Author: jgarrison

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From Reno to Pittsburgh, 1989, the first leg of a transcontinental journey

title slide with Amtrak post card of the California Zephyr in Colorado

This piece is from my journals, memory, and the train guide for the California Zephyr. Sadly, I must not have taken as many photos as I do now, but then this was long before digital photography. 

A three week break from Nevada

I left my car at Carolyn’s house in the Washoe Valley on the southside of Reno. We had an early dinner, then she drove me to the Reno Amtrak Station where we waited for the eastbound California Zephyr. It was the Tuesday after Easter, March 28, 1988. I checked my suitcases through to Pittsburgh, keeping with me only a small duffle bag which contained a pillow, blanket, toiletries, a few clothes, books, and snacks. The train pulled up to the station. It’s a short stop, just long enough for passengers to debark or step aboard. Carolyn and I hugged; I threw my duffle over my shoulders, grabbed the handrail and stepped up. 

As I was finding my way up to the second floor of the double decked train, we pulled away. A few minutes later, we stopped in Sparks, for a longer stop so they could service the train. I looked out the window and saw Carolyn by the tracks waving. Knowing there was going to be this stop, she followed the train over. I waved back but couldn’t leave the train as I was waiting on the conductor to process my ticket. By the time he reached me, the train was running east alongside the Truckee River and passing the infamous Mustang Ranch. The train guide described the gaudy brothel only as “one of Nevada’s unique institutions.”  

At this time, Amtrak had a promotional which allowed you to name your destination. You were allowed one additional stop each direction. The nation was divided into three zones. For 150 dollars, you could travel in one zone. For 300, you could cross all three zones. Looking to make the best of the offer, my destination was Fayetteville, North Carolina, three zones away. Going out, I would make a stop in Pittsburgh, where I would attend a lecture series and catch up with old friends. In North Carolina, I’d have a short visit with my parents, grandmother, and siblings. Coming back, I planned to stop in Seattle, cause I had never been there. I was a little scared but also excited about riding over 7,000 miles on the train over a three-week period. 

I tried to do a little reading as I got use to my seat. While I brought several books with me, the reading was all heavy, mostly on theology and Biblical Studies. I had a commentary on the book of Revelation, a collection of Reinhold Niebuhr’s shorter writings, and Doris Lessings, The Summer before Dark.  With daylight fading fast, I found myself unable to concentrate. I went to the restroom to brush my teeth and long before we stopped in Winnemucca, the rocking of the car and the occasional sound of the whistle blowing in the night had me asleep.

The previous week had been brutal

The past week had been brutal. The Wednesday before, I had officiated at my first funeral. It was for Lois Bowen, a longtime member of the church whom I had not met. Shortly after learning she had cancer, she left Virginia City and moved to Las Vegas to be near to family. They brought her back to the funeral, which I was to conduct. I don’t know how it all came together, but those who knew her shared with me pieces of her life and I somehow managed to work it into a homily.

The small sanctuary was packed for the funeral. Rudi, a former opera singer and a church member, sang a solo while Red, a local banjo picker in his 90s, played a wonderful rendition of “Amazing Grace.” When it was over, Pat Hardy, who served as my supervisor as I was only a student pastor, complimented me on having given one of the best funeral homilies he’d heard. 

Then Holy Week kicked in. Thankfully, Pat came up to Virginia City again on Thursday to lead the Maundy Thursday service since I was not yet ordained and not allowed to officiate at the Lord’s Table. On Friday, I preached the ecumenical Good Friday service at St. Mary’s in the Mountains on John 19:17-20. The service went well except for the confusion which came in leading the Lord’s Prayer the “Presbyterian way” in a Catholic Church. (Presbyterians say debts instead of trespasses and the Catholics don’t have the doxological ending to the prayer). Also, on this day, I learned I had passed all four of the ordination exams I taken in February.  A major hurdle toward ordination had been completed, but with two Easter Services, I had little time to reflect. 

Then on Easter Sunday, two days before I stepped on the train, I held my first Sunrise Service at the cemetery on the north end of town. It was a cold morning. The temperature was in the 20s and a cold wind blew off Mount Davidson. We hurried through the service with me giving a short homily on Luke 24:1-12. Afterwards, we rushed back to the church on South C Street where Norm had coffee and pastries waiting for us. A few hours later, I conducted my first Easter Service, preaching on 1 Corinthians 15:19-26. 

On the train

By the time I boarded the train two days later, I was exhausted. I don’t remember much after the Mustang Ranch and slept soundly to the rocking of the train.

In the dark, we passed Lovelock, Winnemucca, and Elko, towns I recalled from my drive the past Septemberfrom the Sawtooth Mountains to Virginia City.  I woke at 4:30 AM. The train no longer rocked as we had stopped in Salt Lake City. I got off and walked around the platform in the cold. As we waited for another train, the Desert Wind from Los Angeles, I headed into the station and out onto the streets seeing if I could find a diner. It’d been a long time since dinner at Carolyn’s the evening before.

The streets were dark. Having only been to Salt Lake City once before, the previous summer as I drove west, I didn’t know where we were in relations to anything.  When I came back to the station, I was ready to board the train and snooze again but was held on the platform as they hooked up the cars from Los Angeles. Once the cars clanged together, it was safe to board. Soon we pulled out from the station, heading south toward Provo. As we passed Geneva Steel, dawn was just breaking. The steel plant, with its furnaces glowing, made me feel as if I was already in Pittsburgh. I quickly fell back asleep. 

I slept through the stop in Provo. When I woke, the engines up front rumbled and the wheels squeaked as the train labored over the steep and tight curves heading up to up to Soldier’s Summit. I head to the laboratory to brush my teeth and wash my face, then back to the lounge car, where I picked up a cup of coffee.  I would spend much of the day alternating between the lounge car and my seat in coach, and between looking at the scenery across the Utah desert and reading. Late morning, after the stop in Green River, and just before leaving Utah, the tracks began to parallel the Colorado River. We followed the river for the next 282 miles of stunning scenery, with stops at cute ski towns. 

Somewhere in Utah

Leaving the Colorado River, we made a steep climb over the Rockies. Shortly after a stop at Winter Park, the train entered into darkness as we ran through the 6.2 mile long Moffat Tunnel. Coming back into daylight on the other side, we began our slow descend toward Denver as we ran through many tunnels. 

inside the lounge car

Denver was another long stop on the train. I got to talking to an African American passenger on the platform, who was heading from his home in California to Cleveland, where he had family. We decided to see if we could find a place to get dinner and a drink. Not far from the station was a brew pub. This was still a new concept in 1989, with the only other one I knew of being back in Virginia City. We each ordered a sandwich and one of their brews. We consumed our food and drink quickly, making sure we didn’t miss the train when it headed out across the plains. 

Day 2: Leaving Denver

Darkness was falling as the train left the station. I went to the lounge car where they were showing a movie, but it was crowded and I wasn’t interested, so I went back to my seat, got out my blanket and pillow, and quickly fell asleep. 

Early to bed meant that I also woke early as we were rolling through eastern Nebraska. Knowing the lounge car didn’t open until 6 AM, I headed to the lavatory to clean up and brush my teeth. I got off the car for a few minutes when we stopped in Omaha and walked around in the platform. The sky was just beginning to lighten, and I could make out a few of the buildings. When the conductor called “All Aboard,” I went back to my seat and waited. 

It wasn’t long before I saw the lounge car attendant heading from the crew quarters for the lounge, I followed him with my book, with the hope of getting some early coffee. When he entered the car, with me on his heels, he had a fit. 

The lounge car attendant was an older African American gentleman who had spent his adult life working on the railroad. He was friendly, took pride in his work, and saw the lounge car as his kingdom. What he saw once he opened the door was a dozen or so dozen college students passed out on the floor and in the seats. Empty beer cans rolled from one side of the car to the other whenever the train went around a curve. He cussed and began nudging them with his shoe, telling them to get out of his lounge car. They slowly got up, rubbing their heads, and heading back to their seats. I helped him pick up the empty beer cans and clean up the tables as he gave me a lecture about what’s wrong with today’s youth. 

The college students had been skiing over spring break and had boarded the train the day before in Steamboat Springs. He had been willing to sell them one beer each when he closed the car the night before, but it obvious they had a supply of their own as many of the cans were of brands not sold on the train. 

That morning speed by. We stopped for a few minutes in Ottumwa, Iowa. It was a smoking stop, and all the smokers got off, lighting cigarettes as soon as they were on the platform. I got off to look around at Radar’s hometown. Radar, if you remember, was the loveable corporal on the TV series, “Mash.”  At Burlington, Iowa, we crossed the Mississippi. The California Zephyr pulled into Chicago early in the afternoon. 

Crossing the Mississippi

A stop in Chicago, then onward to Pittsburgh

I had over five hours before catching the train to Pittsburgh, so I checked my duffle and walked across the Chicago River, down West Adams Street a few blocks, to the Chicago Institute of Art. There, I spent a couple of hours looking at paintings. To this day, I remember turning down a hall within the museum and looking at Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” This was the first time I had seen the frequently parodied painting of a farmer with a pitchfork and his stern looking daughter standing in front of a gothic style house Wood’s had seen in Iowa. I was shocked by the small and unassuming size of the original. I’d always expected a much larger painting.

I left the museum around 5 PM, stopping at a bar and grill for dinner, before heading back to Union Station. Around 7, I boarded the Capital Limited for Pittsburgh. As we made our way around the south shore of Lake Michigan, through the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, it felt as if Pittsburgh was getting closer. Soon, I was asleep in my seat as we rushed through the upper Midwest. At 6 AM, we arrived in Pittsburgh. I gathered up my stuff and stepped off the train. Bill, a friend from the seminary, was there to meet me. 

Ticket jacket, route guide, and post card of the California Zephyr

Other train trips of mine: 

Danville to Atlanta, 2020

Coming home to Pittsburgh, 1987

Doubly late to West Palm Beach, 1986

Edinburgh to Iona, 2017

Riding in the Cab of the V&T, 2013

Bangkok to Seim Reap, 2011

Riding the International: Georgetown to Bangkok, 2011

Malaysia’s NE Line: The Jungle Train, 2011

Coming Home on the Southwest Chef, 2012

Other Virginia City Stories

Driving West in ’88

Matt, Virginia City 1988

Doug and Elvira: A Pastoral Tale

Christmas Eve 1988

Easter Sunrise Services (a part of this article recalls Easter Sunrise Service in Virginia City in 1989)

The Revivals of A. B. Earle (an academic paper published inAmerican Baptist Historical Society Quarterly, part of these revivals were in Virginia City in 1867) 

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Opposition to Jesus Grows

Title slide with photo of churches in winter

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry and Bluemont Churches
March 2, 2025
Mark 12:13-27

Sermon recorded at Mayberry on Friday, February 28, 2025

At the beginning of the service[1]:
Two weeks ago, those of us who live and own property in Carroll County received a real estate reassessment. I’m not sure about Patrick County, but Virginia law requires all counties to reevaluate real estate property values every five years. So, if you’re in another county and didn’t get such a statement, don’t worry, your time will come. 

There has been a lot of gashing of teeth and complaining about the reassessments. County wide, property values are up 40-some percent and many of us have seen valuations up by 50 or 60 percent. If you think it’s too high, you can appeal. I doubt anyone will say anything if they think theirs is too low.

