Russia 2015 Forward

For those of us in our fifties and sixties, when we hear the word, "Russia," many images crawl out of our brains.  Nuclear drills in grammar school, Sputnik,  Stalin and Lenin and on and on. Russia was the great enemy of the East that was our antagonist in what became known as the Cold War. I never really understood the meaning and implication of that strange term but I knew it was not good.  I vividly remember a sense of dread and fear about anything that sounded like Russia.  As I lived in Europe and worked in Poland for nearly a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I learned the degree of fear and hate the Russians generate in the Poles.  Working with Russians during that time, I never felt them trustable but rather argumentative and arrogant on a grand scale.  

 

We have watched from afar the Russian revolution that led to the Empire of Russia breaking apart painfully shortly after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 all spurred by the Reagan / Thatcher / Pope trifecta of leadership that exploded the decade of the 1990s.  Russia saw her major wealth generator, oil, collapse and she faced major debt issues, internal strife and dissension.  Then there was Mr. Putin! We had all watch the drunks in leadership, the massive military weaponry parades through Red Square, knew the Black Sea Fleet was supposedly in shambles with the nuclear capability in some state of disrepair and nobody knew how nor who was controlling the key to it all.  Russia through all of this faded into the mist of time as 9/11 exploded onto the global news and attention was shifted farther East and the terrorist networks, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Yet, we learned, after the fact to a degree, that Russia was fighting its own War on Terror with some of her breakaway republics such as Chechnya even after their debacle in Afghanistan for a futile decade. Still the Russian Bear was seemingly in hibernation and clawless; seemed as such but ... !

 

Last night I watched the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympiad with all its grandeur, homage to Russia and her march through history and the beautiful expose of the landscape and scenes of this massive, ancient nation that ran before the ceremonies began. Threading through it all was, what seemed to me, was a "speech" with cheerleaders on the greatness,  power, drive, leadership of Mr. Putin. It was even called "Putin's Games." Then when he entered the stadium I found my memory of films of the Berlin Olympics and watching Hitler and the ovation that ensued on his appearance.  Then when the Russia Olympic team entered the stadium and the ovation ensued and I watched Putin standing, you could tell he felt he had taken his place among the great leaders; perhaps the greatest leader on the earth today.

 

Then I watched the POTUS interview with Bob Costas; wish now I had not watched it. I saw our POTUS in the context of the greatness of the Games and where they are being played being rather "cute" and aloof about no real US leadership at the Games, poking fun at Putin's public persona, etc. I felt this sense of quiet embarrassment for my nation, frankly.  I saw all those national presidents both major and minor countries, sharing the lights with Putin but not an American in sight. I found that, well, disappointing.

 

And as I told my wife during all of this amazing architecture, choreography, execution and with the billions of dollars spent by Russia to get the Games and the grandeur they displayed, that all that had been done during a period of relatively cheap crude oil; the mainstream of Russia's Gross Domestic Product.  I add that little point to make a point. Imagine, now, Russia in her glory under the lights of the Olympics and Putin elevated in stature as never before, should oil prices spike high and Russia's oil wealth escalates dramatically ... then which nation will exact strategic direction and reaction for a generation? That would be Russia as I view it as America sinks more quickly into the sunset of history as the global power.

 

Perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps, as some of my readers indicate in comments to my posts, that it is time for somebody else to be the Beat Cop for the global village.  Perhaps the BRIC, Brazil Russia, India and China actually will be the confederation of global power projection and dominance in the 21st Century.  Perhaps the key cog in the BRIC will not be Russia and, oh by the way, where did America go? All of this can happen very quickly and as I watched the young girl walking through the history of Russia into the future in the great stadium, my mind projected to this which I have written.

 

For me I saw a weak, uncaring, disconnected President of the United States on a global news feed basically joke and laugh about something that carries a much deeper and darker implication. Please remember that I am the great optimist when I write that. I believe Russia a corrupt, Godless nation with a powerful nuclear force with a cold leader that is not bashful about taking any step to insure Russian government control over the economy AND maintaining "influence" still over all the republics that broke away just a few years ago.  These are now more scary times with Russia's new found spotlight. 

