Let’s start with a short list. The third dumbest thing I ever did in my life was to park my car on the rim of an Upper Peninsula dump near the town of Paradise on a Monday night in 1968, so that I could watch scrawny bears come out at dusk, paw through a mountain of trash bags and forage for garbage. The second dumbest thing I ever did in my life was to go back to the same rim, of the same dump, to watch the same bears paw through the same garbage on Tuesday night in Paradise.

This morning’s sermon is occasioned by a very special day in the life of First Church, Birmingham. We gather to celebrate a 50-year anniversary in our present sanctuary, having moved here from the corner of Maple and Henrietta in September of 1952.

It happened just a couple of weeks ago, on a Friday as I remember. But it’s happened so many times, it’s hard to separate one occasion from another. Kris and I were in a nice restaurant…. alone, for a change. Most of the meal behind us. Coffee and the check in front of us. When the waiter appeared before us and said: “Kindly allow me to tempt you with a little dessert.”

Eight and a half years ago, in the pregnant stillness that characterizes this sanctuary on Christmas Eve, I told you of my mother’s birth. It took place in New York City in July of 1915. She was the first child born to Agnes and Anton Meyers. Her last name should have been Markesich, but my grandfather changed his name at Ellis Island, figuring that “Meyers” sounded less foreign than “Markesich.”