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My son and I made a new bed for our youngest grandson. At two, it became time for him to graduate from his crib to a different bed. Because he is still small, the mattress in his crib was large enough for him so we decided to stay with the same size. The new bed is a simple frame around a set of bedsprings and mattress that sits directly on the floor. It is easy for him to crawl in and out of the bed. We see it as a temporary solution. At some point he will graduate to a regular single bed like his brother and sisters and this bed is a simple solution for a time of transition in his place of sleeping.

As is the case with all of our grandchildren, I try to remember bits of my childhood as a way of imagining their experiences. My memory isn’t good enough to give me much information, but sometimes I can connect with what they tell me about their lives. This is especially true of the two year old because I have very few memories of being his age. As the children grow older, I have more memories of my own experience to inform my understanding of theirs. Nonetheless, their experience is unique. They have been born and are growing up in times that are different from my time. Technology is different. Culture is different. Politics are different. Sometimes my grandchildren roll their eyes when I start to talk about when I was a child. When I pause to reflect, I can admit that they are right. My stories may occasionally inform theirs, but their experiences are unique.

In my wandering mind as I was thinking about our grandson and his new bed, I began to wonder if it might be an advantage to have a bed that rests on the floor. There is no space under the bed. I have never heard him or his parents talk about fear of monsters, but if such a fear exists or occurs, he has a bed with no room to hide monsters. Since monsters are imaginary, of course, they could dwell anywhere and the choice of furniture has little to do with the fears of childhood.

I don’t remember ever being afraid of monsters. I grew up with very few fears that I can bring to recollection. I have a vague memory of being fearful when my father was away on a business trip that something might happen and he might not get home. Nothing bad ever did happen in that way, but I learned to listen carefully for airplane sounds. He was a pilot and I learned to distinguish his airplanes from others when they flew over. Because our home was a couple of miles from the airport, and because the winds were pretty steady from the same direction in our east slope location, I knew the pattern that planes flew when preparing to land. I learned to listen for the adjustments in throttle and propeller pitch as a plane descended. I learned to look for the gear coming down on retractable gear planes. I maintain that I could tell whether my father or another pilot was flying our Beech 18 because of the way he manually synchronized the engines as he made power changes. It sounded different to me. I still look up intently and sometimes run out of the house whenever I hear a plane with multiple radial engines. A pair of Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr. engines give me a burst of excitement and joy that reminds me of how I felt when I knew my father was on his way home.

But I don’t remember any monsters or any fear of them.

Now in my seventies, retired, and living in the Pacific Northwest, a region of the country that is relatively new to me after having lived most of my life inland, I am learning about local legends of monsters bit by bit from reading the local news, talking with locals, and seeking out opportunities to listen to local indigenous storytellers.

Our local monster is named Sasquatch. I am no expert in monsters, but I will claim this one as unique to our area because the name comes from the languages of the Coast Salish people. Sasquatch is a word that first appeared in the 1930s in the writings of J.W. Burns, a Canadian journalist and Indian agent who wrote about the Pacific Northwest. It is his version of the Coast Salish word Sesquac, sometimes spelled Sasquits. The people who have lived between the Cascade Mountains and the Salish Sea in Washington and British Columbia have told stories of a large creature that lives deep in the forests of the Cascades. The stories feature a very large creature that walks upright like a human, is covered in hair, and hides in the dark forest undergrowth. Some people call Sasquatch “Big Foot” because of stories of finding very large footprints in the mud or snow high in the mountains and deep in the forests.

We claim Sasquatch as our own and don’t want people to confuse the creature with other similar ones with different names that are reported to live in different places. Rugaru is from the Ojibway language and lives in the northern plains of Minnesota, Manitoba, and Ontario. Witiko, also known as Wendigo, is from an Algonquin word from farther east, though sometimes might share territory with Witiko. And please, despite the popularity of the maker of high end water bottles and coolers, do not confuse Sasquatch with Yeti. Yeti lives in the Himalayan region which isn’t even on the same continent.

Whatever you do, be careful in your search for monsters. Tragically two men from Oregon perished last week while hiking in the snow-covered Cascades south of here near the Oregon border. They went into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest to search for Sasquatch and became lost. A huge search was mounted, but they were found too late, having perished from exposure. Conditions can be brutal in the forest at this time of the year. Water levels are high and snow depths are setting records in some places.

I prefer not to go searching for Sasquatch. I figure that if I ever see Sasquatch it will be because Sasquatch chooses to show themselves to me not because I have found Sasquatch.

I hope our grandson takes the same approach to monsters. No need to go looking for them. It is easier to sleep if you haven’t made the search.

