If you walked out of the front door of my childhood home at 500 McLeod Street in Big Timber, Montana, and turned left toward downtown, you would be looking directly at the Crazy Mountains. Big Timber is laid out in reference to the railroad tracks that pass through town and not the compass. Main Street runs from northwest to southeast. The peaks of the mountains are about 25 miles from town and rise nearly 7,000 feet above the town's elevation. The Crazies are an isolated island range east of the Continental Divide. The view is stunning. Even though that view was an everyday vista while growing up, I am still struck by it whenever I return. It is not something that one gets used to.

The mountains are sacred to the Apsáalooke Nation, also known as the Crow Tribe. The tribe was forced to cede the mountains and the area around them in the face of waves of settlers that followed 19th-century gold rushes. The Apsáalooke word for the mountains is Awaxaawippíia’, which might be translated as “Ominous Mountains.” The language is elusive to English speakers. Not only are many words, such as the name of the mountains nearly impossible for native English speakers to pronounce correctly, their meanings frequently defy simple translation. Translating Awaxaawippíia’ as “crazy” misses the spiritual nature of the mountains. The mountains were a place of vision quests. Young men climbed to the high places to fast and pray. It is said that the famous warrior and diplomat, Plenty Coups fasted near the peak of the highest mountain in the range and there had a vision of the disappearance of buffalo, and white people filling the plains beneath the mountains. This vision shaped his leadership of the people. He wanted the people and their spiritual traditions to carry on. He felt that cooperation would benefit his people more than violent opposition. He argued for education for children and worked for peace for his people in the face of the dramatic changes that settlement brought.

My family were latecomers to the town at the base of the Crazies. My folks settled there after World War II. The Crow Reservation had been reduced, and Crow Agency was a two-hour drive east of town. Sacred places, however, have power that is beyond a single culture or period of history. The Celts use the term “thin places” to refer to sacred locations. There are places where people feel a strong connection to something beyond the ordinary in these places. The concept of thin places reaches beyond physical locations and refers to moments and experiences. Still, it never excludes the physical realities of sacred sites, areas of natural beauty, and places associated with ancient rituals.

My Christian heritage is filled with stories of high places sacred to our people. Moses went to the mountain to confer with God, and the Ten Commandments were received on the mountain. Jesus also prayed on a mountain.

The spiritual power of the Crazy Mountains reaches beyond the stories of the Apsáalooke. Although I moved away from those mountains at 17, they have shaped my vision of the world and my attitude toward the sacred nature of creation.

In 2006, we were awarded a generous grant to support a sabbatical and invested three months in the study of sacred places. We were living in the Black Hills of South Dakota in those days and were deeply aware of the sacred nature of the hills to the Lakota People. We listened to elders tell the Lakota creation story, in which people emerged from Wind Cave to populate the land above the surface. I began the sabbatical by climbing to the top of Black Elk Peak, the highest point in the hills and the highest point in the United States, west of the Rocky Mountains. I also walked to the top of Bear Butte, Paha Mato. We camped at the base of Paha Tipi, also known as Devil’s Tower, and walked around the monolith. Our sabbatical took us to other sacred places, including the ice fields of the Columbia Glacier and the high lakes above Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. We traveled to Australia, viewed Uluru, and walked around its base.

I have now arrived at a new place in my life. We now live close to the shore of the Salish Sea. We can look across the water at the San Juan Islands and beyond them to Vancouver Island. This is my first time living year-round next to an ocean, and there is much that I have learned and much that I have yet to learn. I have not, however, left the mountains. On the short drive to our son’s farm, we can see Koma Kushan, also known as Mount Baker. The nearly 11,000-foot active stratovolcano is covered in snow year-round. It is similar in height to Crazy Peak in the heart of the mountains of my youth, but because the surrounding territory is a lower elevation, the rise of the mountain is even more dramatic. I do not know the indigenous history of the mountain, but I know it is a thin place. It is a place of deep spiritual meaning and shapes the people living near it.

There is something powerful about looking at a snow-capped mountain from the bay's surface. There is a place where I ride my bike from which the mountain can be viewed across a harbor, its height and majesty reflected in the smooth water as it is backlit at sunrise. The mountain is inviting, and in the summer, we take our grandchildren up above the snow line at 5,000 feet to play in the snow and stop at a place of old-growth forest on our way.

