HMMM... I WONDER WHERE THIS GOES...?

Baldy is one of the highest points between the Rockies and

the Alps. Death Crevice is on the opposite side of this image.

(We once climbed down the steep front face of Baldy; we

have never climbed up from that side.)

A few nights ago I put in a DVD and settled in to watch “127 Hours,” a true-life saga that – like everyone who sees it – I already knew the ending of: Canyoneer Aron Ralston, trapped by the untimely slippage of a boulder while exploring a red rock crevice in Utah, is driven to free himself by amputating his own right arm.

As the movie progressed, I became more and more tense until, just as Ralston came to the full realization of his predicament, I had to turn it off. I stopped watching not so much because I dreaded the anatomical gore that was to come, but because an existential, organic tingle started to radiate through my body – a kind of physical memory – reminding me of the cliffs and crevices of my youth, and of the various boulders that hung lodged in them, who knows how precariously.  And it’s not that I remembered how frightened I was in those situations – but that I, in fact, was having the time of my life. Like Ralston.

I was never the taut, conditioned, or skillful rock-climber depicted in the film, but I am ever grateful for the fact that, from the time I was twelve years old, when my family moved to the Black Hills, I have had rocks to climb. My cinematic cold feet were caused by the sixty-five-year-old me looking back on the literally carefree exploits of the twelve- and seventeen- and twenty-year-old me and… well, sort of watching a movie of myself descending into a crevice.

Which is not to say that those days are behind me. “Carefree” has perhaps been replaced by “careful,” (and “decrepit?”), but there are still rocks in my life – and even crevices. Like Death Crevice.

Baldy Mountain, a grand granite dome in the middle of the Black Hills, is laced with crevices. When you’re nineteen or twenty, as Jeff and I were then, you’ve got to try them all. You just plunge in and see where they lead – at least Jeff does, and so here I come, too. The final, upper reach of Baldy's summit -- after an initial approach up more gradual flanks -- thrusts almost straight up out of a grassy, alpine-like valley floor. We looked up the sheer but slightly rounded wall and spotted a ledge about forty feet up that was interrupted by a vertical crevice continuing up toward the top of the dome. To get to the crevice we had to get to the ledge; to get to the ledge we took a short running leap from the valley floor and used momentum and a few scattered, knobby holds, and the soles of our tennis shoes (we hadn’t yet discovered the wonder of Vibram), to scramble up the forty feet of granite. At least Jeff did – so here I come, too. The ledge was so narrow that the shallow crevice we leaned into felt like safe harbor. It was just deep enough, and angled enough, that it was a pretty easy knee-and-toe ascent to its upper reaches, where it opened onto an intersection with another crevice – actually a gap where one slab of mountain leaned against another – criss-crossing at a right angle. To continue upward (always upward!), it was necessary to leap or step across this gap and throw ourselves into the waiting maw of another crevice which continued up – now steeper and deeper – on the other side. A crevice we knew not the ending of.

Now, dear reader, you can join me in my imaginative remembering of this venture.  Go to the nearest wall and stand about four or five feet away from it. Keeping your feet together, lean toward the wall with your outstretched arms. When you make contact, step across the intervening space with one foot, then bring the other over. Then do the exercise again, this time, when you are leaning across the space with your hands against the wall, look down at the carpet and imagine that instead it is blue sky. You will likely come to two conclusions: One, this step is no big deal; two, if you don’t successfully make this easy step you could – you just could – plummet to your death.  Thus was born, in our breathless, adrenaline-fueled excitement, the name “Death Crevice.” The first time we leaned across, no doubt in mid-step, one of us probably said, “You know, a guy could die here.” I’m surprised that our sophomoric wit didn’t come up with “Theoretical Death Crevice.”

Jeff, emerging from Death Crevice, 1992

The crevice we entered on the other side of the gap is probably the most fun and just-challenging-enough climb of the dozens that Jeff and I have taken together over the years: the perfect dimensions for shouldering in some places, spanning from one’s back to the  tips of ones toes in others. Although once one was jammed in the crevice a fall wouldn’t mean death, you would get pretty banged up as you slid down, stopping just short of that blue-sky opening at the bottom. (Death Crevice has been known to dislocate joints.) It’s always fun, and that initial step-across-nothing is always a thrill.