A Mother

As I sat in church earlier today and the preacher was readying for his wonderful sermon, for some reason like a light flash, memories of my mother came flooding through my heart.  Mother passed away just a few years ago but as the years go forward for my life, I find myself thinking and dreaming about my mother.  I was honored to get to sing and to speak at her funeral; a memory I will never forget.

 

The value of a mother is incalculable for that value is passed into future generations at times blatantly and at times subtly but passed.  My mother, Mary Frances Keith Williams, was a woman of drive, of giving but more than any other descriptor from my perspective, my mother was a protector.  Mother was from a family of four sisters and a baby brother. Her home life as a child was scarred by the poison of alcohol addiction in her father.  Mother was the one that chose to fore go a high school education to leave home and find work to support her siblings seeing each of the younger ones graduate with honors from high school.  Mother was always so proud of her younger brother and sisters as we all were in my family.

 

As World War II came and the men left their jobs at the huge Republic Steel plant in Gadsden, AL, mother found employment as did thousands of other women doing the work of the veterans fighting in foreign fields. She ran an overhead crane in a machine shop and from many that have shared with me, she was an excellent and very careful crane operator. Certainly of no surprise to her eldest child and only son which would be me.

 

When the War was over and the men returned, mother, like millions of other women, were forced out of their jobs to be replaced by the men.  So many times I heard mother vent anger and frustration about having to leave the only decent job she ever had. I was too young to understand any of that at the time but as I have aged I now understand fully for her work was her pathway to economic freedom which she always longed for.

 

So now being jobless in 1945, she set about working multiple jobs, living modestly and paying for her siblings to go to high school and finding them weekend jobs arriving on bus transportation on those weekends.  My heart swells now when I think of all she gave so that others could have better!

 

With what turned out to be my father returning from WWII and back into the Steel Plant, he began a barrage letter writing campaign  I heard about many times trying to get mother to date him. She did and from that and the ensuing marriage, I arrived in March of 1948.  But the life she chose to give up her drive for economic freedom via marriage became a replay of her childhood life but this time from my father and his alcohol addiction and not her father.  It is not my intention to be vindictive nor whine about life growing up but suffice to say, I hate alcohol to this day more than any other poison Man has found to ingest into the body God created. But a family we were with me the eldest followed by two younger sisters as well as a miscarried child all between 1948 and 1955.

 

My mother was a woman worn by the harsh realities of life.  She was tough but never harsh. She was lovable but not warm and fuzzy loving. She had temper that would rage frighteningly when ignited but she could be in a state of quiet silence and enjoying what was around her.  She enjoyed music and later sang in a church choir. She always loved for me to sing to her so singing at her funeral was an extension of this life for a few sweet minutes.

 

The memory that flowed this morning at church was in realizing that I was probably twenty-five years old, married and a new baby when my mother quietly had gone about completing her GED for her high school education; she was in her fifties.  She was running a day care with large numbers of kids of various ages single handedly.  But someway found time for the course work for the GED.  I was completely unaware of this for I was busy with life and career and graduate school; a blur still in my mind.  But then came the day for her high school graduation held at Etowah High School in Gadsden, AL.  I was so excited to attend this for her and with her for I had no idea of what she had had to accomplish for this amazing feat.  Yet that joy was quickly quenched when the reality that my father refused to attend the graduation which she so badly wanted him to do as well he was actually mocking her for having done it and accomplished it.

