Thoughts on the Trinity

For those of you reading this on blogspot, I received an email from one of my brothers concerning the Biblical Teaching about the Trinity and I thought it might be of interest to those keeping up with our adventure here in Seattle.  Robin

 

The Trinity:  The Bible never uses the word "trinity" as such. It is a distinctive Christian theological affirmation that is fundamental to our understanding of God's character and means of interacting with people. The Biblical teaching is consistent, but subtle. For example, in Genesis 1:28, it says: "Then God said, "Let US make man in OUR image, in OUR likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." From the very first chapter of the Bible, there is this mystifying statement that God is a communal deity and that creation itself was and is a team effort. John's Gospel and many other NT sources affirm that Jesus is the creative agent of creation, THE WORD that existed from eternity John 1:1-18. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is also present in Genesis 1:2 and is described as hovering over the waters. So, in creation we encounter God in three unique personalities or modalities. We affirm clearly that God is One, however, we experience God in the Three dimensions that He has chosen to reveal Himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A helpful way for me to get ahold of this is to consider a molecule of water, H2O. At room temperature we experience that molecule as liquid water and it has a multitude of valuable uses. Below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, we encounter that same molecule as ice. It has tremendously changed its form and function, but its essence is exactly the same H2O. Above 212 degrees F. it changes again into steam, which we encounter now as an invisible source of power and function. However, it is the same molecule. So it is, I believe with the Trinity. God's essence is One. We experience that real essence or hypostasis in three distinct modalities or forms. The Old and New Testament both are full of allusions to God's multidimensional substance. A knowledge of Hebrew is extremely helpful in this regard, as one encounters various names for God such as adonai, elohim, and yahweh. These are either translated in English as God or Lord and you have no idea that they may have fairly significant meaning for us in the discussion of the trinity. Also ruach is the word for Spirit in the OT and you find a very strongly developed theology and ministry of the Holy Spirit throughout the OT. Jesus spoke extensively about his identity in the Godhead in many ways, three of the most notable are as Good Shepherd, referring back to Psalm 23 and the prophetic teachings about Good and Bad shepherds; Wisdom incarnate as described in Proverbs 8; and the Son of Man; alluding to the apocalyptic power and authority of the Son of Man who will execute final judgment and authority. The Holy Spirit in the OT assumes the role of being the presence of God in the Temple, at various Holy Shrines, and in entering into human lives with power and for a specific, yet narrowly defined purpose. For example, God's Spirit came upon David when he went to battle with Goliath. God's Spirit empowered Samson as long as he kept his Nazarite vows in order to overcome the Philistines. God's Spirit came upon the Judges and Prophets when they were called to speak God's message. The difference between the Old and New Testament in this regard is that in the OT, the Spirit came upon people for a specific purpose, with a limited duration and in a conditional manner. Saul lost the anointing of God's Spirit as his heart turned away from serving God and sought to serve himself. Samson became a weakling when his vow to never cut his hair, part of his Nazarite Service, was broken. David begs God not "to take your Holy Spirit from me", in Psalm 51:11, in the face of his public disgrace and humiliation concerning his relationship with Bathsheba. One of the things that makes the NT truly New, is that the anointing of the Holy Spirit is no longer for a few isolated individuals, but is given to ALL believers, for all time, and with arkai, or all sufficient and efficacious grace that will accomplish God's purpose in our lives. Hebrews 7:21 speaks of Jesus as the enguos of God. This is the only place in the NT that this word is used and it means surety or guarantor. The Old Covenant had a mediator, in other words, God's side of the bargain was assured, but the human level of obedience could waver, and the Covenant Promises could be missed. The New Covenant has an enguos, one who guarantees that on both the Godward and Manward sides of this relationship, the results are certain. It's just like when you co-sign a home mortgage or car loan for one of your boys, if they default on that loan, you are legally and morally responsible, it is guaranteed. That is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives on a daily basis. I John 1:9 speaks of our confessing our sins. It uses a verb for forgiveness that states that God is constantly forgiving both our sins of commission and sins of omission. Like the windshield wipers that we will use this morning on our way to the cancer center, we encounter the Trinity every second of our lives of faith. We stand on the Promises of God the Father in His Word, we have a defense attorney, advocate, Jesus in the presence of God defending us against the accusations of the Evil One; we rely on the presence and power of the Holy Spirit every second to cleanse, empower and equip us for faithful service in God's Kingdom.