To our delight, Death Crevice opened onto one more ledge, one more (easier) crevice, and the top of Baldy! Since that initial ascent, we have led many friends up Death Crevice. We've climbed it with our wives and kids. I look forward to doing it again soon. Well, let me clarify: Jeff takes them up Death Crevice, I volunteer to lead others up another one of our discoveries, a route we have named “Life Affirming Crevice.” No 127 Hours in there.

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(What made me shudder at watching the movie was not recalling my climbs with Jeff – it was recalling the few times when, like the film’s hero, I tried it alone.)

THE TIDE'S PENDULUM TRUTH

…I have been made free
by the tide’s pendulum truth
that the heart that is low now
will be at the full tomorrow.

                                     ~R.S. Thomas

All of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

                                                                                                     ~Blaise Pascal

In the movie Topsy-Turvy – a depiction of the Victorian-era partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan –  there is a scene in which Gilbert has just had a recently-invented telephone installed in his home. His elderly father objects to it as an intrusion, complaining, “Why should I have a gadget that allows a stranger to set off a bell in my home whenever he feels like it!” I can’t think of a better summary introduction to the world of noise that ensued. With the invention of the radio at approximately the same time, our grandparents’, parents’, and now our generation have not only been present at the creation, but have observed the steady marginalization of quiet and solitude over the last hundred years. Quietness has, almost literally, been pushed to the edges of our existence.

Although the increasing number of noisy gadgets in our lives (including mine) should perhaps give us pause, my intention here is not to rail against them, but to offer a modest proposal for how to live with them in such a way that we experience a life of balance, benefiting from both the technology that we have come to require and the solitude that we, actually, need.

The proposal I have in mind is the Sabbath, or, more exactly, the idea of the Sabbath. While I am a proponent of the biblical Sabbath pattern of six days of work and one of rest, I am speaking here more of the micro- and macro-Sabbaths that flow from this principle.  (The Sabbath principle is one of those things about which it can be said, “It’s not true because it’s in the Bible; it’s in the Bible because it’s true.”) Sabbath means a number of things, but at its heart it primarily means “rhythm” and “rest.” It is “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It is why workaholism should be confessed and treated, not bragged about. It is why, when the boss bragged, “I don’t need a vacation,” one of his employees whispered, “He doesn’t think he needs a vacation but everyone else thinks he needs a vacation!” It is why Jesus said to the exhausted disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a quiet place.”

And it is why we need quiet after the noise of TV and cellphones, and darkness after the screenlight of iPads and Androids. It is rhythm, Sabbath rhythm. And it is rest – not, in this case, idle snoozing (although studies have shown that the afternoon nap is more productive, even in a business sense, than the afternoon coffee break), but the break from routine. Putting away the pale-lit device and talking across the table to a friend. Walking around the block. Sitting in church without texting.

If the irritating jingly bell represented the new intrusion of technology for W.S. Gilbert’s father, I suppose the icon for our current distractions is the familiar scene of two people talking, at least one of them bobbing his head nervously up and down, constantly checking the tiny screen that can’t be turned off – ever.

The always-on screen is a good modern representation of what the Bible calls the sin of failing to enter into one’s Sabbath rest. The non-sabbatical, always-on life – whether that of work or technology – is, like all sin, “not just bad – it’s bad for you.”*

The noise of devices and the glare of screens affects our brains, our relationships, and our attention. (Brain development needs down-time.) Everybody gets nervous if they see a cell phone driver heading toward them, but the same everybody thinks that they are the exception who can handle it themselves. It is not just the seventeen-year-old pickup truck driver – who killed a grandmother, mother, and daughter because he was texting – who needed a sabbatical break from the screen; his victims needed him to take one, too. So much for the libertarian freedom of the cell phone.

The original sin was the sin of self-centeredness. (“I don’t need God, I can be God!”) It is still what all sin is. Our devices become like Eden’s talking snake, enticing us, “You can do it – and that, too, and that, too…, whatever you want…, these iThings are extensions of you! Why would you turn them off?”  And, to switch literary references, a picture of the Queen dancing in her iron shoes comes to mind. Dancing to death.

I am a user of these devices. Whenever I switch them off and sit quietly in a room or stare out a window or walk iPhone free, the first thought I have is how good it feels. The second is how rarely I do this.