I am grateful for the many sacred places I have been privileged to visit and for the years I have been able to live near thin places. I know that the places of my life have shaped my personality and spirituality. May I never take them for granted?

Two of my high school summers involved working on my uncle’s and cousin’s farms. Growing dryland wheat in north-central Montana is a challenge. The way they did it back then was to alternate strips of land. Half of the land was planted with hard red winter wheat that grew throughout the summer. The other half was kept bare. We controlled the weeds on the bare ground by pulling a cultivator with a tractor. With no weeds, the soil could trap moisture used in the next growing season. Wheat would be planted in the fall after the other strips were harvested, and the stubble from the harvest would be worked back into the ground to be kept bare for a year before being planted again.

My days began with an early breakfast, followed by a drive to the field in a service truck. I’d use a transfer pump to fill the tractor with diesel while I checked the oil and greased the machine's fittings. The rest of my day was spent driving around the field, pulling the cultivator. We worked mile-long strips, and one neighbor had three-mile-long strips. A tractor pulling a toolbar doesn’t go very fast. Driving straight for a mile between corners induces boredom. Straying from the straight, however, costs money. It wastes energy to have an overlap that is too large. A skip allows weeds to grow and pull moisture from the soil.

When harvest came, all hands on the farm switched to getting the wheat from the fields to the bins. I never drove combine for more than a few rounds. My role was to drive a straight truck alongside the operating combines so they could empty their hoppers into the truck box. It took precision driving. I had to stay close enough for the auger on the combine to reach and far enough away to avoid collision with the combine. I had to pay attention to the load in the truck, making sure that it was even front to back, left to right. When the truck was full, I had to make a quick trip to the bins and empty the grain before returning to the field. Two trucks could keep up with one combine when working close to the bins. When we had to drive a bit farther, it took three trucks for each combine.

Things are different these days. Tractors combines, and trucks are much bigger. The farms are much bigger, too. Fewer workers are covering more ground. Many farmers use a crop rotation that adds nutrients to the soil and minimizes tillage to preserve soil moisture.

The formula for farm profit is similar, however. Wheat is stored in hopes of getting the best price. When it is sold, it is shipped. Wheat from the farms I worked was loaded onto trains heading west. At the Columbia River, it was loaded onto barges for transfer to ocean-going vessels for export.

The United States produces more corn, soybeans, wheat, and other agricultural products than we consume. Farming profits depend on exports, and farmers rely on imported products, including fuel, fertilizer, and machinery parts. Agriculture is an international business.

I didn’t fully understand the wheat markets when I was a teen driving around and around the field. But I could tell you which years had seen high wheat prices. It was easy. When the price was up, farmers bought new equipment. We used to joke about a neighbor who got a new pickup when wheat was above $5 per bushel and drove the old one in the off years. My father’s purchase of pickups followed the same pattern. He was a farm machinery dealer, and his income rose and fell with farm incomes.

I still don’t fully understand commodity markets. They are complex with the buying and selling of futures. However, it doesn’t require complete understanding to see the impact of tariffs and threats of tariffs on the price of grain. Corn and soybean prices are off by about 10% with the threat of tariffs. Wheat prices have been trending downward since the most recent highs reached in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The current US price for wheat is between $5.49 and $5.52. There won’t be many new pickups in farm country. In the years when I was working on the farm and joking about the neighbor’s new pickups, a pickup truck cost less than $3,000, and wheat was bringing in $5. Even with ten percent higher prices, it takes a lot more bushels to buy a $70,000 pickup.

The diesel price for that pickup is trending downward for the third straight year, influenced by lower crude oil prices and increased refinery capacity. Projections suggest an average price of $3.61 per gallon, though tariff threats make accurate projections nearly impossible.

In a recent address to Congress, the US President said he loves farmers. However, that “love” is hard for farmers to feel when tariff threats are closing off markets, costing billions of dollars in lost revenue, and affecting the bottom line of every farm and ranch operation. The financially devastating effects of a trade war will undoubtedly result in the financial failure of more family farms. When family farms go under, the land is bought by larger farms controlled by large corporations. The population of rural counties declines, schools suffer from fewer students and lower funding levels, and local merchants have fewer customers. Small towns across rural America are being abandoned.

