Author: thegraymaniac

A very old man was taking a walk down a secluded beach in South Florida.  It was very early in the morning, and there was nobody else out yet.  So, the old man had the beach to himself.

It had been a very stormy night, but the sun was breaking bright and brilliant over the Eastern horizon on this following morning.  So, the old man was happy.  He was lost in his musings about the past, his past, and was humming quietly to himself as he ambled along scuffing his feet across the sand.  He thought back to all the dreams of his youth, and how they hadn’t quite worked out. Still, things had been pretty good.

He looked down towards the beach where the surf was coming in and in the breaking, foamy water spied a large dark looking box.   Curious, he shuffled down towards it, taking his small little old man steps.  It appeared to be some type of chest.  The wood was dark and worn smooth, apparently from being in the water so long.  Sort of like driftwood.  It had bright golden bands of some type of metal around it, and the lid of it was slightly cracked as if it was about to pop open.  Excited now, the old man pulled it in further away from the water.

“This is really something” he thought

Sitting down next to the little chest, which was about the size of a loaf of bread, he pulled as hard as he could on the top.  The little crack became larger and the lid popped open, making him fall back into the soft sand.  Peering inside, hoping to see gold or silver he instead saw what appeared to him to be a snow globe.  “Well, if that don’t beat all” he thought “It is close to Christmas though” he muttered.

He reached in and grabbed the little globe and realized suddenly that it was very heavy for its size.  “Dang” he swore.   He hefted it out and held it in both hands, and peered down at it.  A close examination revealed that what he at first thought was a snow globe actually now looked more like quartz, a smoky white type of stone of some kind set into a beautiful piece of wood like none he had ever seen before.

As he looked into the crystal, the smoky color begin to become clearer and clearer until it was like glass.  The weight of the ball now seemed so heavy he could no longer hold it, and it was becoming quite hot.  He sat it down into the sand and peered closely into it.  Suddenly the old man was jolted like he had been hit by lightning.  Images began to appear inside the crystal.  They were familiar places, but didn’t look exactly right to him.

“What the hell is this?” he asked to himself, suddenly becoming alarmed.

 

A voice inside his head answered, “It’s the future”  “I give the gift of sight into the future.”

It was a soft feminine voice, like the type one would ascribe to coming from an Angel.

“What are you” he said

“I am the future” the voice whispered “If you wish to see; you have only to say so.”

“Well sure.” The old man answered “I’m not gonna be around much longer anyhow I want to see what happens”

“Are you sure?”  The sweet voice echoed back.

“Yes, please show me.” He said

The inside of the crystal began to swim before the old man’s eyes, and images started to flow into the ball, scenes from which he could not turn away.  “Definitely not a snow globe.” He thought.  The images started flowing by, at first like a lazy little creek, but soon coming in a torrent like a raging river.  The old man could not turn away.

He wanted to run, but he couldn’t move.  He wanted to yell, and then to scream but he couldn’t even whisper.  “So this is really what is going to happen?”  He thought with horror and excitement mingled together all at once.  His mind could barely comprehend what he was witnessing.

“Yes” said the voice, which had changed to the hoarse croak of an ancient crone….

It took all of the old man’s strength to pick up the crystal ball and place it back into the little chest.  It seemed to burn him like the coldest ice and the hottest flame at the same time.  As he shoved it back into the chest and slammed the little lid shut, he felt a fluttering deep in his chest.

“Oh no.” he said

He gently sunk down into the sand, as his heart slowed to a stop and quit beating.  He didn’t feel any pain, just a sense of longing.

As the tide continued to come in, the water moved under the little chest like a finger and swirled under the sand until the chest started to move, and then float.  It floated out of the old man’s already cold fingers and washed back out into the ocean.

It rode back out onto the waves almost ready to ride on the ocean currents, until a small child, scarcely over the age of five ambled down towards the surf. The chest changed direction and started floating slowly towards the child.

Perhaps someone younger could bear to see the mysteries seething inside.  Perhaps not.

 

 

 

 

“When you’re weary, feeling small….when tears are in your eyes, I’ll dry them all.” “I’m on your side…”

It’s important to remember, who’s on your side. Because in this life you must choose a side.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters, by Simon and Garfunkel was the first song I heard on the radio back in 1970 as I was driving home from the hospital after my daughter died. It has both haunted and encouraged me for well over forty years now, most especially that one line: “when you need a friend, I’m sailing right behind,”

…. and I have these days when I have done nothing to be a friend, or very little, but in some odd coincidence I hear this song on the radio driving home from dropping off a very wonderful little baby, and I’m encouraged that tomorrow will be a good day.

