Politically Incorrect in Today's World

I will, no doubt, lose some friends, relatives, students in my words this day but I believe these words must be penned for they have been burning in my heart for several weeks now. Our pastor has preached powerfully in the last two weeks about our world in the 21st century as viewed by political correctness versus through the lens of the absoluteness of the Holy Bible.  His words have pierced my heart and my soul on Christians today via acknowledgement or, even worse, quietly accepting the wrong that resides all around us, has brought to me this keyboard.  I am always amazed to learn of the rather wide array of people that read my blogs and comments on FB. It is always an honor to have someone call, walk up to me or email me with kind or sometimes unkind words but still, I know people, you, read.  Please know that I am writing from my heart and not just to take an alternative or argumentative position on a controversial topic.

 

As my life has unfolded, especially in the last decade crafted primarily from time with thousands of college students in my teaching and hundreds of thousand of prison inmates, my heart has been drawn more powerfully to the Bible and its immutable teachings. People can rationalize the Bible in many ways including ignoring what the Bible says but rationalization is just that; cognitive dissonance reduction. Translated, it is Man's mental capacity to find a way to mentally round off the squared edges of wrong.  Frankly, I am quite tired of that and even more tired of seeing it each time I turn on the TV, watch our politicians, seek to understand why things happen as they do.  In that decade, five guiding principles have evolved in my life journey as I view into my seventh decade on this earth. They are:

 

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 it is you are looking for in life, you will most certainly find it
5. Right is right and wrong is wrong and no amount of wrong will ever make a wrong Right

Given those five avenues to what I consider the Truth, I am reminded over and over again that life with no foundation will always crumble at some point.  As I read those five principles in context to me and I believe to Man as a whole, my heart pounds with the wrongness I see so evident on every hand.  The Bible is quite clear on its position on gay, lesbian homosexuality. The Bible is blatantly clear on the institution of marriage.  The Bible is unequivocal in its Commandments to Man in how to exist correctly with God in the first Four and how man can live properly with each other in the remaining Six of the Ten Commandments. As with the issues today we are watching in our Congress and our POTUS, I think we all need to go back and actually READ THE CONSTITUTION.  Likewise, therefore, I implore you to invest yourself in the word of God for its teachings are incorruptible, not misleading and stand unchanged through the flow of history to date and in the days before us. I stand on that Truth! I stand on it for it, the Bible, is God's Inspired Word to His children; that would be each of us.

 

I certainly, on a very personal level, am not holding myself up as anything worthy of example for I have failed at friendships, I have disappointed and have been disappointed. I have sought forgiveness on my life on many occasions of people I have offended, worked for, friended and I pray God never takes that sensitivity to others away from me.  I have failed my family but am forgiven by them and by my God; that I know. I strive each day with each breath to never disappoint my God nor my family nor my array of friends ever again. I long that for every person that sees me or knows me to leave with a fresh sense that they can see something different, something unique, something Godly in my dealings with them.

 

As a reader, if you are one of those I have offended, I sincerely am sorry.  But when it comes to the teaching and commands of the Bible, I will no longer simply ignore the  ungodliness of homosexuality, same sex marriage and the whole matter of racism sickens me and I pray I have never been accused of being racist in any way with anyone.  But let me state here that we live in a time and in a world where it seems we are all supposed to be "tolerate" of everyone doing everything or anything they choose to do. Simply, ABSOLUTELY NOT.  It seems to be the world today is growing tolerate of every ideology and whim and wrong except Christianity.  We all do not have every right to do anything and every thing we may choose to do. That is exactly what Satan would have us all to believe and strive for as a way to life.  There are rights and there are wrongs; they are all in the Holy Bible just so you can know.

 

Wrong friendships have become far too easy with the advent of social media. What an easy, dangerous trap to fall into isn't it? I see it and hear it all too frequently and have seen firsthand the dire result of pursuing relationships via the cyber "vapor" of anonymity.  Let me remind each of us that NOTHING entered into a computer is ever fully erased due to detection technologies of today; NOTHING! Web sights clicked on, emails, FB messages, tweets; just look at TV when a crime happens and witness the  unbelievable nature of science that unearths messages via hard drives, cell towers, etc. Yet many proceed like there are little walls to hide behind in messaging. As I think about it more and more, that is a great reality. Somebody is always capable of seeing for light makes darkness dissipate, right!

 

Those of you that know me know  I am not bashful about staking a position and defending it with fact to the best I can. I do not write this to be combative for I write this in hope that people that are staggering around in the forest of wrong of mores, societal lies will cast aside the blindness of Wrong and choose a path that God has ordained. I implore each of us to assess your lives through that lens. Will we lose friends? Probably but it is a worthwhile thinning of the herd of wrong I have become convinced of on so many fronts.

