The year I was born, US physician Jonas Salk tested the vaccine for polio on himself and his family. The following year, clinical trials were held involving 1.6 million children in the US, Canada, and Finland. The results of that trial were announced in the spring of the following year, and the vaccine was licensed. I can’t remember the first time I received the vaccine. I have a vague memory of an oral vaccine, which was probably not the Salk vaccine, but rather another one developed by Albert Sabin. Two years after the Salk vaccine was licensed, the annual number of polio cases dropped from 58,000 to 5,600. A decade later, only 161 cases remained.

Polio is an ancient disease. There are ancient Egyptian images showing children with malformed limbs walking with canes. The year before I was born, a polio outbreak killed over 3,000 people in the US. Beyond those killed by the disease, thousands more were paralyzed. Treatments were devised, including the use of an iron lung to aid breathing, but no cure was found.

The medical breakthrough that turned the tide on this disease was the development of an effective vaccine. Dr. Salk never sought profit from the vaccine. In a 1955 interview, he was asked who owned the patent for the vaccine. He replied, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Several other vaccines have enhanced my life. I have avoided tetanus even though I have had injuries where the bacteria could have entered my body. The injection I now receive every ten years also protects me from diphtheria and pertussis. Because of my age, I am now considered to be “at risk,” and therefore receive a high-dose flu vaccine each year. Although I know it does not provide complete immunity, I have received COVID vaccinations according to the schedule recommended by my doctor, including the updated 2025-26 vaccine administered yesterday.

I have listened to arguments against vaccination, but I have not been persuaded that they are backed by the same rigorous scientific inquiry that has produced the vaccines and the schedule of recommended vaccinations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is a challenge, however, to participate in current public debates over vaccines because there are so many high-profile speakers, including governmental authorities who not only lack scientific discipline and training but also do not rely on experts for information and guidance.

Despite a rambling press conference by the US President, there is no evidence of a connection between Acetaminophen and autism. Unlike polio, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, flu, and COVID, autism is not a disease. It is not “caused.” Autism refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by variations in social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech, and nonverbal communication. There is no single type of autism. It can be helpful to think of autism as a spectrum. Autism spectrum disorder is the preferred way of referring to a set of conditions that appear different in each person affected by it. People with autism need varying levels of support, depending on how the condition affects them. Some people who live with autism have other conditions that can be medically treated.

I am not a doctor. I am not a biologist or researcher. I am not an expert in Autism. What I am is a person who lives in a community with friends who have been identified as being on the autism spectrum. I am grateful for these people in my life, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to live in a world without autism. I do, however, support research to understand better the conditions associated with autism. Understanding can lead to supports that help people with autism pursue their dreams and lead the lives they choose.

We human beings are incredibly complex. There are a few simple solutions to the problems we face. One of the tools we have in dealing with life’s challenges is generational wisdom. We have benefited from the information gathered and insights developed by those who lived before our time, and we have a responsibility to add to their knowledge and pass it on to future generations. Until the current administration was inaugurated, we could count on governmental agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Library of Medicine to be stewards of our collective knowledge and wisdom. However, current policies of replacing experts with those whose only qualifications are loyalty to the President and the ability to garner media attention threaten our collective ability to retain the information and experience of previous generations. It is especially alarming that these leadership changes have been accompanied by direct attacks on universities, which have traditionally been centers of sharing research and wisdom.

The challenges of the current political situation are not the first or only challenges that research and discovery have faced. In our country, we have a heightened awareness of the precariousness of our situation in part because the rise of authoritarianism has been so sudden and dramatic. And now, the administration and the party that controls the legislature seem intent on creating a government shutdown as an excuse for more dramatic firings of dedicated public servants and more drastic cuts to genuine research and discovery.

In response, I am trying to hone my critical thinking skills. I try to practice judgment and discernment as I wade through the barrage of information from the Internet. I write essays every day without the use of large language models, also known as artificial intelligence. I am only one person, but I belong to a community of individuals who continue to engage in challenging research and critical thinking. In the face of the challenges posed by the disintegration of constitutional democracy, individuals and informal groups of concerned citizens are becoming increasingly essential stewards of research and generational wisdom.

And I try to retain my sense of humor. As it turns out, I haven’t needed any medication for the slight pain of yesterday’s injection. Had I felt the need, however, the medicine of choice for me would have been Tylenol. Unlike some public figures, I am willing to trust clinical trials and careful research. Also, unlike those figures, I don’t fear autism or those on the spectrum.

A dear friend of ours is a patient in a rehabilitation facility as he recovers from a stroke. The stroke occurred in an area of his brain that has to do with mobility. He has lost much of his ability to control the right side of his body from the shoulder down. Fortunately, the bleeding in his brain was minimal, allowing him to make a relatively quick recovery in terms of thinking, memory, speech, and facial expression. His therapy includes exercises that have the two sides of his body mirror each other. For example, he places his hands together and presses them from left to right, then from right to left. At first, he could only go one direction, but now he can go in both directions. He is slowly regaining his ability to move his thumb and fingers on his right hand. His therapy is hard work, and he is diligent in his exercises.

As he recovers, a race is underway at his home. His husband is working with contractors to complete the remodeling of their home, making it more accessible. Their home is an older building, and some of the remodeling is extensive, involving extensive work on plumbing, electrical systems, and construction. The work is being rushed with the hope that construction will be completed before our friend is discharged from the rehabilitation facility.

Meanwhile, we can visit and share our friendship. That friendship includes acknowledgment of his recovery and adjustment to the challenges of disability. Furthermore, we have gained a great deal of insight into his medical history. I am not a doctor, and I do not know all the technical details, but as has been the case when I have visited others, I have learned a great deal about the complexity, beauty, and resilience of the human body. We human beings are a fantastic combination of strength and vulnerability.

Our friend had a brain condition known as AVM. That is short for Arteriovenous Malformation. I can’t seem to remember the extended version and have to look it up to get the spelling correct. It is a rare condition that occurs in only about 1 in every 100,000 people. An AVM is a tangle of blood vessels in which arteries and veins make direct connections without the typical capillaries connecting the vessels. This results in high blood pressure from arteries flowing directly into veins, which do not usually receive high-pressure blood. Our friend’s condition had been diagnosed before his stroke, so doctors had MRIs and other clinical evidence about what was going on. He was receiving specialized treatment, but before the stroke, it was felt that a surgical remedy was not an option because of the location of the AVM.

Before his stroke, our friend’s symptoms included headache, numbness, dizziness, and occasional seizures. These were being treated with medication. Careful monitoring of his blood pressure and medicines for blood pressure were also part of his treatment.

I don’t know all of the details, but the AVM and the stroke are related. When the stroke occurred, the AVM floated slightly away from the surface of the brain, allowing surgeons to remove it. The procedure was very delicate, lasting 9 hours. He then had to remain sedated in the operating room for an additional period of time for special monitoring and control of his blood pressure as his brain adjusted to all of the changes. The surgery was successful, and the slow process of recovery began. After five weeks of hospitalization, he was released to rehabilitation, so he can now receive care close enough to home for us to visit.

Among the amazing things we have learned from this friendship is more about how the human brain works. Not only are human brains capable of surviving a condition such as an AVM, but they are also capable of learning enough about how brains work for surgeons to train and remove the AVM in a manner that allows the patient’s brain to continue functioning.

We humans take pride in our brains. While it may be hubris, we have been led to believe that our brains distinguish us from all other life on earth. We acknowledge that there are other intelligent animals, and some researchers question whether certain animals, such as dolphins, are as intelligent or even more intelligent than humans.

Our complex and capable brains, however, may not be the best thing for our planet. Human activity has caused an incredible amount of damage to our planet. For example, human activity is responsible for species extinction at a rate that rivals the impact of an asteroid hitting the Earth. We are on track to become more destructive than an asteroid when it comes to the loss of biodiversity. Human intelligence has been detrimental to the planet and the animals that inhabit it, including humans. It is now clear that human activity is capable of rendering this planet incapable of sustaining human life.

Our friend’s remarkable recovery, however, is a source of profound hope for me. If human brains are capable of devising techniques and treatments for significant problems within the brain of another human, it seems we might have the capacity to reverse and rectify some of the damage that we’ve caused to others and to this world. If our friend’s brain is capable of recovery from an AVM and a stroke, perhaps this planet is capable of recovery from human environmental destruction.

On the one hand, I am sorry that our friend had to suffer a stroke. Bleeding in the brain is a serious matter, and recovery is a difficult process. On the other hand, being with our friend is a powerful source of hope for me. I feel deeply grateful that I can visit him and learn from his experience. I am awed by observing his recovery. I am so thankful for his friendship.

I know that there are many difficult days for him. I know that it is hard for him to be patient with himself and the pace of recovery. I hope that the community of his friends will continue to support and encourage him. We are all growing through his journey. I need to be sure to tell him how grateful I am.

When I was a student, I attended an event for ministers that focused on preaching. I had served for a year as a licensed minister before entering seminary, and thus I had some experience preparing weekly sermons. At that point, I was a manuscript preacher, writing out all of my sermons and having a complete text in the pulpit from which I read. Being a graduate student in a seminary that took biblical scholarship seriously, I was learning the art of exegesis, focusing on a particular passage of scripture, studying the context and the meaning of the words. During one of the convocation meetings, working preachers were asked, “What is the biggest challenge in preaching for you?” There were some recognized and powerful preachers in the group, and one of them surprised me by saying, “Pitch and rhythm.”

My focus was on the academic and intellectual aspects of preaching. I gave very little thought to pitch and rhythm. That conversation, however, became a turning point for me as a preacher. I began to pay attention to how words fit together. Oral communication works only if the listener is engaged. If a sermon is dull and academic, worshipers tend to tune out and their minds wander away from the message. The convocation became, for me, the start of a lifetime of noting the difference between written and oral language. I continued to write sermons. When I started delivering sermons without notes, I went through an elaborate process of writing out a manuscript and then outlining it. In essence, I memorized the sermon and began to gain confidence in preaching with only the outline from which to preach. Eventually, I learned to leave the outline in my bible and deliver the sermon without notes. It took me years to learn that craft, and I continued to write full manuscripts. I always had a complete manuscript in hand when I officiated at a wedding or funeral. Those “once in a lifetime” events are too important for a slip in speaking. Names are important to people, and I wanted to ensure that I did not misspeak when ministering in those situations.

Sometimes, when advising younger preachers, I would share a manuscript and challenge the preacher to deliver a sermon that I had written as a way to practice delivery.

Along the way, life went on for me. We had children. I worked at summer camp and led Vacation Bible School. I developed a love of children’s books. I paid attention to which books children asked me to read over and over again. I worked on pitch and rhythm when reading aloud the words of children’s writers. I still love reading out loud to children. I’ve read that it is a critical element in brain development. I’ve read that regular reading to a child in the first five years of life has a larger impact on overall brain development than 18 years of public school. It has an effect that cannot be replicated by other media such as television or computer games.

One day last week, I was caring for our youngest grandson while his mother had an appointment. We played with toys in our living room for a few minutes, and then I started reading books to him. We have a good collection of books that children love, and I had a pile of books that I allowed him to select from to read. He chose ones that I have read to him many times before. We read “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.” We read “I do not like them, Sam I am, I do not like green eggs and ham. Not in a box. Not with a fox. Not in a house. Not with a mouse . . .” We read “I’m not going to get up today,” and a favorite at our house: “Go dog go!” - the book that has everything: up and down, red and yellow, green and blue, chase scenes, emergency stops, romance, and a party. The books that our grandson chooses all have rhythm and invite reading with pitch. Pitch and rhythm often are far more important to children than plot.

There are books I have read so many times that I can recite them from memory. There are books I have read so many times that the children in my life know if I have skipped a page, or even a single word. Some children’s books don’t even have a plot. Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown. The book features wonderful illustrations that start with bright colors that gradually fade as the story progresses. It is the story of a rabbit getting ready for bed and saying goodnight to all of the things in the bedroom: "A little toy house and a young mouse, a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush and a quiet old lady who was whispering hush.”

The book has been around for 75 years, and it wasn’t initially a popular success. The New York City Public Library didn’t carry the book until 1973, 26 years after it was published. Margaret Wise Brown had written dozens of short stories and submitted them to the New Yorker without any of them being published. She began writing children’s books and achieved modest success. Goodnight Moon sold a few thousand copies. Encouraged by its success, she went on to write over 100 books. Her style was to quickly write a story on whatever paper was available. An envelope or grocery list would do. She’d get it down in a few minutes and then spend two years or more polishing and editing the story.

Margaret Wise Brown died suddenly. She had an operation to remove a cyst, and on the day of her discharge from the hospital, she kicked her leg like a Can-Can dancer to prove to the doctor she was feeling well. That motion dislodged a blood clot, and she died instantly. She was 42 years old. In her will, she left the royalties from Goodnight Moon to the nine-year-old child of a friend. The book went on to sell over 40 million copies and remains in high demand.

I think many preachers could benefit from reading children’s books aloud. I know I’ve learned a lot about preaching from doing it. I still hear sermons from working preachers who have ignored pitch and rhythm. Sometimes when they are preaching, my mind wanders. “Hello. Hello. Do you like my hat? I do not like that hat. Goodbye. Goodbye.”

I’ve never had much trouble waking in the morning. Since I was a young child, I have been comfortable going to bed relatively early compared to others. Now, in retirement, I often find myself feeling drowsy as soon as it gets dark outside. That isn’t much of a problem in the summer, but where we live, it gets dark pretty early in the evening this time of the year. Sunset occurs around 7 pm here these days, and we’re losing about 3 minutes of daylight every day. It isn’t practical for me to go to bed that early. If I did, I’d be done sleeping by 3 am or so. So, after dinner dishes are done, I try to have projects that keep me occupied. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but I do watch videos on my computer, and sometimes I’ll spend an evening watching several different videos designed primarily for entertainment. I love to read, and I often do so in the evening, but I have to be a bit choosy with my reading material. If I settle into my recliner with a book that isn’t too engaging, I’ll nod off, and then when it is time to go to bed, I won’t be sleepy, or I may go to sleep for a couple of hours and be wide awake in the middle of the night.

The challenge of dark evenings is going to be even worse in another month. Sunset will be before 6 pm, and then, on November 2, Daylight Saving Time ends, and it will be dark at 4 pm when the grandkids get off the school bus.

I used to be better at working in the evenings, but I’ve never been very good at it. When I was a college student, I discovered that I could be much more productive in the mornings, and I did most of my homework early in the morning. I’d rise before other students. I’d have the library to myself and could get a lot done before breakfast. These days, I generally don’t expect myself to accomplish much after dinner. I’ll putter in the garden, work on a few minor home repairs, or fiddle with my writing, but I know that serious work goes better in the mornings for me.

In the morning, I seem to have a sleep rhythm that wakes me before others. I can remember lying awake in my bed listening for my father to get up to go to work when I was a young child. As soon as I heard him stir, I’d get up and get dressed. Often, in the summer, he would leave the house around 4:30 am, and I would get to go with him to the airport. Sometimes I got to fly with him. Sometimes I’d entertain myself while he made his early morning flights. There were always fun things to do at the airport.

I didn’t have much need of an alarm clock, but when I was 10 or 11, I received a Baby Ben alarm clock as a birthday present. I think it might have been something that was done for my sisters when they reached a certain age, and since I was the next kid in line, the gift became a sort of tradition. At any rate, I was fascinated by the clock. It had two keys permanently attached for winding. One was for time, and the other was for the alarm. Although the time was supposed to run for 30 hours, it was practical to wind it once a day, usually at bedtime. The alarm probably only needed to be wound once a week, depending on how quickly it was shut off in the morning. Most of the time, I didn’t bother setting the alarm, though I gave it a try a few times. The loud bell had other functions. I’d use it to wake my brother, who liked to sleep in. One summer, I devised a system of opening my window just a crack and setting the alarm clock on the sill with a string attached to the knob you pulled out to set the alarm. I’d set the alarm for the time I expected my friends to drop by, and they’d pull the string, setting off the alarm to signal that they were in the yard. It seemed like a clever system, but it didn’t have any practical application, because we had a doorbell on our house that served the same function.