 

That is the day etched in my brain as I went to my home where I was raised and confronted my father about this. I felt so unbelievably proud and yet so sorry for mother for she was deeply hurt which translated to me being very angry.  It was the first time I had so vehemently confronted my father on any issue and there had been myriad issues that needed confronting through my childhood. But this was a case worth taking a position with him and assumed it might turn negative and physical for he tended to want to be a bully anyway. I did not care for Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong and his behavior and attitude was just Wrong!! Let me just say that I was so angry after the confrontation which he still refused to attend and celebrate her accomplishment that I remember very little of the ceremony other than tears of pride flowing from my eyes. for mother.  I was never more proud of my mother for she had accomplished something most would have assumed she would not nor could not accomplish!

 

I have never put those words together until now so you can know. But today during church I felt it time to put to words how much I loved my mother. I honored her. I was never disrespectful of her.  I sought her input and advice. She was a woman of few words but when she put the words out, she stood by them.  She was a prophet of tough love which, of course, many times I needed in my growing up years. She was a rock in the middle of an avalanche and there were many of those in my life at home. But she never wavered, she never bolted and she never quit. Those three traits are three I believe have found their way into my DNA as well as a powerful work ethic. I love her for giving me rich example of all of those.

 

So what is a mother? My mother was a maker of opportunity and drive. My mother provided and protected those she loved from those than would do harm or injure those she loved. She was not articulate but there was never a question about what she wanted done. When she said it, she meant it!

 

I know mother is with Jesus and long to spend more time with her when my time comes.  She will probably want me to sing to her some more so that will be a joy to watch those black, piercing eyes twinkle and tear up in her abundant silence.  She was a good person and I only hope I can get close to that in my life that is left remaining.

The Last Full Measure ..

Lincoln spoke in the Autumn of 1863 in Gettysburg these epic words:

 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.  But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

 

That great speech returned to my brain this morning and I have read it slowly and deeply three times to feel the essence of his words against the context of his time after that great, defining battle fought just four months earlier.   Yesterday, thus why this has come to me so strongly, was a day where not until about 5 pm did the TV give me any news of the day and the world for I was part of my grand daughter's world of Disney and Hub.  Yes, those are channels she, at four years old, love so Poppy and Grammy get to watch it with her. 

 

As this black African child flitted around our home in comfort, love, warmth and being the queen of the roost as she so richly deserves, I was taken and shaken back to the MLK television day that was jammed with speeches, movies, memorials, etc, etc.  One of the documentaries I watched and pierced my  heart was of black soldiers returning from WWII but not yet discharged. They were on a long train ride moving to the West Coast which required overnight.  The train had to stop for some mechanical reason in a small place in a Southern state, do not recall which one and it matters not to my point.  On that same train were German Prisoners of War.  The white soldiers and the Germans were granted food and housing for the overnight stay but not the blacks.  The blacks witnessed walking into a large room white soldiers that the blacks had fought next to in Europe, lounging around playing cards and drinking beer with the German POWs but they, the blacks, were not allowed in the building where this was taking place nor were they allowed to sleep on the premises nor to be fed. In a flash the poison of racial reality hit me like a brick all over again. 

 

Given that last paragraph as context, I come back to my Ethiopian grand daughter bestowing joy via her energy and cuddling to her Poppy yesterday as carefree and loved as could be; a blessing. Then out of the blue the Gettysburg Address  came to my mind this morning and our nation today verse the war footing and division of the Civil War. All those points on the compass pointed me to this writ.

 

If you really read what Lincoln said in the framework of what he wrote and said then, how different is our nation today, really?  From my porch view in NE Ohio of our nation, the divisions and divisiveness of racism is not too far from what I could imagine it was in the slavery South. "Racism" has become a mantra and a sword point thrown at anyone that dares to question a black leader such as POTUS but at any level of government as well.  I did not vote for Obama nor would I again but not because of his skin color or ethnicity but because I did not trust him in the Senate and I have seen nothing to build that bridge of trust with me since the occupation of the White House. Personally, I believe our nation has taken a giant leap backward under his leadership but this blog is not designed to be negative about my POTUS meaning ours. I still pray for him and his leadership as I am commanded to do by Scripture though I do not agree with his agenda, his tactics nor his questionable strategies.

