Month: December 2018

Everybody has a story. The rich and the poor. The small and the tall. Every human being contains within them the most wonderful and complex story anyone could ever hope to hear. The story of their life

The very few people who are great writers can express certain portions of their wonderful existence. But even the greatest can only show us a small snapshot of the whole. Think,… it takes you 40 hours to read a really long, interesting biography. That’s just one ordinary work week. It’s just an abbreviated compilation, albeit many I have read have been superb. Oh, that we could know more of the inner monologues of some of the great minds.

Used to be, back in the days of the great philosophers, their proteges would live with them and listen to hours and days of their teaching. Used to be people who wanted to learn a great skill would apprentice to a master for a decade or more in order to become a master themselves. Nowadays we have school, but it seems we get snippets of this and dribblings of that, and never too very much of anything specific, unless one studies to be a doctor, or a lawyer or a PHD. Even then, we don’t know the inner being. We don’t know the whole story.

I like to say, I have composed my greatest works in the bathtub, and have forgotten them as I have toweled off. The warm water does wonders for the blood circulation in the brain.

Be sure of one thing. Do not ever look down upon any other human being. Don’t think you are better than the poorest farmer working the meanest rice field in China. His story might be much greater than your own. In his eyes it certainly is…and perhaps in God’s eyes also.

My Daddy was 13 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He remembered listening to President Roosevelt on the tiny radio they had in their depression era house. He was like so many of America’s boys back then. He couldn’t wait to get old enough to go fight. He was so young when he enlisted in early 1945, that my Grandfather had to sign papers for him to join.

That war, and the subsequent Korean War turned the 17 year old boy into a hardened 22 year old man who had seen more death when he came home than anyone should ever see. Those memories, along with a tattoo which said “Mother” stayed with him the rest of his life.

I carry many of those memories he had with me. He chose to unburden himself of many of them for some reason….perhaps because he couldn’t bear for someone else not to know about the horrors of what he had seen, along with the camaraderie he had experienced and shared with his fellow sailors.

Because of that, I have always been staunchly against war.

I always will be

Today is a day to remember those who gave their lives at Pearl Harbor, and to hope against all hope there will never be another war like that, and that we can end those wars which are now being fought.

Every year without fail it comes. It’s that time of year again when my nerves become as jangled as old St. Nick’s jingle bells.

I can’t help it. I’ve tried, but to no avail. Every December 25th, right after all the wrapping paper has been torn off of all the presents (usually a TON of them…really…) I start saying to myself: “next year, I am not putting myself through the strain of trying to get so much…to do so much” but, when next year rolls around…..this year now, I start getting that feeling down in my gut that I am just not going to have enough dough, ray, mi to get what I feel like I need to get. Sometimes it get’s to the point where it downright depresses me.

I know when I was a kid, a lot of my best memories of Christmas were, or course at my Grandparent’s home. But, I guarantee you right now that they were a site simpler Christmases than now. One year that I remember really vividly was back in the mid 60’s I guess. We didn’t usually go up there until a few days before Christmas day. And guess what? Grandma didn’t have her Christmas stuff already out! That’s right; she didn’t get it out the day after Halloween like some of us do now. She didn’t have too much stuff anyway. One medium size cardboard box and that was it.

For some unknown reason that year, I went out with Grandma to cut a tree. Grandma was appointed to all that kind of stuff because of Grandpa’s arthritis in his knees. I can’t remember when he didn’t have it. Besides, he was the type who thought if Grandma needed a tree, then SHE should be the one to get it. We walked for a good piece, up and down some rolling hills. Finally, Grandma spotted a little pine tree. It was about a 4 footer, and had pretty, fully needled limbs. We took the saw and cut it down, and I drug it back to the house. Out came the cardboard box, and my brother and I, and Grandma put on the decorations. Everyone else just sort of hung back and watched. It was great fun! We had to be oh so careful with those glass ornaments, and even had to replace one or two of those big old bulbs on the one strand of red lights that she owned.

When we were through, and plugged in the lights, that little pine became transformed into a veritable “Times Square” beauty. I don’t think it would have won any contests of ANY kind. But for us, it was good. Very good.

My brother and I usually only had two or three presents each at Christmas. There was one “main” present, which usually never exceeded a twenty dollar price tag. Then there were a couple of smaller ones. Grandpa always delivered, with a stocking full of fruit. Oranges, apples, sliced orange candy, peppermint sticks (the soft ones) and all types of assorted nuts. I really looked forward to that stocking! Then, when we visited O’ Zion Baptist Church for their Christmas program, we ended up getting that wonderful brown paper bag full of the same kinds of goodies. The sliced orange candy was ALWAYS my favorite!

I don’t know when things changed, but somewhere along the line they certainly did. The stores all have gotten larger. Then of course we have had the development of Wal-Mart, the king of merchandising. With them around to push the small Mom and Pop businesses into bankruptcy, the way that Christmas has been perceived and promoted has changed tremendously. Every year it’s pushed up by a day or two. It used to be that it was right after Thanksgiving before you saw anything “Christmas” come out. Then, they moved it up a couple of weeks. They have kept moving and moving it until now the Trick or Treater’s are not off of the streets and into their beds, before the Christmas stuff comes out.