 

I hope this might be helpful for you in this regard. I could go on much longer about the issues surrounding Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit upon believers, but that will have to wait another day. 

 

 

TOWN LIVING

Seattle, WA 10-30-2010; Beautiful weather this afternoon, mid 70's

We had to get up early this morning in order to be at U of W Medical Center by 7 am for an Ultrasound-Echocardiography. Very interessting procedure. You get to see how well every valve and section of your heart is working. The technician wouldn't let on if my results were good or bad, we'll find out from the Dr. on Wednesday when we have our next big consultation. After the Ultrasound, we went back to the Seattle Cancer Center Alliance for a chest X-Ray and a pulmonary function test. I passed that with flying colors, despite my childhood asthma and smoking cigarettes between the ages of 8-11. I was the original Bill Clinton and never inhaled which is probably why I never got hooked on nicotine like many of my siblings. One nurse asked me why I decided to quit smoking when I was 11. I told her that we moved to WA state and I thought it would be a good time to quit smoking and start a new life out west. It probably had more to do with there being an absence of Piggly-Wiggly supermarkets in the west and you couldn't get the five finger discount for the product as easily in WA state. Nurse Britta thought that was a pretty profound insight for an eleven year old, so I let her persist in that positive perspective. We went down to Kelso, WA to visit Hanna over the weekend and had a great time. Drove back to Seattle Sunday evening and got to bed early for a busy week.

Watford City, Mckenzie County, North Dakota

Pa, Danny, Ophie, and Tom joined Mom, Kathy and I in Watford City in the Fall of 1959. I was going into third grade and Miss Alexander was my teacher. Somehow the fact that my oldest brother Earl knew her or had even dated her in college came to my awareness and I'm not sure if that was an asset or a liability for my academic career. She was particularly kind to me, however. I think it all started on class picture day early in the school year when I showed up in the best outfil any little North Dakota Wrangler could find. My mother decked me out in a Howdy-Doudy cowboy matching pants and shirt outfit that she must have picked out of the missionary clothing barrell at some church bazaar. It was perfectly complimented with my regular high top work boots that probably Danny and Tommy had worn before I inherited them. I will tell you later about the first pair of shoes I ever received that weren't hand-me-downs in a subsequent notation. It was on the way to my brother Earl's wedding and I'll check with him about dates and location. Well, all the rest of the kids in the 3rd grade class picture looked just like late 1950s American kids should look like.All the boys except one ranchers kid had crew cuts and blue jeans.  The "Old Man" took no little pride in providing hair cuts for everyone in the family who couldn't escape the torture. Somewhere he had acquired a hair cutting tool that hadn't been sharpened since its purchase. It thinned your hair concurrently with cutting it. Maybe that's why some of the older boys went prematurely thin on top. Well, you wanted the pain to stop as quickly as possible, so we always ended up with "long" hair, looking like a refugee from some hollar in the Ozarks. I was put in the front row so my workboots couldn't be hidden and with 4 rolls of pantleg bulging over the top of the boots, I thought I was the cats meow. Nobody else had an outfit like mine and being a "farm kid", no one had the gumption to tell me the truth.I was the laughing stock of the 3rd grade. Ignorance is bliss, however, and Miss Alexander made sure I went home over the lunch hour and changed out of my special outfit so it wouldn't get soiled during recess or lunch time. I'm sure she knew the abuse I would have received on the playground wearing that costume. I also remember one day doing a math drill and I was the only student who got it finished in the allotted time. She kept everyone else in over recess to finish the assignment and I was the onlystudent allowed to go out with the rest of the elementary kids. When they blew the whistle to come back inside, the teachers would stand and we would line up behind them. I was the only one with Miss Alexander and I never forgot my affection for her.

