Thursday, February 26, 2026
(Part 5 of …)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Triangle
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
for you have heard the words of my mouth;
in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise.
I will worship at your holy temple
and give thanks to your name.
The LORD will complete what he has done for me;
your kindness, O LORD, endures forever.
Do not forsake the work of your hands.
Bob’s a preacher, pastor and musician at Triangle Family Church in Durham. He’s written three books, one titled Sermons of a Reluctant Preacher. I didn’t get to be with him at Triangle Family Church for a service, but when I watch on YouTube, there I see my friend, Bobby Huneycutt the preacher, not seeming reluctant at all. He loves his music, and his Tarheels, and his church family, and more than anything, he loves Ryoko and the children they have raised over the years. We met 50 years ago, when he was Bobby from Morehead City and I was Davy from a dairy farm in Lincoln, Illinois.
Bob drove his truck to California hoping to surf and play blues guitar, and he lived in that truck for awhile. I hitchhiked to San Francisco to check out classes in a deep massage method known as the Alexander Technique. Unexpectedly, our ragamuffin lives were upended by Rev. Moon’s Creative Community Project, which gave us both opportunity to fight through our habits and regrets back toward God. As you might expect, this was not easy for either of us.
Or for anyone. But the local leaders put together music, exercise, shared meals, fellowship and fasting, along with fascinating lectures that wove threads of theology, philosophy, religion, and history into a blanket that in time we both threw over our shoulders. For Bob, that blanket has kept him warm ever since. For both of us, it protected us as we left old lifestyles that really were pretty selfish. For me it held me together while I turned back toward Jesus. Under that blanket, a safe tent in the dark night, we both keep learning to wait for God, and know that He’s right here.
The time we spent together in California, when we both more often felt like reborn babies than grown up men, allowed God to build a foundation for Bob and me, which now 50 years later allows us to start right up again in Durham. We both wondered if that would happen. We both wanted it to happen. And we both think it did. The differences in our culture and oikos fall away. That song? … “Friends are friends forever, when the Lord’s the Lord of them.” We can stake our claim on that truth.
Bob’s ten years of hard work on Church mobile fundraising teams (MFT) led into ten years learning the art of making sushi, in Nashville and then in Durham. This quiet blues singer shares those stories in his books Blue Eternal Sky and Leaving Shadowland. Both of us began college studying journalism. And today both of us write, trying both to disclose our weaknesses and celebrate our strengths, doing what we can to BE. Looking up toward God.
Bob kind-of retired a few years ago, although not from pastoring Triangle Family Church. His bookshelf is full of studies and texts of Rev. Moon’s Divine Principle and the Bible. Ryoko and their daughter continue working at Akai Hana, the Durham sushi restaurant they own. “This has always been a family before it is a business,” Bob said about Akai Hana.
The restaurant’s Japanese name means “red flower.” A painting commissioned to celebrate the restaurant watches over us while we eat the beautiful, colorful sushi Bob and Ryoko’s friends have made for us. The restaurant’s sushi chef painted two of the artworks on the walls. He and Bob spend a few hours each week playing with two other guys who love the blues.
Back at home, deep in their not-quite-private woods not far from the Duke campus, we played Marvel Splendor, a card game Bob and Ryoko play every night. Bob shepherded me through my first try at the game, which generally lasts 30 minutes or so. Bob helped me count my points (18 points wins the game), and then quietly counted Ryoko’s. “You’ve got 19. You are the winner, my dear.”
“Really?” Ryoko jumped up and laughed from way deep down inside. And all of us felt happy.
Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
(Esther C (in the Deutero-Canonical books), Psalm 138, Psalm 51, Matthew 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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