 

Our world is simply in a terrible economic, political, diplomatic, and military mess and looking at the world from God's view, why would it be any better, I believe. Our own nation, a nation founded on the principles of Godliness, has forsaken and trampled those principles in the dust of equality and everybody having the right to do whatever they want.  I will forever believe the HIV/AIDS disease was brought on by the sickening reality of homosexuality. The Bible is vivid on this very point when men turned to men in lust and women burned in lust for  other women and disease came on those that chose to be in that number.  Look it up; it is THERE!

 

It is my sincere belief that God has pulled back from America for America, as a nation, has pulled away from God. I believe God is giving our nation a taste of what life without Him can look like.  I am not a preacher but I am a man, a husband, a father and a grandfather.  I realize that amazing mass of people I have had access to in my lifetime and how many of those I have failed to be a Christian example before. I seek forgiveness on a grand scale for allowing that to happen. 

 

As I sat in church this morning listening, I was moved strongly to put into words the pounding in my heart and thus what you have read.  What do we stand for? Where are we going? What are we looking for? Why do we keep doing what we have always done knowing it is wrong?  Four questions I ask you to deeply analyze at a very personal level.  I hope more than you know that my words will be received with the heartfelt love with which they have been written. I hope even more than that if you see in your own life, as I have, the wrong, I did not say politically correct, but the wrongness of decisions in your own life that there is still time to correct that vector to that God would have you pursue.  If you would like to discuss this with me, I would be honored to have that conversation.  

 

Like I tell my children and close friends, if I did not care, I really would not care. I care for each of you more than you perhaps can begin to understand. It is my greatest hope that this blog will be a beacon in a world of darkness. I prayed before I wrote that God will give me the words. I will pray before I publish this that these words will touch many hearts as He would have that heart touched.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my heart!

The Cadence of Time

It has been two weeks since I did my last blog. As I think about what has transpired in those short few days of life, it astounds me at the mastery and the majesty of life and yet, the unforeseen events and people that enter your life that make a lasting brushstroke on your life.  I will begin the blog with remembering a great experience for many reasons with my travel to my hometown of Gadsden, AL to be part of a home going celebration for my college basketball coach, Coach Riley Whitaker.

 

Funerals have a way of making or causing you to stop and reflect, don't they?  I am so thankful Coach and I remained connected through the years since that one year I played for him in 1967.  To be asked to eulogize him at his funeral and get to sing one of my favorite songs, He's All I Need, was a great time for me and apparently for many others I saw for the first time in far too many years as well as some wonderful people I had not met in my days in Alabama. Memories are treasures I realize as the years pile up and the memories turn to higher elevations in my mind.   A side point but a pertinent point in now having attended and sung at many funerals in the last few years is that there is a tremendous difference in a funeral for a Christian and one that is not a Christian. Coach and his beautiful wife, Marie, were well in the shadow of our Lord and we all know Coach is there in Heaven; a blessing!

 

Seeing the guys I played basketball with so many years ago was a true joy. We laughed, we shared, we bonded once more after the battles we fought together in that successful season for it was Coach that drew us together and then transformed us into a cohesive unit. He was a master at that in his quiet, low profile manner but always focused. I loved him for who is always was; my Coach and I will treasure that time in Gadsden to my last day and beyond!

 

I love to meet new people but meeting new people from the town where I grew up is even more special for we share a common root structure in many ways.  A dear friend I had that year I played for Coach that was accidentally killed in an auto accident that shocked all of us that knew him that year.  To be honored to meet his wife at the funeral after all these years is remarkable on many fronts that began with unexpected handshake at the conclusion of the funeral.  Seeing many friends I worked with at Goodyear in Gadsden, churched with, had as teachers in high school, sportswriters, former childhood friends; this list is long but the joy is greater. 

 

As I returned to Canton that Sunday, I could not escape this phenomenal reality of how much people need other people for each of us put our brushstroke on each person we meet on this journey as they do on us. We are the sum of all the people that have touched us, changed us, molded us to what and who we are! Isn't that amazing when you stop and think about it for it screams to me that, yet again, there is purpose for every act and action we take on this journey!  My heart is so warmed by each and every one of those folks I met in the whirlwind journey home but everyone will never be forgotten.

 

In the last week via a Facebook message, I would able to establish contact with my third grade teacher that is soon to be 101 years of age in December. I wrote her, Ms Adamson, a letter and she sent me a nice letter back along with a newspaper article about her on achieving that century mark. I had to smile with her letter for she closed by giving me her phone number and "you can call collect if you wish .." for there are many of you that do not recall the "call collect" component of phone calls. She also attributed her long life to never getting married and very few drugs.  A great experience and to now have contact with my first, third and fifth grade teacher is really something special to me.

