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An older gentleman came by my table today at Trade Day and was wearing a “vote for Tom Dooley” button. I was gonna’ make some little joke about what would happen if he lost….as in “lay down your head and cry” so I say: “voting for Tom Dooley?” Big mistake. I got a fifteen minute teaching session on what is wrong in America today…mostly consisting of the fact that “America is not adhering to the Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers” ….”but most of them were deists weren’t they, and didn’t they want separation of Church and State?” “NO SIR..!! that’s entirely wrong!” says he. “Our forefather’s were all good Christian men, and they wanted this to be a Christian country!” A young man who was with him shook his head in agreement. “But I have read that Thomas Jefferson had his own Bible, in which he made changes…and also had a child with one of his own slaves” I said, trying to go against the “good Christian men” theory. “No sir..” he say’s again. “That thing about the Bible is a lie…and that other thing about the slave women….well that was his brother that did that” “His brother?” I said. “Yep, everyone know that his brother was the one that did that and since they proved it with DNA..his brother would have the same DNA, right?” At this point he was getting a little red in the face…and I decided it was time to give up my position. “Well, I guess….” I said. He decided he didn’t want to buy anything and walked off. I looked at one of my other friends who sometimes comes to visit for a spell. “Hang down your head and cry” he said while

shrugging his shoulders.

A day rarely goes by that I don’t think about the past. I realize that in most cases it is better not to dwell there, but I don’t believe an occasional visit is a bad thing.

I think of all the people I have known, who are now gone, and the good times we had together. I think of trips I have taken, both alone and with others, and all of the beautiful fragments of this world I’ve laid my eyes on.

I think of the children and grandchildren I have touched, kissed and held in my arms and loved. I have memories of them to visit and smile over.

I think of my wife, who has been on this journey with me for so many years, and how she is such a part of me. My conscience and my reminder to live what I say, and not simply say the things I think I am.

The more we live, the longer we are here, the larger our past becomes. That mirror into our memories is large and easy to stand in front of and endlessly reflect. We do have to move out from in front of it though, and keep moving. Tomorrow is another day, and another chance to build upon the wonderful things we want to put into our library of memories. Oh, I know there’s also some bad there too. Always will be. But we can overcome the bad if we’ll only allow ourselves to do so.

I hope everyone has a safe and great week.

Where are your memories?

I know people say we should “live for today” or “the present is all that matters”. But I don’t think so.

On some days, like today, my memories are all that sustain me. The present doesn’t work the best for me, and living for today is like an October dust devil…swirling through and kicking up leaves. It’s here and gone before you can even identify it.

More than anything else in my life, my biggest fear is losing my memories, forgetting where I’ve been, and who I’ve touched and kissed and loved. Losing me.

One of my older friends at Trade day took a nasty fall today. He said it was just a weird blank feeling, and he fell and pulled over his table while I was standing there and spilled his things. As I was helping him pick them up he kept saying he just didn’t know what had happened. There was a look in his eyes. Seventy six, just lost his wife this year. An uncertain look.

Then this afternoon I found out my Eli took a nasty fall at school and busted his chin on the pavement. He looked so pitiful and frail this evening when I saw him, and that same uncertain look in his eyes. He will remember that spill all his life, just as I remember riding my tricycle down the steps of our house when I was four and busting open my forehead. He will for sure remember this.

My older trade day friend may not remember his fall too long. He will for sure not have the chance to store it in his vault of remembrance near as long as Eli will his. And so the difference that seventy some odd years make. A lifetime started, a lifetime lived, and the memories are what makes the life. They are us, and we are them.

Where are your memories? I can still find mine most of the time right now, and for that I am so very grateful.

Remember my friend, and little Eli. They both need healing thoughts.

Lying is now an accepted way of life. People of all ilks try to see how much they can “get away with” when it comes to untruths. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have exponentially increased the number of lies that are published on a daily basis, coming from the top down, among all manner of people.

Our world today is accurately described by Isaiah’s description of ancient Israel:

“None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.”

How then can we continue to survive in the modern world?

We can look again to the knowledge of the ancient text of Proverbs.

It tells us to trust in God with all our hearts; and lean not unto our own understanding. If we will acknowledge him, he will direct our path.