We’re going to talk about paying taxes and God’s control today. I am sad to inform you that I can’t give a theological reason not to pay taxes. But if you feel your evaluation is high, you have the right appeal. Hopefully, what we pay in taxes will be used to enhance our communities and support things which makes our common life more productive and pleasant. 

Before reading the Scripture:
We’re continuing through Mark’s gospel. As I mentioned last week, opposition to Jesus increases as we move toward his arrest. Today, we’ll see Jesus challenged with the second and third of four questions. The first question, which we heard about last week, had to do with his authority. He now gets bombarded by different groups of Jews, who attempt to trick Jesus into incriminating himself. The second and third questions have to do with paying taxes and the resurrection.  

We see an odd group of folks come at Jesus. The question as to taxes involves the Pharisees and the Herodians. The latter group supported Roman control over Palestine. Normally, we’d see these groups on opposite side of issues. Of course, nobody likes paying taxes. But the Pharisees disliked it for theological reasons while the Herodians saw it as a necessary evil which allows them to enjoy the things Rome supports.[2] Earlier in Mark’s gospel, we see the two dissimilar groups joining together against Jesus.[3]

The next question which relates to the resurrection is brought about by the Sadducees, a group who denied the resurrection. The Pharisees believed in it, but they’re not the one who asked this question. The questions and those who ask them are ironic. It’s almost like someone set up several groups of people to ask Jesus questions. But our Savior answers them in a way that sends the questioners off shaking their heads. 

Read Mark 12:13-27
Have you had a salesperson play on your emotions to get you to buy their product? The life insurance salesperson who speaks about how desperate your family will be when you die. Or maybe a car salesperson trying to get you to move up to a nicer vehicle than your budget allows, telling you how impressive you’d be riding in the fancier car. I’m sure we’ve all been there. 

Not long after moving here, we had our HVAC system checked. The technician suggested the thing was rusting away and leaking, and I should replace it before winter. A few days later the company’s owner came to give me a quote. I had already called around, so I knew about how much a system should cost. So, when he handed me his quote, I was shocked. It was well over twice what I expected. 

He tried to tell me all the reasons they were the best company and pressure me into signing a contact with offerings such as a yearly maintenance check, but only if I signed that day.

When he realized I was not buying his line, he changed tactics. He told me how all the other HVAC companies hire guys trained in prison. He also implied that many of these workers were people of color. Then he asked what I’d think if one of them came into my house and attacked my family. I’d had enough. I told him to leave. 

The next person who came to give me a quote for a new HVAC system asked why I thought I needed a new system. I told him I’d been told it needed some expensive freon and was rusting out. He looked at the system, said the rust was to be expected, and wasn’t bad. He then asked if he could test it. After hooking up gauges, he shook his head. “Your system is fine,” he said, “And if you put anymore freon in it, you’ll blow it up.” We’re still using the same system and have yet to add freon. It has lasted the past five winters. 

When a wire shorted out, I called the guy who said I didn’t need a new system. He isolated the problem and quickly fix it.  

Honesty and good service are traits which serve us well. When someone tries to butter you up or use dishonest techniques, hold on to your wallet and run. 

Jesus must have known when the Pharisees and Herodians showed up together, something was up. And then they butter him up with praise. I’m sure Jesus just listened, waiting for the hook. Sure enough, they then asked: “Should we pay taxes to the emperor?” 

This put Jesus in a bind. If he says yes, the people who despise taxes will think Jesus sold them out. Furthermore, the Roman taxes had to be paid with Roman coins, the denarius,[4] which the Pharisees and strict Jews considered idolatrous. The coins went against a strict interpretation of the commandment prohibiting graven images.[5] Furthermore, the inscription around the emperor’s head read “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, Son of the Divine Augustus.”[6]  In other words, it indicated the divinity of the Caesars, which flew in the face of monotheistic Jews. 

On the other hand, if Jesus said, “no, you shouldn’t pay taxes,” the authorities would have a reason to arrest Jesus. “Inciting the crowds against Rome,” would be the charge. It’s a no-win situation. 

But Jesus is clever. “Let me see a coin,” he said. And they produced one, which is telling since they considered the coin idolatrous. When Jesus said, “give to the emperor the things that are his, and to God the things that are God’s,” the questioners are left speechless.  

Jesus acknowledges the legitimacy of human government.[7] We shouldn’t forget that all governments, like all human institutions, are sinful. Yet, scripture understands they’re necessary and, as Paul reminds us, deserve our respect.[8] Jesus does not encourage an artificial separation of life into the secular and sacred, as some have suggested.[9] Instead, if we’re to acknowledge that all belongs to God, that includes even what’s the emperors. The earth and those who live in it are the Lord’s.[10]

We don’t know if the Sadducees who next approach Jesus were waiting to see what happened to the Pharisees and Herodians, or if it was later in the same day or another day. But Mark presents these events as if they happened in rapid succession. 

 Mark first informs us the Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection, then tells the scenario which they present to Jesus. We also know that the Sadducees didn’t believe in angels and demons in addition to no afterlife.[11] They base their question on the laws of Moses, which said that if a woman dies without children, her brother-in-law should marry her.[12] In this case, the woman is terribly unlucky with husbands, because every brother she marries dies without her having children. 

Their question for Jesus, “who’s the woman’s husband in the life to come since she’s had seven husbands on earth?”

The Sadducees story drips with irony. They don’t even believe in the resurrection, yet they are trying to trap Jesus concerning his beliefs. Jesus responds harshly, telling them they don’t know scripture, nor do they understand the power of God. He suggests that in the life to come, we’ll be more like angels, of which the Sadducees also didn’t believe in. 

Paul, in his great chapter on the resurrection in 1st Corinthians, speaks of our earthly bodies as perishable seeds, but the resurrected body as imperishable. Just as we don’t know for sure what a seed will produce until it planted in the ground and sprouts, it’s not for us to fully understand what our resurrection life will be like.[13]  

Jesus concludes his response by drawing on the name God gave Moses to use when he addressed the Hebrews in slavery. “I am the God of Abraham, of Issac, and of Jacob.” God didn’t say, “I was.” The use of the present tense is important for it implies that the patriarchs of the Jewish people are not dead and forgotten. 

In this second story, Jesus refuses to let the people pin God into a vision from their own minds. God’s freedom and ability are beyond our minds to comprehend. We tend to think of the afterlife in terms which we know from this life. We expect our bodies and families continuing as we have experienced them. But Jesus’ response reminds us there is a lot we don’t know. We are called to walk by faith, and that includes into the life to come. 

Furthermore, we shouldn’t be surprised when others rise up against us. Jesus faced enemies in his ministry, and it won’t be any different for us. Hold on to the faith and keep your eyes on Jesus.

Today’s stories remind us of God’s sovereignty over our earthly lives. Yes, we’re to live on earth and abide by laws, if they don’t contradict God’s law. And we are to live by faith, trusting the future to the one who created and redeemed us. Amen. 

[1] I plan to omit the opening section at Mayberry to shorten the service because the congregation celebrates communion on the first Sunday of the month.

[2] William L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1974), 423.

[3] Mark 3:6. See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2024/03/10/the-plot-against-jesus/

[4] Lane, 424.

[5] Exodus 20:4. 

[6] James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 363. 

[7] Edwards, 363.

[8] Romans 13:1. 

[9] Douglas R. A. Hare, Mark: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, KY: WJK Press, 1997), 154. 

[10] Psalms 24:1. 

[11] Edwards, 365. 

[12] Deuteronomy 25:5-10. 

[13] 1 Corinthians 15:35-42. 

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Reviews of my reading during February

cover photos of books reviewed

The weather has often been cold and unpleasant, so I have been doing a lot of reading. These five books are all different, so maybe you’ll find something that is of interest. I often read something in February in honor of Black history. I have been reading His Truth is Marching ON: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham. But, I won’t finish this book before the end of the month. Look for the review next month.

Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir

 (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2010), 288 pages, no illustrations. 

One of the first books I remember reading after my ordination was Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. The book came out during my last year in seminary, and I borrowed a copy for the presbytery office. I liked the book so much that I ordered a copy for myself and reread it. I often go back to that book, and it has informed my ministry over the past 35 years. Beside that one book, I have only read articles by Hauerwas. Learning that he had a memoir, I decided to read it. While this reads more like an autobiography than a memoir,[1] I’m still glad that I read it and recommend it to others. 

Hauerwas was the son of a bricklayer. His parents were modest lower middle-class Methodists from Texas. Both parents were older when he was born and his mother, like Hannah the mother of Samuel in the Old Testament, promised to dedicate her son to the Lord. Hauerwas sensed this and even committed his life into that direction, which led him to college and on to Yale Divinity School. But instead of becoming a pastor (he was never ordained and wasn’t even sure, at first, he was Christian), Hauerwas went on to earn a PhD focusing on ethics. He spent his career teaching and writing. 

Hauerwas began teaching at Augustana, a small Lutheran College. After two years, he moved to Notre Dame, where he taught for fourteen years, and then on to Duke Divinity School. Throughout this time, the nation dealt with Civil Rights and Vietnam. In his memoir, he is also honest about the political struggles in academia. This was especially true at Notre Dame, where he was a Protestant teaching in a Roman Catholic university.

Another intimate part of the book deals with his first wife, Anne, who had mental health issues that showed up early in their marriage and increased over time in severity. Bipolar by nature, Anne struggled with reality. She often thought she was in love with other men (who she fantasized as loving her) and much of this first marriage was without sexual intimacy. Along the way, they had one child, Adam, who was mostly raised by Hauerwas. After moving to Duke, Anne decided she wanted to go back to South Bend (where she was again in love). They divorced and her world unraveled. In her 50s, she died of a heart attack. 

Hauerwas then married Paula, a woman who was working at Duke and an ordained Methodist pastor. According to his story, their relationship has been much steadier, and both have been able to thrive in their relationship with each other and others in the academic community. They also both love baseball and at one time (before I moved to the Blue Ridge) owned a house on Groundhog Mountain, which I pass every Sunday morning between Mayberry and Bluemont. 

One of the things I appreciate about the book are details about who have influenced Hauerwas. Early on, it was Barth and the Niebuhr brothers. Later came Catholic theologians and a Mennonite, John Yoder, who helped Hauerwas move toward Christian pacifism. In addition to those Hauerwas personally knows, he also credits books which have helped shape his theology. There is much in this book for those who enjoy theology, philosophy, and how thought process is shaped.  

[1] I think of a memoir as focusing narrowly on one aspect of a life. This book tends to focus on many aspects of the author’s life, from his birth to his sixties.

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Twentieth Century 

(New York: Crown, 2017), 127 pages. 

This is a valuable little book that shouldn’t take most readers more than an hour or two to read. I’ve heard it mentioned often lately as an antidote (or resistant manual) to a more authoritarian society which seems to be preferred by many in the western world. As for the desire for authoritarian desires, see Anne Applebaum, The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.

Snyder offers easy to understand lessons on how we might resist tyranny.  The first one has become a rallying cry since the election, “Don’t Obey in Advance.” The lessons themselves are just a few words, making them easy to understand. Then, following each lesson is a bolded paragraph highlighting the importance of such action. This is then followed by several pages of examples from European fascist movements early in the 20thCentury and the collapse of Eastern Europe into the communist domain following World War 2. Snyder also highlights the troubling trend of many of these same countries, after having a short bit of freedom with the collapse of the Soviet Union, have slipped back into authoritarian control. 