It’s not the same stuff either. I looked and looked the other day to try and find something that wasn’t made in China. I finally did. It was made in Viet Nam. I went through a JC Penney store the other day and looked at clothing and found made in Egypt, Viet Nam, Peru, Nicaragua, Singapore, South Africa, etc. You name it. The only thing I found in the whole store in 30 minutes of looking that was made in the U.S., was good old “Cannon” towels.

Well, back where I started. The feeling in the gut. It’s a little worse than usual this year. My situation is a little tenuous, and money is going to be really short. This MAY just be the year when I am forced to do what I think about every year and cut back. Besides, I am not really sure that I want to make China’s economy any better than it already is…or Viet Nam’s for that matter.

Maybe I should go out in the woods and cut down a little old pine tree, just for old time’s sake. (If the pulp wood guys haven’t gotten them all!)

I watched the launch of the Orion rocket this morning…and it brought back a little “thrill” in my soul which I thought was long gone.

How well I remember the early days of the “space race” between the United States and the USSR. The Russians beat us to the punch with “Sputnik” and the first man in outer space was Yuri Gagarin…back in April of 1961. Our first man in space was Alan Shepherd, who launched a month behind the Russians on May 5th of 1961. President Kennedy stood before America only 20 days later and said:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

And so we were off and running, and on July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. No other country has ever put a man there.

We have gone through many years since then, with other programs taking the place of “deep space” travel. The Space shuttle program…the space station.

All of that was exciting, but not something which would serve to inspire the soul.

Now with the Orion program, humanity seems to be pointed out towards the depth of space again. Away from the Earth, out into the unknown and unknowable. Out to perhaps one day have humanity set foot on another world.

I’m a lifelong reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I loved Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. I also liked less well known authors also, like Frank Herbert and later on Orson Scott Card. But it was mainly Heinlein who really put the reader out there amongst the stars. I really “grokked” his books.

This morning as Orion rose into the sky I thought of a quote I had read from author Norman Cousins, who became famous for “laughing” himself back to health:

To be able to rise from the earth;

to be able, from a station in outer space,

to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets;

to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible;

to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe—

all this enlarges the human horizon . . .

— Norman Cousins, 1973

Hopefully this morning, the United States, and perhaps the entire world again took its first baby step towards a hopeful ultimate destiny of reaching the stars and the planets surrounding them, and “going where no man has gone before.”

Wisdom comes with a price. Sometimes the price is age. Yes oh yes…age! Yet many well minded but weak bodied elderly are buried long before they die!

Sometimes the price is pain. Sometimes the price is sacrifice and sometimes it is study. Sometimes wisdom comes with love which requires no reciprocation, and the price is humility. Sometimes it comes with giving which requires no acknowledgement, and the price is anonymity.

Some people gain more wisdom quickly because they are open to the ideas and opinions of others. Wisdom is hard to find in a mind made up to the certainty of all things, at the expense of the independent thought of others. Wisdom is understanding, and understanding can only be determined by the compassion to consider even some things with which you may not agree. Wisdom is respect shown until respect is no longer given.

I wish I were wise enough to be a problem solver instead of an observer. One day I hope to be that problem solver.

I’m working hard on it. I’ve got the age part down pat, but that’s the irony isn’t it? That’s the Catch-22 of human life!

Some of the other qualities continue to escape me, and probably always will due to my nature. God help me, because some days I cannot help myself.

Once back in the summer of 1974, I spent the night right in the center of Spanish Harlem in New York City. The marimbas were playing all through the night, and people were singing, dancing and cooking, because it was a Saturday night. There were screams of joy, and a few of pain. I slept well that night, with the smell of the spicy food creeping into my dreams and making me famished for breakfast.

We had been to the site of the newly built, soon to be opened World Trade Center earlier that evening, and had been invited to go up part of the way in an elevator by a construction foreman. There were four of us young men: a long tall Texas boy, an African American former college football player from Kentucky, our bespectacled New York native Peace Corp member…in whose apartment we were staying, and me…the backwoods Georgia boy.

We rode the subways, visited the harbor where lady liberty stood, and got hot dogs at Coney Island. Nobody had a bad word to say to us, never disparaged our little mixed group, or even looked at us funny. We went about the town fearlessly, never anticipating any harm or trouble. Just three out of towner’s getting shown the ropes by the city boy.

Those lights, music and smells from that night still bubble to the top of my memory from time to time, and I wonder how the world has gotten so much more callous and hateful in forty short years. I’d like to go back in time once again and look out over the lights of Manhattan from those soon to be opened, ill fated towers and yell out to the people below to stay the same as they were.

Some days I wish I was like the Tin Man from the “Wizard of Oz” In the first place I would LOVE to have that oil can and be able apply some of that magical oil to a few of my joints, especially my knees! It would be great to have a new heart too.

The one I have is a little battered and beaten. Really though I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 18. Mostly because I cannot remember HOW I felt when I was 18, or 21, or 35…and so on. You get the idea.