If we acknowledge God, and accept that we cannot understand how he created us, or our world, I believe he will give us the understanding we need to navigate the mine field of lies we must sail through every day we live in this modern world.

If we chart our course through life nowadays, based on what we think is true, we will certainly be deceived. Look around you, and you can see it happening every day, “tweet after tweet”.

I don’t think God deals with us through Twitter. I think he still deals with us through our hearts.

What do you think?

Sometimes back in the 80’s as we were traveling across America on some of our trips out to Boise Idaho to visit Paula’s folks, we’d come to stretches of road that beckoned miles out ahead. The road was straight, but the eyes could not see far enough to discern what lay at the end of that long stretch. It shimmered mysteriously and unknown miles into the future.

Age seemed the same way back in those days too. We were in our thirties then, and the mid to late sixties was beyond my kin to see. My comprehension of what lay ahead was just a guess, and a poor one at that.

Now, closing in on my 68th birthday in October, I understand how a person can misplace their glasses for days at a time, and lose their balance on a two step ladder. The body’s senses lie to the brain, and tell it that everything is still the same as it’s always been, but…..

Sorry, I can’t remember where I was going with this post…maybe later?

I got to thinking about the old saying that “life is just mind over matter….if you don’t mind it don’t matter!” Now I now that’s supposed to be funny, but really it’s kind of true. If you don’t mind what people say about you, it don’t matter. If you don’t mind you don’t have as many possessions as others around you, it don’t matter. If you don’t mind that someone cuts you off in traffic, it don’t matter. If you don’t mind you’ve gained a little weight, it don’t matter. If you don’t mind there’s a little dust on the furniture, it don’t matter.

The things that DO matter are our peace of mind, and happiness, and our relationship to the people and the world around us.

It matters how we treat our family and our friends. It matters if we help someone who asks for it, but also it matters when we help someone who needs it and DOES NOT ask for it…cause some people who need help are too proud to ask and some are so far gone, they cannot ask.

It matters if we care about humanity….not just American humanity but ALL of humanity.

So today don’t mind about the loudmouth in the aisle ahead of you at Walmart talking on their cell phone about things best kept private, it don’t matter. Don’t mind about what the talking heads on TV are telling you, in the long run it won’t matter. Don’t mind if so and so don’t agree with your politics, or pulls an online rant on you, in a month or a year, or in 100 years it…won’t…matter. Period.

Do mind about telling someone you love them…that does matter. Do mind if you help somebody who is sick, or feed someone who is hungry, that does matter. Do mind about hugging your kids, and your old people. Do mind about dealing with those around you with kindness. Those are the tenets of living which will live on far beyond us all. That is the morality upon which an unbreakable civilization will one day be founded, and out of which a new paradigm of life will emerge.

If you’re a Christian, read the gospel and do what Jesus says. If you’re an atheist treat others with integrity, compassion, and understanding. If you are of any religion, stand for the good which all religions include…don’t make up you’re own rules. Don’t surround yourself with hatred. Don’t think that revenge will end with the last person who acts with revenge in mind. It won’t. An eye for and eye only ends up making everyone blind.

Perhaps I am naive to think these things. To think that we will be able to solve our own human problems by our own human selves. But I do

I really do.

Take everything you know or think you know, and do a “role reversal” in your mind.

Now, think about it for a while…….is it possible that we (as human beings) are wrong about some things? Is it possible we are wrong about some people, or groups of people?

Is it possible…could it possibly be possible, that we are just not thinking?

One thing that I make sure and do on a daily basis is to say out loud: “I will not let hate and fear rule me!” I know that if anyone actually saw me, they might think that’s pretty weird. But, my opinion is that “vocalizing” our thoughts makes them more of a reality then just thinking them in our heads. I also really believe that part of our problem in this society is that we do not vocalize our thoughts and opinions enough to other, actual in the flesh people. We have a habit of expressing our thoughts and opinions here in cyberspace, and it’s just…not…the…same, as having a conversation in person.

For most people, excepted for the dedicated and practiced “entertainers” in our world who are adept at acting out and inciting others…for most people though, besides those entertainers…it’s harder to express hatred and fear to somebody’s face, than it is to write it out on this digital page.

