Category: Ted Grimsrud

Fatherly companionable silence (Theological memoir #1)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 3 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—June 24, 2019

It is a kind of truism that we tend to see God in ways that echo how we see our own fathers. For some reason I was thinking about that the other day. I would tend not to think that way, but I was wondering if this truism is at all true in my experience. I would start by saying that in my sense of my own life, my mother played a much larger role than my father in my theological formation.

However, as I thought about it, I actually do think there may be parallels between how I think of my dad and my view of God. Let me suggest a motif. When I think of my dad, one element that comes to mind is what we could call “companionable silence”—the tendency to be in one another’s presence without saying much of anything out loud, but finding it enjoyable to be together. Is that same dynamic part of how I think about God? It seems that maybe it is.

Father’s day reflections

Our recent celebration of Father’s Day kind of snuck up on me this year—I suppose in part because it has been 36 years since I last had to try to remember to offer gratitude to my father, Carl Grimsrud, on the day (he died in 1984). So it was early Monday, the morning after Father’s Day that during a period of wakefulness I spent some time remembering my dad.

I have pleasant memories. In fact, I can’t remember ever having sustained feelings of hurt, resentfulness, anger, fear, or disappointment in relation to him. That’s not to say I never did, just that the negative memories don’t remain. I do have some regrets—mainly that there is so much I wish I could have talked with him about. Also, I feel that I can understand him a lot better now and can actually imagine his inner life a bit, so it’s too bad I can’t engage him in light of that understanding. And I would like to know many things about his life that I never learned about. I never knew his father, but I can now imagine a bit of what my dad’s relationship with his father was like. I would have liked to know more about that, though. Continue reading “Fatherly companionable silence (Theological memoir #1)” →

The joys and dilemmas of road food (Looking West #3)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—February 18, 2019

For as long as I can remember, I have loved road maps. When I was maybe 13 I found an almost mint condition road map for Oregon from 1950. What was special about that map was that it was of Oregon before the Interstate Highway System. I was fascinated especially by Highway 99 before it was superseded by I-5. Quite a few of the little towns, especially in the southern part of the state, virtually disappeared after the new highway came—Divide, Curtain, Wilbur, Azalea, Wolf Creek….

I spent hours imagining road trips around 1950s Oregon. Then, when I got hold of a road atlas for the entire US, the imaginary trips expanded. Finally, in 1971 when I was 17 I was able to hit the road with my parents and younger sister. We drove all the way out to Virginia. We mostly followed the interstates, and I got to drive about half the time. One highlight, though, was when I drove through pre-I-64 West Virginia in the rain. That was a long but beautiful drive. Since we moved to Virginia in 1996, I learned that the road I drove back in 1971 still exists in much the form it had back then because I-64 traversed a much different path. US Route 60 (the “Midland Trail”) from Charleston to Lewisburg remains a long and beautiful drive.

Happily, when I married Kathleen I found a kindred spirit who also loves road trips. We got started pretty slowly since we didn’t have a car for the first ten years of our marriage (though we did borrow her parents’ car for a memorable trip from Arizona to Indiana to Saskatchewan and back in 1983). But once we got our new Honda in 1991 we took every chance we could get. We’ve driven back and forth across the country at least seven times, with quite a few shorter trips as well. We would have liked to have done more and hope still to take many trips. We’ve learned that we have extra fun when we avoid the interstates as much as possible (at least once we made it all the way from Harrisonburg, VA to Eugene, OR, without a single mile of interstate driving).

Road trips mean road food

I have to admit to having a less than sophisticated palette when it comes to meals while traveling. All too often, I have been content to settle for fast food chains or bags of snack food. Even so, from time to time we have randomly struck gold. Surely the most interstate- and fast food-intensive cross country trip came in 1998 when it was just our son Johan (then 16) and me. But we stumbled upon a terrific breakfast spot in the mountains west of Missoula, MT (it might have been Durango’s in Superior, MT). If the two of us were to repeat that drive, that’s the one place where we ate that we would return to, as Johan would never stand for fast food these days. Continue reading “The joys and dilemmas of road food (Looking West #3)” →

Looking West – Introducing a Blog Series

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 21 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—February 15, 2019

I was born in Eugene, Oregon, back in the mid-1950s and lived my first eighteen years in the tiny town of Elkton, Oregon, about an hour’s drive southwest of Eugene. After a couple of years going to college in Monmouth, Oregon, I ended up back in Eugene at the University of Oregon and except for a couple of excursions for graduate school spent the next twenty years there.

It’s now been almost twenty-five years since our family moved away from the West Coast, the last twenty-two being in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Part of my soul remains in Oregon, though. When I raise my eyes from my computer right now, I look west. I do that a lot, often for minutes at a time. Sometimes, I’m just taking a break. But often my mind moves to the years gone by and to the sensibilities of the world in which I grew up. I’m still that person in so many ways.

The lure of writing

For as long as I remember, I wanted to be a writer. I decided in middle school to major in journalism, thinking at the time of being a sportswriter. I got the degree but decided against the career path. My writing energies turned in a more, I guess I could call it, ecclesial and academic direction. As a pastor and college professor, I did write a lot, some of which was published. I imagined when I retired from teaching a couple of years ago that the writing would come easier and my productivity would ratchet up. So much for the best laid plans. It’s been kind of interesting for me in that the ideas have continued to bubble up as much as ever, but the actual effort to turn the ideas into something concrete has not been as easy to generate as I had hoped.

Continue reading “Looking West – Introducing a Blog Series” →