September of 2022 will be here soon and we are trying to gear up for  A BIG EVENT  that combines the 75th Northwest District Convention AND the 75th Anniversary of Idaho-Oregon Buddhist Temple .  The theme for our event is " Reflecting on the Past; Looking to the Future . "   This is our poster announcing the event.  It has pictures of all our IOBT resident ministers from our first minister in the upper right to our current minister in the upper left.  Can you name them all?!? As we begin the planning stages of this event, we are filled with a sense of uncertainty.  There is so much we don't know about what the world will be like in 2022.  Will the corona virus continue to challenge the safety of large gatherings?  Will our conference need to be virtual, like the Oregon Buddhist Temple's convention was this year?  If we have a face-to-face conference, will the switch to a fall convention schedule (it used to be winter) affect how many ...

  The first thing that comes to mind for the month of October is Halloween, along with costumes, candy, and masks. It’s fun to walk along the store aisles stocked with Halloween costumes and candy and think about how you’d like to disguise yourself. However, my attention is always on the candy since I’m not much for getting into costume. I say that I don’t like to dress up in costume, but I can say that I have a number of masks that I wear. I’m sure that all of us have occasion to wear a mask or two. The masks I’m talking about are ones that we use in our everyday lives to present various faces to those around us.  Before retirement, I had a teacher mask. That’s the one that my students saw in the classroom.  It was important to remove that mask when I returned home so I wasn’t being a teacher with my spouse. I guess my teacher mask does come in handy during a golf round, though. I talk to my golf ball, saying, “Go, go, go!” or “Sit, sit!” If the ball behaves, th...