 

As we as a nation and as a People work through this latest mass shooting, we realize just how vulnerable we all are for today you realize that events like that are just a breath away.  Listening to railing in high pitch after each of these about guns, mental health, poor police work, etc, etc, I am reminded of something I have known for many years. If someone wants to kill you; they will for it is about choice and will, isn't it?

 

Since returning I have been honored to sing in three local assisted living facilities where you are surrounded by dozens of elderly people. In that hour or so I get to spend with them in singing, talking, meeting and sharing with them, I am reminded that it is I that gets the real blessing by that labor of love. That has become a phenomenal ministry for my quartet, The Pathway Quartet for you realize that many of those wonderful people find themselves placed there by children or whoever just does not have the time nor the patience nor the finances to give that care they need.  I also realize now that each of those people have a story they really want to tell so the blessing comes when the music is done and you open yourself up to the stories.  There are smiles, tears, regrets, feeble hands that hold yours gently, sweet comments of appreciation; who could not love that!  I always take the time during and after the singing to talk about Heaven and what they must do to have that home prepared for them in Glory. Wow, what a ministry!

 

So time does march on in drumbeat cadence. I know that sounds like something a really old person would write but I see that cadence and hear it ever so clearly.  As physical or mental ailments begin to invade those around you and change the persons you have known for many years, it is both shocking and hurtful to see the transformation. Realizing as well that each of us stand at the precipice of changes like that causes you to enjoy every moment you have with friends, loved ones and family.  My grand kids are now in the fifth, fourth, third and second grades with one yet to start school; that takes my breath for I know each time I see any of them now, they will be markedly changed since the last time I held them.

 

I will close in a few words on the exhilarating power of hugging.  As big as I am I have to be careful in hugging someone that is frail and elderly not to hurt them. But in being gentle, you can see the power of hugging in lifting a frown to a smile, a tear to a twinkle, a dread to a hope. Wow! And I get to see those transformations oh so frequently in my ministry in the jails, in the homes, at the funerals, in my family. Humans need other humans but more specifically, people really do need people. It is my greatest hope to be able to exhort and encourage many people that will enter my life in the remaining years God will give me. For who gets the blessing? That would be me and I am so blessed.

 

So for the quick handshake at the funeral that meant so much, the many laughs, the tears of joy I saw, the stories long forgotten but now fresh, the reality of the cadence of time, I realize what a precious treasure life is.  I will leave you with that last sentence and the key operative word, "treasure" for each of those I met while back home will forever be a treasure buried safely in my heart.

Stepping into the Deep End

Being born in 1948 and thus my teenage years spent during the turbulent times of the now called "Civil Rights Movement," like most of us, we were pretty oblivious to the real story and the logic behind the events we witnessed or heard about. I certainly plead guilty or perhaps ignorant is a better plea. 

 

Here we reside in a new century and thirteen years into it and many of us now in our sixties are baffled, fed up with or just plain tired of seeing and hearing some of the rhetoric from some of the same archaic mouths from the era of the "Movement."  Jesse Jackson sort of comes to mind as an example of what I am talking about but there are several.  I have many black, oops, excuse me, African American friends, have an African grand daughter, live in a world populated overwhelmingly by African Americans in the jails and prisons where I seek to minister.  We see the staggering statistics of gun deaths by African American men killing other African American men and have societally pretty much just shrugged our shoulders and just believe or rationalize it is what it is and move on. My list of examples could fill pages but we all know what I am talking about especially if you are from the 1960s South.

 

This summer I have invested much research time in drilling into the strategic and tactical realities of the Battle of Gettysburg.  Reading or rereading several 500 page books about each day of the three day battle fought 1-3 July 1863 is fascinating to me strategically and tactically. I know the commanders, the locations, the routes of march, the positions upon entering the theater of operations that hot summer, the weapons, etc. I know where my great grandfather and his two brothers were located all three days and about their march from New Guilford, PA to Gettysburg. I know much but what does that really matter when you reflect on the strategic dimension of that battle?

 

While I long to return to the Gettysburg battlefield and again walk the topography and feel the earth provide cover and springs that provided much needed water; all that was there in 1863, one must, strategically, link up the previous September of 1862 when Lee took his Army to Sharpsburg, MD where the flowing Antietam Creek would provide but one feature show in the theater of blood over three days that Autumn.  Strategically, one cannot just look at Gettysburg and not see the direct linkage to the Battle of Antietam which, like Gettysburg, were Union victories. These were two devastating losses in men, materiel, political footing and pride for the South. Let us not forget that while Gettysburg was being fought, future POTUS Grant was defeating the Southern Army at Vicksburg cutting all the Mississippi River as the spine to the South.  Three great battles with many skirmishes and cavalry battles mixed in led to the surrender by Lee not many months hence. 