Living in town had both its benefits and potential disasters. We were able to go to the movies whenever we could come up with 25cents and Mom would approve of the content. But, you became painfully aware of the vast social and economic chasms that separated us from many of our friends. During hunting season, for example, none of our friends had 4 deer carcasses hanging frozen outside their back doors. We thought nothing of going out with a hacksaw and hatchet after school and cutting off some venison steaks or ribs for supper. They were hung high enough so cats and dogs wouldn't bother them and with North Dakota weather, we had frozen meat for weeks, until it became even too much an eyesore for my folks to bear. You also could participate in afterschool activities and summer sports. Baseball was king and I was a prodigy among kids my own age. I had competed against my older brothers all of my life and I thought nothing of playing against boys 5-8 years older than myself. Playing against kids my own age was like taking candy from an infant and I got to pitch, play shortstop and hit cleanup immediately. My biggest frustration was that our catcher was so bad that he missed most of the 3rd strikes we got on the batters and, in those days, if 1st base was vacant, you could run and be safe, if you got there before the catcher could throw you out. In Little League today, 3rd strike and you're out, regardless of whether the catcher catches the ball or not. So, it was no surprise when my brother Tommy's coach asked if I would be willing to play on a team with kids who were 5 years older than myself. They were short players and some that they had were more of a liability than an asset, so I was drafted to play with Tom and his buddies. I worked my way into the starting lineup fairly soon that summer. I remember catching a certain homerun in center field on my birthday, June 30th. I just never gave up on that ball and I'll never forget the feel of it plopping into my mitt and the cheers of the crowd when I threw it back in. I can still hear Tom calling out from behind his catcher's mask, "Way to go, Rob, nice catch." The only downside to that feat of baseball acumen, was being threatened by the kid who had hit it with bodily harm if I ever showed my face in his home town. I wasn't worried, nobody would beat up a kid 5 years younger than them in public, not in North Dakota anyway. Near the end of the Season, we somehow managed to schedule a game against the All Star Team from Williston, North Dakota.

I remember an unusual amount of intensity surrounding practices before the "Big Game". Watford City was just another podunk town next to nowhere in the eyes of the kids from the Metropolis of Williston. They even had a professional baseball team called the Williston Oilers and we were to play the "Big Game" in Oiler Stadium in the afternoon prior to the Oilers own game. The trip to Williston went without incident until we had to cross the Wide Missouri River on a metal bridge that I was sure would collapse mid-stream. I held my breath and prayed real hard the entire way across. We made it! Arriving at Oiler Stadium, we began to warm up when we saw "HIM". He was 6 feet 6 inches tall, cocky and worst of all a leftie. We had heard about some Goliath of a kid through the small town baseball grapevine, but we all thought it was just small town gossip and typical exaggeration. It wasn't. He was everything people said about him, and more. He was their best  pitcher, at least the fastest throwing, and he took the mound the top of the first with an attitude of sublime confidence and boredom. This was going to be a joke in his eyes. Watford City of all places!. They even had a midget, me, on their team who was probably the batboy, how wrong he turned out to be. My brother Tom, being 5 years older than me, remembers every pitch, hit and play in detail. I will leave it to him to tell that version of the story. I'll just share my recollections which are much less detailed.

I'll never forget getting in the batter's box for the first time. It was like the movie "Simon Birch". I was probably around 4 feet tall and had a strike zone that looked like a matchbox to "Goliath". Like my biblical predecessor who faced the historical Goliath, I was all prayer and trust in the God of Israel to spare my life and bring us victory over the North Dakota version of the Phillistines, the Willistines. "Goliath" looked at me with derision and scorn. What was this runt doing playing on this team. Never having the best control of his pitches, it was inevitable that I got walked every time I went to bat. "Goliath" started losing his temper and his cockiness after my brother Tommy hit a home run off of him and the hicks from the sticks pulled ahead to stay. Somehow, we managed to hang on and win that game. Gyro Gertie finished them off in the ninth inning with his personal version of an unhittable sinker ball. Game over, time to celebrate and bask in the glory that a bunch of kids from nowhere beat the Williston All Stars; including "Goliath", Mr. Phil Jackson, himself, Mr. Everything to sports fans in Williston, in North Dakota, in Chicago and now Los Angeles. I'm sure he probably doesn't even remember that life changing day for a kid like me. I have followed his career and personal life ever since. He is both an amazing success and an openly flawed individual, like all the rest of us.I continue to pray for him. That the God of his Mother, will give him peace and joy.

Perseverance

August 27, 2010 Seattle,WA - 70 degrees, cloudy with rain in the morning, sunny and warm tonight.

