Two cows are in a field.

Cow #1 says………."Moo!"

Cow #2 says……:  "I was just going to say that!"

Today my Dad would be 70. He died in 1993, having just turned 54.

I miss my Dad – so hard to believe he has been gone so long. Today as I hurt for our friend, Tom McCall, who just lost his own Dad, I feel the deep inner pain, the sense of loss that just will not go away. Death is so final, and efforts to write about it always seem futile.

I remember my Dad as one who worked hard and gave his best along the years of life. He and my Mom had seven children, losing their first at the age of 3 months. Dad was a woodsman all of his life, proving the adage that you ‘can take the man out of the woods but you can’t take the woods out of the man’. Even when we lived on the plains of southwest Kansas he did a little bit of tree work. Later, in North Central Kansas, he found a happy niche as a local tree surgeon, felling trees around town on his days off, hauling the firewood home to heat our big house on the edge of town.

Of course Dad’s real job was as a Highway Patrolman and he served Kansans in this capacity for 23 years. I always enjoyed seeing him in uniform and hearing him check in on the radio: “334 Garden City” or “334 Salina” as the case may be. I’ll never forget his early morning return from a tragic wreck in which three had perished. I was up at about 5:00 AM or so and as he came by my room he just held up three fingers, sober and dutiful.

He was 43 at the time, younger than me as I write today. As I pass these years I often wonder, “What were those years like for my Dad? Did he have the same feelings I have now? Who was he really? Can I understand him now that I am passing through life as he did?” Maybe I can. I know this. For years now I’ve found myself asking, “How did Dad handle this?” And I try to answer so I can get a good idea for how I should handle whatever it is. Always I remember a man who loved me and showed it by steady faithfulness.  After I moved out and started my own home he really worked to keep channels open. He loved my wife, Jane, and by word and example supported our marriage.

This summer we visited my Dad’s boyhood home in Emily, Minnesota, and spent most of a week with his seven wonderful siblings and their families. Wow! Once again I was reminded of one of my Dad’s best qualities, exhibited so well in the Huff clan of the North. He knew how to love – love in a way that was real; no airs, no ‘delusions of grandeur’ as he liked to say, no mean spiritedness about people. I didn’t always understand this kind of love, being a more emotional type, and in my teenage years I was annoying enough (and beyond “annoying”) to make for some real difficulty. But in it all he was steady and true, living a life of trust and dependence on God. His life and guidance, along with my Mom, of course, took me on a path in which I often encountered the living God. And much to my Dad’s joy, one day I surrendered my life to Jesus and He has made all the difference.

Those are my thoughts today on my Dad’s 70th birthday. I so wish he were still with us. How I would love to talk about life with him, making amends, listening, listening, listening. For now I just want to be more like him, which will be less than he wanted, but as much as I can hope for. And I say that with a happy smile. Larry Huff was a good man and today I gladly honor him as my Dad.

To comment, see me at FB — RandyandJane Huff

  “Certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing

(C. S. Lewis in Abolition of Man)

My college roommate, the esteemed and Rev. Jim Reed, occasionally chided me along lines like this: “Randy, you are far too black and white in your thinking – there is far more gray than you are willing to allow.”   Being, well, “black and white in my thinking” I didn’t like to hear that. Life tosses us around and we discover some things and hopefully grow in wisdom and now, some 20 years later I know there is alot of gray, rightly understood.  But I still maintain an outlook weighted to the “black and white”. One of my apologetics for doing so is this: the world is lost in gray thinking. We scarcely believe any boundaries exist at all, much less boundaries that we could know or to which we would be – perish the thought – accountable.

All this comes to mind as I am reading the first chapter in C. S. Lewis’ excellent book Abolition of Man – a book that has proved prophetic over these last several decades. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed Abolition as number 2 in the list of top 50 books of the 20^th century. And for good reason. Lewis makes the case that — (while college beginners may not have a clue about where real lines should be drawn) — the influence of gray glasses that would invade everything does nothing less than push us toward demise, toward a loss of knowing there is anything really human, toward a denial that immutable and universal values exist. (I should say before continuing that my friend Jim is unusually bright and probably sees better everything I will try to say. I just found it fun to reflect on our ‘deeply enlightening’ conversations from year’s past. )

The point of Lewis’ first chapter is this: we establish all value statements from within. Whatever we feel about something, that is what it is, so that the estimation of a thing’s value can have as many grades as half the number of human eyes (or ears) in existence. This, he says, so far from valuing sentiment or emotion, is to leave it utterly untrained, master instead of pupil. Instead, Lewis says, the feelings are to be trained to appreciate what is good, to value what is valuable and shun what is worthy of being shunned. Foreign concepts, those, to much of the modern mind.

