Early every morning, I sit by the fire silently and drink my coffee.

Sometimes I sit in silence for an hour.

Then I saddle my horse, Dusty.

He's a Buckskin gilding.

We head out into the morning light and we work the fences or pretend to.

What I'm really doing is thinking and writing in my head.

It's early spring.

The red-ringed blackbirds have just arrived for the season.

The barnswallows are coming in droves.

I realize that my whole life I've been thinking about this very issue Kate raises.

And I'm in conflict.

I come to the conviction that I can't be silent anymore.

I'm writing the sermon in my head.

The words won't stop.

In 1974, Trey Robinson and his seventh grade American Literature students persuaded the U.S.

Congress to permit them to move the body of a famous mountain man from a gravesite alongside

a Los Angeles freeway to his rightful resting place in the Rocky Mountains.

It's quite a story.

And if you're interested, it inspired Robert Redford's film, Jeremiah Johnston.

Later in 1980, while working among the Caron Hill tribe people on the board of Myanmar

and Thailand, a life-turning event convinced try to leave public education and enter full-time

ministry.

...