Another busy morning at the Cancer Center. Started out with another blood draw to test for anything that would prevent me from having a bone marrow assessment and removal. Spoke with a couple from the Tri-Cities who had a stem-cell transplant that failed two years ago. They're back to have another go at it with a donor providing the stem cells this time around. He had a allergic reaction to the dye they give you for a CAT scan and was hospitalized for a couple of months. That means he gets to start over again and will be here for probably 5 months. He and his wife are real WSU Cougar fans and don't go anywhere without some form of Cougar clothing. The Husky fans are equally as devoted. I wish believers would have as much enthusiasm for God's Team as they do for sports teams. Maybe it's better we aren't exhibitionists for the Kingdom. I think Jesus said something about living our faith in discrete anonymous acts of compassion and humility that only God notices. So keep loving God and serving others so no one gives you too much credit. We're just clay. The Potter decides what shape and function we are to assume. Be maleable in the Potter's hands this week. Let him keep molding you into the "poema" masterpiece of love that is his greatest joy.
After the blood draw, had a panorex dental xray in preparation for a complete dental exam next week. At 10 am dropped down to the 2nd floor to begin sedation for the bone marrow removal. We had a wonderful nurse who always keeps patients fully aware of what she was doing. For some people it could have been TMI, but Kriss and I prefer to know as much as possible and we got along great. Took some very powerful oral sedatives; one could get strung out on that stuff if that was your goal in life. I felt like some Aussie repeating, "No Worries Mate" the rest of the morning. When it came time to penetrate both hips to draw bone marrow and take bone samples, things got serious. Even with the "Lucy in the sky with diamonds sedatives" I was on, it took some real perseverance to endure the procedure. Nurse Talks-a-Lot kept putting liticane deeper and deeper into the muscles and even hip bone when i started jerking and jumping. It's the same stuff we use on cattle and horses, with veterinary approval, of course, and so I can appreciate why they wiggle and squirm when it's given. The left hip went fairly smoothly, but we had a serious battle to get all the samples from the right hip. Nurse Talks-a-Lot said she was really proud of the way I handled the whole thing. She told us about a patient who informed them after 2 unsuccessful attempts that if it didn't work the 3rd time, that he had a gun in his pickup in the parking garage so they were doubly motivated. Fortunately, it worked the 3rd time and no firearms were in play. I came back to the house after lunch and crashed for several hours to let the sedative work out of my system. Nurse Talks-a-Lot said not to sign any legal documents that one's spouse might put before you while recovering from the sedation. She has a good sense of humor and owns and rides horses. You can't go wrong with a cowgirl for your medical provider.

Watford City, Mckenzie County, North Dakota Fall 1958

Mom, sister Kathy,and I moved to Watford City to live together the Fall of 1958. I was going into 2nd grade and Kathy was going into 5th grade which my Mother was teaching. We lived in a trailer house across the street from the school along with a bunch of oil roustabouts families. Dieter Lundy was our closest neighbor and his Dad worked in the oil fields so he moved around alot. He was basically a good guy, but he didn't get too close to others, cause he got tired of the trauma of separation and so stayed fairly aloof. The theme for that year was survival and perseverance. For some reason we were more destitute than normal. Even with my mother's supplemental teaching income, poverty stalked us like a coyote after a newborn lamb. The wheat crop probably failed, or the prices were lousy, or Grandpa Peterson just felt miserly that year. Living so close to school we could walk home for lunch. The memorable thing about my first day in Watford City Elementary was how many students there were in my class and how little there was to eat for lunch. For some ungodly reason, my mother had come across cases of condensed tomato soup. I'm sure my imagination must be wrong, but I swear we ate tomato soup breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we were lucky, we might get a grilled cheese sandwich in the evening, or break up the monotony with milk toast, hopefully with a little butter and salt and pepper. By some stroke of fortune and the compassion of the janitor of the elementary school, he took me aside toward the end of the first week of classes and asked if I would be interested in being his assistant for a couple hours after school. It meant emptying all the garbage cans in the elementary school and wiping clean the blackboards with this special eraser that cleaned off even the dust. He said he couldn't pay me any cash, but that the principal said I could get free lunch tickets for every day we were in school. Well, I had learned early in life that any opportunity you could find to earn any form of income was a gift too great to pass up and I told him that I was his new assistant.