 

My greater concern with this, our nation, at the strata of racial equality for which the Civil War was ultimately fought, voting rights became the challenge of the mid 1900s during the terrible decade of the 60s with killings, lynchings, marches, seen almost as frequently as body counts from Vietnam on the evening news.  As strange as it may seem having grown up in Alabama, not until the last year or so did I come to realize the core issue in play in the 1960s was about blacks not being able to vote.  I marvel, still, in working in jails and prisons for now over a decade in seeing week after week the population of inmates be it male or female, overwhelmingly African American. Whereas in that same decade of teaching at the university level on nine campuses and teaching a total of roughly 7,000 college students, had far less that a 100 in total African American students. Do you see the correlation of concern the numbers portray?

 

I, like many Americans, ask publicly or privately on the matter of racism, when will this stop, what will it take, where does it end, and the questions continue to go unanswered. I watch the cable experts (sarcasm intended) ignite and energize the divide night after night. I watch and listen to people so politically devoted to the POTUS and the Party that they can do nothing wrong and anything the others do is wrong and racist ... how assinine! 

 

We are a nation, in my opinion, as divided in 2014 at some points of the spectrum than the one Lincoln addressed a century and a half ago and I believe worsening instead of improving.  While I did not nor do I personally care for Obama, I did have hope that his ascendancy to the White House would bring a leveling of this matter of divisive racism. Six years later I cannot escape that crawling feeling that it has worsened and become more divisive.  There are certain folks now on TV I simply cannot watch with Charles Blow, a black writer for the NYT for the racist bombs he throws around on talk shows simply baffles and angers me for with each bomb, the division widens. He is but one with Roland Martin another and not to mention Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all of whom I believe have hurt the achievement of racial equality.  And there are still others!

 

We should not be a nation of Party but a nation, as Lincoln postulated, not divided after so much blood and treasure and national esteem desecrated. But here we are 150 years later and I question if, in fact, progress is being actually made.  I realize as well that racism has always been in any and all cultures but one would think and hope in our era of wireless technology, we could actually find a way to scale that awful wall but I do not see it and I am looking.  My African grand daughter has shown me so much about me; a Southern man that remembers well the hell of the sixties and the burned crosses, the KKK, the colored and white everything, the Freedom Riders, Selma, Birmingham, Montgomery, Mississippi. I am embarrassed now each time Alabama or Mississippi is spoken of about the past for we are better than this I believe.  But I also realize that division creates cash flows to the coffers of those that gain from maintaining the divide. I find that abominable but I believe it true.

 

I will close by believing Mr. Lincoln would be quite disappointed in his America today that so much was invested to change and prevent. It just baffles me!

The Power of Absolutes

I have awakened early this morning triggered, I suppose, by a FB post a long time friend posted yesterday in which he has been developing a manifesto of his life as a Southern Baptist.  I find that worthy of people that have time on their hands and a will to put to words on a screen what their heart is saying to them. The last thing I read before going to bed was a post in this manifesto on use of alcohol using well chosen words to, in essence, justify the use of liquor and wine for Christians while exempting the "sons and daughters" (of which I am one) of family alcoholics due to the propensity for they themselves to go down that same pathway.  As I rolled around my bed last night and into three or four dream-driven naps, each of the episodes of dreams took me back to far too many awful memories and events affected by said alcohol.  As I have stated many, many times, I HATE ALCOHOL.

 

So in getting up early on this still dark and very cold morning in NE Ohio, I went back and reread my friend's post and then my post pushing back against the baseline post along with others that commented to the base post and I realized I was apparently the only dissenter to the rationalization that alcohol is okay for Christians.  I felt the ember warm all over again in my reread thus me devoting my weekly blog to this topic.