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My father was a generous man. He taught me many lessons that I have tried to emulate and one of those is generosity. We lived in a small town of less than 2,000 people. It was well-known in our town that if someone showed up in town with a vehicle in need of repairs and no money to pay for those repairs they would likely end up at my father’s shop. Sometimes what was needed to get the person or family back on the road was a tank of gas. If they showed up at dinner time, which for us was at noon, they’d likely come to our house for a meal before traveling on. Sometimes their vehicle needed new parts or a bit of welding. It would end up in our shop with repairs being made in the most cost-effective way possible. When they were unable to pay the bill, they’d be put on the road anyway, usually with a full tank of gas and probably with a package of sandwiches as well.

One of the things that my father liked was meeting new people. He could strike up conversation with strangers. If we went on an airplane or a boat, he would always try to meet the captain and learn about how the vessel worked. He was a pilot and he was able to use his gift of talking to get us tours of cockpits of airplanes and bridges of ships. Once when we were on a family trip to Washington, DC and unable to find a parking place, he pulled into the driveway of a complete stranger and talked his way into a parking place for the day. Sometimes his desire to banter with strangers embarrassed us kids. We’d try to talk him into just being a part of the crowd, but that wasn’t his way.

He was always eager to learn new things. He tried to learn several different foreign languages and was unafraid to try his language skills even when his accent rendered him beyond understanding for native speakers. If he had one or two words, he’d try to use them.

He thought that if he liked something, it would be liked by everyone. If he was in the mood for root beer floats, everyone got one. He’d buy root beer by the gallon and ice cream by the bucketful and start making shakes. He never asked whether or not others liked the taste of root beer. I don’t think he could imagine that there were people who did not like that flavor.

He served on the boards of several nonprofit corporations and was always generous to causes in which he believed. It was through his desire to serve that he ended up representing our state at a national meeting of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill. It was at that meeting that he met Rosalynn Carter. When her husband ran to become the President of the United States most of his friends and neighbors were members of the Republican Party. He made no bones about trying to convince them to vote for Jimmy Carter, often saying that he knew two things about Carter that would make him a good president. First, he had a good wife. Second he was a farmer. That combination, he argued, was the kind of leadership the country needed. When someone protested that Carter had too little national and international experience, Dad would argue that farming and maintaining a good marriage were far more complex than international politics.

Of course my father’s appreciation for Carter went beyond his success as a farmer and husband. My father appreciated his courage standing up for civil rights. He felt a connection with Carter, who was a veteran of military service who had developed a serious vision of world peace like my dad. He admired Carter’s experience in the Great Depression and his dedication to his church, other traits they shared. Carter was the first candidate for US president who was younger than my father.

And Dad started serving Jimmy Carter sundaes. Our local creamery sold ice cream in five gallon containers and he made room in our freezer for one. Anyone who visited our house was served vanilla ice cream with peanut butter and chocolate syrup. They weren’t asked whether or not they wanted one, they were served and if they questioned the dish he’d say, “Try it. You’ll like it.”

I lost my father when I was young. He died before his 60th birthday. He died while Jimmy Carter was still in office.

I was married and ordained by the time my dad died, but I still had a lot to learn. I found myself seeking mentors who were near my father’s age. My father-in-law was an important part of my life for more years than my father had been. I also looked up to some of the leaders my father admired. Although i never met him face to face, I paid attention to Jimmy Carter who without doubt in my mind became the greatest former President in our nation’s history. When I couldn’t make sense of international politics, I turned to the Carter Center for information. When Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter volunteered with Habitat for humanity, I volunteered with Habitat. I looked up to him as a model and mentor.

A lot of years have gone by since Jimmy Carter was president and my father was alive. During that time I completed my active career and reached my retirement. One of my models for retirement has clearly been Jimmy Carter. He eschewed wealth and lived simply. Unlike other former presidents he returned to his old home after serving as President. At the time of his death a single secret service vehicle parked outside the Carter home was worth more than the house where the former president lived. I admire that style. He enjoyed his long and successful marriage with Rosalyn and always treated her as an equal partner. He served others faithfully. He was never ashamed of his faith. He taught Sunday School and worshiped with his congregation.

And now the story of Jimmy Carter’s earthly journey has come to its conclusion. There will be a lot of tributes made and stories told. My personal grief feels like the loss of a dear family friend. Somehow, I hope that I can use the things he has taught me to invest the time I have left wisely in the service of others regardless of which way the winds of politics blow.

