A tragedy has occurred, so I will start with what we know. Sixty-seven people died suddenly and traumatically when American Airlines flight 342 collided with a US Army helicopter above the Potomac River near Washington, DC. Sixty passengers and four crew members were aboard the AA jet. Three were on board the Army helicopter. There were no survivors.

Sixty-seven people died. Sixty-seven human beings with unique thoughts, desires, hopes, dreams. Sixty-seven people with families were forever changed by the tragedy. I can only imagine the pain that has crashed into the lives of the survivors. Throughout my career, it occasionally fell to me to carry the news of the death of a loved one to a family. I have seen grieving people collapse to the floor in agony. I have heard their cries. I have watched them as sobs wracked their bodies. I have been a witness to a fraction of the pain that has come from this tragedy. I know a bit about the stages of grief and the process of walking through grief with others.

There were figure skaters on the plane, some with their parents. There were coaches beloved by those they had led. Men and women, youths and adults, tragedy upon tragedy.

Whatever we do, we must never forget the depth of the loss. We must honor that loss with careful work to learn all we can from the accident to help prevent another similar tragedy in the future.

Although not current and no longer flying as a pilot in command, I trained as a pilot. I earned my license. I flew passengers in light aircraft. I grew up in a family of pilots. I have worked on a crew that recovered the wreckage of an airplane that crashed into a hillside. I know a bit about the procedures of the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration as they carefully examine every bit of evidence that they can understand the cause of an accident. I have read the reports of thousands of aviation accidents to see what can be learned from them to prevent future accidents. I know how careful the investigators are being. I know they will take their time, examine every clue, and examine their reports for possible errors before official statements on the cause of the crash.

It is too soon to draw conclusions.

In the Internet age, with access to vast amounts of data, I have watched the video of the accident. I have listened to the recordings of the conversation between Air Traffic Control and the pilots. I understand the specialized language they speak. I heard the voice of a helicopter pilot who has now died as they stated with confidence that they had the traffic in sight and asked for permission to take responsibility for visual separation. I heard those voices again as the controller asked them, and they repeated their response. I have looked at the procedures of how traffic is separated in one of the busiest corridors of air traffic in the world. I have watched the data of the flight paths superimposed on images of the terrain below. I understand the airliner's path as it followed an approach to runway one followed by a change to runway 33 as directed by ATC. Regan Washington has three runways that all intersect with each other. All of them are less than 20 feet above the level of the river. All three require flying over the river when winds require traffic to land northbound.

I understand the focus required to fly a precision visual approach to a shorter runway at night with the city's lights and multiple other aircraft visible. I know how hard it is to distinguish other moving aircraft at night while maintaining precise altitude and glide path control. I have flown into airports where controllers work with civilian and military flights. I understand that they work with multiple frequencies. I know the pilots of the CRJ could hear only the controller and not the helicopter pilots. The helicopter pilots could not hear the radio calls of the CRJ plane. ATC personnel handle complex radio assignments and manage multiple planes every day at Reagan Washington National Airport. The pilots of both aircraft were working hard, doing what they knew how to do. The controllers were aware of the situation and reacted appropriately.

There is a lot we know. But there is a lot we do not know. We do not know why the two aircraft reached the same point at the same altitude when one should have been above the other. We do not know if the helicopter crew was wearing night vision goggles, restricting peripheral vision. We do not know what they saw that they mistakenly identified as the CRJ. Some things we do not know will become apparent and be reported as investigators complete their detailed and careful work. Some things will remain mysteries as the evidence died with the pilots.

I return to where I started. What is clear is that there is a tremendous amount of grief and sorrow. And I understand that anger is part of the grieving process. Some people with limited emotional range turn to anger more quickly than others. Those who are unable to admit hurt seem to be constantly angry. Those who have no empathy for the pain of others speak the language of anger. Angry speech does not focus on accuracy.

The President was factually false in blaming the former administration's diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for the accident and in claiming that he understood its cause. He spoke without evidence. His main political tactic is to lash out with anger and blame. He was wrong to do so when the people he was elected to lead need understanding in the midst of grief, healing in the midst of pain, and calm in the search for answers.

As former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg posted on social media, “President True now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again.”

This is not the time for blame. It is the time for grief. It is the time to seek answers. And it is the time for leaders who understand what time it is.

I should have worn red yesterday. I have a couple of red shirts. I like to wear red for Pentecost but break out the red shirts for other occasions. I didn’t wear red yesterday. I didn’t even think about it. I wore a neutral T-shirt and pulled a gray sweatshirt over the top. I had my mind set on working through a writing project. I also had my mind set on staying warm. It wasn’t that cold. I went for a 25-mile bike ride without getting chilled.

The reason to wear red is that it is traditional for Lunar New Year. I didn’t wear red because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to remember the exact day of the first new moon of the year. It isn’t a big deal. We don’t live in a Chinese community. If we did, I’d probably realize that there is more than one chance to wear a read during the 15-day Spring Festival that follows.

I ignore astrology. I don’t read a daily horoscope, though I used to look at it occasionally when we received a print newspaper. And I understand even less about the complex Chinese zodiac calendar. It is a 12-year cycle represented by 12 animals. The clock is also divided into 12 animals, each being matched to a two-hour time block in each 24-hour day. I’m so out of touch. I had to look up to be sure I was born in the year of the snake. I thought that was my animal, but I needed to check. The new year that started yesterday is the year of the snake. Last year was the year of the dragon, and 2026 will be the year of the horse. There are stories about the order of the animals. I only know that the snake used a trick to get ahead of the horse. Since the snake wasn’t a good swimmer, it attached itself to the horse’s foot to cross a stream, and when the crossing was completed, it jumped out, startled the horse, and managed to complete the race ahead of it. Snakes can be tricky.

Snakes are also feared and associated with evil in other mythologies. In the third chapter of Genesis, the snake is portrayed as the most crafty of animals and tricked the humans into disobeying God. The story goes on to name the snake as cursed forever: “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:14 - 15 NRSVUE) The snake doesn’t come off well in that story.

Other cultures have similar stories. In Chinese mythology, snakes are sometimes shape-shifting, able to change into humans and back into snakes. They sometimes appear as fantastic beings combining snake body parts with other body parts, such as human heads. In Chinese art, snakes are sometimes depicted with arms and hands.

The story also calls snakes “little dragons” to make those born in the snake's year feel better about their identity. Snakes seem to have negative images in many cultures and stories.

In Hopi stories, snakes symbolize healing, transformation, and fertility. In ancient Crete, snakes were worshipped as guardians of the mysteries of birth. In West Africa, snakes were signs of eternity and were considered immortal because they shed their skins and were reborn.

I like the stories of the Rainbow Snake that we heard in Australia. There is a traditional story of a great flood that threatened the survival of the people. The snake invited them to climb upon its back and swam through the flood saving humanity. There are also stories about how the snake's movements created the paths of rivers and streams and defined the shape of the oceans. We returned from a sabbatical trip to Australia with a liturgical stole upon which is a rainbow snake. It is one of the treasured items that we keep and have worn for special occasions.

So, like millions of children who will be born in the coming year, my birth year is associated with the snake by those who follow the Chinese zodiac.

The stories of why people wear red are not associated with snakes. Wearing red during the celebration of the Lunar New Year comes from stories of another creature. Nian is a legendary monster. This ferocious beast lives underwater but will crawl onto the land and attack coastal villages with its sharp teeth and horns. In the legend, the people of the village all ran away and hid from the monster, but a mysterious old man showed up and remained in the village. Both the village and the man survived unharmed. He told the people the village was saved because he scared Nain away by hanging red banners on his door, lighting firecrackers, and wearing red clothing. Stories of Main have been going around for centuries and those who observe the Lunar New Year with Chinese traditions wear red clothes, light firecrackers, and decorate their homes with red banners.

However, I forgot about the Lunar New Year. There are no red banners on our house and I didn’t wear a red shirt. We didn’t make any dumplings or turnip cake. However, we had beets with our dinner last night, and plenty of red was left when I did the dishes after dinner. Our main course was a new recipe for us: beef with pepper, cherries, and gorgonzola cheese. I wouldn’t have thought of cooking cherries with meat, but Susan found a recipe for a tasty dinner and used a few of the cherries.

Our cherry tree is very productive. We froze over 50 pounds of cherries last year and need to eat them before picking cherries this year. Even if I forgot to wear red, the cherry tree will sport enough red fruit to make the Year of the Snake a good one at our house.

The rule in the house where I grew up was that if it was below 50 degrees outside, you had to wear a jacket. At our house, temperatures were measured and reported on the Fahrenheit scale. There were other related rules. If it was below 20 degrees, we were required to wear a hat and mittens or gloves. When it got below 0, we had to wear a scarf or a facemark. If it was below -20, we usually got the help of our father to deliver our newspapers. Later, when I got my driver’s license, I helped my younger brothers when it was cold. I remember we were told that if it got to -40, everyone would stay inside, and our father would close his business, but I don’t remember experiencing -40. That is -40 actual temperature. We didn’t hear about wind chill until I was older. The wind always blew. Windchill temperatures were likely well below zero often.

When we lived in North Dakota when the temperature dipped below zero, people wouldn’t turn off their vehicles to run into the Post Office or grocery store; when it was -20, they would leave their cars running for the church service and the coffee hour afterward.

I don’t live in a cold place anymore. Temperatures in the 20s are considered cold, and when temperatures reached the teens a couple of winters ago, many houses in our neighborhood experienced frozen pipes. We had a frozen pipe in our garage, but I discovered the problem before it thawed. I could turn off the supply to that one pipe, which fed an outside tap and avoided a leak. I’ve since installed a valve that allows me to drain that pipe before it gets cold.

I, however, still get cold. I rarely wore long underwear for the first sixty-five or more years unless it was below zero. I wear my long johns daily, even when the highs are approaching 50 degrees. And I’m not likely to shed my jacket at 60 degrees. It depends upon who I am addressing and how I explain this. For some folks, I say it is because the humidity is so high here, and high humidity makes it feel colder. The humidity outside right now is 87%. At 26 degrees, it's laying down a good layer of frost.

Part of why I feel colder these days is that I am getting older. I’m not likely to stay inside, however, so I layer up. For years, I wore an undershirt and a dress shirt to work with a jacket or coat over that. I had plenty of sweaters. My mother was a knitter, and my mother-in-law provided gifts of rag wool sweaters at several Christmases. Somehow, however, I never got into wearing sweatshirts that much. But this year, at least for the last month, sweatshirts have become my everyday wear. I still wear a dress shirt and a tie to church. And if I have meetings, I wear a regular shirt with a collar, but most of the time, I’ve been wearing sweatshirts.

It started on New Year’s Day when I got a new sweatshirt with our annual Polar Bear Plunge logo. It was a lovely, warm thing to put on after I took a swim in the ocean. I am proud enough of that to keep mentioning it, and I enjoy others' reactions when they see it. Then, a couple of weeks later, I got a new sweatshirt with the logo of a local independent coffee shop. The shop has a customer loyalty program where customers can earn points for purchases. I ignored the program and failed to redeem my points for “free” coffee when I stopped by. Usually, you have to register for those programs, but the owner knows me, so he registered me even though I was ignoring the program. One day, he told me I had accumulated enough points for a free sweatshirt. I accepted the gift even though it is a stark testimony that I spent too much money on fancy decaf drinks and spiced tea at the shop.

I’ve been enjoying wearing sweatshirts so much that I decided to dig out the ones I’ve kept in my drawer for years. I found an almost new sweatshirt with the 1996 National Youth Event logo on it. I served on the planning team for that event, and all team members were given hooded sweatshirts. The event was held in the middle of the summer in South Carolina. I couldn’t imagine wearing the garment at the time I received it. It went into a drawer and stayed there for 29 years. It survived being moved.

That was my new sweatshirt. The other one, without a hood, was a gift from my mother. It commemorates Archbishop Desmond Tutu's visit to Montana. It was an amazing event. The Archbishop traveled 47 hours to appear in Helena, Montana. His appearance was his only stop in the United States on that trip. He came at the invitation of our friends who had been working to end apartheid and raising funds to support schools in South Africa. My mother attended the event, which was a fundraiser for the schools. She knew I wanted to attend but was unable, so she bought me a sweatshirt. I don’t know if I had worn it before this month. It appears to be brand new. The event for which it was made and sold happened in 1990. Thirty-five years is a long time to keep a sweatshirt in the bottom of a drawer.

I should check for other unused items in my drawers that need to be found in new homes. On the other hand, who knows when I’ll change my manner of dress? I might need to add another layer to keep warm in another decade. If I do, I doubt I will need to shop for more clothes. I seem to have enough on hand. I know we are experiencing global warming, but I'm prepared if we run into a cold streak.

Over a lifetime of studying and teaching the bible, I have frequently quoted a passage from Deuteronomy that is the centerpiece of morning and evening prayer in observant Jewish homes. Known as the Shema, it is a commandment to remember God and the relationship between God and the people of God:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down, and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NRSVUE

Our people's traditions and the Bible's existence come from a commitment to multi-generational memory. Before the Bible existed as a written document, its contents were transmitted orally for generations. This passing of the story from parents to children was seen as a sacred responsibility, and the faithful were commanded to remember that responsibility twice daily. Who we are and what we believe are the product of thousands of years of commitment to truthful memory.

When an event occurs, those who have experienced it have a deep commitment to preserving the memory of that event. Over and over again, I sat in the homes of people who were planning a funeral while going through the initial stages of processing their grief. I almost always heard one phrase: “I’ll never forget.” The stories that flowed from loved ones might be funny, sad, poignant, or illustrative of character. They were always treasured by those who had directly known that person. Often, I would lift those stories or parts of them in an eulogy delivered at the service.

However, the commitment to never forget faces a challenge when the first generation who experienced the events comes to the end of their lives. Memories can be lost in the transition from eyewitness to those entrusted with their stories. The world stands at a critical moment in terms of our memory, and yesterday’s observance of the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust was a stark reminder of the depth of our responsibility to keep the memory alive. At a ceremony marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, world leaders gathered with 56 survivors of Hitler’s genocide of Jews, Romas, gay men, and others. Four of the survivors told their stories at the event. Leon Weintraub, who spoke, is 99 years old. He was a child when she first saw the Death Gate at the Birkenau extermination camp. Tova Friedman, who was five and a half, recalled watching from her hiding place at a labor camp “as all my little friends were rounded up and driven to their deaths, while the heartbreaking cries of their parents fell on deaf ears.”

The Nazis murdered 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1941 and 1945. They were part of over six million killed by the regime. The majority of those murdered there were Jews. There were also 70.000 Polish prisoners, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and an unknown number of gay men.

The survivors will be at the end of their lives in just a few years. While they have been powerful witnesses and kept alive the commitment to never forget, it now falls to those of us who did not see what they saw or experience what they experienced to pass their stories on to succeeding generations. To do so, we must keep their stories in our hearts.

The warnings from these stories are explicit. The risks of intolerance and antisemitism continue to be real today. Weintraub specifically appealed to young people to be “sensitive to all expressions of intolerance and resentment to people who are different.”

Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz museum, told those gathered, “Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides . . . without memory you have no history, no experience, no point of reference.”

For me, Holocaust Remembrance Day brings to mind the day in the summer of 1978 when I visited Dachau. It was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one. It opened in 1933 and remained open until liberated by U.S. forces in 1945. There were 32,000 documented deaths at that camp. Many more died during death marches to and from the camp. After liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery by starvation and untreated illness continued to die.

I can remember the feel and the sound of the gravel beneath my feet as I walked silently from building to building, peering into the rough wood platforms stacked five high, which were the sleeping quarters for prisoners and the gas chambers and crematoria ovens where killing was an assembly line production. As we left the camp, the words “Never Forget,” inscribed on a marker in four languages, remained in my memory.

The call to memory, however, is more than a call to silent contemplation. It is a call to action. The Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany was not the end of human cruelty and genocide. The world has witnessed and continues to witness the deaths of innocents. Here in our own country, where we once believed such cruelty could never happen, we have witnessed angry mobs stirred to violence without concern for their victims. We have seen the pictures of children forced into cages at the borders of our own country. We have listened to hateful rhetoric from our nation’s leaders.