The Twenty Lessons:

  1. Do note obey in advance
  2. Defend institutions
  3. Beware of the one-party state
  4. Take responsibility for the face of the world
  5. Remember professional ethics
  6. Be wary of paramilitaries
  7. Be reflective if you must be armed
  8. Stand out
  9. Be kind to our language
  10. Believe in truth
  11. Investigate
  12. Make eye contact and small talk
  13. Practice corporeal politics
  14. Establish a private life
  15. Contribute to good causes
  16. Learn from peers in other countries
  17. Listen for dangerous words
  18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives
  19. Be patriot
  20. Be as courageous as you can

I especially liked his lesson on being kind to our language. Here, he encourages us to read books (not just what’s on the internet). His reading list includes: 

*Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 45
*George Orwell,        *1984, *Animal Farm, and his wonderful essay, *“Politics and the English Language” 
*Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
*Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Albert Camus, The Rebel
Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind
Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless
Timothy Garton Ash, The Use of Adversity
Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility
*Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible 
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The * indicates books I’ve read (8 out of 18, so I have some catching up to do). 

This is an important book. It might be a good one for a small group of people to read together and to discuss, over a period of time, each of the lessons. 

Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, 

narrated by Simon Vance (2019, Audible, 15 hours and 1 minute.


In 1763, the English portrait painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to Samuel Johnson to start a club that would meet each Friday evening. Starting with nine members, the club voted on new members (and membership had to be approved by all members allowing one no vote to blackball a prospective member). While this book focuses only on the activity of club members in the 18thCentury, the club continues to this day as the London Literary Club. For most of the 18th Century, The Club met at the Turk’s Head Tavern, starting with dinner at 6 PM, and then drinks and conversation going on till midnight (or afterwards). 

The membership of the Club in the early years were men (the membership was all male), who made their mark on history. In addition to social critic Samuel Johnson and biographer James Boswell, The Club had an impressive list of members. Reynolds made a fortune with commissioned portraits. The great political philosopher Edmund Burke, who is best known for his quote, “All that is required for the triumphant of evil is for good men to do nothing,” was a member. He still influences true conservative thinkers today. Sadly, most who consider themselves conservative probably don’t know him, the exceptions being George Will and Arthur Brooks.  Another Scottish political philosopher, Adam Smith, gave us economics as a discipline. Edmund Gibbons wrote the multi-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Other members included David Garrick, the great Shakespearean actor who changed the way actors performed, and playwright Oliver Goldsmith. 

While each of the above members receive a short biography within the book, Damrosch focuses most on James Boswell (who joined The Club after its establishment) and Samuel Johnson.  Johnson was English and Boswell was Scottish and would later become the Lord over a vast estate upon his father’s death. Boswell also wrote a major biography of Johnson. The two of them even took a Scottish holiday, traveling across the lowlands and to the Inner Hebrides. Both would published books on the journey. 

Johnson valued the control of one’s passions while Boswell often drank to excess and sought out prostitutes. In Boswell’s journals he used codes, which have been broken, to indicate sexual activity. Boswell had a rough relationship with his father. Johnson who was 20 years older than Boswell, became a surrogate father for him while he was in London. 

Damrosch dedicates some focus to what was going on in the larger world during this era, from the Seven Years War (known as the French and Indian War in America) to the American and French Revolutions. Club members discussed topics such as capital punishment, slavery, and religion. 

While I have listened to this book, I have also ordered a copy because I want to go back and collect quotes. Also, the text often refers to paintings of the era which was printed within the book. I recommend it. 

J. Murray, To Hunt a Sub 

(Laguna Hills, CA: Structured Learning LLC, 2016), 370 pages. 

I picked this book to read because it was about submarines. For some reason, my daughter has been fascinated with submarines and I partly to be able to keep up a conversation with her, I have read several books on submarines over the past several years. I also chose this book as I have followed Jacqui Murray’s blog for years and wanted to read one of her books. 

However, if you’re looking for a book on submarines, this isn’t your book. Only a few pages of this story deal up what happens in a submarine. In this case, the sub has lost control due to a computer virus. The story is engaging. It reminds me of some of the action books I read in high school. 

To Hunt a Sub centers on an Islamic terrorist group who figured out a way to incapacitate the American submarine fleet. To pull it off, they need the help of an Artificial Intelligence research of Kali Delamagente, a single parent PhD candidate at Columbia University. Her research blends AI, geography, and paleoethology. Her computer program named Otto allows her to go back in time to places where she follows “Lucy” around as she and her tribe made their way out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago. This story is very creative, blending life in the “pre-human world,” paleoethology, computer science, geo-positioning and terrorism. 

Center to the story is Kali, who is running of out of funds and time to finish her research and complete her degree. Two shady men attempt to help her, but for their own benefit. One is a male professor who secretly kill off lovers and stole their research, which he published as his own. The other is a Muslim on a secret jihad. Kali’s research will help him in his goal to kill large numbers of “infidels.” He promises money for her research. 

Helping Kali avoid the dangers she faces is Zeke Rowe, an ex-Navy Seal, whose last mission resulted in permanent disabilities. He is now a professor of paleoanthropology at Columbia but has been secretly recruited by the Navy to help them discover what’s going on with the submarine fleet. The two are romantically drawn to each other, but both put the importance of their work ahead of any relationship. In addition, Kali is not just concerned for her well-being but that of her son and her three-legged dog.  

The book was a fast read as I was drawn into the story. There’s lots of action and plenty of violence, but in the end the good guys win, and the American fleet is safe. The number of characters (and how some of them used various names in different settings), was confusing until I got further into the story. Some of the encounters seemed far-fetched. But this is an action book and it keeps your attention. 

Fred Chappell, River: A Poem 

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), 51 pages. 

This is a delightful collection of poetry by the late Fred Chappell, who taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for forty years and served four years as Poet Laurate for the state of North Carolina. Originally from Canton, North Carolina, these poems draw heavily on the image of the mountains.  River was Chappell’s second book of poetry. In addition to poetry, Chappell has also published novels and short stories. 

While the title suggests the book is “a poem,” it consists of 13 rather long poems. Some like “Susan Bathing,” are prose-like. This poem describes in detail but without slipping into pornography his wife’s body. Another, “Science Fiction Water Letter to Guy Lillian takes on the form of a poetic letter.  Others are more traditional, often drawing on stories of his grandparents. One moving poem, “Dead Soldiers,” is about the floods in 1944 and the empty liquor bottles in a man’s basement which are washed down the river as he shoots at the bobbing bottles with a 22 rifle. Reading it brought the floods in the mountains after Hurricane Helene last year to mind. The poems capture the rough life many in the mountains endured. 

Water, more than rivers, provides a unifying theme of the poems. While rivers often show up, but so does water such him as a child being lowered into a well to clean it. Other water themes include bathing and baptizing. The poems draw on Appalachian sayings and include clever phrases and metaphors. Humor is also inserted into the poems. 

I found similarities in these poems and Wayne Caldwell’s Woodsmoke, which I read last year and Ron Nash’s, Among the Believers, which I read several years ago but didn’t review. I recommend this book especially for someone wanting to capture the sense of the mountains in the early 20th century.  

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We’re God’s Tenants

title slide with photo of two churches

Jeff Garrison
Bluemont and Mayberry Churches
Mark 11:27-12:12
February 23, 2025

Sermon recorded at Bluemont Church on Friday, February 21, 2025

At the beginning of worship:

Cover of Linda Flower's book, "Throwed Away"

“’Throwed away’ is an expression peculiar to eastern North Carolina. If a piece of land or a person or a stretch along a highway looks ‘throwed away,’ it can be in no worse shape,” writes Linda Flowers in the preface to her book titled, Throwed Away.“Fields left unattended and overcome with cockleburs are ‘throwed away.’ Ramshackly houses with boarded-up windows and rotten porches, or country stores that have bitten the dust are ‘throwed away.’

Flowers grew up in Faison, North Carolina toward the end of the share-cropping era. Her family share cropped. In 1968, she left the state for graduate school in Ohio and later New York. When she returned in 1980, the change startled her. 

The end of tenant farming is generally thought to have occurred in the mid to late 1960s, as machinery reduced the number of hands needed on farms. Of course, some continued afterwards, but the economy of sharecropping was on its way out. A few sharecroppers gained enough cash to buy their own land, but most moved into factories and other forms of labor. 

Flowers, in her book, set out to recapture the world of her youth which she describes in this manner. “At its best, tenantry was exploitative; at its worst, it was a kind of slavery.”[1] Such farming practices weren’t new. As we’ll see today, they existed in Jesus’ day. 

Before reading the Scripture:
We’re back in Mark’s gospel, picking up where I left off in November. If you remember, during Advent I jumped ahead and we looked at the 13th Chapter of Mark, which pertains to Jesus’ 2nd Coming. That’s an Advent topic. Today, our text begins with Mark 11:27. From here through the end of the12th chapter of Mark, we see the conflict around Jesus’ ministry intensify. Various groups try to trick him or cause him to incriminate himself. But Jesus proves to be up for the challenge.  

The economic world of Palestine in the first century was one of poor tenant farmers who slaved to raise crops and then had to give a significant portion of their income to the absentee owners.[2] This was a system like what went on after Civil War in the South, where those without land struggled and worked the lands of those owned by former plantation owners who had depended on slaves. 

In a way, a tenant farmer was just a step or two above a slave. He could leave, but where could he go? We know Jesus often takes the plight of the downtrodden. In both first century Palestine and in the South from the 1860s until the 1960s, tenant farmers were mostly downtrodden. But in the parable Jesus tells, he flips the story. Here, the owner of the land is generous. The tenants are evil. 

Our passage begins with Jesus’ third visit to Jerusalem after his arrival on the day we refer to as Palm Sunday. This would be Tuesday of Holy Week. It appears Jesus left the city each night and stayed in Bethany, where perhaps the lodging was cheaper.  The next morning, he came back to the city and headed for the temple.

Read Mark 11:27-12:12
Early in Mark’s gospel, we have the story of Jesus in the synagogue in Capernaum, which became the center of his Galilean ministry. There, Jesus impressed the people with his authority. His speech was beyond anything they’d heard from the scribes.

He followed this up with his authority over evil spirits.[3] In that early encounter, the question was raised as to where Jesus obtained his authority.

Now that we’re into Jesus’ last week of his earthly ministry, we learn the question over Jesus’ authority continues to linger. Early in Mark’s gospel, the freshness of his teachings caused his popularity to rise. He comes to Jerusalem as a popular man. Those who held the authority at the temple fear him. 

This is the third day in a row that Jesus enters Jerusalem. But it’s not the city itself which interests him, it’s the temple. He immediately heads for the temple which stands high over the city, as he has done of the previous two days.[4]

We can imagine Jesus and the some of the disciples walking along the massive courtyards and porticos around the temple. A group of religious leaders approach him: chief priests, scribes, and elders. These three groups made up the Sanhedrin, leaders of the faith who also handled the precarious relationship with Rome.[5]  

It was probably just a representative group of the Sanhedrin who approached Jesus as the entire body consisted of seventy-one members.[6] They know Jesus has been making a stir around Jerusalem from his entry parade[7] to his overturning tables and chasing out livestock the day before.[8] So, they ask Jesus by what authority does he do such things. 

