Norris Burkes

Like most pastors, I send out a weekly email to church members and friends previewing my sermon topic and promoting upcoming events.

After the November election, I received this email from a person I’ll call Joe Christian:

“Please remove us from your e-mail list. I wish to get as far away as possible from the poison in this country that is evangelical Christianity.”

Last month, before I was to speak at the Sacramento Rotary Club, my wife Becky asked, “Do you think you’ll ever fully retire?”

I answered, “Definitely! Mostly. Maybe?”

She asks because she knows I sometimes struggle to write this column, travel for speaking engagements and pastor a small church.
It’s all rewarding, but a lot of work.

Sometimes, I feel like the man who had enough with life’s difficulties and went to live in a monastery.

Once in the monastery, the man was instructed to speak only two words per year. 

After his first year, he met with his abbot. His two words, “Bed hard.”  

After his second year, he told his abbot, “Food bad.” 

Finally, on his third year, he came to the abbot’s office and said, “I quit.” 

I was 28 when the Air Force sent me to Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, to complete Chaplain Basic Training.

For three weeks, I was elbow-to-elbow with other young chaplain wannabes.

On my left sat the first of many chaplain priest friends. Yet from the beginning, Father Frank found me disturbing on two levels.

This summer I flew to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to sharpen 1,492 pencils. A long trip for such a chore.

But readers of this column know I’m involved with the Chispa Project, which outfits libraries for children in Honduras. My daughter Sara Brakhane directs the project.

Those sharpened pencils were needed for Pedro Nufio Elementary School, home of Chispa’s 88th Honduran library.