If we would be faithful to the memory of those killed in the Holocaust and to the memories of the survivors. If we would be loyal to the commitment to teach the stories of our people to our children, we cannot be silent. When the last survivors die, other voices must continue to speak.

Yesterday afternoon, we were treated to a cloudless sky. While cloudless skies are prevalent in many places where I have lived, they are rare in the Pacific Northwest, where we get our share of rain. Gray skies are part of the winter around here. However, we have discovered that while we miss clear blue skies, our weather is not exclusively rain and clouds. We also get our share of beautiful sunny days and have had quite a few recently.

After dinner, I stepped out onto our driveway. I was taking care of a little household chore. Our curbside recycling and garbage pickup occurs every other Monday, and we are instructed to put our containers at the curb the evening before pickup. So, a few trips to the curb after supper on Sunday are part of our routine. Last night, however, was far from routine. Clear skies invited me to look up, and the timing and weather were cooperating to give me an exceptional night sky view. After a few seconds to orient myself, I could see three of the planets in alignment. The sight was breathtaking. I went inside to invite Susan to join me.

I have read about the opportunity to see a rare planetary alignment, but I hadn’t intentionally taken a look. I am only an occasional stargazer. I enjoy looking up, but I am easily distracted by airplanes and satellites passing overhead. I can identify the North Star and the dippers and usually find Orion. I remember being taught that the planets don’t flash and twinkle in the sky and can usually identify some closer ones. Venus is bright and easy to locate. Susan pointed out Mars, which has a reddish appearance. I think the third planet we were seeing was Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune would have appeared between Jupiter and Venus, but they are more distant and more challenging to make out without binoculars or a telescope. Saturn should have appeared somewhat closer to Venus. Still, there is a bit more light pollution to the south of our house caused by a nearby oil refinery, and that may have been combined with my lack of experience, which prevented me from identifying it.

I didn’t need to see six of the planets at once to be in awe as I gazed into the night sky, and I didn’t need a telescope or a guide to experience wonder as I contemplated our place within the solar system.

I’ve read enough to know that the science of identifying planets has shifted a bit over my lifetime. In elementary school, we memorized the names of the nine planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Later, scientists decided that Pluto isn’t a planet in the same sense as the others. Since 2006, it has been classified as a dwarf planet by astronomers. What is more, Pluto is not alone. Our solar system has other dwarf planets: Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. Those bodies rotate as they travel through the solar system, which has smaller objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto is the brightest object.

What I know about planets and stars comes mostly from reading. I’ve read a fair amount about cosmology and am fascinated by astrophysicists' teaching about the universe's nature and history. Most physicists I have met quickly distinguish between their view of the universe and the origin stories of religion. Physical cosmology deals with actual observable phenomena, while religious creation stories contain large amounts of speculation about the physical universe while focusing on the relationship between God and humans. There are also metaphysical perspectives that focus on the hows and whys of the universe's origin while trying to refrain from specific religious doctrines.

My perspective holds a fascination with religious, physical, and metaphysical teachings. I have invested more time and energy in studying the creation stories of the Hebrew scriptures than other views of the nature of the universe. Still, I find no conflict between our people's stories and science's discoveries. Creation stories that emerged before the modern scientific method was developed have a different purpose than physics research. Although there are contemporary readers who try to interpret those stories as factual records of the origins of the universe, their function was far more one of identifying the origins of community. Some of those stories arose out of the experience of Babylonian exile. When exposed to the ideas and cosmology of their captors, leaders of Israel emphasized their own stories of origin in part to distinguish the exile community from that of the place where they had been transported as refugees. When the return from exile was granted, they brought those stories back to Jerusalem. They shared them with the faithful who had been allowed to remain—stories of exile and stories of those who remained eventually merged as the people were reunited. The result is that there are many stories of creation in the Bible, and there are differences between them. Their purpose is not to present a scientific study of the cosmos but rather to speak of the origins of a people.

Still, I share with learned astrophysicists the awe they experience when they observe the universe. That awe is related to the awe our ancient forebears experienced when gazing into the night sky and realizing that even though they were far from home, the stars and planets were still familiar. Sometimes, I experience awe and wonder without explaining how or why. It was that way as I looked at the night sky last evening.

Our place in the vastness of the universe can make us feel small. However, conscious minds are gazing out with self-awareness here on this tilted planet in a relatively average solar system on the edge of one of many galaxies. There may be others in other places of the universe, but human awareness is what we know. It is enough to inspire stories worth telling over and over again.

Not long ago, I had a brief chat with a friend. I reported a recent ride in a vehicle where the driver and the car participated in a beta test of the vehicle’s manufacturer’s self-driving system. I sat in the back seat and watched as the driver removed his hands from the steering wheel and made a few inputs into a touchscreen display. The system worked reasonably well, giving us a comfortable ride until we passed through an area of bright sunlight that appeared in flashes because of a row of trees near the road that created stripes of light and shadow. Unable to adjust to the conditions, the self-driving feature turned itself off and required direct input from the driver, including steering and application of the accelerator, for the trip to continue. My comment to my friend was that I could easily imagine a technological fix to the problems of light and shadow but that there were more significant challenges to self-driving vehicles that challenged the lack of philosophical and ethical education of the engineers designing the cars.

My companion immediately referred to what has been dubbed “the trolley problem.” The trolley problem is a series of thought experiments that offer ethical dilemmas about being in a position to choose between killing several people and killing a single individual. In the most common presentation of the problem, a runaway train or trolley is headed toward a section of track where five people are standing. A bystander sees the impending collision and also that there is a switch that can be pulled to divert the runaway trolley onto a side track where only a single person will be killed. The choice presented by the experiment is the dilemma about whether to do nothing, in which case five people are killed, or to intervene, in which case only one person dies, but it is a person who was initially safe.

My conversation with my friend did not permit time for me to push beyond the usual simple math that is often employed in considering the trolley problem. In general, most people would assume that the death of one is preferable to the death of five and judge that there is a moral obligation to act to decrease the number of deaths. Had we had the time, I might have gone into much more detail. Still, all I was able to offer to the conversation at the time was a comment about the trolley problem standing in the line of an ethical discussion that was going on for centuries before trollies existed and that I thought that as a stand-alone thought experiment, it lacked the complexity and nuance that ought to be considered when evaluating self-driving vehicles.

I am not an academic philosopher, though I did study philosophy and the history of philosophy as an undergraduate student. I have, however, studied ethics enough and have run into enough ethical decisions in my life to be wary of simplistic solutions to complex problems. I fear using the trolly problem in the discussion of self-driving vehicles because it presents a relatively simple mathematical solution. The engineers designing the hardware and software of self-driving cars are practiced mathematical solutions. They can easily program a vehicle to quickly judge numbers and choose the action that will result in the smallest number of victims. The real world, however, rarely presents ethical problems as simple as choosing between one and five victims.

For starters, the trolley problem does not consider the possible danger of loss of life to the persons on the trolley. What if the sudden switch in tracks causes the trolley to tip over and risk the lives of the trolley’s occupants? The algorithms applied to self-driving cars must be able to weigh possible victims inside and outside of multiple vehicles involved in an accident scenario. As any accident investigation reveals, numerous factors and various decisions are involved in accidents. In the case of the self-driving car in which I was a passenger, the vehicle’s safety system relies on returning control to a human driver when the automatic system fails to have sufficient information to continue. In the scenario we experienced, the alertness or distraction of the person sitting in the driver’s seat is not programmed into the vehicle’s computer. Nor is that person's level of impairment. At a minimum, the driver was distracted by the touchscreen in the car. What if that person had also been talking on the phone, looking at the scenery, engaged in conversation, or otherwise distracted?

My philosophical and ethical education came with a distinct cultural bias. I studied ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and nineteenth-century German idealistic philosophy. While attending graduate school on the campus of the University of Chicago, I was aware that the philosophy department of that University reflected those biases, as well as a strong bias toward analytic philosophy. When considering some of the vast ethical challenges of the 21st Century, those biases can prevent consideration of tribal and indigenous ethics and Eastern philosophical and moral wisdom.

In the current system of education of software and hardware engineers, academic philosophy or ethics are not considered. Engineering schools do not typically offer philosophy or ethics as areas of study. The gap between the philosophy department of the University of Chicago and the engineering department of Stanford University is much greater than the physical distance between Illinois and California.

Yesterday, as I tutored my grandson in his work with middle school algebra, we discussed various kinds of single-variable problems. The text presented issues with only a single solution, including those for which the only solution is zero. It also presented matters that have an infinite number of solutions and problems that have no solutions. The exercise was to determine which type of formula was given. It is simple introductory algebra. The lesson was designed to teach students to discard problems that did not offer a single solution.

I wonder if self-driving car engineers have considered the possibility of the various problems from a mathematical perspective. Like middle school students, have they been taught to discard issues with no solution or infinite solutions?

Philosophers have known since ancient times that there are ethical problems with multiple solutions and moral issues with no solution. Their experience might inform engineers who write software for self-driving cars. It is far more complex than a thought experiment involving an imaginary trolley.

We are cautious about recycling at our house. While we have a curbside collection of many recyclables, we know that the program is flawed and that many items placed in curbside recycling bins end up in landfills. As a result, we sort carefully. We pay for an additional recycling service that offers recycling of items that are not recycled through the curbside system, including plastic film, multi-layered plastics, clamshell plastic containers, medicine bottles, light bulbs, batteries, and other items. Like most of our neighbors, we are concerned about human impact on the environment and are trying to do what we can to protect and preserve the natural world for generations to come.

As part of our environmental concern, we have researched organizations that work for environmental justice and have programs to protect and preserve natural areas. Little did we realize that our research into ecological protection organizations would conflict with our attempts to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but we have a dilemma.

Every day, when we pick up our mail, we quickly sort. More than half of the mail we receive is unwanted and unsolicited. When we walked in from the mailbox, we had a stack of envelopes headed straight for the paper recycling bin. However, some items come in the mail that contaminate paper recycling, so we find ourselves opening unwanted letters and sorting their contents. Items that we cannot find a way to recycle end up in regular garbage and are bound for landfills.

I know this is the wrong forum for this communication, and I have already sent this message to several organizations; here is one of my current complaints.

Dear organization,
It may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t need any more address labels. I have so many unused labels that they are creating a storage problem for me. I try to use them whenever I write letters, and I write many more letters and send many more cards than many of my acquaintances. Still, the labels keep coming quicker than I can use them. I estimate that I have a box in my study with more labels than I can use in the next ten years, and while I expect to live more than ten additional years, the day will come when the labels exceed my ability to use them in my lifetime.

Let’s take a look at the problem. From my perspective, I don’t know what to do with all of the labels. If I put them into my paper recycling, the microplastics they contain can end up in animal bedding and compost material. Our planet already has too much microplastic pollution. It eventually ends up in our food stream. Researchers say that animals and humans now have microplastics in our bodies. The entire health effects of that pollution are yet to be understood, but it seems prudent to interrupt the stream of such items into the environment.

In addition, the adhesives in the labels can create problems for paper recyclers. They jam machines, cause excessive wear and tear, and raise the cost of recycling.

I am distressed by the idea that I am contributing to increased waste, and the waste I generate has my name stamped on it. Remember, I didn’t choose to order the labels or ask to have my name printed on adhesive-backed microplastics.

Let's also look at the problem from your point of view. Sending me address labels is not causing me to donate more to your organization. It is having the opposite effect. We have limited funds, so we are strategic in our donations. While we donate a significant portion of our income to charitable organizations, we want our donations to be effective. Nothing makes us feel less like donating than having an organization waste the money it has pursuing donations. Please don’t spend our donations on sending us more address labels.

I know we aren’t the only ones who have this problem. I see return address labels on the cards and letters I receive from my friends. Some of these friends have beautiful handwriting, and I treasure their letters. They can write their return addresses on envelopes and used to do so before their homes became overwhelmed with address labels sent to them by organizations.

In the last month, I have received address labels from your organization and several others. I have also received membership renewal letters and even membership cards from organizations I have never been a member of. These organizations are getting my address from some source. You might do more with my address than print and mail labels to me. I’m pretty sure you are sharing my name and address with other organizations that publish and distribute address labels.

I’m trying to be creative in my approach to this problem. There are a few household repairs where address labels can be used as a substitute for tape. I suppose they would work for wrapping presents. I’ve allowed my grandchildren to use them as stickers for craft projects, even though I don’t think their artwork should have my name. I also am teaching them to sign their artwork with a pencil or pen. I want them to practice writing their names in hopes that one day, they will grow up and be free from organizations that send them address labels. However, using the labels as tape does have its limitations. They aren’t stretchy, nor do they have the insulating properties of electrical tape. The adhesive is no match for duct tape. The labels are too small for many of the necessary patches and repairs.

Please note that I’ve included a dozen address labels in this letter. If you’ve forgotten who is writing to you, one is beneath my signature. Note that I have removed the labels from the coated backing paper on which you sent them to me. I’ve done so because that paper should not be put into regular paper recycling. After all, the coating on the paper contains microplastics and can cause contamination. Since I’m sure this letter will end up in your recycling, I’ll try to make it earth-friendly.

I grew up in a house full of maps. My parents were pilots, and in the days before, GPS and computers that stored mapping information and paper maps were used for aerial navigation. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration requires pilots to have the necessary maps on board their airplanes. A Flight Safety Specialist could approach an aircraft on the ground and ask to be shown the maps, which were inspected to ensure they covered the most recent trip's area and dates. Maps were updated regularly, and new versions superseded the old ones. Updating included obstacles like towers and other structures that changed with development and new construction. It also included the addition of navigational aids used by pilots.

The program intended for the dated maps to be discarded. However, my parents often kept dated maps for planning and instructing new pilots. They also allowed us to use the maps for play and encouraged us to learn to read maps. Several maps were transformed into treasure maps, although we never discovered any significant treasure apart from planned treasure hunts created by aunts and sisters.

As an adult, I have continued to enjoy maps. Although I have a GPS unit that I transfer between our car and our pickup, and I have a mapping program on my phone, I still enjoy looking at paper maps. My wife also enjoys maps. On several occasions, maps have been gifts that we exchanged. This past Christmas a road and recreation atlas of British Columbia was one of the gifts. It contains 176 pages of detailed maps of roads, trails, and waterways, with the topography illustrated in colors. I’ve already enjoyed studying the maps and daydreaming about possible camping trips and other adventures in the province to our north. This is the second such atlas we have owned. We had a similar atlas in 2006 when we spent several weeks exploring Alberta and British Columbia as part of a sabbatical. However, the provinces are large, and there is much that we have not seen. Beyond British Columbia lie the Yukon and Northwest Territories, which are also inviting to us.

However, all paper maps have an inherent problem. They are printed on flat paper, but our planet is not flat. Cartographers have known about this problem since ancient times. The Babylonians drew maps in disc-shaped forms to address this problem. In the second century, Ptolemy wrote an eight-volume guide to geography that showed a spherical earth. Maps from the Middle Ages have been preserved, showing Jerusalem as the center of the sphere and only three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa.

More accurate charts were required as various sea navigation techniques were developed and refined. Given the limited experience and understanding of the scale of the earth, early charts were full of inaccuracies. Famously, Christopher Columbus landed on San Salvador Island, also known as Waiting Island, in the Bahamas, believing he was off India's coast. He was correct in thinking that the globe could be circumnavigated, a revolutionary idea at the time, but he was incorrect in his assumptions about the planet's size.

Around fifty years after Columbus’ voyages, Gerardus Mercator created maps using a mathematical projection. Mercator made equally spaced parallel vertical lines for the meridians using the grid of meridians and parallels. The parallels of latitude were horizontal straight lines spaced farther and farther apart as their distance from the Equator increased. Imagine depicting the sphere of the earth on a cylinder and then flattening the tube. Mercator projection maps are the most common maps used in printing. Remember any flat map of the planet that you have seen. Chances are it is a variation of a Mercator projection.

The problem with Mercator projections is that the farther from the equator you are, the greater the distances shown on the map. Distances near the poles are larger than distances at the equator. As a result, our atlas of British Columbia makes distances seem more significant the farther north you go in the book. I must keep reminding myself not to rely entirely on visual images when imagining travel.