 

Many of you reading this perhaps do not care or you have a fervency of rightness or wrongness on the subject. Or, like too many, you just simply do not care. I do wish I could, at times, lapse into that neutral world and simply ignore some horrific facts of alcohol in our society.  Many had much worse childhoods than I no doubt and I certainly am not intending to play the violins of my life shrouded and crowded by that elixir from Satan himself in my personal opinion.  I believe liquor in a home or a church is like grabbing a timber rattler by the tail for recreation.  You may get by with it for a while, find excitement in the grabbing, exhilarate at the snake's reaction but in the end, the snake usually wins that deathly game.  I am not immature nor am I stupid enough to believe that today, 2014, that the same snake and its gamers sit in church pews, classrooms, employers and employees, parents, children, students, soldiers, pulpits, choir, police, firemen, husbands, wives, politicians, inmates, etc,  across our world. 

 

In my prison work I give the inmates the opportunity to write on a prayer request furnished to them a request they wish prayer for. In the many thousands I have read and prayed for, I would easily say 80% speak to praying for deliverance from the addiction of drugs but more specifically from alcoholism.  My assessment, it is the most dangerous, easily accessible viper in our world. More traffic deaths are alcohol related than any other cause.  Most crimes are alcohol fueled. Divorce, incest, aberrant societal behaviors are all in the spectrum of what alcohol can do to a person's brain once it is pickled. Soldiers in combat, many of whom I know well, have committed admittedly to atrocities in the combat theater when seeing their fellow soldiers maimed or killed and they go on an alcohol induced killing venture. These are not rumors; these are facts of our world. Plenty of statistics reside to substantiate my strong distaste of alcohol and its effect on families, churches, leaders and worst of all, children.

 

I fail to see how nor why a Christian can find any space to justify use of such a devastating poison to Man and society.  It for me is the adage about putting lipstick on a pig; it is still a pig.  Many of you will think I am just old or too slanted or whatever you wish to think it your decision, not mine. But I KNOW what I have seen, experienced, see weekly, read, see in the news and as I said on the FB post to which I speak to at the beginning, fail to understand why the political forces in American have blatantly chosen to seemingly ignore this addictive poison while choosing to attack tobacco a few decades ago is beyond me.  Alcohol, guns, marijuana, and the list goes on of our rationalization or cognitive dissonance reduction that this is fine, we have the right, it is our decision to potentially wreck and destroy others by decisions of choice with more than ample evidence of the horrific results to our citizenry is simply baffling to me still.

 

I will close with what many of you have read from me before for it applies; Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong and there is no amount of Wrong that will ever make a Wrong, Right. I hate ALCOHOL in any form. I am supposed to hate the alcohol and not the alcoholic I have been told but as my readers, you should know that is a most difficult hurtle for me for the emotional scars still run very deep in me and my family. When will we wake up? So you can know my position, there IS NO PLACE in church pews, pulpits, choirs, Christians for the poison of alcohol.  This, for me, states an ABSOLUTE which are becoming less and less viewable and enforceable in our society meaning fewer and fewer boundaries.

The Power of Humility

I believe we can all wrap our minds around the concept of power for it resides all around us. It has many faces, many sounds, many smells, many reactions, many implications but power, we understand!  The concept of humility, I believe, gets, many times, lost in the winds of rhetoric for people will tend to use the prism of weakness or ineptness when meandering down the pathway of humility. So when you link Power and Humility together in a subject of a blog, it feels strange and incongruent; and I am the one doing the writing!

 

In my life I have been privileged to work with some really great people and some very powerful men and women.  I have always been drawn to that turbine of energy that powerful leaders exude not necessarily to copy it but to understand it.  It is amazing!  If you have been in the presence of celebrity, a national level politician, a professional athlete, a great preacher, etc, you know that feeling of awe that consumes the air you breathe whether you wish to admit it or not.  I believe, properly aimed and channelled, that turbine can generate great change. I remember as a young second lieutenant listening to and shaking hands with General William C. Westmoreland that commanded all troops in Vietnam.  I remember having fifteen minutes in the snow in Cleveland with Doug Collins and Michael Jordan. I could expand the list to a very long list of interesting people I have met on this journey.  How does that affect me personally at the time? Most would not believe it but I find it hard to piece together tangential sentences meaning words get stuck somewhere and I babble like an idiot. that is Power and it makes each of us react in our own unique and usually out of context way reacting to it.