I was going to say that the margins to which quiet has been pushed are out in the woods – in the mountains – and that you can seek solitude in a backpacker's tent or a remote cabin. But that’s not really true, is it? If you approach all but the remotest cabin in the darkness you will see the soft blue glow of an iPad emanating from the picturesque windows. The real Sabbath – and the real Sabbath rhythm – is produced by an on-off switch (wherever you are), and by the solitude or conversation that follows.

When we read the most profound of the Bible’s many creation accounts – the one in the first chapter of Genesis – we see that the Crown of Creation is not humankind. It is not even God. It is the Sabbath.

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This New York Times essay by Pico Iyer (the source of the Blaise Pascal quote, above) is a very insightful and even inspiring treatment of this topic.


*"Sin" is kind of a loaded word for some; think "brokenness," or anything that works agains the fullness of life.

RAGS AND TATTERS: SOME ROUGH LINES AT CHRISTMAS

Many preachers are confronted with a kind of awe at the great texts of Christmas and Easter, saying to ourselves, "What more can I say about so profound a story?" For a number of years my response to this has been to attempt a Christmas sermon in verse. I offer this one as my blog Christmas card.

Now Advent winds are bringing in the cold of winter,

and scattered stars glow with a chill and distant light.

The road to Bethlehem is getting ever darker –

and darker still before we come to Christmas Night.

Imagine, then, young Mary and her steadfast Joseph;

with little donkey clopping out a lonesome song,

she nods to dream, the child stirs, and she remembers

the message of an angel, now it seems so long

ago –  to her, and to the people of the promise.                                              

Her people have been waiting for these thousand years,

and she – for these nine months in which all time is folded –

has held all love: The answer to all hopes and fears.

Joseph’s hope, for now, is just to find that small inn,

a welcome place he’s heard of on the edge of town.

She’s tired and she’s cold – and soon they’ll be a family!

He’ll tell them, “Please, a bed so Mary can lie down….”

We, too, would add our voices after Joseph’s pleading,

“This is God’s mother – surely you can find a bed!”

But, no, God’s family comes this night in rags and tatters;

they’re lucky, after all, to get this straw instead.

And down through all the ages are so many searching,

like this poor young couple, as they seek to find

shelter, food, and friendship – and a new beginning:

A light ahead, the sad and weary road behind.

And even in our day of marvels, comfort, plenty;

chance can find a man, like that one you saw

homeless in the darkness as the winter gathers.

He, too, would welcome happily a bed of straw.

In Africa a mother’s life is much like Mary’s:

Gathering wood and water to get through each day.

Her Joseph on the road seeking work or barter,

as satellites spin on their high and starry way.

Our brothers in Colombia still live with danger –

like Israel’s people living in the grip of Rome.

This world, though history’s pages tell of many changes,

is still the world where Jesus’ family made their home.

The people in the darkness long to see that great light

promised long ago. So where is God to be

found? How will he save the people from their sorrow?

Will He work a wonder? Or is it that he

himself will be the miracle: God born among us,

not in golden wealth, but in that family –

Remember? – We were following them? They found a stable --

Look, there in that manger, could it… could it be…

A baby! Look! Here come a band of curious shepherds;

this is what the angel told them they would see.

This is why the heavens opened wide with glory

The savior of the nations is… a poor baby!

Rejoicing all around from these rowdy shepherds!

They tell their news to Mary, her eyes glow with tears.

In her heart she ponders all these words, and wonders

what life will bring their precious child down the years.

And, pondering, remembers her own angel’s message –

So filled with joy, and yet there was a shadow, too.

A son of mine?  To be the savior of the people?

Too much! But let it be: he’ll do what God must do.

And Joseph of the true heart will adopt this baby;

for love of Mary he will dearly love their child.

“Emmanuel” “God With Us” – Names the angel gave him –

but papa now must guard him in a world so wild.

Now see! Those cold and distant stars begin to gather

into a band of light and they bow to one:

One star among them shines a beam of love’s own brightness

upon the little scene: The birth of God’s own son!

And you, who like the shepherds, now have heard the good news,

like them you’ve heard what Heaven’s angels had to say,

now join your voice to theirs: shepherds, stars, and angels,

And sing that Jesus Christ the Lord is born today!


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References to Africa and Colombia are a recognition of our congregation's companion churches in those places.