I discovered the value of the alarm clock when I became a college student. I found that while I woke in time for my classes and other obligations, I slept more soundly if I knew that the alarm would signal time to get out of bed. Otherwise, I’d keep waking and checking the clock throughout the night and not sleep as well.

After we got married, we got an alarm clock that played the radio to wake us. I’d set the volume very low, and sometimes I could wake without disturbing my wife. For most of my adult life, I had a watch with an alarm that I used. When I got a smartphone, I started using it as my primary alarm clock. I still use that system, though I rarely need an alarm now that I am retired. If I have an obligation to be somewhere at a specific time, I’ll set an alarm. Otherwise, I rise when I wake and am ready to go.

One of our granddaughters has a clock at her bedside and enjoys checking it. She is the one who wakes easily. The other grandchildren need to be called in the morning. I’ve considered purchasing an alarm clock as a gift for our oldest grandson, but he now has a phone with an alarm feature that he can set.

Do they still sell alarm clocks that you wind? We have a mantle clock that we wind every evening. When I forget and it stops chiming the hour, it will wake me up, and I’ll get up to wind it so I can sleep again. I think, however, that I am a relic of another generation. Winding clocks isn’t a part of the routines of our children or grandchildren.

Some of the clocks in our house won’t even need to be set when Daylight Saving Time ends. Most of them, however, do need to be reset. For mechanical clocks, the easiest way to set them back an hour is to stop them and then restart them an hour later. That’ll entertain me on Saturday, November 1, for at least an hour. I doubt our grandchildren will ever experience that ritual.

In 2005, I was stuck in my professional career. I had been serving as a pastor of the United Church of Christ for 27 years, ten of those years having been spent in Rapid City, South Dakota. Our children were raised and left our house to pursue their lives and careers. I had applied for a position as a Conference Minister, but the search committee had chosen a different candidate for what I had thought was my dream job. I loved my job, but I was still itching for a change of some kind. It may be because ten years was the longest I had served in the same call at that point in my life. Perhaps it was my memory of something my father had told me when he decided to sell part of his flying business, “25 years is long enough for anyone to do the same thing.” Whatever the reason, I was trying to figure out what the next phase of my life might bring.

What came along turned out to be just what I needed. We applied for and received a grant from the Lily Foundation for a sabbatical. We had taken sabbatical leave before, but had never figured out how to work out a real break from our parish duties. The grant not only provided funds for the church to hire excellent leadership during our absence, but it also provided generous funds for travel and exploration. Part of the grant application process involved writing a proposal to the foundation. One of the questions that we were given to ponder as we prepared our application was this: “What would make your heart sing?” I recall thinking about that question for quite some time and compiling a list of things that I thought would bring me joy. Among the things on the list were time with family, especially our adult children; time to explore nature, especially wilderness places; time to connect with colleagues, especially a seminary classmate with whom we were very close; and time to travel.

As has been the case with thousands of ministers who have received Lily's sabbatical grants, the experience renewed our commitment to the congregation we were serving. We went on to serve that congregation for a total of 25 years until we retired. During that time, the congregation grew in its sense of mission and outreach, faced and addressed some capital expenses related to its building, deepened connections with mission partners in Costa Rica and on the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, and Pine Ridge Reservations, and developed new worship and faith formation programs. I look back on my 2006 sabbatical as one of the most crucial turning points in my career, even though it didn’t involve starting a new venue for service. Instead, it involved a recommitment to the call in which I had served for more than a decade and would continue to serve for many years to come.

The question of what makes my heart sing remains an important one for me. In many ways, the answer is the same now as it was back then: time with family, time with nature, time with colleagues, and time to travel. Being retired has given me the gift of time in new ways. We now live near our son's family. We have opportunities to be with our grandchildren every week. We spend time outdoors, regularly connecting with nature. We can connect with colleagues over the Internet in ways that did not previously exist. And we can travel, although not in all the ways I had imagined before being retired.

What I know is that travel and being in nature have ways of nurturing my heart and soul. Susan and I spent four days hiking and viewing the sights on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island. We have walked through old-growth forests and marveled at cathedral cedar trees. We have stood atop rocky cliffs and gazed out at the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean. We have walked along sandy beaches and listened to the sounds of creation. It was a soul-refreshing time for us, even though we had more time for connection with nature in retirement than we did when serving congregations full-time.

Making a personal connection with the glories of creation is an integral part of my life. It is one of the reasons that preservation of the environment is more than just a cause to me. It is personal. My connections with wild places have deeply moved me, and I have dedicated my energy to preserving them for future generations.

When our son was the age that our oldest grandson is now, we enjoyed watching the Sci-fi/fantasy movies in the Star Wars series. We had a VCR in our home, and he got a boxed set of the first three movies in the series, which were labeled episodes 4, 5, and 6 after additional episodes were filmed. We watched those three movies together several times. The third one, Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi, featured training scenes set in a deep mystical forest and introduced furry characters who become allies. The Ewoks are small, furry aliens who live on the forest moon of Endor. They have a tribal culture and primitive technology, but can utilize the tools at their disposal to defeat the more technologically advanced Empire. The forest scenes for that movie were filmed in a grove of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island, known as Cathedral Grove.

We went for a walk in Cathedral Grove yesterday and were reminded of how its special atmosphere inspired moviemakers to develop characters and scenes for a wildly popular movie. We didn’t meet any Ewoks, but we could see how one’s imagination could soar in such a place.

Cathedral Grove was just one of the places we explored on our trip to First Nations land on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is sacred space. It has made our hearts sing. We will return.

If you conduct a quick Internet search on the origins of Poutine, you will find that there are many different stories with varying dates. I don’t know which story is authentic, and I doubt it makes any difference at all, but since I have many Canadian friends, I’m assuming the dish has something to do with beer.

I imagine a few boys tipping a few beers. Maybe they had been drinking most of the afternoon on a cold winter’s day when there was little to do but to wait out the stormy weather. One beer led to another, and they were having a good time, but eventually they got a bit hungry. One of the guys asks the bartender to make them some fries, though he may have ordered chips, depending on which part of Canada this occurred. In my imagination, however, he orders fries because poutine is a French word, and so I’m thinking the boys in the pub weren’t Anglophiles. A plate of fries, however, doesn’t seem like it will fill them up, so one of them asks the bartender to sprinkle cheese curds on the fries. Cheese and fries sounded good. The hot fries would melt the cheese. Another one of them thought that fries and curds might be OK, but it could be improved. He was probably pretty hungry, though drinking beer all afternoon leaves one with a full belly. He asked the bartender to smother the fries and curds in brown gravy. The bartender thought that sounded terrible and told them so, “"Ça va faire une maudite poutine!" ("It will make a damn mess!”). The boys insisted, and thus poutine was born.

Even if that isn’t the real story, it seems to match the strange, uniquely Canadian dish. You can get poutine almost anywhere in Canada these days. Most Tim Hortons serve it, and a lot of other places do as well. I think it is on the menu at McDonald's and Burger King in Canada. I wouldn’t know. I don’t go to those restaurants much in the US and have no intention of eating there when I’m traveling. The dish doesn’t look very appealing. However, one can imagine that after a few beers, it might seem a bit more enticing. Or perhaps it is a Canadian thing that folks from south of the border don’t understand.

I don’t feel the need to eat poutine every time we go to Canada, but when we stay for a few days, I usually end up ordering it with a meal at some point during our visit. It just seems like the Canadian thing to do.

I don’t know how Canadians feel about it, but it strikes me that there is a particular humor about the name of their dish. Poutine, translated from French, means roughly “mess.” It is a good description of what the dish looks like. However, no one translates the word anymore. It simply means fries and curds with gravy. Sometimes the poutine is prepared with cheese that isn’t quite the squeaky cheese curds that make the dish a unique combination of flavors, sounds, and textures. Melting cheese between hot fries and gravy is a bit of a disappointment when you have your heart set on authentic poutine.

I’ve heard that there is a variation with shredded mozzarella called “disco fries.” I have no intention of ordering that. The report of disco fries that I heard mentioned them being served in New Jersey, which I do not consider a place to go for authentic Canadian food. There are also variations, such as spaghetti sauce in place of brown gravy, called Italian poutine. If it’s Italian, it can't really be poutine, can it? And some restaurants feature vegetarian poutine with white mushroom gravy in place of brown beef gravy. I can understand that some people might like that version, but if you’re going to eat poutine, it seems to me that you ought to go for the whole experience.

Poutine purists may scoff at my labeling the dish as Canadian, but I enjoy it on my visits to British Columbia. Folks from Quebec don’t like having their unique culture turned into something generically Canadian. They are proud of their culture and language and have no intention of being assimilated into the broader culture. In a 2011 interview with Toronto Life magazine, Montreal chef Chuck Hughes lamented that, “over the past few years, poutine has become known as a Canadian dish, and it’s totally NOT a Canadian dish. It’s Québécois!”

I haven’t spent that much time in Canada, but I know that it is not a good idea to offend folks from Quebec. Any attempt to call things Québécois “Canadian” is seen as an attempt to tarnish the purity of Canadian Francophones. Calling a person from Quebec “Canadian” is likely to raise hackles and may end up in a fight. I’m pretty sure they are defensive about their cuisine as well.

My story about the origin of poutine is nowhere near the real story. If it were Quebec, beer probably wouldn’t have been involved. It might have been wine, but if it was, it was a good variety and not some cheap California knockoff. Quebecers are picky when it comes to wine. And they would resent any insinuation that they might have been a bit tipsy. They know how to hold their wine. They are people of culture and elegance.

If you’ve never tried poutine, I highly recommend giving it a try. If you want authentic poutine, I suppose you should go to Quebec to get some. On the other hand, if you don’t think anyone from Quebec is looking and you don’t hear anyone speaking French, you might get away with ordering and sampling a dish from a Tim Hortons. Genuine poutine might not be a fast food item, but you can probably get away with it in Western Canada.

I think former Quebec Premier Jean Charest summed it up best when he said of the dish: “I love poutine so much that I eat it as little as possible.”

I think I’ll follow his lead.

I read the news from a variety of sources, including several international ones. I try to understand what is going on in the world, and also why those things happen. I am interested in nuanced analysis, but it is tough to find. In our increasingly polarized world, many people are getting their news in sound bites and clips. Social media is a place for in-depth analysis. When I am tempted to blame computers and social media, I try to remind myself that engaging in careful analysis and conversation has never been easy.

I recall a series of conversations I had as a college student, before cell phones, personal computers, and social media. In those days, we got our news from newspapers and television broadcasts from three networks. The conversations centered on the general topic of science versus religion. I rejected the proposal, arguing that science and religion are not opposed. At one point, I found myself in a conversation with a classmate about the theory of evolution. The classmate was a “born again” Christian who frequently used the slogan “one way” to indicate his belief that Christianity was superior to all other religions. I found his brand of faith to be off-putting. I was a serious student of religion, intending to become a Christian minister, and the reduction of Christianity to a set of slogans seemed inappropriate. I didn’t publicly criticize those, but I certainly thought of them as having a very shallow faith.

In our conversation, my classmate said that the Bible is opposed to Darwin. I responded that I didn’t think the Bible is opposed to any person. He clarified that the Bible states that God created everything, including humans, and that Darwin proposed humans descended from apes. I said that I didn’t think that Darwin’s research into the origin of species could be reduced to family lineage and asked him if he had read “Origin of Species.” He responded that he didn’t have to. He had read a brochure that he got at church.

I wrote off the conversation, deciding that it wasn’t worth arguing about. I myself had not read Origin of Species. I took a look at it in the library after our conversation, and it was over 500 pages long; frankly, it was pretty dull. Knowing that much reinforced my belief that it was nearly impossible to have a nuanced conversation about natural selection with a born-again Christian who was convinced that he knew the truth and that everyone who disagreed with him was wrong and probably headed for hell.

Charles Darwin was a very complex thinker. He was fascinated by many aspects of the natural world. He is famous for the survey voyage on the HMS Beagle, and for his theory of natural selection, but those two things represent just a small part of his interests and research. It has been reported that Darwin’s favorite plant was a type of Drosera, a carnivorous plant that has sticky tentacles with which it entraps insects. His 287-page book Insectivorous Plants, published in 1875, reports on his experiments with Drosera.

A tract circulating in an evangelical church did not equip my classmate for a nuanced conversation about Darwin’s ideas or theories. Despite his claims to the contrary, my classmate did not know what Darwin thought, nor did he know what he wrote.

What Charles Darwin did was to participate in science. He contributed to a body of knowledge and information that has been accumulating for centuries. A human life is a short span compared to the lives of many plants. Learning about them requires many generations of shared information and knowledge.

Science and religion are not opposed. They are human explorations that have been shared over the span of thousands of years. And they are filled with layers of nuance and complexity. When we reduce them to slogans, we fail to appreciate either of them.

I am hungry for complex and nuanced conversations, but I find them increasingly difficult to find.

I would like to have a calm conversation about freeing the hostages and ending the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Still, it seems that anything other than a full endorsement of the policies of the government of Israel is labeled anti-Semitic in public conversation these days. I want to be able to understand the story of the man charged with the murder of Charlie Kirk to see if there is anything that can be learned about preventing such violence in the future.. But even raising the question seems to be interpreted as saying something negative about the man who died. I don’t understand how Turning Point USA became a multi-million-dollar nonprofit. I’ve worked in much smaller nonprofits, and I know the influence major donors can have. But questioning the organization at this point will get a person labeled as a radical leftist.

I actually may be a radical leftist, but I am deeply committed to nonviolence. I would like to have a nuanced and civil conversation with those who hold different positions, without the conversation being reduced to memes and tropes.

The arena of internet memes doesn’t require research. It doesn’t require reading long and sometimes boring books. It doesn’t require actual knowledge. More troubling, it often dismisses careful study and investigation.

I am not a scientist, but I know that autism is not a disease and it cannot be prevented or cured. I know that banning Tylenol during pregnancy will not mean that there are no people on the spectrum. Furthermore, I am grateful that I have friends who are autistic. I believe they have a significant positive impact on the quality of life within a community. What worries me most about the current public debate is that officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are literally deleting the results of complex double-blind research projects and removing from public access research that has taken generations to accumulate. Any questions raised about where federal funds authorized for scientific research are being redirected under the current administration are dismissed as inappropriate.

An administration that stifles all criticism and attacks those who ask questions is not creating an atmosphere for careful, nuanced, complex conversation. And that is the conversation we need right now.

For the record, I’m willing to listen.

I was following our three-year-old grandson down the pathway to the park. He seemed eager to get to the play equipment, which featured slides and structures for climbing. He has short legs, so I don’t have trouble keeping up with him. All of a sudden, he stopped and veered off to the right of the pathway. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. Blackberries are what he saw. He picked a few, eating them as he picked. I paused and picked a few and held out my hand with a half dozen berries to him. He took them all and put them all in his mouth. A bit of blackberry juice ran down his chin as evidence of the treat. We walked a few feet farther and made a second stop for more berries. After four or five stops, he was ready to pick up the pace and get to the playground.

I’m not enough of an expert in plants to know whether the berries he picked were Rubus bifrons (Himalayan) or Rubus armeniacus (Armenian). We call all of the non-native blackberries in our area “Himalayan,” though I know that there are at least two varieties of invasive berries in addition to native blackberries. The invasive species spread rapidly and quickly take over large areas. They can wrap around trees and shrubs, crowding them out. At this time of year, they send forth new canes that reach out into pathways and hang from tree branches. I’ve hit a few when riding my bike, which isn’t much fun. The thorns easily cut my cheeks. That is bad enough, but if I run over them with my bike, they frequently puncture my tires. I’ve had to install thick liners in my bike tires to ride reliably on the trails near our house.

Most locals consider the blackberries to be a weed. They hack at them with machetes, mow them with industrial brush cutters, and when the weather allows, push them into piles and burn them. You need good gloves and sharp shears to trim them.