We had all learned to work on the farm from the earliest of ages. I can't tell you our ages, but I remember sitting on the side of a baler with Kathy on the opposite side watching for any bale that was improperly knotted. We would throw up an arm and the driver would stop and come back and tie a new knot so we didn't have broken bales to rebale. We moved up in stature when we got to help trip the dump on the homemade bale stacker that could pile 15-20 bales in a mini-stack out in the field. Another promotion put you in charge of collecting eggs that we sold to a grocery store in town. This was a very important job, because it generated real money, or helped pay off our food charges, and we needed every egg. I was unceremoniously removed from this position in about 6 weeks.You see, chickens don't actually like you to take their eggs away from them every day. They have this fantasy about setting on them until they hatch out and they can proudly pilot them around the barnyard. Being fairly young, I didn't handle the hen pecks on my small hands and so I devised some creative ways to get the eggs from the hens. Solution #1 was to enter the chickenhouse and scream at the top of my lungs causing every hen to fly from the nest in sheer terror. This was an extremely effective method, until my father was leaving the barn one morning during this procedure and came running to she what tragedy caused my scream. After explaining my ingenious solution to hen pecks, he let me know in convincing fashion that this methodology was inappropriate and would cease immediately. Solution #2 involved the use of a foot long 1x2 inch board that I inserted under brooding hens and then hoisted them vertically, pinning them against the top of the laying box with one hand, while retrieving the eggs with the other hand. There was always a certain amount of collateral egg breakage with method #2, but I figured it was the price of progress and I could collect the eggs in record time. The downside to such trauma was that the hens would panic as soon as I entered the chickenhouse. Their either remembered the screams of method #1, or had endured the pincer effects of method #2. For whatever reason, egg production dropped precipitously within a month and I was fired from the poultry division and reassigned to helping slop out the cow manure in the milking parlor. Parlor was a much too genteel and civilized word for our milking operation. It was more than rustic and hadn't been upgraded since it was built in the early 1920s.
Older siblings milked cows twice a day, 365 days a week, no matter what else was happening in the world or their love life. I couldn't tell you how many times those cows got milked at 11pm or later when an older brother drug in from a date. We younger boys would not hesitate to offer to do the milking for them so they wouldn't have to come home so early, for an appropriate level of remuneration, of course.

Working as assistant to the janitor in 2nd grade provided me with, not only a reliable hot lunch, but a sense of self-respect and importance that has stayed with me all of my life. I never complained once about what we had for lunch that year. I couldn't shake the awful tedium of tomato soup and anything they served at school beat that hands down. I didn't understand my classmates complaints about the food and if they didn't finish their meal, I was always right there to offer to take their tray back for them. It wasn't always easy finding a way to eat their leftovers without detection, but hunger finds a way. On the last day before Christmas Vacation, by boss, the Head Janitor, gave me a Christmas Bonus, a box of chocolate covered marichino cherries. I couldn't wait to get outside and tear into that box.I did and got so sick after eating all of them that I cannot bear to eat those cherries to this day. Another lesson learned the hard way.

August 26, 2010, Seattle, WA - Seasons Change

Seattle, WA; Summer heat is gone, clouds and rain arrive, 70 degrees, overcast.
Spent most of the last two days in consultations. Retell my medical history to where I can tell it by heart. First cancer diagnosis, 1998. Tumor on the side of my tongue; surgery at Oregon Health Science University Friday the 13th of November, 1998. Removed more than 1/4 of my tongue and sewed it back together; removed 17 lymph nodes from the right side of my neck. Fortunately, no sign of cancer outside the tongue. Start to learn how to speak all over again, could preach within 6 weeks, no chemo or radiation. April 2006 diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Began a four year process of chemo, radiation, radioactive isotope therapy, and then more chemo,radiation and now, I'm here for a stem cell transplant. It seems like I just keep going in a medical circle that never stops. Coming to Seattle is taking a significant risk in stopping the merry-go-round, you just can't guarantee where it will let you off. It most likely will leave us in remission with a successfull long term cure, but it can also lead to serious complications and even death 3-5% of the time. By the grace of God and the power of so many prayers, we will leave here whole and on the road to long term health.