Losses for Canadian farmers match the pain US farmers are feeling. Trade wars are wars that no one wins.

I know that we can’t go back to the days when a teenager practiced driving by pulling a cultivator around and around the field before spending a few weeks driving an old farm truck in close confines with the most expensive piece of machinery on the farm. History doesn’t go into reverse. It would help, however, if policymakers would at least study history a bit and try to avoid past mistakes. I fear that hard times are ahead for farmers.

We didn’t make much of a deal of St. Patrick’s Day in our home when I was a child. According to our father, we had primarily German heritage on his side of the family, with perhaps a bit of Russian thrown in, though no one was sure of that. There was a family rumor of a Lakota relative somewhere in our background, but my grandmother wasn’t sure about that. My mother said that our heritage was mainly English on her side of the family, with a bit of Scots thrown in. She didn’t think we were Irish, but was sure that if we were, we would have been Protestant and would not have observed St. Patrick’s Day, which she called a catholic holiday.

On the other hand, I did not want to get pinched at school, which was the punishment for not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. This was no problem because our father was a John Deere dealer, and we wore lots of clothing with the green and yellow John Deere logo. Any green at all was a sign that you were safe from torture from your classmates.

Later, as an adult, I had an Irish boss who said that you don’t have to be Irish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in one of my side jobs. He used the occasion to indulge in a bit of beer with his friends and invited me to join them, but I was a small-town pastor who knew that plenty of eyes in my congregation disapproved of such behavior.

And now, I have a grandson whose name is Patrick. Although his family is not Roman catholic, his father was raised catholic, and his other grandparents are active in their parish. They have provided Patrick with laminated Saint Patrick Holy Cards with a picture of the saint and an Irish blessing. They have also given him additional cards about the saint's life. They have a strong Italian heritage, and I don’t think they identify as Irish. Still, it is important that their grandson know the association between his name and the Catholic bishop who was never formally canonized, having lived before the current laws for such matters, but who is revered as a saint.

Patrick’s story is widely known, and his autobiographical Confessio is available. When he was a teenager, Irish pirates captured him from his home in Britain and took him as a slave to Ireland. There, he tended animals before escaping and returning to his family. Later, when he had grown up and become a cleric, he returned to Ireland, where he evangelized and spread the Christian faith, later serving as a bishop. He has come to be known as the patron saint of Ireland.

St. Patrick’s Day is as much a cultural holiday as it is a religious celebration. Like my former boss, many observe it as a celebration of Irish heritage and ways. Over the years, people with Irish heritage have spread across the globe. Here in the United States, they often settled in urban areas with concentrations of Irish people, keeping their Irish traditions and identity alive. When I was in seminary, the joke was that if a person with fair skin, like myself, wore a clerical collar, there was no need to worry about getting a speeding ticket. When pulled over, the officer, likely an Irish policeman in Chicago, would say, “Let’s keep it down, now father,” and drive off without issuing a citation. I never tested that story. We had a car that was underpowered and unlikely to get going faster than the speed limit on the freeway.

With a grandson named Patrick, it is a good occasion to celebrate his presence in our family. His birthday is in July, so having a bit of a celebration in March seems like a good idea. I wore a green shirt and a tie with shamrocks to church yesterday, and when I received compliments on it, I responded by saying, “I’m not Irish, but I have a grandson whose name is Patrick.” I’ll likely wear green today in his honor as well. When he was younger, his favorite color was green, but those things change as children grow, and I’m not sure what he is currently calling his favorite color.

It has been 46 years since my father sold his John Deere franchise. I don’t have much John Deere identity clothing left. There is a yellow jacket with a green logo that my son occasionally wears at the farm. I have a cap in the closet with the John Deere logo. I also have a light jacket from our shop with the John Deere logo and my name, which I keep at the shop at our son’s farm. That jacket is special to me because it belonged to my great Uncle Ted and was handed down to me because it was embroidered with our shared name.

However, you won’t find me at any of the lively St. Patrick’s Day parties at pubs and taverns around the area. I’m not much of a drinker, which is a strange way to celebrate a grandson, anyway. Calling him seems like a better way to celebrate the day with his name.