I am aware that invasive species pose a threat to local ecosystems. Plants, fish, and mollusks have caused significant problems for stewards of public lands.

I am not qualified to offer much commentary about invasive species, but I am inclined to speak up for immigrants of various types. I am not indigenous. Some people are descendants of the tribes that have inhabited this region since time immemorial. I moved here in 2020. I come from a long line of people who moved from one place to another. My ancestors immigrated from Europe to this continent and have moved around this part of the world extensively over the years. I have lived in six different states. From the perspective of natives, I might be considered an invasive species.

Then there is the matter of the honeybees, of which I am caretaker. They also come from European ancestors. They are not native to the land where I keep them. Although they are not aggressive and get along well with other species of bees, I am careful to keep the number of domestic honeybees on the farm low so that they don’t displace native bees and other natural pollinators.

Like the gift of honey we extract from the beehives, blackberries are a generous and sweet offering from a non-indigenous source. Blackberries, however, don’t require any tending or care from those who harvest them. Along the paths that we walk, I’ve seen tourists and neighbors out with their baskets and buckets gathering berries for their meals. I have also seen people who are forced to sleep in the parks and on the streets, out picking berries. The blackberry canes don’t care if you are rich or poor, if you are indigenous or an immigrant. They can’t check your green card or try to have you arrested and deported. They offer sweetness to every person who chooses to look and pick the berries.

I am also drawn to the contrarian nature of blackberries. Our grandson knows about picking strawberries, raspberries, and tomatoes from the garden. However, he is sometimes tempted to pick them before they are ripe. We keep telling him only to pick the red ones. But when it comes to blackberries, the red fruit is not yet ripe. You have to leave the red berries until they turn black before harvesting them.

Like the rest of us invasive species, the story of Himalayan and Armenian blackberries is complex. It doesn’t work to label them as “good” or “bad.” I’m fairly certain that engaging in a battle with them and attempting to eliminate them will likely not be effective. They’re awfully resilient, and they certainly are omnipresent in the Pacific Northwest. For now, I’m content to invest some time in cutting them back, especially when they threaten native trees. I have good gloves and a machete, and cut them back from time to time.

On the other hand, I have no plans to eliminate them from our neighborhood completely. It puts a smile on my face to watch my grandchildren pick and eat the fruit. Learning about the good gifts of the earth is an integral part of raising faithful stewards of the earth’s ecology. It warms my heart to see someone who is hungry and whom our society can’t find ways to adequately feed be able to have a sweet treat that is free for the taking.

In a sense, most of us are invasive to the land where we now live. The history of colonialism on this continent is full of pain that is deeper and more lasting than a blackberry cane in the face. But, like the blackberries, we are capable of offering some sweetness to those we meet. At least I aim to try. Whether it is a smile or a bit of assistance when I recognize a need, I may be able to leave a bit of sweetness for someone else. I’ll take my lead from the blackberries.

We are heading out on a little adventure venture this morning. When we moved to the Pacific Northwest, I expected to make many day trips across the border into British Columbia. We had some time to explore BC in 2006 when we were on sabbatical, and the beauty of the province made us feel like coming back again. However, we retired and moved to this part of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic when the border was closed except for essential traffic. Sightseeing wasn’t considered to be essential. The process of moving was a bit more complex than we initially anticipated. The house we initially rented was in a different town from where we eventually purchased our own home. That move was a bit more involved than we expected. We went back to work for a couple of years, filling an interim position and enjoying the work. There are other reasons, not the least of which is that we form habits and get into patterns. However, the bottom line is that we haven’t explored the territory just across the border as thoroughly as we expected.

When we looked at this autumn, we made it a priority to plan a little trip to see the sights. We’ll cross the border and head to the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen, about 35 miles from our house, and take the ferry over to Duke Point on Vancouver Island. The ferry takes approximately two hours for the crossing. Then we will drive across the island to the west coast to visit the popular tourist district of Tofino. It is known for Pacific Rim National Park and is said to have a laid-back surfer vibe. We are staying in a small town south of Tofino, called Ucluelet, which is known for its ecotourism. We plan to spend three nights in the region before coming back home on Thursday.

One of the things that changes when we cross the border is the system of measurement. Canada, like much of the rest of the world, is on the metric system. On our side of the border, we have a hybrid system of sorts. Back in 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act. The law declared the metric system to be the preferred system for trade and commerce. It created the United States Metric Board to oversee voluntary conversion. The plan was not very popular, so we didn’t really switch to kilometers on our highway makers. We still think of temperatures in Fahrenheit, and measure liquids in cups and quarts and gallons. Many manufacturing processes have transitioned to the metric system, and a good set of metric wrenches is required to work on vehicles manufactured in the US. The lug nuts on my Ford pickup are 18mm, and you need the correct wrench to change a tire.

Each time we drive across the border, speed limit signs greet us in kilometers per hour. Fortunately, our car’s speedometer has small markings for kilometers, and our GPS converts the speed limits to miles per hour, so it doesn’t require much mental math to drive safely. The main highway we use when going to Vancouver has a speed limit of 100 km/h, which is approximately 60 mph, so there isn’t much confusion. The accurate formula for the conversion is 1.6 km per mile, but it is easier to memorize a few key speeds and think in approximate terms. 90 km/hr is about 55 mph. 40 is about 25. It doesn’t take much practice for the speeds to seem pretty standard and comparable to those we drive on the US side of the border.

Converting temperatures is more challenging for me. (F-32) x 5/9 doesn’t come automatically. It is currently 55 degrees outside. 55 - 32 is 23. 23 x 5/9 is 12.8. 13 degrees sounds cold, and I might choose the wrong jacket. On the other hand, 40 degrees Celsius is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I listen to Canadian radio a lot and have become somewhat accustomed to the temperatures, but they still catch me off guard. I haven’t found an effortless way to make the conversion.

Then there is the matter of money. Currently, the Canadian dollar is worth approximately 72 cents US. For most purchases, it works to round the conversation to 75, so you can think in terms of an item costing about 3/4 of the price when converted to US dollars. Most of the time, we use our debit cards for purchases, so the conversion is automatic, and our bank does not charge us a conversion fee. However, we do carry a bit of Canadian cash, just as we carry US cash when traveling on our side of the border for incidentals. It has been a long time since my card stopped working at a gas station, but I still feel uncomfortable pulling up to a station unless I have cash as a backup in case the card doesn’t work.

Spending a few days in Canada, as opposed to just crossing the border for a meal or a trip to the airport, will get us thinking in Canadian terms. It won’t take long for us to adjust to the different systems of measurement; after a while, conversions will no longer be necessary. We can learn to think metric. Our trip this week will be too short for it to feel natural, but the conversions are part of the joy of travel. We like seeing things from a different perspective and thinking in other ways. When we traveled to Australia and Japan, we had to make all of those conversions and also learn that traffic drives on the other side of the road. The mental concentration required to drive on the left and locate the turn signal on the right side of the steering column, while obeying traffic signs in kilometers, is a workout.

After a few days in Canada, we might even slip “eh” into our conversation from time to time. Maybe we’ll even order a double-double at Tim Hortons. Poutine, however, is an acquired taste. That might take a bit longer.

History is often taught as a succession of events. Our textbooks were filled with timelines, and we learned to place events on the lines in the correct order. As elementary students, however, we didn’t have a long perspective on time. Everything before we were born was, in a sense, ancient history. And because of my age, it seemed that history ended with World War II. Our history books presented that war, which ended just before I was born, as the culmination of history. We learned a few dates assigned as beginnings and endings.

I now realize, however, that beginnings and endings are not fixed points in time. Wars break out in response to specific events on specific dates, but they are often rooted in events that occurred long before combatants met on the battlefield. Ideas rarely have a single point of origin. When I taught faith formation leadership, I tried to help students understand that religion and education were inextricably intertwined. I would speak briefly of John Dewey and the rise of public education in the United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but I would also teach about the origins of the Sunday School movement in the 18th century as a philanthropic effort to provide literacy education to poor children who worked in factories all week and had no other opportunities for school.

There isn’t a single date for the beginning of the concept of creating schools to teach children. Sometimes, ideas and concepts evolve slowly over many generations of thinkers. Way before the idea of public schools was first promoted, the concepts that laid the foundation for public education were being formed. One of the changes in thinking was the translation of the Christian Bible into common languages in the 13th century. As people began to hear the ideas of the bible in common languages, they began to think of themselves in new ways. The idea that each person is infused with the image of God is a very ancient concept, and it took centuries for it to become part of the common understanding.

As people began to think of God’s image within each individual, it became possible to consider individuals as capable of developing that image. People possess within themselves resources that, when developed, can empower them to learn and grow. Whether or not this change in thinking was prompted by the translation of biblical texts from Latin into common languages is unclear. Still, after a few years, new philosophies began to emerge.

Historians refer to the eighteenth century as the Age of Enlightenment. It is unclear whether new ideas were emerging at a more rapid pace. Still, it was during that time that European philosophers began to publish ideas that underpinned a rise in the demand for individual liberty. The American and French Revolutions emerged from specific political events, but they also stemmed from the growth of new ways of thinking.

One of the concepts that had been mulling for a long time was the concept of “Bildung.” The German word first appeared in early translations of the Bible from Latin to German. It has to do with the image of God in individuals. German poets and philosophers picked it up in the late 18th century. Among those was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who proposed the structure of modern education, beginning with primary school and continuing through to university. Humboldt published an essay called “Theory of Bildung,” in which he proposes that educational systems can be formed that encourage the emergence of wisdom and well-being for all people, not just the elite. The shift of focus to the development of personality as opposed to simply learning a trade gave rise to the idea that learning has its own intrinsic value. Beyond merely memorizing facts, students learn about their innate ability to ask questions, conduct research, and form their own opinions.

Influenced by Humboldt’s concepts, John Dewey would later write, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

While those philosophical and educational ideas were emerging, modern governments were also developing. An educated population is capable of participating in self-governance. Democracy becomes possible.

We have inherited generations of layers of ideas and concepts that shape how we think of ourselves and the world. However, the emergence of new ideas does not erase existing ones. Alongside ideas of individual liberty and potential are ideas of classism and notions that not all people are equal. By the middle of the 20th century, Eric Fromm was writing about the fear of freedom and the human tendency to accept authoritarian systems, even when they are aware that greater freedom is possible.

We must understand the current debate about freedom of expression within the context of centuries of evolving ideas and perspectives. Ours is not the first generation where ideas, often expressed in humor, have been perceived as threats to those in power. It is not a mistake that freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and freedom to petition are ensconced in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 in the context of the rich development of philosophy and education.

Understanding the potential of each individual and their capacity to learn and grow is essential to the development of a charter of fundamental rights. This complex intertwining of ideas, philosophies, educational systems, and government continues in the debates and arguments of our time. Fundamental rights are not absolute. One individual’s expression of freedom cannot be allowed to constrain another’s expression. It comes as no surprise to students of the history of philosophy that politicians who campaigned on protecting specific freedoms rush to constrain those freedoms as soon as they come into power. The one who shouts the loudest may not be expressing the most important ideas.

History has repeatedly demonstrated that ideas cannot be suppressed. Leaders who seek to silence critics don’t stop ideas from circulating. Those in power might succeed in taking the comedian off the air, but they won’t change the reality that the joke is still on them.

The Salish people from Skagit tell the story of Raven and Crow’s Potlatch. Like other traditional tales, there are many different versions. The basic story is that Crow worked hard all summer to lay in food stores for winter, while Raven played and did not prepare. Raven laughed at Crow when Crow urged him to follow squirrel’s example. Raven was in trouble as winter approached and went to Squirrel to ask for help. Squirrel scolded Raven. He went looking for Bear, but Bear was sleeping. So he went to his cousin Crow’s place, but instead of begging, he devised a way to trick Crow. He began talking about Crow’s potlatch. Crow had not planned a potlatch, but Raven said everyone was talking about it and couldn’t wait to hear Crow sing. In those days, Crow had a beautiful voice like that of the Wood Thrush. Crow felt flattered and soon was preparing a potlatch. He cooked all of his stored food while Raven invited all of the animals to come. Crow practiced songs, but Raven told the other animals that it was he who was giving the potlatch. All of the animals came. Crow had prepared all of his food, but each time he tried to eat, Raven urged him to sing another song. After all, except Crow, had eaten their fill, the guests collected the leftovers and took them home as was the custom. Crow thought that he could survive on the generosity of the guests since he had no food, but they did not invite him to eat because they believed Raven’s lies and thought it was Raven who had hosted the potlatch. Crow was starving, and his singing voice was destroyed. He was forced to spend his winters begging for scraps of food and making scratchy sounds: Caw! Caw! Caw!

There are many other stories of Crow told by Coast Salish people. In her series of Coast Salish Stories, Andrea Fritz has a story about Crow helping Wood Duck.

Humans have long been aware of the intelligence of crows. They demonstrate sophisticated problem-solving skills, the use of tools, face recognition, and complex social behaviors. Some observers claim that crows hold grudges, plan for the future, and pass down knowledge from one generation to the next. One day, our grandchildren were briefly entertained by a man who fed crows by throwing peanuts under a car. He showed the children how the crows would land and go under the car to pick up the peanuts, while the seagulls, who also liked the peanuts, couldn’t figure out how to get the peanuts that were under the car. We have observed crows in our neighborhood who wait for the seagulls to get into garbage cans, tear open the bags, and spread the garbage before the crows sweep in and take the best bits away from the gulls.

Indigenous storytellers interpret the visits of birds and animals as signs for humans. They tell of messages carried by the creatures that benefit their human observers. My imagination doesn’t seem to be able to reveal the messages carried by birds and animals. Yesterday, as I sat outside for a few minutes, taking a break from my bike ride, a crow landed a few feet above my head. It walked back and forth on a building awning and looked down at me. Perhaps it was looking for scraps of food, but I had no food with me. I didn’t have anything to offer. The bird tipped its head one way and then another as if studying my face, looking directly at me. I looked back, but couldn’t discern its message.

Perhaps the crow was visiting to warn me of the coming of winter. Yesterday was a lovely, warm day, more like summer than autumn. But colder weather is coming. The days are getting shorter and the nights are colder than they were a few weeks ago. Rain is forecast for next week, and I know that even though the honeybees are busy during the day, the time is coming when I need to have their hives prepared for winter. I install small passive solar heaters on the hives and add feeders, allowing me to provide them with syrup as a supplement to their honey during cold periods.

On the other hand, it may be that the crow didn’t have a message for me other than a request that I bring some food with me next time. I could put a few peanuts in my pockets for another visit. I’m pretty sure that if I had placed peanuts on the railing next to me, the crow would have come down from the awning and come even closer.

Yesterday, it seemed like the crows were having a convention in our town. There were lots of crows everywhere I went in the morning. Then, in the afternoon, I could only see a couple of them. I don’t know where all of the others had gone. I made up a story about the crows’ convention. I joked about the different breakout sessions that they might be attending. They might have a workshop on tricking the gulls so the crows get the best scraps from the garbage. Another might be finding places to find food that other birds do not visit. Of course, they would have to have several workshops on murder.

I suppose that the use of the term “murder” to refer to a flock or group of crows comes from the birds’ scavenging. Observers saw them scavenging the bodies of dead animals. Perhaps they were common on battlefields and at cemeteries. I think some have interpreted the black color of the birds as an omen of misfortune or death.

A crow convention might also have genealogy working groups. Crows are members of the Corvidae family, which includes ravens, magpies, and blue jays. Crows didn’t inherit the size of the other birds and don’t have the showy tails of magpies and jays.

An ornithologist might provide a better explanation for why I saw more crows in the morning than in the afternoon, and I should be interested in the scientific information. On the other hand, telling stories about crows has been a part of coastal culture for thousands of years. Maybe I’ll just come up with one more story to add to the collection.

