When I was a seminary student, Christian Education was a kind of second-class area of the seminary. The school still had a masters in religious education degree that it offered alongside the masters of divinity degree. The masters in religious education degree was a two-year program as opposed to the masters of divinity. It didn’t require the advanced systematic theology courses and was seen as a somewhat lesser degree. In those days the masters in religious education was seen as a path towards service in the church that did not involve ordination. Masters of divinity was seen as the basic requirement for ordination. None of that was terribly relevant for me because I was enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry program, but I found that I was very attracted to the courses in the religious education program. I found Ross Snyder, the professor of religious education, to be among the most challenging and forward-thinking teachers in the institution. By the time I finished my degree, the seminary had eliminated that position and has not since had a department of religious education.

For my entire career, I have been active in Christian Education programs, groups and activities. After graduation I became certified as a specialist in Christian education. I was very active in the Association of United Church Educators, serving on its national board and publishing and editing its first website. I attended every national and regional youth event during their first half of my career. I counseled at camp and served as director of youth camps. I have written for five major curricula of the church, including writing more sessions for 15-18 year olds for Seasons of the Spirit than any other author. I also have served as a curriculum editor and edited the first (an to date only) on-line curricula published by the United Church of Christ. I served the national setting of our church as an educational consultant for the entire tenure of that program.

I’ve always seen myself as a sort of education person.

But I have never seen that as different from the work of every pastor. In our denomination, we are ordained as “pastor and teacher” and we promise to “preach and teach” the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The role of teacher is not somehow secondary to that of preacher in our theology. It is in our practice. Quite frankly, we could not have raised my family and sent our children to college on the salaries of Christian educators. My salary as senior minister is about double th salary of a Christian education specialist with similar experience and education. That inequity in salary, however, never really bothered me, though I have done a lot of advocacy to have educator’s salaries and benefits raised. I wasn’t bothered, because I saw the work of senior minister to be the work of education. I have always seen worship as the primary Christian education experience offered by the church. Knowing that parents and grandparents are the primary teachers of faith to children, worship was our primary way of “teaching the teachers.”

Along the course of my career, the language has changed. Christian Education, Sunday School, and even teaching are no longer terms that are employed much in the national settings of the church. The current buzz words are “Faith Formation.” I like to continue to add the word, and refer to it as Christian Faith Formation. As an old school teacher, I still see value in the use of teacher. Jesus, after all, was given the title “rabbi” which means teacher. But I can live with the changes in language.

Revising my thinking about worship as the primary faith formation experience of the church, however, is a bigger challenge for me. There are contemporary speakers and authors who are getting a lot of attention in church circles who are questioning the relevance of worship in the 21st century church. They speak of online community formation and see social networking and other tools of the Internet as replacing traditional gatherings. “Why drive a half hour for a meeting, followed by another half hour drive, when you can sit in the comfort of your own home and connect with others on your computer or tablet device?”

I can still answer that question. Because the time driving is time available for thinking and face-to-face meeting is not filled with the distractions of multi-tasking on your device. I see no particular reason to offer a form of Christian faith that doesn’t involve commitment and the invitation to always go for the form of faith with the lowest commitment is not appealing to me. I don’t see the future of the church as a community that doesn’t care who is and who is not participating and has no concern for really getting to know one another.

I can’t fathom a community that is unable to respond to grief with a hug.

Still, there are some excellent examples of online community. Caring Bridge is a very supportive and prayerful way of staying connected with those going though major medical procedures and recovery. I have treasured the ability to offer prayers and support through that forum and have been able to remain connected with those in distant locations through the media. Most of my connections with my colleagues in Christian Education are over the computer in these days when we don’t have the funding to get together in person.

Educators need to embrace new media and use it inappropriate ways for teaching. Just as the printing press, radio and television have become important tools for teaching and learning, soo to is the Internet. We must, however, continue to see the difference between the media and the message. Marshall McLuhan non withstanding, the stories of our people existed before printing. Some of which existed before written language. The computer is no more the content of our faith than was the blackboard on which my professor wrote. It is a tool for our work.

And, as old school as it may be, I will still see face-to-face, in the same room worship as the primary opportunity for sharing that faith with others. And, I am confident, ours isn’t the last generation to recognize the importance of worship.

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 think of myself as a private person. As soon as I write those words, however, I know that they sound silly. I am a preacher in a congregation. I get up in front of a group of people every week and every week we invite visitors to join us and to become a part of our congregation. I serve in several volunteer capacities that require me to meet new people and to become involved with folks that I had not previously met. Over the years, Susan and I have shared the same vocation and have worked together. But we have tried to create a few boundaries between work and home. Keeping confidence with those whom we serve sometimes requires that we don’t even discuss certain parts of our work with each other. When we had children living at home and when we were caring for our parents, it wasn’t appropriate for us to share the stories of others in our home setting. And having a family life meant having boundaries between work and family. When our children were infants, we lived next door to the church we served. Our next move put us in a home that was about a mile away from the church. When we moved to the hills, our children were teens and we chose a home that is 10 miles from the church. The increasing physical distance has meant that home life and work have had a bit of separation.

Our vocation, however, isn’t one that can be constrained to a specific location. Pastoral concerns don’t always arise on our timetable. The needs of the people we serve aren’t contained in eight hour days.

One of the symbols of how work and life merge for me is my cell phone. I survived and served as a minister for about half of my career without having a cell phone. I didn’t use one for the first few years after we moved to South Dakota. But as the phones became more common I saw the usefulness of the phone as a tool for ministry. At first I was very guarded about the number. I gave it to my family so they could reach me. I gave it to our administrative colleague so she could get messages to me. But I didn’t make it available to the congregation in general and I tried to keep its use limited. I remember the days when I would turn it off and put it away when I got home. After all we have a home phone and our number is in the telephone book. All of that has changed.

These days I get phone calls from people that I have given my number to and I also get phone calls from those who have gotten my number from others. Here are a few of the calls I have received in the last couple of days as an example:

I am “on call” for our LOSS (Local Outreach to Survivors of Suicide) team. That means that I am carrying my phone 24 hours a day and have to be able to assemble a team of responders to go on a moment’s notice. I was just getting ready for bed when a call came in on Monday evening. I spoke with the answering service, and with dispatch as I changed my clothes. I exchanged messages with team members and placed a couple of calls to assemble the team. I spoke with a deputy and an investigator to determine what we might find on scene. By the time I had finished that series of phone calls, I had gotten my resources, backed the car out of the driveway, programmed the address into my GPS and transitioned my phone to a hands free connection with the car. I was still speaking on the phone and making arrangements as I drove to our team rendezvous point and out to the scene. Over the next 24 hours follow-up to that event took a dozen more phone calls.

I was at home when a person I had never before met called looking for assistance to avoid a power cut off for past-due electricity payments. This particular person had been on the phone a lot before my number was found. Every resource in the community of which I was aware had already been tried. After all, the power company doesn’t turn off electricity the moment a bill is past due. They don’t even turn it off when a bill is 30 days in arrear. That person knew that this crisis was coming for months and has been on the phone trying to find money to pay the bill. By the time the phone call came to me on the eve of the cutoff date a lot of time had passed. I tried to make a compassionate response, but I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the choice to pay the phone bill and not pay the electricity was a poor choice.

The day after being out into the wee hours of the morning on the LOSS call, I received a call as I was eating breakfast from an out of state person who was worried about an adult child who was in our area who suffers from mental illness and addiction issues. The concerned parent wasn’t sure about the exact location of their child, but had a general sense of where the child might be camping. A wellness check was in order. Someone needed to go out and visit with the child and report the situation to the parents. I didn’t make the wellness check myself, but arranged for it to happen. That meant a few more phone calls. Again, multi-tasking, I was talking on the phone as I finished breakfast, drove to a meeting and I took two phone calls related to that wellness check during my meeting.

I guess I’m not really a private person at all. But I have learned to treasure some of the small things in life. Last night I plugged my cell phone into the charger and set it in its place within reach on my headboard and went to sleep. This morning I woke up and the phone had not rung at all during the night. There were no messages left for me and no text messages to which I needed to respond. It was wonderful. I enjoy nights like that.

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 lived in Chicago for four years. Granted, it was a long time ago. I was different in those days. Chicago was different, too. I know that there is a kind of urban beauty. I can remember going up to the top of what was then called the Sears Tower or the John Hancock building and looking out at the city lights. From that height, the lights twinkle and there is the darkness of Lake Michigan on one side and lights that stretch to the horizon on the other. You can watch the flowing headlights of the cars on the freeways and see the interchanges as they carry their human cargo from one part of the city to another. There is a rich cultural beauty in a city as well. I remember coming out of Orchestra Hall after listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti and thinking what a treasure it was to hear such great music - and all with a student discount. Thursdays we could wander among the impressionist paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago on the strength of our student ID cards. There were things that i didn’t like about the city. I was a country boy and the traffic was daunting to me at first. I never did adjust completely to all of the locks and bars and other security measures that were required. Were I to live there today, I know that the daily headlines of shootings and senseless violence would be even more horrible than they are to me as I view from a distance. But I remember moments of genuine beauty. Chicago is on the sunrise side of Lake Michigan and I am a sunrise kind of guy. The University of Chicago is a truly great institution with a truly great library and the Chicago Consortium of Theological Schools was one of the great centers of theological education in the world at the time that we were there.

I was a bit apprehensive about moving to North Dakota. Having grown up in Montana, I have some biases about mountains and the beauty of Big Sky Country. But I discovered a beauty on the plains that surprised me and took my breath away. I know places where you can lean into the wind and if you walk a few feet from the road and climb over a fence, you can see grasslands stretching as far as you can see. The rhythm of the wind moving the grass is as captivating as waves on an ocean. I’ve watched summer thunderstorms roll across the prairie with complete confidence that I could tell the track of the storm and keep myself safe. And there is a beauty to the people of the prairies that captured my heart.

We were blessed to live in Idaho for a decade. The ski runs at Bogus Basin, just minutes from our home are three and four times the length of the longest runs in the Black Hills. And there is night skiing up there. I could leave the office a bit early and get in three or four hours of skiing before bedtime. Idaho is a place of incredible creeks and rivers. It was there that i learned the joy of running whitewater in a raft and I picked up a bit of ability to sail on mountain lakes. There was incredible scenery in every direction. Less than an hour to the mountains. Less than an hour to the desert. Sand dunes and lakes and mountain vistas all within minutes of our home.

But I can remember stopping in the Black Hills on our way home from Chicago. In those days of 55 mph speed limits the hills were a day’s drive from home. and two days’ drive from Chicago. We’d make the trip in three days with two overnights and with relatives in the hills, it was a convenient stop. I would stand out on their deck and smell the pine trees and look up into the canopy of stars overhead and be moved by the deep beauty of the place. Later, when we lived in North Dakota, I could feel the moderation in the weather as we drove into the hills - almost always cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than the place where we lived. Early one evening, I stood outside in the hills and thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a place like this - with pine trees in the yard and the beauty of the hills surrounding you?” Still later, when we lived in Idaho, we came to the hills and discovered once again that refreshing coolness. The place we lived in Idaho suffered from a lack of wind. I didn’t even know that you could miss the wind before I lived there. You can. Take yesterday or any of the past few warm summer days around here and remove the breeze. It would approach unbearable.

And now I live here and have lived in the same house for 20 years - longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my life. And I can go out onto my deck whenever I want and breathe the pine-scented air. Last night I was on a call with the Sheriff’s Office in the middle of the hills and while we waited for a few moments to visit with some people who were living in the midst of one of the most difficult of life’s situations, we stood in the yard in our shirt sleeves, completely comfortable, gazing up at the sky with its countless stars. Even in the most painful moments of life, we are treated to scenes of incredible beauty. People who live amidst city lights never get to see the glory that surrounded us.

I dip my paddle in the lake and watch my canoe glide across the water. I have don nothing to earn the right to such incredible beauty. It is a gift.

May I never fail to recognize and be grateful for the gift.

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 frequently comment, somewhat tongue-in-cheek that when I was 25 years old I was at the height of my brilliance and that it has been all down hill since then. I think I was quite intelligent at 25. I was equipped with quite a bit of knowledge and I had proven my academic capabilities. But I was also somewhere near the height of my arrogance in those days. I was full of myself. The piece of the line that is the least true is the bit about it being all downhill since. That part definitely is not true. It does get a laugh from some folks, and it does address a fear that I have on this side of sixty of loosing my mental abilities, but it really isn’t true.

I was only 20 when I officiated at my first funeral. I hadn’t even left for seminary yet. I was serving as licensed pulpit supply for a small congregation. I was just beginning to hone my skills as a preacher and worship planner. I hadn’t even read the funeral service that is in the book of worship, and we had a different book in those days. When I met with the widower, he was four times my age. The woman who dies was similarly in her eighties. They lived alone in a small house and I didn’t really know them. I didn’t even know who to learn much personal information in a short session to plan the funeral. I don’t remember much about the funeral. I somehow got through it. The ministries of the congregation, shown partially through an abundant dinner and plenty of food taken to the home of the grieving widower, were far more important and valuable than the words I read at the service.

I wasn’t completely naive about death and loss. My maternal grandparents were no longer living. My paternal grandfather had died not long before. My oldest sister had been killed nearly three years before. I had attended funerals for others in our church. I had a short list of things that I didn’t like about the funerals I had attended for others. But it wouldn’t be at all fair to say that I had developed a theology of death or a philosophy about the administration of funerals.

But that was before I went to seminary. The culture and atmosphere of seminary was exhilarating for me. Daily we were challenged by our teachers to read ideas that were new to us. Some of our texts were so complicated that we had to discuss them with each other just to get a basic understanding of what had been written. I was surrounded by people who were on a similar academic journey and we formed a close community of study and concern. We followed roughly the same schedule. We were reading the same books. We ate and slept and drempt theology. And I enjoyed it immensely.

The culture of theological education has shifted significantly since those days. Our seminary was a residential program. The seminary had dormitories for single students and apartments for married students. It ran a dining hall. It even had a lab school for students who had children. It was expected that the pursuit of a theological education was a full-time venture and that you would attend worship and convocations and other events at the seminary. The seminary was not just the source of our academic education, but also of our social life and cultural events. We were immersed in learning. These days the same seminary has a single building and a schedule that is set up to provide education for commuter students. The majority of the student body lives in other locations and commutes into the city for classes three days a week.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both styles of learning and teaching and I am in no place to offer an evaluation. Such an evaluation would be meaningless because the culture has shifted. It is no longer practical in today’s world to insist on the style of education that we obtained.

But we were, for a few brief years, academically brilliant. We were reading and comprehending what we were reading. We were immersed in the world of ideas and contributing our ideas to the body of thought. Our professors were at the top of their games in a culture of excellence and a climate of continuing research and education. We were especially adept at theory and logic and the rational behind the practice of ministry.

We were also living in a bubble. Except for internships, which were somewhat artificial settings of ministry, we were isolated from the day to day life of congregations. Sunday worship we went to the congregations where we were interning and we imagined ourselves as the senior ministers and thought about how we might handle the text differently and what we might say. Despite attending weekly services in area churches, our own worship life was centered in the seminary’s worship services, held during the week.

I’ve been thinking about seminary days because we are looking forward to a visit, in August, from a a seminary classmate. We were close in school and have remained close since, despite serving on different continents. We have such great memories of late night discussions and conversations that shaped our theologies and world views. But we can’t help but recognize that we are different people today. We didn’t have children when we were seminary students. We are grandparents today. They had children in those days and now have lived through the trial of the illness and death of a daughter. All of us have gone through the death of parents, and I have lost a brother.

It isn’t just that we have all turned grey and the males have lost most of our hair. We have gone through life experiences that have shaped us as human beings and given us resources for ministry. We will still talk into the night, though perhaps not as late as was the case in our seminary days. We will still feel the stirring of passion over theology and the world of ideas. But I suspect that our conversations will also be tempered by a bid more appreciation for silence and thoughtfulness.

Perhaps we are moving toward the edge of wisdom. And wisdom may be a gift as worthy of sharing with the church as was our brilliance.

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.