Remember I’m on your side, and I’m sailing right behind.

Don’t underestimate the gift of the light with which we were created.

It can be bright enough to totally illuminate our lives, and the lives of others with whom we come in touch, if we allow it to shine.

It is the most powerful tool against the darkness which attempts to repress our happiness and balance.

It is the one thing which connects not only humanity, but all life.

We are all star dust, combined intricately with….

The light of love.

The first cup of coffee in the morning is a wonder. I may have one more during the day…but the aroma, the warmth, the taste of that first cup, is marvelous. Such a simple thing.

On days when the Grandbabies run in and down our long hallway, hollering “papa..nana” my heart soars with my love for them, for all my family. For my friends. Such a simple thing.

I love reading a good book, watching a good movie. I like cornbread, beans, and taters which I cook myself, better than 99% of restaurant food. I like clothes made out of cotton. Simple things.

I like looking at the bright stars on a dark, dark night. Sometimes I go to the local cemetery when there is a meteor shower, cause it’s the darkest place in town and the people there don’t ever ask for a thing but respect.

I love all kinds music, and when I’m not playing it I have my own radio “in my head” I can’t ever remember a time when there was no music. I cut my teeth on Patsy Cline and Hank Williams. Simple stuff

I love a walk in the spring and the fall around my tiny little town. The familiar houses, the streets..they are comforting. It’s home, even with it’s warts and scars I still love it…I love the smell of the cloth being finished at the cotton mill, and the grassy, oniony smell from the first spring cutting off the little league fields. The same ones I played on are still there, the old dam and the spillway still the same. I miss the old school, and how I used to go around the grammar school during the school year with a pocket full of change and hide it in the trees, and under rocks, and in the bushes where the little first through third graders would find it.

I love sunsets and sunrises and funny shaped clouds. All simple things, all mostly free things as the majority of good things are in life. I guess what I’m trying to say, is simply…I love life. I hope you do too.

I was just listening to Frank Sinatra the other night.  That man could really sing.

I never really listened to Sinatra a lot before September of 1968.  Before that time, I was an Elvis fan first.  I like some other rockers too.  Jerry Lee Lewis was another.  I liked a lot of the other crooners besides Sinatra earlier on in my life too.  Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Perry Como and Andy Williams.  I sang “White Christmas” every year at school from 1964 through 1967.  I could do “Everybody Loves Somebody” and sound just like Dean Martin, I’ll guarantee it.  Paula and I went on our one and only cruise back in 2011, and I went to nightly Karaoke on the ship and sang that song.  The rest of the cruise, I had people coming up to me in the dining room and saying….”There’s ol’ Dino”  Yep, I do a pretty good imitation of him.

But Sinatra?  I could never imitate him very well.  I didn’t do it in High School because I had never listened to one of his albums before.  Oh, I had heard him on the radio of course.  “Strangers in the Night” was a hit song during 1966.  It hit number 1 on the pop charts that year.  His daughter also had a hit with “These Boots Were Made for Walking” in 1966.  It seems that that was a good year for the Sinatra family.  But, Sinatra’s album “Watertown” which came out in 1970, only sold 30,000 copies.  He just sort of retired from recording new stuff after that.  He got dissatisfied with the way his voice sounded and although he performed in Vegas, things were never the same.

I only discovered how much I loved his earlier music in that early fall of 1968.  That’s the month I started to college at West Georgia College in Carrollton.  West Georgia still had a real “small college” feel back in 1968, and I’m glad I went there.  Another reason I’m glad I went was because that’s where I met my future wife.  But…back to Sinatra.

My “assigned” roommate in Strozier hall at West Georgia College, who’s name was also Larry, was a real record collector.  He brought his record collection, and his record player to college with him.  I didn’t have squat besides the clothes in my closet, so I asked Larry if I could listen to his record player while he was gone to class. He told me it was ok, but “You might not like my taste in music” At first, I had to agree.

There were no rock and roll records in his collection.  No Elvis, no Beatles, no Rolling Stones.  There was Sinatra, Nancy Wilson and Deon Warwick.  There was about 6 Sinatra records, and his record player held five albums at a time, so I took Sinatra.  It was a good choice.