It is a long story that would take too much space to tell here, but we have two cutlery drawers. One, in the kitchen, has plenty of knives, forks, and spoons to set our dining table. It also has a generous assortment of serving utensils. The second, in a sideboard or buffet in our dining area, also has enough basic cutlery to set out a table. Unlike the set in our kitchen, this set has enough dessert or salad forks to serve a group of people. We don’t need two sets of cutlery. We have two sets because of the accumulations of a 52-year marriage, more than a plan to furnish our dining table in a particular manner.

Our son and his family are very busy with four children and two working parents. They have adopted particular efficiencies to make their lives work. One of those efficiencies is that they keep containers of knives, forks, and spoons on their big table. It saves them having to have a cutlery drawer, makes unloading the dishwasher simple, and means that anyone who wants a piece of cutlery has easy access to it. It also means that meals that don’t require certain pieces of cutlery don’t result in clean cutlery having to be washed. It works well for their family and provides a welcoming table for guests.

At our house, however, our grandchildren are learning to set the table. Forks go to the left of the plate. Knives to the right with the cutting side of the blade facing the plate. The spoon goes next to the knife. “Why do we do it this way?” “It is a tradition. It is the way we always did it at our house when I was growing up. It is the way your father set the table when he was a boy.” “What if we don’t need all this silverware?” “No worries, we have a dishwasher.” “How can I remember which side?” “Fork has four letters, left has four letters. A knife and a spoon have five letters each. Right has five letters.” When I explain that last bit, I have to be careful not to wander off into how to tell the port and starboard sides of a boat and which side gets the green light and which side gets the red light, but the number of letters in the words is a clue.

Our table can seat ten if we squeeze a bit. When we have more, some are sitting at the picnic table on the deck or at another table that we set up in the study. We love to have guests, and a bit of crowding for a dinner at our house doesn’t seem like a problem.

While there are differences between dinner at our house and dinner at our son’s house, they have more in common with each other than dinner at Windsor Castle. I read an article about the state banquet at Windsor Castle during the recent state visit of Donald Trump to the U.K. According to the CBC, 160 guests were seated at a 50-meter-long table. It’s a pretty big building to have a dining hall with a table that is nearly a city block long. The article went on to say that the table was set with 1,452 pieces of cutlery. Even with 160 guests, that comes to more than nine pieces for each guest. I assume that some of the cutlery was for serving dishes.
Not everyone needs a pickle fork. Still, even seven or eight pieces of cutlery for each place setting is more than I know how to arrange properly. The rule is that the dessert fork is placed next to the plate at the top, with its handle facing left, and the dessert spoon is placed above the fork, with its handle facing right. Add in a salad fork to the left of the dinner fork, and that would be six pieces of cutlery. I’m not sure where the other two would go. Maybe there is a steak knife between the plate and the dinner knife. It’s England, so I think you use both hands to eat with forks remaining in the left hand and knives and spoons used by the right hand. I would have to concentrate really hard to keep from switching sides.

At the dinner, there were speeches. We like to talk over our dinner, and we begin our meal with a prayer, but we generally don’t have speeches. I wonder if the acoustics are excellent in Windsor Castle, or do the speakers have to project their voices well? Maybe they use a PA system. Let’s see, does the microphone go above the dessert spoon? It is unlikely that I will ever be invited to a state dinner in Windsor Castle, so I don’t need to know all of the specifics.

There are numerous protocols and rules of etiquette for participants in state dinners at Windsor Castle. Speeches are supposed to be cordial and filled with compliments and principles shared in common. Warm references to things held in common are the preferred topics. King Charles, in his speech, implied the U.S. shares Britain’s perspective on the War in Ukraine, saying, “In two world wars, we fought together to defeat the forces of tyranny. Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.” President Trump didn’t mention Ukraine in his speech. The King spoke of the “precious opportunity to safeguard and to restore the wonders and beauty of nature for the generations who follow.” Trump didn’t mention the environment. The King referred to shared values. Trump boasted of the strength of the US economy and noted that the two nations share the same language.

According to the article that I read, this was the first state visit in the UK where the Beating Retreat ceremony was performed. Beating Retreat heralds the closing of the gates and the lowering of flags at the end of the day. The article didn’t mention why the ceremony was chosen for this visit, but I have my suspicions. I’ve heard several of Donald Trump’s speeches. Let’s say that he tends to go off script and go on and on and on with a lot of topics that don’t make a lot of sense. There needs to be some official ceremony to say, “That’s enough, let's all go to bed.”

I wonder if the President knew how to use each piece of cutlery that was provided to him.

On days when he doesn’t have an evening meeting, our son hurries home from work to spend some time with his children. It is helpful to their family if he can take responsibility for the youngest child while his wife puts the finishing touches on dinner. All the children in the family have limits on their screen time, but the school-age children are allowed an hour of video watching or audio book listening on the iPad at the end of each day. The youngest, however, isn’t ready for that much time in front of a screen. Sometimes he and his father do farm chores. Although he can’t carry much firewood, lift buckets of chicken feed, or toss bales to the cows, he enjoys being with his dad, and he likes to be around the animals. His favorite activity is going to the beach to throw stones in the water. We have a gravel beach, and sometimes we meet them when we walk down to watch the sunset.

Watching our youngest grandson throw rocks into the water brings back so many memories. I can remember going to the river with my father and throwing stones. My dad taught me to skip rocks, and I love searching for the perfect flat stone. I taught both of our children and numerous nieces and nephews to skip stones. When we meet our son and grandson at the beach, I can’t resist joining them. Our son is the family’s most talented stone skipper. He has a left-handed underarm throw that gets the rock to the water at just the correct velocity and spin to make a long series of splashes.

Just in case you aren’t a fan of the art of skipping stones, I need to clarify that there are two ways to judge a stone’s throw. Skippers count the number of slashes. It’s pretty easy to get a stone to skip once, resulting in two splashes. A bit more velocity in the throw and in the spin can result in multiple skips. It is common for us to achieve six to eight splashes, and we’ve gotten lucky with as many as a dozen. Skimmers are getting splashes, but the goal is not to count the number of splashes, but rather to judge the distance traveled. When I was a kid, getting a stone all the way across the river so that it landed on the opposite bank was the goal. We skimmed our stones. A good trip across the river might involve two or three splashes, but it made the distance.

I don’t know about competitive stone skipping, but the world of competitive stone skimming was rocked by scandal this year. Eastdale is a tiny car-free island off the coast of Scotland, where there is a tradition of holding the World Stone Skimming Championship each year. The rules of their competition are simple. All stones must be “naturally formed” on the island. Competitors are not allowed to import stones for the contest. And all stones must pass through the official measuring device called the “ring of truth.” It is a piece of flat steel with a precise 3-inch hole cut in it,

This year, the event drew 400 competitors, each of whom threw three stones. That’s 1,200 stones that had to be inspected with the “ring of truth.” Competitors came from 27 countries. The competition was remarkable in that it was the first time a person from the United States won. Jon Jennings, of Kentucky, skimmed his stones a cumulative distance of 177 meters. It isn’t bad, considering that Jennings is primarily a stone skipper who runs stone skipping contests back at home. The only prize of the competition in Eastdale is a trophy and bragging rights. No betting is allowed.

His victory, however, came after the competition was marred by scandal. Kyle Matthews, the official judge of the event, examined all the stones used by competitors. However, when the throwing began, some observers noted that some competitors’ stones were suspiciously round, too perfect to be natural. Upon further examination, it was discovered that there had been some “nefarious shenanigans.” When confronted, the competitors with the suspicious stones confessed to their mistakes and accepted disqualification.

Matthews won’t name the disqualified persons, but did say they “expressed their sorrow, sadness, and apologized for bringing the sport into disrepute.” What they had done was to gather larger stones and then ground them down so that they were perfectly round and fit the “ring of truth” too perfectly. The winner noted that there were some attempts at cheating, but was grateful that they were discovered before the competition was completed. “I think that it’s one of those fair statements that, you know, cheaters never win and winners never cheat,” he said.

When we go to the beach, we don’t worry about changing the stones that we find. A gravel beach doesn’t have that many flat stones. The action of the waves tends to round them into balls rather than flattening them into disks. And we don’t throw many three-inch stones. The ones we find are usually smaller. And we don’t compete. Our grandson hasn’t yet mastered the art of skipping. He’s content with a single splash for each stone. He has figured out that bigger stones mean bigger splashes. However, bigger stones are harder to throw, so he has to select stones that he can actually get to sail out over the water a few feet. His father and I look for the flattest stones we can find and occasionally find one that will give us a pleasant amount of splashes.

I’m sure that children have been throwing stones into water throughout the entire course of human evolution on this planet. And I’m sure that millions have discovered the combination of spins that produces skipping and skimming. People will continue to do both for as long as there are people on Earth. As the judge of the contest says, “There’s something very pure and very satisfying watching stones skim across water.” We’re lucky to be able to witness that purity and feel that satisfaction as often as we want.

My childhood home stands at the corner of 5th Avenue and McLeod Street in Big Timber, Montana. Big Timber is a small town. First Avenue was also US Highway 10 before the Interstate Highway was built. That meant that all the trucks passing east or west through that part of Montana had to go through our town on a street that was four blocks from our house.

One block from 1st Avenue is Railroad Street, which runs next to the train tracks. There are no longer passenger trains that pass through Big Timber, but when I was a child, two passenger trains were traveling in each direction. Only one train in each direction stopped in our town. The other was an express that stopped only at larger cities. The express trains, however, did drop mail bags and bundles of the Billings Gazette Newspaper without stopping. In addition to the passenger trains, a dozen or more freight trains were passing through town each day. Freight trains regularly left cars with bigger shipments on a siding next to Railroad Street. Our father’s business received farm machinery on rail cars. The cars would be parked next to a loading dock, and we would have 24 hours to unload them before they moved on. Although the passenger trains no longer stop, the number of freight trains has increased recently, with three coal trains in each direction.

Due to the location of our house, we could easily hear the trucks and trains rumbling through town, as well as the train whistles warning of the crossing at McLeod Street. Our bedroom was on the second floor of our house, and we slept with the windows open, except on the coldest winter days. I don’t remember that the noise of the trains and trucks ever made it hard to sleep. I might occasionally wake when I heard a train whistle or when a truck applied its Jake brake at the edge of town, but I’d go right back to sleep. Night noises were just part of living in that place.

There were other night noises. We often heard the coyotes singing in the hills. Occasionally, an airplane would fly low overhead on approach to the airport, though there wasn’t much nighttime activity at our small airport. The fire whistle would sound, summoning volunteers to fight fires or respond to a severe traffic accident. Once in a while, an ambulance would use its siren on its way to the hospital located right behind our house.

I’ve lived in other places where there was more noise. When we lived in Chicago, we lived on 57th Street, which was a corridor for ambulances and fire trucks. When we first moved into the apartment, it seemed to me that sirens were passing by the building all night long, but I quickly adapted and learned to sleep through the noise. We lived in Boise, Idaho, for ten years, with railroad tracks right behind our backyard fence. It wasn’t the main line, just the Amtrak spur to the train depot, which was a few blocks away. So, we only had one train in each direction each day, but both trains came during hours when we were usually sleeping. I would only be woken by train noise when the west-bound train was running late.

The house where we live now is a mile from an oil refinery that runs 24 hours a day. The refinery's processes are relatively quiet, but there is a constant hum emanating from the facility. In addition, the trains that carry crude oil to the refinery and refined products away, as well as the trucks that haul fuel away, have their own distinct sounds. Most of the crude oil arrives by ship on the sea, and we don’t hear the sounds of it being transferred to the pipeline at the shore.

Inside our house, however, there are other sounds. The most prominent sounds are two antique clocks, both of which have loud ticking sounds. They both chime on the hour, and one chimes on the half hour. Our refrigerator is relatively quiet, but it has an ice maker that clatters when it spills ice into the collection tray. Our heating and air conditioning systems have a large fan that makes some noise.

I’ve learned to sleep with a certain level of background noise, and each time we move, the night noises are different from those where we used to live. I’ve adjusted quickly to the new sounds. I’m not the world’s best sleeper, but noise generally isn’t one of the reasons I wake in the night.

I was inspired to write this essay by lying in my bed and listening to the night noises. They are all familiar and comfortable to me. But they might prove to be challenging to someone who wasn’t used to the sounds of our house. The clocks are pretty loud. However, when we have guests, they don’t complain about the sound. I’m pretty sure that our son and daughter-in-law’s home, just down the road from ours, is even quieter. They have 10 acres, so the neighbors are farther away. They don’t have any clocks that make noise. Their primary heat source is a wood stove, so their furnace fan doesn’t run very often.

When our grandchildren were babies, our son and his wife had a white noise machine that they would turn on when putting the baby to sleep. The theory is that because babies are surrounded by the sounds of their mother’s heartbeat and breathing, a certain level of background noise calms them. I think the white noise machine would make it challenging for me to sleep. I doubt that it would be calming. Of course, I have no conscious memory of my transition into the world. My mother told me that I was a sound sleeper when I was tiny.

Children are growing up these days who don’t know the sound of a mechanical clock. For them, TikTok is a social media platform where people watch short videos. However, I do not need the videos. I do, however, sleep better with the tick-tock of the clocks in my house.

People of faith have been telling stories of freedom for a very long time. The stories of the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt have existed in written form for thousands of years. The oldest surviving manuscripts date back to around 250 BCE, and it is commonly believed that written versions of the story existed before these were preserved. The majority of contemporary scholars date the composition of the first books of the Hebrew scriptures to around the 5th century BCE.

The events that they report are much older than the written stories. The slavery of the people of Israel might align with the reign of Pharaoh Rameses II, around 1250 BCE. It could be even more ancient. The books of Kings in the bible report that Solomon began building the Temple 480 years after the Exodus, so that the Exodus could have occurred as early as 1446 BCE.

However you count the years, the stories are ancient. We have been telling them for thousands of years. Somewhere along the way, although we don’t know precisely when, a tradition developed of telling the stories in the first person. Instead of talking about those people long ago, many people recall the events as being about us. “When we were slaves in Egypt,” begins one of the contemporary liturgies. We treat the ancient stories with deep respect in part because they are so relevant to the lives we live today. We believe that the stories have much to teach us about how to live in the present generation. We teach our children and grandchildren not just to preserve the ancient texts, but also to provide them with resources that they might live lives of freedom.

Freedom, however, is a complex concept. Our ancient stories teach us that our people have not always gotten things right when it comes to freedom. Our stories report that Abram and Sarai left the lands of their ancestors in search of freedom and a future. Along the way, their lives became entangled in a lie to Pharaoh about the nature of their relationship. Later their lives are made complex by a son born to a slave. Eventually, another son is born to them. His story becomes complex when his twin sons struggle over inheritance. One of them has children with four different women in search of love and legacy. Those children sell one of their siblings into slavery, but he works his way into the favor of his captors and a position of power. Driven by famine to the land where he lived, his brothers and their children eventually became enslaved. Moses, who was born into the extended family but raised as a child of the powerful ruling family, leads the people from slavery to freedom. Still, they don’t recognize the freedom and long for a return to Egypt. They wander in the wilderness for a generation and experiment with idol worship in part because they don’t know how to live as free people.

The stories are complex. The summary above doesn’t begin to explore all the nuances and twists of the plot. Throughout all these ancient stories, a theme of slavery and freedom prevails. The people long for freedom, but wrestle with how to live as free people.

Those stories have much to teach us about freedom. It is a word and a concept that is routinely misused and misunderstood in our country today. There are a lot of people who believe that their freedom is increased through the oppression of others. Historian Timothy Snyder, author of the bestseller On Tyranny, writes that the concept of freedom has been distorted to make us all less free. He makes a distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom to.” Negative freedom, the kind of freedom that is about being against things, is a trap. It is reflected in the popular sentiment that individual freedom is freedom from government, freedom from regulation, and freedom from laws. The result is the deconstruction of government that we are witnessing under the current administration. Dismantling government does not result in freedom. When the government becomes dysfunctional, it can’t provide for the basic needs of the people.

Removing restrictions on air and water pollution results in less freedom for future generations, who are forced to live with the consequences of pollution. Removing vaccine mandates results in more illness and less freedom.