Jesus doesn’t give a direct answer. If he said, “my Father in heaven,” not only would they probably not accepted it, but they may also have used it as a reason to charge Jesus with blasphemy. Instead, Jesus asks a question. Questioning back and forth was a standard tactic in debates of the day.[9]

Jesus’ question as to the authority of John the Baptist, places the Sanhedrin in a bind. If they say John’s authority came from heaven, Jesus could pin them down as to why they didn’t believe John. And if they say his authority was human, the people who see John as a prophet might revolt. So, the leaders’ refusal to answer Jesus’ question allows him not to answer theirs. 

I should point out that Mark understands Jesus’ fate is tied to John’s fate.[10] Both will give their lives to stand up for their principles. 

This sets the stage for Jesus to tell the last major parable of his ministry recorded by Mark, the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.[11]Jesus’ familiarity with the Prophet Isaiah can be seen in this parable which parallels the prophet’s “Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard.”[12] In both cases, the owner plants a vineyard, encloses it, builds a tower and winepress. 

In Isaiah, the story hinges around the vineyard yielding only sour wine. Think vinegar. The owner decides to do away with the vineyard, which the prophet links to God punishing Israel for its lack of faith.  

Jesus’ parable starts the same way with a man planting a vineyard, putting a fence around it and building a tower and winepress. I’m sure the Jewish authorities who heard the beginning of Jesus’ story immediately recalled Isaiah’s song. They knew where Jesus was going, that he was addressing them. 

But then Jesus’ story takes a dramatic shift from Isaiah. In both cases, the owner of the vineyard represents God. But in Jesus’ story, instead of the vineyard producing a bad crop, the owner of the vineyard relocates to a foreign land. Think heaven. He hands his farm over to tenant farmers. 

At the time of the crop, the owner sends back a slave to collect the owner’s share of the crop. But instead of paying up, the tenants beat up the slave and send him back to the owner limping and bruised. He sends others, but the same thing happens. The representatives of the owner are beaten or killed. 

Finally, the man sends his son, thinking they will honor him. That, of course, doesn’t happen. The owner provides the tenants multiple opportunities to keep up their end of the bargain. Seeing the son who is the heir to the property, they decide to kill him. Perhaps they think the owner has died and, with the son out of the way, they can claim the property for themselves. Not only do they murder the son, but they also disrespect the body by throwing it out to decay. Of course, the owner isn’t dead and will come and destroy those tenants. 

Jesus concludes with a verse from the 118th Psalm, of the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone.[13]

Mark tells us the religious leaders realize the parable’s intention. They desire to do away with Jesus but are afraid of the crowd. However, not only is this parable about them, who have ignored the prophets call, it’s also about Jesus. He’s the son who represents the father. He’s the son, the rejected one, who will become the cornerstone in the new covenant God establishes with his people. 

As I pointed out before reading the passage, Jesus turns this story its head. Instead of siding with the tenants, he portrays them with wicked hearts. Sin doesn’t reside in just one class of people. Rich and poor are equally guilty. 

I’m sure the religious leaders didn’t want to see themselves as tenants. They think of themselves as leaders. Yet, they’re still responsible to God. In fact, we’re all tenants on God’s good earth. A steward is another way of describing our position. God gives us talents and the good earth. We only have possession of it for a short period of time. Sooner or later, we must give it back. Do we make good use of God’s gift?

As the Psalmist proclaims so elegantly, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.”[14] We must always remember who is in charge; our allegiance belongs to God. As tenants, we’re to be doing the work of the owner.

Another thing Mark confirms about Jesus is that the Savior discouraged any radical attempt to forcefully bring about the kingdom. Jesus discourages taking up arms against Rome.[15] In the parable, Jesus points out that the rulers (the wicked tenants) are out for their own well-being, not representing God.[16]

Mark paints a darkening picture of forces gathering around Jesus. In two days, the “Son” will be arrested in the garden. The following day he will be killed outside the city walls. The peaceful man who devoted his ministry to doing good and teaching kindness is about to live into the parable he told. Mark leaves it to his readers to decide which side we’ll be on.  Amen. 

[1] Linda Flowers, Throwed Away: Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 64. 

[2] James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 354-356; Morna D. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark (1991, Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 274; and William L. Lane, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 416. 

[3] Mark 1:21-28. See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2024/01/21/jesus-in-the-synagogue/

[4] Mark 11:11 and 15. 

[5] Edwards, 350. 

[6] Edwards, 350.

[7] Mark 11:1-11, https://fromarockyhillside.com/2024/11/17/7549/

[8] Mark 11:15-19, https://fromarockyhillside.com/2024/11/24/what-does-jesus-have-against-fig-trees/

[9] Hooker, 271, Edwards, 351.

[10] Hooker, 272. 

[11] Edwards, 354.

[12] Isaiah 5:1ff. 

[13] Psalm 118:22-23. This Psalm was also used two days earlier as Jesus’ entered Jerusalem. See Mark 11:9-10.

[14] Psalm 24:1

[15] This will be made even more clear a few chapters later at his arrest. See Mark 14:47. 

[16] Brian K. Blount, Go Preach! Mark’s Kingdom Message and the Black Church Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998), 82-83. 

Pastoral Prayer for today

20250223 Pastoral Prayer

We gather after another cold week, giving thanks for a warm building and warming weather. We gather with concerns in minds and hearts. Will we have enough to get by in retirement? Will we still have medical care? Will we endure another pandemic, bird flu or something else. We gather, unsure about the future, but your Son and our Lord and Savior, tells us not to worry. We’re to trust you, for whatever happens, we’re in your hands. So, we come became you, gathered as your people, turning our burdens to you while we give you thanks for your faithfulness in the past. And we trust that as you’ve proven your faithfulness in the past, you will continue to be faithful today, and in the days to come. Regardless as to what happens, remind us of your presence and help us to seek what is right in your eyes. 

Almighty God, we confess we have made a mess of your good earth. There are not only rumors of wars, but there are wars.  We are shocked to learn of 70 Christians beheaded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet we feel safe because that’s so far away. We are sad to hear of the civilians suffering in Ukraine, those in Gaza whose lives have been destroyed, and the Israelis who have died, but again that all seems so far away. And we’re heartbroken when we hear about violence on the streets or in our homes. You have created us all in your image. Help us to work toward breaking the chain of violence, to seek reconciliation, and to do the hard work of loving one another. 

Be with those who are poor, those who suffer from bondage to sin and addictions, as well as to those who are in prison. Show us how to make a difference in our world, even if it is in just one life. Give comfort to those in grief over the death of loved ones. Be with the sick… 

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Goler Gulch, March 2005

Ralph at Sam's Cabin in the Majovie, near Randsburg, CA

An early morning drive in the desert

Last week, I told a story about an adventure with Ralph into Central Nevada. This week, I rewrote a piece I wrote in 2010, shortly after Ralph’s death. This trip I spent more time jotting down in my journal some of Ralph’s unique bits of wisdom. Hopefully, you’ll get a better view of my friend who died 15 years ago.

Flowers in Goler Gulch

Ralph and I stayed the night in Ridgecrest. Before heading out for the desert early in the morning, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up fruit and pastries along with coffee and juice. Dawn broke as we drove along the highway toward Goler Gulch. In the soft morning light, the carpeting of highway shoulder with flowers amazed me. The wet winter had given growth to white and yellow asters, daisies and bluish heliotropes. Even beyond the road, the flowers grew under clumps of greasewood. 

It was March 2005. I had flown out west the day before so I could officiate at a wedding. I picked up a rental car in Las Vegas. As I had a few extra days before the celebration, Ralph took a bus down from Cedar City and met me in Vegas. We then headed over into the Southern California desert, to see where he grew up. We’d talked about doing this trip several times while I lived in Utah, but had never gotten around to it. 

Our next stop this morning was Sam’s Cabin, located just off the highway. Arriving, we sit outside on a picnic table and ate our breakfast while watching the changes in the morning light across the El Paso Mountains to our north. “You can find any kind of mineral up there in those mountains,” Ralph noted. “Just don’t start a mine, because whatever your digging will quickly disappear.” It was the words of one who knew a bit about the folly of mining. 

Sam’s Cabin

I’d heard a lot about Sam, who’d built this cabin seventy-some years ago. Once, I met his daughter, who’d recently died in her mid-nineties. Sam was an old-time miner. He’d worked in Nevada and as a young man headed up to the Klondike in 1898. He supposedly made enough money up north that he didn’t have to do much work the rest of his life. In the 1930s, he showed up in the Mojave, working as a caretaker for a mining firm. It didn’t take much to live like he did. He had a wife, who lived over on the coast. Sam would go visit her a couple times a year and occasionally she’d come out to the desert, that being the extent of their marriage. 

Sam's homestead in the Mojave Desert
Sam’s homestead

My favorite story of Ralph and Sam was their trip to Death Valley in Ralph’s family Model T truck, taking it across China Lake early in the World War II, before the government converted the dry lakebed to a Naval Aviation bombing site. Ralph had fond memories of the trip, including meeting Scotty of Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley. Today, this trip would be impossible because the bombing range is still in use. 


We discovered Sam’s cabin in a state of “arrested decay.” The BLM keeps it from blowing down and one can rent it for up to two nights. Sam died in 1965, in his early 90s.

After breakfast, we looked around the old cabin while waiting for Bill, a friend of Ralph’s from Southern California to arrive. Rocks and boulders of all shapes, colors and sizes dot the yard. Ralph pointed to many of them and told me which gulch from which they’d been taken. Most of the rocks had been hauled in by Sam with the help of Ralph and his brother Charlie. 

Sam's place in the Mojave
Another view of Sam’s homestead

Ralph’s family homestead in Goler Gulch


Bill arrive a few minutes later, driving a huge Suburban SUV. We decide to take his Suburban and leave my rental car at Sam’s Cabin. We climbed in and Ralph began the tour of Goler Gulch. The gulch has always been a placer mining district, meaning the ore is found in sediment washed down from the mountains. Attempts have been made to find the ore body from up in the mountains, but no one has ever identified the source. When Ralph was a kid, old miners held to the belief the gold had been pushed down during the last ice age, by glaciers. Of course, there is no evidence of glacier activity this far south. Another popular theory, according to Ralph, who reported this with a straight face, is that the gold came from Alaska.

Old Behren homestead in the Mojave
Ralph showing us around the old Behren homstead

Ralph’s family’s Model T

Ralph was born in Kansas. When he was an infant, his parents moved to California. They added a bed to their Model T coupe, making it into a truck in which the family made the journey. After a short stint in Los Angeles, they headed into the desert, where his dad worked as a miner and a cook. Interestingly, the Model T still runs. Ralph has driven me around in it and even let me drive it.

Ralph told about his brother Charlie and him taking the Model T on trips through the desert. In the spring or after rains, when the water would be raging in the gulch, they’d stop the car on one side of the stream, take off the fan belt and drive through the water, hooking the fan belt back up on the other side. The car seemed to go anywhere; you just had to know the tricks. If the fan was spinning, it would kick water over the distributor cap and short out the electrical system. The engine could take a little more heat than the electrical system could take water. 

Behren homestead around 1930
The homestead around 1930 with Ralph, his father and his brother and pet dog. They often slept outdoors, especially in the summer.



