In the midst of all my angst about life's questions and growing older, I took time out last night with my wife Sandi to attend a local charity wine tasting expo.

We hadn't planned on going since it is a rather pricey affair and were getting ready to leave the house and grab some dinner at the Thai restaurant in downtown Boone, when Sandi's cell phone rang. Several minutes later we had been given tickets to the wine tasting and needed to change from jeans to something more fitting an "expo" type event.

I guess that is the benefit of being an almost empty-nester older couple who ordinarily have no plans for Saturday evening—we are available for these last minute change of plans.

So, we got ready, drove into town and met the couple with the extra tickets. Once inside, we ditched our coats, showed our tickets and were given our wine glass to keep for the evening. As there were a possible 200 wines to taste and lots of fresh food from local gourmet restaurants to eat, we began our evening at one of the wine merchant tables and followed that first taste with a little shrimp and grits to go with it.

At this juncture I could say that we had a wonderful evening, ate some good food, drank responsibly and met a lot of people we'd not seen in quite some time. But that would be much to simple and almost miss the point of why I am telling this little story.

As we moved through the huge crowd during our more than two hour stay, I was struck by the odd thought that the only difference between this event and an extraordinary Halloween party was that people were dressed in different costumes. It was almost like 90210 come to life as groups of smiling happy people passed us with glasses raised and garments glowing. I was surrounded by people and I myself was a part of those surrounding others who had come to have a good time and for this very short moment in time, the rest of the world didn't exist. In one sense I felt that we could hide behind our happiness as one would hide behind a costume at a Halloween party. In this crowd, one could be anyone that one wanted to be and I do believe that most chose to be happy, successful and full of hope.

Not that any of this is fake—the contrary is true. It's like that old Beatles song that says, "everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey". Knowing this and the fact that everyone has a story to tell, it is amazing to see a large group of people projecting part of the image of who they really are for you and me to see. Not that we are like this all the time, thus the Halloween costume party analogy. There are certain situations when we feel safe to let other people see pieces of us that are normally held back in the everyday, work-a-day world.

At this point I have probably lost myself and you as well. All of this might just be a part of my imagination or my skewed vision of some sort of hyper-real reality buzz. None the less, last night, I would have been quite happy to set up a booth in the corner of that grand ballroom and with glass in hand, listen to every story that each person had to tell and only left as the clock struck twelve and Cinderella left the building.

If the shoe fits, wear it. Enjoy your ride!

The past couple of days have floated by as if I was in a dream, dreaming I was in a dream. In other words my mind's metal activity has been on overdrive after receiving a post card from my high school reunion team inviting me to our 45th get-together.

Normally I am not the type of person that shies away from reminiscing about my former days—I feel that a certain amount of nostalgia is a good balancing feature for our fast-paced lives. I would never describe myself as morose but am aware that my DNA is infused with a certain amount of melancholy—not enough to cause depression but just enough to promote deep, lingering thoughts and emotional responses that help me appreciate the life I have been given.

So, to then say that I have been caught a bit off balance by thoughts of visiting my hometown again and meeting people I have not seen in many, many years is no great stretch.

What I am aware of more than anything is the fact that I have led an incredibly rich and rewarding life. I made it through a lot of situations during my youthful days that could have placed me at risk of living past thirty. In the process of "finding myself" I wasn't always aware of the consequences of my actions or in-actions—but I was always cognizant of the fact that I was being watched and somehow protected from critical harm.

After getting married and becoming a Christian, it was easy for me to see that there were angels watching over me during those reckless years. Yet during the past few days of wandering around the re-union website and interacting with people from my distant past, many more questions than answers about the nature of life and living have been raised.

I guess in one sense I feel some "survivors guilt" over the state of my life as compared to others I have come in contact with through the re-union site, trips to Facebook friends pages and a recent, early church family, gathering.

Has my life been blessed in a different fashion from others simply because I am a part of the church and have attempted to acknowledge "Him" in all my ways as I am encouraged to do in scripture. And while I may believe that this is true, it leaves a lot of questions still unanswered about the nature of life on earth and each person's journey through it.

But I guess people have been asking these types of questions ever since Cain killed Abel—why the one died and the other was spared—why some people are healthy and others prone to getting sick—why there are rich and poor and many in-between.

I have come to understand that some of us are what I would call the "walking wounded" or fractured individuals. We are never quite "whole" but we have learned to live beyond the parts that would limit us from interacting with life on a positive note. We have learned to make choices that build up rather than tear down and in most things accept that which we have no control over.

I am reminded of two incidents in my life that turned out to my benefit but could just as easily gone the other way.