The current President of the United States is not exactly an expert in maps, as was the case during his first term when he used a Sharpie pen to draw the area where he expected a hurricane to travel. His advisors should at least explain Mercator's projection to him. It could help him revise his ambitions. Specifically, Greenland isn’t as big as he thinks it is. While it looks as big as Africa on a Mercator map, Greenland is roughly the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Greenland has essential mineral resources beneath its surface, including critical minerals used in green energy technologies and areas where fossil fuel reserves may lie. However, finding, extracting, and transporting minerals and fuels from Greenland is difficult.

In 1946, US Secretary of State James Byrnes offered to buy the island from Denmark for $100 million. The offer was rejected. Adjusting for inflation, a similar offer would be about $1.5 billion. Although no price has been discussed, Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredericksen has already described the president’s plan to purchase Greenland as “absurd.”

Rather than dreaming about controlling whatever resources lie beneath the ice and rocks of Greenland, I propose that the president be given various maps with different projections. A Cassini Projection map shows Greenland much smaller than a Mercator map. A Central cylindrical projection shows Greenland as long and skinny. A Goode map shows wedges cut out of the flat area to more accurately depict the size of territories near the poles. He might enjoy drawing with Sharpie pens on different maps as he tries to figure out what he is talking about when he talks about Greenland.

And if that doesn’t distract him from ordering acts of violence, perhaps one of his advisors could distract him by explaining plural tantrums. In common usage, pants, pliers, glasses, scissors, tweezers, and other nouns appear only in the plural form, even when discussing only one item. Using plural tantrums to refer to his possessions might make him believe he is twice as rich, which would likely please him.

One of the blessings of my life is that my wife has been an equal partner in all aspects of our shared experience. Not only did we attempt to divide household chores and our responsibilities as parents and grandparents evenly, but we were professional colleagues. We worked for the same congregation for all of our careers as pastors and teachers. For about half of that time, we shared a single job, dividing it according to our specific skills and aptitudes. I have deeply appreciated Susan’s skill and grace as a pastor and have learned a great deal about the nature of my profession by observing her.

We came by this naturally. Of course, we talked extensively about living and working together. We researched the history of collegia. A collegium is an association where each member has equal power and authority. In the church and academic communities, the term was often applied to groups of professionals who lived together and shared household duties to be more efficient and have more time for their work outside of the home. We wrote papers on the subject. Beyond that, however, we grew up in families where our parents shared duties. My mother was a partner in all of my father’s business ventures. She worked as the bookkeeper for their joint business ventures and understood the dynamics and finances of his work. Susan’s parents had specific roles. Her father worked for income, and her mother was a homemaker, but they were equal partners in their marriage. My mother-in-law always kept and balanced the checkbook. They developed a skill at managing their finances dependent upon the complete sharing of information.

There were, however, many gender distinctions in my growing up. There were differences between men and women that were assumed and often not questioned. I grew up knowing that there were specific rules. Some of those rules came from the simple fact that I was born into a family with three girls. Having big sisters meant that there were patterns of authority that were already established before I was born. I don’t remember ever questioning some of those rules. We didn’t need locks on bedroom doors in our house. If the girls’ bedroom door was closed, I didn’t open it. I might knock if I needed to say something to one of them, but I never opened it. If there was a sister in the bathroom, I didn’t knock. I waited. That was the rule. Another rule about which we have laughed but which I have observed all my life was never to look into a woman’s purse. Mostly, I observed that the rule as a child is never to touch a woman’s purse. I have a good friend who also grew up with older sisters for whom the same rule was applied. If our wives ask us to get something from their purses, we carry the entire bag to them and let them take out whatever they need.

I don’t remember much about my sisters’ purses, except they had them. I had a wallet. Later, I had a few keys. That was it in terms of personal items. I didn't carry it if it didn’t fit into my pockets. The things I have are the same now as when I was a kid: my wallet, keys, and pocket knife. I do remember my mother’s bag. It was not one of those little bags that fashion models carry while walking the runway. It was a real piece of luggage. My mother was a knitter, holding yarn and knitting needles with her wherever she went. But she had a lot more than that in her bag, which we called her knitting bag. Her wallet, checkbook, keys, and many other supplies were in it. She could produce tissues if we needed one band-aid when a cut occurred. She had cough drops if our throat had a catch and could make a snack when needed. She had scissors and often a role of scotch tape. There was chapstick and aspirin and paper, pens, and pencils. It seemed to have all of the supplies everyone needed. We used to joke that in addition to everything we saw her produce from that bag, there were other things in there, including things even she didn’t know were there. Our family had seven children, but we used to say that there had originally been eight, but that one fell into the bag and was never again seen.

I haven’t thought much about that knitting bag for many years, but an article on the BBC website got me thinking. The article said that one of the significant fashion trends is supersized handbags. There are a lot of things that people want to carry. Large bags have room for make-up bags, phone chargers, water bottles, books, umbrellas, a spare pair of shoes, and more. According to the article, large bags have been trending for a couple of years now, and they appear to continue to be very popular.

The article explained the popularity of a particular bag made by the fashion designer Hermes. Inspired and named after the actress and singer Jane Birkin, the bag continues to sell for $1,000 and more. The Fashionphile website offers a Hermes Crocodile Birken at a discount price of 41,995, marked down from the list price of $55,995. I’m guessing that a woman carrying a Birkin probably doesn’t need the space for all her extra cash unless she just pulled off a bank robbery. However, the bag might be big enough to help empty a bank vault. The cash went to purchase the bag. No worries, Walmart has an imitation of the Birkin available at a much lower cost. The bag is priced at $78 and is called the “Wirkin.”

For those who do carry such bags, one thing they don’t have to worry about is me stealing them. There is no way I would ever touch it. There are some rules that I have no intention of breaking.

Today is Treaty Day in Washington. It is a school holiday in the Ferndale District, where our grandchildren are enrolled. 1854 through 1856 were critical years in the history of the state where we live, during which seven key treaties were negotiated between indigenous tribes and the territorial government. Securing peace with the traditional occupants of the state was part of the process that led to statehood in 1889. November 11, 1889, is one of the dates in history that I have memorized partly because of my journey through the places where I have lived. On that day, after thirteen years, when no new states were admitted to the United States, four new states were admitted to the union through an act by the United States Congress. Those states were Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana. I have lived in all four of those states.
Furthermore, I have lived on land initially reserved for native tribes before it was removed from indigenous control by later actions in three of those states. Where we live here in Washington is different. The Lummi Nation peacefully ceded control of the area through their participation in the Point Elliot Treaty, signed on January 22, 1855.

The history of the Point Elliot Treaty is essential to understanding the place we now call home. The Lummi people had occupied this territory for more than 150 generations. They knew no other home than the islands and coastal areas, including Birch Bay, where we live. The coming of settlers was brought about in part by the California Gold Rush, which created such a demand for lumber that extracting timber from the areas near the coast in Washington to ship south was profitable. Settlers came to cut wood, and others came to provide food and other essential services to the loggers. Choosing an alternative to armed conflict, the leaders of the Lummi Nation negotiated an agreement. Representatives of two sovereign nations, The Lummi Nation and the United States, came together and negotiated a treaty that included promises made by both parties about how the land and resources of this region would be shared. The agreement they signed is called the Point Elliot Treaty. The treaty signers promised to live by it forever for all future generations.

Some deviations from the treaty have had to be adjudicated in court. Still, the introductory provisions of the treaty, including Lummi's rights to fishing and harvesting shellfish from coastal waters, have been upheld.

To live where we do is to join with others as treaty people—those who have inherited the vision of pioneer and Lummi ancestors who chose to live in peace and share this beautiful land. Treaty Day in Washington reminds us that our state has been made possible by multiple treaties with 29 sovereign Indigenous nations that resulted in peace and guaranteed specific rights to our neighbors in those nations.

In the Ferndale School District, the lessons that are used to teach students the meaning of Treaty Day were developed in partnership with Lummi tribal leaders so that children who attend school in the district and children who attend Lummi tribal schools share the same lessons and develop an understanding of the story of this place.

The Point Elliot Treaty was signed at Mukilteo, about an hour and a half drive from where we live. We visited Mukilteo often before we moved to Washington because my brother lived on Whidbey Island for many years. Mukilteo is where the ferry departs for the island's southern end. Another feature of modern Mukilteo is that it is next to Paine Field and the Boeing Everett Factory, the largest building in the world by volume, covering almost 100 acres. My brother rode the ferry to Mukilteo for many years and then a bus to the factory, where he worked alongside 30,000 other workers.

We live close to the official Lummi reservation and visit the reservation regularly, taking advantage of lower prices for fuel and making sure to purchase our seafood from the tribe. Being careful about the source of our seafood is vital because, during the 1960s and 1970s, the Lummi were excluded from the commercial fishery despite the clear rights established in the Point Elliot Treaty. They pursued a peaceful and legal settlement, and in 1974, the Ninth District U.S. Court of Appeals handed down the Boldt Decision, reaffirming the tribe’s right to half of the catch, with the tribe and the state managing the fishery together. Although the food we eat has a minimal impact on the overall management of the resources of our region, we are careful to purchase from the tribe as part of our participation in the treaties that have granted peace to the place where we live and that acknowledge the sovereignty of our neighbors.

It is easy to find many places in this world where wars rage and people are killed in disputes over control of land and resources. However, we have been blessed to live in a place of peace where people of good faith and integrity negotiate ways to live together and share resources in peace. We are the inheritors of the Point Elliot Treaty, and since the promises of that treaty were made for all future generations, we have been granted the ability to own a home here. Teaching our grandchildren about the importance of that treaty is worth more than a single day each year. Pausing to observe Treaty Day is only part of the education they need to live peacefully with our neighbors and continue the peaceful sharing of land and resources for generations yet to come.

The history books and other curricula used in public schools have not always been accurate in reporting the truth about the relationship between settlers and the indigenous peoples. Although knowledge exists to correct those inaccuracies, there has been political backlash in parts of the United States, and revisionist teaching has resulted in incomplete education for many children. We are fortunate to live in a school district that has worked diligently and continues in partnership with tribal leaders to develop the resources to teach the complex truth of our history. Treaty Day is part of that process.

Last week, I was asked to serve on a vital committee responsible for shaping leadership in our church. I quickly declined, citing my understanding that the role of a retired pastor in a congregation is to support pastoral leadership, not to shape it. My knowledge of my role in our congregation is accurate. However, there was another, perhaps more straightforward reason why I resigned: I wanted to avoid meetings.

My career involved a lot of meetings. It is part of the nature of being a leader in a congregation that takes seriously the role of its members in forming policies, choosing leadership, being responsible for budget, and planning the future. I mostly enjoyed the process and the people, but some meetings were stressful. Like any executive in any nonprofit, my salary was a significant portion of the total budget of the congregation. For most of the years of my career, my salary and benefits made up the largest single item in the church’s budget. As a result, it is hard not to take budget conversations personally. Years went by without pay raises because the congregation and I saw other parts of the congregation's mission as vital, and we chose not to balance our budget by cutting programs and outreach. I often dreaded annual meetings because budget conversations were an essential part of annual congregational meetings and because full participation of members, including expressing their ideas about the budget, is encouraged. I breathed a sigh of relief when they were over.

Yesterday, our church's congregation met to discuss its annual budget, and next Sunday, the congregation's annual meeting will be held. I confess that these meetings are much more fun for me now that I am not the pastor. Still, I’m not a big fan of meetings. One thing I value most about retirement is that I don’t need to attend so many meetings.

But meetings happen anyway. And I ended up with more meetings than I wanted in my schedule. One day last week, I had three meetings in one day. It occurred during the video conference, so I didn’t have to leave my house to participate. Still, I had to scramble to make myself a cup of tea and use the bathroom between sitting in my chair and staring at my computer. It isn’t that the meetings were required of me. But each was important to me. One was a meeting with my editor, who is working with me on preparing a manuscript for publication. Another was a class that I am taking. The third was our church’s Green Team, who work on helping our congregation make more sustainable choices about consumption, energy use, and care of the environment.

Today is another three-meeting day. I’m meeting with a group of writers who give feedback to each other. Some of those writers will provide reviews and possibly endorsements of my work, and I am asked to provide them with reviews and endorsements. My second meeting is a different class that I am taking. Although I am retired, I chose to keep up with my continuing education. I want to keep up with advances in research and new ideas in ministry. Education has been such an essential part of my life that being both teacher and student is natural. The third meeting is just for fun. We participate in a generative poetry group. The group generates and shares prompts that we share, each of us writing a poem about the same prompt. We share a poem we’ve been working on during the past week and write poetry during the meetings. The people in the group are delightful and although I doubt I’ll become a poet, the writing challenge is good for my mind and spirit.

So, I go to meetings not because others make me but because I choose to participate in activities that involve meetings. Although I now think three meetings in a single day is a bit much for me, I also don’t want to become the kind of retired person who is only up for one thing daily. When working full-time, I often put in a twelve-hour day with four or five meetings. I was mildly put off by folk, usually those who were retired, who told me they couldn’t attend a meeting because they already had another meeting that day. I resolved not to become a retired person who is up for only one thing each day. I enjoy filling my days with a wide variety of activities. I have no intention of spending all of my time in meetings. I go for walks every day. I ride my bike most days. I play with my grandchildren. I do chores at the farm. I tend my garden and do light repairs around my home. And, increasingly, I keep a schedule involving many more visits to various doctors than when I was younger.

I’m not complaining. I have a good life filled with very good people. I also have a lot of control over my schedule, as demonstrated by my decision not to serve on the committee to which I was invited. However, I need to continue developing skills in seeking alternatives to meetings. Just as I looked forward to having fewer meetings as I anticipated retirement, I look forward to days when I have no meetings now that I am retired. I want more of those days and must be conscious of how many meetings I agree to attend. It is a bit of a conundrum for me. There is much that I need to learn about this phase of my life.

Before I retired, I thought I would reach my goal and that my life would become less complex. However, I have discovered that retirement doesn’t work like that. Like other phases of my life, it involves continually reinventing my role and making new choices about investing my time. I’m not sure that I’m getting any better with experience. I do, however, plan to cut back on meetings.

I am not a birder, but my friends keep journals and log their species sightings for a lifetime record. They go on regular birding trips, sometimes to exotic locations. They participate in annual bird counts and donate to the Audubon Society. They keep track of the birds coming and going at their bird feeders and keep their bird identification handbooks where they can easily access them. On the other hand, I put seed into my feeders when I think about it and enjoy watching the coming and going of birds without being able to tell others what kind of birds I have seen.

Yesterday, however, we went on a birding expedition. It wasn’t billed as a birding expedition but as “a raptor field trip.” There were, however, some serious birders who went on the trip. I mean, able to identify those flying, those in the trees, and those on the ground birders. You know, scientific name droppers. Or “I brought a designated driver, so I could focus on the birds and not worry about keeping the car on the road” birders. Some were “both my camera and my spotting scope are worth more than my car” birders. There were a few intense birders along for the ride. And they made the experience fun for everyone, especially for me, because they pointed out birds that I missed and told me the names of the birds that I was seeing.

One of the serious birders asked, “How boring do you want this trip to be? We could stop for every red-tailed hawk and every bald eagle we see or keep going for the good stuff. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question because I would be pleased to stop for every red-tailed hawk and bald eagle. I usually do. But I also didn’t want to miss out on the exciting stuff, whatever that might be. Fortunately, we got a good mix of both, plus a few experiences that were neither boring nor exciting.

The day was bright and clear, and many other individuals and groups were out looking at birds. Our leader tried to avoid crowds and the places where many others had already stopped. However, we stopped at one place where there were a lot of other parked cars. The attraction was a group of eagles congregated in trees, including mature birds and younger birds. At one point, we counted eight bald eagles in three trees standing next to each other. Other eagles were perched nearby, and there were good opportunities to observe them in flight. I got a few pictures of the birds even though I wasn’t packing a 500mm lens. While we were stopped, our guide invited us to look across the road where other raptors were flying. They were going too fast for me to get good photographs, and I’d already forgotten the names of the birds. As I said, I’m not a birder. However, it was interesting to watch them, and fun to see how our little group of people were excited about the activities on both sides of the street.