Today I am starting a new experiment with my blog. I am hoping to live more intentionally in my relationship with technology and to make a slight shift in my personal spiritual disciplines. The result may be rathe subtle for regular readers of the blog. It may even be rather subtle for me. Since about 2007, I have gotten up in the morning and begun my day by scanning the headlines from news sources from around the world, primarily places to which I have a connection of some sort. Then I would write a thousand-word essay. Often my essays were inspired by the news stories. Other times, I would have a general topic in mind and use the computer to do some research on that topic. My writings were always personal essays. I never got into writing research papers. But topics were often farther from my personal passion and interests. Some days it was hard for me to decide a topic.

From a personal point of view, however, this made me rather dependent upon the connections of the Internet. Over the years, of course, there were plenty of days when I was in a location where I had no Internet access. On those days, I continued to write the blog and then publish it when I got to a place where I could connect. Most of those times, I was traveling and my blogs were sort of modified travelogues with information about the place where I was visiting. It hasn’t been that long since Internet access was reserved to designated places in hotels. I remember before wireless connections were regularly available. I used to get up and go to a hotel business center to plug in with a cable. I’ve written more than a few blogs in hotel lobbies to avoid disturbing a roommate.

I have decided that for a while at least, that I will make the writing my first priority. It is my intention to avoid looking at the cell phone and the web browser first thing in the morning - to reserve those activities for after I have written. It should make a couple of differences in my essays. First of all, it should mean that my writing is more personal - more of a journal of my life and the things that are most important to me. Secondly, it should reflect ideas that have had a little while to mature. Instead of responding to the latest headline, I’ll be writing about things that I’ve been thinking about for some time.

Another shift - and I don’t know if this will make more of a difference or not - is that I am going to try to wean myself from the word counter and having to have each blog entry the same length. I think that a thousand word personal essay is about the right length, but I know there will be days when I am more rushed than others. In the past, I would occasionally pre-write the morning’s blog in order to be able to get up and get going the next day. I may still do that from time to time, but I will simply publish it when it is written rather than hold it to be published the next morning for the appearance of consistency. On days when I am rushed or when I am focusing my attention on getting somewhere else, I intend to give myself permission to make a shorter blog entry. On days when there is a lot stirring in my imagination or thoughts, I plan to give myself permission to make entries at different times of the day. There may be more days when I write multiple times.

I am not abandoning the discipline of daily writing, but rather trying to shift the discipline to focus on my interior thinking and processing rather than my connection with the digital world with all of its distractions.

As I have said, the change may be rather subtle.

I am a person of many habits. The ones I like, I tend to label “spiritual disciplines,” and nurture them. The blog is an outgrowth of our 2006 sabbatical. I stared being very intentional about my writing during that break from the routine and later I decided to turn it into a spiritual discipline and to publish the writings in this blog. Now, over 2.5 million words later I think it is time for me to shift my attention away from counting words and producing words for the sake of the count. I plan to give more attention to what the words say and how they reflect the spiritual journey of a pastor.

I still have boundaries. There are parts of my personal life that I intend to keep personal. There are many stories that I encounter ion my work as a pastor that are not mine to tell. Keeping confidence with those I serve is essential not only to my job, but also to my identity and integrity. But I do hope that this blog will reflect a bit more of the substance of my thinking and of the usually joyful process of theological thinking.

Thinking about God and keeping my mind open to a relationship forged in the work of God’s people is not just a process reserved for the halls of academia and the development of systematic theology papers for education. It is, first and foremost, a lived experience. What I know about God is, indeed shaped by my academic studies. But those studies are always a bit theoretical. Living my life in the midst of God’s people gives me the opportunity to take those academic studies and apply them to the experience I have and the experiences of others.

And so a new adventure begins for me. Perhaps the most significant shift is not in the writing of the blog, but in the moving its position in my day. I doubt if anyone ever read this blog as a news source. it still may be a source of new ideas. I hope that some of the ideas will be a bit better formed - at least reflect things I’ve been thinking about for a few hours.

We shall see.

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.

Last evening, Susan turned her laptop around to show me a really nice picture of a trio of girls from our church paddling an inflatable boat on a small pond. I couldn’t resist making a comment. I love boats. I love kids. Kids in boats in a safe setting is a recipe for good memories and pleasant times. In my comment, I included Ratty’s words to Mole in Wind in the Willows: “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

The thing about my comment, however, is that because the computer was open to Susan’s Facebook page, it thought it was Susan making the comment. In this particular case, there is no harm. The person who posted the picture knows both of us and I put a little note in my comment to identify myself. It was clear, however, how easy it would be to enter a conversation in that media under a false identity.

I’ve never gotten into Facebook that much. I do have an account and I look at it from time to time because I have some nieces and nephews that use it as a primary way of communicating and I am interested in their lives. The church has a page and I have an automated program that will make a post to the church’s Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts all in one simple process. Since I post to Facebook more often than I look at it, some people think that it is the best way to contact me and it is not unusual for me to miss a message posted in that forum.

One of the problems with Facebook is that there are several things you can do in that forum that automatically send messages to everyone on your friends list. So my newsfeed is cluttered with invitations to play Jackpot Slot Machines and Words of Wonder and Criminal Case and Pet Rescue Saga. I guess that might tell you what kind of friends I have. I would say that for the most part my Facebook friends are a very eclectic group. Some are relatives, others are acquaintances from other parts of my life. Still others are more friends of friends. I resist accepting invitations to be friends from people that I have never met face to face, but the church site is set up to be as welcoming of guests and strangers as is the actual church, so there are a lot of people I have never met who participate in that group.

I guess I prefer spending time with my real friends in face-to-face activities. And I prefer going to church and worshiping with other living persons as opposed to virtual church. There is a lot of virtual church going on.

I have been told that our denomination, The United Church of Christ, has more Facebook friends than it has actual members in the pews. I haven’t checked to see if this is true, but if it is it says something about people’s preferences for religion that requires very little commitment.

I recently spoke (face-to-face nonetheless) with a person who belongs to a virtual church. The online congregation has connections to a physical congregation in Nebraska, but the member joined it when it came out of Oregon. The virtual church has online worship with a regular schedule like a physical church, counseling, and other services. It also receives donations and has stewardship drives. It has a paid pastor though I was unclear whether the pastor’s sole income comes from Internet church or if it was a position shared between the Internet church and the physical church.

There is an article on the BBC website about the Kiev cathedral in the Ukraine that has a phone app for Orthodox Christian Ukrainians in search of spiritual guidance. The app, which is officially endorsed by the Svyato-Troyitskyy Cathedral, allows users to “enter a virtual church to pray, seek inner peace and ask a priest for advice.” I couldn’t help but thinking of my making a comment in my wife’s name on Facebook as I read the article. It would be tough to be the priest who gives advice on the phone app. You’d not only be giving advice to strangers - a risky and problematic practice in the first place - but also giving advice to people who may or may not be who they say they are.

I can see the benefits of some of the technology and social media. I am in favor of things that make connections between people. I like to see our members conversing outside of the church walls. And I try to participate in those conversations in a meaningful manner.

But I think that I will never quite catch up with the technology. I’ll never be as at home with my smartphone as is my nephew. I’ll never find making comments on Facebook as easy as having a conversation with a person over a cup of coffee in our church fellowship hall. And I don’t think I’m cut out to be the pastor of a virtual church. Then again, perhaps a virtual church could have a virtual pastor. What if the very intelligent people who created the church app for the Kiev Cathedral were to come up with the right set of logarithms to automate the advice giving? With all of the possibilities of giving ill-informed or wrong-directed advice that exist, it seems that a good computer program might give good advice at least as often as an actual person. Think of the time that would be saved if we automated the process.

From there it is a really short step to using virtual intelligence to craft sermons and once the computer is generating the sermons you might as well create a robot to deliver them. We could set up vending machines in public places to distribute communion and fountains for virtual baptism.

For now, however, I guess I’ll write my blogs the old fashioned way. And yes, I really do write them all. No ghost writers or computer-generated lists of topics.

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 think that it is likely that yesterday’s blog was more of a sermon to myself than it was a message for anyone else. Throughout my life, I have been blessed with excellent health. Even in the areas where I have not always been the best steward of my health, such as weight control, I have not suffered the health consequences that some have suffered. I don’t have high blood pressure or diabetes or other physical ailments. I have good stamina and the ability to engage in exercise and the activities I enjoy. I can walk and run and paddle and ride my bike.

And, in a way that has been a blessing for me, and perhaps for other members of my family as well, I have not suffered from any of the major mental illnesses that create great problems, and often suffering for their victims.

So, if I have a day or two when I feel less than 100%, or a little bit down, I understand that I am a long ways from depression. The temporary discomfort or low energy that I feel is insignificant when compared to those who suffer from depression as a chronic illness.

In fact, I have been so fortunate in this life that whenever I feel a bit down in the dumps, I am quick to chastise myself. How silly it sounds for someone as fortunate as I am to complain. I try to keep my complaints to myself for the most part. I’m pretty sure they would sound trivial to any objective observer.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling down, I can fall into a temporary pattern of not taking responsibility for my own decisions. One of the big areas in my life is leisure activity and exercise.

My friends often ask me during the summer if I’ve been getting out with my canoes. They know how much I love to paddle. They know how good it is for me physically to get exercise. They know how good it is for me psychologically to get off by myself for a little while. My answer for most of this summer has been, “I haven’t been out as much as I’d like.”

The truth is that we have been busy. The truth is that we are always busy. I know that there is a bit of an old work ethic in me that says I shouldn’t go out and play when there is work that is undone. The problem with that way of thinking is that I never get my work all done. There is always something that needs to be done at the church. We are anticipating the largest capital funds drive of my career launching early in 2015. There are six new committees to keep track of and specific assignments that need to be spelled out to keep them on track. There are volunteers to recruit. We are searching for a new choir director. Have I left any leads that haven’t had proper follow up? There is a “to do” list a mile long at my desk at work.

So I use work as an excuse for not taking care of myself. The Bible is pretty direct in addressing that excuse. For the commandment about killing, four words are enough. For the one about the Sabbath, it takes four verses:

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
”But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

Six days a week are enough to do your work. One for recreation and reconnecting with God seems reasonable. After all, who do you think you are? Even God took a day off? Are you more important than God?

I get it intellectually. I continue to struggle with putting it into practice. But yesterday, I went out paddling. I even went paddling with the blog unpublished. I had trouble with the publishing software and I decided that if I was going to get a paddle in and get to the office on time, I needed to go. So I did. The blog didn’t get published until mid morning.

The world didn’t come to an end. My inbox didn’t fill up with complaints. No one gave me any grief. Sometimes I wonder how I can be so dense and self-important that I think that the world can’t afford for me to take a little time for rest and recreation.

It is likely that the opposite is true. I am less efficient when I don’t take time to exercise. I have less stamina. I actually accomplish less when I don’t discipline myself to take care of myself. And it is likely that by skipping exercise I am shortening the number of years I will have to pursue my job full time.

It really isn’t all about me.

I love to watch the heron’s flight. A wooden boat and a wooden paddle allows me to come very close without raising too much noise. The great bird waits until it thinks the moment is right. Sometimes it will let out a squawk as it takes to the air. Sometimes it is silent. It is a rather ungainly bird as it begins to fly. Graceful as it stands and graceful in flight, it has a few awkward moments of transition.

The geese are always noisy and complain about my canoe when it is hundreds of feet away. They do however, have enough curiosity to allow me to paddle in their midst as long as I don’t chase them. If I come too close they take to flight with a bit of a splash, but without the ungainliness of the herons. The ducks don’t let me get that close. They paddle, paddle, paddle faster until splash, splash, splash they take to flight with wet wingtips.

And they all remind me that I am but a passing fancy - a moment in a lifetime full of mostly other things. They give me perspective.

I think I’ll go paddling today.

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

Dear regular readers of this blog:

I apologize for the late publication of the blog today. I actually wrote today’s entry last evening. When I went to publish this morning at 4:30 a.m. the software kept crashing. It took me quite a bit of research and “sleuthing” to figure out where the corrupt files that were preventing publication were located. Finally I got my files normalized and was able to publish, but not before quite a bit of frustration.

Maybe the reason I have so little hair on my head is that I keep pulling my hair!

Regardless, this entry will allow me to test the blog, the return of photos to the blog and other issues. If you are reading it - it means success!

Biblical scholars can argue for hours, or perhaps even years, about the specifics of biblical dating. Because of the changes in calendar systems, the extensive use of oral tradition prior to written texts, and a wide variety of other factors, there is much that is open to interpretation. So without any claim to specific accuracy, it was somewhere around 3,500 years ago when our grandfather Moses led our people out of slavery in Egypt. We’ve been telling the story of the Exodus for a very long time. Our people had been telling that story for a millennium and a half before Jesus was born. But we have some incredibly clear stories of those events. Our common history is pretty clear on some of the things that happened. And some of the parts of that story have become very important to the way we live our lives today.

There are legal scholars who claim that the foundation of all written law can be found in the ten commandments that Moses received on Mt. Sinai and brought down to the people of Israel. Having discovered their idolatry, he broke the first set of stone tablets in a fit of rage. Then, after pleading for mercy from God, another set were finally delivered to our people.

Let’s remember the context. Jacob and his family moved to Egypt during a time of famine and our people stayed there for a long time. At first their conditions weren’t exactly slave-like, but the oppression of the Egyptians became more and more harsh. As the population of the people of Israel continued to grow, Pharaoh felt more threatened and he increased the oppression, discrimination and even torture of the workers. Depending on which biblical scholar you consult, our people were kept in Egypt for somewhere between 200 and 400 years or more. That is many generations. We had gotten used to being slaves.

When Moses led us out of slavery, we didn’t know how to behave as free people. We didn’t have a clue what it meant to be free. The ten commandants were given as simple guidelines for life as free people. Even though we use the same text to refer to the commandments and even though we all seem to come up with ten, the combinations of commandments mean that different faith traditions number the commandments a little bit differently. But the bottom line is the same. The commandments are not intended to be restrictions on the freedom of the people, but rather guidelines for life as free people:

You want to be free? Remember that I am the God of freedom. Don’t let anything else take my place, Anything else that you worship will ultimately enslave you.

You want to be free? Only one God. Remember that bit about how giving loyalty to false gods enslaves? That goes for the images, sculptures, statues and paintings you make as well. They aren’t God. Don’t forget it.

You want to be free? Don’t use the name of God for any other purpose but genuinely calling on God.

You want to be free? Take a day off every week.

You want to be free? Treat your elders the way you want your children to treat you when you get old.

You want to be free? Don’t murder. You’ll become enslaved by the consequences of your behavior. The same goes for adultery, stealing and lying. Every one ends up enslaving you to the stories you have lived.

Oh, and one more thing: to be free quit wishing you had the things that you don’t have.

It is a very simple set of guidelines for living as free people.

God doesn’t set a priority and make one rule more important than another. Each is equally important. Think about that the next time you fail to remember the Sabbath or look with envy upon the possessions of another. Both of those actions are equal in their threat to enslave you as are murder and adultery.

To put it another way, one of my teachers once said, If we can’t get people to honor the Sabbath, have we got any chance at getting them to stop killing on another. And coveting? You might as well give up on that one.

I see it another way. I’m no more innocent than a thief. When it comes to a perfect record on these rules, I’m a long ways away from it. It is only by the grace of God that I know any freedom at all. And once in a while, through God’s grace, I get reminded of how I can enjoy that freedom. Whatever symbol or image I have that I think is important - it is time to give that up. Whatever envy I have towards those who have more than I - it is time to give it up. Freedom doesn’t come from sitting around and griping or from within that things were different than they are. Freedom comes from focusing my attention on God and allowing everything that isn’t God to assume a lesser role in my life. Freedom comes from being very careful in my choose of words and my use of God’s name. Freedom comes from living the truth so not only are the words I say true, but also the life I live.

The story of the struggles of our people to keep faithfulness to this wonderful covenant with God read a bit like a broken record. Again and again, we forgot how to live as free people. Again and again God intervened calling us back to lives of freedom. Through prophets and Jesus and apostles God called us again and again to live lives of freedom.

Sometimes we don’t behave any better than the former slaves in the wilderness dancing around the calf made form the spoils they took out of Egypt. Worshiping gold was pretty tempting. And it was pretty pointless in a land where food and water were in short supply.

Fortunately, God is patient. We keep repeating their behavior and need to learn the lessons of freedom over and over and over 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.