The albums were all from the fifties and early sixties…up to that 1966 album from which “Strangers in the Night” came.  There was Cole Porter songs like “I’ve Got You Under my Skin” and there were songs from movies like “Three Coins in the Fountain”  There were the greats: “Come Fly with Me”, “The Days of Wine and Roses”, “Fly Me to the Moon”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “That’s Life”, and my favorite of all of his songs “It Was a Very Good Year”.  My next to favorite was the oft recorded Paul Anka song “My Way”  I think he is best remembered for that song, but I liked “very good year” the best.

It hit me the first time I heard it, and it still does the same to me after all of these years.  He had a great hit song in the seventies with “New York, New York,” too.  That was in 1979, and Sinatra is remembered best for that song, even though it came from a Liza Minelli movie.

All of those records that my roommate brought with him to college changed my tastes in music.  I went on to listen to just about every album he had brought.  I got to like Patti Page and Doris Day.  I listened to Rosemary Clooney and Eartha Kitt.  I took the measure of Billy Vaughn and Burt Bacharach.  If not for those albums, I’d have never have loved music as completely as I do, and would have missed a lot of good moments in the history of music.

Larry and I were roommates for that entire year, and after that year I married my permanent roommate!

I do still love Sinatra though, and I’m glad for Youtube so I can dial up the old hits from time to time.  I grew to even like Nancy Wilson too.  Larry said I would…..

I try to watch sunrises and sunsets as much as possible.  I frequently make photographs of them, as any of you who are my friends well know.  I love the days that I live on this big blue marble.   I certainly enjoy everyone of them, and will try and continue to do so.

But, I am fortunate.  So much more so than the vast majority of other human beings on the face of the earth.

All around us there is hunger, and homelessness.  Even in our fortunate country there is plenty of it out there.  If I could end it all with a snap of my fingers I would do it.  If I had the money to end it all…..would I do it?  Or, would I say: “I earned this money, and it’s mine” even if I didn’t need a fraction of it?

If I was living in luxury, would I have the same attitude as I do now, as a person who lives paycheck to paycheck, and always has?

It’s an interesting question to ask yourself.  If you could do magic, like the finger snapping thing, and end all poverty, hunger, sickness, homelessness and disease in the world it’d be easy to make that choice, wouldn’t it?  But, if we were billionaires with lots of real money, would we try and do the same things?

I think that the answer to that question is pretty much self evident.

I was thinking the other day about the New Year, and wrote a little piece about it. I started trying to recall the first New Year’s celebration that is logged away somewhere on the hard drive of my brain. I can’t really remember a specific one. Isn’t that strange?

I remember early Christmases. Oh how well I remember that Red Wagon that Santa brought me back in 1954 when I was only 4 years old. We lived in a little old Mill house up on Sixth Street in the proverbial “Mill” town of Trion, Georgia. It was the last Christmas in that house before we moved to a new house that my Dad was having built in another part of town. I guess things were not too bad that year. If we could afford that wagon, and the set of Hopalong Cassidy guns and the outfit that I also got AND move later on to a new house then things were going pretty good. We lived in that new house for eight years until Dad could no longer afford the payments, and we had to move out, back to “Hot Town” just two streets over from where we were celebrating in 1954.

There were a lot of good Christmas memories at the “new” house. My brother was born while we were there. There were “cut down” cedar trees every year in front of the big “picture” window that my Mom was so fond of. There was the year of the Lionel train; there was a year in which I got a telescope to view the Universe and its vastness. I never appreciated the years there as I should have. There was the one wonderful Christmas back in 1962 I believe it was, when it snowed. One of the VERY few times that “heat miser” let it snow in Southland! How beautiful it was to come out and look through that big window that morning and see the snow falling in huge feathery flakes, and the snow already piled up high in wind drifts against the trees. Santa that was the year you were supposed to bring a sled, but we had to make do with cardboard boxes cut up into home made flexible flyers! And oh we did. We slid down the hill at the cemetery across the road from my house until the dead people there must have thought Jesus was coming back, what with all the commotion. I don’t even have a clue what I got that year for Christmas. I got a WHITE Christmas. That was enough. That was sufficient in itself to provide memories to last the rest of my life. Surely any toy would never have been impressive enough to do the same.