Ralph’s family homestead includes a collection of buildings. Ralph pointed to a building he and Sam had built at the beginning of the war for some women from Pasadena who wanted a place to flee when the Japanese invaded. “They were sure the Japanese were coming to rape them,” Ralph said sarcastically. They hired him and Sam to build them a home in the desert. Another building Ralph rescued from the Navy, who’d set up operations at China Lake during the war. Abandon as surplus, he brought it and hauled it home so he could have his own room when he returned from the Pacific.

The Old One-Room School House


We made another stop at the site of the old one room school. Ralph and his brother attended school here with eight or ten other kids from 1932, when the schooled opened, to 1936 when they were bused into Randsburg. He told us about his first-grade teacher who’d just celebrated her 100th birthday. Ralph pointed up stream and said that the girl’s outhouse was up there, and the guys were downstream. “Why didn’t they just have a unisex bathroom with a lock,” I asked, “since there were never more than a dozen students.” Ralph, in all seriousness, responded. “I assume the school board had concerns about mixing urine.” 

We saw the shaft for the Yellow Aster mine, one of the larger mines in the district. As we explored, Ralph picked a leaf of Indian Tobacco and talked about as a kid he’d harvest it and sell it to an old miner. The other miners forbid the old miner from smoking it underground because it stank. He also found an “Indian pickle,” a plant with a long stem and an open chamber on the end where you could place your tobacco as you drew the smoke up the stem. The “Indian pickle” made a perfect bong. He also showed how the new growth on a greasewood (also known as Creosote bush) could be crushed and smoked for a “natural high.” “This also stinks, which is what you’d expect from such a plant,” Ralph informed us. None of us wanted to try it out for ourselves.

Heading up the gulch

Yellow Aster Mine framing


We next headed into the gulch itself, a canyon where much of the mining took place. There were five shafts dug down into the dirt, named Fine Gold Number 1 though 5. Only Fine Gold #1 had a traditional gallows frame, the others being pick and shovel operations with a windlass. In time, the miners discovered that the gold was mostly deposited in the sand within a few feet of bedrock, some eighty feet down. They’d sink a shaft then work out following the bedrock as they made their way up and down the gulch.

Old miners Ralph knew


As we drove up the gulch, Ralph told us about miners he’d known growing up the desert. One was a kid, just 18, who discovered enough gold to buy himself a brand new ’36 Ford with an 85 horsepower V8 engine. Another was a guy named Happy, who was the first pot-head Ralph knew. This was before the Second World War. Happy came looking for work and the miners wanted him to work with them. So, he asked where he might find a place to prospect. One of the old-timers, to be done with him, sent him to the most unlikely place around. Happy discovered a 14-ounce nugget. He remained happy for some time thereafter.  

Some of the miners were more adapt at mining outsiders, an ancient trick of the mining trade. Curly would pull out his pan anytime he saw a tourist driving by. They’d get to see him work out some nuggets from his washings. He’d tell him he dug the ore at his mine, Eagle’s Roost,” up in the mountains. It they seemed interested, he’d ask if they’d like to buy a few inches or feet of the mine from him. During the war, Curly talked to a man from Kansas. Ralph’s father, who was from Kansas, warned the man not to trust Curly. Curly moaned to the man about how everyone talked bad him and were always saying that he was dishonest because they were jealous. So, the man brought from Curly a bunch of land that wasn’t worth much and most of it, Curly didn’t even own. Afterwards, Ralph said, “Curly went into Randsburg and brought war bonds and became a hero.”

Turning around and heading for lunch



The creek ran strong, and the ground softened before we reached the end of the gulch. Bill said he had a shovel in the back if we wanted to keep going, but none of us were excited about using it. We turned around and headed back to Randsburg for lunch. That’s a story I’ll have to share at another time. 

Postlude


Ralph lived in the Gulch until he graduated from High School in 1944, at which time he joined the Army Air Corp. He was hoping to become a pilot, but they had enough so he became a crew member of a B-24. He made it to the South Pacific in time for the war to end. Ralph received a combat citation, and just so no one thought of him as a hero, he loved telling the story about how some General thought he should have another medal, so the General sent several hundred airplanes into the sky to blow the hell out of some island a few Japanese soldiers had the misfortune of being marooned on as their island had been leaped over in our drive toward the Japanese homeland. “We blew the hell out of them,” Ralph said. His second mission was to drop supplies, mostly boots, into POW camps after the surrender. After the war, Ralph attended school on the GI bill and became a chemist. He spent the rest of his life in the Southwest. Ralph died in 2010. Two weeks ago, on his birthday, he would have been 99 years old. 

Other Ralph Stories:

Camp Bangledesh: Ralph as my assistant scoutmaster the summer I was the summer camp scoutmaster for Troop 360

Treasure Hill: Ralph and I exploring Central Nevada

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Trusting God or Humanity?

title slide with a winter snowy photo of the two churches where this sermon will be delivered

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry and Bluemont Churches
February 16, 2025
Jeremiah 17:1-13 (14-18)

This sermon was recorded at Mayberry Church on Saturday, February 15, 2025.

At the beginning of worship: 

Delivered to my inbox every day is a new word. I generally look at the word. Often, I don’t know the word, I’ll look at the meaning realize it’s so obscure  I’ll never use it. But this week, one of the words made me ponder the passage I’m preaching on today. Actually, it’s two words, Amor Propre. Rousseau, the 17thCentury French philosopher, coined the term which means “self-love,” especially a love which comes from the adoration of others who make us feel important.[1] Now that I used it, I’ll never use it again.

As followers of Jesus, the only one who truly matters and provides us with self-worth is God. Seeking such approval from everyone else, to quote Jeremiah, is to trust in mere mortals, as we turn away from the Lord. 

Before reading the scripture: 

Since Christmas, I’ve been preaching from the Old Testament reading from the lectionary. This will be the last Sunday doing this. Next week, God willing, I’ll return to Mark’s gospel. Hopefully, we’ll finish up Mark between then and Palm Sunday. While I really like building upon the previous week’s passage as I preach through a book, it’s also refreshing to occasionally focus on odd passages as I’ve done for the past month. 

Today, we’re back in Jeremiah. The lectionary only calls for the reading from the heart of this passage, verses 5 through 10. That cuts out a good deal of the passage’s power. I am going to read the entire section which starts with verse 1 and goes through verse 18. But I’ll save the last 5 verses for the prayer at the end of the sermon. 

In some ways, this is an unusual section for Jeremiah. Unlike many other places, we do not hear from Jeremiah in first person, until his prayer at the end. Instead, this section begins with God speaking through the prophet, indicting Judah. Then, we hear a series of proverbs which start off sounding like Psalm 1. Many scholars think that instead of Jeremiah writing these himself, he borrowed from traditional proverbs.[2] Kind of like how we might quote Ben Franklin or Mark Twain. In the Psalm and in verses 5 to 8, two trees are used as a metaphor of those who place their trust in God’s hands and those who trust human hands. Jeremiah continues by reflecting on the human heart and giving a warning against unearned gains. 

All this sounds kind of depressing, doesn’t it. But like a good lament, our passage focuses back on God and the hope offered to those who trust in God. Finally, I’ll read the ending of the passage at the end of the sermon, as a prayer. There, we’ll hear Jeremiah’s plea for relief.  Let’s now listen to this passage. 

Read Jeremiah 17:1-13

Why do humans behave so badly? I wonder if Jeremiah asked this question. After all, he’s addressing a people guilty of forsaking their first love, the God in whom they have made a covenant to worship, honor, and obey in exchange for prosperity and protection. 

This passage opens with an indictment. This sounds like a judge sentencing a guilty criminal. Judah’s sin has been engraved with a diamond pointed chisel onto granite hearts and on the horns of their altars. They are guilty. Of course, the altars are not the altar to God in the temple in Jerusalem, but altars and scared poles placed on high hills honoring the ancient Canaanite deities: Baal and Ashera.[3] Such idolatry breaks their covenant with God. 

The deal was that if they placed their trust in God, the Lord would watch out for them and protect them. But they’ve broken this trust. We’re also often reminded in the Old Testament of God’s jealously.[4] We see God’s jealously expressed here. God responds to their lack of trust by giving their enemies their treasures and allowing the people to once again be slaves. 

In verse five, God identifies the people’s sin, in addition to idolatry, as trusting in themselves and in other humans. The people may look to a powerful Rambo-like character or see the shiny spears and shields of their army in formation and think they’re safe. But that’s not safety, God says. For they’ve turned their hearts from the Lord. Human power is like a shrub in the desert. 

Here, the wording of the indictment echoes Psalm 1, which contrasts the faithful and wicked as two different trees. The Psalm first highlights those who do not follow the path of the wicked. Comparing them to trees planted by streams of water, they thrive. The wicked are like chaff which cannot withstand the wind and the judgment which comes upon it. 

In Jeremiah, unlike Psalm 1, the wicked are dealt with first. The cursed are those who trust in human strength. They’re like a shrub in the desert. John Calvin, who uses the metaphor of God as the fountain of all that’s good,[5] as we see in this passage, suggests that this particular shrub spoken of by Jeremiah, appears alive but its roots have dried up. Unable to drink from God’s fountain, Judah waits for justice.[6]

On the contrast are the blessed, those who trust in the Lord. Like a tree by a stream, they thrive. Because they have deep roots, they don’t even fear drought or heat, for they can tap into life-giving water. 

Notice that for both metaphorical trees, trouble will come. They’ll be hot winds and droughts. The one who doesn’t trust in God have no roots to sustain life when trouble arises. The one does place his or her trust in God will survive the trials. 

Next, our passage speaks of the devious and perverse hearts. As I spoke at the beginning of last week’s service, we live in a world which often confuses feelings and actions.[7] We probably don’t feel our hearts are devious and perverse. This may sound harsh. But it reflects a realization that we often look to our own well-being instead of trusting in God to do what is right. 

To quote Calvin again, the heart is a perpetual factory of idols.[8]We find it easier to trust in ourselves or those who promise protection. We with our own strength, or those we idolize, may deliver in the short run. But we’ll so give up, or our contract with others will require us to compromise our morals. Sooner or later, such situations will fail us. 

Our passage asks the rhetorical question as to who can understand the human heart. Then it answers itself, reminding us that God searches both our hearts and minds, rewarding us for the fruits of what we do and think. We must remember that while in this life, evil may seem to go unpunished, God sees and there is a life to come. We may not always see the consequences, but we worship a God of justice. 

In the next proverb, we catch glimpse of such justice in this world. A partridge warms and hatches an egg it did not lay. To say it in another way, it hatched an egg that did not belong to it. Obviously, it would not be another partridge and as it grows would seek out its own family, abandoning the partridge. This observation from the natural world is linked to those who amass wealth unjustly. 

After providing these bits of wisdom, our song shifts focus to God, reminding those who hear these words of the danger of ignoring God, who is the fountain of living water. 

Our hope is with the Lord. Jeremiah understood this as we see in his prayer at the end of this passage. I will close reading verses 14 to 18. Consider it a prayer not just for the prophet, but for all of us. For we need to turn from that which is mortal and center our lives in God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Let me warn you that the ending of this prayer may seem harsh. We must remember that Jeremiah was a persecuted man and those persecuting him were guilty of not trusting in God, but in their own strength. And they used their strength to torment Jeremiah. The prophet, trusting in God’s justice, demands it and asks that he be spared. Let us pray with Jeremiah: 


Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
    save me, and I shall be saved,
    for you are my praise.
 See how they say to me,
    “Where is the word of the Lord?
    Let it come!”