 

Most of us somewhere in our schooling understand all of the above paragraph in differing degrees but we all know the South lost the Civil War. For right or wrong, good or bad, the 1776 "Union" had been rejoined on the crucible of blood. Nearly one million Americans died in that struggle; we know the expanse and the numbers. But have we seriously stopped to understand how those events set America, and the Global Village, on a trajectory where we find ourselves today? 

 

As America has just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the "I have a dream .." speech by MLK at the Lincoln Memorial, I have found myself in parallel with my research on the military struggle of America in the 1860s asking myself some questions I have honestly never stopped to consider nor to contemplate!

 

Remembering well the White and Colored water fountains, doctor office entrances, bathrooms, etc, it was no big deal for it was what it was; it was our collective culture. I had black friends that I played with regularly that lived "down there" and we all know, now, where "down there" was. I delivered newspapers both "down there" and "around here" meaning where the blacks lived "down there" and the rest of use lived "around here. I remember being angered that the only missed payments for the news papers were never "down there" but always "around here."  I learned that blacks in my world in the 50s and 60s, could be trusted and were faithful to their debts even when times were tough, "down there." I always admired that and still do!

 

I do remember that day one summer when I was about ten that I realized blacks were different and that blacks lived differently that me. I did not understand it but it was as a light came on in a cave and I knew that something was strikingly different in their world versus my world. That fact drilled into me more deeply as the riots, the dogs, the fire hoses, the marches, the killings escalated in my world and I was overwhelmed with the cadence of my young life. Oh yes, and there was this thing called the Vietnam War which added a whole new explosive dimension to my world in seeking to connect the dots of why all this was happening. I am sure many reading this would quietly or openly affirm that same sense of wondering why all this was going and spinning out of control for out of control it was!

 

As the "Speech" celebrations have come and gone, the talk shows and media have been brimming with discussions on what was going on behind the scenes that was not obvious to many of our young eyes.  SCLC, SNCC, NAACP were organizations that, for me and for most of us then, were only designations for groups of troublemakers. Nobody took time to explain what it all meant; at least in my world for it was what it was; it was our culture. But I knew that culture in which I grew up was in free fall; and still is!

 

When I learned this week that in 1963 that thirteen states still existed in the UNITED States where blacks could still not vote, I was appalled for all the Freedom Riders, the Selma March, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings, etc, etc began to come back to me in hues of why all that turmoil was unleashed. How dreadful in a nation founded on equal rights for all where a whole people, a people taken from their homelands and brought to this nation to be literally enslaved in an institution as property with no say, no rights on any part of their lives!

 

As all this has focused in my mind, the great battles of the Civil War, the unending killings, bombings, strikes, assassinations, events of my childhood were all part and parcel to where we are now.  We fought a war of independence from a foreign force.  We fought a war to maintain the Union. We fought a war in Asia where a conscription draft system skewed the battle deaths sickeningly heavy toward blacks.  This list could go on as well. Some of you are probably angry with me if you have read this far but what this world, our world, that world where my grand kids will grow up and earn and career and live has devolved hideously.  The Emancipation Proclamation was politically explosive for Lincoln.  He could not even bring it to the legal state until the Union Army had one, ONE, major battlefield victory. Antietam gave Lincoln that political green light.

 

There is so much I could say but will bring this to a conclusion; I hope.  We became a nation in 1776. One hundred years later we killed nearly one million of our own to validate the  Union established in 1776.  One hundred years later the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed primarily because of the dismal, embarrassing state of reality with a significant portion of our population not allowed to vote. As this next century of events since 1964 cuts and meanders in some many directions, one must wonder what this next fifty year will bring. I will not be here nor will many of you so this is all hypothetical.

 

But as I sit here writing this looking at my beautiful  four year old African grand daughter laying in my wife's arms loving on her., I cannot escape the windows of history outlined above and wonder what her life will be like as she grows to womanhood, family, life!  Cultures are the sum total of the behaviors a great friend, John Loulan, taught me many years ago.  I am not pleased nor happy as I look at my lifetime in the rear view mirror as weighed against the countless deaths and destruction cast upon this nation's people and still such atrocious behaviors still exist on some of our nation's people.

 

My summation; we are better than this!  We are more advanced economically, politically, societally, than anywhere else on the globe. And yet, the ghosts  and death angels of my young life reside "down there" and "around here." That is shameful.  Having spent much time in South Africa and seeing the three race cultural struggles continue, I cannot escape this sense that we are smarter and capable of much more and much better in all segments of our population.  My faith in this nation is still great. My hope for this nation is subverted with the morass in which we find ourselves in large part due to poor leadership nationally. The dealing with Syrian will point out the historical blundering that could yield catastrophic results; perhaps even the End Times!