Another time, we stopped to observe an adult male red-tailed hawk perched in a tree. The distance was proper for some good photographs, and the bird was calm enough for our guide to set up a spotting scope, allowing us to get a perfect look at the bird. Then, as we were watching, the bird took off and flew to a distant tree where a bald eagle was perched. As we watched, and as I was taking pictures, the hawk swooped toward the eagle and succeeded in stirring the enormous bird from its perch. Both birds appeared slightly off balance for a few seconds before the eagle flew to another tree, and the hawk landed where the eagle had been originally perched. Our guide reminded us that part of successful birding is watching from a distance and waiting. Sometimes, there is a lot to be seen and learned from finding a place to sit still and observe.

We drove by fields of trumpeter swans and snow geese. In the past, I have driven through the area in search of the beautiful white birds that winter in the Samish area and Skagit flats. We have been mesmerized by their numbers and activities. The purpose of yesterday’s field trip, however, was to view raptors, so our guide barely took notice of the swans and geese, and we didn’t stop to take photographs of them. I guess some people who spend most of their free time looking at birds fail to meet the exciting criteria because they are so common in the winter around here. However, for a non-birder like me, there is still a bit of excitement each time I see a field covered with glorious white birds.

At one point, we stopped to photograph a hawk perched on a wire and got a good look at another flying creature. A person on a hang glider that had launched from a high hill a couple of miles away flew overhead on their way to a landing in an open field. Years ago, I did some hang gliding, and I still feel a thrill when I remember the feeling of flight in the open air. Having grown up around airplanes and loving to fly, there is something unique about hang gliding that is less like an airplane and more like a bird. The lack of an engine means the flight is silent and much more like one imagines the flight of a bird might be.

Another enjoyable experience of the day was that the driver of our carpool had a Tesla electric car equipped with the beta test version of the latest self-driving software. Our driver employed it even on some winding roads. It was interesting to watch the steering wheel turn with no hands on it and to observe the screen display that showed other cars, the edges of the road, and even pedestrians.

I’m not inclined to purchase a self-driving car right away, and I’m unlikely to become a serious birder. But spending the day with people who do those things was fascinating.

Before we moved to the Pacific Northwest, we frequently visited this region while on vacation. Our son and his wife moved to Olympia for his first job after graduate school. Our first two grandchildren were born in Olympia, making it a go-to destination whenever we had time. To celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, our children and their families gathered with us at Anacortes to celebrate. That visit included a day trip aboard one of the many whale-watching ships that carry tourists to view the mammals that roam in the Salish Sea. Our journey took us among the San Juan islands, and we successfully saw a pod, or family group of orcas, also known as killer whales. I didn’t know much about the different types of mammals in the area back then, but we were most likely seeing members of the J pod. There are three pods that makeup what is known as the southern residents. These pods remain in the general area of the Strait of Georgia offshore of where we live.

In the late fall, the three pods usually can be found hunting for Chinook salmon near the mouth of the Fraser River just a few miles north of where we live. They often range farther south into the Puget Sound in the late fall. By December or January, the pods will have moved out into the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca off the tip of Vancouver Island. J pod generally stays around that area until they return to the Salish Sea in the late summer, following the salmon as they head toward the mouths of rivers to swim upstream to spawn. The other two pods of the southern residents travel south along the outer coast, sometimes going as far as California, but J pod generally stays close to where we live. Scientists are not entirely sure of the exact territory of the pod because following orcas in the open ocean is a challenging task, and often, they disappear for long periods.

Back in 2018, before we moved here, one of the adult females of J pod received international attention when her calf died, and she carried the body of the calf for 17 days, covering 1,000 miles. Local tribes named here Tahlequah might be translated as “two,” “just two,” or “two is enough.” The name was a nod to the dedication of the mother to the calf even after it died, and she became a symbol of grief. This region has a lot of grief as salmon runs continue to diminish. The diminishing salmon runs affect the health of the animals that depend on the salmon for their food source. While some orcas eat widely varied diets, including eating other sea mammals, the orcas of J pod eat salmon as their exclusive food source. The southern residents are endangered, with only 73 members left. In addition to the lack of salmon, the orcas are threatened by pollution that contaminates their food and the noise from ships, which disrupts their hunting. The threats to the orcas are intensified by climate change, which is dramatically altering food supplies in the ocean. Warming also depletes summer stream flows, affects the salmon's migration patterns, and affects the orca pods' health.

Tahlequah’s devotion to her calf inspired tributes and became a focus of the broader grief that has come with dramatic climate change. Although we don’t know much about the emotions of other creatures, it is easy to see the mother's dedication as an expression of grief.

And now, observers believe that Tahlequah has surpassed her 2018 tour of grief. In late December, observers and many of us here celebrated seeing a new calf swimming alongside her. In addition to the calf that died in 2018, she has successfully raised two calves, and this new calf was a sign of promise. That promise turned to grief when, on New Year’s Eve, Tahlequah was seen carrying the body of the calf that died of unknown causes. That was 19 days ago, and it is unknown whether or not she is still carrying that calf as the pod has moved to the mouth of the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, where direct observation is much more difficult.

Those who observe animals in the wild, including birds, land, and sea mammals, have noted many cases of animals trying to cling to the bodies of family members who have died. In 2021, Edinburgh Zoo reported that one of their chimpanzees refused to let go of a stillborn baby. Elephants, crows, geese, and dolphins have been observed focusing on the bodies of dead relatives. We, humans, can identify with that behavior as we seek to cling to those we have lost and express our grief with a host of different traditions around the care and handling of the bodies of our loved ones.

Indigenous people have long traditions of expressing kinship with other creatures with whom we share the environment. They frequently refer to different species as kin. Coast Salish tribes have held prayers and ceremonies focusing on sharing the grief of Tahlequah. There is an understanding that her grief is also our grief. And it is. We, too, are affected by the dangers of pollution. We, too, eat salmon and other sea creatures for nutrition and sustenance. We also understand the threats that global climate change makes for all creatures, including ourselves. The fact that we share the grief of the orca mother, however, has no impact on her or future generations of her kind unless we turn that grief into action. Global warming is directly connected to human consumption of fossil fuels. Ocean pollution results from human carelessness with the resources we use to support our lifestyles.

Suppose we would genuinely share the grief of Tahlequah as she carries her dead baby. In that case, we must continue to find ways to change our consumption patterns and do what we can to influence policymakers to protect the environment and clean up pollution. Death and grief will be a part of this world as long as there is life. If current trends continue, a day will come in the foreseeable future when there are no more orcas to mourn the losses of their kind. That is a tragedy we can prevent if we have the will.

I have sung the words of Katharine Lee Bates’ poem “O beautiful for spacious skies,” and known that I have been witness to great beauty. It is said that she wrote the poem during a trip to Colorado. I have stood at over 14,000 feet on the summit of Pikes Peak after climbing the Barr Trail as the afternoon thunderstorms moved off to the east where no point for thousands of miles rivals the altitude of that summit as a double rainbow paints from horizon to horizon against the dark clouds while behind me the sun sets across countless peaks filled with glaciers thousands of years old atop mountains that took 30 million years to rise and have stood for even longer. Streaks of red and orange and gold and purple and yellow took my breath away and defied my capacity for poetry. I have beheld beauty.

I have also witnessed the daily visits of a husband who after years of watching the memories fade from his wife’s mind was forced to admit her to a care center where cruel illness continued to rob her of her autobiography with a fierceness that was at the same time ponderous and sudden. He was always by her side when I came to visit, his daily pilgrimage continuing with unmatched fidelity as she was robbed of the memory of the names of their children and of the recognition of their shared stories and eventually of her capacity to recognize him as husband. Yet he persisted until like the simple furniture of the room and the pattern in the carpet and the routine of the meals and the paint on the wall he became a fixture in her life drained of romance and even recognition of his identity. And when she breathed her last he sat and wept while his children gathered and with a voice quiet and barely audible declared. “I have been given love and love never dies.” I have beheld beauty.

I have paddled my kayak silently across the stillness of predawn as the mist rose from the water and even the Canada geese were hushed to silence as not even a hint of a breeze could move the needles of the pine trees on the shore. I have sat in silent wonder as the lake yielded double vision perfectly aligned vertically as the sun crept above the hills to the east and spread glorious color on everything below lighting the drops of water on the deck of my boat with tiny rainbows while heron stirred from silent pose to rise with grace while emitting a prehistoric cry inviting a chorus of sound from songbirds in the trees and waterfowl floating on the surface. I have watched beaver rise and eagle fish and pike break the water’s surface in search of airborne insects. I have been witness to the glorious daily awakening of the lake surrounded by the forest. I have beheld beauty.

I have also watched as a widow, crushed to the floor with grief, shattered with shock at the violence and devastation of a single 9mm bullet fired from the chamber of a standard Glock handgun irreversibly destroying the complex brain of her beloved. She understood in the horror and trauma that the violence she would never be able to erase from her memory rose not from the weapon nor from the hand that held it but from the demons of depression and the rush of unrestrained impulse. That knowledge, however, was powerless against the wall of “could of, should of, would of” that filled her soul with guilt as devastating as her grief. I watched as she rose from the ground and bit by bit, piece by shattered piece, moment by trembling moment with tears that made her faint from dehydration, began to piece her life back together. Through pain that was more intense than she ever had known and with labor that lasted years longer than that which birthed her children, with courage that exceeded that of a soldier falling on a grenade to save their buddies and strength that diminished the power of an olympic weightlifter, she pieced together her shattered soul and gave birth to a new life with grace as much of a companion as grief and when she was able to smile through her tears glory broke free. I have beheld beauty.

I have stood atop the Athabaskan glacier and peered into deep crevasse where the ice is blue from centuries of incalculable pressure that forced the oxygen from between the water molecules leaving only pure water behind. I have sipped the cold purity dripping from ice brought to the surface by explorers. I have beheld beauty.

I have held the hand of my life’s partner as she drifted off to sleep without need for words to express the decades of silently listening to each other breathe and feeling each other’s heartbeat through fingers on wrist or hand over heart. I have adventured through memory upon memory of long walks and adventures shared, of children and grandchildren entering our partnership with powerful personalities, incredible creativity, and amazing wisdom. I have shared decades with a colleague who understood my work and the vision behind it and shared the daily grind of labor. I have sat down to a table filled with bounty produced by hours of careful preparation and presented with care and then looked across the table at the face of the most generous person I have ever known. I have felt the power of forgiveness when my words and actions have caused pain. I have looked into the eyes of one who has brought extra blankets and pillows when I have been ill and tucked the blankets around my feet when I have been weary. I have laughed and giggled and shared private jokes that no one else could understand and know that I have been known. I have known the assurance that I am loved and that love is eternal. I have beheld beauty.

I have been reflecting on my origins in the last two journal entries, responding to a challenge by a teacher who invited reflection on the world into which we were born. I was born and raised in Montana and I graduated from college in that state. For much of my life I have referred to myself as a Montanan, although I moved away from Montana at the age of 21 and have not lived in that state since. My family, on my mother’s side, were early settlers in Montana. Her maternal grandparents arrived with the push to territorial status. Roy Russell was a trained court reporter, the first person so trained to make it up the Missouri River to Fort Benton. He later served in the territorial capitol of Virginia City and in the state capitol of Helena. As far as I know, none of my immediate lineage were directly involved in mining and the multiple gold rushes that are the stories of the nineteenth century in Montana. That bit of family trivia might be a contributing factor in my perception that the real winners in the gold rushes were not the people who dug in the earth in search of a lucky strike, but rather the merchants who sold those people supplies.

The Great Seal of he State of Montana includes an updated version of the territorial seal, which includes a picture of a sunrise in the mountains, a waterfall, a pick, a shovel, and a plow. Beneath the picture is the official state motto “Oro y Plata,” meaning “Gold and Silver.” When I was growing up I somehow got the impression that the motto was Latin and that Latin was used as a language of scholarship. That notion, however, is incorrect. The phrase is Spanish and its presence in the official territorial seal reflects the brief period of Spanish Rule in the intermountain West before those territories became part of the United States. The reference, regardless of language, is to the mining industry, which was very instrumental in the political organization of the territory and early statehood.

When I took Montana history as a school child, I boasted to my friends that our family’s contribution to the State didn’t come from the pick and shovel, but from the plow. My father’s farm supply store had an antique plow, designed to be pulled by a horse, proudly displayed on the roof. I knew stories of how early miners’ efforts were hampered by the lack of food and how food vendors made huge profits off of those shortages. One of the things we were taught about gold rushes in Montana is that eggs sold for $1 each, a high price by modern standards even before considering inflation.

Stories of high prices for food during mining booms were parts of other places where we lived. The Black Hills of South Dakota, where I lived for the longest period of my life, were shaped by the discovery of gold in the hills and the subsequent rush for riches. Rapid City was first established as Hay Camp, a reference to its role in providing animal feed in support of the mining activities in the hills. I learned stories of mining in Idaho when we lived there. And now, living in Washington, I am learning of the role of our county here in various gold rushes of the mid to late nineteenth century. During the 1849 gold rush to California, there was a sudden growth in the market for lumber. Trees close to the coast were cut, milled, and shipped by sea to California. The area that was to become Whatcom County were we lived, saw entrepreneurs cashing in on the market for cedar shingles. Later, the Fraser and Klondike gold rushes to the north produced markets for a variety of products, including food. There are stories of the price of a single egg climbing from $1 to as high as $3.

I’ve had the price of eggs on my mind recently. Most of the year we don’t pay in money for eggs. We get the eggs we need from our son’s farm, where we trade childcare and farm chores for our share of the abundance of the farm. However, egg production slows in the winter and an unfortunate attack by the neighbors’ dogs last spring resulted in the loss of the core of the egg producing chickens at the farm. New chicks were purchased, but the pullets don’t produce as many eggs, especially during their first winter. So for a little while we have been purchasing eggs at the grocery store.

In December, I could find eggs under $3 per dozen at local stores. A month later, the same brands are selling for $3.50. Premium brands are over $7 per dozen. That’s still not $1 per egg, but it is enough to get my attention. The reason for the fluctuations in the price is supply and demand. The supply is running short while the demand remains high so the price goes up. The shortage of supply is due in part to avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu. The strain of the disease that is circulating among flocks this year is particularly strong and has resulted in a drop of egg production. According to the Washington State Department of Agriculture egg production is 11% lower than last year.

Bird flu is not new. It has been around since the 19th century and emerges every winter. Like the flu strains that affect people, different strains of the disease emerge each year and some strains are more dangerous than others. Among the biggest carriers of the disease are waterfowl, and we have a lot of migrating waterfowl in our area all year round, including birds that winter in our area and nest farther north in the summer.

So far our son’s chickens have not been affected by bird flu. They are fed in protected areas where other birds are not able to get at the food and leave droppings behind that might carry the highly transmissible virus. Larger flocks of free range chickens are more vulnerable because migrating waterfowl feed at night and often take advantage of the domestic birds food sources.

There’s no gold rush going on in our region at present, but I’m keeping my eye on the price of eggs and looking forward to warmer days when the egg production at the farm resumes, as I reflect on the many stories that combine to tell the history of the places where I have lived.

I was born into a blended family. I was welcomed by my parents, two adopted sisters and one sister who was born into our family. After me, one brother was born and two more were adopted. I have always known that there are different ways to get into a family. I thought, for as long as I can remember, that I would some day be a father of a family with children who were born into the family and children who were adopted. As it turned out, even though my wife and I were parents of only two children, one was born to us the other was adopted. Every child deserves to be loved and treasured by family and there are different ways to get into a family.

I was born into a family passionate about staying together. “You can get angry,” my father often said, “but you cannot resign from your family. You can quit a job. You might even quit school. But you cannot quit a family.” No matter what differences appeared, no matter what choices were made, no matter what mistakes marked lives, my parents actively pursued relationship with their children as long as they were alive.

I was born into an extended family. There was always room for family at grandma and grandpa’s house. My father came from a large family and he wasn’t the only sibling who had a large family. When all of the cousins and aunts and uncles came, grandpa had to set up an extra dining table and grandma went into cooking overtime. My mother’s sisters enjoyed getting together and we learned to love our cousins and look forward to their arrival.