I am blessed to work with this book every year in a class I teach here at KMBC, and it is always a fun challenge. But the most helpful section, the one that fired my imagination for this post, is best given in a few excerpts, as follows: (all quotes from the 2001 HarperCollins ed.)

“All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.”

“St. Augustine defines virtue as…the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.”

“Aristotle said that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.” (16)

This is all to say that “certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” (18)

“I myself do not enjoy the society of small children. [But because I believe in objective value on the matter] I recognize this as a defect in myself.” (19)

If you know Abolition, you remember the famous lines at the end of the first chapter. He says we have made value subject to the emotions rather than vis a` vis, thus giving emotions nothing objective to guide them.  And so we give persons no intrinsic basis to rise to ideas of goodness that previous generations knew were essential to being truly human.  In Lewis’ words, “we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible….In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” (26)

Lewis’ point, as I understand it, is a picture of the modern problem. Values are subject to each person, with the highest possible value being what we call tolerance. And the ‘objective’ value of tolerance has not more basis to it than that which we assign it – it has not the force of universal, innate law behind it because there is no such thing. Rather, it is enforced by a legal fiction with no objective basis in reality.

This is all reflected in a troubling  interaction I observed on an online forum. On the assumption that values are always developing, a person refused to deny that sometime hence – say 2000 years from now – rape may indeed be deemed good. Since goodness is subject to us, those in power will decide what good is and the terms good and evil will have no grounding in immutable reality.  Lewis says that is exactly where we are headed when we deny objective values — and he was right. 

May I share a Kentucky morning with you? It is Saturday, mid-August and I am quiet on our patio swing praying and thinking, trying to see and hear what matters. The cattle just across the way –mothers, calves, and the Bull – move toward the barn, quiet as well. In a far off meadow the neighbor’s cows are likewise grazing. The hills beyond them fold down into a long valley, the ridges like large fingers of two hands coming together, disappearing down into the clouds of mist rising slowly. A distant cloud shifts and for a few minutes the rising sun peaks through and brightens the mist, promising to eventually burn it away and bring on the day. But for now, a heavier fog is drifting in and the cool air says there is still time for quiet and meditation.

One always wonders if it is right to interrupt this kind of reverie. The world so bombards us with the artificial, it is hard to see the real. Closer to my swing I see a plastic bag of compost, a hose caddy – accouterments of the garden growing with various states of ease just a few yards away. Closer to me are tools and discarded boards left from an unfinished patio project, waiting to be put away later in the morning – sawhorses, a shovel, a broom, buckets of nails. The neighbors on both sides keep the hummingbirds busy with four different feeders and these overgrown bees buzz me now and then. My coffee cup, now empty, tells me to get more. I notice a cobweb in a chair arm and wonder at the countless spiders and their countless webs in myriad places. And then I wonder about this crazy business of modern technology which means I try to express my mind through keys on a quietly humming plastic box.

Are you still there? This is a Kentucky morning. The sun is peeking through on that meadow again, though the mist that had been only in the valleys is blended in with a general fog all around. Near the river here where we live the morning fog is a given, a soft blanket on the day that always rises as you get things underway.  Our oldest sons steps outside for a moment.  “Dad.”

“Huh?” I reply, sort of lost in my thoughts. “Would you fix me a pancake?” Jane is a fabulous cook; I am not. However, I can make a pancake pretty well and so I tell him of course I will, I just need a few more minutes of quiet.

The peeking sun is gone again. What am I saying to you after all? Well, as I prayed this morning, “Lord, are we to imagine this life is of no value – just a barren passing through? What is all this beauty? What are all of these joys – and pains? Without question they point to you if we can see at all.”

A year ago I was praying for our friend Neil, diagnosed with a vicious cancer that had already invaded his liver and left him little hope. I was joining others in praying for his healing – something God can do with a glance, a thought, a touch, while we are helpless completely. Neil died in November, leaving a wife and two beautiful, recently married, daughters. He was in his mid-fifties. Was he eager for heaven? No doubt – this world is indeed a valley of tears, a broken place as our 24/7 news wearily reminds us. Was he eager for life here? Without question – two daughters, hoped for grandchildren, precious wife and home and life’s work. But with so much pain and tears, can Creation be good?