Late Fall, Little Knife River Country School, Mercer County, North Dakota 1957
Having worn out my welcome at the Lapla Country School near Beach, North Dakota, my parents decided it would be best for me and my mother, Ruth, if I would go live with her in a trailer house next to the Little Knife River School where she was the solo teacher. Mom was a complex person. She had grown up in Albia, Iowa most of her life. Her father Archie, died in the flu epidemic of 1918 when whe was only 6 years old and they were living on the South Dakota prairie to alleviate her asthma symptoms. She had a certificate authenticating her claim to have lived in a sod house, which I can't imagine was the best for a child with asthma, but she was awfully proud of that heritage. She always told the story about an Indian Medicine Man who saved her life with a special tea-like drink while she was having an asthma attack. Truth or fable, it made for a good story, unfortunately, her father died when she was still a child and it had a significant impact on her emotional and relational well being.

Returning to Iowa, my Grandmother, "Ma'am", as we always called her, enrolled in Drake University and left Mom and her younger brother Bob, with her parents in Albia and she went off to College to become a teacher. She received a Lifetime Teaching Certificate from Drake and was hired by the Albia School District where she taught in the same building for 42 years until her retirement. She was also a great student of the Bible and was often asked to teach adult christian education classes in the local Disciples of Christ Church. Her stature in Albia was profound, having taught 3 generations of students, and she set an example for all of our family to see higher education as the only escape from poverty and tragedy. Sadly, she didn't do such a great job preparing our mother for life outside of Albia, Iowa.

Mom graduated as Valedictorian of her High School class before she was 17 years old and somehow went to visit a friend or relative in Wibaux, Montana that very summer. Somehow she ran across my Father's sister Beatrice, who introduced J.O. and Ruth and it went downhill from there. She had never been away from home much and probably hadn't had any dating experience, being the daughter of such a prominent educator. She loved to dance, however, and fell madly in love with a wickedly charming and bored norwegian farmer's eldest son. Grandma Peterson could smell trouble a long way off and tried to keep them apart by locking my father in his upstairs bedroom, but love or something like it could not be restrained and they ended up getting married in Wibaux, MT by mistating both of their ages, with, of course Aunt Bea's unfortunate complicity and signature as witness. In addition to the unapproved wedding, there was also the little problem of an unexpected pregnancy. They moved into the Peterson Farm home about as welcome as a cockroach in a kitchen. My Grandmother Peterson had the rather cruel habit of speaking Norwegian to everyone in the house, just to remind Mom that she was an outsider, and totally unwelcome and unworthy. In the 1930 official government census, my mother is listed as a "domestic" in lieu of a member of the family. My parents would move to Iowa to be closer to my mother's family and escape the unbearable stygma of their nuptials. The baby, Mary Lou, died of course. But it didn't stop my parents from having 12  more children, I being officially the 13th; 11 of whom survived infancy and the chaos of our lives. Our mini-clan would wander from Iowa,  back to North Dakota, out to Idaho during WWII and then back to North Dakota to once again live on the Ancestral Homestead. By this time Grandpa and Grandma Peterson had bought a house in town, so we didn't have to live together. My sister Kathy was born in Beach, North Dakota in 1948 and I was born there June 30, 1951.

When I was 4 years old my mother followed in my Grandmother's example and sought to fulfill her dream of going to College and becoming a teacher like "Ma'am". She enrolled in Dickenson State Teacher's College in Dickenson, North Dakota the Fall of 1955 and graduated the Spring of 1957 with a teaching certificate from the State of North Dakota. The only job she could obtain was the solo teacher of the Little Knife River Country School 40 miles SW of Beulah, Mercer County, North Dakota. She packed up food and clothing and set off for a new life in order to help keep the financial wolves at bay to whom we were hopelessly indebted in Beach. The Little Knife River School Board provided a two room trailer house next to the school for her to live in and she began a successful teaching career. When I had begun to wear out my welcome at the Lapla School, my parents decided that I would be better off going to live alone with my mother and so I transferred to the Little Knife School and moved into the trailer next door. It was a great help to my mother to have someone else from the family living with her, and I ended up helping with some of the chores and work around the school.

