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So this morning I was headed out to my regular downtown Saturday meeting. I grabbed a Cliff Bar off the top of the garage fridge and took my first bite. I heard that strange crunch of a foreign object in my mouth. Oh oh, there it was—a piece of tooth. As I was driving into town I made my call to Dr. Kate, my dentist for the past 24 years. “Come on in Mr. Pumphrey anytime before 12:30”. Believe it or not I was excited to see my dentist. One of the realities of the ‘aging process’ is that you…

I suspect those of you who have been following my “finding the extraordinary in the ordinary” over the past seven years, have picked up that I am a bit of Real Coloradan Snob. I proudly confess that I am!!! My brag list is pages long. It contains: I was at the very first Bronco game in 1960, and there is a creek in Blanco Basin named after my grandmother Opal. I remember driving up I-25 the week it was completely opened from Pueblo to Denver. There is nothing that will get my hubris going about my pedigree more than conversations…

Thirty six years ago I moved to Alamosa, CO which is in the center of the San Luis Valley. “The Valley” is the world’s largest Alpine Valley. I would call it a giant terrarium that sits one and one half miles up in altitude. It is 60 miles wide from East to West, and 120 miles long from North to South. Of the three routes into The Valley, you get to choose between Wolf Creek Pass from the west, Poncha Pass from the north and La Veta from the east. By far and away La Veta gets the most traffic,…

My usual meditative Friday afternoon lap swim was interrupted by the familiar sound of 200 kids on Thanksgiving break. The lap pool sits next to two pools that are designed for kid fun. The squeals, laughter, chatter and the general cacophony that is a universal sound filled the air. As long as my I was face down on my lapping the sounds were muffled, but when I touched the wall to turn around the relentless exuberance remained.My 42 hour-long laps were rewarded by time in the giant hot-tub, which even put me closer to the pool party. About every three…

O some of the great privileges of my life in pastoral ministry are the opportunities I have to be present at every transition in a person’s life. Today I was honored to preside at memorial service for a marvelous person. Judy was a woman of many gifts. At the core of her being Judy was a teacher.Her death was a result of her desire to live. She faced a surgery which carried with it a 50/50 outcome. From the start she was clear that she would rather die living than live dying. Without the surgery death lurked every day at…

Well, I have taken a three week ‘blog leave of absence’ but I am excited to be back. I was on a 10 day road trip to Texas to visit daughter Amy and the grandkids. Mattias, who is now a freshman at Tarelton State, invited us to his new home to see his place and go to jazz band practice. By Texas standards it is a middle sized University—with about 13,000 students. We drove to the campus and began our search for Mattias. We arranged a meeting spot and he came zipping on his electric skate board. He said, “The…

Maybe because my last name is Pumphrey which I admit is quirky, I have had an affinity for pumpkins since I could remember. Pumpkins are never called Humpkins but I have been called Mike Humphrey for more times than I can count. I am not sure what the allure is for the golden gourd, which used to come in only one color. Now orange is still the color of choice but there are now white, blue, warty (a hybrid cross with a diseased looking gourd) and sizes from almost micro pumpkins to the 1300 pounders.Simply stated by this “Autumn Lover”—pumpkins…

I am going to use my time with you this week to talk about the Viet Nam war. I am not a vet. I graduated in 1967 from HS and got a student deferment. When the lottery came in 1970 my number was 350. I was supposed to be born on June 28–which would have given me 57. There were 64 Viet Nam deaths from Pueblo, County —I knew two of them. But first to this movie which I saw yesterday.One of the joys of my life has been welcoming into my life my step- daughters 38 years ago. Stephanie…

When your home becomes the gathering place for every kind of bird that either lives or flies by the Front Range, lessons in inclusivity come with it. You soon learn that the invitation to the aviary species that goes out “FREE FOOD AT THE PUMPHREYS’ ” does not discriminate. MK has become the “Daddy” Bruce Randolph of Whisper Creek. “Daddy” was known in Denver for creating one of the largest Thanksgiving Day food distributions in the nation. This year will be the 57th annual, with a total number of those fed to exceed 10,000.When we first began this bird feeding…

In 1933 two seventh grade girls formed a friendship that would last their life times. One girl was from Clarinda, Iowa and the other from Basingstoke, England. It was purely a random draw that brought the two girls together. They began writing to each other, at a time when it took a letter at least a month to cross the ocean and find its destination. They continued to write through high school and college. One of the girls went to the University of Nebraska and the other to the equivalent of a teacher’s college in England. When the war hit…