I was born into the church. My parents took me with the rest of the family to church camp when I was six weeks old and I went to that same church camp every summer through my 24th birthday. I don’t ever remember a conversation about whether or not we would go to church on Sunday. It was something we simply did. We walked to church in every kind of weather. If it was above 50 degrees we didn’t have to wear a jacket. If it was below, jackets were mandatory. My siblings are not regular church goers as adults, but it sure stuck with me. After retiring as a pastor and teacher I’m still in the pews each week.

I was born into a family where men and women were equals. Our mother was always a part of our family business. Our father was a pilot and our mother earned her pilot’s license before she had children. Our parents rose before the rest of the family and did the bookwork of their family business together before breakfast. A special desk for keeping the business records was built into our living room during a remodel. I have known for all of my life that I was to respect other’s privacy. “You don’t look into a woman’s purse” was a rule that was never violated. After more than 50 years of marriage when my wife asks me to get something for her from her purse, I bring the whole purse to her and let her extract what she wants. My wife and I went to school and graduate school together, were ordained in the same service and served 44 years as pastors always serving the same church. She has been my colleague from the beginning and continues as such.

I was born into a love of travel and adventure. I can’t remember my first ride in an airplane. As our family grew bigger airplanes came into our company. Although we lived in the mountain west, I swam in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans before I was ten and traveled to both in an airplane piloted by my parents. My father would wake me at 4 am and say, “I’m going flying if you want to come along,” and then head to the car. I could get up, get dressed and be beside him before he started the engine. I’ve watched enough sunrises from an airplane that I can see them in my imagination when I am on the ground.

I was born into a family where things were not wasted. My parents’ teenage years were lived in the Great Depression. If an object had some potential future use, it was kept. My Great Uncle Ted, for whom I am named could make anything out of sheet metal. He saved every tin can, cut it apart and flattened it for material to make string dispensers and tape dispensers. When we cleaned out his home after he died, we found a box labeled “pieces of string too short to save.” That is exactly what was in it. My mother saved the whole box and it was in her shed when she died. When the phrase “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” came into popularity as part of the environmental movement, it seemed natural to me. I am proud of the small amount of trash we set out for pickup.

I was born into an antiracist family. My parents are white and of European descent. They were lifelong members of NAACP. We welcomed African-American children from Chicago into our house through a program called Friendly Town. We hosted strangers from around the world through SERVAS. International students at a nearby college who could not go home for holidays were invited to spend them at our home. We attended Crow Fair and stood for the dancers at the pow wow. We wept as we watched the funeral of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Of course we had our biases and racism is as real in our family as any other, but we were raised to be aware of it and to overcome it when we recognized it.

I was born into love that has no end. We were so fiercely and passionately loved that we are sustained by love even though we have grown and formed families of our own. My parents, two sisters, and one brother have preceded me in death, and their love is still with me every day. Our children were born after my father died, but they know his love and they tell stories of him and my mother to their children. The legacy of love will continue forever.

I was born in Sweetgrass County, Montana, named for the traditional medicine plant that is burned for smudging and purification. Up north, near the town of Sweetgrass, Blackfeet women make sweetgrass into tea, but I was born in the traditional lands of the Apsáalooke nation, known as the Crow Tribe. My hometown was part of their lands guaranteed by the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty which tribal elders signed and was taken away by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty which was not signed by the Apsáalooke. By the time I arrived, the reservation had been further downsized by congress. The boundary of the reservation was nearly 70 miles from my town and only a few tribal members remained, mostly working as summer sheepherders in the mountains.

The Big Timber hospital was across the alley from our family home. My mother walked there when the time came for me to be born. I didn’t wait for the doctor’s arrival. The nurse knew what she was doing, and the doctor was only needed to sign the birth certificate. Perhaps in the excitement my naming was rushed. I do not know, but I ended up with a mono-syllabic first name and no middle name while by three sisters and three brothers all got multi-syllable names and middle names as well. I might chock it up to being the fourth and middle child, but I was also the first boy, something that meant a lot to my father who told me about it repeatedly.

Local lore says our town got its name from the cottonwood trees that grow down by the river. On their way back east after wintering on the Pacific Coast Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery divided into two teams to cross what is now Montana. Clark led his party into the Big Hole and over the Bozeman Pass into the Yellowstone Valley. They had been traveling overland since they left the Columbia River in what is now Washington. After following the Yellowstone for a brief while, they finally found trees big enough to make dugout canoes. They felled some large poplars or cottonwood trees and made their boats near the confluence of the Boulder and Yellowstone Rivers. Clark named the camp Big Timber. The town that later was established on the site, however, was named Dornix. The name change came when the town moved a couple of miles to be next to the railroad tracks.

The wind can blow in Big Timber. Strong winds flowing down the eastern slopes of the Rockies are funneled between the Absaroka mountains to the south and the Crazy mountains to the north. On very windy days the official wind gauge, located at the airport would read 0 mph because when it passed 100 mph it reached a peg just before zero. Other times it read random numbers because it was frequently broken by the force of winds blowing faster than it was designed to measure.

In those days it was a farm and ranch town, having been settled by folks from the east including a lot of Norwegian immigrants who arrived after the Northern Pacific Railroad was granted right-of-way for their line west and the area was opened to homesteading. The economy of the town was tied to farming and ranching, with winter wheat producing some profits to the north and east and cattle and sheep being raised in the valley. Big Timber was once known as the wool shipping capital of the United States. Once the railroad reached town, the wool terminal in Big Timber loaded more bales of wool onto the trains than any other single shipping point for several years. The wool business was dependent upon leases to graze sheep on federal land in the mountains.

Two sheep ranches herded their sheep through town and up the road into the mountains each spring and back each fall in the time I was born. A dozen years later they began to truck the sheep for the fall return and in another dozen years the leases had expired, and the sheep ranches shrunk to lamb production for the grocery market.

Cattle and sheep ranchers didn’t get along. The last main street shootout occurred when I was ten and is said to have resulted from a cattleman mistakenly walking into the Court Bar, which is where the sheepherders hung out. Cattlemen belonged in the Grand Bar. You can still find old timers with high emotions about cattle and sheep.

It took a lot of the dry land in the hills to raise animals. We talked in terms of acres per cow, not cattle per acre. Along with the sweetgrass, which is good feed, there was plenty of sage which isn’t very nutritious. Several of the ranches supplemented their incomes by welcoming dudes from back east and entertaining them with horseback rides, fishing trips and campfires under the blue of Big Sky country with day trips into Yellowstone National Park.

Growing up in the shadow of the mountains, I developed a strong bias about mountains. I confess to a smug elitism. When my eastern cousins told me of climbing mountains in New England, I reminded them that the floor of the river valley south of town was higher than the tallest mountain in New England. I scoffed at anything lower than 10,000 feet that people dared to call a mountain. Our town, however, was in the valley at just over 4,000 feet. The land slopes downward in that part of the state. Bozeman, 60 miles to the west, is 800 feet higher than Big Timber and Billings, 80 miles to the east is nearly a thousand feet lower.

Our house was not only right next to the hospital, but only one block from the grade school and one block from the high school. I have had to employ considerable fiction when telling my grandchildren about the strenuousness of walking to school as a child. There was a sign next to the elementary school that said, “Slow Children,” but we weren’t slow. I could run from our house to the school in less than a minute. If I started to run when I heard the school bell, I wouldn’t be late for class. My rush, however, would be reported to my mother by several of the neighbors. It was that kind of town. Everyone knew everyone else’s business.

Of course it is all different now. And my memory is less than accurate as the decades go by. It has been more than half a century since I lived in that place, and I was quite eager to leave when I did. Romantic thoughts are less than accurate, but the mountain scenery is every bit as spectacular as it was when I was born. I know because I drive through the valley every once in a while and never fail to be grateful to have been dropped into such an awe inspiring scene.

For several years when I was a child, one of my chores was removing ashes from the fireplace in our family room. Our fireplace had a metal insert and there was a metal chamber beneath the fire chamber. When there was no fire in the fireplace, a door could be opened between the two chambers and the ash could be swept into the lower chamber. This chamber had a door on the outside of the chimney. My chore was to remove cold ashes from the lower chamber. We lived in windy country and the biggest problem with the chore was that the wind could blow ash into your face. The job could be quite messy. I learned that putting of the job made it worse. It was easiest to deal with the ashes when there were only one or two buckets of ash rather than waiting until the chamber filled and a mandate was issued because no more ash could be added from above. If the ashes got packed in the chamber, it was a real chore to get them out with a fireplace poker and a shovel.

I also had the chore of bringing firewood from the backyard piles into the house and keeping the wood box filled. I quickly noted the difference in volume and weight between the firewood carried in and the ashes carried out. Sometimes I would sit and watch the fire in the fireplace and note how much the wood was reduced as it was transformed into ash. Of course I knew that part of the volume of the wood was going up the chimney as smoke, but smoke seemed even less substantial than ash.

Later, when I was older, I spent quite a bit of time around smoke jumpers and others who fought wildfires. I listened as they described fire behavior. Part of effective firefighting is learning to anticipate which directions the fire is spreading and understanding where natural phenomena such as the slope of the ground or the fuel load affect the ability to fight the fire. I learned that because heat causes air to rise, fires burn more intensely when going uphill than when spreading down. I learned that wildfires in grass can burn like a moving wall, but in heavily forested areas they become dozens and dozens of individual and sometimes isolated fires as embers blow ahead of the fire and ignite areas ahead of the fire. Sometimes the spot fires ahead of the main fire can consume fuel and slow the pace of the main fire.

Fire behavior is a complex science and what I know from casual observation and talking with firefighters is enough to convince me that there is a lot that I don’t understand. There is one additional thing about wildfire that I learned from watching the 1988 and 1989 Yellowstone Park fires. I found myself glued to the television during the late summer and early fall watching images of crown fires burning through the forest canopy. I looked for places that I recognized and since I knew the park fairly well and knew the places near the roads from having driven them a lot, I could often identify features. Most striking for me were pictures of trees burning around Old Faithful Lodge. The iconic log cabin hotel is a landmark in the area. What I didn’t realize at the time is that because there was significant danger, news photographers were kept at a significant distance from the fires. In order to get dramatic pictures they used long lenses which tend to collapse images making it seem like the burning trees were much closer to the building than was the case. When I visited in person the year after the fires, I had trouble reconciling what I was seeing on the ground with the pictures I had watched on the television because the distances seems so much bigger in person. Yes, I saw lots of burned out trees, but I also saw survivor trees and I saw areas that were unburned.

Most importantly, I learned that what I saw on the media of the day was not the whole story. It is a lesson that it seems a lot of people still need to learn. Just because you saw a video clip on a social media site does not mean that you understand what has occurred. People posting their conspiracy theories on social media are not experts in fire behavior and their theories lead others away from the truth. Yes, there are places in the areas devastated by the Los Angeles wildfires where trees survived next to houses that were destroyed. This doesn’t mean that structures were targeted. It means that the ornamental trees, especially palm trees, contain a lot of water and the fast moving fires heated the wood inside the homes more quickly than the fibers of the trees. In some cases the trees survived when the houses burned. It means that fire spreads in a mosaic pattern, affecting different places in different ways. If you look at the media pictures, there are plenty of dramatic images of palm trees burning. When the resins in the tree reach a certain temperature they go up in flames and because of the accumulation of dead leaves under the canopy they often appear as giant torches with the tops burning more intensely and sometimes the trunks are left standing after the tops have burned off.

This is not a time for conspiracy theories. It is a time to bring support to firefighters and to those evacuated. It is a time to strategize about housing for those who have lost their homes and support for those who are grieving. There will be plenty of time to analyze the fires and even look for mistakes in prevention and in firefighting. I know that the falsehoods of social media will continue and I know that simply stating facts does little to convince people who prefer their conspiracy theories over objective information. We all watch with a mixture of horror and fascination as fires spread.

Anyone who claims to know exactly what has happened and why is either mistaken or simply lying.

In liturgical churches today is the celebration of the Baptism of Jesus. Jesus’ baptism is celebrated on the first Sunday after Epiphany as part of the tradition of telling the story of his life from birth to death in the weeks between Christmas and Easter. The readings for the Sunday fit nicely into the three-year pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have brief reports of the baptism. Although the Gospel of John has a reference to John baptizing Jesus and John declares, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him,” it does not have a direct report of the actual baptism.

The reports are brief - just three verses in Mark and only five in Matthew and Luke. the three synoptic Gospels all report the descent of the Holy Spirit and a voice from heaven declaring “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Matthew reports that John initially hesitated, saying that he needed to be baptized by Jesus and not the other way around, but that interchange is not reported by Mark or Luke.

Throughout history, there have been some rather intense arguments about the meaning and practice of baptism. It is an important sacrament in most Christian congregations and has been so since very early in the history of the church. The Acts of the Apostles reports baptism of entire families including people of all ages. Before long baptism had become a symbol in the Roman church with traditions for blessing small amounts of water and baptizing by pouring or sprinkling water. During the Protestant Reformation, parts of the church split away over the issue of the appropriate age for baptism. Some argued that infants should not be baptized, but rather only those who were able to profess their faith and request their own baptism. The practice, called believers’ baptism, also involved, in some cases, the repeat of the sacrament for those who had been baptized as infants. This repetition, labeled “anabaptism,” was criticized by some church leaders who said that since baptism was of the Holy Spirit and not of human action, no human can declare one baptism invalid and there is never a need to repeat. Other arguments occurred over who was properly qualified to conduct a baptism, with some claiming that the worthiness of the officiant was a factor in the validity of the baptism.

We studied all of this history and the various arguments as students in seminary prior to our ordination. Because I was baptized in a Congregational Church as an infant and the Congregational Church was united with the Christian Church my religious heritage contains both infant and believers’ baptism traditions. Before I was ordained, I committed myself to a couple of positions in regards to baptism which I have maintained to this day. First, I committed to offering and recognizing all forms of baptism: infant, believer, sprinkling, pouring, immersion. Depending on the circumstances, I have participated in baptisms of all of those types. Secondly, I have a fairly high sacramental theology, which includes the conviction that the sacraments of baptism and communion are of the Holy Spirit and not of human origin. Therefore, I do not believe that my ordination gives me the authority to refuse those sacraments to any person. When baptism or communion is requested, I have sought to always say, “Yes!” and perform the sacrament to the best of my ability.

I prefer to officiate at baptisms in the context of regular worship of the church with the entire congregation participating in the vows of support, but there have been times when I was called to conduct a baptism with only a very small gathering of witnesses. When our children came into our lives we chose to have them baptized in the congregations we were serving, inviting other pastors to officiate so that we could join in the vows as parents. Susan and I have officiated at the baptism of all of our grandchildren when they were young.

I have officiated at baptisms in hospitals and private homes, in lakes and rivers and public parks. In partnership with the pastor of our sister congregation in Costa Rica, I waded into a public swimming pool for the baptisms of a dozen youth. For thirty years I kept an ink footprint of a tiny baby born prematurely who weighed less than four pounds at birth. I baptized the infant in an isolettte in a neonatal intensive care unit with distilled water provided by the hospital. Later I sprinkled the child as a baptism reminder in a public worship service. Despite the odds, the child survived and grew into adulthood. I have baptized infants whose lives were measured in hours and days rather than years. I officiated at the baptism by immersion of a man old enough to retire, borrowing the tank of a neighboring Baptist congregation for the sacrament in front of a circle of his friends. I’ve poured vials of water lovingly brought home from pilgrimages to the Holy Land that included sampling the water of the Jordan, where Jesus was baptized. I’ve added water from the spring on a family farm to the local water for the baptism of a child more than a thousand miles away from tat farm. Once I accidentally spilled the water for baptism reminder at the doorway of a chapel in a monastery. A nun who was probably 50 years older than I at the time helped me clean up, took the container into a bathroom and returned with it filled. As she hung it in its place she put her finger to her lips and said, “The priests don’t know it, but all water is holy.” There are adults nearing 50 years now at whose baptism as infants I officiated.

Despite the advice of a mentor and trusted colleague, although I recorded each baptism in the official records of the congregations I have served, I did not keep a personal record of those baptisms. It would take quite a bit of research to make a list. Two of those congregations have now closed and I am uncertain where their records have been kept. I feel no need for a personal list. Each baptism was important. No one was more important than any other. The water has always been holy before I prayed the prayer of consecration and the Holy Spirit has always been present.