It seems like first days in any school seem to be difficult for me. By the time my mother came and transported me out to the prairie school, winter had started to rear it's ugly head and there was snow on the ground that first day. During the first recess, all the other children asked me if I would like to join them in a special game of follow the leader with hands joined together. Being the youngest in the group, I was appointed to be last in line and they began to go in an ever-tightening circle until I was catapulted by centrifugal force into a snowbank. ?Than was the original intention from the beginning. With that "special" welcome from my fellow classmates, I tried to keep from crying or trying to explain to my mother why I was covered in snow. Life with mother turned into a routine of getting up by 5 am to start the potbellied coal stove in the schoolhouse, so we wouldn't freeze to death in 40 degrees below zero weather and listening to a very small collection of archaic records on a primitive record player the school provided. My most memorable recollection of that school year was sitting in with the older classes for most of my instruction and hitting another student over the head with a baseball bat one day in May during lunch hour. I was in possession of the bat and this other person was in possession of the ball and when my request for the ball was flat denied, I did what any self respecting descendant of Vikings would have done, I hit the kid "fairly lightly" over the head, which did result in my obtaining the baseball so I could hit fly balls to the other boys. Unfortunately, it also resulted in the aforementioned student stumbling into the school house with minor head trauma, with bleeding, and my being carried by my right ear up the steps of the schoolhouse by my infuriated mother, who proceeded to give me an old fashioned spanking that I never forgot. We were only at the Little Knife Country School for one academic year and my mother obtained a better paying job teaching 5th grade in the Watford City Elementary School, Watford City, Mckenzie County, North Dakota.

STARTING SCHOOL

August 24, 2010 - Seattle, WA - 80+ degrees, no cloud in the sky!

• It felt like starting 1st grade all over again. We arrived at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance just before our first appointment at 11:00 am. Drove into the wrong parking lot, so Kriss and I walked over to the right building while Hanna and Cleo found parking. One office after another, one new face and name to remember. Question: Why am I here? Not a simple answer. Mostly, we want to prolong my life and continue to serve God. Forms and more forms. Homework; read reams of material, but don't doodle on anything or nurse Dorothy will not be happy with me. All the nurses and staff are obviously "called" to work here. Those that are not weed themselves out in short order. You are surrounded constantly with the process of life and death. It's like a fast forward view of human existance. You see people literally reborn with successful transplant outcomes and people who look ready for their last breath. Grey, frail, shuffling through the halls, clinging to the dignity of humanity, buoyed by the compassion and care of the staff. Shockingly, many of them come alone. How do you face this without an entourage of loving family? I am an amazingly rich man. Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote about true wealth; he essentially felt that the only treasure in life was deep human relationships. The value of shared life experience was worth more than any material possession. You can have every "thing" in this world, but if it costs you your soul; "a quoi ca sert?" (what good is it). I can't help but pray for everyone around me. Like people stranded at sea in a lifeboat, we wait for healing, we desperately cling to the hope of remission. God is with us all. Healer of the nations, be merciful and give us life!
• For the rest of this week it will be meeting after meeting, procedure after procedure; Finance Consultation, how will you be able to pay for $250,000 worth of treatment?, praise God for a good Medical Insurance; EKG to test heart health; Conference with Dr. Fero, head of the Rose Team;
• Social Work Assessment, am I stable enough to get through all this; Dental Exam; Bone Marrow Analysis, including sedation and recovery; Pulmonary Function Test; Dental Examination/Followup;
• Orientation  for family caregivers
• That's just the first week. It gets a lot more involved and complex week 2. By the grace of God we will persevere. We are held afloat by the prayers and love of God's people. We can never thank them enough for all the compassion we receive.

Lapla Country School - September 1957 - Golden Valley County - North Dakota

I don't know if I slept a wink last night. I have been waiting three years in order to walk the 1/4 of a mile up the hill to attend Lapla School with my brothers and sisters. Their are 5 Petersons enrolled at Lapla in the Fall of 1957; Danny, Ophie, Tom, Kathy and me, Robin. My parents tried to get me enrolled when I was 5 years old, but the school board would make no exceptions in spite of my ability to read and write. By the time I was 6 years old, I could read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide to such a level that my father called me his "little mathematician". On more than one occasion, the "Old Man", J. O. Peterson, would tow me into Beach, ND and find some farmer having coffee at the lunch counter inside the Husky Gas station. "Pop" would pull out a couple of sheets of addition and subtraction figures and challenge the farmer to a contest with his "little mathematician", the loser had to buy lunch. I don't remember ever losing that contest, and I can still remember how good those hamburgers tasted. They grilled the buns lightly with real butter before slapping on the hamburger, cheese, mayo, ketchup and dill pickle. The fries were made by hand in the kitchen and filled up a 5 year old for at least 3 hours.