I am thinking I hear an echo from Eden that says, “It is good. All that God made is good.”  And I believe again that though we dare not love the world and lose our soul, in loving God we are saved and we can then rightly love the world he has made.  The trees matter — they are his.  The singing birds are expressions of his unbounded creativity.  The rising mist had its birth in his mind from all eternity.  And while these things are child’s play to Him, for us they should be cause for unspeaking wonder.  The cooing doves in the distance, a cow mooing just now, our neighbor’s dog barking to the world, the growing garden nearby. Can I ever be still long enough to see the amazing good of God in the world He has made? Do I really have to write about it even? No, and yes.

In writing about it my understanding improves.  And as we love God with our minds — which he also made — we come closer to Him whom to know is life in the fullest sense — eternal life.  So we can say together:

 Thank you, Lord, for the world you have made and the life you have given.  Please help us know what it means, always looking to you, the Author of it all and the Finisher as well.  Until that great day, Oh Yes! (Amen!)

That helps me a lot on a Kentucky morning.  Helps me know what matters, helps me more rightly love the God who made this beautiful world, and helps me be ready for whatever else the day may bring.

I dunno — never done it.

Why are you doing it now?

Because we have two sons and we love them.

Doing it without experience?

Yep.

Strange.

Yep.

Having children is as real and life-intrinsic as breathing.  It challenges everything about you, requires more than you ever dreamed, and teaches you a thousand lessons about yourself.  It pays back far more, too, but that is for later, further out there than we can see.  Good thing we don’t really know all that is involved or we might not want the job!  For that matter, we don’t ask for it exactly, it seems, but life urges us on to give back what we have received and so for most of us, we receive the amazing gift of children and realize they are very much worth wanting and having.

And I am out of words except for this effort to muse about what it all means.  We are raising our boys on our knees.  And we are engaging in their life where they are.  We are modeling and demanding discipline, albeit imperfectly, and we are meting out discipline, again, imperfectly.

And this "imperfect" business goes without saying, but perhaps we need to say it to help us remember that we have limits.  Of course we are imperfect.  But we strive and pray and engage and seek counsel and press on.  We read about and witness parents and children who seem to do it all right and we say, "Well, we’re still working at this thing."  We feel all that is at stake and the pressure mounts.  We remember that countless folks have done well in this thing and we take hope. And we smile with pride at the progress our boys make and remember that God knows us and them and we are in His care.  We remember they are not us and we make this enormous stretch of trying to see the world as they do.  And we pray some more, and some more…and some more.

So I’ve never raised kids and I don’t have much to say on it.  When I finally might have a thing or two clear in my head about it, my boys will be out on their own, hopefully trying their hand at this parenting business.  I hope our example will be a guiding light and, as my Dad told me, that they will do better in every respect than I did.

And here I find another hopeful place.  I loved my Dad.  He was a good man and a good father who patiently bore all that is involved with raising a son like me.  He wanted me to do better than he did, but that’s too tall an order.  I just hope I can be like him.  Did his son turn out perfectly?  Not exactly!  And neither will my sons.  But, if they can love the Lord, pursue wisdom, and trust in Jesus for salvation, then I can rest.  Not there yet — still on the stretch.  But with memories of my own Dad along the way, I’m believing we can win this thing.

That’s 2 cents in the too occasional blog.  I welcome your feedback and insight over at our FB (RandyandJane Huff) or email: rhuffATkmbcDOTedu.  (This blog is currently in ailment mode but will have the comment feature fixed soon and be in better shape.)

I did nothing I say, joining countless others in the revery of staring at screens, interacting with….  Interacting with…what?

I do not know this mystery.  Are we losing our minds and our eyes and our relationships, all the while more "connected" than ever?  What do we do when we surf or FB or chat or….  Are we doing nothing?  Why could doing nothing be so interesting and alluring?

Uncle Dale says I ask questons with no answers.  Wish I were more candid. All I know is that long hours can be wasted and it really is interesting to do what I am doing now — writing for an audience out there somewhere.  If I am doing nothing then why are they reading this? This nothing.

Maybe it is not nothing after all.  Maybe, instead, it has value, this internet world;  it just has to be metered and weighed and tamed and properly utilized for meaningful ends.  Otherwise we do become extensions of the laptop and the net, minds disorganized and short-term b/c google is always at the ready;  minds separate — with technology the friendly traitor — from that which makes them healthy and quick and self-reliant.