The current administration uses the word “freedom,” but detains people based on the color of their skin or the language they speak. It sends innocent people to a foreign gulag based on tattoos they have. It sends military troops into cities against the wishes of local leaders. It removes experienced, dedicated, and competent public servants and eliminates essential services, including food assistance and healthcare. It says, “you don’t need government,” but uses government to oppress people. It claims efficiency, but produces record deficits.

To those familiar with the ancient stories of our people, these are familiar stories. The prophets warned about empire. They explained how the treatment of orphans, widows, and immigrants was inextricably linked to the well-being of the wider community. They warned of the corruption of kings and the dangers of freedom “from.”

The ancient texts not only warn about “freedom from,” but teach about positive freedom: “freedom to.” Real freedom comes from choosing faithfulness to one God. It values community and understands that the freedom of one is connected to the freedom of all. You can’t become free on your own. Freedom requires cooperation. Freedom comes from understanding that you belong to a multi-generational community. Freedom does not come from the accumulation of wealth or power. It comes from faithfulness and sacrifice. People become free not by defining what they reject, but by discovering with whom and to whom they can be faithful. Freedom is found in promises kept.

However, as the stories of our people clearly illustrate, the lessons of freedom have to be learned over and over again. We easily stray from the path that leads to freedom. We frequently make choices that lead to tyranny. We still need the old texts because even after thousands of years, we have not yet learned the lessons they teach.

There was a lot of talk about the arrival of autumn at church yesterday. It may have been because it was a gray day with some rain. It may have been because the temperature has been chilly in the mornings for several days. It may have been because the leaves are turning color. It may have been because members of the congregation are educated and know that the equinox and the official start of the new season are a week from today.

Of course, there are plenty of other reasons. Talk of the change of seasons might have been more prevalent because the sermon didn’t engender much comment or conversation. It might have been more prevalent because people are emotionally exhausted with all of the news of increasing fascism, confusing trade policy, increasing inflation, decreasing employment, immigration raids, deployment of military to U.S. cities, and a daily barrage of news. The change of seasons is a safe topic compared to many others that might come up.

The tilt of our planet means that either the Northern or Southern Hemisphere receives more illumination from the sun, except during the two equinoxes. Each spring and fall, the sun shines directly over the equator, giving roughly the same amount of light to both hemispheres. The equinoxes are the traditional times for the start of spring and fall. The word equinox comes from Latin and means “equal night,” referring to the times of sunrise and sunset. An equinox technically would be a day with 12 hours between sunrise and sunset. The tilting planet, however, combines with terrain and other factors to mean that the moment of equal day and night varies by location on the Earth.

Where we live, on the 49th parallel, the time of nearly equal day and night will come on the 24th or 25th of the month. We will, however, recognize the equinox along with the rest of the world on Monday, September 22. The variation of the length of days is a phenomenon of the nearness to one of the poles of the planet. People who live on or near the equator don’t experience much variation in the length of days and nights.

We are northerners, at least by US standards. The farthest south we have lived is Chicago, which is around the 42nd parallel. We are used to long days in the summer and long nights in the winter. The variation in the length of days and nights is significant enough for us to notice the differences in the places we have lived. Before our move to the 49th parallel, we lived near the 44th parallel in Rapid City, SD, for 25 years, and we really noticed the longer winter nights in our home here.

Longer winter nights also mean that the rate of change in the length of the day is more dramatic. We are losing more than 3 1/2 minutes each day now. That rate of change is enough to prompt us to think about the change of seasons. And, along with most of the rest of the country, the end of daylight saving time on November 2 will make the change seem more dramatic. On the day we shift our clocks, it will get dark before 5 pm, and we’ll have those early sunsets through the winter.

One of the places where the change in the length of days is apparent to me now that I am retired is that there is less time for outdoor recreation. Soon, there will be days when we take our daily walk after sunset. We wear reflective clothing and limit our walks to streets with sidewalks when it is dark. I also enjoy a bike ride first thing in the morning most days. Before long, that will mean waiting until after 8 to ride my bike. In the summer, I can go out at six or even earlier if I want.

The ways we react to the change in the length of the days are different than some of the animals we observe. The bees are settling down and preparing the hive for winter. Bees don’t hibernate, but they stick close to the queen when temperatures dip below 60 degrees. The hive shifts from relying on pollen and nectar brought in from outside to relying on the honey stored within. As one who harvests a portion of the honey, I give the bees a supplemental feeding of syrup in the winter to support them. The squirrels don’t hibernate, but they, too, rely on food that has been stored over the summer to sustain them in the cold of winter. Animals that do hibernate, like bears, are trying to store up as much fat as possible right now. They are eating voraciously. It is a good time to give them plenty of distance as they prepare for hibernation. Migrating animals are on the move. The Canada geese are starting to collect into larger flocks, and we see the V formations flying overhead. We haven’t yet noticed the swans and snow geese, but they will arrive soon. Trumpeter and Timdra swans in this part of the world are a sure sign that winter is approaching. They’ll start coming in early November.

Like the other members of the congregation, I joined in the conversations about the approach of autumn. I enjoy the change of seasons. I’m even looking forward to a few rainy and foggy days. The lawn has been dormant for a couple of months, but the green is starting to return. I didn’t have to water my outdoor plants yesterday as the rain was sufficient. However, I know myself well enough to anticipate the days when I will grow tired of the rain and cold and start to long for another change of season. When we lived in the Dakotas, we used to say that if you didn’t like the weather, all you had to do was stick around. It was bound to change soon. That applies here as well.

So I’ll count another season. I’ve collected quite a few in my life, enough to keep looking for the next one.

I have had a fascination with the north for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up, I knew a pilot who regaled me with stories of bush flying in Alaska. I toyed with the idea of becoming a bush pilot and going to Alaska to live. I did become a pilot, but it was never my primary pursuit in life, and I never came close to being good enough for off-airport flying in Alaska. I took up winter sports, and we came close to attending the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. However, we got caught up in a ticket scam, and by the time all that got sorted out, there were very few tickets available for the events we wanted to see. I have dipped my toes in the North Sea off the coast of England and the Netherlands, and we have traveled as far north as Edmonton in Alberta. I’ve been talking about taking a trip to Alaska with a side trip up the Dempster Highway past the Arctic Circle, through Inuvik, to Tuktoyaktuk, to swim in the Arctic Ocean for many years. I’m fairly sure that some of my friends are wondering if I will ever take the trip, or if I’ll talk about it and never follow through. Sometimes I share their skepticism.

We considered taking the trip during one of our sabbaticals when we were still working, but we never quite managed to work it out. Other trips took us in different directions. Then we retired. The first summer was invested in moving. Since then, COVID-19, wildfires, and family obligations have combined in a way that has prevented us from traveling north. We now live on the border with Canada. There are lots of trips north that we can take with less investment of time and money than going all the way to Alaska or the Arctic Circle. We have yet to explore much of British Columbia, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories lie beyond that.

Sometimes I think I’m in love with the idea more than with the effort it takes to make the dream come true. The dream remains, however, and we are taking some solid steps with the intention of making 2026 the year of our great trip north.

Part of the attraction of a trip north for me is the sense that things are changing quickly. The Arctic is experiencing rapid warming due to global warming. The sea ice is melting at an alarming rate. Shipping in the Arctic Ocean is rapidly expanding due to the decrease in sea ice. Roads are being made and improved. More tourists travel north every year. When I started to dream of an Arctic trip, the only road to Tuktoyaktuk was a winter ice road. Inuvik was the end of the road. Now, there is a good gravel road to Tuk, and the influx of people like me, who want to see the Arctic Ocean, is shifting the character of the remote Indigenous village. Part of the lure of visiting such a remote location is the opportunity to meet and learn from the people who have made the place their home for generations. Their world has been invaded by broadcast television, the Internet, and tourists from the south, bringing problems from the outside, including severe addiction to dangerous substances. It isn’t just the ice that is shifting. The culture is shifting as well.

Although I have not yet traveled to the North Country, I have read about it more than the average person in my community. I take every opportunity I can to talk with those who have made the trip. I have friends who are on their way back home from a trip to Tuk this summer, and I’ll be peppering them with questions soon.

For decades, scientists have been developing theories and proposing experiments to slow the warming of the Arctic. Proposals for artificially modifying the climate through geoengineering continue to surface. Several feasibility studies have been conducted. Proposals, including thickening sea ice by pumping water onto the surface, fertilizing the ocean with iron to cool the water, and seeding clouds with sunlight-reflecting particles, had all been put forward. So far, it is questionable whether such proposals can be put into effect on the scale required. The Arctic is a vast area, and such projects would have to be massive and involve substantial budgets.

Beyond the scale of such proposals lies the very real possibility of unintended consequences. Humans don’t have a very good track record when it comes to the environment. Even when we are trying to correct past mistakes, we are still prone to making new ones. Scientists are seriously questioning whether such efforts should be made at all. Cooling the Arctic without addressing the broader issue of global warming may accelerate the warming of mid-latitudes and equatorial regions. That would make storm systems even more powerful, and storms might bring more heat to the Arctic, exacerbating the problem geoengineers were seeking to correct.

A majority of climate scientists agree that the key to slowing the melting of Arctic sea ice is reducing the use of carbon-based fuels. Even as they explore other options, scientists agree that decarbonization is the most feasible and crucial step for humans to take. Geoengineering as a solution is so expensive and fraught with unintended consequences that, at this point, its use is speculative. So far, it is in the same realm as my trip to the Arctic. It has been imagined, but has not yet become a practical reality.

The solution to global warming will require dedication over a prolonged period of time. I doubt that we will see a reversal of human-caused climate change in my lifetime. That does not mean that we shouldn’t try. Some of the most worthy projects humans have undertaken require multiple generations for completion. Some worthy projects will never be finished.

A trip to the Arctic, however, is a much smaller adventure. For now, I’m convinced it is one we’ll accomplish.

I’m hesitant to write about the horrific killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. I don’t want to pretend that I understand or know more about the crime than I do. I am often quiet as criminal investigations continue. I believe that the criminal justice system has the potential for learning about crime. I know that behind the scenes, away from the media attention, investigators are conducting careful work. At the same time, prosecutors prepare legal strategies to bring the defendant, who is in custody, to trial. There is more evidence and more information than is being reported. I hope that the evidence will come to light in a careful judicial process. Our justice system is carefully designed to seek the truth. Like other human systems, it is not perfect. Investigators, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and juries make mistakes. The system of appeals is in place as a potential remedy to those mistakes, but it remains a human system.

I have been similarly reluctant to write about the case of Vance Boelter, who has been charged with stalking and murdering Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and with stalking and shooting Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife. According to the charges filed in the case, the defendant had a list of possible targets and went to the homes of other public officials, intending to make violent attacks. The case will continue to unfold deliberately. I expect that there is more that can be learned from the legal process that follows horrible acts of political violence.

Furthermore, the families of the victims of political violence deserve respect and peace. I don’t want to write words that might exacerbate their suffering. They already have to deal with so much attention from invasive media. Their journey of grief is not helped by others making assumptions about what they feel.

I am, however, consuming some of the media reports about these murders. I am interested in learning more. I am asking myself and others what can be done to prevent future acts of violence. As such, I am interested in an analogy used by Utah Governor Spencer Cox during the press conference at which it was announced that a suspect is in custody in the Charlie Kirk case yesterday. Cox, a Republican, has worked for collaboration with Democrats and tried to play down the polarization that marks current US politics. In the past, he has worked with Democratic governors on issues such as homelessness, housing, and teen social media use. In his address yesterday, he called upon all to “build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now.” Speaking to young Americans, he said, “You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option. But through those words, we have a reminder that we can choose a different path. Your generation has an opportunity.”

The analogy that Governor Cox made was with cancer. “Social media is a cancer on our society right now,” he said. At first, his analogy made me uncomfortable. I’m sure that there will be plenty of people looking for simple answers who will rush to blame social media for the violence. Indeed, there is a lot of violent language and imagery on social media. However, serious problems rarely have a single cause, and laying blame can divert attention from the kind of careful, critical thinking that is required to come up with complex answers to complex problems. Another politician saying “Social media is bad” doesn’t provide a solution.

Upon reflection, however, I think the analogy has some value. Cancer is not a single disease with a single treatment. It is a term applied to a wide range of conditions that exist in human bodies. Like a lot of others, I live with cancer. I want to be careful with my words here. I am not dying from cancer. Some cells in my body are not reproducing in a typical fashion. Biopsies have come back reporting the presence of cancer. In the case of the skin cancers that have been discovered, a simple surgical remedy is effective. Having the cancerous cells removed, however, is not the end of the story. I need to be regularly examined by a dermatologist, and I receive treatment for pre-cancers a couple of times each year. I also have prostate cancer. The cells from that biopsy have been genetically tested to determine the aggressiveness of the cancer I have, and for now, it is being treated by active surveillance. With regular testing and treatment, this particular cancer is one with which I can live. Not all cancers are death sentences.

The solution to the violence of social media does not lie in a complete ban. Like cancer, it is a reality of our lives. We need to learn to live with it. Living with it will require that we learn about its various forms and uses.

Despite the horror of the violence we have witnessed, despite our awareness of the role of social media in promoting division and violence, I am continuing to use social media. I have Facebook and Instagram accounts. I post regularly to Substack and promote my account on other media platforms. I am being careful to avoid violent language. I don’t use my accounts to attack. I strive to provide meaningful reflection and foster engagement and dialogue. But I am not an expert. I am likely to make mistakes.

For now, I am mulling the analogy of cancer and social media. Both are capable of deadly results. Both are realities in my life and will remain realities for as long as I live. The questionnaire for my recent flu shot, like most other medical forms, asked me if I had been diagnosed with cancer. I now have to check that box each time I fill out similar paperwork. My insurance company is aware of the diagnosis. It has become an integral part of my identity now. My smartphone is currently being charged, and I’ll be checking it and scrolling through social media several times today. I will continue to live with it. I must never forget how dangerous it can be and how carefully I need to make my choices whenever I use it.

As far as I know, there have never been monsters under my bed. Actually, the bed on which I sleep has a set of drawers under the mattress, and there is no room under there for any monsters. I know that children sometimes have fears of monsters in their homes, whether under their beds or in a closet or other closed space. I can’t ever remember a time when I thought that there were monsters in my house.

I did have little brothers when I was a child. Except for a couple of years during college when I had a private room, I’ve generally shared my bedroom with someone else. Little brothers can be a nuisance. They can be noisy. They can interrupt one’s sleep. But my parents didn’t like it when I called them monsters.

A couple of mosquitoes flying around one’s head can be annoying, but I don’t imagine them as being large enough to swallow me in a few bites. So far, none of my encounters with mosquitoes has been fatal.

Recently, our three-year-old grandson has declared, on several occasions, that dragons eat oxen. A creature large enough to eat a cow is impressive, but dragons, being mythical creatures, are not likely to be seen in the house. I know that children have fears and that sometimes their fears are irrational. Parents and other caregivers need to be cautious in helping children develop skills to cope with their fears. This, of course, starts with providing a safe environment for every child. It may also involve careful choices of books to read to children. Parents and others need to be aware of children’s developmental stages and read books that are appropriate at each stage of a child’s growth. That is especially challenging in a family with children of different ages. Our three-year-old has three siblings who range up to 13 years old. There has been regular reading of Harry Potter stories in his home for his entire life. I’m not a big fan of the series, but I don’t think there are any dragons in the series. The books feature magic, and this magic can be used to harm people. There are plenty of other children’s books that feature dragons to have captured his imagination.

I’ve never had a monster under my bed, and I’ve never seen a dragon. I haven’t spent much time thinking about what a dragon would eat. Maybe a mythical beast doesn’t need three square meals a day.

Several times, we have been lucky to see gray whales feeding in the bay. An adult gray whale is a big animal. They can grow to be more than 40 feet long and weigh over 40 tons. That’s bigger than a city bus. They don’t appear to be dangerous to humans when eating ghost shrimp from the bottom of the bay. I suppose that if one got too close in a boat, the tail of the whale could do a lot of damage. Gray whales are known as “medium-sized” whales. They are larger than orcas but smaller than humpback whales. Once hunted to near extinction, sightings of humpback whales in the islands are becoming more common.