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to me: five golden rings. Despite the depiction in children’s books and illustrations of the iconic Christmas song, music historians mostly agree that the reference is not to jewelry, but rather to ringed neck pheasants. At least half for the verses in the song refer to birds as the gifts. As one who lived in South Dakota for a quarter of a century, I like the notion of ringed necked pheasants. It is the South Dakota state bird. Unlike some state birds, the bird is an immigrant, imported to the state, mostly for sport. And South Dakota and Alaska share another unique trait when it comes to state birds. Locals hunt and eat the state bird in those two places, although Alaska’s state bird is native to the state, while South Dakotans hunt and eat immigrants, who were imported in part for the sport of hunting. Try hunting and cooking a Cardinal in Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, or West Virginia. Or hunt and cook a flicker in Alabama. You’ll find the response to be quite different.

However, I didn’t plan to write about state birds today. I didn’t even plan to write about the popular Christmas song. I am, however, looking forward to worship this morning when we will have an opportunity to sing several Christmas carols. It is our tradition on the first Sunday after Christmas to sing a lot of carols and we are leading worship at a small island church this morning, so we’ve continued that tradition in our worship planning. This congregation loves singing and their piano players are great song leaders. We’ll be singing with enthusiasm.

I brought up the song because I am reminding myself that it is already the fifth day of Christmas. Time is flying already! In the cycle of readings in the traditional church, there is a rush to read through the life of Jesus in the seasons of Christmas and Epiphany. Two of the shortest seasons in the Church year are dedicated to the life of Jesus. That means that each year there is a rush of Gospel readings and it always seems like time is rushing by. The readings are set up in a three-year cycle in the Revised Common Lectionary, focusing on the first three gospels: one year is Matthew, the next is Mark, the third is Luke and then the cycle repeats. Readings from the Gospel of John are sprinkled throughout all three years, with there being more in the second year because the Gospel of Mark is the shortest of the gospels. This is the Luke year in our lectionary. Luke, being the longest gospel, makes the pace of reading seem particularly quick.

There is something else that is unique to Luke. Luke is the only Gospel with a birth narrative and anything at all about the childhood of Jesus. While Matthew does have the genealogy of Jesus’ father and stories about the predictions of the birth, those readings occur during Advent. Matthew does have the story of the flight other than Egypt and the killing of the innocents, but that is a topic for another year. Luke has only one story about the childhood and adolescence of Jesus, and that is today’s story. Next week the Lectionary heads to the prologue to the Gospel of John and most congregations will probably substitute the Epiphany readings because it falls on the day before Epiphany. The story of the visit of the Magi only appears in Matthew, so that Gospel is always the reading for Epiphany. You sort of have to be a Bible geek to keep track of all of this. Today, however, the focus is the iconic story of Jesus at 12, when the Holy family goes to the temple and Jesus remains behind. When his parents realize he is not with them, they return to Jerusalem in a panic and find him in the temple with the scholars. Mary expresses her panic and concern which Jesus dismisses with a very typical teenage response, “You should have known.” Actually the Gospel reports he said, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

This story is the only view of Jesus adolescence that appears anywhere in the Bible. While the 20th century was an intense time of discovery about the importance of child and adolescent development and the 21st Century has been a time of incredible discovery about brain development in childhood and adolescence, it was not at all common to pay any attention to childhood and adolescence in the time when the Gospels were written. Some secular writers of the time write as if children are simply miniature adults. Others simply don’t mention children in their writing. It was fairly common not to give a baby a name until they were two or three years old because of the high infant mortality rate. Better not get too attached until you see whether or not this child will survive. Children were ignored for the most part and so the simple fact that we have a single story about Jesus’ childhood is remarkable.

In my mind, the story is a dramatic illustration of just how common Jesus’ childhood and adolescence were. We enjoyed the adolescence of our children, but there were quite a few zingers, intense moments, snippy comments, and sleepless nights in the process. And now our oldest grandson is 13 going on 14 and we find ourselves heading back into teenage years. It can be an emotional battle for parents and grandparents and we find our worry and panic buttons pushed on a fairly regular basis. The report of the conversation with Jesus and his mother in the temple seems right in line with our experience. The teen acts impulsively, provoking panic on the parent’s part. Parents are deeply aware of the huge consequences of teenage decisions. The adolescent pushes all of the buttons without any awareness of how deeply it impacts the parent.

Naturally we think of Jesus from our perspective: God comes to us in human form. As we age and mature, however, we gain the ability to think of the perspective of the other. Think of Jesus from God’s point of view. God loves humans so much that God wants to experience all of human life from the inside, as a human. We get to know God as a human companion. God gets to experience the hormonal rush and impulsiveness of a teenager from the inside. And Luke reports a story of how real the experience is. It is a lot to take in. And the year is only just beginning.