Anyone else feel almost clean and free when the net is unavailable for awhile?

Better minds can do more with this meandering.  I just know I don’t want to do nothing.  And the internet is good at leading us into the nothing trap.

Yes, Jane is a Great Aunt, and has been for nearly 20 years.  Of course before that she was already a great Aunt.  And before that I thought she was just great everything, and still do. (Jane is the 9th of eleven children so her oldest niece is near her age.  Lots of relatives in a family that size!)

This week one of her great nephews visited — Jarod.  He is one of the sweetest, delightful, fun-to-be-around little guys.  He adores his cousin Elliot, calling him "King Elliot" and "Master E".  When he watched him play Little League he cheered like the devoted fan he is.

Uncle George was a face I knew from far away. Neither of us could help this distance. He was 18 when I was born. He was starting college then and eventually moving to Oregon; I was getting born and learning how to walk. I do have a few memories of him though, times when we were at Grandma’s or at his home in Manhattan or even once in Oregon. And I remember George’s room at Grandma and Grandpa’s, a room that also belonged to Paul, David, Dale, and Daryle. But George was the big brother and his bed was the special one in the corner — the big bed that I never did get to sleep on until all of the uncles were gone.

My earliest memory of George is watching him play caroms. We were in the living room at Grandma’s house; he was playing against someone and I was looking on. I have a carom board today and when I got it at an auction in an old, dusty box I was thinking of George and watching him at that board so long ago. I can still see his face as he flicked the carom with his thumb — the easy grin and quiet steady nature.

George is my mother’s oldest brother. I always wished to know him better. But I did get to see him every couple of years or so — that was good. On Friday my sister called to say that Uncle George had died after a bout with cancer. All had known he was fighting a rough battle, but this came sooner than expected. Now his face is missing from my family. I miss him. He was a part of me and I of him — he was my Uncle.

"Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face." George can see clearly now. So much that is murky and hard to see in this world — he now sees it. Because now Uncle George has a real face. He is redeemed, the old body made new. He has a face more real than ever possible in this life below.

With this new face he sees Grandma and his Grandparents, my father, and a score of other loved ones. Now he sees clearly, and he sees the ones he loved and lost in his 59 years of life.

I want to see him again someday. When I do I’ll see that crooked grin that I also inherited. And I’ll ask him some more questions about Craftsmanship. He was one of the best and I always loved talking to him. And in a world with no time and no more separation we will get better acquainted, and I might even learn how to do that amazing "arrow-in-a-bottle" brain-teaser he and his Grandpa kept secret.

I last saw George at Grandma’s funeral last December. We visited, shook hands on that last day, looked each other in the eye and said normal goodbyes. How I wish I could see him again. But I’ll have to wait until I get my new face. All the earth groans for that day. Our hearts groan as well with the pain of death – with losing George. But someday we’ll see him again. That is our steadfast hope in Christ, when we once again and forever will see face to face.

Lord, thank you for the hope of heaven we have in Christ. You have taken away the sting of death, but we still feel it so mournfully in times like these. Please be with George’s family — comfort and strengthen them. And we humbly ask that you would keep us close to your side so that we someday will see George again.

As we hope in you, the only Everlasting One, Amen.

(You may sign a guestbook and view George’s obituary here.)

Is he hateful toward religion? What would make that OK? How, exactly, is this banning going to happen?

I’ve decided that this pronouncement, notwithstanding Mr. John’s obvious ability and intelligence, is less than the sparkling rhetoric one should not expect anyway. Banning religion is one of the dumbest ideas one can imagine. Just as well ban breathing or water or trees. Craziness, sheer craziness.

And imagine how it would be done. This is totalitarianism in the good old-fashioned way. It is tinkering with the most fundamental reality of life — the realization that we are not invincible individuals, that we are accountable to something/someone greater, and that that entity — whatever it is — is worthy of worship. Worship is as natural an instinct as breathing. The key to it all revolves around the object that one selects for worship.

When Elton John says he would ban religion, to what is he claiming ultimate allegiance? Whatever that is, it is guaranteed to have religious trappings of some kind. You don’t need a church as such or a typical altar, etc. to worship and conduct religion. Religious exercise has always been with us and it always will be.

Banning religion is like trying to bannish life. We may try, but it ain’t gonna happen.