Somehow in my mind I have made a connection between television game shows and people who are aging less than gracefully. I am not a big fan of television and have no shows that I watch regularly. I did go through a period when I was watching several British comedies on a fairly regular basis, but I’ve somehow fallen out of that habit. Most of what I know about television game shows comes from the few moments I have watched in the homes of members of the churches I have served. I have known people who, if I dropped by during “Wheel of Fortune” would continue to leave the television on and visit with me between rounds of the game. “Jeopardy” is another game show that in its time had a big following, mostly, it seemed, among retired persons.

But as I age, I am also aware that there is a certain amount of mental stimulation that is important to keeping my mind fit. I play Lumosity games on my computer daily and keep track of my scores. And I have found that I enjoy radio quiz shows. There probably is no difference between my penchant for radio quiz shoes and those who watch game shows on television. In my mind, however, I justify the time I invest in listening to the shows by listening to podcasts, which means I can pause the show at any point and return to it at a later time. I listen mostly when I am driving, which is a half hour or more each day. The first game show that captured my attention is “Whad’ya Know?” with Michael Feldman from Wisconsin Public Radio. The show is only barely a game show. It really is a comedy show with “All the News that Isn’t,” “Thanks for the Memos,” and a short quiz.

Then I discovered “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” with Peter Sagal from WBEZ in Chicago. Again, it really isn’t much of an intellectual challenge. They do have celebrity contestants and people who phone in can compete for the prize of Carl Kasell’s voice on their home voicemail. But the questions are often about celebrities, the results of public opinion polls, and other things that are, for the most part trivia.

The third podcast that I listen to that bills itself as a game show, actually has some mental challenges. The NPR show features host Ophira Eisenberg. The show also has its share of trivia, which I rarely know, but also has puzzles and games which are more intriguing to me. The show often features musical quizzes with Jonathan Coulton, the “one man house band.” There are a lot of puns and word games as well.

Eisenberg is a multi-talented actress. Originally from Clagary Canada, she has been a featured comedian in many clubs and programs, including appearances on the Late Show with Craig Ferguson and Comedy Central. I really don’t know much about her except little pieces. I heard her tell the story of being in a very serious car accident as a child on The Moth, which is supposedly all stories rooted in the truth. She is only in her mid ’30’s and has already published at least two books, including a memoir which came out last year. I was turned off by the title of the memoir and have yet to read it, but I suppose that I may do so sometime in the future.

I just wonder if someone who is not yet 40 really has enough experience to write a memoir. That, I’m certain is a bias of an old man and probably not one of which I should be proud. A good memoir comes from the ability to tell a story. Most of us have had enough experiences to tell a good story by the time we reach the age of 30. I, who have never written a memoir, am not held back by a lack of experiences or stories to tell. Ophira Eisenbrerg has published a memoir in part because she has put in the work to write one. There does, it seems to me, appear to be a lot more that will come from this talented young mind. Maybe there will be multiple memoirs.

Looking through the podcasts that I listen to regularly, it does seem that I have a special affiliation for good storytelling. The New Yorker Fiction podcast features the best of published fiction, often read by writers whose works I have previously read. The moth is live storytelling. Snap Judgement fatures stories that are highly edited and produced, often with music to accompany the stories. This American Life is a unique form of storytelling. Even Radio Lab is a form of telling stories as Had Abumrad and Robert Krulwich ask the kind of questions that often inhabit my imagination. Even my favorite music podcast, “From the Top,” features quite a bit of storytelling about the lives of the featured young artists. One of the things that I really appreciate about the show is host Christopher O’Riley’s gift for interviewing youth and teens. As an accomplished pianist, he often accompanies the young musicians who are showcased on his program.

For generations people have valued good storytelling. Those with a knack for spinning a yarn on the front porch or telling a spooky story around the campfire have been recognized as treasures of their communities. At their best, radio, television and movies are media for telling stories. They hold our attention because we become immersed in the stories that they tell. I guess, for me, to enjoy a story, it must at some level be believable. Although I enjoy fiction, a departure that is too far from the life I lead eventually bores me. I’m not much for fantasy. Too much of what is shown on television is so far from any reality that I know that it lacks believability for me. Although I understand the value of being able to suspend disbelief, it isn’t one of my strong points.

I doubt if I am improving my mind by my choice of entertainment any more than those who watch game shows on television. But at least I don’t impose my choice of entertainment on others when they come to visit.

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 generations our people have believed that the words we choose to talk about life help shape our perception of reality. I suppose that the deepest origins of language are lost in antiquity, but one of the stories that has come down to us with our language is that an alphabetic language grew up in part out of the desire to talk about God. Prior to the rise of alphabetic languages, writing systems were mostly pictographic. People drew small pictures of the things that they wanted to communicate. Egyptian hieroglyphics are an excellent example. The sign for bird looks like a bird. The sign for snake is a toy snake. The sign for sun looks like the sun. As the language developed there were other signs such as dots and dashes that gained specific meanings and enabled more complex messages to be communicated.

An alphabetic language, on the other hand, starts with symbols. Individual letters are not literal depictions of anything. They do have correspondents with sounds that we make when speaking, but the process of reading is not a matter of decoding a series of pictures, but rather of using symbols that have a common meaning.

Researchers say that we begin to learn language before we are born. The sounds and rhythms of the mother’s speech are transmitted to the baby developing within her. The child is born with a slight predisposition to learning the specific language of the mother. Of course young children are capable of learning additional languages and when they are raised in a different culture, they make the language substitution apparently quite easily. Nonetheless, we seem to be born with a general sense of language. From the first moments, parents use words to sooth babies, even before the language is about communication of concepts. Reassurance, love and safety can be communicated before the baby has learned to speak.

We know from experience and scientific research that in general language centers are located in the left hemisphere of the brain. Strokes and other traumatic brain injuries can result in the loss of language. In severe cases the victim is left with no language, no memories, no way of evaluating time. Instead of thoughts as we experience them, these patients experience only sensory intake. A moment is either pleasant or not. And yet it seems that these people are capable of feeling basic emotions and experiencing life in a meaningful way. Joy and love do not seem to be dependent upon language to express them.

But for those of us who do experience the world through language, there is a continuing attempt to find expression of those emotions and experiences which seem to us to be most important. We read and write poetry in an attempt to use language to express things that seem to be almost beyond words. The key word in that previous sentence is “almost.” Just because an idea or an emotion is complex, or difficult to express doesn’t stop us from trying to express it.

David James Duncan wrote in “The River Why,” “People often don’t know what they’re talking about. When they talk about love, they really don’t know what they’re talking about.” The simple fact that love is more complex and more nuanced than our language doesn’t stop us from trying to talk about it. We make analogies. We write long, complex sentences and combine them into paragraphs. Still, for those who have experienced love, the desire to speak of it remains very strong.

There are lots of other times when we experience our words as falling short of reality. In the ancient stories of our people we can sense the experience of the beyond by reading the official words of sacred text. When Abraham comes close to the sacrifice of Isaac, we sense this huge relief when the ram is provided for the sacrifice. But if we read the story carefully, we find in it a major shift in the understanding of the world and the relationship between God and humans. This story begins to function in the lives of our people as a way to reach beyond ancient practices of sacrifice to new ways of showing commitment to the relationship with God. Never again in our scriptures do we read of God as demanding human sacrifice. Our story took a turn in a new direction. And no matter how many times we read or speak the story, we all understand that there is much more going on that the simple elements of gathering wood, sharpening the knife and going off to a remote place.

The descriptions of Pentecost in the book of Acts is similar in its descriptions. It is obvious that there is more going on than the metaphor-laden words of the story. “Divided tongues, as of fire,” is not the same thing as tongues of fire. “A loud sound, like the rush of a mighty wind,” is only a particle description. It is obvious that words alone fail to express the power of that experience. And yet words are the tools that we have to convey that experience to others. The story was repeated again and again in the early days of the church. We continue to tell it over and over, even though we know that the words fall short of the complete experience that was known to the eyewitnesses.

I feel a deep sense of gratitude at having the ability to use words. Even though many of the things I write fall short of being full or accurate description, language is a tool that helps me process the experiences of this life. I write because it is a way of processing what has happened and a way of expressing the deep meaning that I sense in the moments of my life. Part of that deep meaning is connection with others. I write in part because I sense that someone might read my words. It doesn’t seem as if I am writing for a particular audience, as is the case when I craft a sermon, but I do have some sense that the words are a way of reaching out to others.

Perhaps that is the real reason why we have language - to make connections with others and remind ourselves that we are not alone in the world. And that is a very good thing indeed.

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 enjoying reading the two volumes of P.G. Downes’ journals of travels in Northern Canada between 1936 and 1947, edited by R.H. Cockburn. The journals are a rare and somewhat raw look at the experiences of a bold adventurer. P.G. Downes was a teacher at a private school for boys near Boston who spent many of his summers taking incredible canoe voyages in Northern Canada. He kept journals of his adventures and 40 years after his death the journals have been edited and published in two volumes. Somewhere in the introduction, the editor comments that they may be of limited interest. Not everyone wants to read of the discomfort of traveling long days on short rations, the limited pleasure of eating seagull, and the stiff shoulders and blisters that come with the first days of an extensive canoe trip. The editor does think that publishing the journals does, however, have an audience among scholars who are studying the history of native people; geographers who want to know what the land was like before it had been mapped, photographed and developed; and armchair travelers who revel in reading about the adventures of others and fancy travels in their imaginations.

I think I fit into that final category. It is not that I don’t have a few genuine adventures in real life. I love to travel and I have been blessed with many wonderful trips and there are more yet to come. But my imagination is capable of thinking of trips that are probably beyond the realm of practical. It is unlikely that I will do extensive canoe traveling in the barrens area of Northern Canada. Although there is plenty of relatively empty space to be explored, the logistics of such trips are probably beyond my means. Not having several years to invest four or more months in travel by canoe, my only access to such adventures would be to fly into remote locations, travel a short distance and then fly out. The costs of such trips are probably beyond my means. And I would probably need a guide. And I may be getting beyond the age where my physical stamina is up to the challenge of running rapids, making portages, and dealing with the deprivations of isolated travel.

There are some trips that I probably will take only in my imagination and never in reality. That doesn’t keep me from enjoying the imaginary trips.

So, in a flight of fancy, here are some trips that I will probably never take, but I can imagine nonetheless.

I think it would be a grand adventure to travel with my son and grandson to Corwall, the peninsula that juts out of England into the Atlantic Ocean. I fancy we might stay in Penzance the town that gave its name to the famous pirates of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera. There are plenty of things to see in the area and we wouldn’t become bored, but the thing I would most love to do would be to take long beach combing walks on the beach. I know we’d love the things we might find.

Back on February 13, 1997, the container ship Tokio Express was bound for New York when it was hit by a wave described by its captain as a “once in a 100-year phenomenon.” The ship tilted 60 degrees in one direction and then 40 degrees in the other. 62 shipping containers fell off of the giant vessel and sank to the bottom of the ocean. At least one of those containers broke apart as it sank. We know that because for the last 17 years Lego pieces have been washing up on the beaches of Cornwall. To make matters even more interesting the Lego pieces have a nautical theme. There are pirate’s swords, flippers, sea grass, and octopuses. There are a few things that you might not expect to find on a beach as well, such as daisies and dragons.

Theoretically the plastic peaces could have been caught in ocean currents and traveled around the globe. There is a Facebook page about the Lego discoveries and there is the possibility that one of the pieces made it all the way to Australia. But the largest number of pieces are washing up on Cornish beaches. In my imagination, I would take family members to the beach without telling them what we might discover and allow the discovery to be an amazing surprise.

I have often wondered what it would be like to paddle the 52 miles between North America and Siberia. I have paddled my kayak across the Columbia river between Oregon and Washington and back. I think it would be an adventure on an even grander scale to have paddled between two continents. The problem is that there are some very strong political barriers that make that trip next to impossible. Westerners simply cannot get permission to arrive on the Russian shores of the Bering Straight. The few who have done so have, for the most part, done so illegally. Given the turbulent waters and relatively short wave lengths in deep and very cold water, it would be necessary to have a support and safety boat for such a paddle. And the odds are that both boats would be confiscated upon arrival. It is a journey that is probably best taken in one’s imagination.

I think I would enjoy a trip down the Amazon. Of course the western part, where the river comes out of the mountains, would require a raft and a guide, but the trip would go through some of the deepest canyons in the world. And most of the Amazon’s travel is across a flat plain. Imagine floating on a river that carries 20% of the freshwater in the entire world. I suppose the best way to travel the lower Amazon would be to construct my own raft. That might be too big of an adventure, but I have no desire to take a cruise ship. Maybe I could book passage on a river supply ship. I’ve read that you have to bring your own hammock for sleeping because the floor of the boat is where the chickens and pigs sleep. Now that would be an adventure!

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 is no surprise to me that the package software for publishing personal web sites doesn’t quite fit the way I use my web site. Finding the right software to publish web sites has been a challenge for me both in my personal web site and in the church’s web site. I guess that I am simply not a typical consumer of such products. I’ve been working with the web long enough that I know a bit of html programming language and I have used my skills to customize pages and to make things look the way that I want. My goals for my personal site and for the church site are quite different.

With the church site, I have tried to keep the design simple and accessible. Ideally there would be several people who would contribute directly to the site, so we went with an Internet browser interface. All it takes is the knowledge of a single password and any user can make modifications to the site from any computer. The vision was that church volunteers could take responsibility for content in various parts of the site and make regular updates. The reality is that we haven’t identified those volunteers. We have members who know how to make those changes - there are even a couple of members who are professional web designers. And ewe have plenty of volunteers who are very generous with their time and energy. Somehow, however, the web site hasn’t become a priority for volunteer hours.

The issues with my personal web site are different. The big issue is that the site contains a huge amount of text. Most blogs are tens or hundreds of words written periodically. My blog is a thousand words a day. My site currently has over 2,500 thousand word essays. That isn’t a huge amount of data in the age of the Internet, but the way that it is organized, with entries carrying dates and links to other entries by date means that there are simply a lot of links that need to be maintained. One solution would be to have blog posts expire after a certain number of days. I’m sure that there is no one (other than me) who goes back and looks at blog posts from seven years ago.

Since 2011, I have been using software that creates monthly archives. This makes the essays easier to search if you know that date of the material for which you are looking. However, in order to make the blog posts really accessible, a system for searching by topic needs to be developed.

In a dream world, someone would take an interest in editing the blogs and we could sift and sort and publish a kind of “best of the blog” section that would be easily searchable by topic. Since it is unlikely that I will hire an archivist to manage the volume of writing, that isn’t a likely scenario.

My current hope is to put in place a new blog system sometime during this summer that will enable keyword searching and build a pathway for organizing old blogs into topic categories. But setting that all up takes time and I have some sense of design and want the appearance of the blog and the web site to be a bit more than a straightforward academic or industrial site.

So for a few days at least, I have been publishing just words to the blog without photographs. I have a lot of photographs of the past week with Vacation Bible School and other events. and I was hoping to get some of them up on the site, but my web publishing software is being quirky at the moment. Some mornings it is taking longer to get the blog posted than it does to write it, with multiple failures before a successful post. I know the reason that this isn’t working correctly, but I haven’t found the time necessary to go into the system and fix the problems. So for the moment I’m slogging on with a blog that is less than my vision.

When I work with grieving persons I speak of “muddling through.” Sometimes in life we aren’t able to get every task done and we aren’t able to cope with every decision that needs to be made and we just “muddle” for a while. It is a way of surviving. Muddling, of course isn’t a very pleasant lifestyle for the long term. It is inefficient in terms of time, energy and emotion. But sometimes that is all that one can do in the face of a crisis or a case of emotional overload.

For the next couple of weeks, I anticipate that I will be muddling in terms of the blog - getting by in a manner that is less efficient and less finished than I’d like things to be. It is important that I keep my life priorities straight. The blog is a part of my spiritual discipline. It is a way of communicating the flow of my life with a few people who read it regularly. It is a way of intro ducting myself to a larger number of people who visit my site periodically. But it isn’t my life. It isn’t my career. I write, in part, to teach myself how to write. I also write because it is my way of processing the events of my life. Regular readers of the blog will recall that I write about the process of writing from time to time, but that the topics of the blog are as varied as the experiences of my life.