There are, however, stories of sea monsters that have been told for generations around here. John Kirk, cofounder of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, reports that sightings of sea monsters in the San Juan Islands are more common than sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. As far as I know, the Loch Ness Monster, like dragons, is a mythical creature.

Kirk, however, is convinced that sea serpents live in the waters of the Salish Sea. He cites reports of sightings of such creatures dating back to 1909. Most recently, two teenagers reported a sighting that occurred while they were sitting on a dock near Campbell River. They described the creature as a serpent with a three-foot-long head, fangs, and a spiky tail. Kirk calls the creature a cadborosaurus.

I don’t doubt that there are creatures in the sea that scientists have not formally identified, but I’m not inclined to go looking for sea serpents, either. Maybe some creatures have no interest in encountering humans.

I do, however, like hearing stories of sea serpents. People have had fears of sea creatures for as long as humans have ventured out onto the waters of the sea. Fishers have gone to sea and not returned, leaving their loved ones with no definitive knowledge of what happened to them. While it is easy to imagine storms intense enough to sink ships, our imaginations often lead us away from everyday occurrences to something more mysterious. There are places in the sea that are very deep and unexplored. It isn’t hard to imagine that there could be creatures that we have not yet seen, and, given the giant whales that do visit our waters, it isn’t difficult to imagine that some of the unseen sea creatures might be very large.

I’ll keep looking out to sea, and if I see any monsters, I’ll be sure to report my sightings. In the meantime, I’ll keep listening for stories. I will, however, be careful to choose which stories I repeat to my grandchildren.

Yesterday was an anniversary day for me, although I didn’t celebrate with any events. Instead, I went about my usual routine, which involved a bike ride, writing a poem, taking a short nap, and going for a walk with my wife. I cooked dinner and spent a quiet evening watering the plants in our yard and catching up on some important emails.

On September 10, 1978, in a service of the Yellowstone Association of the Montana Conference of the United Church of Christ, I was ordained to the Christian ministry. At that same service, my wife, Susan, was also ordained.

Before ordination, we had both been examined by the Church and Ministry Committee to assess our preparedness for ministry. I presented proof of my academic preparedness to that committee, including a four-year undergraduate degree, a three-year Master of Divinity degree from an accredited theological seminary, and a professional doctorate also from an accredited seminary. The doctorate was not required, but it was presented as evidence that I had gone above and beyond the minimum requirements. I also presented and defended an ordination paper that described my call to the ministry and expressed my lifelong commitment to it. Also required was a call to ministry, in my case, a call to serve as the pastor and teacher of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Reeder, North Dakota, and First Congregational United Church of Christ in Hettinger, North Dakota.

After being examined by the Church and Ministry Committee, I was presented to and examined by a meeting of the Yellowstone Association for the purpose of examining my fitness for ministry. According to the faith and practice of the United Church of Christ, I presented my ordination paper. I answered questions from the gathering of representatives from the congregations in the association. The meeting required a quorum of churches to be represented, a gathering of clergy and lay persons at which the lay persons were the majority, and had to be preceded by an official notice to all of the congregations in the Association.

The service of ordination was also an official meeting of the Association, with a roll call of churches recorded by the Association's clerk. Special guests for the occasion and the preceding theological conference included Rev. Ross Snyder, professor of Christian Education at San Francisco Theological Seminary, and Rev. William Peterson, director of the Wholistic Health Care Center in Hinsdale, Illinois.

During the ordination service, there was an additional formal examination. I was asked to reaffirm my call to the Christian ministry and my acceptance of that call. I affirmed that I hear the word of God in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and that I accept the word of God as the rule of Christian faith and practice. I promised to be diligent in my prayers and study of scriptures as well as the public duties of my office. I promised zeal in maintaining the truth of the gospel and the peace of the church, and to speak the truth in love. I promised faithfulness in preaching and teaching the gospel, in administering the sacraments and rites of the church, and in exercising pastoral care and leadership. I promised to keep silent all confidences shared with me. I promised to regard all people with equal love and concern, and to minister to their needs. I accepted the faith and order of the United Church of Christ and promised to reach out ecumenically to all who are in Christ, showing Christina love to people of other faiths and people of no faith.

After my wife, Susan, was also examined with the same questions, the members of the Association were asked once again to declare worthiness for ordination and support of our ministries. We then knelt before the congregation and received the laying on of hands and the prayer of ordination. As we rose, we were vested with stoles, and our ordination was declared.

At the time, I planned to serve for three or four years as a local church pastor before entering specialized healthcare ministry. I had served an internship with the Wholistic Health Care Centers and believed that I would serve as a chaplain and pastoral counselor. The Centers, however, required pastoral experience in addition to certification as a licensed counselor before being eligible for full-time employment as a pastoral counselor. I set out to gain four years of experience. What followed, however, was a path of ministry that took a different course. I served seven years as co-pastor with my wife of the two congregations in North Dakota followed by ten years as co-pastor with my wife of a congregation in Boise, Idaho, followed by twenty-five years as senior pastor of a congregation in Rapid City, South Dakota, after which I retired, but came out of retirement to serve an additional two years as co-minister of faith formation with my wife at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Bellingham, Washington. Add up those years, and it took me 44 years in the parish to gain those 4 years of experience.

In retirement, I have maintained my full standing as an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, fulfilling my continuing education requirements, submitting an annual report to the Committee on Ministry of the Pacific Northwest Conference, and participating in the conference's meetings. I occasionally provide pastoral support and pulpit supply to local congregations.

And, as I have been doing for 47 years, I revisit my ordination vows and re-commit to the promises I made at my ordination. I believe in keeping my promises, and I have no intention of breaking the ones I have made.

These days, my ministry is mostly writing with an occasional sermon delivered to a congregation to support an active minister who needs to be out of the pulpit for a vacation, illness, or other reason. There are a few more faithful words to come from me as I look back on the life I have lived. I am grateful for the congregations that have called me to serve and for their support of my ministries. I am grateful to the members of the Yellowstone Association who were diligent and faithful in their examination, ordination, and support of me. Most of all, I am grateful to God who called me to the ministry and whose presence continues to call me.

The celebration of the anniversary didn’t require any pomp or circumstance. As has been true for my whole life, the most important part of the day was prayer.

A small group of us gathered last night in one of Bellingham’s city parks to walk among the tall Douglas Fir and Western red cedar trees. The gathering was part of an ongoing series of opportunities for church members to engage in brief meditations in outdoor locations. Our church’s Green Team hosts the events as an alternative to traditional meetings. The group works to promote long-term sustainability efforts in the church and the community. In the past, Green Team members have expanded the congregation’s recycling system, worked to have solar panels installed on the building, conducted an energy audit, promoted the installation of automatic light switches and water-saving devices in the building, and participated in the care of outdoor plants. The group has hosted a Climate Revival and a Sacred Earth Fair to involve the broader community in conversations about environmental sustainability in our area.

Green Team members have called the outdoor meditations “Nature Nurtures.” They are not formal worship services, but rather simple opportunities to gather with other people of faith in an outdoor setting to appreciate the goodness of God’s creation. Our first experience was held on the beach. We invited a poet to share some poems on themes of shore and horizon. Last night’s experience was focused on one of the beautiful heritage forests not far from the church building. We used the first part of Psalm 47:10 as a verse to focus our meditation:

“Be still and know that I am God.”
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know
Be still
Be

I enjoyed the simple meditation, and quietly repeated the verse in the pattern above several times as I walked among the trees, feeling their presence, watching the gray squirrels, listening to the birds. The experience wasn’t exclusively one of nature, as the park has several pickleball courts that provided their own musical sounds in the background. Still, I focused my attention carefully and tried to be mindful.

After about 15 minutes, however, my mind drifted from the Psalmist’s invitation to come into God’s presence to a completely different bible verse. In 1 Samuel, the rise of David within the leadership of Israel caused the sitting king, Saul, distress. As David’s popularity rose, Saul became fearful that his own power and popularity were waning. When David came home from battle with the Philistines, he was greeted with singing and dancing. The verses that were sung angered Saul. People chanted:

“Saul has killed his thousands
and David his ten thousands.”

I wondered, as I walked in the woods last night, if the songs the people sang were referring to mosquitoes.

There were certainly enough of the tiny flying insects swarming around my head to distract me from serious meditation and appreciation of nature. I didn’t succeed in killing thousands, but I did slap several dozen.

The idea of hosting a meditation in the forest was a slightly romantic vision. The reality was a bit more challenging. I’ll be interested in hearing others' evaluations when we gather in a couple of weeks to plan our next outdoor experience.

We are a group of idealists dedicated to making positive contributions to the world. Sometimes, however, I wonder about how effective we are. I am aware that the global climate crisis is a result of complex systems of consumerism, trade, and resource distribution. The small acts of our team have, at most, a minor impact. Turning off lights and conserving water in one church building will not reverse coral bleaching, deforestation, or carbon pollution. It is entirely reasonable to conclude that the fossil fuels we consumed driving to the park had a more negative impact than the awareness we raised. It is legitimate to ask ourselves whether or not it was worth the effort.

Contemplation of the meaning of our lives and work has been a part of our people's traditions for thousands of years. The songs and stories of the Bible that we use in our meditations are part of a complex history marked by both ups and downs. The verse from Psalm 48 that we used as our focus last night has a complicated history. For a biblical scholar, one of the challenges of the psalm comes from its numbering. While it is Psalm 48 in most English Bibles since the King James Version, it is Psalm 47 in Latin and Greek Bibles. It is generally used as a song of praise in Jewish and Christian liturgies and has been set to music multiple times. Most of the psalm focuses on Jerusalem as a place of God’s favor. By extracting a few words from a single verse, we were taking the words out of context.

The verses from Samuel to which my mind was drawn are part of a complex tale of palace intrigue. A few verses later, Saul attempts to kill David. David, however, escapes multiple attempts and eventually becomes king.

Our lives are far from simple, even when we try to make space for contemplation.

We were trying to be. The mosquitoes were trying to survive.

I suppose that some mystics and lovers of nature can ignore the mosquitoes and sit quietly and peacefully for extended periods to contemplate the beauty of nature and the glory of God. At least last night, I was not one of them.

As we planned our “Nature Nurtures” events, another team member suggested that we needed contingency plans in case of inclement weather. I suggested that we gather outside, regardless of the weather. We all have appropriate rain gear. Weather is part of the glory of creation. However, if a few mosquitoes can affect my meditation, I’m pretty sure that a few raindrops also could distract me.

Perhaps a brief meditation on the tiny insects is also a gift of God.

A few years ago, while visiting a friend who was undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer, I found myself in an intense discussion of the ideas in the book “Fear and Trembling” by Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard published the book under a pseudonym: “Johannes de silentio.” The Danish philosopher and theologian drew the title of the book from scripture: “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling,” (Philippians 2:12) I read the book when I was a college student, and it has occupied a place on my bookshelves since, but I have rarely referred to it over the years. After my initial conversation with my friend, I returned to my study and pulled down the book to refresh my memory.

Numerous scholars have written about Søren Kierkegaard, who is widely regarded as one of the founders of existentialism. My friend was fascinated by the ethical dilemma presented in the book. The title of the book hints at the dilemma. A couple of verses after the one from which the book gains its title, the author of the letter to the Philippians challenges readers to live ethical lives: “Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world, holding forth the word of life so that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.” (Philippians 2:14-16). The letter holds out what seems to be an impossible standard. How is it possible to live a life without blemish?

Kierkegaard begins his book with a discussion of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in obedience to God. The story, in Genesis 22, challenges my understanding of God. I’ve struggled with it repeatedly throughout my career. How can a good and loving God make such a demand? How can a faithful father even consider following the instruction? Kierkegaard uses the story to distinguish the religious and the ethical. Being religious demands faith, and faith compels Abraham to comply with what he perceives as God’s instruction. In the story, Abraham appears to be willing to sacrifice his son. He takes him to the mountain, binds him upon an altar, and raises the knife, only averting at the last moment to sacrifice an animal instead. Kierkegaard views this as a sign that Abraham is willing to do something ethically wrong to be religiously right.

I think that my friend’s interest in Kierkegaard and our ongoing conversations were part of his working out his personal faith and evaluating his own ethics as he faced the illness that would end his life. He had been a successful lawyer and prosecutor throughout a distinguished career. He had studied ethics and argued in favor of punishing those who had committed ethical violations. Prosecutors focus not only on crimes committed, but also on the process of determining the appropriate punishment for those crimes. I’m sure that as he looked back on his life and tried to gain a sense of integration, my friend was aware that there were many times when his faithfulness to the law had placed him in positions that caused him to question the ethical or moral consequences of the law.

Our conversation continued until it was cut short by his increasing illness and eventual death. I do not know if my friend found a sense of resolution. What I do know and admire about him is that he was willing to engage in serious self-evaluation even when it raised questions about the ethics of his life and career. He was a courageous man, and I admire that courage.

The reality is that being human involves engaging in complex moral decisions. Unintended consequences often confound the attempt to live a “right” or ethical life. Morality goes far beyond the application of a simple set of rules. When we dare to examine the motivation for our behavior, we discover that it is possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Human rules and systems of justice are prone to mistakes. Like Abraham, it is possible to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing, even when an obviously innocent victim is in our hands.

Life is complex. Sometimes our attempts at helping another creates dependencies and inequalities.

I was thinking of my friend’s honest wrestling with right and wrong near the end of his life as I have been wrestling with a minor decision in my own life. I’ve been asked to present a poem at a fundraising event. The cause supported, a local food bank, is a worthy cause. Hunger and homelessness are problems with real victims in our community. Indeed, providing food to hungry people is a charity worthy of our support. The event, however, involves a dessert auction. It is a simple thing, but somehow the idea of wealthy and comfortable people who rarely, if ever, feel the pangs of hunger paying large sums to eat decadent desserts so they can provide food to others strikes me as bizarre. “I’ll eat chocolate decadence so you can have a package of ramen.”

Whether or not I participate in the event is not a major ethical decision. I occupy a position of power. I can make a choice. Those receiving food from the pantry have fewer options. I pray, however, that I can find the courage to examine my motives and the broader context of my choice. May I, like my friend, look back with clarity and honesty that I, like him, might embrace the end of my life with fear and trembling.

Yesterday, as a part of our congregation’s “Gather In” celebration, a ring of tables was set up around the parking lot at our church. Each of the tables was decorated by a group in the church to offer information about the ministries of that group. There were tables for music groups, book groups, and fellowship groups. Many of the tables represented mission groups. I was helping to staff the table for our Green Team, a group of church members dedicated to promoting long-term sustainability for our congregation and community. Our group conducted an energy survey of the building, implemented an expanded recycling program, encouraged the installation of solar panels on the church roof, and educated congregational members about simple solutions they could implement in their daily lives. We hosted a climate revival to connect community members working toward long-term solutions to the climate crisis. We hosted a Sacred Earth Fair that brought together leaders in environmental justice and sustainability from around our region to discuss and coordinate further work. In the spring, our team led a worship service to celebrate Mother Earth and the power of God’s continuing creation.

While I was helping at the Green Team Table, I was also promoting the work of another group in the church, whose table was just a couple of tables away from the Green Team table. People of faith for alternatives to gun violence work within the church to raise awareness of the victims and survivors of gun violence. The group has held informational meetings about secure firearm storage, common-sense gun safety laws, and promoted the Wear Orange campaign. The group has hosted a community rally to raise awareness on National Gun Violence Awareness Day in June.

To honor the victims and survivors of gun violence, I wore a bright orange shirt that I wore as a volunteer in the Pennington County Search and Rescue Team.

Two parallel movements promote wearing orange shirts as symbols of commitment to protecting children. Both movements began in 2013. The Wear Orange campaign for victims and survivors of gun violence began after 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed in Chicago. Her friends wore orange to remember her. The color orange was chosen because it is what hunters wear to protect themselves and others in the woods. The first week of June each year is designed as a time to wear orange in honor of the victims and survivors of gun violence.