PLAYING SCRABBLE IN THE MULTIVERSE: YOUR MOVE

My friend Warren and I have a running Scrabble game going – on our iPhones. He’s in Texas, I’m in Minnesota. On a lazy Saturday we might finish a game in less than an hour; more often a game stretches out for a day-and-a-half or so, with intermittent play wound into our routines.  The chat feature allows us to stitch our moves together with conversation and wise cracks – keeping in touch (which is actually the richest part of the whole deal).

Although it’s fun to discover that it’s “my turn” while idling fifteen minutes in the dentist’s waiting room, the most enjoyable experience of the game is the afore-mentioned Saturday morning with a cup of coffee, or around 5:00 – happy hour – with a glass of wine, not playing on the fly but replying back and forth with moves – and chat – in real (if occasionally interrupted) time.

This happy hour experience has made me realize that – beyond the fun of playing a game and the novelty of doing it electronically – what we are actually engaging in is the rapidly developing philosopho-science of virtual reality. Even though our Scrabble exchange is a rather minor and low-key expression of VR, I have a sense that something, well, virtually real is happening, and it is one small part of a significant alteration in human interaction and relationship that is not only technological but ontological. And it may not be an alteration at all, but more like a movement along a continuum.

What is virtually real is not just the click and clack of the game tiles, but the fellowship – yes, the emotional feeling – of the experience. If the standard of reality in this case is sitting in front of the fire, my friend across the table with a game board between us, a glass of wine in front of each of us, and the hum of chit-chat and the occasional bon mot passing back and forth, this virtual game offers about, say, 70% of that. So of course I’m not equating iPhone Scrabble with being in the presence of my friend, but, hey!, 70%!

I’m quite serious about this. I’m a quintessential “people person;” in the beginning stages of my entry into the world of computing (and iThings) I would have laughed if anyone had suggested that any of these applications would have the slightest resemblance to essential human interaction. But I’m experiencing it. And –  (the continuum) – what will this be like in 2061 when my friend’s image will come from the internet in my eyeball, we’ll chuckle in real time at one another’s wise cracks, and raise a glass to toast the beginning of a game, smiling eye-implant to eye-implant.

The more profound continuum – and the inspiration for this little essay – is provided by the cosmological theory of the multiverse. Proponents of this theory postulate that there could be an infinite number of universes, and, if that is the case, advanced civilizations have long ago developed the art of constructing simulated universes, which means, according to one application of the theory, that it is most likely that we are living in one of these fake universes – a virtual world created on some kind of non-digital super-computer.¹  This puts a new twist on wondering how “real” the entire experience of playing virtual Scrabble is.

Physicists – even those who propose it – acknowledge that it’s difficult to tell if the idea of the multiverse is physics or philosophy (since it is scientifically un-testable).² My virtual Scrabble game with my friend certainly lacks the physical, but, philosophically, it works. In the context of all that our friendship has to offer, it’s not good enough. But it’s pretty good.

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1. For a mind-boggling, but accessible, discussion of the implications of the multiverse, see, "Cosmic Jackpot," by physicist Paul Davies.

2. There's a good introduction to the multiverse and string theory on the recent PBS "Nova" series, "The Fabric of the Cosmos," with physicist Brian Greene.

BUT WILL THE PERSONNEL COMMITTEE WRITE "READ MORE" ON MY REVIEW?

"After every sermon the preacher should fall on his knees and ask God to forgive him for what he's just done." ~Martin Luther

Although I believe in legitimate accountability (church council, etc.), I long ago quit looking nervously over my shoulder and came to the conclusion that if I feel OK about what I’m doing, I am not so concerned about what Mrs. McGillicuddy thinks.  Another way to put that is to say that I am my own best (or worst) critic (with, I repeat, the added seasoning of accountability).

As such – although I actually do feel pretty good about the work I do in this calling – I have a litany of shortcomings that would probably be longer than any list that my worst enemy could come up with.

Another time, perhaps, I’ll go after myself about missed hospital calls, repetitive stewardship sermons, or failed attempts to ignite a passion for the faith in a fourteen-year-old confirmation student. Today my confession is that, over the course of thirty-five years of ministry, I have not done enough reading.