Mrs. Kittleson was our teacher, or warden, however you wanted to describe it. Lapla was a classic one room country school, with no running water and two privies 40 yards from the school house for sanitary purposes. Some interesting playground equipment was installed between the school house and the outhouses. They were so well anchored into the ground that they are still there today. An old building for storage stood out within the wind-break trees and we would find treasures inside from time to time. I was so excited about my first day in school that I was beside myself, literally. After perfunctory introductions and the arranging of students by grades, it was time to say the Pledge of Allegiance and get started with 1st grade English. There were a couple of us in 1st grade and Mrs. Kettleson appropriately began to teach us the alphabet. I was so bored and hyper that I made some smartalect comment about how dumb this was and things went downhill from there. Noting that I could already read and write, Mrs Kittleson finished our lesson and sent us back to our desks with double lined paper to practice writing the alphabet. This was not living up to my expectations of what a thrilling adventure going to school could be. I filled up my page in minutes. With nothing more to do, I decided it was time to wander around the classroom and check in with other brothers and sisters to see if they were doing something more stimulating. Thus began a day long series of inappropriate actions on my part and escalating responses by Mrs. Kittleson. At first, she calmly and kindly informed me that students must remain at their desks so that they would not disturb or distract other students from their tasks. As she was informing me of these essential pedagogic principles, brother Tom kept making faces and taunting me out of Mrs. Kittleson's range of vision. She ended this instruction with that infamous warning about severe consequences for students of any age who refused to follow school rules. Within minutes, I had finished reading a book about some animals who lived in a house filled with bags of popping corn. Somehow the house caught fire and they had so much popcorn that it all popped and was pushing the occupants out the doors and windows. I decided it was time to check in with fellow siblings. Mrs. Kittleson decided it was time to set an example. She marched me to her desk, laid me across her lap and proceeded to give me the lightest spanking I had ever had. The entire time she kept explaining how sad this was that I had to be punished on my first day at Lapla School, but that she felt it was necessary to put an end to this inappropriate behavior early in the day. My response was to make ridiculous faces at my fellow students during the spanking and I couldn't feel it at all. After the third administration of corporal punishment with increasing severity, Mrs. Kittleson was feeling the strain and decided she would tie my feet to the base of the desk by my shoelaces to insure that I would remain seated. Well, it wasn't long before she turned her back to write something on the blackboard and I reached down and untied my workboot laces and this time I eluded her grasp for several minutes before judgment #4 was inflicted. Nearing the end of her tolerance for this most difficult of Peterson children she decided to tie both my feet and hands to the desk, just to insure that I stayed put. Somehow I managed to get loose once again and this time she put some real effort into the spanking and I decided maybe it was in my best interest to accede to her demands. Maybe it was her final statement about sending a note home to my father at the end of the day that turned the tide. For whatever reason, I was a fairly model student the rest of the day and then began to dread the note sent home. It came swiftly and decisively. Pa read the note, grabbed me by the seat of my pants and gave me a couple of serious swats and my delinquant days at Lapla School were ended. My father sent a note back to Mrs. Kittleson explaining that maybe she might give me more advanced work to do and that he was certain that she would have no further problems with my behavior, he was right. Within weeks I learned to appreciate Mrs. Kittleson. She figured out how to stimulate my curiousity and exploit my level of knowledge. We had a visit with the Little Beaver Country School sometime in the next few weeks. Mrs. Kittleson suggested a competition in addition and subtraction amongst Little Beaver 2nd and 3rd graders and Lapla students, including one first grader, namely, me. I'm not sure whether or not she had a bet on the side with the Little Beaver teacher concerning a certain 1st grader who she was certain would win, but she was awfully nice to me for the next few weeks. The only thing about winning math competitions at school was that there were no hamburgers or french fries for winning and I had to be content with just human adulation. At least I thought it was adulation, later in life I would realize it might just have been jealousy or resentment. My career at Lapla School was cut short within 2 months of its beginning. My parents decided I would do better under my Mother's tutelage at the Little Knife Country School where she was the only teacher. Thus ended a promising start to an academic career in Golden Valley County, North Dakota. I would never again attend school in that county, but if you visit the Lapla Schoolhouse, now moved into Beach, North Dakota as a museum, you can find my name in the list of students registered for the Fall term 1957.