 

Then there is humility.  For me the best example that comes to my mind would be Jesus. He was meek which for me is defined as strength and power under control.  Humility, for me, is when you find yourself with absolutely no where else to turn, nobody to turn to and you have no answers; it is a sense of complete emptiness which can be devastating for many including myself.  Many of you that know me know I have worked now over a decade in jail and prison ministry.  I cannot begin to tell you how many sermons, Bible references, examples, songs sung, questions being asked, etc. I have listened to and participated it. I can tell you that what I am realizing more and more is that i am seeing more and more very real examples of true humility in the population of the inmates.

 

Many will scoff at that and I can understand that to a degree but in having now worked with over 200,000 inmates, I feel I have learned much about the psychology of inmates. There is no crime that will shock me anymore. There is no tattoo that will cause me to take pause. I hate the smells, the misfitting orange jumpsuits and worst of all the strange beige colored shower shoes the inmates wear.  I realized of late that I had allowed myself to get too hung up on the way things look and smell but have realized a tremendous shift in my heart for these men and women I see almost on a weekly basis.  Last night was a classic example of how this decade has changed me; at the heart!

 

When God's presence is there in the chapel and you are leading nearly forty men of all ages, several ethnicities, innumerable crimes, dozens of fatherless children somewhere needing their dads at home with them, it makes my heart hurt. Last night a young African-American man stood and asked if he could give his testimony which, of course, we allowed. It was touching, sincere and came from a fellow inmate. I saw a whole complexion change for I saw eyes stop wandering, I saw tears from grizzled looking men, I saw and felt humility abound in that moment.  It was amazing.

 

As I stood to end the service before the deputies took the inmates back to their cells, I had the group of forty to stand around me and to put their hand of a fellow inmate meaning each inmate was touching two other inmates as I held two inmates close to my sides. I prayed but it was so uniquely different in that close proximity of men that were hurting, fearful, disappointed but had been touched by the Hand of God through the songs, the sermon and the testimony! That was Power of Humility personified.  It was absolutely and uniquely exhausted when I got home after the two back-to-back services for both were powerful in the presence of God!

 

Most of you will never see the inside of a jail or a hospital or anywhere where people are hurting, celled and truly frightened about what tomorrow will bring.  I look at these men and women and see a future meaning a future that they have chosen through poor choices to be left behind in the opportunities of our nation.  Each time I leave the jail tired, I leave those men and those women with a sense of hope and challenge for their obstacles are myriad worse due to be incarcerated. But as I sit in my care to ready for the drive home, I realize all over again that it is I that has received the blessing for the work, the energy, the time away from family, the sacrifice but it is such a blessing. It is always my greatest hope that the seeds are planted and that God will raise the fruit for harvest; He will!

So What Will You Do Differently?

As we are now into the first week of January of a new year, many resolutions have been made and I learned this week that in America, less than 10% of resolutions are kept; not a surprise.  We all make them whether we put words or energy to them don't we?  My wife and I were talking about this just this morning as we are encamped another day with our five grand kids in polar conditions so given that ambiance, my mind has begun to drill more deeply into the title question.

 

I am one that seems to reflect on history and also have this almost manic need to understand why things happen and why people do what people do be it good or not good.  I watched Dennis Rodman and his team of former NBA players in an interview with CNN this morning that turned contentious, rightly I believe, about being in North Korea. I was amazed to watch Rodman literally incapable of articulating with any clarity his thought and answer to a direct question.  Some will no doubt think or say I am being "racist" which has become a cop out term which is a default when someone does not agree with you, your skin color, your political leaning, etc.  