Oh yes, Christmas memories are not hard to come by. But New Years? That’s another thing altogether. My folks never made such a big deal about it. Some of the time we were at my Grandparent’s house and went to bed with the chickens even on New Year’s Eve. Even when we were at our own house, I can’t remember any New Year’s parties, or any celebrations that were held in anticipation of a New Year. It just came. The years just stacked up, and you greeted them with the same anticipation that you did any other day.

After my wife and I married in 1969, we started marking the New Year.
I think that every year now since we have been married, my wife and I have done something to mark the New Year. We let the kids sit up and watch Dick Clark blather on, and watch the big ball drop at Time’s Square and the “Peach” drop in Atlanta. I can’t remember if there were any years that we were not together, or not many really that the whole family hasn’t been around. Just the last few years, I think we have gone our separate ways to some extent. Most of the time now, we go to my daughter’s house and play board games and then do the count down. Backwards from ten to zero and ZOOM, in comes another year.

It’s all pretty humbling when you step back and think about it though. This year we are marking as 2014 A.D. (At least those of us who use the Julian calendar. The Chinese and the Muslims both have a different “New Year” then we do. This year the Chinese New Year starting on January 14 and will be the year of the Horse, very appropriate. The Muslims use the Hijah Calendar which was created by Mohammed) Most people make the mistake of thinking that A.D. stands for “After Death” when it’s Anno Domini or “In the Year of our Lord” It was “invented” if you will in/about the year 525 by Dionysius Exiguus to figure out when Easter was. But, I digress. Think of 2000 and 14 of those babies! Just think of all the monumental things that have happened in those 2014 years. Break out your history books sometime and thumb through them. There are some Earth Shaking years wrapped up in there. Some years that changed human history forever. Some of them are ones that are a no brainer. 1945, the year that the first Atomic bomb was used. That one changed the world forever didn’t it? There are some that are more obscure, but nonetheless just as important. How about when Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis on the door of Wittenberg Church on October 31, 1517? Although Luther didn’t know it at the time, that year broke the hold of the Catholic Church on Christianity. Just think how much that change our world.

How about September 11, 2001 as a recent year that changed history? It definitely has, and will continue to, as we move through all of the ramifications and repercussions of moving through this Brave New World we are now entering into.

Think about all the new technology that has developed since World War II. For some reason, that particular War more than any other has seemed to be a catalyst for the development of Science in leaps and bounds. It’s amazing what has taken place, but it’s scary at the same time. I just heard a man talking on the Radio not more than a week ago saying how one day soon all humans would have special chips inserted into their hands so that they would not have to have cards, or even any other forms of identification in order to buy things, or go places. No more credit cards, or passports just that little non-removable chip to tell the world who you are. I am glad I am about past the point where I might be around when they institute THAT little bit of Science one of these New Years. I am afraid that they would just have to skip me on that one.

I have also heard where more and more people are now using biotechnology which identifies human embryos outside of the human body for things such as disease, genetic malformations, and most prevalently for the sex of the baby. Pretty soon it’s going to get down to the parents being able to say: “I want a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes, who has an I.Q. of at least 150, and we are going to want him to be a pianist” The new Eugenics, and yes it will probably get to that point one day if whoever decides on this type of thing (and who will that be?) decides to let it get that far. If it’s our Federal Government, then God help us, it will certainly be a mess. It could already be in use as far as we know in some countries out there. Think about it. There are a lot of countries who don’t even have the constraints of Ethics which we have in the U.S. (And that’s saying something right there, buddy!)

Now there is also word of a new Computer program being developed which can store everything which is on a human beings brain on the hard drive of the computer. It can’t store the emotion, or the spirit of the person. Just what they knew or know. Think about the uses for that, when a program can be bought which you can store Grandma or Grandpa’s knowledge on. Maybe they will fix it up where you can put a 3-D likeness of the person on there, and actually program it where it can seem like you are communicating with them. “Hey Grandma, do you remember back when I was 13, and fell down your steps and broke my arm?” “Of course I do Honey” it answers back. “That was really a bad day”

Scary.

They say what the mind of man can conceive can be turned into reality. And to think I have been reading Stephen King for years. Oh boy.