 But I have not run away from being a shepherd in your service,
    nor have I desired the fatal day.
You know what came from my lips;
    it was before your face.
Do not become a terror to me;
    you are my refuge in the day of disaster;
Let my persecutors be shamed,
    but do not let me be shamed;
let them be dismayed,
    but do not let me be dismayed;
bring on them the day of disaster;
    destroy them with double destruction!  Amen. 

[1] https://worddaily.com/words/Amour-Propre/

[2] R. E. Clements, Jeremiah: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988), 107. 

[3] Clements, 105.

[4] See Exodus 20:5, 34:14 and Deuteronomy 4:24, 5:9, 6:15. See also Joshua 24:19. 

[5] See B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), especially chapter 2. 

[6] John Calvin, Commentary on Jeremiah and Lamentations, vol 1 (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1979), 351-352.  As quoted by Walter Brueggemann, Jeremiah 1-25, To Pluck Up, to Tear Down (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1988), 151. 

[7] https://fromarockyhillside.com/2025/02/09/isaiahs-tough-message/

[8] John Calvin, Institute of the Christian Religion, 1.11.8.

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A Great Basin Mining Adventure

Photo of Ralph's truck around Hamilton, Nevada

This was a trip I made with a friend from Cedar City in the late 1990s. I wrote this piece for another blog about 15 years ago, around the time of Ralph’s death. I bring it back out because in last Sunday’s sermon, I mentioned this trip. I have updated the writing a bit. I should go back through my slides and pick out more to feature (or maybe add a map of our travels).

Camping on Main Street, Treasure City


“This street used to be bustling with noise,” I think, as I stroll down Main Street, Treasure City. The sounds of wagons and the clicking hooves from horses, added to the cussing of teamsters, the pounding of stamp mills and the music from saloons would have too much. But I swear I can still hear voices in the brisk wind, bringing a chill the summer air. My belly is full. Ralph and I had just eaten a steak and a baked potato, along with a salad. We’d drown it with a beer. Before hitting the sack, I decide to walk the length of the road. Ralph stays behind to tend the fire. The distant mountains are turning purple. This street had once a thriving business district with forty stores and a dozen saloons, but today just the shells of collapsing rock structures remain.


By the time I get back to the truck, Ralph has let the fire die down and is already in his sleeping bag. I blow up my mattress and rolled my bag out on the other side of the truck. Plopping down, I watch the summer stars and listen to the wind and Ralph’s snoring. Soon, I too am asleep. I wake at first light. The wind has died and silence seems eerie. While the coffee perks, I explore some nearby ruins. The evening before, I stayed on the gravel road for the mountain is pitted with mine shafts. A wrong step could send you several hundred feet down and into oblivion.

History of the mining region


In the later part of the 1860s, miners from Austin and the Reese River Mining District in search of another mother lode discovered rich in what became the White Pine Mining District. One of the first discoveries, in 1865, was named Monte Christo. It’s just a few miles west of here. From there, miners set out in all directions and in 1867, discovered what became known as Treasure Hill, the mountain upon which we’d camped. The land was unforgiving. There was little shade in the summer and an altitude above 8,000 feet created brutal winters. But with some of the ore as pure silver chloride and assayed as high as $15,000 a ton, people were willing to put up with the hardships.

ruins of an old mill
Ruins of an old mill

By 1869, Treasure City with a population of 6,000 had been established on top of the mountain. There were nearly 200 mines along with ten mills to crush the ore into powder, in preparation to leaching out the silver and gold. A water company laid pipe and had the ability to pump 60,000 gallons a day to the top of the thirsty mountain. But it was all short lived. Most mines played out after a few hundred feet and the rock proved a formable challenge. Early in 1870, the excitement began to wane. By the end of 1870, only 500 people remained. In 1880, when the Post Office closed, there were only 24 people left living on the mountain. 

Economic lessons for the region

A look at Treasure Hill’s rise and fall provides an economic lesson in the danger of speculation and bubbles and international finance. Western Historian W. Turrentine Jackson, in his classic study on the region, Treasure Hill, goes into great detail of the financing of the district. In the late 1860s, so much money was poured into the region, more than was ever needed to develop the mines. Much of this capital was wasted; some of it spent on bogus mining operations that existed only to mine the pockets of capitalists who hoped to make a fortune and were willing to take great risks. Then, as the availability of high grade ore begin to wane, money begin to be withdrawn from the region. John Muir visited the area after the rush and wrote in Steep Trails:

“Many of [the mines] do not represent any good accomplishment and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud and ignorance—sin against science. The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may be regarded as the prayers of the prospectors offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but like prayers of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered.” (Elliott, 105)

Leaving Cedar City

Ralph and I got an early start for this remote spot in the Nevada desert. Leaving Cedar City, we drive north to Minersville and then on to Milford, where we cross the Union Pacific tracks and set out across the desert on Utah 130. Our travels take us just south of the ghost town of Frisco and north of the Wah Wah Mountains. We enter Nevada at Baker. Shortly after meeting up with Highway 50, we leave the pavement for a rough road that skirts the north boundary of Great Basin National Park.

Osceola

Our first stop is at the site of Osceola. Here, In 1872, a unique mining community for Nevada existed. Hard rock mining is the norm in Nevada. This was industrial mining. Miners dig shafts and drifts as they blast into rock for ore. The ore was then crushed and chemically treated to extract the metals. However, in Osceola, free ore existed in sediment. Placer mining, as was done in the California gold fields, was possible. All one needed were shovels and pans, some water, and perhaps a sluice box. The difficulty with placer mining here was the lack of water. Early in the town’s history, they dug a ditch up Wheeler Peak to divert water to the town. This mining district boasts the largest gold nugget ever found in Nevada. There is not much left of the town that existed here for nearly fifty years. Fires, the bane of mining camps, sent most of the town up into smoke. Modern mining operations destroyed the rest. Only the graveyard and some mining equipment used more recently remains.Interestingly, even with gold near historic lows (this was in the late-90s), there’s still a few people mining in this district. 

Ely

Leaving the cemetery behind, we drive out of the canyon and head west, across an alluvial fan and toward the highway. Reconnecting to US 50, we continue on to Ely where we stop and have lunch at the historic Hotel Nevada. I suggest we eat on the road to make better time, but Ralph cringes. “If I can’t sit down and enjoy my meal, I’m not living right,” he insists. After lunch, we continue west on US 50, passing the huge open pit copper mine at Ruth and thirty minutes later, the Illipah Ranch. Somewhere between Ely and Eureka, we abandon the pavement and head south on a gravel road.

Ralph inspecting som kind of left-over equipment

Hamilton

Hamilton is our first stop, nine miles south of US 50. It sits on the north side of Treasure Hill and served as a logistical point for the various mining communities south of here. The town was first called Cave City as so many miners from the mountains sought refuge there in caves during the harsh winters. As mining flourished, they laid out a town. By the spring of 1869, more than 10,000 people lived here. It became the county seat for the newly established White Pine County. They built a courthouse. Stage coaches connected the town to Austin and Pioche and the railroad at Elko.

But the town’s life was short. The excitement lasted on a few years and by the time of the 1870 census, less than 4,000 people remained. The town struggled on. In 1873, a shopkeeper by the name of Cohen, seeing his investment falter, set his store on fire in the hopes of collecting on his insurance. The fire spread and much of the town burned. Another fire destroyed the courthouse in 1885. In 1887, the town’s future died as the county seat moved to Ely. Today, only a few ruins and a cemetery remain. There’s plenty of mining junk left out, along with the leftovers of a cyanide leaching operation and a few junked house trailers used in the last attempt to mine in the area. We see no one as we poke around.

Treasure City

photo of ruins in the Treasure Hill mining district

After Hamilton, we head south to Treasure City, located just a mile and a half from Hamilton, but on top of the mountain. We take the wrong road and I find myself out in front of the truck with a shovel, clearing rocks as we make our way up a switchback road to the top. Had we known, another road to the west would have taken us to the top without any trouble. It’s getting time for dinner and we find a place along Main Street where we stop for the evening.

I build a charcoal fire behind the truck. As soon as we have coals, I put in two foil wrapped potatoes and, in a wire basket, begin to grill the steaks we had socked away in the cooler. As the sun drops toward the horizon, the wind picks up and soon we’re both pulling on jackets. We eat dinner, washing it down with a beer. I throw a few pieces of pinion onto the coals and the fire blazes. After chatting for a bit, I take off on my walk.

Shermantown, Eberhardt, and Charcoal Kilns

The next morning, we head south off the mountain and stop by the sites for Shermantown and Eberhardt. We link up to the Hamilton-Pioche stagecoach trail and follow it to US 6. Turning left, he head back into Ely in time for lunch and to gas up the truck. Then we head south, stopping at the Ward Charcoal Kilns, a state historic site. It’s interesting that there was a large charcoal operation in this desert region. They harvested all the pinion and juniper for miles around to feed these massive kilns. The charcoal was mostly used to roast the ore in the milling process. Leaving the kilns behind, we head down US 93, stopping at Pioche, another mining town.

Pioche and Home

Pioche is still alive and holding on now as an out-of-the-way tourist town. The community received a new lease on life in World War Two, at a time when the government was forcing the closure of gold mines as non-essential industries. But the ground around Pioche included large deposits of zinc,. Considered an essential mineral for the war effort, zinc mining lead to a revival of Pioche. They continued mining zinc around Pioche till the 1980s. We stop long enough to have dinner at the Overland Saloon, and then headed on home. At Panaca, a Mormon farming community, we leave US 93 and head east, toward Cedar City. An hour later, as we approach the city with the sun setting to our back, the red hills glow in the evening light.

A photos were slides which I digitally copied.

Camp Bangladesh: another adventure with Ralph

Sources:
Shawn Hall: Romancing Nevada’s Past: Ghost Towns and Historical Sites of Eureka, Lander and White Pine Counties(University of Nevada Press, 1994)

W. Turrentine Jackson, Treasure Hill, (University of Arizona Press, 1962)

Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada, revised edition. (University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

_________., Nevada’s Twentieth-Century Mining Boom: Tonopah, Goldfield, Ely (University of Nevada Press, 1966).

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Isaiah’s Tough Message

Title slide with photos of the two churches where the sermon was preached along with photos from the Treasure Hill Mining District in Nevada (which was mentioned in the sermon).

Jeff Garrison
Mayberry & Bluemont Churches
February 9, 2025
Isaiah 6:1-13

Sermon recorded at Bluemont on Friday, February 7, 2024

Comments at the beginning of worship: 
Two weeks ago, I used questions from the Heidelberg Catechism for our Profession of Faith. Some of you had trouble with the 4thquestion, which asks if you can live up to God’s law perfectly. The given answer is: “No, I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor.” Several people questioned this, saying they don’t hate God or neighbor. Perhaps I should explain. 

First, the catechism comes from the 16th Century. While it may be expressed in a different manner today, the hateful actions toward God or neighbor have nothing to do with how we feel about God or our neighbor. Since the 16th Century, we’ve gone through the romantic era which confused feelings and actions. When we causally say, “I love you,” we’re expressing a feeling. We truly express love (and hate) in action. 