But the blog isn’t my life. I would have nothing about which to write if I weren’t spending most of my time working at the church, developing new programs, administering the life of a busy and growing congregation, planning worship, working with teams of volunteers and dreaming about the future with visionary people. The blog is a mere reflection of life - not life itself. Life has to be the focus even if it means the blog struggles for a while.

I wish I were publishing a more polished and better organized blog. But this will have to do for now. A little muddling isn’t all bad.

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 told that all of the smoke in the skies around here is from wildfires in Utah. The jet stream is stirring the air over the west in such a way that the smoke is being carried up fromt he southwest instead of its usual flow from the northwest. It looks, however, like a shift in the wind direction might bring more, not less smoke into our area.

The Utah wildfires are mostly in the southern part of the state. Everything is tinder dry down there and they have had a real spell of hot weather throughout the month of July. By the time kit gets to us, we could also be getting smoke from fires burning in Nevada and California as well.

Firefighters in Washington, Oregon and Idaho have their hands full, too. On the eastern slope of the Cascades, just north of Leavenworth, the Chiwaukum Creek fire has sent its smoke plume as high as 25,000 feet in the air. That’s high enough to be seen from Seattle. The fire is burning in heavy timber and conditions are brutal for firefighters. Temperatures have been over 100 degrees in a place that isn’t used to such warm temperatures. One report that I read said that residents of 860 homes have been evacuated with another 800 homes considered to be threatened. The governor of Washington has declared a disaster for 30 eastern counties and called up the National Guard to help fight the blazes.

The areas where the fires are burning are very close to territory where we love to camp and explore. We drove through the region a couple of weeks ago with daytime highs in the seventies. It turned hot after we got home.

The fires have largely been started by lightning. One of the Washington fires is over 35 square miles and a long ways from containment.

In Oregon, the Waterman Complex has blackened more than 4,000 acres of timber, grass and brush. In the rugged and remote territory of central Idaho they named the big fire “Preacher.” The Preacher fire was growing by about 25 square miles a day earlier this week. In Boise, where we lived for a decade, the skies are more smoky than here. Smoke from the Whiskey Complex dropped visibility to under 2 miles earlier this week.

Resources are pouring into the region from across the nation. Just from conversations with folks around here I have heard of a 20-man hand crew and at least four other firefighters from the hills that are on their way to the fires in the northwest. One firefighter commented tongue-in-cheek that the entire nation would probably start tilting toward the northwest with all of the iron going there in the form of fire trucks and other equipment.

With thunder rumbling through the hills as I write this morning, I am aware that those hot, dry conditions that are creating havoc to the northwest are heading our way. Our ten-day forecast calls for highs in the low 90’s next week. That isn’t extreme for this part of the country in mid July, but we have been enjoying lower than normal temperatures for much of the summer and we’re going to have to adjust.

We know that our forests can dry quickly and that the large number of trees killed by beetles means that there is plenty of fuel for large fires in the hills. So far we have been lucky, but luck can change quickly.

Insect infestations, rapidly changing weather conditions and wildfire are all part of living in the forest. We know that the natural cycles of the forest include the periodic destruction of standing timber and the replacement of old trees with new ones. We also know that our interventions and attempts at forest management haven’t always been successful. Excessive fire fighting led to high fuel loads. Really big fire complexes such as the Yellowstone fires of 1988 and 1989 were in part the result of 25 years of extinguishing every fire that occurred as quickly as possible. When we didn’t allow the forest’s natural processes of thinning occur and we didn’t thin ourselves the fuel loads became really high. Some previous logging practices have led to areas of the forest where all of the trees are the same age, vulnerable to the same diseases and at a higher risk for fire than if the logging had been done on a more selective basis. Often our attempts at forest management were undertaken with incomplete information and a lack of understanding of the large cycles of a healthy forest.

And more than a few of us have built our homes in the wrong place. Those gorgeous homes tucked in the trees with winding gravel roads for access and dense forest on every side make wonderful places to live and are really vulnerable to wildfire. Neighborhoods like the one where we live, with houses clustered, trees thinned and more open space are easier for the firefighters to defend in the case of a wildfire heading in our direction.

The thing about smoky skies is that I hesitate to complain. I don’t like all of the smoke. It makes me sneeze and it cuts down on the beautiful view to which we have become accustomed. But for now all we’ve got is the smoke. The folks living west of us are facing the threat of the flames. There can be a lot of fire season after July. It could easily be two or three months before winter storms come along to help put out the big complexes in the most remote areas. So far the firefighters have been able to protect most of the homes, but there will be people who lose their homes this summer. And there will be injuries to firefighters. Even the best trained and best equipped firefighters face significant risk on every fire.

I’m going to do my best to avoid complaining. We have had a lovely summer so far. I haven’t had to water my lawn yet. We just started watering at the church. Our temperatures have been comfortable and we had a wonderful vacation with lovely weather.

Instead of complaining, I’ll be praying for those whose lives are far more uncomfortable than ours. Be careful out there. It is a wild and dangerous 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.

Yehuda Amichai is widely regarded as Israel’s greatest modern poet. Recently Parker Palmer offered a short reflection on Amichai’s poem, “The Place Where We Are Right” for the On Being website. The poem has gotten me to thinking about the nature of our political conversations.

The Place Where We Are Right
by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the Spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
were the ruined
house once stood.

Amichai, of course, writes from the midst of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. Generations of people displaced by some of the deepest horrors of human cruelty have ended up in a desperate struggle for a tiny plot of land. Both sides claim that they are right and that their right gives them the authority to use weapons against others.

And from the security of knowing that they are right more innocent victims are created and more voices join the chorus of “we were wronged by the others and we have the right to retaliate.” Palestinian rebels cite the years of oppression and confinement in Gaza and the manipulations of employment and water systems and the indignities suffered at checkpoints as justification for lobbing rockets at Israel. Israel cites the horrors of the Holocaust and the innocent victims of random attacks as its right to use deadly force to defend its citizens.

Both sides should loudly that they are right and justified in their actions.

Who is right and who is wrong seems like a philosophical luxury when there are infants among the corpses.

What if those in Palestine who question the morality of lobbing rockets against civilian targets were the voices that were heard? What if those in Israel who question the ratios of death were the loudest voices? When is the body count extreme? 100 deaths in Palestine for each death in Israel? 250 to 1?

What if the doubters’ voices were heard.

Amichia’s poem settles uncomfortably in the back of my mind as I ponder the horrors of 298 people perishing when a missile downed a civilian airline over Ukrane. The war whose dynamics we don’t understand with separatists backed and armed by Russia has now spread far beyond the borders of that disputed territory. Victims included AIDS researchers in route to a conference in Australia. Nearly 300 innocent people downed by ill trained troops armed with surface to air missiles capable of downing large airplanes, but apparently incapable of discerning the difference between military and civilian planes.

There must be doubts among the rebels today.

There must be doubts among those who have backed, funded and armed them.

The world will probably never see it, but I suspect that there may even be doubts in the mind of President Vladimir Putin of Russia: a man with the power to stop the flow of money and heavy weaponry to the insurgents.

Mind you there is not enough information for me to be certain. I know what I think, despite the denials of the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. But my information comes from the reports of journalists whose biases show in the face fo the blackened wreckage and the rising stench of death.

But can anyone seriously doubt that the passengers on the plane were innocent victims of a conflict in which they had no part?

Some days the luxury of arguments about who is right and who is wrong bears too high a cost. How many people have to die before we declare that regardless of the arguments about who is right and who is wrong the violence needs to stop. Whether you are dead right or dead wrong you are still dead.

Many years ago I learned that life doesn’t have a “rewind” button. You can’t unsay the harsh words you have said. You cant un-see the horror once you’ve views it. There are plenty of mistakes and misjudgments that cannot be undone. The Malaysia Jet cannot be un-targeted. The field where the wreckage fell can never be anything but hallowed ground.

It is from the horror of this incident that we must raise our voices - not from the certainty of knowing who is right and who is wrong, but from the doubt and pain of the death of innocents. From this ground the world needs to cry out loud enough to end the conflict.

To call a cease fire.

To stop the flow of weapons.

To look for alternative ways to seek justice for those who are embroiled in the conflict.

We know it is possible. We have witnessed it in the slow but steady healing of South Africa. We have witnessed it in the uneven, yet discernible journey toward peace of Northern Ireland. The truth that brings reconciliation is deeper than the claim that we are right. Peace is a product of setting aside the claims of right and wrong and moving beyond the cycles of retribution and revenge.

Perhaps it is only when we realize that there are no winners in war that we are able to stop adding to the lists of the losers in war.

For today we must look at the grim images of the columns of smoke rising and sit with our questions. We must be honest enough to admit that we don’t know who is right and who is wrong.

Today is a day to sit with our doubts. And name our loves. We love life. We love other people. We love the diversity of this creation. We love the honest innocence of children. We love the freedom to travel. We love new experiences. We love our faith that boldly declares that death is not the end.

And perhaps our doubts and loves will till the soil of our broken world so that new life may one day emerge from the ashes of conflict.

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.

Vacation Bible School isn’t as intense as a week at camp. The children are only at the church for about 2 1/2 hours each day. But the process is exhausting for the adults and teens who provide leadership. There is the need to remain vigilant while the children are in the building. Program needs to constantly be adapted to the numbers and behavior of the children. We are very fortunate to have a good team of experienced adults who are ready and able to deal with whatever comes our way.

For those of us who work at the church, the rest of the business of the church goes on. There are bulletins to prepare, meetings to attend, bible studies, small group meetings, pastoral care and administrative tasks that won’t wait just because we have a building full of children every evening. We come to the end of our days pretty tired. We’re not having trouble sleeping this week.

But just like camp there is a mid-week transition that occurs. The children become adapted to the program. They are more relaxed and familiar with the routine and the adults are better able to anticipate how they will respond once we get to know them. And we can see the end of the week. We’ve completed three days and we only have two more to go. Friday is mostly a celebration and a review, so there isn’t as much preparation for that day. Today is our last really big day.

Of course it is also the day we need to get our bulletins printed, contact our insurance agent about an annual review of values, make a memorial purchase, do some set up for the rest of the week. There is a slide show of the Vacation Bible School that needs to be prepared to be shown Friday night and again on Sunday morning. And there is work to be done in the sanctuary to prepare for worship on Sunday. Some of the changes can’t be made today because we will continue to use the sanctuary for Vacation Bible School, but our lists of things to do are fairly long at this point.

So much for the lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer.

In the church it is mostly full steam ahead as we continue to offer programs and do the planning that is necessary to be able to make the transition from one season to another. It isn’t quite fair to say that we continue everything at the same pace during the summer. We do have shorter office hours in the summer. The shorter office hours are, however, mostly a reflection of the realities of a limited budget. It costs money for us to keep our doors open and our building staffed. By decreasing the hours of office operation we free our professional staff to be out and about the community. We do decrease the amount of hours worked by support staff which, in at least some cases, increases the work load for the ministers. I’d call it a balancing act, but it is a bit more complex than that. It is the normal business of being a non profit organization that wants to invest its funds in service and outreach. We need to make decisions that maximize the impact of the gifts we receive. As they say, “It’s what we do.”

It may be a product of my age, but I spend more time these days thinking about long-term sustainability of our organization. I know that no human institution lasts for ever. I know that our faith proclaims the power of resurrection and that death is not the end. But it seems to me that it is incumbent upon us to leave a legacy to future generations just as we have received a legacy of the generosity of previous generations. It isn’t the only model of being a church. There are plenty of churches and para-church organizations that focus on the present only and measure success or failure by counting attendance. They create institutional models that are dependent on continuing growth, with mortgages to pay and interest that must be covered. Once they stop growing, they can’t meet the financial obligations they have made. At some point such behavior becomes unsustainable. We’ve observed it in many different congregations over the years. Our congregation has a different model. We have been about the same size for more than half of our 135 years as a congregation. We continue to be large enough to be effective in our ministries and small enough to be flexible and adapt to changing times. We operate as a cash business so that we can grow and shrink our ministries in response to the means and generosity of our congregation. We maintain modest reserves for emergencies, but know that the true reserves of the congregation are not in bank accounts, but rather in the lives and dedication of our members. We try to foster and nurture long-term relationships and we ask for significant commitment from our members.

Like all churches we see a fair amount of transition. People come and go. Sometimes they return to us again. We try to adapt to changing needs and circumstances. But we also have families who have been a part of our congregation for multiple generations. We have commitments that we have kept for decades. We form long-term relationships for mission and ministry. It isn’t the only way of being a church, but it is our way.

As much as I love starting new projects and programs, I am aware that it is also my responsibility to keep an eye out for the sustainability fo the things we do. When our commitments and generosity match the programs and ministries in which we engage we are capable of keeping up the pace and sustaining those ministries.

VBS moves just a tad too quickly to keep up the pace year round. But we’re pretty good at offering a high quality week each year. We even have enough energy to bring some of the lessons we learn in VBS into our regular Christian Education programming and ministries.

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 capital funds process going in our church that involves groups of people studying our building and trying to project building needs for coming years. We are well aware that our building is nearing 55 years old and that the people who were involved in the design and construction of the building did a good job of planning for the future. Part of our congregation’s ability to engage in significant mission and outreach is that we have been blessed by a very functional building that serves our congregation well. While other congregations are faced with building needs consuming huge amounts of congregational resources, we have been well served by the generosity and foresight of those who came before us.

Now it is our turn to make the investments required to position the congregation to meet the needs of a new generation. The challenge of this is that we don’t really know what the congregation will need in the future. The congregation has served his community for 135 years without having an air-conditioned building. But these days we are not the preferred summer concert venue because of the lack of air conditioning. Our own people sometimes are uncomfortable because of a building that can hold significant heat in summer months. Virtually all new public buildings in our community have air conditioning designed into them from the beginning. Can we imagine that we will not have some system for cooling our building 25 or 50 years from now? Even if we could answer that question, we wouldn’t know whether members of the congregation decades from now will want to remain in the same building or have new construction of different kinds of spaces.

Currently we have study groups examining our roof and ways to make the building more fire resistant, our heating and cooling systems and ways to make the building more energy efficient, and a visioning group thinking about possible future uses of the building and how we make changes to provide for future needs.

Most of us think that our sanctuary will continue to be a place of worship, music and community gathering. We find its appearance to be timeless and don’t envision major changes. But our choir loft at the rear of the sanctuary is not accessible to those who have trouble negotiating the stairs. Installing an elevator is not only costly in this generation, but saddles the congregation with very expensive on-going maintenance. It may be simpler and more efficient to bring the choir and bell choir down to the main level of the congregation. That wouldn’t require major changes in the room, but we might want to think of seating. Doing that means trying to envision the worship style of future congregations - a challenge in itself.

This summer we’ve had some events that have taxed our building and perhaps show us a little bit about how the future might look. In early June we hosted the South Dakota Conference of the United Church of Christ. For parts of three days we had over 100 guests for workshops, worship and meals. Our kitchen, fellowship hall and sanctuary served the group well. We had room for the Board of Directors to meet comfortably. We had classrooms for small group meetings and spaces for informal gatherings. But we ended up moving all of the furniture out of our parlor. While the formal meeting room works well for some of our groups, it is not really a multi-purpose room. We made it work, but it got us to thinking about how a few changes in furniture might enable the room to serve our existing needs and also be a more comfortable place for some new uses. We also put a lot of energy into setting up and taking down projection systems and ways to share video. We might want to think of more convenient ways to provide for audio-visual presentations in some of our rooms.

The big strain on the building, however, was our bathrooms. We simply did not have enough for the constant use of the conference. Lines formed. Paper supplies dwindled. We had no appropriate rooms for families who needed to provide assistance for loved ones. Although our main bathrooms are ADA accessible and we have additional changing stations for babies, we simply didn’t have enough bathrooms for the event.

Throughout the summer we have been hosting visiting youth groups. The building provides a place for them to put down sleeping bags and spend the night. We have adequate kitchen space for them to share meals and both indoor and outdoor recreations spaces. But, again, we are short of bathroom space and have no showers.