I want you, friend, to understand that I am, in fact, a reader. But my reading is exhibit A of the proof of the old adage: “That which is urgent but not important drives out that which is important but not urgent.” And of course I use “urgent” somewhat loosely. For good or ill, reading and study take a second place to staff meetings, council meetings, writing newsletter articles, pastoral counseling, teaching confirmation, hospital calling, emergency visits, etc. All of which I readily accept as part of the job description of my call, some of which are urgent, all of which are important, but none of which are more important than regular reading and study.

I cast this as a “confession” because it’s my own fault. I’m not blaming my parish or its people. (Not even Mrs. McGillicuddy.) Years ago, through the example of an enlightened mentor, I was freed from any sense of guilt about letting people know that I was “wasting time” reading a book.  The object of my confession is a combination of a haphazard discipline of my time and the actual busy-ness of the calling.

Four categories of reading come to mind as being essential to what I do:

• The general reading required of anyone who seeks to be a literate and informed citizen: newspapers, various magazines, book reviews, etc. (Who was it that said, “The preacher should prepare a sermon with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other?”)

• The artful and literary writing of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry – both the recognized “classics” and the new stuff. One of my homiletical heroes, the Scottish preacher James S. Stewart, of the 1940s-60s, laced his engaging sermons with references to Shakespeare and to other poets and writers of both ancient and modern times.  (This raises another issue: The reading of the person in the pew. I know that I hark back, perhaps in vain, to a time when to be educated meant that one would be acquainted with the Bible and with Shakespeare.)

• Regular engagement with theological writing (again, both ancient and modern) and professional journals in the fields of theology and practical ministry.

• The Bible. I agree with a colleague of mine who once said, “I can’t preach on this text until I discover how it changes me.” This means – no matter how many times I’ve read it before – reading and re-reading this book that is the basis of much of our civilization and our understanding of the world. From a standpoint of faith, I belong to a community that considers it to be “the word of God,” not as some kind of magical tome, but as a record of God’s covenantal and reconciled relationship with us. The skeptic in me struggles with a theology of the Holy Spirit, but I ultimately accept that it is the Spirit and the word(s) that bring the message of this book alive, again and again.

Our ivory tower seminary professors suggest twenty hours a week be devoted to reading and study for the weekly sermon. But my “ivory tower” chide isn’t fair – I agree with the professors. It is a goal that is in keeping with what I am called to do as a “minister of word and sacrament.”  OK, some weeks it may dip to fifteen… or ten, but I’m going to keep trying. Regular reading is what allows the preacher, when invited to preach, to use that old saw, “I’ve been preparing for this all my life.”

I began by saying that reading is essential to what I do. Of course it is also essential to who I am.  What reading do you require for the fullness of life?

SMALL COUNTRY, LARGE POETRY

I will be among those ordering a book of the poetry of the recently-announced winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer. In the meantime, the announcement brings to mind another small-country (and, in his case, back country) writer, R.S. Thomas, the Welsh priest and poet who died in 2000, and who was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize. 

Nobel or not, I agree with those who say that Thomas’ place in history will match that of John Donne or George Herbert. That is to say, he will be ranked among the greatest of religious poets. (Although for Thomas, “religious” has as much to do with doubt as with faith.)

Here are three by R.S. Thomas

The Empty Church

They laid this stone trap

for him, enticing him with candles,

as though he would come like some huge moth

out of the darkness to beat there.

Ah, he had burned himself

before in the human flame

and escaped, leaving the reason

torn. He will not come any more

to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still

striking my prayers on a stone

heart? Is it in hope one

of them will ignite yet and throw

on its illumined walls the shadow

of someone greater than I can understand?

Near and Far

No one so busy

as you are. Where is that

seventh day when you rest

from your labour? I arise

from sleep to find that

you have been all night growing.

And by day you are abroad

endlessly exploring a circumference

by which you are not confined.

You have no words yet vibrate

in me with the resonance of an Amen.

You are strung with light

as with nerves across which

thought is drawn to deliver

intellectual music. Sometimes

you are an impulse upon my walls,

at others a modifying

of unseen organisms, slowly

and delicately as a mutation;

but always as far off

as you are near, terrifying

me as much by your proximity

as by your being light-years away.

A Marriage

We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love's moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
`Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance, and she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather. 

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More about R.S. Thomas here and here.

HIGH LONESOME

This town is so lonely it’ll make you old before your time;

Let me take you in my arms, hold your body close to mine…

                                                                                             ~Ian Tyson

Every year at this season it comes over me: the hermit thing. The urge to take a stack of books and notebooks and my laptop and head off to the cabin for a week alone—to study for a season’s worth of sermons or work on a piece of curriculum or write that baptism book for parents.