On January 1, 2024, I joined with neighbors and other winter enthusiasts in the 41st annual Polar Bear Plunge at Birch Bay. In the center of Birch Bay Village is a large empty field known as Birch Bay Beach Park. Across the street from the park is public access to the beach that stretches from the Bay Breeze Restaurant up past the Library. The Bay is shallow and it is an area where there is plenty of water play in the summer. On New Year’s Day the community makes a party out of it. A large warming tent is erected near the park outside of Beach Cat Brewing with live music and hot cocoa. The Park District gives out free chowder and chili. There are t-shirts and certificates for those who take the plunge. I enjoyed the experience and have had fun listening to the comments about my t-shirt. The reality, however, is that I don’t wear t-shirts that often these days.

Sensing the charm of a new tradition, I took the plunge again on New Year’s Day this year. This time I paid a bit more money and got a nice hooded sweatshirt with the Polar Bear Plunge on the front. I’ve worn the sweatshirt in public more than last year’s t-shirt and I’ve gotten a lot more comments. I have every intention of making this an annual tradition. The practice of the Plunge is very simple: Get in. Get wet. Get out! There are no prizes for the length of time spent in the bay. My version is to make a complete commitment. I wade in deep enough to dive under the water to make sure that I get my whole body wet before standing up, wading back out and heading for my towel. Being wet, I’m not much for hanging around the warming tent, drinking cocoa and listening to loud music, so I head home to celebrate with a warm shower.

The practice reminds me of many times when I was growing up. Our family often took a winter trip to Chico Hot Springs in the Paradise Valley outside of Yellowstone National Park. That is the only entrance to the park that is open year round to wheeled vehicles. The road from Mammoth to Cook City is plowed during the winter and a drive across the north part of the park in winter is a great way to view wildlife. At the hot springs there is a hotel with a large outdoor swimming pool and naturally warm hot tub. We used to get good and warm in the hot tub, climb out, roll in the snow, then go back into the hot tub. The experience makes your skin tingle and the cold is soon forgotten.

Birch Bay doesn’t have any hot springs. There was a hot tub in the back yard of our home when we purchased it, but it was old and maintenance proved to be expensive and we had it removed, so I’ve substituted a warm shower for the warm part of the experience. I know it falls short of the real Scandinavian experience, but I don’t think I have much Scandinavian heritage anyway. I do have some English heritage and with it came a bit of stoic attitude. I don’t scream as I plunge into the water. I try not to shiver or show that I’m cold. I just go about my business and then head for home.

However, there is something very social about the experience even if I don’t spend a lot of time with the activities in the warming tent. Trust me, it is definitely easier to jump into the cold sea if others do it too.

In Denmark the practice is called “Vinterbadning,” which simply means winter bathing. Denmark sits on the sea lane from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea with the North Sea forming the western coast. the North Sea is colder than the Salish Sea. In winter it is 7 to 10 degrees colder for a Dane to go Vinterbadning than for me to take the Polar Bear Plunge. For the record there are no polar bears in Birch Bay except for stuffed animals and people wearing costumes.

In addition, the Danes have the tradition of the Sauna. The Danish tradition is a dry sauna, rather than the steamy chambers common in other places. They keep their saunas between 175 and 225 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s considerably hotter than my shower. While I go in for the annual plunge, I don’t think I’m up for the whole Danish Vinterbadning experience, though it seems like I’d want to try it if I ever visit Denmark.

I also recommend the practice for others. I’m not much of an evangelist when it comes to the Polar Bear Plunge, but I do like to invite others. And I have a specific invitation I’d like to issue. I know that Robert F Kennedy Jr. is only a potential nominee for Director of Health and Human Services at this point, but if he is confirmed by the Senate, I hope that he will come to Birch Bay for the Polar Bear Plunge next year. Alternatively, I’d be willing to have some of my taxes go to funding a trip to Denmark for him to go Vinterbadning. I think it would be good research. After all, Kennedy has no medical qualifications and has not let the lack of qualifications keep him from promising to “Make America Healthy Again.” I’m all in favor of being healthy, and there are a lot of people who think that cold plunging promotes health. I think that if he wants to be an effective HHS director, knowing first hand about the benefits of cold plunging might be good experience for him.

And I think doing it with Danes would enhance his experience. Those people are tough, and I think it might be good for someone in the incoming administration to know just how tough before they go too far imposing universal tariffs on the source of the majority of the US supply of insulin, hearing aids, and Ozempic. Novo Nordisk is a Danish company and US consumers will be forced into dramatic increases in the cost of health care if the tariffs are imposed.

Who knows, perhaps Kennedy could convince the incoming President to go Vinterbadning. It might be good research for all of the bluster about taking control of Greenland from Denmark.

When i was growing up our town had a volunteer fire department. Volunteers were summoned by a blaring siren that could be heard throughout the town. One day when we were at school we heard the siren, then we heard it again, calling for more volunteers. It repeated several more times and everyone, including our teacher began to get concerned. Not long afterward the principal came into our classroom and conferred with our teacher and shortly after that it was announced that there was a wildfire rushing toward our town. There were lots of firefighters working on the fire and it still was a ways from town, but we would be released from school early. We were instructed to go directly home and not delay. Students who rode buses to school would be given instructions by their bus driver.

I could see the smoke clouds rising from the hills above town as I ran the block from the school to our house. It looked to me like the fire was near the airport. I was worried because our family businesses included the operation of the airport. We had airplanes in the hangers up there. My mother tried to reassure us that everything would work out, but we could see that she was worried. Our father was somewhere up on the hill helping with the firefighters.

As it turned out, the fire, driven by winds that reached 40 to 50 miles per hour, raced across the prairie and grasslands west of town. It had started near one of the roads, but was between the Yellowstone and Boulder Rivers and burning towards their confluence. Our town was in the path of the fire, but fire lines were drawn, a back fire successfully removed the fuel from the path of the fire and it was contained and controlled before it reached the airport buildings. The fire burned in an area of relatively low fuel load. It was early in the year and the grass had been grazed. Though the snow had melted, the grass had not yet grown high. The winds drove the fire quickly, but there was not much to burn, keeping the flames low and easier to control.
There were several minor injuries, but no fatalities. A few sheds, a lot of fence posts, some power poles and a couple of old vehicles were burned. A bulldozer belonging to my father’s company was operating too close to the fire line and the operator was forced to turn into the fire, but it passed quickly without damaging the operator and was able to keep working. The fire passed so quickly that the dozer did not even need new paint after the experience. Several fire fighters who knew what they were doing were able to run though the fire line and survive on the burned grass on the back side of the fire.

Even prior to that fire, I had learned to think of fire as an enemy. We were taught about fire safety and had an evacuation plan for our house should it ever catch on fire. Our father flew fire patrol over parts of two national forests and Yellowstone National Park. He had flown lead plane for smokejumpers and for planes that dropped water mixed with retardant on fires. In those days the community of aerial firefighters was relatively small. Once, when it was not on an actual firefighting mission, I got a ride in a Ford Trimotor airplane operated by Johnson Flying Service that was a jump plane for smoke jumpers. Firefighters were considered heroes and fire was an enemy to be fought. My father was proud of his 25-year record of flying fire patrol in which no fire spotted by his plane ever burned for more than 24 hours. Discover fires early and fight them aggressively was the plan.

Of course, we now know that it was a less than perfect plan. The huge fires of 1988 and 1989 in Yellowstone National Park burned more intensively because the fuel load was so high due to years of extinguishing fires that were part of the natural ecology of the park. Fire ecology was little understood. These days forest managers better understand the role of fire in healthy forests.

On the one hand, the out of control wildfires that are ripping across parts of Los Angeles are part of a natural cycle. The dry chaparral on the hillsides has burned in cycles for millennia. The dry Santa Anna winds drive flames rapidly. After the fires, the rain returns and the land that has been burned is vulnerable to mudslides. Fires and mudslides occurred long before those hills were heavily inhabited. However, there are some things that are unique about this year’s fires. Flames are burning in areas where they have been successfully controlled in previous years. the fuel load is particularly high because there have been several wet years in which the fuels could grow rapidly. Most importantly, the growth of the Los Angeles urban area means that the fires are burning in areas with a lot of buildings. Structure fires are different than wildfire in open and unpopulated areas. The demands on equipment and the use of urban infrastructure, especially pressurized water lines, are very different than wildfire in areas with fewer structures. With 179,000 residents under evacuation orders and an additional 200,000 under evacuation warning, traffic management is a unique dynamic challenging firefighters and emergency managers. At least ten persons have died. Looting and theft is occurring in evacuated neighborhoods. At least one of the fires was caused by arson.

But there is even more to these fires. In general in previous years, fire season ran from May to October. Earlier fires, like this year’s firestorms, are relatively recent. However, conditions have become such that there is no real fire season in that part of the country any more. Fire season is all year round. Weather extremes, including increased temperatures, extended drought, and changes in the distribution of airborne moisture into atmospheric rivers has resulted in increase risk and larger wildfires all across the Western United States.

The cost will be high. Over 10,000 structures have burned. Insured losses are expected to be above $8 billion. These are expensive properties that have burned and it will have a large impact on insurance costs across the region.

Despite what some are saying, there is nothing normal about these fires. For now we watch from a distance, but we know that we are all in this together and even though we live far away these fires will have an impact on our lives.

I attended a meeting yesterday of a group that has been meeting for some time, but to which I was a newcomer. There was one person at the meeting who I have known for some time. She was the one who invited me to participate. The others were people I was meeting for the first time. We met for an hour and a half in a room with flexible seating. For our meeting the chairs were arranged in a circle. There was a clock on the wall that was in easy sight for some of the members of the group. It was behind me, however, and so I didn’t look at it. I had no responsibility to keep time during the meeting. I had consulted my watch to choose what time to leave home, had made an accurate guess of how long it would take to get to the meeting through city traffic, and had arrived at the venue a few minutes early which allowed me to inquire about the specific location of the meeting room within the building and arrive before the meeting began. Our time was quite interesting to me. I was challenged by some of the ideas that were being shared and listened intently to the others as they spoke. I participated by sharing some of my ideas as well.

In the afternoon, having returned home after the meeting, I went for a walk around our neighborhood and as i was walking I was reflecting on the meeting. For me the hour and a half went by quickly. I wasn’t feeling any pressure. I didn’t have any other appointments in the day. I could have lingered another hour if needed. But I also wan’t responsible for keeping time. When I teach a class or lead a group I am constantly consulting my watch or a clock to make sure that the group is stying on task and we complete our work while respecting the time of the participants. In our meeting yesterday the group leader was constantly referring to the clock on the wall and also to her phone which displays a clock. She referred to both several times during the meeting at one point questioning the accuracy of the clock on the wall and later commenting that it seemed to be keeping time quite well. While time wasn’t the main focus of the meeting, there were several timed activities. We engaged in directed work for ten minute blocks and then resumed plenary action after those blocks.

Sitting with my back to the clock and feeling no need to consult my watch during the meeting, I suspect that my perception of time was a bit different from the group leader. I didn’t care if the meeting ended on time. How different that experience was from some of my school days when I was much younger. In our elementary school there were clocks at the front of each classroom. It was the opposite of yesterday’s meeting. The students all faced the clock and could easily read it. The teacher sat with their back to the clock and had to turn around to consult it. In our school the clocks were mechanical with second hands that swept at a steady pace. The minute hands, however, advanced with a jerk as the second hand reached 12. In addition the clocks had a feature that synchronized all of the clocks in the school. At the top of each hour an individual classroom clock might skip one or two minutes to start the new hour in sync with the other clocks in the school. The feature could also make the clock say at one minute before the hour for more than a minute if it had been running fast.

There were many days when I obsessed over those clocks, paying attention to little else. I tried to will the time to pass more quickly, eager to have the classroom time end so I could get outside and play. Sometimes it seemed as if time itself slowed at five minutes to the time to get out of school for the day.

I am fascinated by the perception of time. I know that it changes as we age. I’ve often used the example of the passage of time in relation to a person’s lifespan. Two of our grandsons share the same birthday in early February. The younger one will turn three. For him, the next birthday will be 1/3 of his lifetime away. The older one will turn 14, so his next birthday is a much small fraction, only 1/14 of his lifetime away. And for me the time between my next birthday and the following one will be only 1/72 of a lifetime, an extremely small fraction compared to the children.

The perception of time, however, is much more complex than just that. I’m pretty sure that our youngest grandson doesn’t process time in a linear fashion, at least not the way I think of time. If I announce that when we finish dinner we will clear the dishes and I will clean up in the kitchen, then we will play a game, and after the game we will read a story, and then after the story we can have some ice cream for dessert, his mind will go directly to the ice cream. He will come into the kitchen while I’m washing dishes, grab my leg and pull me toward the freezer reminding me that I promised ice cream. He will interrupt the game to ask for ice cream. He will want to skip the story, even if it is one he has had me read over and over at some times to campaign for ice cream now. I saw a linear progression of several events. He focused on ice cream. For me the time between dinner and desert passed quickly. For him, it seemed to pass more slowly.

Consider how our perception of time changes with perspective. I remember some nights when we had an infant in our home and I was awake in the middle of the night trying to soothe a fussy baby. Sometimes it seemed like it took forever to get the child back to sleep. Now, decades later, it seems like the time of infants in our house went by so quickly. It was just a flash and then it was over.

Our natural timepiece, our heartbeat varies with age. We use that rhythm to affect our sense of the passage of time. Human heart rate tends to reach its peak speed months after birth and then slowly declines as we age. My heart beats slower than that of my ice cream obsessed grandson. He has to wait more heartbeats than I to get to dessert.

I certainly don’t fully understand the passage of time. It leaves me with the question of the song by Chicago that was recorded in 1969: “Does Anybody Really Know What Time it is?”

I am not a politician. I won an election for a student government office when I was in the 7th grade and I ran and lost an election for a different student government position when I was in the 10th grade. Since those days, I have avoided running for political office. I am not tempted to change that record in my retirement. Having said that, there are plenty of politics and plenty of political decisions that are made in other arenas of life. The church has its own form of politics. For a few years I served on the Board of Directors of a church conference. During that time the conference had a fairly charismatic leader who was used to having the full support of the board. However, I voted against the majority many times during my tenure. There were a dozen times when I was the only “no” vote in the room. Our church operates on generally democratic principles which means that the board continued with its actions over my votes and each time that occurred, I tried my best to be supportive of the decisions that were made. As a member of the board, I felt that I needed to take responsibility for its actions even when I wished it had acted otherwise. Being in the minority did not make me any less a member of the board and as a member of the board, I felt it was incumbent upon me to assume full responsibility for the board even when I disagreed with a particular decision.

Looking back I realize that those were some of the toughest years of my pastoral career. There were many high points in decades of serving churches, but I don’t count that experience as one of them.

There are other ways in which I have engaged in politics despite my intention not to run for office. I frequently said to members of the congregations I served that I would be glad to tell them what I thought, but I would not tell them what they should think. Unlike some early Congregational ministers who held election day sermons and did not shy away from instructing members on how to vote, I never assumed that I had the wisdom or the authority to give the congregations I served such advice.

Nonetheless, I am a citizen and I have tried to be a faithful and fully participating citizen. I vote in each election. I listen to candidates and try to make faithful and informed decisions. I allow my faith and the moral principles I have learned to guide my participation in the political process. And, like the years that I served on the board when I disagreed with many of its decisions, I remain a faithful citizen when the candidates I back lose and others win. I firmly believe that those who hold political office are elected and therefore obligated to serve all of the country, not just those who backed them.

As a result I have often held my political opinions to myself. I have invested considerable energy in refraining from making my journal into a place of political speech. However, there are times when I think it only honest to express some of my political opinions. If this offends some of those who read these posts, I am sorry. My intent is not to offend and it is not to instruct others on what they should feel or how they should vote.

There are multiple reasons why I did not vote for Donald Trump in any of his bids to become President. I do not believe he has the character or temperament to hold the office. Despite his backing of prominent evangelical Christians, I cannot see how he represents any Christian values. But he has won the election. He will become President once again in just a few days. And I will remain a loyal citizen of this country while he is President just as I did when he served from 2017 through 2021.