Our building was designed for children’s’ programs. From the beginning our congregation wanted to have classrooms and other spaces for children. This week it is delightful to have our halls crowded and our spaces filled with children. Our program, with over 50 children and 20 adult and teen leaders fits in our building well. There are some moments of crowding in the hallways during transition times, but we have space for our programs. However, like the conference annual meeting, we did a lot of moving furniture to make things work. While moving furniture will always be a part of congregational life, we are aware that we need to think in terms of more flexibility when purchasing furniture for the future. Lightweight tables, stackable chairs, and more attention to floor coverings will make our spaces more flexible. The building was designed for graded education, with different sized furniture in different rooms, assuming that children would be divided into age groups. Some of our programs now involve mixing age groups and we find that not all of our adult furniture serves children well. For example, folding metal chairs pose a danger of pinching fingers and falling, whereas stack chairs allow little ones to kneel on the chair without risk.

We can’t predict the future, and we will never have a perfect building. But we are working diligently to think and anticipate as did those who came before us so that our investments will have lasting value as did theirs.

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 can remember some things about Vacation Bible School when I was younger. We usually had a half-day program, gathering in the morning and finishing at lunch time. Our classes generally used the same rooms that we used during the regular Sunday School year. The program ran for a week, usually relatively soon after school got out for the summer. the leaders and teachers were mostly parents of the children in the program.

What I don’t remember is specific content or themes for any of the years. I don’t have any recollection of the stories we learned or lessons that were taught. I guess they were general lessons that were not that different from other things that we learned in Sunday school.

Things are different in our church these days. Vacation Bible School has an average attendance that is well over double the average attendance in our weekly Christian Education classes. Our church runs an evening program because that is what works best for our volunteers. Many of our leaders work during the day and then give us evenings for a week to staff the program. My participation with the program is primarily with the songs, opening exercises and other things that focus on the themes and Biblical stories. Most years I take quite a few photographs and even record a little video that can be used in a presentation that documents the week.

Another difference that I remember well. When we had Vacation Bible School we prepared a presentation that was incorporated into the worship service on Sunday. Participating in the church service on Sunday was an important part of our experience. It is unlikely that we will even have10% of the children who participate in our program come to church on Sunday. Certainly we won’t get a third of them. We have learned that preparing a program for Sunday doesn’t really work. You simply won’t have the children to participate.

One factor is that we serve quite a few children in our program who do not participate in the regular programs of our church. There are always a few children whose parents sign them up for as many Vacation Bible School programs as practical and who go from church to church all summer long. Most of the children have some connection to our church. Our own children are good about inviting friends and families who are not particularly active in the church, but who have visited on occasion often bring their children. Some of our guests might become more involved in the church after their VBS experiences. It can be an entry point for people to get more involved in the church.

Part of the story seems to be that after a week of bringing their children to the church daily, families make plans to do other things on Sundays. The are plenty of people who consider themselves to be regular members of the church whose attendance patterns vary.

The comparison between my own experience as a child and the programs we offer today is not really relevant to very much. The congregations are different sizes, in different settings and a lot can change over the decades. As a congregation we have to adapt to the times and serve the people in our community today. Attempts to go back or to recover the experiences of the past rarely meet with success. The world is different and we are called to engage in ministry in this time and place, not another.

I do, however, use my own personal experience as a kind of gauge - a way of reflecting on how things have changed. One of those changes is that the church - and perhaps society in general - is moving away from program-based ministries. Our church has long been a program church. It is the right size to focus its energies on offering programs. We have a long tradition of opportunities to become involved in programs for specific ages of people. Most of the programs have an expectation of regular attendance at meetings or gatherings.

As the church moves away from programs, participation is focused more on events. People participate in a single event and then go on to the next one without the expectation that they will have a formal pattern to their participation.

Vacation Bible School is an interesting phenomenon to observe because it operates as a program for some participants and as an event for others. Some of the children will attend all five nights. Others will attend some, but nto all. Our experience has led us to expect decreased participation on Friday evening. There are plenty of children who will attend four of the five sessions. We will have new children each evening who have not attended previous evenings. Each session is an event for some of the participants. As a result we have to plan ouf program so that it can also function as an event. We want a child who attends a single evening to have a meaningful and positive experience without designing the program so that it is repetitious or boring for those who attend multiple evenings. It is a real challenge for those who plan and lead the sessions.

I am a product of the days when churches offered programs and it is a challenge for me to move into thinking in terms of stand alone events. I’ve been quick to criticize churches that seem to just flit from event to event without developing commitments to on-going ministries. We’ve seen the effects of one-day programs for hungry and homeless people. The programs consume huge amounts of donor resources and offer a single day, but draw down donations to the providers who feed people 365 days a year and offer on-going support. Not every ministry can be viewed as an event only.

I suppose that part of the educational mission of Vacation Bible School is to teach those of us who are leaders in the church new ways to engage in our ministries and new ways to look at the church. As the world changes and the church changes with it. we are challenged to develop ministries that are relevant and engaging.

The week will be an adventure and I pray that I will keep open to learning as the days pass.

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 are no written histories of the years prior to people of European descent coming to the Black Hills, but the oral histories report that the hills have long been abundant in a wide variety of game. Deer were the most numerous of species, with both black-tailed (mule) and white-tailed deer in abundance. In 1875, and expedition of 400 soldiers led by Lt. Col. Richard Irving Dodge came into the hills and made a somewhat systematic study of the deer, noting the differences in size and the locations in which they found deer. The expedition killed approximately 1,000 deer in their exploration. He noted in his report the from the time they entered the hills “scarcely a day passed without our seeing some of these beautiful animals.”

It only took about five years for the hunting pressure from market hunters to severely diminish the deer herds. Wagon loads of deer meet were taken to Deadwood to feed the miners. Similar hunting pressure was decreasing elk herds at the same time. In December of 1878 the Black Hills Weekly reported “if market hunters keep killing off the game at the current rate, they will be looking for different employment the next year.” However, it wasn’t until 1911 that there was any regulation of hunting in the hills and there were no set hunting seasons prior to the 1920’s.

These days the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks works hard to manage the Black Hills deer herds with an eye towards the health of the herd and the pressures caused by human encroachment into the habitat.

Where we live we can echo Lt. Col. Dodge’s experience: “Scarcely a day goes by without us seeing one of these beautiful animals.” Our neighbors have an area in their back yard where they do not mow and it has become a good place for the does to have their fawns. This year we have three fawns who are spending their time in our immediate neighborhood and now that they are big enough to spend a little time out on their own and tall enough for us to spot when they are running in the tall grass, we have taken to keeping an eye on them. We think we have a set of twins plus one more fawn. The does are a bit harder to identify, but I think I know which one is the mother of the twins at least.

At this stage of their lives, the biggest risk for the fawns is crossing Sheridan Lake Road, but for the most part they stay on our side of that road, finding plenty of food in our yard and the yards of the neighbors. We mow our grass, and the soft green shoots are attractive to the deer.

The fawns are simply fun to watch. They are much more flighty and easily startled than the older deer. We have to be quiet and move slowly if we want to observe them. But when we’re inside the house, they’ll come remarkably close to the house and give us a good view out of the windows.

Who knows why we are so attracted to young animals? It does work towards their preservation. From ancient days, humans have noticed and appreciated young animals, identified their mothers and hunters have, for the most part, respected and sheltered the young animals. Since there is no hunting in our neighborhood and this isn’t the hunting season at any rate, the animals are safe during their early months while they grow out of their spots and learn the ways of life in this semi-urban interface of animals and people.

I haven’t quite figured out whether or not deer ever gain any street smarts. They seem to be particularly bad at looking for approaching cars, judging speed, and choosing when to cross the road. Traffic is supposed to be limited to 45 mph on Sheridan Lake Road behind our house, but there are plenty of cars that go by at least 10 mph faster than that. Despite many generations of deer growing up since the road has been busy, they don’t seem to have developed any particular skills at safe crossing. Those of us who live here and drive the roads regularly have gained some skills at knowing where the deer are likely to cross and keeping our eyes out for the animals, but anyone who lives and drives in the hills will occasionally have a deer strike accident. This time of the year, of course, the hills are filled with tourists who are less familiar with the roads, have their attention directed in other places, and are less used to looking out for the deer.

So we hold our breath when the fawns cross the busy street.

We do, however, count ourselves among the luckiest of people to be able to live in a place where we have deer in our back yard and we get to watch the fawns grow up each year. We make a bit of a sport of learning to spot them in the tall grass and some evenings spend quite a bit of time with what must look to the neighbors as idle staring into the woods. It is a different type of looking than was required of those who lived near these hills in the early days. We are not dependent upon the deer for our food. We don’t have to learn their ways so that we will be able to hunt to survive. Our winters aren’t dependent upon our being able to select the fattest of animals. We just watch the little ones grow up until they lose their spots and their colors and size make them pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of the herd. We can usually identify the yearlings, but beyond that all of the deer pretty much look the same to us.

We enjoy our human neighbors, but feel blessed to live in a neighborhood where some of our neighbors are four-legged, fast, and fascinating to watch.

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

During the years that we lived in North Dakota I was struck by the fact that locals were quick to comment about any weather that it was unusual. If it got cold, they’d say, “It isn’t usually this cold around here.” If it was dry, they’d say, “It isn’t usually this dry.” Every weather, no matter what occurred, was met with a comment that it wasn’t typical for that part of the world.

There was an element of truth to the way North Dakotans spoke of the weather. In the seven years we lived there, there were plenty of temperature records - both heat and cold - for particular days. There were a couple of precipitation records for the day as well. Weather patterns are constantly in motion and the weather doesn’t really repeat what has occurred before.

These days enough of my life has been lived in the western Dakotas that I probably sound like a local to those who aren’t from around here. But you have to say that the weather really is unusual this year. It started with a real record-setting blizzard on October 4 last year.We had enjoyed several days of temperatures in the 70’s and 80’s in late September and October looked to start a bit warm as well. Then we got dumped on. Some places got as much as three feet of wet spring-like snow. The previous October snowfall record was something like 10 inches. This blizzard left us digging out for most of a week. Out on the prairies, it took several weeks just to count the livestock losses.

It wasn’t that we weren’t warned. The forecasts, especially those in the last day or so before the blizzard, were pretty accurate. I’m pretty good about being prepared, but we lingered at the office long enough that we had trouble getting home that day. Not that there was any rush. By the time we got home the electricity had been out for several hours and we didn’t get our power restored for several days. No worries. We had plenty of food and were warm and safe. I didn’t bother to put the chains on the pickup. We had no place to go and the county placed a travel ban on all roads until the snowplows could get out and clear paths.

The weather continued to be pretty severe all winter long, with lots of snow and several big storms rushing through the area. Spring came late with lots of cooler weather and plenty of rain.

It isn’t uncommon for us to have a period when we get thundershowers most days and some of them dump big amounts of water. But that is the kind of weather that we usually have in June. As we watched the storm clouds rush in and prepared for another drencher yesterday I couldn’t help but think that the hills look and feel like June instead of the middle of July. We know things will dry out one of these days, but for now the weather is a bit unusual. The forecast is calling for overnight lows in the 40’s with highs in the 70’s for the next couple of days.

Normally I’d say mid-July is a safe month to plan an outdoor wedding in the hills. There are some beautiful places to have weddings around here and the weather is generally warm and dry in July. I always advise couples to have an indoor plan B just in case of rain, but personally I worry about things getting too hot and the minister and guests getting sunburned with outdoor weddings in the hills in July.

Yesterday’s wedding required moving from plan B through plans C, D, E, F, and G, I think. The storms usually track from west to east in the hills, so we watched as the sky was clear to the west and the storm clouds rolled up to the north. An hour before the scheduled time of the ceremony the chairs were all set up and the band was ready to play under a sun shade. Then it became clear that that storm off to the north was heading directly toward us. People scrambled to put tarps over the band equipment and to put things inside. When the rain and wind started, there were folks standing at the corners of the shade structures to keep them from blowing. 15 minutes later we were all inside the large shop building listening to the sound of small hail and watching the wind whip tents and tarps and shade shelters all around the place. A garbage can took a trip off to the south pasture and the rain was making tiny streams and puddles everywhere.

Then the storm blew over. Towels came out and the chairs were dried. Hay was spread over the muddiest spots. There was a break in the storm and we started the ceremony, thinking we could get it done before the next rain storm hit. The music started, the wedding party processed, and I read the call to worship and the invocation. By then we were getting wet once again. I checked with the couple and we went “fast-forward” through the vows and rings and declaration of marriage in the rain before everyone rushed into the shop for more towels. This time we were drying off faces and wiping glasses before having the scripture, charge to the couple and song inside.

Then the storm blew over and the sun came out. By the time dinner was served, we were all outside again, the band was setting up their equipment and the evening proceeded under clear skies. I had to head home early to get ready for this morning,but I suspect that the rise of the super moon was absolutely gorgeous and the couple was glad they had chosen such a beautiful location for their marriage. They are young and filled with a sense of adventure and I don’t think the rain was that big of a problem for them or for their guests.

I hope I can retain some of that sense of adventure about the weather. After all we can’t control - or even completely predict - the weather. And we are likely to be caught by surprise once again. I’ve discovered that I’m pretty much waterproof. Dry me off and I’m ready to go again.

May we never lose our sense of delight at the surprises.

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.

Well, sports fans, it has all come down to the championship game. Brazil and the Netherlands will play in the consolation round today, but the championship game, between Germany and Argentina will take place tomorrow. That game will crown the winner of the 2014 World Cup.

The stadium in Brazil will be filled to capacity. They have already arrested several people in a huge ticket scam. Officials know that there are more tickets out there than there are seats in the stadium. They hope that they can seat the legitimate ticket holders and provide some way for the others to see the match on large screen televisions. The big screens are the way most of the people in the home countries will be watching. There will be plenty of others watching around the world.

Had one of last week’s game been different, this weekends contests would have been between neighbors. Germany and the Netherlands share a common border as do Argentina and Brazil. The way it turned out, it is difficult for the loyal fans of Brazil to know which team to back. On the one hand they’re pretty mad at Germany. The 7-1 drubbing of Brazil last Tuesday was humiliating. How could you cheer for Germany to win? On the other hand the rivalry between Argentina and Brazil is long standing and there are plenty of folks in Brazil who can’t imagine cheering for Argentina under any circumstances.

With all of the hype, I can’t avoid thinking that if I were able to watch the match in any location, with any company, what would I choose? Of course there is the obvious: in the stadium in Brazil surrounded by family and friends - perhaps some of my Costa Rican friends. Another place would be in the home of a friend or family member. We’re not too big on television in this family. My computer monitor is larger than our TV. It might be fun to watch the match on a bigger screen. The big screens in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica would be a great setting. The crowd will definitely have a party atmosphere. Good food and good times will abound on the streets of Costa Rica. Of course the rainy season has arrived in Costa Rica and heavy rains with the possibility of flash flooding might put a damper on outdoor celebrations - perhaps an indoor location would be better.

Actually, however, I think that the most interesting place to watch the match might be the Vatican. I know that the Vatican is not known for big screen televisions and raucous crowds. I think they sip a little wine there, but they’re not known for their beer. Still, I think that there must be something going on. If you are a Vatican watcher you already know that Pope Francis hasn’t moved into the usual papal palace. He is still using his small room at the hotel reserved for Cardinals when they visit the Vatican. He has, however, used the Antechamber of the Papal Household for general audiences to greet the people of the church and of the world.

Now think about it for a minute:

All General Audiences with the Pope have been cancelled during the month of July. Weekly audiences resume in August. Hmm . . .

Through an extremely rare set of circumstances, there are two living popes at the Vatican. One is from Germany. One is from Argentina. Hmm . . .

Although the view of the Papal Household with the giant columns and the huge courtyard is familiar around the world, very few people have any idea what it looks like inside the building. It’s a really big building and it must have plenty of rooms. Did you ever wonder if somewhere in the midst of all of that history and all of that papal paraphernalia, in a basement, perhaps behind the place where they store all of the miters and other fancy hats . . . can’t you imagine a small sports bar with comfortable chairs and several televisions? Hmm . . .

What could be better than a couple of popes each with a frosty mug in hand discussing the details of soccer in Latin? Perhaps in a bit to outdo each other with their humility, Pope Benedict would actually pray for an Argentinian Victory while Pope Francis prays for Germany.