The same year, far away from Chicago, in Williams Lake, in central British Columbia, Chief Fred Robbins brought together former students and their families from the Secwepemc, Tsilhqot’in, Southern Dakelh and St’at’imic Nations along with mayors, school district officials, and members of civic organizations in the Cariboo Region, for a time of commemoration and reunion of students and families of the St. Joseph Mission Residential School that operated from 1891 to 1981. At that gathering, Phyllis Jack Webstad told her story of her first day at residential school:

“I went to the Mission for one school year in 1973/1974. I had just turned 6 years old. I lived with my grandmother on the Dog Creek reserve. We never had very much money, but somehow my granny managed to buy me a new outfit to go to the Mission school. I remember going to Robinson’s store and picking out a shiny orange shirt. It had string laced up in front, and was so bright and exciting – just like I felt to be going to school!

“When I got to the Mission, they stripped me, and took away my clothes, including the orange shirt! I never wore it again. I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t give it back to me, it was mine! The color orange has always reminded me of that and how my feelings didn’t matter, how no one cared and how I felt like I was worth nothing. All of us little children were crying and no one cared.”

The story moved people to begin a movement. Ever since, an annual Orange Shirt Day has been held on September 30 to promote conversation about the impact of Residential Schools and the legacy they have left behind. It is intended to be a day for survivors to be affirmed that they matter and to create bridges for reconciliation and healing. It is a day to remember that every child matters. The date was chosen because the fall was the season of the year when children were taken from their homes to residential schools. It is also an annual opportunity for schools to examine their anti-racism and anti-bullying policies for the coming school year.

I wear orange in honor of both the orange shirt movements, and I tried to tell both stories to those who asked me about my bright orange shirt yesterday.

In 2022, while I was serving as Interim Minister of Faith Formation at our church, the Collins Dictionary announced its Word of the Year. It was “permacrisis,” a noun to describe “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.” The word seemed especially relevant as we adjusted to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. It continues to reverberate as an accurate description as we are barraged by the news of the collapse of constitutional democracy in our country, the use of military force to attack our own citizens, the establishment of arrest quotas and internment camps where people are held without due process, the firing of competent and educated leaders, and the replacement of them with pseudo-scientists and conspiracy theorists. We are living in a permacrisis.

Our instinct in the face of a crisis is to speed up and engage in more activity because time is urgent. However, author and professor Jessica Riddell lectures and writes about a different approach, one that promotes long-term hope and human flourishing. She quotes Nigerian poet and scholar Bayo Akomolofe, “The Times are Urgent: We must Slow Down.” It is a concept that has enabled indigenous people around the world to survive the incessant pressures of colonization. It is a lesson I am continuing to learn from my Lakota and Coast Salish friends: “When facing a crisis, slow down so you have energy for the long haul.”

I wore orange yesterday. I will wear orange on September 30. I will wear orange next June. While I can dream of a day when reconciliation comes and violence is ended, I know that day may be a long time away - after the end of my time on this earth. I’m learning to slow down and understand that hope comes from the endurance of those who continue to witness day after day, year after year. Hope is not a sprint. It is a lifestyle. When I’m tempted to forget, I pull on my orange shirt.

Canadian Author, Miriam Toews, has won many literary awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award. Some of her novels have been made into feature films. But it is not fiction that has put her on my list of books to read. It is the intriguing title of her memoir, “A Truce that is Not Peace.”

I have been praying for peace for most, if not all, of my life. Some of my teenage prayers for peace focused on the War in Vietnam. The news reports of the deaths of soldiers and civilians, combined with my inability to understand the reasons for the war and the failure of our country to extract itself from what seemed like ever-increasing tragedy and suffering, seemed to cry out for divine intervention. My age and the draft made my prayers personal. Looking back, I cannot tell if my prayers for peace were for others or for myself.

Praying for peace is a core spiritual discipline of Christianity and many other religious traditions. People pray for inner calm, for reconciliation with family and friends, for an absence of conflict in the community and around the world. We refer to Jesus as the Prince of Peace, a name that appears in Isaiah’s prophecy. In our worship, we pass the peace, greeting one another with the peace of Christ. As a pastor, I often used a slightly modified quote from the letter to the Philippians, “May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” as a benediction at the end of worship.

There are some prayers that I know will continue to be a part of my life for the rest of my life. Praying for peace is one of them. My prayers for peace have included the names of places of conflict: Vietnam, Bosnia, Laos, South Africa, Sudan, the Philippines, Nepal, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Myanmar, and many other places. I often find myself praying for peace in areas where conflict seems inevitable. The continuing violence and devastation in Gaza make envisioning peace an almost impossible task. The interplay of superpowers makes imagining peace in Ukraine a challenge. Nonetheless, I continue to pray for peace.

Prayers that do not have obvious answers are a part of many lives, and Toews reports on several prayers in her memoir. The Paris Review article on her book contains her version of the story of her life's beginning. “My mother had prayed for six years to become pregnant. Had she considered avenues other than prayer? That was my sister’s joke.” The memoir goes on to report that her mother said she had been conceived on the night of her grandfather's funeral. Her mother said, “That night? That night, your father was either going to kill himself or create a new life.” Toews reports that she was “conceived from death and despair and six years of begging God.”

The title of the book, “A Truce that is Not Peace,” refers to the profound tragedies her family has endured. Although he did not end his life at the beginning of hers, her father struggled with mental illness and depression for many years; he died by suicide in 1998. Toews has previously explored this tragedy in her book “Swing Low,” which is told from her father’s perspective. As is the case in many families, the grief did not stop with a single death. Twelve years later, in the midst of severe depression, Toews’ sister also died by suicide. In her memoir, she struggles with how to make peace with the tragic results of decisions that her loved ones made.

Suicide is never a purely personal tragedy. It always affects a wide circle of others. And the others are left to make sense of something that will never make sense. In my work with survivors of suicide, I often told those who had recently lost a loved one that the death of their loved one is not something that one can get over. “You won’t get over this. You can, however, get through this. But you won’t get through it alone.”

Toews has learned to understand the pain her father and her sister experienced. She has learned to respect the choices they made. Feeling that respect has been a struggle for her as she has moved through the stages of her life. She has learned that respect is not the same as compassion. She is not capable of feeling the pain of her loved ones in the same way that they experienced it. And she admits she cannot fully understand the choices of her loved ones. Even without understanding, however, she has learned respect and discovered an uneasy truce with the realities of her life. That truce is not peace.

Throughout my life, in addition to praying for peace in places around the world, I have often prayed for peace for individuals I have come to know. Some of them I have met through my work in the church. Some of them I have met as a suicide first responder. Some of them, like Miriam Toews, I have not met face-to-face, but have known through their writing. Others have come to me in news stories. I cannot count the number of times I have prayed that others might find peace.

Toews’s book suggests another way for me to understand my prayers. As I continue to pray for peace, perhaps I can learn to look for signs of truce even when peace has not yet come. It may even be the case that the truce precedes peace. How wonderful it would be if Toews’ truce, which is not peace, might become one step on the journey towards the peace that passes all understanding.

I know that praying for peace will always be a part of my life. The places may change. The names may change. The faces may change. The prayer will continue. May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Forty-five years ago, I worked part-time at a small radio station in southwestern North Dakota. The station manager's father was named Bill. He was an old-time journalist who was mainly retired but appeared on-air for a half-hour call-in show on weekday mornings. That program immediately followed my segment, allowing me to finish the paperwork and preparation for the next day’s show. When the call-in program was finished, we would go to a local cafe for coffee before I headed up the hill to the church and my main job. Bill and his son were active members of the congregation we served. The father was the treasurer of the church when I served as pastor.

Over the years, Bill shared many stories with me about his life. He was a veteran of the United States Army, having served in Europe during World War II. I’m not sure of all of the details of his service, but at least part of the time, he was a journalist with the Stars and Stripes newspaper. In April of 1945, he was traveling with the 80th Infantry Division when they were sent to take control of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Edward R. Murrow, the famous CBS radio reporter, was also part of the press detachment that arrived at the camp.

Bill had a lot of war stories, and he would occasionally tell them to the gang at the coffee shop. There were, however, some stories that I heard in other settings, often in the driveway of his home as he walked me out after I had paid a visit. As a young pastor, I was learning to listen to the stories that World War II veterans shared with me in private. At first, I didn’t understand why they were telling me the stories. Later, I learned that they were stories that they had not previously told to anyone. There was an air of secrecy that surrounded service during World War II. The famous slogan, “Loose lips sink ships,” served as a reminder that in wartime, information was a powerful weapon and that there were things that needed to be kept secret to preserve the ability to surprise and shock the enemy. Decades later, the things that they had witnessed continued to haunt the soldiers, and they sometimes sought opportunities to talk to someone about them. A young pastor was a reminder of the young pastors who had served as chaplains during their military service and had become trusted confidants to share the horrors they had witnessed.

The things that people told me in confidence as a pastor are not my stories to share, but part of Bill’s story is documented history that has been reported in other places. Part of the liberation of Buchenwald involved taking German civilian citizens on a tour of the camp. Because they had been subjected to Nazi propaganda, it was feared that the Germans would not take responsibility for the atrocities that occurred in the camps. Rather than tell them about what had happened in the camps, people were taken and shown crowded barracks, where as many as 1,200 people were housed in horse stables, five to a bunk. They were forced to smell the stink of sick prisoners and rotting bodies. Some were forced to participate in the burial of deceased camp inmates.

A couple of years before Bill told me some of his wartime stories, I had toured Dachau, one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany. The camp was initially established to house Hitler’s political opponents. Later, it was expanded to house Jews, Romani, as well as Germans, whom the Nazi Party considered to be dissidents. By the end of World War II, the camp had become the center of a system of 100 sub-camps, located throughout southern Germany and Austria. By the time of our visit, the camp had been cleaned up. Most of the barracks had been torn down, with a few remaining as a museum of the brutal treatment and terror of the concentration camp system.

At Dachau, as was the case at Buchenwald, when liberation occurred, local citizens of the town near the camp claimed that they were unaware of what was happening inside the camp. At Dachau, there were 32,000 documented deaths and thousands more that remain undocumented. It is hard to understand how such horrors could occur in a community without some local knowledge of what was happening. The Nazi propaganda system was powerful and effective, however. We will never know if the camps were allowed to carry out their gruesome work next to civilian populations because of official propaganda and lies about their mission, or willful ignorance of the surrounding population. Probably there were elements of both.

My limited experiences and knowledge of Nazi concentration camps have left an imprint on me. It is one of the reasons I am fearful of the growing ICE detention centers in the community where I now live. We know very little of what goes on in those places. People are arrested and detained in the facilities without formal charges or judicial procedures. Their families are often unaware of the reasons for their detention and frequently don’t know the location of their loved ones. Agents seize people from job sites, schools, immigration offices, and other places.

More troubling to me is that I often encounter family and friends who are hesitant to talk about what is happening. “It makes me sick to think about it.” “Let’s talk about something else.” I have long conversations with people close to me, in which there is an unspoken agreement not to discuss politics. Our country, once seen as a leader in human rights, is now on the Global Human Rights Watchlist. Civil liberties in our country are declining at an unprecedented rate. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly complex to have civil conversations about what is happening in our country.

I’m sure that some will be uncomfortable with the comparison of the rise of fascism in the 21st-century United States with the Nazi regime in 20th-century Germany. I believe, however, that now is the time to become as aware as possible and not shy away from uncomfortable conversations.

The stories that Bill told me haunt me too much for me to ignore what is going on in my community.

I joke that when I was young, I used to think my name was Beverly, Nancy, Lois, Ted. I never doubted that my mother knew my name, but she would occasionally go through the names of my older siblings before getting to mine. Actually, it didn’t happen very often, and I don’t remember her going through the whole list when referring to our youngest brother. What I do remember is that, unlike my siblings, a stern reprimand involving the use of my middle name wasn’t much different than simply calling me by name. I don’t have a middle name. I do have an initial, and I was occasionally called Ted E., but I was also called Teddy sometimes, which sounds the same and was often used by one of my aunts when she spoke to me. Another beloved aunt, whose name was Verneva, was known to us as “Aunt Teddy,” so being called Ted E. seemed like a good thing, mostly.

My two oldest sisters have one-syllable middle names, while the one next to me has three syllables. She got the most syllables of all of our parents’ children. I got the fewest. I don’t, however, ever remember reflecting on that fact or feeling somehow left out because of my name. People would sometimes ask me if my “real” name was Theodore. Some people named Theodore are indeed called Ted, but I was named for my Uncle Ted, whose name was Edward. Everyone called him Ted. The family story is that my father said, “If you’re going to call him Ted, why not name him Ted?” It makes sense to me.

There was, however, one day when my name caused me distress. On the first day of first grade, when the teacher asked me my middle name, I said, “I don’t have one.” Looking back, I’m sure she probably said to me gently, “When you go home for lunch, ask your mother what your middle name is.” Somehow, I interpreted the teacher's words as a rule that required me to have a middle name to return to school after lunch. I ran home in tears and announced to my mother that I couldn’t go back to school because I didn’t have a middle name. What I was saying didn’t make any sense to my mother. She wrote a note to my teacher, and I returned in fear, sure that I had “flunked out” on my first day of school. The teacher read the note, and I heard nothing more about my middle name for the rest of my school career. I ended up with a couple of college degrees, so I guess it wasn’t an impediment to my education.

Names aside, one of the blessings of my life was growing up in a family with sisters. My mother was one of five daughters in a family with no sons. My father had one sister and four brothers. All of my aunts were strong women.

There was privilege in being the oldest son. I often joke that my father was so glad to have another male in the household that he was always partial to me. I did get to go to work with him more often than my sisters, and in our family, hunting was something that men did without women. I felt honored to be a part of the hunting trips.

When I got married, I was the first son-in-law in a family with three daughters. I always felt at home in my wife’s family. I have thought of my wife’s sisters as my sisters for all of our marriage.

The sisters are together for a few days this week. They try to get together each year for what they call a “Sisters Retreat.” They rotate hosting the gathering, and this year it is our turn to host. When they come to our house, I’m included in the conversation and enjoy having the sisters as much as they enjoy being together. Occasionally, I tell them that my father used to comment about my mother and her sisters, saying, “Every one of the Lewis girls is a good cook and efficient in the kitchen. When they are together, however, it takes twice as long for them to produce a meal. When there are three, you might starve waiting for dinner.” It wasn’t literally true. We ate well and on time when my aunts were around.
On the other hand, when my wife and her sisters get together at our house, I do plan to do some of the cooking. Their time together is valuable, and I can give them more time by doing a few household chores. Besides, they are very complimentary of my cooking, and I enjoy the compliments.

I’ll have plenty of time for my own projects this week. The sisters have planned adventures that don’t require my participation. There will also be plenty of times when I’m included in the conversation and have a good time. I may not have learned my lessons thoroughly, but my sisters certainly tried to teach me that there are times when I should keep my mouth shut and stay out of their business. And, since I’m doing some of the cooking, I don’t have to worry about starving while waiting for dinner. I think my father, who wasn’t much of a cook, would be supportive of my role. And I know that I learned some of what I know about cooking from sisters who, despite my complaints, did sometimes include me.

I attended high school during the days of the space race. The Apollo 11 moon landing occurred in the summer before my junior year. Across the United States, school curricula were being revised to encourage more science in academic programs. Our small-town high school wasn’t exactly cutting-edge. It had a few holdovers from previous educational theories. One of those holdovers was Latin. Two years of Latin were offered. Our school didn’t provide any other “foreign” languages. English and Latin were the languages. I don’t know if I took Latin because I couldn’t think of other electives that appealed to me, or if I took Latin because it was something that my relatives had done. High schools don’t offer Latin these days.