 

Someone posted on FB a couple of days ago, no doubt being sarcastic, about some of the commercials every thirty seconds during the football games of late about black only dating sites.  I saw the commercials and found myself with this strange crawling feeling about how our world has so changed. There is a Congressional Black Caucus; why is that?  There is the NAACP so I ask why not a NAAWP in our times of tolerance and equality?  As I grow another year older in March, I see my nation drawing farther and farther apart instead of embracing each other; so sad!  As I  write this with all five our my grandchildren hovering in front of the fireplace due to the cold, I look at my beautiful African grand daughter and see how happy she is with her family which is her brother and sister and two cousins and her Grammy and Poppy. We are family so I then question from the joy this child from Ethiopia has brought to our family, why can we as a nation find a footing of togetherness?

 

I am about to decide that politicians, pundits, lobbyists, media really do not wish a drawing toward each other in our society for in the division and divisiveness resides funding for causes and campaigns all at the expense of harmony and true peace.  I grew up in Alabama, saw the marches, watched the coverage of dogs and bombings in Birmingham, Selma, Mississippi, the Freedom Riders, the bus burnings, the Colored and White fountains and bathrooms, back door entrances for blacks to the same doctors and dentists white people got to go into through the front door and on and one.  I wish there was some way to erase all that but that will not happen I realize.  But to continue to throw gasoline of division in the twenty-first century using the hate and hurt of a generation ago just seems wrong to me.

 

In my own family in the three years we have had our African queen, Ms Hope, we have seen her bring smiles to tears, joy to hurts and warmth to anger time and time again. If one black African child can bring that to a family and to a wide band of families, why could that not be caused to happen in the macro population? Answer ... too many people do not want that to happen for residing at the core of division of political power, overflowing coffers for political gains that seek to foment the age old hatreds and shreds of division maintains the means of more and more anger.  Some will say I am a Southern boy that has lived in the North long enough to be "Yankeeized." for I have heard that and read that.  Perhaps true but fact is, I have found a way to truly embrace people with vast arrays of differences from me racially, ethnically, economically and spiritually.  When I read caustic or insinuative posts on FB that are hurtful to a person or to a race, it simply angers me and frustrates me for it is ignorance that resides at the core of such actions I believe.

 

So what will you do differently in the days ahead is not a rhetorical question but rather a fundamental probing of why we are granted yet another day on this earth.  For me I choose to be even more open to other opinions and seek to be less judgmental while at the same time seek to understand with more clarity what the Bible instructs us to be and to do.  Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, BIBLE, is a great description of the Holy Bible.  I will close by restating the five step platform of my view of living a life today:

 

1. If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten
2. If you do not stand for something you will fall for anything
3. If you do not know where you are going, that is exactly where you will end up
4. Whatever you seek in this life, you will find
5. Stay in the fight!

So my new year resolution begins with seeking to be clearer on God's Word and direction for my life, yearning to be a better example for my grand children for they are watching and listening in a games of Monopoly, commercials, reactions to football games; every thing I do they are watching; WOW!  I want to use the talents God has granted me to His Glory only and find great joy in using that talent.  I want to find an even deeper joy of life and living.

 

I will close by challenging you to do what I challenged a large group of jail inmates to do last week ... take a piece of paper and write yourself a letter than nobody will ever see but you. In that letter, write your biography and in that letter list the five most important hopes for your life. Go ahead, try it!

A Year to Remember ... ney, a Year Ahead to Ponder

I always love this time of year when everybody loves to produce programs, sitcoms, documentaries, editorials, etc, looking back on the year about to end.  I think that not a bad thing but it does not align with my approach to life.  Those of you that know me know well I tend to always be looking toward the horizon and not through the rear view mirror of life's bucket.  There is little to nothing we can do to change, correct, transform what has happened but there are mountains of things we can all do in our own unique world and life about what happens ahead of us.  I suppose that is this perpetual optimist that is me for I have never seen a glass half empty even when the view pained me.

