The Christ Child - Video

 Journey with Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Witness the awe of the shepherds in the plains of Judea. Feel the joy of the wise men as they kneel before the Light of the World – our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Sunset at the Lake

I often walk to the lake to watch the sunset

That's Seattle across the lake

Sometimes it looks like the sky is on fire

Beautiful colors reflected in the lake

Some pretty big boats at Kirkland's dock

Real & Findable

Sarah Broom writes about her family and their home in The Yellow House. Many of her comments resonated with me and the work I'm doing with our family's documents and the stories they tell. 

"Eldership is a full-time job."  JHT - It can be a full-time job for the person who preserves and shares the family legacy and stories. It's a labor of love. 

Going through family documents Sarah Broom’s mother saved from Hurricane Katrina – “Mom examines each of these items first, as a docent would, before passing them on to me. I look at them hard, trying to locate the special detail, photographing some of them with my phone. … “Papers tell so many stories,” she [Mom] says, watching me look." 

JHT - When I go through family documents, like those above - all related to Ray Pepper's father, William Otterbein Pepper - I try to be still and focused so I can sense the stories that are there. 

Sarah Broom is working in Burundi and reacting to the lack of paperwork, “written background to support an idea, it was hard for me to believe in it. This was, I can see now, a facile response to all that had been erased. I was still writing everything down, as I had learned to do during high school in the Yellow House, especially the rote detail, as if by doing so, I was making things real, findable, fighting disappearance.” 

JHT – This brings to mind all I’m doing with the family archives – I’m fighting the disappearance of our ancestors. I'm trying to make them real to their posterity. I want the ancestors, their documents and pictures to be findable. I’m using the papers and the photographs to tell their stories. To help people know and remember. 

Flowers in November

Choices & Meaning

“If there is one thing the great institutions of the modern world do not do, it is to provide meaning. Science tells us how but not why. Technology gives us power but cannot guide us as to how to use that power. The market gives us choices but leaves us uninstructed as to how to make those choices. The liberal democratic state gives us freedom to live as we choose but refuses, on principle, to guide us as to how to choose….

“The result is that the 21st century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.

"Science, technology, the free market and the liberal democratic state have enabled us to reach unprecedented achievements in knowledge, freedom, life expectancy and affluence. ... they do no and cannot answer the three question every reflective individual will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here: How then shall I live?" Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

These answers come from God. 

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More here 

and here

In the Air Again

on the way to Columbus to see family & friends

so much water!

Seattle is in the midst of ocean, sounds, rivers & lakes

It's interesting to watch our flight across the country. 

Our plane did turn around & didn't go into Canada.

The Plains States & Illinois & Indiana

Approaching Columbus - I was a few weeks too late for the brilliant fall colors

First order of business - take my winter coat out of my suitcase 

Christmas Before Halloween?

Christmas cards for sale in the Post Office - BEFORE Halloween!