Another course I took in high school that is no longer offered is typing. Our school had a dedicated classroom for teaching typing. Most of the desks were equipped with manual typewriters. There were a couple of electric typewriters in the room, but we weren’t allowed to use them until we could type at least 50 words per minute with a high level of accuracy. Typing class, as I remember it, involved about 15 minutes of instruction at the beginning of the first class. From there on, we sat at our desks and copied text from a book on the typewriter. It was boring. By the end of the year, I was passing typing tests at over 60 words per minute, which was faster than the teacher could type. I think he was hired for his coaching skills more than for his academic performance. There wasn’t a lot of instruction involved in typing class.

I wasn’t the best or most motivated student in high school. The challenges of small-town social life distracted me. The skills that most interested me weren’t learned in high school. I learned to fly an airplane. I took ground school as night classes and studied more for those classes than for any classes I took in public school. I passed my written flight test on my first attempt and was ready to take the flying portion of the test before I was old enough to qualify for a license.

Looking back as an old man, three of my high school classes stand out as places where I learned lifelong skills: Typing, Algebra, and Latin. I use all of those three subjects nearly every day.

These days, children learn typing long before they reach high school. They are exposed to computer keyboards early in their lives and develop an intuitive understanding of the keys' positions. They don’t know why the standard English language keyboard is arranged in the “QWERTY” format. They probably learned to find the letters on the keyboard by operating touchscreen devices such as phones or tablet computers. They develop the skill of entering text simply by living with devices in their lives. While I am still fairly quick with a standard keyboard, I doubt that I would be as accurate with a manual typewriter as I am with my computer. And I am awkward and slow “typing” messages on my smartphone compared to any of the youth that I know. I have had trigger thumbs on both hands, and I can’t do the two-thumb technique that I see younger people employing. I have to look at the keyboard, and I use a single index finger to touch the letters. My thumbs are too slow and awkward to enter text that way. Besides, I haven’t learned the various shortcuts and techniques of text typing. I still use complete sentences, avoid abbreviations, and add punctuation. I’m pretty slow when it comes to sending text messages.

I’m no math wizard, but I do understand introductory algebra and geometry. When I worked for a small-town newspaper at the beginning of the transition from wax layout to computer layout, we had to resize all our pictures by figuring out exact proportions in column inches. Images needed to fit into one, two, or three columns, depending on the importance of the picture. I used algebra to figure out the correct width and height of pictures. These days, the computer handles all the math for the layout, and text can be made to flow around objects, eliminating the need for pictures to be printed in exact column widths. The designer working on the layout of a book can resize a picture to make page breaks occur at the end of paragraphs of text.

I use Latin on an almost daily basis, but primarily for my own curiosity or to add trivia to a conversation. I made biscuits for our family dinner on Labor Day this week. I hadn’t been doing much Dutch oven cooking, and since I was cooking the potatoes in a Dutch oven, I decided to ignite enough charcoal to bake biscuits in a second one. I didn’t get it quite right and burned the bottoms of the biscuits, but they were generally appreciated by the family anyway. Thinking of the experience, I got to wondering about the word “biscuit.” It comes from the Latin “biscotum,” which means “baked twice.” The way I make biscuits, however, doesn’t involve baking twice. Once is enough. Flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter, and milk. They can be rolled out and cut with a drinking glass or dropped onto a cookie sheet. When I am lazy, I purchase pre-formed biscuits in a peel-and-pop container.

While I think of a specific baked food item when I use the term "biscuit," the word is used to refer to a variety of different foods in other cultures. My English and Australian friends use the word to refer to a “cookie.” And some people call crackers savory biscuits. The company that bakes a lot of crackers and also makes Oreo cookies, Nabisco, is a shortened version of “National Biscuit Company.” I have no idea how they came up with the name “Oreo.” It doesn’t seem to be Latin. I do know that Oreos are imitations of Hydrox cookies. Two brothers, both bakers, had differing visions for their business plans and became fierce competitors. The first developed Hydrox, the other imitated with Oreo. Somehow, Oreo won the popular cookie war even though Hydrox was the preferred cookie earlier. Hydrox is an amalgamation of “hydrogen” and “oxygen,” the elements that form water. It was chosen to indicate the purity of ingredients.

When I share these facts with my grandchildren, they find them to be boring.

I was scrolling through Facebook, looking for news about friends, when an ad for a T-shirt caught my attention. In a way, it surprised me that I reacted to the advertisement because I certainly don’t need another T-shirt. Unlike many others, I don’t generally wear a T-shirt as an outer garment. I’m a long-sleeve shirt guy. I have had a couple of times when squamous cell carcinoma has needed to be surgically removed. The good news is that if one is going to develop skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma is probably the least likely to spread. The lesions generally do not penetrate as deeply as basal cell carcinomas and are far less aggressive than melanoma. I have precancerous lesions removed on every visit to the dermatologist. I have no desire to make things worse. Sunscreen helps. Good clothing is another way to deal with skin cancer. I have several long-sleeved shirts made from material that protects against the sun.

As a result, I don’t need more T-shirts. I have plenty of them, including several long-sleeved T-shirts. I also have several mock turtle neck shirts that I occasionally wear under T-shirts when I want to display a particular design or logo. Many of my T-shirts are connected with some cause or event. I have a red shirt from the Gathering of the Eagles Canoe Journey. I have a bright orange shirt from Pennington County Search and Rescue. I have a pink shirt for breast cancer awareness that says “Tough Enough to Wear Pink.” I’m unaware of the connection between strength and what color one wears, but when I served as chaplain at Western Dakota Youth Services Center, all of the members wore “Tough Enough to Wear Pink” shirts for a photo each year. It was part of a fund and awareness-raising program about breast cancer.

The T-shirt ad that gave me pause was a blue shirt printed with a folded ribbon and the words, “Not all cancers are pink.” The website explained that blue ribbons are associated with prostate cancer, green ribbons are associated with liver cancer, and purple ribbons are associated with esophageal cancer. Gold ribbons are often associated with childhood cancer awareness. The site also featured pink shirts with teal ribbons to raise awareness for ovarian cancer.

A doctor once told me that everyone who lives long enough eventually develops some form of cancer. I guess I have lived long enough. Fortunately for me, the cancers that I have are not aggressive and are easily monitored. Since being diagnosed with prostate cancer, I’ve endured a few more tests to monitor the cancer, but at present, further treatment is not required. I get to see the urologist more often than some men. With a couple of visits to the dermatologist every year, I’m spending a bit more time in waiting rooms and becoming a bit more comfortable in exam rooms. It is a minor disruption to my life, one that I can continue indefinitely.

There are many people with much more dire health conditions. While I have benefited from quality screening, early diagnosis, and less aggressive forms of cancer, I don’t think I want to advertise my diagnosis with a T-shirt. Whereas “Tough Enough to Wear Pink” generally means that I am raising awareness of a form of cancer that does not affect me, donning a blue ribbon shirt probably will spark conversations about my health.

I passed on the T-shirts and continued scrolling.

It is interesting how looped ribbons have become symbols in our society. The use of ribbons might be traced to the 1973 song recorded by Tony Orlando and Dawn, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.” The song is a ballad told from the perspective of one who has served a prison sentence: “Now I’ve got to know what is and isn’t mine.” The former prisoner is uncertain whether his girlfriend will welcome him home.

Later, yellow ribbons became symbols of families awaiting the return of those who had been deployed overseas for military service.

From there, ribbons seemed to proliferate.

It isn’t a bad symbol. A bit of ribbon is inexpensive, and if it carries meaning for the one wearing it, I’m all in favor of it. Of course, we rarely leave things simple in the US. Ribbon symbols are now available as jewelry, t-shirts, and in other forms. It is almost as if we have separated the symbol from its original meaning.

I don’t mind talking to others about prostate cancer. I’m not keeping my medical diagnosis secret. On the other hand, I do not need to wear it on my shirt sleeve or any other part of my shirt. The treatment strategy for my prostate cancer is “active surveillance.” It sounds a bit like it might involve sneaking around and undercover operations. I’m comfortable with active surveillance.

September is National Prostate Health Month, also known as National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. I encourage all of my friends to learn about risk factors and symptoms and engage their doctors in conversation about prostate cancer screening.

I don’t need a T-shirt to have those conversations.

Labor Day came as early as it can this year. The first Monday of September can be as late as September 7, but this year, Labor Day was September 1. We celebrated with a barbecue dinner. Since our family celebrations took place in the late afternoon and early evening, I had most of the day to attend to a variety of other activities. In the morning, I went for a bike ride around our community. There were many people out and about, beginning their day with walks, bike rides, and trips to coffee shops and cafes. Some holidays are observed differently in Canada than in the United States, but Labor Day is a holiday that we share. Although tourist travel from Canada is down sharply this year, there were quite a few Canadians who had come to town to spend the holiday at their cottages and condos. After my bike ride, I made a trip to the hardware store and stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of items I had forgotten to purchase on my last trip.

At both stores where I made purchases, I thanked the clerks for working on Labor Day. I could have easily avoided shopping on the holiday, but it was convenient for my schedule to pick up a few things. The store clerks weren’t the only ones who didn’t get a holiday yesterday. In our area, garbage collection was on its usual schedule. I saw the trucks out making their rounds as I rode my bike. We are on an every-other-week pickup schedule for garbage and recycling, so it wasn’t a day for that for us. However our curbside compost pickup is on the alternate weeks. Ours was picked up right on schedule yesterday. That means that not only were the truck drivers making their pickups, but the materials facility was open and running to receive all of the items picked up.

The coffee shops and cafes probably had a few extra workers scheduled for their busy day yesterday, and I’m sure that the cleaners in the motels and vacation rentals were putting in long hours to keep up with the extra traffic. And, as expected, law enforcement, firefighters, ambulance drivers, and hospital workers were all making their rounds and doing their work.

It struck me as slightly strange that all the professional people received a paid holiday yesterday, while many who have other jobs had to work. Bankers, government workers, lawyers, brokers, and other white-collar workers all received a paid holiday. Labor Day is a holiday that honors and recognizes the workers who contribute to the quality of life in our country. The history of Labor Day in Canada is very similar to the holiday’s US history. Both countries officially established a national holiday in 1894. The holiday was first observed in Canada, specifically in Toronto, following the 1872 Toronto printers’ strike. In the US, New York held its first Labor Day Celebration in 1882. President Grover Cleveland enacted the Federal Holiday law following the Pullman Strike in the United States.

I’m sure that some of the people who worked yesterday were glad to do so and happy to receive holiday pay. The lowest-paid hourly workers, however, probably didn’t receive any extra pay for working on the holiday. Many employers hire multiple part-time workers instead of offering full-time employment to avoid the cost of providing benefits to their employees. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the cleaning staff and cafe workers didn’t get any extra pay for their work yesterday. They were just glad to have the hours and pay to support their families. A lot of them struggle to make ends meet. A minimum-wage job is insufficient to cover the costs of housing and groceries. Many workers hold multiple jobs to make ends meet. Those workers are just one accident or illness away from financial disaster, living from paycheck to paycheck. Without adequate medical insurance, it takes very little for them to fall into debt.

Many people celebrate Labor Day with little thought to the holiday's history or the sacrifices made by laborers to improve working conditions for all. Our celebration primarily served as a recognition of the end of summer. Our grandchildren who live in Washington started school with a three-day week last week. This week, they’ll go four days, and next week, they’ll be back to the five-day-a-week schooling. Our grandson in South Carolina had his first day of school on August 7, so he is already into the academic schedule. Having a long weekend allowed his family to take a trip to the beach before the cooler weather sets in.

Over supper, we discussed our summer and the adventures we had shared. We also asked our grandchildren to share one goal that they have for this year at school. We planned to walk to a nearby candy store for ice cream for dessert, but when we arrived, they were all out of ice cream. Last night was their last day of business before closing for the winter. There were many other treats, and we shared a bag of saltwater taffy and a few chocolates. It was another sign that things are winding down in our tourist town. Other businesses will soon close or reduce their hours for the winter.

In honor of all of the people who work to support our community, I hope to make the practice of thanking them for their work extend beyond Labor Day. I intend to say “Thank You” more often to those who serve me. I am not wealthy, but I can afford to tip those who work for low wages. Labor Day is a reminder to me not to forget all of those who work hard behind the scenes without much recognition.

Thanks to all who have worked hard and contributed to the life we share.

We live in an unincorporated village. It has been a tourist destination for decades. Before settlement, it was a location frequently visited by Coast Salish people for harvesting clams, oysters, and crabs. The road along the bay is dotted with restaurants, a brew pub, coffee shops, souvenir shops, condos, and apartments. There is a small grocery store that offers a limited selection of items, with prices that are slightly higher than those found at a supermarket. A second small grocery store is located near the entrance to the State Park along our bay.

We knew when we bought our home that we would need to drive for many services. It isn’t far. Most of our medical services are within a 15-mile radius, and there are several larger grocery stores, hardware stores, pharmacies, and other services within similar distances.

Parts of our community are very safe places to ride a bicycle. There is a wide shoulder designated for bikes and walking on the main street along the bay. Additionally, there is a designated walking bath located next to the beach. The immediate community surrounding our home is designated as a golf cart area, and the speed limit is 25 mph. The village is busy this weekend with tourists from Seattle, WA, and Vancouver, BC, coming to the beach for a holiday weekend before fall arrives.

Most of the time, I don’t have much trouble riding my bike around town. Yesterday, the flow of traffic alongside the bay was slower than I typically bike. I joined the parade of cars, golf carts, and bicycles and waited with others as pedestrians crossed the road. People were in a good mood, and there was a holiday feeling. It was fun to know that I could ride fast enough to pass the golf carts, but most of the way, the traffic was too tight to allow it.

I was heading to a grocery store that is farther from our house. It is about six miles each way, a reasonable trip with my bicycle. I wasn’t going for a kitchen stock-up. There were just a couple of items that I had missed when shopping earlier in the week, and the errand gave me a chance to ride my bike and check a couple of items off my list.

By the time I got home from my errand, I felt like a local. In the first place, I knew where I was going, and I wasn’t wandering as was the case with some of the drivers of carts and cars. I didn’t need to stop and look to see what the shops had to offer. The thing that made me feel like a local, however, was the weather. I left home without giving a thought to the weather. I didn’t look at a forecast. I knew there were clouds in the sky, but nothing that would prevent me from taking a bike ride. When I came out of the grocery store and got on my bike, it was raining. By the time I had gone three or four miles, I was pretty wet. I wasn’t fazed by the experience at all. I wiped the water spots off my glasses and continued with my ride home.

It is a small thing, but there was a time when a bit of rain would have prevented me from going for a bike ride. There was a time when I checked the rain gauge to see how much we had received, even if it was just a brief shower. Now, however, I barely notice a small shower. It wasn’t enough to get me to change any of my plans. It wasn’t even enough to give me an evening off from watering my flowers. My wet clothes quickly dried, and I went on with my day as usual.

It has been five years since we officially retired from our jobs in South Dakota and moved to the Pacific Northwest. We are approaching our fourth year of living in this house. We are settling in and consider ourselves local residents now. The immediate neighborhood around our house is mainly comprised of people who live here year-round and work in neighboring towns. Just a short walk away, however, the neighborhoods are mostly beach cottages and rental properties.

I don’t mind all of the visitors. Sometimes they make me feel grateful for my life. I see tourists lingering on the beach watching the sunset and realize that this is a special experience for them. I get to walk to the beach at sunset as often as I want.

I’ve had conversations with people who never quite feel at home. No place is quite right for them to relax and feel comfortable. I’ve been fortunate to have a very different experience. I’ve had several homes throughout my life, and each has felt welcoming and natural to me. I’ve lived on the prairie and in the forest. I’ve lived inland near the center of the continent, and I’ve lived at the edge of the country near the sea and the Canadian border. Each place has felt like home to me. Each place carries special memories for me.

For now, we live in a good place, and I’m grateful to have the health to ride my bike. The urge to get a golf cart hasn’t entered my life. I don’t know how many years we will stay in this house, but like others who have gone before, I know that the time will come to move to someplace closer to services.

Until that time, it is good to be at home in this place. It is a good place to be.