The title of this post comes courtesy of my late father. It was the name he gave to a concoction he sometimes put together for our lunch, when Mom’s job had turned him into a sort of farmer/househusband. He’d clear all the leftovers out of the refrigerator, stir them together in a frying pan, and call it Slumgullion.

Now that I’ve typed it, it occurs to me that I’ve never written that word down in my life before.

Anyway, the idea is that this is a disjointed post, composed of random events out of a random day.

I note with pride that my next door neighbor is grilling his supper out by the garage right now. After the below zero temperatures we’ve endured this week, today’s 20° high felt positively tropical, and he is responding in a manner typical of the bulldog (or bull seal) Minnesota breed.

I’d do the same thing myself, only I don’t happen to own a grill. Otherwise I’d be out there just like him. You betcha.



We had our Christmas potluck at the Bible school and seminary today. As always, one of the highlights was the Rømmegrøt. “Rømmegrøt” (pronounced “Rømmegrøt”) is Norwegian for “cream porridge,” which is what it is. It’s rather bland, like most Norwegian foods. Generally consumed with large quantities of melted butter and cinnamon. In fact, as I observed to my dazzled table companions, “Most beloved Norwegian foods are primarily butter delivery systems.”

The former president of our church body gave a short message, in which related the following story, probably old hat to everybody but me:

There was a father who made it a point to tell his children frequently how much he loved them.

One day he brought in a contractor to pour a new cement driveway. When they were finished, his little son started stomping around in it, writing his name, putting in his handprints, and generally making a mess. The father gave him a spanking (this was long ago, when spanking wasn’t yet a crime against humanity).

The little boy walked away crying. “You said you loved me!” he wailed.

“I love you in the abstract,” said the father. “Not in the concrete.”

As I conversed with him later, he told me the following story, which won’t be as funny to you as it is to me.

When I was a kid, growing up in a Norwegian Lutheran church, we had two hymn books. One was The Lutheran Hymnary, a book with a black cover that contained mostly hymns of German derivation. The other was The Concordia Hymnal, a navy blue-covered book largely containing translations of Norwegian hymns.

A pastor of our church body tells a story that occurred while he was still pastoring in one of the bigger, mainline Lutheran churches which had swallowed up several Norwegian splinter bodies.

His congregation was devoted to the old Lutheran Hymnary, “the black hymnal.” Long after a more modern, synod-approved hymnal had become available, they continued to use that beloved volume. But their copies were getting old. They’d already had them rebound three times.

So he called his bishop on the phone and asked him, “Do you know of any church that might have a supply of the old black hymnal lying around, that they want to get rid of?”

And the bishop replied, “I wouldn’t know about that. But why don’t you call Bishop _______ in Chicago? He might know. He’s black.”

Merger humor. You gotta love it. Or respect it. Or listen politely, anyway.