Since I know that Pope Francis already owns an official Costa Rica football jersey, I don’t want to imagine him wearing the colors of another nation. I guess I can imagine him wearing his white robes with a stole with light blue and white vertical stripes like Argentina’s uniforms. Pope Benedict, of course, would have a stole with black and red horizontal stripes in the fashion of Germany’s away uniforms. In keeping with his normal style, Pope Benedict would be calm, not showing his emotions, discussing each play and call of the referees with the rational rhetoric for which he has been famous. You can bet he’d have an impeccable command of the rules and be, of course, infallible in his calls. Pope Frances, on the other hand, might be more likely to show his emotions, giving Pope Benedict a huge bear hug as part of his victory dance each time Argentina scores.

Yes, I suppose it is a terribly irreverent flight of imagination and I suppose that tree are some people of good faith who might be offended by such a flight of fancy.

But then, I’m not exactly a typical sports fan, either. It’s just an image that came to my mind that I can’t seem to get out of my head.

I know that there are many in the world who take both their sports and religion very seriously. I want to remind them that in the end, it’s only a game. God loves the winners and the losers. Life goes on. It is for entertainment and fun first of all.

But then I also think that all of the silliness of religious rivalry and the claims of various churches for some kind of exclusive claim on God’s attention must also be amusing to God. I’m pretty sure God laughs at our antics and wonders why we take so many things so seriously.

One thing for sure: if the two Popes do watch the match together, God will be right there with them. And God loves both teams equally.

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 readers of this blog already know, I’m not much for watching movies. So it is unlikely that I will be watching Dawn of the Planet of the Apes anytime soon. After all I haven’t gotten around to watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes yet. I did watch the 1968 movie, Planet of the Apes at some point long after it was released in theaters. I think someone owned or rented a VCR tape of the movie and I gave it a watch. Perhaps I saw it on television. I don’t really remember, except that I was pretty much not impressed with the fake costumes and the money spent acting out what seemed to me to be an implausible storyline. Seeing ads for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes seems to me like sone of those things the just keeps happening. After eight films, two television series, various comic books and at least one video game, the idea seems to be completely exhausted. But somehow it keeps coming back.

I know it is a poor analogy, but I have a similar reaction to the photographs of smoke rising from Gaza after more attacks from Israel. We’ve see this before. We already know the story line. Militants in Palestine, usually in Gaza, fire rockets at Israel. They are poorly funded and their military technology is pretty primitive and the rockets usually fail to come even close to their targets. Sometimes a few people in Israel are wounded. Tragically sometimes one of the rockets finds a few victims and people are killed. Israel responds with sophisticated and deadly accurate weapons and the death toll rises. More than 100 Palestinians have died in the most recent round of attacks. In virtually all of these attacks and counter attacks the victims are predominantly civilians. The militants say they are striking out against Israel’s military and its abuses of power, but they rarely inflict any damage on the military. The Israeli Defense Forces say they are responding against the militants, but most of the casualties are simply regular people trying to go about their regular lives.

After the death toll rises to a certain point the militants run out of rockets and then after a while more Israel will stop lobbing weapons at targets in the Palestinian areas and a type of calm returns.

Until the next time someone gets a rocket and tries to aim it at Israel.

Like the Planet of the Apes movies, it seems to be a bad idea from almost every point of view, but it keeps coming back again and again. In the case of the Planet of the Apes movie, it is making enough money for the investors and producers to make them want to do it again. In the case of the violence in Israel and Palestine the weapons manufacturers are making some money, but not enough to begin to justify the human suffering.

In this round of violence, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes this week. Militants in Gaza continue to fire on Israel causing damage and injuries. Israeli leaders say that “dozens of terrorists” are among the dead. It is impossible to know for sure since the militants continue to fire rockets at Israel - presumably they aren’t all dead. And with over 100 killed and nearly 700 injured in Gaza it is safe to say that most of the victims were not the people who are attacking Israel.

I know the gist of the arguments and a bit of the history. In the 1967 war Israel captured the costal territory now known as the Gaza strip. They kept troops in the area and exercised strict control over the people until 2005, when they pulled their troops out of the area. Israel continues to control most of Gaza’s borders, water and airspace. Except for the southern border, controlled by Egypt, Israel has the territory surrounded and is able to restrict the movement of people and goods in and out of the region. 1.7 million Palestinians live there under severe socio-economic hardship. Israel says the restrictions are necessary to control attacks by militants, but the attacks continue to flare from time to time.

Hamas governed Gaza from 2007 until the unity government was formed with Palestinians in the West Bank this June. Israel has never recognized the legitimacy of Hamas leadership, claiming that Hamas is dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel. Hamas has certainly been responsible for attacks against Israel. Hamas has claimed responsibility for some of the rockets in the recent round of conflict.Hamas claims it is defending the people of Gaza. Israel claims it is defending the citizens of their country.

No one is perfectly defended. No one is completely safe. No one wins in these conflicts. There are only losers.

And neither side seems to be able to think of anything new or different to try. It is like a bad movie playing over and over and over again.

In 2008, Operation Cast Lead was launched in response to rocket fire. An estimated 1300 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians. 13 Israelis also died, including 4 who were killed by “friendly” fire from their own side.

In 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense resulted in 167 Palestinian deaths. Six Israelis were killed.

What appears to be different this time is that Egypt, which was a key player in brokering cease fires in the past seems to be less inclined to serve as mediator in the present conflict. It has opened the Rafah border crossing for Palestinian casualties, but not for those who simply want to flee from the area to escape attack. The civilians behind the fences walls and gates seem to be contained with nowhere to go.

But this isn’t a movie. It is real life.

Unlike Planet of the Apes, I can’t simply ignore it and wait for the fervor to die down and the storyline to be forgotten.

I’m not inclined to go to a theatre to watch humans and apes fire weapons at each other in order to escape from the real world. There are enough lethal weapons being used in real life. I don’t need to spend money to watch more violence on the silver screen.

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 a very clear memory of being ten years old. We were in a large canvas wall tent that our family owned, pitched at chippy park on the Boulder River. It was very dark, except for the occasional flash of lightning. Although I might have been sleeping, I was awake, and for a minute I was a bit afraid of the coming storm. My father’s calm voice was reassuring: “Lie on your back so you can see the flash when it lights up the tent. As soon as you see the flash, start counting - one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five one thousand, six one thousand. There hear the thunder? It took six seconds for the sound to reach us. Sound travels slower than light. It takes about 5 seconds for sound to travel a mile, so that lightning strike was more than a mile away.”

“The lightning will come closer, but not so close that there is no gap between the flash and the thunder because the lightning is striking near the top of the ridge and we’re about a half a mile from the top of the ridge. It won’t strike down here. It’s looking for the shortest path to the ground.

“Then after the time gets smaller, it will start getting longer as the storm blows across the ridges.”

I lay there, warm in my sleeping bag, listening and counting. After the storm blew overhead, I had trouble counting because the thunder would echo through the high ridges and valleys and I could still hear the echoes from one thunder as another started to boom. The next thing I knew, it was morning and dad was frying bacon over the fire outside the tent and I was eager to get my shoes on to go outside.

My father didn’t grow up in the mountains. He was born on the open prairies where violent summer storms spawned tornadoes. One time a twister moved their barn, the biggest building on their place, a foot off of its foundation. An unlucky chicken had gotten its leg stuck under the building as it settled. It had taken months to get the barn squared back up and make the repairs necessary for a stable building.

But he never conveyed any fear of the weather to me. Weather was, for him, always a rational exercise - a puzzle to be solved. And he knew a lot about the weather. When I was older he showed me the maps with the isobar lines, showing where the pressure was high and low that could be used to predict wind direction and, with a little less accuracy, the speed of wind we might expect.

The memories came to me as clear as if it were yesterday this morning as a little thunderstorm passed well to the south of our place. I can judge the rough distance of the storms from the amount of rolling echoes in the hills. Even when I can’t see the flashes, I can tell that the storm is quite distant by the sound. The echoing thunder brings back such pleasant memories that it is fun to simply lie on my back in bed and listen. There’s no point in trying to count and judge distances. Our house isn’t a tent, and the flashes aren’t always visible when the storm is to the south and our bedroom is on the north side of the house. And the storms in the hills tend to have lightning strikes closer together so that it is hard to tell which boom goes with which flash. But I have little to fear from a summer thunderstorm. The real dangers of the thunderstorms around here are flash flooding, and wind damage, with occasional occurrences of lightning striking buildings. In dry weather lightning is responsible for fires, which can also pose a threat. Our home is not in a low place prone to flooding and since last October’s blizzard, we’ve remove the trees that might fall on the house itself. I suppose the neighbor’s trees could fall on the garage, but we are safe in our bedroom.

You get a different picture of the weather watching the weather channel on TV. I don’t ever do so, but they used to put the weather channel on at the care center where my father-in-law lived. It seemed to me that the station was nonstop coverage of weather disasters. They had to have crews disbursed all over the world to find storms that destroyed buildings and created havoc. Thinking about it now, I understand that they played a lot of recorded footage - not all of those storms were occurring at the same time as they were being shown on the television. The channel could be upsetting to some of the residents of the care center, because they didn’t always understand that the storms pictured were in other locations. We haven’t had a hurricane around here for a long time. We finally asked the staff at the center to select a different channel for the television. If I had lived there, I would have figured out where they kept the remote to simply turn off the set. Short of that, I could always unplug it. But then I think differently from the people who staff the home. I probably think differently from the people who live there. I’d probably be annoying to the other residents. When my time comes, I may be a challenge to the staff.

I find watching the weather and listening to the world to be far more entertaining than the television. I prefer open windows to air conditioning. I like to go outside in the rain and get wet. I am a big fan of taking off my hat and facing into the wind just to let it blow through my hair even though I don’t have all that much hair these days. I think of myself as being easily entertained.

But I can’t fathom what is interesting about watching the weather in some other place on a television set. Why do that when you could look out the window at the weather where you are?

I wonder if they’d let me pitch a tent in the yard so I could lie on my back and listen to the storm.

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.

Growing up alongside the river meant that we waged a rather constant, low key battle with mosquitoes. The buzzing little insects can be a real annoyance and different people respond to the pokes of the blood-eating pests in different ways. Most feel a bit of the itch. Some itch more than others. Some swell at the site of the bite or at least have some red skin in the area of the bite.

We had three resources in our battle with the bugs when I was a kid. One was that we did a lot of cooking around a campfire. A few green willow branches with all of the leaves will make a lot of smoke and the smoke keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Of course it probably isn’t good for people to breath that much smoke, but at the time the smoke seemed like a good alternative. Our second defense was the river. The cold river water soothed the itching of the bites and the mosquitoes didn’t follow us into the river. You could find a bit of comfort from the mosquitoes by getting into the river. Of course the water was too cold to remain there for long. Our third mosquito-battling resource was the fact that our father was an agricultural pilot. A few low passes with his airplane would decrease the number of mosquitoes for a while. However, I must admit that it never seemed that he achieved a total victory. We’d notice that there were fewer mosquitoes for a few weeks, but I don’t think we ever eliminated them entirely.

We got good a repairing screen doors and we had good screens on our windows. As a last resort we could move indoors for protection from the bugs. One of the luxuries of the new home that our mother built after she was widowed was a screened porch that was large enough for several people to gather and enjoy the view of the river and the evening without the bother of the bugs. Indoors, however, was just where we didn’t want to be in the summer when I was a kid.

Who knows how accurate my memory is, but I think that for the most part we simply endured the bites of the mosquitoes and went on with our lives. I used to say that mosquitoes don’t bother me. I don’t seem to have much of a reaction to the bites and usually I can forget about them within a few minutes. I remember thinking that mosquito repellant was for city slickers and sissies.

Of course I’ve never had dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, filariasis or west nile. The little bugs can carry some really nasty diseases.

Mosquitoes have been the topic of several texts exchanged with my sister in the past few weeks. It appears that the home place is raising a bumper crop of the little insects this year. It has been wet, so there have been plenty of puddles and places for the insects to lay their eggs. The grass has also grown quickly and long grass is another place that harbors the moisture necessary for the reproduction of mosquitoes. We have better awareness of the negative effects of chemical insecticides and so have fewer tools to combat the bugs. It is probable that some of the chemicals we used to combat mosquitoes years ago were quite a bit more dangerous than we knew.

We are planning a brief family gathering at the home place in August and my sister is concerned about the effect of the mosquitoes on the children. She wonders what we should do about them. I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful to her. Smoky fires, frequent trips to the river and screens didn’t offer the solution that she was seeking. She’s a resourceful person and will probably come up with better ideas than she could get from consulting her brother.

Most of the places I travel these days, even campgrounds in relatively rural areas have been fogged or sprayed with chemicals to control the bugs.

But there are plenty of places where there are plenty of bugs and I’m not one to let the bugs stop me from enjoying the beauty of this world.

Many of the journals of travelers who have spent time in the arctic mention the difficulties of facing hoards of mosquitoes and flies. Since mosquitoes are a small mode-like fly, some of the journals don’t make a distinction between the tiny ones and their larger cousins. Any insect that lives off of mammalian blood can be a real annoyance if they are found in sufficient numbers. In the arctic one line of defense is more clothing. Pants that can be tied at the ankles and tucked into boots, long-sleeved shirts, and netting to cover the face can give a level of protection. No exposed skin gives less opportunity for the bites, but it doesn’t reduce the attraction and it doesn’t reduce the ability of the insects to drive one nearly crazy with their sound. Even one mosquito in a tent can keep me sleepless for hours.

I am all in favor of doing what we can to decrease the spread of disease. I understand why combatting mosquitoes is serious business. But I hope that I never have to succumb to a life that is so fearful of an insect bite that I fail to go outdoors or to travel to remote locations to look at the world from a fresh perspective. I’m willing to endure a few bites for the solitude and closeness to God that the world’s wild places offer. I’ll take the precautions that are available to me. I even use repellant these days, hoping that I haven’t become too much of a wuss.

I had a conversation with a person who lies in a large urban area once about my penchant for seeking places where there are very few people. My friend asked me specifically about getting lonely when I am hiking or canoeing by myself. I was a bit taken back by the question. I don’t remember ever feeling lonely out in the country.

Crawl into your tent and get settled for a night’s rest. Put out the light and get your body comfortable. And just at that minute where you begin to drift off to sleep a high-pitched buzz will remind you that you’re not alone.

Loneliness isn’t the problem.

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.

Susan and I are blessed to have a lovely home. We have a luxury of space in our home that once housed us and our children and even then had an extra bedroom for guests. We have spread out a bit, using some of our extra room for an expanded library, space for our projects and such. It is the second home that we have owned. Before that, we have a wonderful home provided by the church we worked for. And before those days, we lived in a series of different apartments, each adequate for our needs at the time.

I am well aware that there are people who are homeless and many others who live in substandard housing. There are homes that pose health risks to those who have to take shelter in their mold-infused walls. There are places where people live that are firetraps and inadequacy equipped with the basics for a comfortable life.

From almost any point of view we are very fortunate to have such a nice home.

Even with such a very good, safe and secure place to live, I am completely stricken with wanderlust. I love to travel. I don’t mind sleeping in strange beds in strange places. I’ve been known to unroll my sleeping bag under a tarp or tent. I’ve even slept in a pickup truck or car on occasion. the joy of seeing new places and discovering different points of view is far more wonderful than the temporary discomfort of having my accommodations differ from the usual.

The past few days, I’ve been on an epic canoe trip that started at Reindeer Lake on the border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, hundreds of miles north and a bit west of Lake Winnipeg. Through a series of travels upstream, portages to and from lakes and finally crossing a divide and heading down stream again with more portages, the initial goal was North Nueltin Lake across the Nunavut border. From there we’re heading down the Thlewiaza, sometimes just called Big River all the way to Hudson Bay where we’ll head south, hugging the shoreline all the way to Churchill.

These days Nueltin Lake is a destination for those who have enough money to hire very expensive fishing vacations in remote fly-in lodges. There is trophy fishing for lake trout, grayling and northern pike. These days there are accurate maps of the region and gps devices to assure that one always knows one’s location. But I’m not making the trip these days. I’ve been traveling in 1948, when that country was largely unknown to outsiders and the path of the Thiewiaza was unknown even to the indigenous people who lived to the west of its flow or those who clustered at its mouth on the big bay.