I will point out, however, that Monday, when Congress certified the results of the recent election was decidedly different from four years ago. The losing party and the losing candidate carried out their responsibilities according to the constitution without drama or unconstitutional behavior. They remained loyal to their oaths of office. It stands in stark contrast to the attempts of the losing candidate and his supporters four years ago when the capitol was stormed by armed people who assaulted law enforcement officers, wantonly damaged and destroyed government property, and tried to prevent the peaceful transition of power. Despite attempts to portray them otherwise many were guilty of felonies and were convicted by juries of their peers. It is worth noting how much effort President Trump and his backers have invested in trying to suppress the investigation of the special counsel. When there is that much effort to continue a cover up it is reasonable to believe that they have something to hide.

Despite all of that and even despite his promise to issue pardons to those convicted, I want to note that things are different now than when he was elected 2016. Although I expect his term to be a major setback for climate action, a President does not have unlimited power on the world stage. Momentum is now on the side of global energy transition despite any actions Trump may take. The global economy have changed significantly since his last term. China now leads the world in renewable energy production and does not depend on the US for its transition. And here in the US clean energy is booming. The majority of the investment driven by the Inflation Reduction Act has been invested in areas that elected Republican leaders. There will be opposition within the Republican party if the President tries to curb the growth of renewables. In addition US mayors and governors will continue to strengthen climate resilience in their areas of influence despite federal policies.

I favor quiet days of peaceful transition over the violence of the past and I believe in the power of peaceful resistance to misguided policies. I suspect that I will be moved to write more political commentary in the next few years, and I know there will be challenges. I can in no way view the rhetoric from President Trump as normal. His threats to use the military against US citizens and for the purpose of the expansion of the physical territory of the US are deeply alarming. I predict, however, that the next four years will be even more frustrating for him as he confronts the political realities that limit his power. These may be trying times, but they are not the only times. I’ll trust history to make the final judgment on the current moment in US politics.

Occasionally, I have the opportunity to preach at a small church near our home. Their pastor has turned to us on occasion when she takes a vacation, to lead the congregation in worship. Each time I have the opportunity, I am thanked by the pastor and by members of the congregation. I try to be gracious and simply say, “You’re welcome,” but it seems like it should be me who is thanking them. I find myself so grateful to be invited. I really enjoy preaching. I don’t think I knew before I retired how much I would miss the gift, given to preachers of being able to speak in public.

I used to get pretty nervous before I had to deliver a sermon. I still do. I have to be intentional about calming myself. I practiced my sermons early in the morning in an empty sanctuary. I spent time sitting in the pews, recalling the members of the congregation and where they usually sat, thinking about how my words might be received.

Although those days have passed, I still have opportunities to speak in public. Not long ago, I read a poem at an open mic event. Last Saturday, I taught a class on Zoom. I participate in a writer’s group and a poetry group and I enjoy opportunities to present.

In a way, I guess, it might be fair to say that I earned my living by preaching. That is a bit of an exaggeration, however. There were places I visited when I was an active minister where I never preached a sermon. I’ve led Bible study in a jail, and I’ve visited a lot of people incarcerated, but I never preached in that setting. When I visited in the jail, however, I was often called “preacher man,” by inmates who had never heard me preach. It wasn’t that my reputation preceded me. It was an association that the inmates made with the clerical collar I often wore for jail visits. I used to joke that if I was going to visit the jail, I was going to dress in a matter that would encourage the guards to let me back out again. I never had a problem leaving a jail, and I knew most of the guards, but there were some occasions when being seen as a clergy person made my visits simpler.

Looking back now, however, I don’t think that the moments when I was speaking out loud were the most critical moments of my ministry. I can recall many times when I was silent and said very little that were important times of ministry.

As a passionate believer in congregational polity and the power of the members of the church, I tried to say as little as possible during congregational meetings. I trusted the process and I wanted other leaders to speak. I was not disappointed. There are others who shared my concerns and carried them to those meetings.

Some of the most powerful times of silence, however, were in pastoral visits. I often sat with people as they were dying. I would pay a visit and sometimes family members gathering with their loved ones needed a break. It was a simple thing for me to offer to sit with their beloved as they got a meal or a nap or ran an errand or two. Sometimes I would read scripture or sing hymns. Sometimes I would pray out loud. Most of the time I simply sat. My presence did not require words and the person with whom I was sitting didn’t need me to speak to know that they were not alone.

I learned that when it feel to me to deliver traumatic news, the best thing I could do was to simply allow people to react after I told them what had to be told. People receiving the news of the sudden loss of a chid or spouse or parent will often react with a lot of tears. Sometimes they will shout and moan. Sometimes they will fall on the floor. At those moments they don’t need my words. All they need is my presence. People are remarkably resilient. They do not fall apart when they are gripped by shock and grief. The moments of their loss of control are brief. Most of the time in ten or fifteen minutes the grieving person regains composure. Often they have questions. Often I had answers for them.

I was often called upon to offer public prayer. On the advice of a teacher, although I was able to pray spontaneously without notes, I disciplined myself to write certain prayers. I used manuscripts for funerals and weddings. i wrote out invocations for events. I have a collection of prayers that I wrote for classes that I taught. But some of the most powerful moments of prayer were times when I invited others to share in times of quiet. I was reluctant to call those times silent, and often invited quiet prayer rather than silent. I appreciated the sounds of a congregation sharing quiet. Babies stirred, people coughed, there was shuffling in the pews. We could hear the sounds of nature, and sometimes the sounds of traffic outside of the building. The building itself had its own noises. Listening to all of those sounds didn’t require my words. Sometimes there are no words for our prayers and at those times it is good to know that we aren’t the only ones praying. Holding hands as we stand next to a hospital bed, I have often realized that our small circle is all breathing in sync with the patient.

In the mix of speaking and listening, often listening is the better part.

Still, there have been and continue to be times when I cannot be silent. There are moments when I am called to speak. Too much silence can become awkward. Too much silence can invoke loneliness. Sometimes we need words to express our feelings.

I continue to reflect on the power of speaking and the power of silence. Yesterday I took a long walk around the neighborhood and down the beach. The fog had rolled in and quiet was peaceful. The birds were still and few people were out. I had the beach to myself. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the waves hitting the shore. The quiet soothed my soul.

I’m still learning the art of living. The quiet has much to teach me.

I’m not sure how I should feel about the weather. Although it has been 4 1/2 years since we retired and moved to the Pacific Northwest, I haven’t quite acclimatized to this place where I now live. It reminds me in some ways of the decade that we lived in Boise, Idaho on the edge of the great American desert. We never got used to the dry conditions and lack of wind. I know how to live where the winter weather can be severe. I’ve got the right clothing to layer up for freezing temperatures. There is a plug in on the front of my truck to connect a block heater for cold starting conditions. I think I have plugged it in a couple of times since we moved, but I doubt that it was really necessary.

I don’t know whether to feel smug or guilty as winter Storm Blair hammers much of Canada and a host of states to our east. States of emergency have been declared in at least seven states and there a places from Alberta to Washington DC where more than a foot of snow has fallen. Travelers are facing cancelled and delayed flights and the media is saying the temperatures are the coldest and the snowfall the heaviest in more than a decade.

I have readers of my journal who live in some of the places affected by the polar vortex. Meanwhile we may get a bit of light frost overnight tomorrow. Temperatures will remain in the 40s and 50s for the rest of the week. Being accustomed to life in colder places, we’ve got our garden buttoned up for the winter, but we have neighbors who have plenty of blooming flowers in their yards that they may need to cover. I was thinking that with Christmas and New Year’s Day past, perhaps I ought to put out my bird feeders for a few months, but I haven’t gotten them out yet.

I’m not bragging. I really don’t know how to feel about the weather. When we decided to move out here, friends warned me about the rainfall and cloudy days. It does rain a lot here and we don’t get anywhere near as many sunny days as other places we have lived, but I suspect that i somehow am a bit less vulnerable to seasonal affective disorder than some others. The urge to head to Southern California or Arizona hasn’t seized me the way it does some of our friends. But I do miss winter. I’ve lived almost all of my life in places with four seasons, and from my point of view we only get three around here. Since I love all four seasons, I don’t really have any complaints about the seasons we do have. I like being able to get into the garden a bit earlier and having fresh flowers a bit later than other places we have lived. But I miss snowy days and the sense of knowing how to get by when the weather gets cold.

Before we moved, I was happy to sell my snowblower. I even considered getting rid of my insulated coveralls, though I’m glad I kept them. I don’t need a machine to blast through heavy drifts around here, but I barely get to use my snow shovel at all and I don’t have much driveway or sidewalk to shovel at this house. All of the school buses around here have auto chains, but I suspect that some of the drivers have never actually deployed them. The decision about calling snow days for school is made by the County Sheriff's Office which means that one icy hill somewhere in the Cascade foothills results in school cancellation here on the coast. In a way it seems somehow wrong to cancel school on a day when there isn’t enough snow to make a snowman or slide a sled down the hill.

The big storm is moving off to the east. Parts of Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC are due to take the brunt of the weather today, but it seems unlikely that the weather is severe enough to interrupt the Congress’s meeting to formally certify the presidential election. Although I have plenty of fears about the outcome of the election and the years to come for our beloved country, I’m gratified that Congress is able to conduct business as usual during the storm.

I loved to keep going in harsh weather when I lived in the Dakotas. It felt like a minor victory to make it to the church when others were staying home. While I encouraged those who had trouble getting around in the weather to stay home, I wanted to keep the church open and conduct regular worship despite the weather. I only agreed to cancel worship when the police issued a no travel order. People who live in much colder places manage to go on with their business despite harsh weather. I admire the fishers who work the waters of the north Atlantic when the sun does not rise all day long and the temperatures hang around -40. In the winter the trucks keep suppling communities at the end of the Dempster and Dalton highways. The airplanes continue to fly in Yellowknife through the winter. People get up and go to work and survive and thrive in winter.

Climate scientists warn that temperatures could rise by as much as 3 degrees C in the next couple of decades, but -40, which is the same in Celsius as in Fahrenheit warmed by 3 degrees is still around -35F. That’’s cold enough to freeze any exposed skin in minutes. Life will still be harsh in the north country. There still will be brave and intrepid souls for my grandchildren to admire.

Meanwhile, I’m going for walks wearing a hooded sweatshirt and often a rain jacket. I don’t struggle to get to the grocery store or dive to church. I have to admit that I’ve got it easy. I still don’t know whether to feel smug or guilty.

With some exceptions, I was a lectionary preacher over the course of my career. It made sense to me that I should allow the scriptures to lead my preaching rather than choose the texts for worship myself. I wanted the discipline of applying the texts I was given rather than going to the ones that were easiest or my most favorite. There is a distinct advantage to devoting one’s career to preaching from the pattern of texts chosen by representatives of many denominations who gather to discuss the texts and the patterns of worship. By following the three-year cycle, I immersed myself in the Christian year, following the traditions of the church and observing minor as well as major feast days and holidays. I get to expect the return of particular texts and anticipated the flow of the year. For a lectionary preacher, the seasons of Christmas, Epiphany, and Lent present a rapid dip into the Gospels and the life of Jesus each year. While the relatively long season of Pentecost that fades into ordinary time presents opportunities to explore the Hebrew scriptures, the readings for the beginning of the year invite the regular telling of the stories of Jesus.

One of the problems with following the lectionary was pointed out to me in a lecture by the great biblical teacher Walter Brueggemann, who chided us about our dedication to the pattern of reading by pointing out how much of the scriptures are left out of the cycle of readings. He reminded us that we are called to be led by the entire bible, not just the relatively small number of texts that can be crammed into a three-year cycle. I tried to take his teaching seriously first of all by disciplining myself to daily readings that led me through the entire bible. Some years I intentionally followed a “through the bible in one year” reading discipline. Other years, I focused deeply on a single book for an extended period. In my worship planning I deviated from the lectionary by adding verses to the prescribed lections so that the congregation was exposed to more of the text.

There is a frustration to any pattern of reading the Gospels for public worship, however. There are only 52 Sundays in the year and it ends up feeling like we cram too much into too little space. I began to question the wisdom of the three year cycle. After all we have four gospels. why not a four year cycle? In the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel of John is interspersed with the other gospels with more of it appearing in year two, when Mark is the focus Gospel due to the fact that Mark is also the shortest of the gospels.

This year is Luke, which is the longest, and it always felt to me like we were rushing through the texts at this time of the year. For whatever reason, the second Sunday after Christmas in year three the Gospel text is the prologue to the Gospel of John, which is beautiful and poetic, and well worth public reading and proclamation. Like many other scripture passages, it lends itself to being read out loud. It is one of the texts that I memorized so that I could speak it directly to the congregation and often did so to close the Christmas Eve service.

If I were still leading worship, however, I’m sure that I would do what our pastor and the pastors of most of the other congregations in our area are doing, which is to read the texts for Epiphany Day for worship today. Even though Epiphany Day does not land on a Sunday this year and the readings are technically for Monday, those texts are so important to the flow of the season that we want to read the story of the visit of the magi from the Gospel of Matthew in Sunday worship each year.

With the interruptions of texts from John and Matthew, however, the result in the lectionary is that the story of the early part of Jesus life, reported in Luke 2, is told out of order. Last Sunday we read of his visit to the temple as an adolescent. On February 2, the fourth Sunday after Epiphany we will finally read of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, if our congregation chooses to read those texts. An alternative lectionary path calls for another reading from the fourth chapter of Luke, so that is another option.

People can worship regularly in the church without grasping the intensity of these precious stories. Only the Gospel of Luke reports on the childhood of Jesus. Matthew tells of experiences of his parents - visits by angels, the flight to Egypt, and such. Mark begins with Jesus as an adult without any reference to his birth and childhood. And John approaches the coming of Jesus from a philosophical and poetic approach without any storytelling of the child. That leaves us with only a couple of stories from the second chapter of Luke.

One the one hand, it shouldn’t surprise us that our people have not preserved the stories of Jesus’ childhood. At the time of his birth the role of children in society was different than today. Children had the lowest status in society in the ancient world. They were often considered to be a nuisance or distraction, tolerated but not welcome. It was not uncommon for infants to be cared for by their mothers and aunts for several years before they were named because the high infant mortality rate encouraged not getting too attached to any individual before there was a sense that the child might survive. Children were put to work early in their lives assisting their parents without much regard to formal education.

It is the contrast with the norms of the ancient world, however, that make the stories we do have of Jesus’ early life so precious. Jesus’ parents were given his name in dream encounters with angels before his birth. They presented him at the temple for a naming ceremony early in his life. He was treasured and named and nurtured with love. These are important stories that help us understand how he himself defied the norms of his day by welcoming children when the disciples would have prevented them from coming.

Reading the texts in worship is important and meaningful, but I hope and pray that others will join me in reading beyond the lectionary. Tell the stories of Simeon and Anna’s reaction to Jesus’ presentation to your children and grandchildren. Remind them that not only does Jesus bring us the message of love, but also that Jesus was loved as a child. These are stories that are worth telling every year in every season.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Eleven pipers piping. When I was a kid, I didn’t put much stock in some of the gifts touted by the song. Who wants a partridge in a pear tree or a trio of french hens? As for dancing ladies or milking maids, leaping lords and geese and swans, forget it. I did think that five golden rings might be a pretty valuable gift, given that I didn’t know that the song referred to ring-necked pheasants. While pheasants are good eating, I wasn’t much into gifts of food when I was growing up. I had, however, seen an incredible Black Hills Gold ring on the hand of a rich dude who had come to stay at Bo Clark’s guest ranch and I had to admit that the ring looked expensive. Five of them might be sold for enough money to do something serious.

However, my ears perked up at the thought of eleven pipers piping. In those days I hadn’t ever heard the bagpipes played and I didn’t know about them. These days almost every fire department in the country can muster at least a single piper to play Amazing Grace for a fire fighter’s funeral, and I’m sure that places with lots of Irish fire fighters like Chicago and New York had pipers when I was a kid, but I didn’t give bagpipes much of a though at all.