 

I know I have stepped into the deep end of my societal pool. I guess that is what learning and education does; expand one's capacity to learn, right?  But the real question  is simple, what are we going to do differently for change begins with a choice and one step of energy. Fact is; what we are going is apparently not going in a right, more equitable solution for our national population and global village.  None of this excuses the entitlement mentality that resides and abounds and is providing a cancer to the resources of this nation.

 

Yes, I look forward to your thoughts and recommendations please. If you wish to take shots at my words, I will absorb and move forward. When I think of the blood and loss in our very own nation since our birth that has brought us to where we are; frankly I am not too proud of the landscape.  My grand kids deserve better from their Poppy.  Our Hopie laying in my wife's arms watching Curious George is a metaphor for our national, collective cultural direction I believe.  We can do better!

A Georgia Cotton Field World

A few years ago at a Dixie Melody Boys concert, a great Southern Gospel quartet for many years, Ed O'Neill, the bass singer, said that today in concerts, after having been in Gospel music for sixty years, is like walking into a Georgia cotton field with all the white hair.  That was a funny comment but one that resided in me. Let me explain!

 

A ministry that has opened to my quartet, The Pathway Quartet, and to me when all of us cannot make schedules work and I fill as a soloist, is doing concerts in regional assisted living facilities.  I realize I have never invested much time in large groups of elderly and somewhat infirmed people but have found that investment via the concerts to be simply amazing. As an aside, having sung in many concerts in the last several years, a reality of my personality is that I want to go and sing and depart. That internal drive in me has caused me to miss the real reason for singing Gospel music too many times with many people.

 

Here is one thing I have learned and learned well which, therefore, has caused me to force myself to disconnect from that drive in me to go, do and leave now to being early, do your best and stay after to really get to know those folks God has put before me to sing to. Thus the point most learned is that in performing with your heart the music of the Gospel, you touch people in a much deeper place and especially if they are older.  Many of them have no family to spend time with, many are literally put into those places and pretty much forgotten. It is what I have come to call a "lost population." Many of the songs they have heard through their lives and I love to watch them strive to sing along with us or me.  Singing Gospel music touches people is a most intimate way I have learned so investing time with these sweet people after the music is done is vital to the whole experience. Those that do not take this time are missing the real love.  That is so very sad.

 

Just last night as I sang to a group of about twenty-five elderly folks at an Assisted Living facility, I got to meet some really sweet, precious people, to hear their stories, to give a hug when they asked one, to be part of their lives for an hour. Who got the blessing? Well, I certainly did and with each of these events I realize in my own heart how blessed I am to get to do that ministry for that is exactly what it is; a ministry!

 

My vault of memories grows with each concert event.  Last night there was a new deposit of memories. One I will share ... this precious lady was just to my left sitting as I sang. Her eyes never left me the entire time and she had this sweet, magnetic smile and spoke volumes with those deep blue eyes. She had really dressed up for the concert with a white sweater with red birds on the front. During one of the songs I reached down and gently shook her hands and she teared up. I realized she was holding a little stuffed dog all tucked in her hands.  She held it up to me as I shook her soft hand.  When the concert was over I returned to her and she held "Pet" up to me with a broad smile on her face asking if I wanted to hold "Pet." I held the little brown stuff animal, dog, and I could tell it thrilled her to death that I would take that ten seconds to do that. In that moment I knew all over again why a ministry like I get to be part of is so important and I was recharged!

 

We all have had or will have aging parents or grand parents in that same situation unless they are taken home via death as will each of us.  Will we be forgotten or dumped on some paid facility to care for them? I think that a worthy question for each of us will face this same life reality.  I will take this opportunity to thank my sister-in-law and her wonderful husband for the care they showed so wonderfully in caring for my wife's father to keep him at home. As well I want to tell both my sisters just how much I love them for caring for our mother to keep her at home. Home is so very important to these people I realize more and more. So anything I can do to make these many I am now getting to meet feel a piece of "home" it is certainly worth the time, effort and energy of our Quartet's part to deliver for I see so clearly how much these folks appreciate the effort and the caring.

 

This whole ministry has been simply amazing in its rewards coming from just taking a few minutes to share, to listen, to smile with them.  Each of these people have rich histories and are pocked with many highs and some terrible lows.  Many have various physical encumbrances but when we come together in the concert venue, there is a common denomination of enjoyment, warmth and togetherness; sort of like a small taste of Heaven and we get to be part of that taste!

 

A special insight for me is in seeing family members or spouses sitting next to their parents or spouse housed in these locations. You can see the angst, the love, the disbelief, the joy of just getting to be with them one more time. I watched a beautiful daughter last night, about fifty, push her mom in a wheelchair to the concert. The entire time I was singing I watched the daughter rubbing her mom's hair and shoulders and when she would look up at me her eyes would be heavy with tears but with a smile of appreciation.  That is worth more than any money to me in seeing such love before me not ten feet away. I loved that daughter for she loved her mother and the mother was pretty much oblivious as to what was going on which made the whole experience even more precious to me.