The season of Christmas has always been family time for us. Today is my father’s birthday. Although he died 44 years ago, the day still brings me wonderful memories of sledding, winter touring Yellowstone National Park, swimming in hot springs, cross-country skiing, digging tunnels in snow drifts, and countless other adventures. There was always a bit of end of the year rush after Christmas with my father’s business. Inventory had to be completed. There were a few customers who needed to complete big purchases before the end of the year to make their tax computations work out. But father always had a more relaxed mood and was ready to take time off from work for fun. There always was a special cake baked by our mother. Dad’s favorite was German chocolate. There were usually plenty of pecans from Koinonia Farms. My folks ordered pecans for gifts each year and there were always enough for holiday pies and cakes at our house. We kids had pretty much tapped out our bank accounts with Christmas spending, so dad’s birthday was generally a low budget affair. I often saved enough to buy a box or a bag of candy, knowing that as soon as the gift was opened, it would be shared. Dad loved outdoor play and whether it was an old car hood towed behind a jeep or a snowmobile, he was attracted to ways to play in the snow. One winter he and the mechanics in his shop built a snow vehicle from scratch that operated with homemade tracks employing hardwood cleats, powered by a Wisconsin motor salvaged from a hay baler. It was good enough to make the trips up the mountain to measure snow depths for the Forest Service that winter.

When our children came into our lives the days after Christmas were always special family times. As pastors there was a lot of activity building up to Christmas Eve services, followed by a quiet Christmas and often a week during which there were very few demands on us as pastors. Many years we took a week’s vacation following Christmas Day. Sometimes we’d get in a skiing trip and often we’d make family visits. We continued the tradition of outdoor play with plenty of sledding and winter sightseeing.

Yesterday we continued our family celebration by traveling down to Skagit County to Mount Vernon with the three oldest of our grandchildren. We met their father for a pizza lunch and then the girls went with grandma to paint pottery at a local ceramics shop. My grandson, son, and I walked back to the Library Commons where our son is the director. While he took care of his work, his son headed off to the teen space in the library and I settled into a comfortable chair with a collection of short stories.

The Mount Vernon Library Commons is a brand new building that began to open to the public in October as construction completed. The library expanded from 12,500 square feet to more than 30,000 square feet, not counting the three floors of parking, including 76 EV chargers, located above. It contains study rooms, a new teen room with a makerspace, a conference room and commercial kitchen, and a greatly expanded children’s area with multiple play spaces.

In the teen room there is a large television with gaming consoles and video games that have been carefully chosen to encourage group play. When we first arrived our thirteen year old grandson headed to the space saying he wanted to sit in a comfortable chair. At first he was the only one in the video game area and I saw him scrolling through the game menu. When I checked back later he was playing Minecraft with another teen while several others were drawing and reading at a nearby table. A while later, I counted nine youths in the space. Four were playing at the video consoles, one was using one of the 3D printers, another was reading in a comfortable chair. More were gathered around a table.

On the drive home our grandson told us that he had had a great day. He doesn’t live in Mount Vernon and had not previously met any of the other teens, but the space made it easy for him to connect with them. Based on one afternoon’s observation, I was delighted how the library has quickly become a gathering place. One of the goals of the new building was to create a safe and welcoming environment for teens in a small town that doesn’t have many spaces dedicated to teens outside of the schools.

There is a lot to worry about for parents and grandparents of teens. These are vulnerable years. Human bodies rapidly maturing with skills expanding while brains are still developing. Teens need access to technology in a rapidly changing world. They need to have access to the Internet in order to conduct research and connect, but the Internet is a risk-filled environment. Cyberbullying wreaks devastating results. Predators lurk and lure with lies and promises. While video games teach skills later useful in such widely varied occupations as drone piloting and robotic surgery, they often can be isolating for teens who can play for years without ever meeting other players face to face.

The recent gut-wrenching tragedy of the death of actor Hudson Meek, who died at age 16 after falling from a moving vehicle is a stark reminder that teens are faced with decisions that have permanent consequences. As our hearts go out to family and friends we are motivated to draw the teens in our lives closer and to do what we are able to protect them. Navigating the journey from childhood to adulthood, however, requires increased freedom and trust. We can’t raise our children by smothering them.

As the year draws to its end, I am grateful for the expansive vision of the Mount Vernon Library Commons Project and the dedication of library staff to creating safe space for teens to gather, to play games face-to-face, to engage emerging technologies in creative ways. May it be a model for other communities for years to come.