My companions for the trip have been Farley Mowat and Charles Schweder, principal characters in Mowat’s book “No Man’s River.”

I do a lot of my traveling that way.

So far I have been on several major expeditions that take me to the most northern and often unexplored places north of the tree line in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. I’ve run rapids in canoes, slogged over long, muddy portages and spent days slowly making my way across the tundra and muskeg. I’ve winter traveled with dogs, wondering whether or not the food would hold out and how much longer we could keep going in the face of such violent storms. I’ve waited out the weather in snow shelters, cabins, tents and a few times in simple depressions at the base of trees - all without getting cold and in the comfort and luxury of my bed.

In fact I do quite a bit of my traveling while sitting in my Lazy-boy recliner in my library in the basement of our home.

Every once in a while I take one of the world’s great train rides. I’ve explored Australia on the Ghan, taken a couple of epic journeys on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and taken the Orient Express from Paris through Vienna to Istanbul. The latter trip is significantly more adventurous than the modern luxury ride that ends at Budapest. I’ve even taken one trip on the Simplon-Orient Express (so named because of the Simpton tunnel) through Milan and Venice before heading to Belgrade and Sofia on the way to Istanbul.

The world of books has enabled me to travel more frequently and to more distant places than are accessible through my sometimes limited budget of time and money. It isn’t that I don’t like to travel in real life. I do. And we have been very fortunate to have been able to make a trip through Europe and an additional trip to England. We’ve traveled in Australia and I’ve been to Costa Rica several times. And we’ve made some wonderful road trips across the United States and Canada. The desire to travel is a constant companion and I spend quite a bit of time pouring over maps and thinking of routes.

One day Susan and I plan to drive to Alaska. By the time we actually get on the road, I will have made several pilot expeditions checking out the route and planning the stops by reading The Milepost. I get a new copy of that venerable guide every couple of years or so and we are still several years before affording that particular trip.

And it is unlikely that I will ever take a canoe trip down the Yukon from Lake Laberge to Dawson City. I’m unlikely to figure out how to photograph grizzly bears, moose and wolves from a raft on the Tatshenshini River. Odds are against one of my hand-made canoes heading down the Thelon river or any of the pristine and sometimes unnamed rivers east of Great Slave Lake hundreds of miles from any road or community. that didn’t stop me from reading Alex Hall’s “Discovering Eden: A Lifetime of Paddling Arctic Rivers.”

There are still a lot of epic journeys ahead in my life. Some of them will involve being away from home for many weeks. Others will consume less fuel.

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.

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m not much of a sports fan. The games I like best are the ones played by people that I know. I find high school football to be the most interesting level of play in that particular game. I pay attention to the Super Bowl primarily because it is what the people I serve are doing on that particular day. It isn’t at all uncommon for me to watch only the closing minutes of a big game or to check out the scores in the Internet after the game is over so that I will at least be able to engage in conversation with others. Our home isn’t the site of Super Bowl parties or other sport events.

I have a group of friends with whom I meet weekly for bible study. We have been meeting together for many years and over the years we have learned a lot about each other and provided important support fro one another as we journey through life’s many different experiences. But I’m not much at the regular conversations about the Minnesota Twins. Other member of the group are really big fans of the team, know the names of all of the players and watch the drama of the season. I barely know enough to look up the team on the Internet, which I have just done because I will be meeting with the group this week and i need to know at least the minimum of information. The Twins haven’t been having a good season. They are 5th in the American League Central Division with a record of 39 wins and 48 losses at this point in the season. That’s pretty close to the Chicago Cubs’ 38-48 record, which also lands them in 5th place in their division in the National League.

Of course the cubs haven’t even been to the World Series in my lifetime. The last time they won the series was 1908, when they became the first team to play in the series three consecutive times and the first to win back-to-back victories. The Twins have won the series twice in my life, but their most recent victory was a long time ago. There are young adults who are old enough to legally drink in bars who haven’t seen a Twins victory in their lifetime.

I’ve paid more attention to sports in the past few weeks than I have for a long time, inspired by the amazing run of good fortune of the Costa Rica team in World Cup competition. Costa Rica went much farther than the pundits predicted, making it to the quarter finals, where they narrowly lost to the Dutch team on penalties after the Dutch made a risky and surprising decision to pull off a goalie substitution at the very end of the game. The move was either a lucky risk or coaching brilliance, depending on who you talk to. The celebrations in downtown Costa Rica were almost as grand as when Costa Rica was winning matches. Everyone in the tiny country is proud of their team and pleased with a showing that identifies them as winners on the world stage.

Paying attention to the games has given me a theory about why Soccer isn’t as popular in the United States as it is elsewhere in the world. The very thing I enjoy about the game makes it hard for it to become hostage to the really big money of the advertisers. A soccer match is 90 minutes long unless it goes into added time. Even the match that the US team lost to Belgium, which had 30 minutes of extra play was over in 2 1/2 hours. Once a soccer game gets started, it is nearly nonstop action. There are very few stoppages of play. Compare that with college basketball in the US, where there is an advertisement break for every foul called and every timeout. In football we watch an advertisement for every first down. And baseball is more about fidgeting pitchers and dawdling batters who extend the length of the game to a pace of unbearable boredom when watching on television.

All of those breaks in the play means that the games are often more about the advertisements than they are about the competition. I suspect that part of what people like about watching the matches on television is the lack of advertisement interruptions. Once you start watching the game, you have to keep watching - there are no breaks.

That non-stop action also produces an intensity of play that is exciting to watch. Because we have a sense that the competitors are giving the game their all, we get caught up in the tireless that we know they are experiencing. Compare penalty kicks in soccer to a field goal attempt in football. In football you have to endure tons of commercials before the well-rested kicker in a clean uniform trots out onto the field and puts out a few seconds of effort and then goes back to the bench as either a hero or a failure. In soccer, you hold your breath with the penalty kicker as he tries to calm himself, focus on the goal, outwit the goalie and make his kick. It is a real man-to-man competition between players who have been working hard for more than an hour and are nearing the limits of human endurance.

OK it wasn’t quite that way in the Dutch victory over Costa Rica, but I was so caught up with the Costa Rica team that I wasn’t paying much attention to the fresh goalie in his clean green uniform. My mistake.

And since I watched matches on the Internet, I don’t even know the names of the sponsors. There isn’t a web site devoted to World Cup commercials such as exists for Superbowl advertisements. There is an advertisement that was shown in the 1999 Superbowl that I still use as an illustration in lectures. After all of these years I still have to watch the ad to remember the company advertised. And I don’t know if I’ve ever done business with EDS.

I’m still no big sports fan, but watching the world cup this year has given me a deeper understanding of those to whom the games are so important.

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.

My mother comes from a family of mostly professional people. There were lawyers, court clerks and plenty of ministers in her family. In those days, however, people had to have practical skills as well as a profession. Although her father was an attorney, their family kept a cow to provide milk for the family. Her mother proved up a homestead as a way of becoming a land owner. There are plenty of family stories of ministers who were also fine gardeners and others who had many different skills.

On my father’s side of the family, preceding generations were primarily farmers. They possessed mechanical skills because it was required to do the work of the farm. They got good at working with animals, because they worked the land with teams before there were tractors that were practical for such work.

Most of what I have learned about furniture repair, however, didn’t come from my family at all. I learned it from the elders of my wife’s family. She had an uncle who had done a considerable amount of refinishing furniture and making light repairs. Her grandfather caned chairs and that skill was passed down to her father and I picked up the skill from observing both men.

I suppose that there was a time when caning chairs was a job skill and that people earned their living handcrafting the seats of chairs. These days, however, there really aren’t all that many opportunities to use the skill. Since the late 1950’s most furniture with caned seats have been made with sheets of cane that were woven by machines. The sheets are then set into a groove in the chair cut by a router. The cane is then held in place with another thicker piece of cane stock glued into the slot, holding the woven cane in place.

I learned to weave cane by hand in order to make seats for canoes. By setting up a jig, I can drill an even row of holes around a canoe seat and then cane it to make a lightweight and comfortable seat. Most places that sell cane webbing also sell plastic cane which is waterproof and stands up well to use in a canoe. Several years ago I purchased a large roll of plastic cane that will probably last the rest of my life for all of the canoes that I wish to build or restore. And, when restoring canoes I now sometimes use cane webbing that is machine woven as such was used in most canoes from the 1960’s on.

Once in a while I get the opportunity to weave cane for a chair that a family member or friend has. On our way home from our recent vacation I picked up a chair that belongs to Susan’s sister that is in need of a new seat. I’m not as quick with the weaving as I once was, but I’ll have it redone within the next week, working a few minutes each evening.

When I was a seminary student, I learned the technique for making chair seats with fiber rush. Fiber rush is a tough twisted paper that is used for weaving the seats of chairs that have four rungs. I was serving as janitor in a church that had individual chairs with rushed seats in the sanctuary - about 300 of the chairs. The paper rush was worn from years of use and I began to replace the bottoms in a few of the chairs. The task was so big that I organized a class and taught others to make the repairs, using chairs from the sanctuary for teaching and then recruiting students to do additional chairs. Before having its seat re-done each chair had to have the old material removed, have all of the joints re-glued and the wood oiled to make the chair look good. Occasionally I had to replace dowels or make other repairs to the chairs as well. Over the course of a year we were able to get new seats in all of the chairs in that church. When I visited the church about 20 years later they were still using the chairs. I suspect, however, that they have long since been replaced by now.

The craft of furniture repair isn’t a necessary skill in a world of kit furniture and household furnishings that are not designed to last for multiple generations. A fair amount of the furniture in our home came from preceding generations, but that is rare even for people of our age. We have a storage unit that contains some very good and usable furniture that we got from our elders and for which we can find no home in the present generation. Our children’s homes aren’t really designed to be showplaces for antiques. I don’t know what will become of the old furniture, but perhaps some of it can find homes where it will be treasured for a few more years.

I have all of the caning supplies that I need at this point in my life, although I may need to buy another coil of chair cane at some point in the future if I find opportunity to cane enough chairs. For some reason, however, i took a look at the web to see if supplies are still available last night. They are. But I found other things that surprised me. In addition to chair cane, the web site sells caning pegs and wedges and a caning tool. I had never though of those things as objects that one would buy. I make my pegs by sharpening bits of dowel. The chair I am currently caning was previously caned by using golf tees as caning pegs. I know because the person who did the job would break off the tee in the hole and then add a bit of elmer’s glue to secure the ends of the cane instead of tying it off the way I learned to do. It never occurred to me that one might buy such an object rather than just make it. The same applies to wedges. They are just pieces of hardwood cut into a wedge shape. And a caning tool is a handle with two pieces of dowel in the end.

I guess I should be heartened to know that there are others who still cane chairs and that the skill will continue on into another generation. I had been wondering who I might recruit to teach the skill so that it would survive me. Perhaps I should also be on the lookout for someone that I could teach to carve pegs and make simple tools. Those skills seem also to be disappearing.

In the meantime, I’ve got a chair to finish and if I do it right it will last longer than I will.

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.

Sometimes I wish I had paid more attention or at least gone to family members and asked to hear particular stories again. As I get older and more of our elders pass on from this life, there are fewer original sources for some of our family stories, and I fear that I might not know the details or get the stories right. I am especially aware of this when I spend time with siblings. They have different memories of our growing up years than I do. Sometimes they recall events of which I have no memories. Sometimes they recall things very differently than I remember them. For the most part we have no arbitrator of our memories - no authority to which we can turn to find out what really happened.

One of our family stories is that our Great Uncle Ted, for whom I am named, once entered a banana eating contest in California. Uncle Ted lived in California for a number of years and he was considerably more adventurous in his young adult years than he was as a senior when we got to know him best. We remember him as quiet and inventive and a man who liked to keep to himself. We used to joke that he was the slowest opener of Christmas and birthday presents we had ever met. He would get out his pocket knife, carefully cut the strips of tape one by one, remove the paper without ever making even the smallest tear and then carefully fold it for reuse before looking at what was contained in the package.

A look at family photos, however, illustrates another side to Uncle Ted. He rode motorcycles and moved to California when the rest of the family stayed pretty close to the family home. So I guess I’m not surprised that he might have at one time entered a food eating contest at a fair in California.

The version of the story that I remember is that he won the contest, got violently ill and that another competitor died as a result of the contest. When I search my memory, I can’t remember ever hearing the story from Uncle Ted, however. I can remember being told it by older sisters and I think that a couple of my cousins also told me the story. the part about someone dying might have been an embellishment that wasn’t part of the actual event. In fact it seems possible that Uncle Ted entered a contest and didn’t win.

I do remember that Uncle Ted never liked bananas. Having at one point eaten enough to get sick would provide a sufficient explanation for that particular dislike. Then again, our brother Vernon didn’t like peanut butter when we were growing up. We never figured out why. He seems to like it fine enough now that he is an adult. Sometimes food preferences don’t have any basis in trauma - they just exist because people are different and our likes and dislikes are also different.

I’m not a big fan of contests. I pay attention to some sports, but am not among the biggest fans of sport. I play a few games, but am not big on board or card games. I rarely enter contests when you have to fill out cards and enter at business places. I don’t buy lottery tickets. I don’t gamble. I don’t even purchase raffle tickets. Those things simply aren’t entertaining for me.

So I don’t follow the world of competitive eating. I happened to run across a story with photographs about the Nathan’s Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest on the Washington Post web site this morning. I like the picture of Joey “Jaws” Chestnut of California proposing to his longtime girlfriend, Neslie Ricasa before the contest. She’s a competitive eater as well. Chestnut went on to win the contest by eating 61 hot dogs with buns. It was his eighth victory in the contest.

The picture of him proposing is the only one that is worth a second look. Some are so disgusting that they ought to have a warning about graphic photos. It is not a pretty sight.

I don’t think I’ll celebrate July 4 - or any other holiday - by seeing how much food I can stuff into my face.

There are a couple of stories about food that I caught in my reading that were more interesting. The Costa Rica team has advanced farther in the World Cup than many people expected and that means that the team has been staying in Brazil longer than was expected. They had to have more gallo pinto shipped in to keep the team going. They received a shipment of 200 kilograms of rice and beans, 74 small bottles of Salsa Lizano, 80 packs of coffee and 36 bottles of a Costa Rican Tobasco sauce to keep the team going as it faces off against the Netherlands in the quarter finals today.

Another story was about a group of four Costa Rica fans who have had to come up with an additional $3,000 each to extend their stay in Brazil to be able to watch their team make history. They are all sharing a single small room and have been skipping meals to make the stay as inexpensive as possible. They also have been doing their own laundry in the sink of their room. I suppose that includes washing their jerseys. In the meantime an Italian sportswear brand had to have an additional 50,000 Costa Rica jerseys shipped into Brazil because of the popularity of the shirts - and of the team. If Costa Rica were to double its population, it still would be the smallest country participating in the quarterfinals. If they were to double the salary of their coach he still would be the lowest paid coach in the quarterfinals. Some things just can’t be valued in dollars and cents.

The good news is that I think I will be able to get the images of the hot dog eating contest out of my head by watching Costa Rica play soccer today.

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

As we always do, we brought home a case of apples from Washington on our recent trip. It is too early for this year’s apples, so the apples we brought home are very similar to those available in the supermarkets here, but we get a good price on fruit when we are out west and it is a bit of a treat to have a few things in stock. The apples we bought are for eating, so they aren’t the best apples for pies. I could, however, make an apple pie to celebrate July 4th. I’ve gotten pretty good at baking pies in my Dutch Oven and a little practice might do me good. The truth is that we don’t eat many pies in our house. Health dictates fresh fruit for dessert as an alternative to the sweet and rich recipes that we of the think of for that part of the meal. As a person who continues to struggle with being overweight, I do have to make careful choices about what I put into my mouth.

Still, it would be nice to have something genuinely American to celebrate Independence Day. Remember the old advertisement: “Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet”? It was intended to be a celebration of things American and an encouragement for Americans to consider purchasing automobiles that were assembled in the United States. These days such a decision is a bit more difficult. Foreign companies such as Toyota, Fiat, Daimier, Honda, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche and Volkswagen manufacture int he United States. And American companies like Chevrolet assemble cars in Canada and Mexico for sale in the United States.