When we sin against God or another person, we show hate. We may not have hateful feelings, but we show contempt for them. Likewise, our love for God and neighbor needs to be more than some warm internal feeling. Instead, we show love by working for the wellbeing of the beloved. It’s become somewhat of a cliché, but love is a verb. I suggest the same goes for hate. 

Essentially, what this question drives at is a deep understanding that we are sinners who first look out for ourselves. As Paul said, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”[1] Because of this, confession is required. As I pointed out in my last sermon from Psalm 19, we should confess even to those sins we don’t realize we commit. Likewise, as we’re going to see in today’s sermon, we confess not just for individual sins we’ve committed, but those sins which come from the society in which we live and benefit. 

I hope this clears things up. If not, let me know and I’ll be glad to discuss it further. Regardless of the fourth question, I commend the Heidelberg Catechism to you. It opens with the most beautiful question, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The answer begins: “That I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”[2] You can’t go wrong with such thinking. 

Before reading the Scriptures:
As I’ve been doing since Christmas, I’m preaching on the Old Testament lectionary passages. Today, we’ll look at the sixth chapter of Isaiah. I have preached on this passage here once before, using it to discuss worship.[3] The flow of Reformed and Presbyterian worship follows this passage. We are called into God’s presence and sing God’s praises. God holiness reminds us of our need to confess our sin. So, we confess and find forgiveness which allows us to hear and respond to God’s call. 

But this passage contains more insight than just worship, as we’ll see this morning. Not only is this Isaiah’s prophetic call, but we also learn about God and our relationship to the Almighty.  And we’re reminded there are times before we can fully experience hope, consequences must be faced. 

This passage can be broken up into parts. I’m breaking it into two parts: Isaiah’s encounter with God and the word Isaiah takes back to God’s people.[4] The lectionary doesn’t include the entire chapter, allowing the preacher to stop after Isaiah’s responds to God’s call with “Here I am, Lord, send me.”[5] But to cut this passage short, while it may make us feel better, keeps us from understanding it’s message. 

Isaiah willingly volunteers to be God’s messenger. But he receives a tough message to take to the people. Unlike Jeremiah, who often shares his personal feelings with his readers, Isaiah keeps his cards close to the chest.[6] I wonder if, looking back, Isaiah questioned his willingness to volunteer? However, as the prophet understood, we’re to be faithful to God, which requires us to accept and struggle with the entirety of the Word. Doing so, we learn it’s not about us, but about God. 

Read Isaiah 6:1-13:
It was the year Uzziah died. We often date things from significant transitions which include the death of important people. You know, the Hebrew people didn’t have a lot of great kings, but Uzziah was better than most.[7] At least he wasn’t totally rogue.  

Death reminds us there can be no going back. History marches on. Sooner or later none of us will be here. Our time, like Uzziah, like Isaiah, will have passed. We should ask ourselves if we’re making the best of the time we’re given.

During this year after Uzziah’s death, Isaiah finds himself in the temple and receives a vision. God sits on the throne high above the temple. It requires only the hem of God’s robe to fill the temple. From this description, Isaiah reminds us that the real king, the King of Kings, overshadows whoever sits on David’s throne. The robe of God the King won’t even fit in the Salomon’s magnificent temple. All-around God, court is in session. Seraphs fly and sing while they shield their eyes from God’s brightness and their feet from God’s sight. Here, we’re reminded of an Old Testament notion that God goodness is such that if we, as sinful humans, looked at God, we’d die.[8] We also see an ancient custom, which in parts of the world still holds true, that the dirt on our feet represents the unclean state of creatures.[9]

Isaiah is beside himself.  Feeling doomed, he cries, “Woe is me; I am a man of unclean lips and live among people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” The idea of unclean lips implies the uncleanness of the whole person as Jesus says in Matthew, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and that is what defiles.”[10] Furthermore, we learn that Isaiah doesn’t just see himself as sinful, he also understands he lives with sinful people. This passage is why, in our prayer of confessions, we have time for corporate and individual prayer. We are responsible for the bad things we do individually, as well as the bad things done by society at large. 

Only after the coals from the altar touch Isaiah’s lips does he hear God’s call. Now, instead of fear, he confidently volunteers to be God’s spokesperson. As I suggested earlier, we don’t know what he thought of the message he must carry to the people, but he’s got a job to do.

Verses 9 to 12 is a message of doom. God’s word brings confusion and a hardening of heart and leads to destruction. Often, we hear of God saving a remnant, but here we’re told if only 10% survives, it, too, will be destroyed. Total destruction. Everything is empty. 

When I lived in Utah, about once-a-year Ralph, a friend of mine, and I would take a trip out into the desert to explore.  One year we set our sights on Hamilton and Treasure City, true ghost towns located in White Pine County, miles from a paved road. In the late 1860s, 12,000 people lived around the Treasure Hill mining district, but the gold and silver didn’t run deep. Two years later, the towns declined. By the mid-1870s, they were abandoned.[11]

That night we camped on Main Street in Treasure City. It was eerie. Half stone walls of former buildings surrounded us and created long shadows as the sun sank in the west. Nothing remained intact. And you had to be careful walking around because there were open mining shafts in which you could fall. No one else was around. In the distance, coyotes sang. At nearly 10,000 feet, the brilliant stars looked to be just out of our reach. The wind rustled sagebrush, and a few dangling pieces of roofing tin squeaked. 

Reading Isaiah’s message, I imagine Jerusalem looking like what Treasure City did back in the mid-1990s when we camped there. Of course, Treasure City’s destruction had nothing to do with God’s judgment. There was just a limit of the available high-grade ore. But the result was the same. Both Jerusalem and Treasure City became desolate. 

But why would God do this? Why wipe out even the remnant? I don’t claim to understand all of God’s ways, for I am not God. But I think we learn two things here. First, the chapter ends with only a lifeless stump remaining. Five chapters later in Isaiah, we read about a shoot coming from the stump of Jesse (David’s father).[12] From that stump comes hope. And by bringing life from the stump, God demonstrates his power not only to create but to redeem a fallen creation. 

Second, the eventual fall of Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem changed the Hebrew people.[13] After the exile in Babylon, you no longer hear of God’s people following pagan gods. Instead, the Jews who returned from Babylon to rebuild remain, to this day, solely committed to One God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.And for us Christians, this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our ultimate trust doesn’t belong to any human construct or person, but only to Almighty God, who has the power to redeem. Sooner or later all we have and create will fail. But God, and those whom God claims, will remain. Amen.

[1] Romans 3:23.

[2] To review the catechism in its entirety, see https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism   

[3] See https://fromarockyhillside.com/2022/04/03/why-church-for-proper-worship/  For others who see this passage as an outline for worship, see Walter Brueggeman, Westminster Bible Companion: Isaiah 1-39 (Louisville: WJKP, 1998), 58 and Scott Hoezee, “Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13) Commentary, https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2022-01-31/isaiah-61-8-9-13/

[4] Some scholars break this passage into 3 parts (the vision of the King, the purification, the commissioning). See Otto Kaiser, Isaiah 1-12, John Bowden translator, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 123-133.

[5] While this passage shows up several times in the three-year lectionary, at least this week’s lectionary adds verses 9-13 in brackets, suggesting they’re optional.

[6] Christopher R. Sietz, Isaiah 1-39: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 57.

[7] 2 Kings 15:3. 2 Chronicles 26 gives a more complete picture of his reign and how he sought out God when his reign began (at the age of 16). Later in his long reign, pride got the best of him as he invaded the priest domain in the temple. 

[8] See Exodus 19:21-22, 20:18-19. 

[9] In the Muslim world, it is considered an offense to sit on the floor with your feet facing others. You’re to bend your legs so your feet are behind you. 

[10] Matthew 15:18

[11] For insight into Treasure City, see Shawn Hall, Romancing Nevada’s Past: Ghost Towns and Historical Sites of Eureka, Lander, and White Pine Counties (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1994), 199-202. 

[12] Isaiah 11:1. This passage titled “The Peaceful Kingdom,” is often read during Christmas. 

[13] Isaiah writings here would have been in the time of the Assyrians, who destroyed Israel (the Northern Kingdom). Jerusalem wouldn’t be destroyed and desolate until their defeat by the Babylonians. 

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Puzzles this winter

Title slide with pictures of puzzles

Kelly, a regular reader, often posts photos of puzzles she completed, along with great book reviews. When I commented about a puzzle I was enjoying, she challenged me to post photos! Generally, at my house, the puzzle table comes out around Thanksgiving. We put away by Easter. These are the puzzles completed so far this season, all of them are 1000 pieces.

I have been on vacation, taking my last week of time off from 2024 this week. That’s why there were no sermons on Sunday.

Cabin on a lake puzzle

This puzzle was done over Thanksgiving weekend. I love the Northwoods and this cabin on a lake with a full moon and what seems to be northern lights feels like a place I could hang around for a while.

Shay locomotive puzzle

I love trains and especially like the beauty of these Shay locomotives. But this puzzle was the most difficult one this season. A 1000 pieces with about 800 of them being black!

This puzzle was perhaps the easiest of the puzzles. Colorful and cheerful, it almost makes you want to camp out for the holidays in a travel trailer. However, in reality life, it’d probably be a good way to freeze yourself. This December, two friends and I helped close in the underpinnings of a travel trailer in which a handicap woman is living. She refused to go to another setting and I can’t image living there when we had temperatures well below freezing with high winds.

National park puzzle

This was a Christmas gift from my daughter. I always love National Park puzzles. I counted and have visited 30 of these parks. Several I’ve hiked through including the Great Smoky Mountains, the Shenandoah Mountains, Isle Royale, Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon. I should write more about those hikes. I did publish a blog post of an incredible trip with my father and sister to the Dry Tortuga’s in 2018.

Monet masterpiece puzzle

A neighbor lent us this Monet puzzle and it was most enjoyable to put together his masterpieces. In 1990, I was able to see a large Monet exhibit of his serial waterlily paintings as the Chicago Museum of Art. In 2020, I had planned on seeing another large Monet exhibit in Boston (along with a game at Fenway Park), but COVID caused us to cancel that trip. I love his use of light in his paintings.

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Readings in January 2025

title slide with book covers

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

 (New York: G. P. Putman and Sons, 2018), 372 pages. 

Kya Clark, “the Marsh Girl” lives in the salt marsh of Eastern North Carolina. As a child, her mother abandons the family. Then one by one, her siblings’ leaves. Finally, her father, the one who has run everyone else off, leaves. Abandoned by everyone who should have cared for her, she learns how to survive. She digs shellfish and sells them to Jumpin, an old African American who sells gas and bait along the marsh. Jumpin and his wife Mabel, in a way, become surrogate parents for Kaya. She gets by, eating what she collects along with making enough money to buy cornmeal and oil in town. 

Kya only spent one day in the school. Picked on by other children, she never went back, always staying one step ahead of the truancy officer. She befriends Tate, a former friend of one of her brothers. Over time, Tate teaches her to read and begins to lend her books which allows her to learn more about the marsh. But he, too, leaves as he heads to Chapel Hill for college. He fails to come back as promised. Only later, does he come back and try to re-establish contact as he establishes a nearby research lab on the marsh.  Kya, who had taken up painting, becomes a self-taught an expert in marsh ecology. She even publishing books based on her paintings. 

