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.

Donald Lastinger taught me to be honest with myself by letting me know him as a real person even though he was much older and my pastor. Shirley Richards called me more deeply into pastoral ministry at a time when few would have imagined that was the right path for me. “Aunt” Ruth Hightower showed me how to make a life for myself by offering hospitality to others.

I doubt any one of these three would have thought they would rate as having had the greatest impact on my life and maybe they are not really in the top three. However, when I look back across the years of my life this morning, Brother Don, Shirley, and Ruth gave me immense gifts.

Two kindnesses from last night. 1) A woman told me how much she liked a talk I gave 2 months ago and detailed why. I don’t do much speaking anymore and I enjoyed the praise. 2) I was tired from a long day and was standing around with another person whose day was just as long as mine, but she had a shorter distance to travel when the event we were at ended. I said I was thinking of running away. She encouraged me to go immediately. I would have stayed longer to help clean up, but left when she “gave me permission.” It was nice to get home when I did.

Walker Knight died at age 95 on 1 December of this year. He donated money to my friend Paula when she was planning a trip to serve as an unpaid Visiting Professor of Pastoral Care at a seminary in Bangalore, India. When she saw his donation, she celebrated the memory of the time some 30 years earlier when Walker had gone with her to her hearing before the Social Security Administration about going on disability after a head injury sustained in a car crash. Walker, a busy journalist and editor, said no one should have to go to a disability hearing alone. He went with her all day and then brought her home to have supper with him and his wife Nell that night. I want to have a quiet history of kindness and care like Walker Knight.

I have been saying thank you when I awake most mornings lately because I have had a good night of sleep. Sleeping is not my super power. I have trouble sleeping when I become stressed even if the stress is from doing too many things that I enjoy doing. If I don’t keep my pace somewhat measured, I tend to suffer by waking in the night and, sometimes, not being able to fall back to sleep. I have been sleeping well lately! And on the nights when I spend too much time awake, I still arise in the morning thankful because I can identify where I went too far and have a chance to do better in the new day. This gratitude stuff is infectious!