I have, in fact done this every year or two, and the drill is always the same: After a nine hour drive across the plains and badlands, the Black Hills rise and then disappear in the twilight. The road winds steadily up and into the Hills until, at over a mile high, I arrive at the cabin just after dark. If I’m lucky there’s a fresh snowfall to light my way to the porch steps. I unlock the door, drop my suitcase on the floor, get a fire going in the twenty degree cabin, then finish unloading the car (under stars that shimmer “like salt on black velvet”). I unpack my suitcase, set out my laptop, and continue to build up the fire. Thirty degrees. I busy myself cutting some bread and cheese, and uncork a bottle of wine. Forty degrees. It is quiet. There is no TV or radio or internet or CD player. The cabin is surrounded by the darkness and miles of the Black Hills National Forest, and the walls are made of logs twelve inches in diameter. Quiet. At about sixty degrees I sit in front of the fire with the bread and cheese and wine. I take a sip and it hits me: “This is kind of lonesome.”  I’ve enjoyed my hermitage for about forty-five minutes, and I have six days and nights ahead of me.

There are three troublesome things about my isolated scenario: One is that I am an extrovert. Not the wacky Krusty the Klown extrovert of my youth – I’m sliding closer to the midline every year – but I’m still defined by that Myers-Briggs truism that an extrovert is “energized by being with people.”  The second problem is that I’m madly in love with my wife, and I just left her behind for a week – in fact made deliberate plans for what I kept claiming was going to be a “great week – really productive!” And now I’m here at sixty degrees (with a forty-five degree bedroom waiting for me) while she’s at home watching Glee. And here’s the thing – she’s happily watching Glee. Oh, she loves and misses me, but she is – as an introvert – conveniently energized by being alone! (I need to keep insisting that she “misses” me, because when I come home she persists in telling me how nice her week was. She especially delights in reporting, “When I got out of bed, all I had to do was pull up the spread, and it was made!”)

The third problem is that the Sage Creek Grill, one of the best restaurants in the Black Hills, is (what I quickly come to think of as “only”) ten miles away, in Custer. It’s too late to go tonight, I suppose, but something to look forward to tomorrow – after I get a few pages of reading and writing done, of course. (One year I bought fifty dollars worth of groceries to take out to the cabin for my solitary meals. But the lure of the Sage was such that at the end of the week I dropped the groceries off at my sister’s in Rapid City on my way back east.)

But the morning dawns cerulean blue and snappingly cold. The cabin is now cozy warm, and those twelve inch logs will keep it that way with the occasional tending of the fire. (The same logs whose thickness made my bedroom so quiet that in the middle of the night I got up, rummaged around, and turned on a fan – for the noise.) I bundle up to sit on my favorite porch chair with a cup of coffee, devotions, and visible breath. Quick cup of coffee and quick devotions because it is cold.

Back inside, I open the laptop on my specially-built-out-of-lumber-scraps custom laptop desk. I lean back in the chair, do that  backwards entwined finger-stretching-knuckle-cracking thing, stare at the screen, then notice my watch, recalling that the Sage Creek opens for lunch at 11:00. Time for a shower, then twenty minutes to town, lunch with any of my area friends or relatives I can coax into joining me (if I'm lucky, this will be a laughter-filled "hour" that stretches into the afternoon), twenty minutes back, and, to work….

(Let me pause here to report that I actually have accomplished much sermon-planning, curriculum-writing, and, yes, finished that baptism book using this routine. The reader will be excused for wondering how.)

I started these fanciful forays into creative loneliness when Caryl was teaching, and we were usually unable to coordinate her schedule with my Study Leave calendar. (Yes – Study Leave! My Mom once said, “I don’t care what you call it, it’s still vacation.” My Mom!!!) But now Caryl is retired, and she’ll go with me this year.  I love it, but it’s actually a trade-off: On the plus side, no lonely nights with cheese and crackers; but then, whenever she sees me leaning back and eying my watch she gets to say, “How’s that sermon coming?”

The extrovert in me will be pleased with the company; the introvert in her will be fed by the quietness of the cabin. We'll go to the Sage Creek once or twice.

And it will only take a little bit longer to make the bed.