That’s all pessimism though, and maybe things will actually turn out for the good in some of the upcoming New Years. They are coming up with treatments and cures for more diseases every day, and doing things to relieve the suffering of humanity. Yes, believe it or not there ARE still some humans out there who work on things to benefit others without the thoughts of greed or manipulation guiding them. (Not enough of them though!)

I heard where there are Cancer treatments being developed through genetic research, where people’s own cells (I believe stem cells if I am not mistaken) can be used to attach a killer “trigger” to, which only affects cancer cells, so that when the cells are introduced into the body they kill ONLY the Cancer and leave everything else healthy. What a good year it will be when they can use that one.

That type of genetic research, where genes are modified to take care of human problems and suffering can be a good outcome. What if they could eliminate suffering of all kinds? Some people would think that a world without suffering would be wonderful. But I wonder. I wonder if ALL suffering should be eliminated. Seems like that would take away a little bit of what it means to be human, but that’s just my opinion.

Then there are those that will tell you that all of this must be leading up to the “end of time” Yes, that’s right, the end of all the “New Years.” In Christian beliefs Christ himself is going to return again in one of these New Years for those who are his children. According to many Christians, the signs are out there for all to see. The diverse Earthquakes and disasters (remember the tsunami several years ago on the day after Christmas?) the continuing problems in the Middle East, especially between Jews and Arabs. The widespread and very dangerous spread of new antibiotic resistant disease. The famine which affects more of the world every day. The lack of Love in people for other people. Matthew chapter 24 chronicles what Jesus had to say about it. Read it and decide for yourself. A lot of people already have.

I am not sure of everything that is happening, I will tell you that for certain. At my age, a lot of the new technology is fascinating, but it’s like a double edged sword. My religious indoctrination says the signs are out there, but the scientist in me is in conflict with the theologian. The reader of the written word in me, the seeker of knowledge, wants to keep abreast of everything that’s going on in the world, but sometimes over analyzes or doesn’t understand the significance of what is being input and processed by my teeny brain. The realist in me knows that things can’t stay the same, but the dreamer wants things to stay like they are, or go back to the way they were!

Remembering New Years? Do you see know why it’s hard to do. When you get stuff like this in your head, then it sometimes just starts to run together like syrup across pancakes.

I am glad it’s almost 2014, and I am super glad I have made it this far and if nothing happens I will be watching the ball drop in times square at midnight December 31, and I will be hoping that this year may just be THE year when everything starts to come together for the good of everyone in the world. Happy New Year to everyone in The Year of Our Lord 2014.