What I did know about was Piper airplanes. My father was a Piper dealer and there were always several Pipers in our hangers, although I’m sure we never had eleven at the same time. Nonetheless, the thought of eleven Pipers was enough to get my imagination whirring. I suppose that one might interpret the song to refer to the Piper PA-11, a variant of the Cub that fit between the J-3 and the PA-18 Super Cub. We’d had a few of them come through our airport and dad had bought and sold one or two. The original PA-11, with the 65hp engine just didn’t have the performance for the mountains where we worked and even the later versions with 90 hp were a bit short on power. By the time I can remember, the mainstay of our working airplanes were Super Cubs with 150 hp engines, sufficient to be used for fire patrol in Yellowstone National Park and the high country of the Beartooths.

In my mind, the PA-11 had another serious shortcoming. Unlike the J3, which was flown solo from the back seat, the seats were moved back in the PA-11, so my dad flew from the front seat. I don’t mind riding in the back seat, but the front seat is a lot more fun. After I grew and put on some weight my dad would occasionally fly from the back seat of a Super Cub when I was with him, though he flew solo from the front seat.

In my mind, however, 11 Pipers was eleven distinct airplanes. While I suppose one could imagine eleven of the same model, in my imagination. Eleven planes would mean at least one of each of the four mainstays of the Piper fleet at the time: The PA-18 Super Cub, the PA-22 Tri-Pacer, the PA-24 Comanche, and the twin engine PA-23 Apache. We had advertising cards that showed all four in flight together in four similar color schemes. Eleven Pipers made it possible to have them in different colors. We had sold Tri-Pacers in Green, Blue, and Red, so I was up for quite a bit of variation in colors and models. However, when I imagined 11 Pipers, there was always on that would be my favorite: A red and white Apache. There are still a few Apaches flying today and one of the most famous is the one owned by Sporty’s Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio. that one is Red, just like the plane of my dreams, and is featured in many of their training videos. It is hard to imagine, when looking at the design of contemporary airplanes how I might have thought that the rather stubby Apache looked so sleek and modern. I suppose it was the retractable landing gear, or perhaps the nose that while nowhere near as pointed as some modern airplanes, still looked sleek and fast to me.

I never did own any Piper, let alone an Apache. I did solo and earn my private pilot’s license in a PA-22 TriPacer. I continued to fly as a pilot until our children were approaching middle school age. We owned an airplane with partners for a while, the reality is that I never was qualified to fly a multi-engine retractable airplane, and I could not afford to maintain and use such an airplane even if one was given to me. General aviation is an expensive hobby. Furthermore it can be dangerous when pilots get rusty and push the boundaries of performance, weather, or experience. I have preferred to play it safe and continue to love to fly with qualified pilots, but don’t imagine myself to be the skilled pilot of my childhood fantasies.

In the meanwhile, Piper has gone on to faster and more expensive airplanes. The company is no longer located in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania and now manufactures its planes in Vero Beach, Florida. The flagship of the Piper fleet is the $4.3 million M700 Fury, which seems like a lot for personal transportation unless you compare it to the price of a $6 million fully equipped Pilatus PC-12.

So for this year, I’m reverting to the image of people playing bagpipes. Eleven would be fairly loud, so perhaps they could play outdoors, perhaps for a parade or on the top of a hill where there would be a good echo.

The big thing about the eleventh day of Christmas for me is that tomorrow will be the last day of Christmas. Epiphany Day is Monday and we’ll be off to a whole new season in a whole new year with whole new adventures ahead. I’ve toned down my fantasy life a lot since I was a kid. A ride in a fully restored PA-11 would be a pretty wonderful experience.

For millennia, our people have been telling a story about how humans came to have so many languages. There are thousands of languages spoken on the earth, but researchers tell us that even though new languages are still being discovered, over 3,000 languages are now endangered and at risk of disappearing. Some of the newly discovered languages are ones that have already fallen out of use. Scripts from ancient languages are occasionally found by archaeologists, who strive to understand the symbols recorded in stone carvings, and other ancient forms of writing. Our people’s story is fairly simple:

Once there was a united human community where everyone spoke the same language. One presumes that the language might have been Hebrew since that is the language of the story. Some people migrated to Babylon and there they decide to build a tower that reaches to the heavens. God is displeased with the construction and confuses the language of the workers. Since the workers can no longer understand each other, the tower cannot be completed. The city in which it was located is abandoned and the speakers of the various languages are dispersed across the world.

The story that is recorded at the beginning of the 11th chapter of Genesis is one version of what is likely a much older origin myth. The Bible, and especially the book of Genesis, has many different stories of Creation that seek to explain the experiences of the people. It is easy to imagine how folk who have encountered different cultures with different languages might seek stories about why different languages exist. The book of Genesis is a collection of ancient stories that were brought together for the express purpose of preserving the stories. Those who collected them weren’t overly concerned with discrepancies between the various stories. Their purpose was not to create a definitive scientific textbook, but rather to preserve the faith of the people. It is possible that these ancient stories were collected and began to circulate together around the time of the Babylonian exile. The exiles feared that their faith and their language might disappear as they were disbursed among other populations and their children met and learned the languages of the places to which they were taken. The story of the Tower of Babel is very likely to have been popular among those who were exiled. It contains a pun in Hebrew which doesn’t exist in English that provides insight into how it functioned in the community of exiles. In Hebrew the pronunciation of Babel is very similar to that of balal. The first is the name of a country, the second means “to confuse.”

The exile was a confusing time for both those who were carried away and for those who remained in Jerusalem. When the exiles were finally allowed to return there was additional confusion among the Hebrew people because the experience of the exiles was very different from that of the survivors who remained. Even the language had shifted in subtle ways. The exiles returned with vocabulary borrowed from their captors. Words and phrases from other languages creep into everyday conversations and eventually become part of the vocabulary of languages that are different from the original. We regularly use word from Spanish, French, German, and other languages when we use conversational English.

Another example from the stories that our people tell that is much more recent is told to explain the difference between various dialects of English. It is believed that the Pilgrims traveling on the Mayflower, developed a few phrases and lingo of their own during the passage and the months of isolation after they arrived in Plymouth. Although the voyage wasn’t that long, only 66 days, the community continued to be isolated from other English speakers for many months. One small example of the language change is the name of the baby that was born on the Mayflower. “Oceanus” was not a common name, but was given to the child. Another baby was born on board the ship while it lay at anchor upon arriving was named “Peregrine.”

These days we have a lot of fun with the various dialects of English, especially when talking with our dear friends from Australia. We can easily learn that what we call the “trunk” of a car, they call the “boot.” Other phrases can bring us giggles. For example “Knock up” simply means to awaken in the morning to our Australian friends. It has none of the sexual overtones we attach to the phrase.

One of the phrases that has entered our vocabulary from another language comes from a variation of Spanish. The version of the language spoken in Central America has several variations from formal Castilian Spanish spoken in Spain. One phrase that seems unique to Costa Rica is “Pura vida.” Literally translated as “pure life,” the phrase contains more subtle meanings including a feeling of optimism and a positive outlook on life. It also conveys a sense of gratitude for the gifts of life and it is used by our Costa Rican friends to encourage those who are feeling down. It seems to mean “even if you are having troubles, you are still alive - look on the bright side.”

Another word that has is origins in isolation is “firkle.” It means to mess around or fiddle. The word apparently was originally used by Antarctic researchers who spent months in isolation conducting research in the frozen continent. Linguistic researchers have been studying the speech of those researchers as a way of understanding the subtle evolution of language. It helps them understand how various dialects evolve. Because the people in Antarctic research stations are isolated from other languages, they tend to make up new words more often than adopting words from other languages. It may be due to the work of the linguists that the word has escaped its original setting. It seems to be a good description of the behavior of our 13-year-old grandson which is quite similar to the behavior of his father. There is a fair amount of firkle going on at our house these days.

May the new year that is unfolding afford you time to firkle and may you enjoy pura vida.

For those who want to know, which may not be very many people, I did have a good time at the Polar Bear Plunge yesterday. The day was mostly gray and chilly, but the sun broke through the clouds for long enough to give us a pretty good window for the annual dip in the ocean. The crowds were pretty big, but we found a place at the edge where there was plenty of room and in we went. The event was Birch Bay’s 42nd annual, and my 2nd. All I need to do, going forward, is to subtract 40 from the year to get the number in which I have participated. A bit of math marks 2048 as the year when I might make my 25th annual plunge in the year of the 65th annual event. If I succeed, I’ll be 94, which is probably old enough to get some attention. As it is right now, there seem to be a lot of old guys who are eager to take the plunge, which is probably a good thing because although I don’t look any too good in a swimming suit, there were definitely a few at the beach yesterday who were doing their neighbors no favors by going shirtless. Although there was little risk of sunburn yesterday, I always wear a swim top these days, so perhaps was a bit less likely to leave children with traumatic memories. In addition, I dove right into the water instead of wading in slowly, which meant I got in and out fairly quickly with little fuss. This year I paid a bit more and got a sweatshirt instead of a t shirt, so was able to warm up in style.

When I think back, I don’t have distinct memories of very many New Year’s celebrations. I seem to have clearer memories of other events that have marked the passage of years. I do remember 2000, when there was concern about the effect of the Y2K computer programming issue. It turned out not to be a major disrupter. And we learned a bit about database file organization. My collection of journal entries is encoded in such a fashion that it won’t be a problem. Of course the change of a millennia doesn’t come around all that often. I’m pretty sure that by the year 3000 my journal entries won’t be an issue for anyone.

While there are many animals that have a sense of memory, we humans seem to be unique in our sense of the flow of time. It is hard to know for certain, but we seem to be the only creatures that has come up with a system of counting years. Our system evolved over many different generations and understandings of the nature of time. When you think about it, it is a rather convoluted system. We determine the length of a year by the earth’s position relative to the sun. Then we divide the year into 12 months of unequal length. We divide months into weeks, but the number of weeks in a month varies. the weeks are all divided into seven days, a practice that reflects one of the stories of creation in the Bible. Days have 24 hours, a rather odd number, considering the possibilities of having a different system. Once we get to hours, the system gets even more convoluted. There are 60 minutes in an hour, and sixty seconds in a minute, but then we go digital with milliseconds. If we had started at scratch to devise a system, it seems nearly impossible that we would have ended up with the system we have. However, people didn’t start all at once in terms of measuring time. Because of regular events such as sunrise, sunset, and high noon, the concept of a day is pretty universal.

Different cultures have different ways of counting years. The dominant system in our part of the world is to count birthdays. The day on which a person is born is remembered and we add a year to the count each time that day comes around on the calendar. But our system isn’t the only one. In parts of south Asia, for example, the tradition is to call an infant year old at birth and to count up from that point. In several different indigenous tribes of North America the tradition was not to make a big ceremony of the day of birth. Often it was not remembered. Instead people counted the number of winters survived to come up with an age that is roughly comparable to the birthday system.

I don’t know if our way of counting time gives us a different sense of the future than other creatures experience, but it seems like it might. Because we have become accustomed to counting years and giving each year a number, it is simple to project into the future. I can imagine a certain number of years of swimming in the ocean on New Year’s Day long before that number of years has passed. And yet everything about the future is speculation to a certain extent. We know that all humans are mortal and that each of us will die, but we do not know when that will occur. Imagining myself at the age of 94 or any other number is pure imagination. I have no idea how old I will be when the last year of my life comes.

From my current perspective, reaching 2026 and even 2030 seem like pretty good possibilities. And, in a way, it might be a positive thing to think of myself at 94. That doesn’t make my current age seem like such a big number. Perhaps I am not as much of an old man as I think. After all, I seemed to have an easier time swimming in the bay yesterday than some people who appeared to be younger than I.

Whether or not I remember it years from now, We’ve gotten 2025 off to a start. I don’t write many checks, so don’t have as many opportunities to make a mistake with the date as was the possibility years ago. I’m interested to see how the year goes and what is in store in the years to come.

Welcome to a new year. In a way every year is momentous, but it is a bit surprising to find ourselves one quarter of the way through the 21st century. For people my age, it seems like we were just welcoming the turn of the century. However, for anyone younger than 25, their entire life has taken place in this century. I can amuse myself from time to time by thinking about how I imagined the future would play out and how it actually played out. I don’t think I could have imagined that I would be living in the Pacific northwest, a 15-minute walk from the Salish Sea and a 10-minute drive from the Canadian border. Whenever the fog lifts to reveal the mountains, we can see Canada from our bedroom window. I have long imagined that I would be a grandfather, but the reality of five grandchildren seems like a blessing and a bit of a surprise. Retirement definitely is different than I imagined. Not worse, but different. The list can go on and on.

Each time that we have moved, it has taken us a little while to slide into the local traditions and activities. We are finding the rhythm of our community bit by bit. Last evening we walked down to the beach for our community’s Ring of Fire and Hope celebration. Each New Year’s Eve families gather on the beach in the dark and at 7 pm they light red flares and plant them along the shores of Birch Bay from the Village to the State Park. We had heard the event described by friends, but the other years that we have lived here, we decided to take a pass. We’re not much for crowds these days and we know better than driving our car down to the bay when there is a big event going on. This year, however, we thought we’d take in the tradition and have a look.

We didn’t light any flares, we just went down to the beach to see others do so. It is possible to pick up a free flare from the Chamber of Commerce. Flares are standard fare in marine emergency kits, and can be purchased wherever boating supplies are sold. However the Chamber provides one flare per family for those who sign a waiver of liability. The flares are supposed to be biodegradable, but I suspect that they have some environmental impact. I know that many contemporary boaters now carry LED flares that do not require combustion. Those may also be reusable, but I don’t know. The flares we could see were the traditional type, sparked with a match or lighter and placed int he sand to give out a red glow for 15 minutes or so.

There were also hundreds of paper Chinese lanterns released around the bay. They are fun to watch and are fairly dramatic. Last night we had a slight offshore breeze that carried the lanterns away from the shore. We watched as the tiny lights rose and eventually disappeared. When I got home I checked on the Internet and, as I suspected, the practice has some negative consequences. The lanterns can cause fires, though that was unlikely last night. They were headed out to sea and the land around here is wet enough that setting an unintentional fire is a low risk. However, they do have wire frames in which wildlife, including marine animals can become entangled. And they leave behind litter in the form of paper, candle wax, and the wire. As pretty as the lanterns are, I think we’ll refrain from participating in their launch.

Actually, when it comes to pyrotechnics, we enjoy observing, but don’t feel a need to light the fuses ourselves. That applies to fireworks, too. Most years I check out the spectacular fireworks displays from the Sydney Harbor in Australia and perhaps a display from New Zealand. I’ve also watched videos of London and other large cities. I don’t know of a professional display around here, but there are a lot of amateurs who blast off fireworks. The fireworks look pretty impressive when launched over the bay with the reflection in the water. And it is easy to obtain fireworks around here. The county has restrictions on the sale of fireworks, limiting such to the time around the July 4 holiday. However, those restrictions do not apply to the sovereign indigenous nations and we live just a few miles from the reservation, where people have for many years earned a living by selling things to settlers. Fur trading has been replaced by tobacco shops, fireworks, gambling, gasoline, and other commodities that are regulated or taxed off reservation. We don’t go in for the casinos, smoke shops, or fireworks warehouses, but we buy most of the fuel for our vehicles on the reservation, taking advantage of the lower prices. And we purchase most of our fresh and smoked seafood from the reservation, honoring the fishing rights for which our Coast Salish neighbors have had to fight so diligently.

After the Ring of Fire and Hope, we walked home in the dark. One advantage of living in the Pacific Time Zone is that the ball drops in Times Square in New York City at 9pm local time. I feel no need to stay up to ring in the new year even though I can count on being awakened by the fireworks that are saved for the stroke of midnight around the neighborhood and all around the bay. It wasn’t very dramatic and loud this year - nowhere near as loud or long lasting as July 4.

On the agenda for today is another Birch Bay tradition to which I look forward. Each year, the emergency preparedness officials of our county test the tsunami warning sirens at 12 noon on New Year’s Day. Here in the bay for more than four decades, locals have rushed into the water for a short swim as the sirens are sounded. Last year I participated in the annual Polar Bear Plunge, and I’m planning to take the step for total immersion again today. Who knows? It may be the start of a new collection of t-shirts.

Happy New Year to you.