community who routinely harass people in the name of Jesus. Perhaps he expected me to say more and to tell him about the congregation that I serve. Perhaps he was looking for a church and wanted to ask more but was somehow hesitant. The truth is that I don’t know the status of his spiritual quest or his place in life’s journey.

And I don’t really know the colleague who made the comment about counseling resources. It is possible that he was already familiar with the resources that I sent. It wouldn’t be difficult to do a Google search on the internet and to turn up some solidly-researched materials alongside of the less solid articles. It is possible that my colleague has an academic background of which I am unaware and knows how to find and incorporate academic research into his work.

It is often the case that when I feel that others are making inaccurate judgments about me, I am in turn making inaccurate judgments about them. Like the cafe in small-town North Dakota, the solution is to get to know one another.

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.

Human beings have sought to define our place in the world for as long as we have existed. What is our role amongst all of th eliding things on this planet? Are we simply another of the creatures, or are we unique? Philosophers have often posited that the fact that we ask the question makes us unique. Humans are the only creatures, so far as we know, who contemplate our place in the world.

People of our strain of faith have come down on the side of humans as unique amongst the creatures for a very long time. In the most ancient of times, our uniqueness was caught up in our ability to wander great distances. We didn’t know, in those times of the great migrations of birds or of the huge range of land mammals such as the caribou or buffalo. We knew nothing of the distances traveled by sea turtles. Because we found particular animals in particular places, we assumed that the animals were more or less static. As we traveled more and observed the world more, we began to shift our ideas. During the time of the great exile in Babylon our ideas were shaped and bent by the constant exposure to the ideas of those among whom we were forced to live. Some of their ideas were so different from ours that we rebelled and became more attached to our own world view. This was perhaps most evident in our monotheism. Whereas our people had at some points in our history claimed that our God was the greatest of gods, we had acknowledged that other people had their gods and perhaps ours was one among many. After the exile, we emerged with an adamant belief that there is only one true God. All other gods are false. But other ideas and notions were shaped by that experience and by the experiences of others. We emerged from the exile with a newer set of stories of creation in which humans were given a unique role among the other creatures from the start. We were to have dominion over the other creatures and responsibility to care for the earth.

Of course how to care for the earth and how to exercise dominion are difficult challenges and we haven’t always agreed on how to exercise that role. These days we can look at some of the things that have occurred in the past with regret. The extinction of some species caused by either human carelessness or our greediness seem to us to be rather blatant mistakes. There was no reason for us to kill off all of the carrier pigeons other than our greed. The decrease in biological diversity caused by deforestation of large areas of land is seen as a problem that needs to be addressed and changed.

Of course we don’t always agree on how to address the problems that we can identify. Some of the science shows that I listen to speculate that with a little genetic manipulation we might be able to re-introduce species once thought to be extinct. By taking DNA from museum specimens and finding suitably similar birds, perhaps a bird very much like the carrier pigeon could one day in the future fly in our skies. Careful and selective breeding of Galapagos island turtles might allow the reintroduction of some species thought to be extinct. I have heard similar proposals with regards to animals that became extinct much earlier, such as woolly mammoths. I have mixed feelings about such proposals. On the one hand they might extend our understanding of the world. On the other hand, it is a simple fact that there is a linear nature to time. We can’t go back to a previous time in history. Even if we were to reintroduce a formerly-extinct species, the world has changed in the meantime. We cannot recreate the past.

The nature of time is another idea that has continued to change over the history of our people, but we have, for the most part, viewed time as linear with a singular forward motion.

How much do we intervene and how much do we allow nature to take its own course? It is easy to argue for intervention when we see the pain and suffering and needless death from diseases like malaria. We know quite a bit about preventing the spread of malaria among humans. It seems to be wrong not to use our knowledge to eliminate the particular mosquitoes that spread the infection. Yes, there may be unintended consequences, but to do nothing in the face of such suffering doesn’t seem to be our calling.

A similar response is called for in the sudden spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa. We know quite a bit about the mechanism of transmission of the disease. We know quite a bit about how to decrease its spread. To do nothing seems cruel and absurd.

As we have gained more knowledge and information about the world and as we expand our understanding of the nature of the universe our discussions have shifted, but the conversation about the nature of human beings and our role in this universe continues. For me there is a certain kind of pleasure that comes from reading Psalm 8: “When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou has established, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?” Our people have been contemplating our place in the universe since antiquity. We haven’t got it all figured out. But there is a certain pleasure in having a thought that was shared by the ancients and will be shared with generations as yet unborn.

One thing about our role is certain - we belong to a people whose impact on this universe is much greater than any single life.

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.