If not the Tin Man, then my next choice would be the Cowardly Lion. Nowadays I feel a lot of times the courage I used to think I had, has abandoned me. I’m fearful of a lot of things to which I used to not give much thought. Lack of days, loss of health, or apprehension for my love ones, or perhaps it is just the way which life progresses. I used to think a lot of times about doing things “I wanted to do” …and I would always think “well I’ve got a lot of time left” What an idiot I was…am….Perhaps it’s because my brain just isn’t what it use to be?

In that case, maybe the Scarecrow?? I can certainly tell you that this getting old ain’t like being in Kansas anymore. I’ve been there once and it just isn’t the same.

An old man came up to me the other day while I was walking and asked: “Where can I find sanctuary?”

“What kind of sanctuary?” I answer back.

“You know, the place where everyone is safe from everything.” he said

I held my breath and thought, and then thought again. I turned around without saying a word and walked to my car and got in and cranked it. I locked the doors and the windows and drove out onto the highway and got it up to about 65 mph.

“This is about it for now…” I thought

But as far as the future, I don’t know….I really don’t know.

In all things there is change. Some for the good, some not. We humans change so many times during our lives. I only now realize how my grandparents…my parents, felt as they were getting older. It’s a definite change.

We start our lives in a full tub of “life”. We are in the very back corner of that full tub….that tub which is a different level for each of us. As soon as we are born, the plug is pulled and our life starts to drain. The closer we get to the “drain” the faster our life moves. The journey will…change…you.

I saw some of the ways it changed my loved ones as they raced towards the spiral at the end. I’m determined I will not change in some of those ways….and yet, much of what happens is out of my control.

So I suppose I will control what I can, and live with what I cannot control. What more can we do?

What more can we ask except for the chance to try and fulfill our best in life? It’s a true gift to be given the chance to even try. It’s a true gift to not be alone….to have people to love, and who love you back.

From 2013- On prayer.

The year was 1954, and it was the first time I can remember being at the “Old Zion” Baptist Church in Blue Ridge Georgia. I remember it for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I had apparently at that young age already admired my Grandfather’s ability to get up and wave his hands around while people sang. I had no concept really of what a song leader was. I may have even thought that people wouldn’t sing at all unless Grandpa waved his hands around. It was the magic of the waving of the hands which caused the singing. I wanted to be magic too. I don’t remember whether or not I asked permission to do it, but I do remember being up behind the pulpit in front of the choir with Grandpa and “magically” waving around my hands. People were singing for sure, but they were all also smiling. I didn’t know they were smiling at me. I just knew they were happy and I thought it was the magic of the waving hands that was making it so.

Throughout all the years I continued to visit that church during my trips to visit my Grandparents, there would always be someone I would meet out on the street in town, or at the lake, or at the church who would inevitably tell the story about how tickled they were at the little four year old boy who helped his Grandpa lead the music. At first I was a little bit embarrassed about it, but as the “legend” grew it kind of bolstered my confidence in my musical abilities a little to hear how well I sang that day. It was one of the things which kept me singing over the years, and led to me being a soloist, songwriter and the lover of music that I am. Without the positive reinforcement of these wonderful “country” people I might have gone with my natural tendency to shyness and never have been able to perform in front of a crowd. I really thank them for their kindness and generosity.

The other thing that came to mind during the recent service was the way which the prayer used to be conducted at O’ Zion as they called it.

In an “Old Country” Church, anytime anyone prays; everyone prays. If a preacher starts the prayer, it’s not long until all the other people join in praying out loud, each offering up their own separate praises, requests, and wishes to their creator.

When I was little I thought this cacophony was pure noise. But as I go older, it started to take on a different quality. After a minute or two of listening, all of the voices began to blend together into one. There was no longer the ability to pick out one single voice and listen to it, it was impossible.

However, far from being just noise the prayers started to take on a quality of purity and holiness that I have not often felt since. They were almost musical and lyrical in their quality and there was a cadence to them that spoke of a sincerity it is hard to find in today’s world. You knew that God was hearing this and that he could understand each and every one of these simultaneous pleadings. As the prayers began to stop one by one as the individuals finished their contrition’s, it got to the point where it would come down to three, two and then finally just one voice, the voice of the preacher who would always be the one to begin and end the prayers. It was almost miraculous how they stopped. Never, ever all at once, but in an orderly fashion perhaps in the order of the importance of what they had to say or to ask of God.

I sometimes felt like a wind was moving through that Church. Even during the heat of August you could feel it and it was cooling and comforting. During December it would warm the body and cause the soul to glow with love. Some would call it the Holy Spirit. I won’t dispute their word on that. I don’t know if Churches anywhere still pray that way today. I think sometimes people may think it’s rude to pray out loud at the same time as another person. I don’t think it’s rude at all. It sort of just makes sense because then it’s not just a bunch of individuals weakly projecting their unheard mental thoughts towards the heavens, but a bunch of strong worshipers openly telling God their needs.

It makes a difference.

I know it does.