Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! The drinking fountain at the end of the hall. That’s what I dreamed about when I was six. I had come down with some mysterious illness with a high fever and I couldn’t drink or keep anything down and it went on for weeks and weeks. I had to stay home from school. Doctors didn’t know what to do. All I wanted to do was to drink cold water coming from the drinking fountain at church next door. It was tall and gray with the name “Oasis” on it. I needed a footstool to reach it. The drinking fountain was at the far end of the hall, past my dad’s office and Sunday school classrooms where I first learned about Jesus and sang hokey pokey songs like “You put your right foot in, you take your right foot out . . . then you shake it all about . . . that’s what it’s all about!” What it was all about was I was thirsty and dreamed of drinking again from the fountain. It was the only one anywhere that had cool water.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! A stained-glass window with my name at the bottom. My grandpa held several jobs in Wheeling, West Virginia, and one was supervisor of the family coal mine. He later suffered from Black Lung Disease because he had insisted on going down into the mine with the miners. The youngest of three sons in a German family (he was born Heinrich Wilhelm which filtered down to me as Harry William) he later had the opportunity of a lifetime to take a great job in Cleveland in the shipping industry working with the Steinbrenner family (i.e., George of Yankee owner fame) but his older brothers convinced him to stay in Wheeling to take care of their ailing mother. As the younger brother, he did.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places: Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ! Doubt upon the mountain. I would have thought after spending 28 chapters with Jesus, following him, sharing meals, witnessing his healings, hearing his sermons, and breathing in the good news every day the eleven disciples would be on board. Not so. Matthew 28:16-20, the final words of the gospel, says they worshiped him, “but some doubted.” Why doubt then of all times? Perhaps they doubted Jesus came back after he was crucified. Did they actually see him, as many maintained, or was it the spirit of the Risen Christ? Or were they just alone on the mountain facing an uncertain future?