In Catholic tradition, St. Patrick’s Day is a solemnity, a feast day celebrating a holy mystery. Our grandson is undoubtedly a holy mystery. His presence in our lives is a miracle. The day is also a holy day of obligation. Days of obligation are when the faithful are expected to attend mass and rest from usual work or recreational activities. I’m retired, so every day is a day of rest. Mostly, however, I plan to observe the day by feeling grateful for the gift of a grandson.

My days are filled with gratitude. My life is filled with many blessings, and grandchildren come to my mind daily. I like to recall their names and ages as I think of them and look at their pictures. St. Patrick’s Day is a good day for celebration, but then again, every day is worthy of celebration for me.

There is a little story in the Bible about two sisters. Since their names are Mary and Martha, many assume they are Lazarus's sisters. The little story nestled in the tenth chapter of Luke is just a snippet, but it is familiar to many Christians. Here is how it goes:

“Now, as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42 NRSVUE)

It is just five verses after the parable of the Good Samaritan. A little snippet shows that those around Jesus were very human and very much like us. I can remember times when there were little tensions between my siblings and me, and when we were hosting guests, it was often easy for feelings to get out of sort for a few minutes. One sister is worried about all of the tasks necessary to host guests. One sister enjoys the guests but perhaps is not working as hard as the other. It is interesting in the story that instead of going to her sister, Martha chooses to complain to Jesus. He invites her to calm down. “Martha, you worry too much. Let your sister be.”

The story is the gospel reading for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost in year C of the Revised Common Lectionary. I have preached a dozen or more sermons that referred to the text. I’m sure I’ve heard at least a dozen more preached by others. It is a beloved story, and plenty of preachers have put a lot of effort into interpreting the roles of the two sisters and Jesus's response to Martha’s complaint.

However, it is just one small story of a minor incident. There is no evidence that Mary and Martha constantly competed over roles in the household. Martha’s particular anxiety in this story doesn’t appear in other places. However, in the story of the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John, Martha is pretty blunt in her greeting of Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

There is more to feminist theology than a story in which Jesus says the sister who listened to him chose the better part. It is a stretch to say that Jesus preferred one sister over the other. Instead, the story reports that Jesus listened to Martha’s complaint and took it seriously. He offered her a different perspective. He didn’t provide an opinion on what Mary should be doing. He offered Martha some advice on how she might handle the situation.

It is interesting to me how often a few verses of the Bible take on a meaning much more significant than other sections of scripture. This is due, in part, to our use of lectionaries. In worship, we read short passages of scripture, leaving the reading of entire books of the bible to devotional reading. Those whose primary source of bible teaching is worship get a few choice passages. Those passages are interesting and meaningful and offer rich living resources, but when they are the only bits of scripture people get, they give an incomplete picture.

The passage should not be interpreted as a commentary on women's roles. It is possible to see the contrast between the two women as one who listened to Jesus and one who spoke to Jesus. It would be wrong, however, to take from this story that listening is “the better part” rather than talking. This is not a story about Jesus favoring the sister who doesn’t speak up.

The story is a gift of insight into the humanity of Jesus and those who gathered around him. There must be thousands of stories that were not preserved in the Gospel record. Jesus must have said many things in private conversations that were not recorded. Here, we have a little moment recorded in this story, and we’re lucky to have it.

Today, I’ve been invited to share a brief moment with children during worship at our church. It is a role that I used to do regularly and one that I cherish. After I retired, however, I needed to cede that role to others for a while. Today is my first return to the children’s moments, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve gathered supplies to engage the children in helping prepare some things to be served at the fellowship time after worship. I’ve got some pre-packaged bars, so we don’t have to worry about hand washing and gloves. We’ll just be putting the items on plates and the plates on trays to take into the fellowship hall. The children will have already heard a telling of the story, but I’ll remind them of it as we work together. I also plan to make participation in the preparations optional, hoping that at least one of the children will choose not to help. If that is the case, it will allow me to remind the children that Jesus reminded Martha not to worry too much about getting all the work done but to relax and listen like her sister.

I don't need to lead the children to specific conclusions about the story or interpret it for them. I’m comfortable allowing it to be a treasured story that our people have shared for generations. The children can enjoy the story and make of it what they want. I hope it will become familiar enough to them that they’ll share it with their children one day.