As I have said before, we spent a half of a school year in 1960 at my Grandparent’s house in Blue Ridge because Mom was sick. I was enrolled in school there for almost half the year, which including the Christmas vacation for that year.
My Grandparent’s residence was a desolate place back then. It was the very last occupied house on Snake nation road at that time. A rough, ragged, rocky, muddy when it rained, and creek crossed road which took about 30 minutes to traverse from the turn off at the cemetery, to their modest gray wooded little two story house. Grandpa’s eight to ten bee hives stood like the sentinels of Stonehenge out in front of their house on top of huge flat rocks Grandpa had dragged up there on a wood sledge. I can imagine that their construction probably resembled in miniature that wonder of the English countryside, because the hill leading from the road to Grandpa’s house was extremely steep. A lot of times when it was wet and muddy my Dad had to get a strong running start from Snake nation road before he turned into Grandpa’s driveway and then as soon as he turned left, he had to gun the gas as hard as possible to try and make the curve up the hill to the tiny parking space in front of the house. Sometimes we just didn’t make it. The tires might have been a little too worn, or the mud a little too thick. We would end up having to park down below the beehives out in the high grass and grab our suitcases and trek up the hill, trying our best not to slip and fall flat on our faces.
But, this year my Mom, my brother and I were already there, and it was for Daddy alone we waited on the day before Christmas Eve. I heard his car first and went and stood out front, next to the porch. He came around the curve which was just in eyesight across the road from “Uncle Lark’s driveway. Lark Davenport’s was my Grandpa’s Uncle…his Mother’s brother and his farm sat across Long Branch creek from Grandpa’s house. The only way to get over there in a hurry was to walk the narrow little half log bridges that the two men had laid down across the fast running little creek in order to access each other’s house if the need arose. It rarely ever arose, but the logs were there just in case.
Daddy drove up the driveway and into Grandpa’s little parking space without any problems that day since it was dry…cold, but dry. It seemed like it was always cold in Blue Ridge that time of the year not matter what was happening elsewhere. We were in the “mountains” of Georgia…..the foothills of the Smokey Mountains which lay not too many miles away across the border into North Carolina.
I hugged my Dad, and my brother ran up to him and Daddy picked him up. Mom didn’t have much to say…things still very unsettled between them.
Grandma and I had been the ones to get the little Christmas tree a few days earlier. We had gone out into the woods and hiked around for quite a while, and found just a little old pine tree that looked nice. Grandma cut it down with the hatchet she had brought with her, and we took it back and Mike and I helped her decorate it. It was about the size of Charlie Brown’s little tree and Grandma had put it up on a table so that the lights could be seen…that one string of lights that she owned. There were maybe a dozen ornaments on it. It looked wonderful to me…as beautiful as any Christmas tree before or since. Grandma also hung our stocking from their mantle, on the far ends away from where the vent from the stove was. There were candy canes hanging around also, giving the old house a festive and fabulous look.
We always slept upstairs in the old house. Since the only source of heat in the house was a potbellied wood stove in the “living room” downstairs. During the cold Christmas weather we slept under 5 or six quilts upstairs. It was one of those situations where when you got warm, you didn’t move out of your “spot” If you moved over a foot, you would have to warm up that spot all over again. Most of the time you could see the fog from your breath, if you had your head out from under the covers. This was how we bedded down on Christmas Eve that year.
I never slept well on Christmas Eve. I always listened for Santa, but never quite heard him. Grandpa would always go “ho, ho ho” a couple of times, but I always knew it was him. He wasn’t fooling me. I heard the trunk of a car slam shut after we had been in bed an hour or so….then drifted off into a light sleep.
I heard Grandpa stoking up the potbelly stove about 5 am, and I waited the required 30 minutes or so until I knew the downstairs would be warm before I woke my brother up and we went running downstairs. All the grownups were already up and having coffee. Grandma already had biscuits in the oven, and we know that a delicious breakfast would soon be coming. Under the tree there were presents! In our stockings there was a plethora of oranges, apples, nuts, peppermint and other great hard candies. We could have our stockings but had to wait until after breakfast to tear into our presents.
We had three presents a piece from Santa, and one from Grandma and Grandpa. Four presents. In this day and age that would seem skimpy, but back then it seemed like more than enough. We place so much emphasis now on the number of gifts given, instead of the number of gifts given in love. There’s a big difference. I despise the TV commercial they have on nowadays with a woman called the “Gifter” whose only goal is to out give everyone else. That tells you where our society has gone.
This was the year I got a telescope, and Mike and I both got a “friction” stagecoach which shot sparks out the back when you revved it up. I also got a plastic “pinball machine” where you shot the balls up into the machine and see whether you get them to land in the highest number “slots”. I think I played that thing pretty much all day long that day. Grandma and Grandpa gave us some clothes of some kind, and I got a couple of new comic books. It was good…no, it was great.
Later on that day, the Uncles and Aunts, and numerous cousins came for dinner. Grandma’s little house was crowded to the gills. A lot of us ate dinner sitting out in the living room or even on the front porch. My cousins and I would find something to play or do after dinner. The food was nothing grand. I don’t remember if we had Turkey or roast beef. It really didn’t matter because Grandma could make anything taste good. I think later on that winter, we got iced and snowed in for over a week or so out there at the end of that old road. Grandpa had to shoot Robins for us to eat. They were delicious. When you’re hungry, I guess anything tastes good!
The air seemed to be filled with good will, good feelings and love that year. Later on, early in the spring we moved back home to Trion. Mom had gotten better, and our lives went back to normal…as normal as it could be in our family anyway. We continued to go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house pretty much every Christmas after that. Even after my wife and I married in 1969, we continued to make an annual Christmas trek to “the mountains” Certainly, even now when Christmas rolls around, I think of those days. The camaraderie, the food, the love that we all had for one another. Those were great Christmases, as are the ones we have now with all of our children and grandchildren. The common factor is family…and love, and remembering what Christmas is all about, not the presents, not the food or the games. It’s all about the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas everyone.