 

My challenge to each of you ... if you have time, find time to spend with these wonderful people in these homes.  You will be welcomed and greeted with smiles, stories and joy; those three are what I could call a currency of bliss!  You will smile, you will laugh, you will cry, you will rejoice at what you will find and it is all worth it. I also want to recognize the in-house caregivers which too often are unsung and taken for granted. I am seeing some really wonderful caregivers in these concerts showing love and respect for these precious people.

 

Again, who gets the blessing? You will, I promise. Give someone in your world a little bit of you today, please.

Loving Living

Good morning as I listen to the chirp of many birds flitting around in the cool, beautiful air of this late Summer.  I have a few minutes before several activities trigger for the afternoon plus the house is actually empty so my mind went into reflection of a concert I was in last night and the reinforcement of the joy of living I am getting to experience on a grand scale.

 

As you have read in my previous blogs or comments on FB, because I was in the military and have a deep love and respect for the institution, the structure and the purpose of our military, when I see one of those familiar Veteran baseball caps, I immediately approach that man, come to attention rendering a formal hand salute and then into a strong handshake in thanking him for his service.  I especially enjoy watching their wives as this  transpires as they break into a beaming smile of pride for their Veteran.  It is one of the joys of my life in getting to do this when you realize we are losing one thousand WWII veterans each day now.

 

Last evening after a wonderful experience in doing a concert with The Pathway Quartet at a local assisted living facility that was well attended, the blessing we all received was lifting in so many ways.  Sitting in the back row was a distinguished, tall, striking African American gentleman with one of the baseball caps on.  Just before we started the concert I made my way through the rows of people to salute him and thank him and telling him when the concert was over that I would very much love to hear his WWII story. He was thrilled!

 

When the concert was concluded and I was drenched with sweat from the hour concert and being greeted by many of those that attended the concert, I continue to watch the Soldier calmly sitting in his seat and I knew he was waiting on me to get back there to him.  I was finally able to make it him when he stood up tall and straight and we began to talk; I was very tired. I realized as the conversation began that he was having problems staying on topic and when I would ask a question about this WWII experience in Europe, he would struggle to tell me something but then it would leave him and you could see the frustration in that reality. I hurt for him for I had witnessed that exact behavior with my father-in-law not long before he passed. To ease his frustration, I told Mr. Waite, he liked that I remembered his name, that I would be back to the facility in a few days and I would sit with him and we could just talk about his life and his WWII experience.  He had the most striking deep blue eyes I had ever seen and I saw tears begin to well up in showing joy that I would take the time to do that for him. We hugged and I moved on to exit the building but not the experience and drying my own tears from the sweet experience!

 

In that few minutes, I was reminded once more of the joy of life and the love of living. With my wife and some other friends sitting in the concert among the dozens of elderly people that came, I was warmed at realizing how much I do love getting to do the things I get to do. 

 

Of course as my wife aptly pointed out as she saw a printed schedule of my schedule by month for the rest of the year with scheduled singing including the jail ministry, she reminded as only a wife can that I have overloaded myself again. GUILTY I plead but in that plea I will not forget that the joy of getting to do the things I get to do is worth every moment of planning, preparation and execution for it is not for nor about me but for those people God puts in front of me for it so from they and their reaction and response that my joy and blessing is derived.

 

I was especially joyed in watching the three guys I sing with, Bob Park, Dave Richards and Norm Farley, all tired from a long day and it was very warm inside the facility singing their hearts out for these wonderful people. THAT is why we do what we do to give them our very best for each of them regardless of their status and state in life is worthy of our very best every time we sing.  I cannot thank those three guys enough nor can I begin to let them know how much I love and respect them for committing to this journey with The Pathway Quartet! What a blessing!!

 

On this August day, I feel each of you reading this should take a few minutes to fully reflect on what it means to love living!  Through the pains of aging, the frustrations of mental deterioration, the pangs of concern about family members, the ever present concerns of our world, we can find solace and release in the joy of this life if we look for it. I know things are not good for everyone all the time but I know that even through the clouds of worry and concern, God reigns supreme.  That, my friends, will preach so can I get a witness?

Dealing with the Clouds of Life

As I occupy my strategic position for my Saturday morning blog write in my recliner so I can see the birds and squirrels square off for the bird feeder on our back porch, I thus reflect on another week God has given my family.  We have had some significant storms with heavy rains this week with moments of majestic sunshine roll through Canton; I love the sheen of sunshine after a heavy rain for the greens are greener and life just seems, well, even better.