Once, on a tired, late afternoon trip to take one of the kids to the State Fair, I was traveling a little too fast on a dangerous stretch of two-lane road that North Carolina is/was famous for. I was "startled" to find myself approaching a cross-roads where several cars were stopped waiting for one car to turn to the left. I quickly realized that I had no chance of stopping and instinctively swerved to the right, entered a patch of road side shoulder about 15 feet wide and miraculously made it the two hundred or so feet around the cars and back onto the road without hitting anything but tall weeds and a bit of gravel.

Suffice it to say, had I hit any of those cars at my speed, lots of people would have been seriously hurt and I most likely would not be here today.

Another time, I was stopped at an intersection on a major highway about two miles from my home. Just as the light turned green, I accelerated only to have my faithful car stall. I was impatient as I tried to start it and then, just as it fired up, I looked across the intersection to see a speeding motorcycle run the red light. The same motorcycle that would have crashed into my passenger side door at high speed had not my car stalled at the very moment it did. The car had never stalled before and would never stall again while I owned it.

Another coincidence—I can't really say for certain. Do I believe that my life and others were spared as a result of outside forces that I am not fully capable of explaining—yes. Does that make the answers to my recent questions any easier—no.

A friend of mine once said after explaining something to me that we were still confused but at a much higher level and about more important things.

I guess that is where I will land with this one—an attempt to dig into a subject that has no easy answers without giving the impression that I think that I am somehow more special than anyone else. Do I feel blessed—yes! Do I have any pat answers for you when you think you aren't: not today—but I am still pondering the question.

Enjoy your ride!

It's hard to believe that it's been almost 45 years since I graduated from high school. I was reminded of this fact last week upon receiving a post card from the committee planing the big high school reunion next July in Port Huron, Michigan.

Not all that unusual perhaps except for the fact that I really never graduated in 1967 but a year later after taking night school to make up for the credits I was missing after having dropped out—a few months before the big date—to travel the world and find the ... << MORE >>

Several years ago I worked as a newsman/photographer for a twice weekly local newspaper called the Jefferson Times. As a writer it was my job to fill up the paper with items of local and regional interest. I also authored a column entitled "Just Common" which was a collection place for all those random thoughts and ideas that popped up between whatever else it was I did.

One aspect of the job I remember clearly was that I was always creating opening sentences in my head to describe the stories I was working on. ... << MORE >>

I really can't believe that it has been almost six months since I posted my last blog rambling.

Have I been overwhelmed with the rest of my life—well almost but not quite.

At some point I guess I just lost my desire to decant every thought—that along with my tendency towards laziness. Perhaps it was that second glass of wine that did me in blog-wise. As we get older, we often trade one buzz for another anyway.
... << MORE >>

About a week ago I began a blog posting about the expectations we have towards friends and aquaintances in our lives. After working on it for over an hour, I went to another tab in my internet browser and lost the whole story. I was pretty bummed at the time and thought perhaps it was a topic that I was not supposed to broach. At the time I felt as though it was perhaps one of the most coherent things I had written in quite some time.

A couple of days later, I ... << MORE >>

"A story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it." Donald Miller, from "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years".

Having just read the aforementioned book I am now prone to wild swings of the imagination in how we can edit our own lives into a story that seems a little more purposeful and productive in a creative and beneficial way.

Not that our lives are like a well written novel or movie where every scene has been written for maximum impact and plot ... << MORE >>

This past Valentines Day weekend Sandi and I visited our kids who live in Cary, NC to have dinner with them in celebration of Sandi's 60th birthday. It is only a 2 1/2 hour drive from Boone and is a welcome change in our daily routine. We affectionately call it "getting off the mountain". Boone is not a backwoods town by any means since it is home to the ever growing Appalachian State University. But it is a lot more rural than it is urban—and that's not a bad thing—just a bit boring sometimes. As you know, I ... << MORE >>

I was driving back from Raleigh on Sunday and having had time to allow my mind to rest (after two long walks in the wilderness areas around Cary with my wife) I saw a trailer sitting in a field and wondered what it would be like to write about it. I mean really take the time to consider it and all its many ramifications, moods and moments. What follows is a poem in progress.

Meditations on a trailer sitting in an open field.   2.13.2011

My first thought ... << MORE >>

Way back in 2007 I posted an observation on what I had come to understand about reconciliation as it pertained to a church I had been a part of for nearly 20 years.

Sandi and I had left the church amid "leadership" disagreements and overall disatisfaction with the direction the church was heading. We had been hurt by "leadership" and in this had in turn wounded others. The church had a long history of leaving wounded soldiers by the wayside. Our attempts to change the way relationships were handled were not met with a ... << MORE >>