When I was in high school, it was expected that students read four Shakespearean plays, with one featured each year. The four were Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. I had the same teacher for English and Latin II in my sophomore year. While I wasn’t particularly fond of this particular teacher, she showed a bias toward her Latin students, which helped me. We read the story of Julius Caesar in Latin while reading the Shakespearean play in English. She pointed out the differences between the historical record and the play. Two famous lines from the play do not appear in the historical record.

In Shakespeare’s play, a soothsayer warns Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March,” which Caesar dismisses. I probably would have done the same, and I was pleased to learn that there is no particular evidence that the soothsayer existed. It made a good character for the play and allowed Shakespeare to use the dramatic convention of foreshadowing, a point made in English class as we studied the play. In Latin Class, we learned that Caesar died on the Ides of March in 44 BC. In the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides was the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other months. The assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March in 44 BC marked a turning point in Roman History. It was the end of the Roman Republic and the dawn of the Roman Empire. We learned that the difference between a Republic and an Empire is significant. A Republic has a participatory government, while an Empire’s citizens don’t have a say in the decisions and policies of the government. That portrayal isn’t entirely accurate, as Caesar ruled as a dictator without the consent of the people, which was part of the reason for his assassination. The distinction was made at a high school level, and I’m sure I didn’t understand or appreciate the difference as a high school student. Still, it certainly comes to mind in light of the shift away from democratic government in the United States.

The other famous line in the play that is not a part of the Latin history is the last words Caesar utters in the play, “Et tu Brute?” In the play, Caesar’s shock at the betrayal of his friend Brutus, who was among the assassins, gives his life a dramatic and emotional ending. It is possible that Caesar’s last words were similar. The ancient record does not record a Latin response, but a Greek source reports Caesar’s last words as "Kai su ei ekeinon; kai su teknon," which translates to "What! art thou, too, one of them? Thou, my son!" The Greek source wasn’t cited in my high school Latin class, only that the play by Shakespeare wasn’t the same as the Latin version of the story in our Latin II textbook.

I’m sure that the assassination was not a pleasant event for Caesar. There were as many as 60 conspirators. Caesar was stabbed a reported 23 times by daggers. Whatever emotional pain he experienced at seeing friends among the conspirators might have quickly been displaced by the physical pain of daggers penetrating his chest and stomach. Likely, the death wasn’t accomplished in an instant. After a major artery was severed and blood began to be pumped into his chest cavity, he had four to six minutes of consciousness before his brain began to shut down for lack of oxygen. That is enough time to experience a great deal of physical pain.

It was a long time ago, however. Even my sophomore year of high school, when two of my classes studied the event, was long ago.

For forty-four years, the phrase, “Beware the Ides of March,” has not been a reference to the collapse of the Roman republic, but rather to a family event. Our son, Isaac, was born on the Ides of March, and since his birth, every Ides of March has been an occasion for celebration. For us, there is nothing to fear about the day. From the moment I saw him take his first breath and shortly afterward issue forth his first cry, the Ides of March transformed my identity. Every year, being a father was a source of great joy. The miracle of his birth and his ongoing life has made the Ides of March a time of turning for me. And now, forty-four years later, I am a grandfather, a role I enjoy immensely.

Like other families, we have our traditions. Our son’s birthday celebration requires a plain angel food cake served whole. He enjoys tearing off bites of the cake without slicing it, and now that he is a father, his children expect us to provide the cake, and they expect their dad to tear into it. They know they will receive a slice after he has gotten a chunk of the cake. This year, we’re saving the angel food cake for tomorrow, as his wife will be working, and we will celebrate with the whole family on Sunday evening. The children will be happy to help decorate cupcakes and appreciate the treat of cake two days in a row, something that doesn’t happen often in their family.

We also have a tradition of going around the table with each person sharing something for which they are grateful about the one whose birthday we celebrate. Since we had three family birthdays in February, we’re practiced, and the children remember the tradition. My job will be to contain my emotions just a bit. I’m so very proud of our son and of all he has accomplished. There is far more that I could say than is appropriate for a family dinner. The occasion is not about me and my emotions, so I must limit my words.

That is good because no words can describe the incredible gift of a son who has graced our lives with so much meaning and wonderful experience. The Ides of March are a day of blessings for our family.