When a person gets a cut, whether or tiny or large, most of the time the healing process begins and the cut starts to mend and eventually goes away.  Whether or not it leaves a scar depends upon  the severity of the wound, and if there was some type of extenuating circumstance such as infection or aggravation of the wound.  This certainly doesn’t have to be a truly physical thing, it can be figurative

I say this because I feel there has been a lot of “cutting” going on in our country and in our world over the past few years and a lot of the wounds are still not healed, or are infected.  It’s bound to leave scars, even after the healing process is over.

I look back on a lot of things I have said and done over the years, and I see where I have “cut” people.  Sometimes small cuts, sometimes pretty deep.  I have done it for spite in some instances, and sometimes it has been purely accidental.  Nevertheless, it has been done and it has been me doing it.  I have not stopped and thought, at least with few exceptions about what I was doing or saying.  Many, many other people have been doing the same.  We use all sorts of sharp objects.  Politics, religion, culture, money….oh yes definitely money.  We cut, cut, and cut and in return we get cut.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Now,  it is nearly Christmas 2017, and I wonder how much longer the cycle of hurting each other can go on.  I realize it’s gone on since the dawn of time, but I wish for nothing so much as peace.  Yet I know it’s not forthcoming.

I listen closely inside my head, inside my heart, and I can hear the words of that song written in 1955 for a group of children to sing:

“let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me”

Who else could it begin with? None of us have control over the minds and hearts of others, though many think they do.  But, if peace is to be found it has to come from within our hearts and none else’s. Somebody has to start, somebody has to be the first to say that they will be at peace with any other human being, no matter what the circumstance.  No matter what the religion or culture, or color, or gender, or political party.  No matter what.

“let there be peace on earth, a peace that was meant to be……with God as our father, brothers all are we, let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony”

If one believes in a God, or a creator as our “father” then that must mean that we are all brothers or sisters of this earth, and we must believe that eventually peace was “meant to be”

The song goes on of course to build to the crescendo which repeats the opening line:

….let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me”.

There is power in peace if we can find it.  I hope that on this Christmas, as in none ever before, we look more deeply and more fervently for the solutions that will bring peace to our world.

 

I think that my generation, our so called “baby boomer” generation has been awarded the privilege and had the luck to grow up during the last, best America which will ever exist.

I don’t say this as a matter of contention with other generations either before or after the boomer generation, but it’s just my considered opinion.

We were the first television generation. Except instead of CSA and Bones, we had Ed Sullivan and Bonanza. We played outside in the sun and rain. We ran and ran, playing hide and seek, freedom, pick up baseball with paper tape balls and broomsticks, tackle football with no pads, and any other active game we could conjure up, including a lot of “cowboy and Indians” (please pardon me my native American friends)

Our Moms and Dads wore us out for lying, bad homework, cussing and back talking. Most of us don’t resent it, or feel like we were abused. There was rarely a parent who didn’t know when to stop. Some abuse existed, but I don’t believe it was as bad as today’s society. We had a lot more newspapers and a lot fewer news channels. A lot more reporters, and a whole lot fewer pundits.

Elvis was alive and singing, and you got his music on something you could hold, and not something you “download” Rock and roll was born, and songs had lyrics you could understand and melodies that stuck in your head. Think about “Unchained Melody” right now and then see how long it takes you to get it out of your head. There’s a reason they still use those songs in movies.

You could go off for a day and not lock your doors. You helped your neighbor with his garden and he helped you with yours, and people shared the excess with others. You could pull your car up on the curb and do most of the work on it yourself, but if you needed a mechanic you got somebody with a pouch of tools and not a computer.

People were not afraid of sweating during the Summer, or wearing a few more clothes to keep warm during the Winter. The clothes we had also had to last us an entire school year. There were no “designer” clothes unless you considered “Levi-Strauss” to be one.

Our parents didn’t like us to waste food because “children in India” were starving. They would have been welcome to a lot of the stuff that Mom tried to make me eat, mainly the foods that fell into the “green” food group.

Most of all, we were all primarily happy. We weren’t afraid to walk to the movies or to school by ourselves. We were embarrassed to think about even kissing or holding hands with a member of the opposite sex. We knew all the cops and postmen by their first name. We weren’t afraid to roll in the dirt and get filthy, dirty and sweaty.

We dreamed of doing big things, and some of those things got done. Some of the impetus to do them got lost in the late 60’s and never got reclaimed. Its still not too late through. There is still time left for we fifties babies to do a lot of good if we will just remember that it was our purpose in life to make the world a better place for children, dogs and all other living things. Peace.