Most of us are not of the mindset yet, to act out hatred and loathing by performing actual deeds of violence in person against other people…although, the instances of those who are doing so is becoming a more common occurrence. People who are on the fence….on the cusp of doing violent acts against other people, are often pushed beyond the edge of inaction to the tragedy of real action, by things they read, hear or come in contact with via the virtual world.

I hope that it doesn’t get worse. I fervently wish that we can all start to again become more communicative with each other in person, face to face. I want for there to be a world for my children and grandchildren to inhabit, in which they have a chance to live and enjoy themselves the way I have….the way we have.

If we think, like I said at the first of this post….if we think about just not ourselves, but of those who come after us in this world, maybe we can solve some of the severe problems which we are now encountering. Listen to your heart, your own heart…not the rhetoric of anyone who wants to sway you away from what you know in your heart is right.

We are all simply layer after layer upon layer of emotional content, which is spilled out upon the canvas of life…day after day after day.

Some layers go down smoothly, with nary a wrinkle..and you may have quite a few good ones in a row, before a messed up, old crumpled layer comes around and rumples up your pile!

Then it takes a lot of smoothing over before that layer is buried way down deep. A wind may come along every now and then an turn up your edges, and you recall that bad day.

Some of our journeys go better than others. Depends upon a lot of things. Some have a lot more wrinkled up layers than others.

I really don’t know why things are the way they are, all I know is that it’s quite a ride….it’s quite a process this “living life”.

I look forward to another layer of life tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll see some of you, and we can work on this big old jig saw puzzle together. I hope so.

From 2012- I still feel this way. I’m glad that in late 2014 I decided to start exercising and walking. It’s helped my physical well being a lot:

The forecast is for beautiful days over the next week. Many of us are going to be able to get out and work in the yard, take a walk, enjoy a cup of coffee on the patio or the porch and watch the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets.

We have so much. I am trying my very best to concentrate on all these good things which I have been given and not dwell on the things which are not so good.

I want more than anything to spend more time with my family. I realized yesterday while watching two of my granddaughters at a Band concert that it was just a blink of an eye ago when they were babies…toddlers, preschool. Now, one is going into High School next year.

I cannot do the things I used to do. I tried to work a little in the yard yesterday and almost made myself sick. Physical work is out of my ability to perform as I want to, because of my limitations.

But perhaps my heart was changed beyond what they did to repair it, while I laid there without a heart beat for 40 minutes. I think it changed my needs. I can let the grass grow long, and the bushes go untrimmed and the digging left undug in exchange for being able to love my family.

Our creator’s gift which came along with my infirmity was time…that most precious thing, and the ability to use it to love, that most divine thing. I am thankful. Never let anything that I say convince you otherwise.

In all of human history there has been no time like now. The only thing which sometimes bothers me is the tiny shiver which runs up my spine thinking about where “now” is.

We live in a world where smart humans have subjected the other 98% of we less technical and scientific “normal” humans to such dangers as nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants, overuse of chemical agents for war, agriculture and insecticides, massive military forces, industrial pollution, poison industrial byproducts, germ warfare, and political strife over land ownership by countries and individuals.

As on of my friends stated just yesterday, homo sapiens may be the very first species to precipitate its own extinction. It’s a sobering and distressing thought. There has never been a time like now.

A time of practically instant communication. A time of world travel which is so quick, that there is no longer a real sovereignty of nations. A time when human knowledge has outpaced our capabilities and the morality of the human psyche to be able to exercise constraint in our dealings with one another, so we therefore treat each other badly.

We are at a crossroads where the spiritual part of humanity’s brain must be nurtured and nursed into a state where a deeper and more compassionate conscious develops. We have to somehow develop a system of learning which fosters the responsibility for our existence faster than our capacity for self destruction. How do we do this?

We turn the keys of power over to the new generation of young leaders who are rapidly developing not only in America, but all over the world. Our children and grandchildren who are anxious to overcome the problems this generation has created, and to create a more harmonious world. They are out there, and we must step out of their way, and demand this generations crop of old and dishonest leaders move out and give the new crop time to grow. It won’t be easy, but I believe it’s our best chance.

Otherwise turn out the lights, the parties over.