 

This week I was reminded yet again that those clouds that roll in, dump their load of wetness on Earth and then roll on is very much a metaphor for life.  I realize we all have different sizes, types and categories of  "clouds" that change the course of our day and thus our lives.  This week has been certainly a week of rolling clouds in my life with an array of unique, challenging, concerning, uplifting, encouraging, enlightening clouds that aggregate at the heart. At that aggregation point I am further reminded that as mere humans without a knowledge of our Creator, we can lull around in frustration, anger, worry and other negatives that will sap the joy of life right out from under us. I choose not to allow that to happen and for those of you that know me you know I am the perpetual optimist so I choose optimism in the reticules of some possible concerns that reside on the horizon.

 

As I was mentally preparing my thoughts for today's blog, I clicked on a icon that opened up comments to previous blogs I had not seen before by many people some of which I know and many of which I do not know. I read the comments of thanking me, telling me how a certain blog touched their lives, how some were challenged to take the next step, etc were words that led me to the context of my blog this morning. As an aside, for those of you that took the time to comment on many of my previous blogs, you honor me and thank you so much! I do believe that feedback is the breakfast of champions ts I encourage you to give me feedback, testimonials for each lifts me to a renewed belief that this journey of blogging does have value for many that read them. I still cannot believe I ever initiated blogging so, now nearly two years hence, I am so glad I have and apparently others are as well. Thank you!

 

Back to the clouds ... as humans we are all frail creatures for that is the natural course of the human existence and the more years we are granted that existence, the toll of aging increases.  For me, at sixty-five years old, yes I have certainly pains where I never did, perhaps cannot jump like I once did but I know I have never been happier with my life in its entire spectrum of characters and events.  Every thing I do I GET TO DO. One of the great blessings of my life is in getting to sing God's praises that lifts so many people.

 

This week with some clouds that rolled in within the family and external to the family, the purity of joy of life itself as a gift from God became again oh so real to me.  When there is concern that can, and will, naturally cause worry and consternation comes to take you in their grip, stepping back, looking up and focusing on what is really important, my God, always chase those demons away. How many times can I testify to that reality!

 

My heart blog this morning is really simple ... never lose faith even when everything in your world may be driving you to do just that.  A quick story which was one of those events of uplift for me, and I had quite a few this week, was that I received a letter from a young man I met in a chapel service in the Stark County Jail just a week ago.  Big, strong, African-American young man comes into the church service at the Jail in the orange jumpsuit. As he enters the door I hand him a Bible and pull him to me and hug him to encourage that  downtrodden young man. I did not know who he was nor what he had done to bring our paths to cross in a jail but I knew that was a special moment. As the church service began and I spoke and sang in preparation for the sermon, I could not take my eyes nor my mind off that young man with nearly fifty others in the chapel. There was something special about him for I have done this work long enough now to have a sense of people in that situation!

 

As the service ended and before the deputies took the inmates away, I had but a couple of minutes with this young man.  Through tears, he began to share his life as a prominent high school athlete, how he knew he had ruined his life and destroyed his family; so many, many times have I watched and listened to stories just like that and I pray I never grow cold or indifferent to them.  As he departed for his cell awaiting his hearing with the grand jury and no doubt prison time, I told him I would stay in touch with him through his journey for I knew that God has a plan for him.  As I do often, when I got home that night I wrote him a letter of encouragement.  Yesterday I had a hand delivered two page letter brought to my home by the Chaplain from this young man.  I asked my wife to read it to me and I felt my heart so turned and touched by the precious words of testimony of God's blessing on his life, regret for bad decisions and how much our time together that night at the jail meant to him; that is why I do this work!

 

In other words, for that young man, God allowed me to be a means to roll back his clouds for a little while.  As my family faces some concerns as all families face, I lift my family to God for His divine touch for the journey ahead and for the unbounded, immeasurable blessings He has bestowed on my family in so many ways.  We have had our five grandchildren with us again this week on Monday and Tuesday and I am always wowed, warmed and worn by the time the return to their parents but the joy of those precious lives and knowing my wife and I are blessed to make memories with these young minds that hopefully they will remember as their lives unfold is a joy beyond measure.  Each of the five are so uniquely different yet they love each other collectively so much; such a blessing to be part of watching them grow and to be part of that phase of their lives. They make me so much better with each visit.  This has been a Monopoly marathon week with the objective being to "beat Poppy" at all cost. I love it!