Baseball is pretty much and American Sport. The World Series features only USA teams. And one only has to pay marginal attention to sports coverage from other countries to recognize that the World Cup is the world’s most popular sport. It’s called football everywhere except in the USA. Here in Rapid City, the Post 22 firecracker tournament is probably the best way to catch a little July 4 baseball unless one wants to participate in one of the pickup games at family reunions and parks around the town. The Firecracker Tournament fireworks were held last night, but there are games at 1 and 4 today with the championship at 7 pm for those who want to catch a little baseball.

I’m not super big on hot dogs, but I did pick up a few bratwurst from our local butcher. Those may not be the most authentic German sausage, but they came from meat produced in South Dakota. I also picked up a bit of burger which we had last night for supper and some pork loin to make skewers for the barbecue.That’s fairly American all in all.

There’s team roping all day today at the Central States Fairgrounds.

You could run off some of the extra calories by participating in the Cornerstone Rescue Mission Firecrackeer 5K race at Sioux Park tomorrow morning.

Of course, the big deal for July 4th celebrations is fireworks. In addition to the Post 22 fireworks last night, there will be fireworks at Arrowhead Country Club this evening and at the Elks Golf Course tomorrow. The Main Street Square celebration won’t feature live fireworks, but they’ll be projecting video recorded in the days when there were giant fireworks displays at Mount Rushmore on the big screen downtown.

Fireworks are fun, especially if someone else takes care of the safety. Last year wasn’t a good year in that department. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission 11,400 people were injured by fireworks last year, a staggering 31 percent climb compared to 8,700 injuries the year before. Michigan, Maine and Arizona made fireworks more accessible to consumers last year, which might account for some of the increase in injuries, but I’ve seen plenty of dangerous behavior right here in South Dakota where we’ve had access to fireworks for decades. 8 people died from head or chest trauma as the result of fireworks last year. And that isn’t counting the house fires resulting from mishandled fireworks. Of course we can find other ways to start fires. Barbecues and propane-fired deep fat fryers are leaders in home fire starters.

I just wish that fireworks were a bit more American since we use them to celebrate this American holiday. Fireworks were invented in China and made their way into Europe around the mid 17the century. They are almost universally accepted worldwide as demonstrations of celebration and national pride. The fireworks display at the winter Olympics in Russia this year were an example and you can expect fireworks as a part of the crowning of the champion at the World Cup in Brazil later this month.

Speaking of football, I hope you have been following Costa Rica - WOW! Even the Pope is excited about Costa Rica’s team.

Back to my topic for today:

The bottom line on fireworks in the United States is that most of the fireworks we use to celebrate our national holiday are imported. Last year the US imported $213 million worth of fireworks, 95% of them from China. It isn’t that we don’t make fireworks in the USA. We do, but not enough for our own use, though we did manage to export $10.2 million in 2013, with Israel being our biggest customer, consuming 26% of USA exports.

It isn’t just fireworks that we import. We celebrate the holiday by wearing lots of t-shirts. In fact the USA imported a whopping $5.3 billion worth of t-shirts last year, 12.8% from Honduras and 12.8% from China. We make a few and exported $633 million worth of t-shirts, mostly to Canada (32%).

A lot of the other things we buy to indicate our patriotism, from paper products to hats and other items are imported. Those American flags you see poked into people’s lawns and being waved by children - chances are they came from China. We import $4 million worth of flags each year, 97% from China.

In fact the US Congress had to pass a bill to insure that the flags flown above the Capitol are made in the USA.

Enjoy the celebrations, but keep an eye out for safety. As for me, I’ll be checking to see what I can do to keep the celebrations home grown.

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.

On Monday, we drove over Fourth of July Pass east of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. As mountain passes go, it isn’t all that impressive. There were lots of steeper and longer climbs on our route from Olympia, Washington to Rapid City, South Dakota. Like other places on the Interstate Highway System, it had a name and a story before the modern superhighway was constructed. But Fourth of July Pass does have its origins in the process of road building. U.S. Army Captain John Mullan was given the task of completing a wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the inland Pacific Northwest. He started construction in the spring of 1859. It took four years to construct the road from Fort Benton, Montana to Walla Walla, Washington. Its crossing of the mountains was roughly the same route that is taken by Interstate 90 today. In the summer of 1861, the end was in sight, but there was still a lot of work to be done. One of the primary tasks was clearing away enough timber to open up the passage way for wagon travel. There were also rocks to move and grades to reshape to allow wagons to pass. Mullan told his crew that they could have July 4, 1861 off as a day to rest and celebrate if they made to top of a certain mountain. The goal was achieved and the area has been known as 4th of July Pass ever since.

The people who will have the best view as they celebrate the holiday up there tomorrow will be those who have parked their cars and gotten out to hike. The trail from Colonial Creek Campground up Thunder Creek trail is spectacular. It is also steep, climbing 2000 feet in just 2.5 miles. It offers beautiful views of Colonial Peak, Snowfield Peak and the Neve Glacier.

But I won’t be hiking today.

I need to be back in my office catching up after a glorious two-week vacation and getting ready for this Sunday. There will be plenty to do as South Dakota warms up for what looks to be a bright and sunny July 4 weekend. With the 4th landing on a Friday, there are lots of barbecues and of the special events planned for the long weekend. Attendance at church probably won’t set any records, but we have two baptisms and communion and the day will be a special celebration.

The Fourth of July was always a time for family celebrations when I was goring up. Our mother’s birthday was July 3. She would have turned 93 today. Watermelons figured large in our family celebrations, but there were some memorable birthday cakes, including the one with sparklers instead of candles that deposited bits of hot metal on the surface of the cake. You had to scrape off most of the frosting to get to an edible surface. Our place next to the river was a safe place for a few fireworks and we usually had a small group of friends gather for the festivities. We didn’t have anything that came close to the giant fireworks displays that are common today, but we’d put on a little show with a few purchases from the local fireworks stand.

Our family almost always had some kind of celebration on the evening of the 3rd. Although our father’s store was usually officially closed on July 4, the holiday came in the middle of haying season and if a rancher was broke down with hay in the field, he was likely to get his parts whether or not it was an official holiday.

July 4 is widely recognized as the birthday of our nation. the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 marked the separation of our country from the Kingdom of Great Britain. It is impossible to say what direction our history would have taken had we not taken that path. It is interesting to note that Canada, our neighbor to the North who did not declare Independence, Ireland and Britain all rank higher than our nation on the Global Democracy Ranking. It is possible that many of the things that went into the forging of the modern democracy we now enjoy might have also been a part of our history had we not been independent from Britain. But that path that our history took worked well for our nation. After a few trials in getting founding and one terrible Civil War, the young democracy has taken root and become a great world power. There is plenty to celebrate on Independence Day.

Just like John Mullan and his crew clearing the way for wagons to pass through the mountains couldn’t imagine Interstate 90, the founders of this nation were not able to foresee the incredible modern democracy that the United States has become. Furthermore it is impossible for moderns to fully understand the past. Driving over the pass on the Interstate doesn’t give an understanding of the perspective of Mullan’s crew. Living in America today, even as a student of history, doesn’t give a complete understanding of the perspectives of the founders. Those who claim to know the thoughts and intentions of our nation’s founders are likely to be wrong on at least a few points.

But we can celebrate courage, vision, and the incredible leadership that marked the founding of our nation. And we can appreciate the benefits we enjoy that come, in part, from the sacrifices of preceding generations. I think I’d stay away from sparklers in the cake and I worry a bit about those who get careless with fireworks, but there is plenty to celebrate as we enter into this weekend.

The celebrations will be even better and the memories even deeper for those who take time to worship in the midst of their celebrations. Taking time to give thanks to God in the midst of all of the other activities can give us perspective and deepen our awareness and appreciation for our place in this world.

Enjoy the 4th. Remember we’ll be open for worship on the 6th.

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 is not just doing one thing. A young child can focus his or her attention on the present activity and happily continue without regard for the future or the next things. We take great delight in watching our grandson’s focus when he finds a task or game pleasing. After all, play is his vocation at this stage of his life. It is how he works out the things that he needs to learn. Through play he is learning how to get along with others, how to be considerate and compassionate and how to make his way in this world. Through play he examines different scenarios and possibilities for how he might engage in adult life when he is ready. Play is his way of learning many of the lessons that he will need later in life. In many tribal cultures, the distinction between play and work doesn’t really exist. Children naturally imitate parents. When they do so, their behavior is encouraged. Adults make child-sized tools for children to use in assisting with cooking, housework, and hunting. When they are successful, they are praised and rewarded. Soon the life of an adult who contributes to the community is a natural way of life.

In our society, we often make large distinctions between play and work. We count the hours of work carefully as if it were an activity for 40 hours a week only. We rarely notice that some of the best creative thinking relative to our work don’t happen when we are “at work,” but rather when we are engaging in recreation. We count the days until a vacation and then head off for something that we don’t do in the normal course of our lives. People join gyms to “work out” instead of having physical activity integrated into their regular lifestyles. A physician friend once commented to me that if people would simply walk to the gym instead of driving, they’d be a lot more healthy. We tend to live far from our work and shopping, so we use cars to get about our daily life, sitting when our bodies have been designed for standing and walking.

In this compartmentalized world, our vacation is coming to an end. There is already a long list of tasks that I need to accomplish tomorrow. Most of the community is focused on a holiday weekend in celebration of July 4, and our church office won’t be open that day, so tomorrow is our day to get out the bulletins, catch up on pastoral concerns, answer e-mail, change the phone messages and get back to work. Then there are a couple of days of preparation for worship on Sunday. I meet with a couple planning a wedding and there are other events that take place on the weekend, so we will be back in the swing of things soon.

As we travel, we visit with other people who are traveling. We have met some full-time RVers, who live in their recreational vehicles year round and travel from state to state. They usually seek warmer climates for their winter activities and tend to drift towards the north in the summers. They often stay parked in the same location for weeks at a time, working temporarily at a campground or other tourist venue before moving on to the next location. They get to travel a lot and see a lot of beautiful country and they tend to spend much of their time in tourist destinations such as national and state parks, national forests and other places. Some of the commercial campgrounds rely heavily upon them as their pool of seasonal laborers who run check-in counters, mow lawns, clean shower houses and do other necessary chores.

That particular lifestyle doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve never been much of a person to want to stop working. I am blessed to have meaningful work that I enjoy. I miss the people and activities of the church when I travel and after a while, I am ready to return to my job and the busy life of a growing congregation. I enjoy the days when I don’t wake to the sound of my alarm and don’t have a list of appointments in my schedule, but I know that I also thrive on the lists of difficult problems to solve and challenges to overcome that are built into my job. At this stage of my life it works well for me to have a regular job with occasional breaks for vacation.

Of course it is difficult living so far away from our children, but we would have that challenge regardless of where we lived. Our two children live nearly 2,000 miles apart. No matter where we lived, it would be a long drive to visit either. At the present moment, we’re roughly half way between the two, which is as convenient as any other location. We make use of our vacations and of unlimited telephone calling as ways to stay connected. We also have the computer and video conferencing as another way to maintain our relationships.

Family is a priority for our children, too, so they make the effort to come to see us and in recent years, we have been very fortunate to have several events when we get the entire family together. Last year we all got together to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. In August we’ll all be together for a niece’s wedding. Sometimes we all get together for Christmas.

So we develop a rhythm of work and recreation. When we get things right, the recreation helps us to be more efficient and creative in the work. That is a bit of a problem when we take vacations like this one where we compress the bulk of the travel into a few days at the beginning and a few days at the end of the vacation. The process of driving requires effort and leaves us tired after a long day’s drive. But we seek to balance that with the wonderful memories of the time we had with our grandchildren and the meaningful work we have at the other end of the drive.

We are blessed to have jobs that allow us this rhythm and support the fullness of our lives that contain both work and recreation.

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 early days of automobile travel, a long road trip was a real adventure. There wasn’t a national highway system and roads often were of unpredictable quality. Tires were fragile and needing to patch several tires in a single day wasn’t uncommon. Fuel stations were few and far between, so finding gasoline was a challenge. Restrooms were behind the bushes alongside the road and overnight accommodations were wherever you decided to camp with whatever camping gear you brought with you. People often were forced to camp in inconvenient locations because of the limited range of their cars.

After the second world war, states and the nation put a great deal of investment and effort into developing and expanding the highway system. Service stations, with more amenities began to become common in every town and in several locations between towns. Auto courts and motels began to spring up. Our family’s summer place began as a park that was used as a campground and was developed into an auto court in the 1950’s. It had a series of small cabins that were sleeping rooms only, with a shared shower house. One owner before our family purchased the property added two burner propane hot plates for the convenience of guests. The cabins were unheated and poorly insulated. But they offered a bed to weary travelers. By the time our family purchased the property modern motels with private bathrooms were the norm and there were plenty of small properties around Montana with small (and often poorly constructed) cabins that were for sale.

Back in the 1970’s when Susan and I were traveling to and from Chicago to attend Seminary there was a 55 mph speed limit across the nation. That made Chicago a three-day and two-night trip from Montana. For the most part we stayed with relatives along the way, but occasionally we would take a slightly different route or break up the drive in a different fashion and find a campground. In those days we didn’t own a tent, but had some good tarps. One was used for a ground cloth and another to provide shelter for our sleeping bags. We cooked over an open fire and used the facilities provided by the campground, often only pit toilets.

The world has changed. There are still plenty of campgrounds in national forests without electricity and modern amenities and those who wish to get off of the highways and hike can still fine pristine camping places. But when we are trying to make lots of miles, it is easier to stay in modern campgrounds.

I remember back in the 1960’s when the first KOA was opened in Billings, Montana. At first it was nothing more than a shower house and a small office with a few camping supplies. The campsites had fire rings. Soon there was electricity and water available at each campsite. Then came sewer and upgraded electrical service, so trailers equipped with air conditioners could plug in. They began to sell propane, and offer games and other activities. Around that time, a neighbor just up the river decided to get in on the business. His home was at the end of a quarter mile gravel driveway that ran along the edge of a hay field. It was several miles off of the main highway. But he put up signs and had brochures printed and people began to discover his place. One of his big attractions was a couple of ponds that he stocked heavily with trout from the hatchery. This made it almost impossible not to catch a fish if you put any baited hook in the pond. He fed the fish regularly and we used to go out to throw fish pellets into the water and watch the fish rise. Pretty soon he had a large number of developed camp sites with water, electricity and sewer hookups for trailers and other recreational vehicles.

Traveling from Eastern Washington to Western Montana yesterday, we began to look for a campground for the evening. We had made no reservations, because we didn’t know exactly how far we would come. After stopping at several campgrounds, we got out our directory and started making phone calls. We finally got the last spot available in a large, modern camping resort. It is a KOA, but it is a far cry from Dave Drum’s first KOA alongside the Yellowstone River.

Our rather expensive parking place features a long pull-through gravel pad, perfectly leveled, with concrete sidewalks along both sides. There is a concrete pad with a picnic table, complete with an umbrella, an above ground fire pit with a screened cover, a two-person swing and a small patch of perfectly manicured grass on one side of the camper. On the other side are two places to connect sewer, a water source with two spigots and an electrical box with 50 amp and 30 amp circuits as well as additional plug ins for whatever one might want to connect. There is cable television provided at each campsite and wireless Internet service. The park features an ice cream shop, a swimming pool, a hot tub, small camping cabins not unlike the old auto courts, and deluxe cabins with private baths, heating, air conditioning and kitchens. There are multiple shower houses spread throughout the park for those who don’t have or who don’t want to use the facilities in their recreational vehicles. I’m thinking that the folks in the million-dollar motorhome that is towing a full-sized pickup behind parked next to us see our little trailer and think we’re roughing-it. They probably don’t mind the fee for parking here, which is about two thirds of what a motel room would cost for the night.

We’re not as comfortable with the high prices. We don’t need the amenities. And we’re a bit sad that one has to make reservations in order to stay in a campground these days. Part of the freedom of vacation travel for us is being able to stop where and when we want. But we travel with multiple cell phones. We have computers and cell phones and a GPS that can mark the route to campgrounds. We can learn to call early in the day and make reservations for the night’s stop.

Chances are, however, most of the time, we will seek routes away from the Interstate where the campgrounds aren’t called resorts and where they don’t fill up every night. We’re not exactly roughing it in our little camper, but we can do without the patio and cable television with no problem.

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