I moved into an apartment building after living in a house for 24 years less than 2 weeks ago. I had forgotten how much sound comes with living in a building with other people. Early one morning, a car horn beeped, lively music played, and someone’s dog barked as I woke before my alarm. Having just signed a 12-month lease, I concluded that I should consider all these things reassurance that I live in a community and am surrounded by people. This is what I wanted. Not exactly as I imagined, but good.

I felt connected to Dr. Young when she said, “I don’t believe we are put on earth to experience happiness, but I do believe we are put on earth to experience joy.” The current version of my daily prayer includes, “Help us to sort out among ourselves sharing so that all may live in health and safety and joy.” My prayer “develops” from time to time. An earlier version focused only on health and safety but life is more than health and safety. There may be traditions of prayer than call out for joy as the birthright of every person, but that is not how I got there. My prayer felt experimental. Dr. Young’s statement gave me a sense of community in this particular yearning. Thank you.

Thank you for helping convert a problem into a blessing for me. Let me explain. I realized that the concept of the bodily resurrection of the saints to Glory on Judgement Day that I was taught as a young man could not be as simple as the preachers were saying. The cycle of life that you have so beautifully expressed means that I share body cells, atoms, stuff with people who lived and died before me. I illustrated it crudely – A man dies in a field and his body becomes fertilizer for grass. A cow eats the grass that includes something of the man who fertilized it. Later the cow becomes meat for a family and something of the cow and the grass and the man who died becomes part of a mother, father, two children, a dog and a cat. This has been going on for a long time so how can we possibly have bodily resurrection on Judgement Day? We’ve been sharing body essence for 1000’s of years. If 1000 of us have shared a part, who gets it in the Resurrection? I saw a problem when literally no one around me did. The problem never created a crisis for me, but today, you showed me how the problem was really a blessing. It is good to be part of the cycle of life. Thank you.

The smell of toast and butter takes me back to the church kitchen where I learned to pray. I started going to Hill Crest Baptist Church when I was 17 years old and meeting with “the men” of the church at 7 AM on Sunday mornings to pray. We prepared toast in the oven and slathered it with margarine. I learned to drink coffee there too. Typically bad church coffee, black because we never had sugar or milk to doctor it with. I still drink my coffee black and I stopped eating bread in 2010, but buttered toast can still take me back to days of spiritual enthusiasm.

Knowing where I want to go helps me navigate in the dark. I have a gift for navigating in the dark when I know where I am going. It started at home when I was young. I slept in an upstairs bedroom. When I needed to use the toilet at night, I would go out the door of my room, down the stairs to the first floor, around my father’s chair in the dining room into the living room, around the stereo console along the wall, down the hallway, and into the nearest bathroom in the dark. Then I would go back when finished. I was surprised to learn later that others would turn the lights on when they were making such a trip. I knew where I was going. I found it simple to find my way there in the dark.

I realized that I could navigate with something other than sight. I could draw upon a sense of space and anticipate where things should be and feel my way to them by touch without knocking things over. When I moved away to other places, I brought my skills navigating in the dark with me.

I suppose a major skill for navigating the dark is not being afraid in the dark, not imagining horrors and dangers, but expecting that what is found in the dark is ordinary and common. Whether in the dark or in the light, we face the same things. We have resources. We have what we need. In the dark, we may need to slow down and feel our way a little differently, but we can stay on the right path whether there is light shining or not.

My mother and Professor E. Glenn Hinson.

My mother convinced the priest at our little church to let me attend his religious education of the parish youth when I was still a child. I have quoted things I heard that forgotten priest say a 100 times over the years. He gave me the concepts I needed to appreciate the compatibility of faith and science before I needed them. I don’t think I heard them from another source for 20 years, so that time was invaluable in ways I cannot calculate now.

Dr. Hinson was the most important scholar I’ve ever known personally. I made him so mad his face was red and splotchy one afternoon when he called me to his office to call me to task for my arrogance. Despite reading me the riot act about my attitude, he turned around and told me that I should transfer to Harvard or Yale where the approach to instruction would be more useful to my style of learning. Then when I panicked at the idea of moving to the Ivy League, he was kind and supportive with me and suggested a series of steps I might take over the coming years to make the best of what I had to work with. I never actually completed a doctorate, but Dr. Hinson shaped the way I both take myself seriously and manage my tendency towards arrogance ever since.

Doing my job is not always fun, convenient, or satisfying, but it is my job so I do it. A job is a long-term project. The payoff of doing a job does not come every day and sometimes not every year. I once went through a phase of hating my job for several years, but could not find a better alternative. Now I like my job again and have a long track record of success doing it. Doing my job consistently has been good for me. Acceptance is sometimes challenging and might seem unpleasant, but I think, like a job, putting my head down and doing what I need to do will be good for me in the long run.