 

As is usually the case, a song will come to my mind that captures the place of my heart this morning as I conclude this edition.  Read the words of this great song and let the lyrics roll your clouds away:

I Know Who Holds Tomorrow
Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand

I don't know about tomorrow
I just live from day to day
I don't borrow from its sunshine
'Cause the skies might turn to gray
I don't worry over the future
'Cause I know what Jesus said
For today I'll walk beside Him
'Cause He knows what lies ahead

 

Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand
But I know who holds tomorrow
And I know who holds my hand

I don’t know about tomorrow

It may bring me poverty

But the One who feeds the sparrow

Is the One who stands by me

And the path that be my portion

May be through the flame or flood

But His presence goes before me

And I’m covered with His blood

Lee and Life

For those of you that know me you know the Civil War, especially Gettysburg, carries great weight and interest for me.   Having blood relatives on that field in 1863 is probably the main ignition point for my incessant interest via my great grandfather and his two brothers. They were in the 47th Alabama that attacked Little Round Top on July 2, 1863.  With the 150th anniversary of the great battle just completed, I recorded several hours of authors and historians speaking on CSPAN and watched each of them seeking to find more nuggets of understanding of that battle.  Since that one month ago, I have read KILLER ANGELS, watched the movie, Gettysburg, read another book, Storming Little Round Top, and have begun a rereading of a phenomenal book entitled, The Gettysburg Campaign, written by a Mr Coddington.  The Coddington book has the best maps I have seen showing clearly the movements of Lee's army out of Virginia and Hooker's Union Army tracking them in a northwesterly direction toward the Blue Ridge Mountians and ultimately the South Mountain that allowed Lee to stay screened leading to the Gettysburg battlefield.  Now I am sure that is much more than you wished to know today but as studying the movement maps, this powerful reality of the maps of the movements formed a tremendous metaphor for our lives in my mind.

 

I believe I am like many that have grown up with a hunger for history for I believe anything can be better understood if the economics, history and geography of the issue can be brought to confluence leading to wisdom on the matter.  Moving an Army of over 100,000 men, horses, supply trains, headquarters, ammunition, staff a distance of over 150 miles on back roads, mountain passes, numerous fording crossings with very rudimentary communication systems is staggering to my mind as viewed through today's GPS-world of technology.  But the Armies of Lee and Hooker poked, parried, jabbed, hid, ran from, dodged their way from Virginia  north to what turned out to be Gettysburg.  Then Lee, not wanting to fight the battle that had to be fought thus the invasion of the North for many strategic reasons, at Gettysburg, had to then turn two full corps of marching troops with horses, artillery and supplies south quickly to reach the small town of Gettysburg to engage the Federal army where they were. He did not want to but knew he must and the had to wrestle with all the naysayers in his command, readjust logistics on a grand scale, scout the noe battle positions, issueed hundreds of orders via couriers to far flung commanders across a thirty mile gaggle of troop concentrations, etc. etc. Absolutely amazing to me!

 

But then, the power of the metaphor of our lives hit me like a cannon shot for what I described above exactly parallels our lives does it not?  We know we are headed some where for some reason. We do not know the obstacles, the enemy positions or capabilities, we do not want to minimize our own strengths and capabilities but we maintain a clear sense of destination for we MUST get there.  Each of us has a different "there" but getting "there" is vital.  See the power of the metaphor now?

 

In working these maps and movements and great volumes of letters, dispatches and telegrams from 150 years into a mosaic that not only shows a story but tells a clear story of strategic direction, clarity of mission, understanding of the pathways to the vision, the destination, called strategies, are vital to each of us regardless of who we are and what we do I am learning all over again via this research.  True, my wife thinks I am nuts for investing so much time in this but I find myself starving to feel the flow of the battles for there is another reality I have learned.

 

Many, for example, hear or think about the Battle of Gettysburg or the Normandy Invasion or the Battle of the Bulge.  Most of us think that really not much happened until July, 1863 or June, 1944 or December, 1944; stuff just all of a sudden went into hyper drive.  Ah, NOPE! So here is my second metaphor that has hit me hard ... the Battle of Gettysburg did not begin July 1, 1863 but actually began June 1, 1863.  For the next thirty days as two armies moved northward, there were myriad skirmishes, cavalry charges, artillery duels and smaller unit battles such as at Brandy Station, Virginia.  My point is that the huge battle culminating as the Battle of Gettysburg was the final peg in a dart board of movements, changes, rights and wrongs, ups and downs, miscues, accidents, in-fighting, politics, etc, etc.  In other words, things do not just happen for things that do happen are a culmination of many smaller, seemingly less important events that come to confluence in one's life, right?

 

So in closing, I think my assessment and recommendation for each of you reading this is to realize my words have nothing to do with battles or war but has everything to do with the battles and scars of life that lead to a point of major contention.  That contention can come in many forms such as death, suicide, divorce, graduations, career advancements, etc, etc. I think the greater point is that each of us have direct control over the battles, regardless of size and regardless of degree of importance.  However, keeping ever in mind that these ebbs and flows, river crossings, miscues, positives and negatives all have a cumulative Cause and Effect reality, let my words sink in for I believe some of you reading this really have a need in your life this very moment to wash the brain and the heart toward making right decisions in your life as the river of life meanders ever forward. 

 

Can I get a witness?