 

The year ahead will, no doubt, be a year filled with national and global challenges. We will see diplomats go to the far reaches of earth to try to ease tensions, raise expectations, lift the flag of improvement over the lands but rare will we see measurable positive improvement.  Yes, America will draw down and thus out of Afghanistan as we did so virtuously in Iraq and in the dust of departure, the killings, assassinations, economic corruption and decline will continue to decimate the landscape of an already scarred world; especially the Middle East.  Do I feel we "won" in Iraq? Certainly not if you define winning as leaving in a state of diplomatic stability with a political system that is functioning. Given that yardstick, certainly we did not leave in victory. Our military, as with Vietnam, deserves all the praise they can be given but war is always less about the soldier and more about the politicians. After all, that is the definition of war which is to, by force, correct the failed political system of a nation and the turn it back over to the politicians. Think about it!

 

I would love to live the remaining days of my life with our nation, my nation, not engaged in military actions somewhere on this globe but I am pragmatic enough to know that will never happen.  When you realize huge forces and structures are being garnered in the Horn of Africa due to its strategic geography due to the escalating explosiveness of Islamic fundamentalists, you know there is a cauldron of fire awaiting ignition. In other words, Afghanistan and Iraq were opening salvos of global terrorism and the "Arab Spring" uprisings, Syrian, etc, are all examples of what resides ahead. I believe 2014 will be a year of extreme military interventions for the US.  But the downside is that should America choose the path of weak kneed diplomacy not backed by a strong striking military hand, America's rapidly declining influence in the world will accelerate exponentially.

 

My list of concerns for our nation, remember I am being positive here, is with the apparent decline in moral fabric that was woven generations ago but is unravelling at an alarming rate.  To test this, turn on the TV and just watch for an hour.  We may laugh at what we see but if you look deeply at what we are being fed, the new norm for our next two generations is frightening at best.  It is not normal for literally almost every program to have a gay theme running through it usually shrouded in humor lines but still this subliminally is creating a new norm.  I watched my five grand kids here Christmas day with the eldest being eleven and the youngest being four. I found myself thinking about where their lives will meander in just the next ten years given what they see and hear as "normal" for we are the sum total of our behaviors which defines "culture" I learned from a great friend years ago.

 

Culture is the cocoon that holds it all together with that cocoon being woven by the strands of values.  I have grown to observe more and more of our world through the prism of Values. I saw the values of my 1960s Vietnam War generation deteriorate so rapidly that it still baffles me. It was from that deterioration that the Baby Boomers, I being one, lock stepped all 76 million of us into the late 20th century armed with new technology, cheap money and ever evaporating morals and mores.  Bill Clinton for me is the poster child of what America should never have become yet history will record him as one of the great presidents.  Scandal was accepted as normal thus the seeds of scandal have now being brought to root and thus what our children and grandchildren are being fertilized with in myriad ways.  Honestly, it scares me to think about what my grandchildren are able to access and given the power of peer pressure, one can only begin to contemplate that new norm in the next thirty years will look like.

 

I believe the year behind us will be viewed as pretty good even with the shootings, suicides, bloated prisons, aberrant lifestyles, children in families that provide little to no more fiber of right and wrong using Scripture as the examination tablet.  I believe the year ahead will see our nation plummet  more rapidly as we pull further and further from the God that created us. Many will read these words and simply say he is old and going to die so let him write out loud ....!  We are the sum total of our decisions and thus behaviors. This is so profound it is frightening in its reality.  Where are the leaders I loved to look up to, wanted to be like, imitate? Perhaps it is my age or stage of life but frankly, I see no leaders anywhere I yearn to adjust myself to. Certainly I am not saying that I am great or anything special; far from it.  But great leaders cause people to want to be like them! Where are they?

 

Each morning in my time with God, it continues to amaze that each day I find an examples of a great leaders in Scripture that cause me to want to strive to be like them.  I love my country. I love the potential of this great nation. I love to know who we are. I do not love what we are allowing to be a new norm that is wrong, disdainful and unBiblical. God has shown time and again how He dealt with His children when they were unfaithful to Him.  Are we any different, really?