While feeling abandoned by Tate, Chase, another town boy seeks out Kya. Primarily interested in sex, Chase promises to marry her and build her a house. Then Kya learns through the newspaper of his engagement to another woman.  Later, in 1969, Chase ends up dead, having fallen from a fire tower. It’s not clear if foul play is involved, but Chase’s mother points the finger at Kya. Eventually, the sheriff on sketchy evidence, arrests Kya. Tried for murder, she’s found not guilty. 

After this ordeal, Kya and Tate get back together, living in the marsh until Kya dies from a heart attack in her 60s. Afterwards, Tate discovers Kya’s secret, which he had not suspected. 

Owen captures the beauty and diversity of the marsh. The reader also feels empathy for Kya, someone who has fallen through the cracks. While alone, she develops resilience but is unable to trust anyone else. Only later, at her trial, do we learn there were those in the town who tried to help her, such as the woman at the grocery story who would give her back more change than was due, taking the money out of her own pocket.  

This an enjoyable read. I recommend this book. Having grown up near the marsh in North Carolina, this book helped take me back to a time the marsh wasn’t overgrown with housing. 

Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

 (1948, Portland OR, Tin House Books, 2010), 127 pages. 

For the past few years, I have avoided alcohol during most of January, at least when I been at home. But I break my fast on the 25th, to celebrate the birth of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, with a shot of “Balvenie” and the reading of a few poems.  So, why I chose to read a book about the cocktail hour during January is beyond me. But so far, I managed to keep the fast. Instead of placing this book in a bookcase, I have stored it in my liquor cabinet. For like a good Scotch whisky, one should savor this book.. 

Bernard DeVoto died two years before my birth. But as a some-times 19th Century Western American historian myself, I have been familiar with his work for nearly forty years. Decades ago, I read a couple of his classics: Year of Decision, and Mark Twain’s America. Both were serious works, although one can’t deal with Twain without enjoying a good joke. Last year I read This America of Ours, a biography of DeVoto and his wife Avis. From that biography, I learned of this little book. Much of the book had me laughing out loud. DeVoto precision details about the making of a good martini ranks up there with George Orwell’s essay on how to make a proper cup of tea. I wonder if perhaps Orwell might have inspired DeVoto as his essay appeared two years before DeVoto copyrighted his work. 

DeVoto and his wife were known for their cocktail parties. Much of what makes this short book so funny is DeVoto’s seriousness. It’s his way or the highway. Those who disagree with him, from his perspective, deserve some terrible fate. 

In the opening essay, DeVoto praises America’s greatness for we have “enriched civilization with rye, bourbon, and the martini cocktail.” He also praises Scotch and Irish whiskeys alongside of bourbon and rye, insist they consumed straight. He had no use for rum and was willing to damn to hell those who abided in the nasty drink. However, as a historian, he knew rum’s role in American’s history and acknowledges how rum played a role in our freedom and in the institution of slavery. Had the sailor’s “primordial capitalist bosses not given them rum, [they] would have done something to get their wages raised.” 

The second chapter begins with an assault on recipes for various cocktails found in cookbooks and women’s magazines. In DeVoto’s world, these are all unnecessary, for one either drank whiskey or a martini. Pity the poor man who would allow vermouth and whiskey to meet for “the Manhattan is an offense against piety.”  Of course, vermouth is used with gin to make a martini. In DeVoto’s world, it better be dry vermouth. And don’t get cute with your drinks. He bemoaned a bar in Chicago which offered “Whiskey on the Barney Stone.” They used green colored ice. DeVoto suggested the proprietor be “put to the torture.” In a later chapter, he goes after the couple who has all kinds of fancy drinking kitsch such as stoppers featuring women’s legs, fancy stirring rods, and signs about drinking. DeVoto had no patience with such foolishness, but then they were probably making daiquiris. 

Long before James Bond, DeVoto suggested it didn’t matter if one shook or stirred the martini. What mattered, however, was avoiding splinters of ice in the drink. Each round of martinis is to be made fresh. There can be no salvation for the man who makes pitchers of martinis and stores them in the refrigerator. Those who desire an olive in their drink were probably denied a pickle in their childhood which sent them on a lifelong quest for brine. As for those who want an onion, “strangulation seems best.”

The only thing one might mix in with whiskey are bitters, but then only Angostura bitters. And no fruit salads. The fruit from orchards do not belong in cocktails. Drinks should be served cold. I’m not sure what DeVoto thought about Japanese sake, which is usually served warm. Writing in the aftermath of the war, he probably thought it justified the use of the bomb. 

In the third chapter, DeVoto attacks the enemy of drinks—sugar. He believes the reason too many people want sugary drinks is that we give our children too much sugar.  “An ice cream soda can set a child’s feet in the path that ends in grenadine…” While such drinkers are to be pitied, they should also be treated as “a carrier of typhoid.” DeVoto even prophesizes the demise of our Republic will most likely come for “this lust for sweet drinks.” And sugar comes from other sources, not just crystals. Fruit has no place during the cocktail hour. DeVoto suggests “orange bitters make a good astringent for the face,” but they don’t belong in drinks. 

I did take a bit of offense at DeVoto’s attack on winter drinks. He has no use for eggnog or a Tom and Jerry. I assume If he hears I occasionally like a hot butter rum after spending time outdoors on a cold snowy day, he’d roll in his grave. But then, that’s a ski drink, and DeVoto didn’t care for the sport. 

I wish I had read this book 25 years ago. Two friends of mine from Utah, both now deceased, would have enjoyed it. Or maybe just one of them. Ralph insisted on making his and his wife’s martini, one at a time. Thankfully, he always had some good peaty Scotch to offer me. Myron, however, might have taken offense. Myron was one of those martini drinkers who made the drink by the pitcher and stored it in the fridge. DeVoto would have had a cow had he witnessed Myron pouring himself a martini from a pitcher he mixed three days earlier. But I never blamed Myron, for he always offered me a pour from a bottle of Glenmorangie

Obviously, while I have never cared for martinis, I enjoyed this book. If you want a martini, that’s fine. Just offer me some converted rye, corn, or barley, aged in a white oak barrel. Ice would be nice, as long as it’s not green.  

Sarah Frey, The Growing Season: How I Built a New Life-and Saved an American Farm

 (Audible, 2020), 8 hours and 41 minutes.

In a way, this book reminded me of Stephanie Stuckey’s book which I read last year.  Both are women executives leading major companies. But that’s where the comparison stops. Stuckey came from a well-to-do family. She took over her family’s business as it was about to completely go under and lead back to thriving. However, Frey came from a very modest background and built a major business.  

In this book, Frey describes her childhood on “the hill,” a small farm in southern Illinois. Her dad, who had ties to horse racing, always wanted to have a winning horse and sunk all the money the family was able to provide into his beloved horses. While he doted on his daughter, he could be mean. This was especially true tohis sons and wife. He also had another family before setting out with Sarah’s mother, which gave Sarah and her brothers a huge family of stepbrothers and sisters. Yet, for all his faults, he instilled in his daughter a belief she could do anything.

As Sarah grew older, and her older brothers began to move out on their own, the family began to collapse. Still in high school, Sarah moved out on her own and continued to work and attend school. Having watched her mother buy watermelons for local farmers and sell them to supermarkets, she tries it on her own. Soon, she was borrowing money from a bank for a larger truck. Her business thrived and after two months was able to pay off the truck. She would continue expanding, adding pumpkins to extend her season. Soon, she realized that she should also start raising some of the produce to provide better returns. When the bank took over her father’s farm, she went back to the banker who’d lent the money for the truck. He. helped arrange the purchase of the property from the bank which held the title. 

Then, as a nearby Walmart distribution center opens, she talks the produce buyer to let her provide watermelons and pumpkins. She readily agreed she could supply them the four loads a week, thinking of her normal load and not four loaded tractor trailers. Realizing she was about to get in over her head, she gave a call to her brother. Soon, she has all her brothers working with her. 

In time her business expanded and included not just Walmart, but most major grocery stores. She also began producing drinks made of vegetable and fruit juices. In telling the story, lots of things seem to be left out (such as financing and attorneys). Throughout the book, but especially at the end, she continued to hit several key points. These include giving people a chancl, treating employees and customers right, hiring those with potential whom others over look, and being creative such as using that usually left in the field for other products. While a lot of the book focuses on herself, she always offers thanks to those who helped her along the way.

Frey is also frank about her husband. And while the marriage didn’t work out, it gave her two boys whom she now tries to spend more time with. 

While I felt a lot of details were missing, I enjoyed this book. It’s a fast read/listen.

  

John Musgrave, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave

2021, Random House Audio, 9 hours and 38 minutes

He always wanted to be a Marine. At the age of 17, John Musgrave signed up with the Corp, having his parents sign for permission. The summer after graduation, he left the Midwest with a couple of friends for the Marine Corp training facility in Southern California. The experience nearly killed him, metaphorically.  He describes the experience the rude awakening once they arrived by train to graduation. But he endured and became a proud Marine. This was 1966 and, after advance training, he headed to Vietnam. 

At first, Musgrave was excited about the war. They sailed from California to Vietnam on a troop ship. He was first assigned to an MP group in the southern part of the country, but wanting more action, volunteered for a transfer. The transfer landed him just south of the DMZ, a unit known as the Walking Dead, as they were taking so many casualties. He complained when military took away his M14 and gave them all M16, with just one cleaning kit per squad and how they gun so often jammed, which lead to many dead Marines. 

Musgrave writes with honesty, as he had done with his boot camp experiences. He tells about his first enemy kill. He discusses the hardship of slipping through the wire to conduct night patrols. He’s honest about how scared they were, in the dark jungle where one not only had to deal with the enemy but mosquitoes and leeches. 

Twice wounded, the second time he took a bullet in the chest. No one thought he would make it, even some of the doctors who treated him. But one surgeon didn’t give up. Eventually, he is stabilized and moved out of the country to better facilities in Japan before moving back to the States. He’d spent 11 months in country. 

Throughout the first half of the book, Musgrave shares personal struggles. Although his father served in World War 2, he and his mother continued to worry about him being in the Corp. He was in love with a girl from his high school and wanted to get married, but she broke off their relationship. He is also very honest about his religious feelings. As a Methodist, a Catholic neighbor had given him a St. Christopher’s medallion which he carried wore on his dog tags. The medallion causes him to be superstitious, thinking that if he keeps it, it will protect him. However, the day he was wounded a second time, he had a premonition he would die that day. While he lived, it was a close call. 

Arriving back in the states, Musgrave discovered things were different. The anti-war movement was just beginning. At first, Musgrave didn’t want anything to do with it as he began college. But soon agreed that the war was a mistake and began to speak out. He became a leader in the Vietnam Vets Against the War movement and even helped led the protests in Miami during the Republican National Convention in 1972.  

While Musgrave eventually became a leader of the movement, he continued to work to bring Vietnam Veterans together. He is critical of how Vietnam Veterans were not welcome in American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War posts. Through this, he struggles with his pride at having been a Marine and the guilt of having fought an unjust war.  As our nation experienced other wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he worked with veterans, helping them cope as they returned home. 

I enjoyed the book. Growing up watching the news every night at the dinner table, the Vietnam War was always very real. I knew lots of veterans and wondered if it was in my future. Thankfully, we pulled out of the war when I was a sophomore in high school. As I was preparing for graduation, Saigon fell and the war was over.